Marilyn and The Misfits

With Marlon at Actors studio benefit, 1955

The famous nude swim on the set of her last uncompleted film, Something's Gotta Give

This Sunday August 5th, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the biggest sex symbol the movies ever produced: Marilyn. No other name 

is needed. For like Madonna or Elvis or Cher or Beyonce, Monroe is instantly recognized as 'Marilyn',  the 20th century's wet dream. This August 5th then is a milestone. That early morning when she took her last breath also fell on a Sunday. An anniversary can't get more precise than that. Was she murdered? This theory has had A LOT of popularity in the last 40 or so years. Certainly there seemed to be some kind of foul play. But by whom? The Kennedys? Marilyn's own maid? Her P.R. rep? Peter Lawford? The mob? 20th Century Fox? Everyone seemed to have a motive or at least something to hide. So many people were mysteriously seen in the dark of night coming and going from her house in Brentwood, or so say the neighbors years after the fact. Or was it suicide [the official verdict]?  Like Garland, Monroe was a classic Gemini. Torn between Norma Jean [her birth name] and Marilyn, she always an unhappy camper [her suicide attempts are too numerous to relate here] and she didn't seem much better the last 6 months or so of her life. I think it was just her fate. Kismet. After so many attempts or false attempts, so many late night/early morning calls to friends, who could take those threats seriously anymore? Marilyn, the person, was a train-wreck: a ton of affairs, abortions, an unstable childhood, analysis, 3 unhappy marriages, chronic insomnia, pills, booze -- you name it. 

With fellow sex-symbol Jane Russell on set of ' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ', 1953

Marilyn relaxing. A favorite pic

With Geraldine, er , I mean Tony Curtis on set of ' Some Like It Hot ', 1959

But Marilyn the star, the icon, the sex symbol of all-time, that was something special. She made magic on the screen. Marilyn was what the movies were made for. Or maybe she was made for the movies. From 1950-1962 Marilyn was what people referred to when they thought of sex and the ultimate female animal, hands down, no argument. That's pretty much the characters she played. Whether she was psychotic as in 'Don't Bother To Knock' or adulterous as Rose in 1953's 'Niagara' or how the public probably remembers her best as the ditzy, child-like innocent from 1955's 'The Seven Year Itch', Monroe epitomized the image of what American men fantasized, who  they wanted their girlfriend or wife to emulate.  
                                                                                                                                For modern day audiences Monroe has probably been seen by most in 1959's 'Some Like It Hot', Billy Wilder's still hilarious gender-bending sex comedy that also starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, retains the power to entertain some 53 years after it's release. The cross-dressing, hints of homosexuality and carnality must have raised some eyebrows in 1950's Eisenhower America. And speaking of dressing, Monroe practically falls out of one costume after another.                    
                                                                                                                                         In 1961 Monroe, who always wanted to be taken as  a serious actress, signed on to make 'The Misfits' with Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Well, "signed on" may not be the correct term as it was written for her by her then-husband Arthur Miller, one of America's leading dramatists. This is a legendary film. A film whose production has been much written about. From Monroe's lateness on set to the strenuous work of Gable in 100 or more degree heat in the Nevada desert, to director John Huston's all night gambling sessions in nearby Reno, this was a movie with unrealistic expectations thrust upon it. Gable, the leading male sex symbol of his generation, Mr Rhett Butler ['Frankly, my dear...'] playing opposite Miss Monroe, sex symbol 1960 version. Everyone expected sparks to fly. Throw in a unstable, alcoholic, homosexual, highly-talented, highly-neurotic Montgomery Clift and macho director Huston into the mix, well one just drools at the thought of such a collection of new and old Hollywood all out there in the Nevada desert heat sweating their boobs and balls off. The press was taking bets as to who would kill who first. It seems Marilyn never was on time, which tried just about everyone's patience except maybe Clift's. Monroe and Miller were in the middle of a break-up of their 4 year marriage which naturally tightened the screws to an already tense shoot.

                                                      

Photo op on the set. Clift, Monroe, Gable in front. Wallach with black baseball cap, Huston in white cowboy hat, Miller in glasses and producer Taylor under the ladder, 1960.

Gable at 59 was not quite the King he once was. He had aged noticeably during the 1950's, his excessive drinking and smoking habits had done him no favors. But he was still perceived as The King of Hollywood and United Artists, which was bankrolling the film, figured they had sure-fire marquee value with Gable & Monroe as the above-title stars. And he and director Huston had been wanting to collaborate for awhile. Huston originally wanted to work with Gable & Bogart in 'The Man Who Would Be King' as far back as 1950. The plan for the film fell though, but Huston did realize a long-standing dream when he made an epic of it in 1975 with Sean Connery & Michael Caine. No longer a young man, Gable, who had a love/hate relation with acting, was looking for a good one to 'go out on'. When he read Miller's screenplay, he immediately felt a connection to the cowboy Gay Langland and felt this might be the one to top off his career.

Montgomery Clift as Perce Howland, punch drunk rodeo rider.

Clift was a wreck. Alcoholic, unstable, as unreliable as Monroe, he somehow was on his best behavior during the 'Misfits' shoot. So much so that Huston, who abhorred gays and couldn't tolerate men who couldn't hold their liquor, cast Clift in his very next production, 'Freud', in 1961 which was another catastrophic shoot and pretty much ended Clift's film career. On 'The Misfits' however Huston saw a dedicated craftsman who would give anything to make the picture better. And it is better for his participation. His bronco-riding Perce Howland is touching, pathetic, funny, sad, broken, brave, lost, lonely. It is a great performance.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

With Gable, pushing the censors envelope of acceptable skin.

And Marilyn, what of her performance? As Roslyn, the perennial woman-child that drives the story, she is asked to play someone who seems not to far from her reel and real self. More serious than, say, Lorelei Lee in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes', more desperate than Pola Debevoise in 'How To Marry A Millionaire', and as innocently sexy as The Girl, that iconic creation from 'The Seven Year Itch', Roslyn casts a spell on all she encounters, even to some extent Thelma Ritter's character Isabelle Steers. Roslyn seems to infuse parts from

Getting ready on the set. Was every day like this ?

her public life as well. A woman whose parents weren't there for her in childhood, Roslyn keeps going back to square one time and again. Recently separated from hubby Kevin McCarthy in the film, Monroe would soon be divorced from Miller and would gravitate to another bunch of man/boy group of delinquents, Sinatra's infamous Rat Pack. So instead of cowboys the real Marilyn would get not only gangsters but politicians -- for Sinatra's reach in 1960 was ever-widening. So life imitates art. The end of 'The Misfits' has Roslyn and Gay drive away after they round up of the stallions, which Roslyn abhors and which Gay now sees is wrong [the horses are being made ready for dog food], and are set free. Free to return home to the mountains they came from. That is what the movie is about: home. How all the people who inhabit this universe have lost it and how they so much want to find it again. A place to live free and be happy and content. I fear Perce won't find it. He will go back to his rodeos and broken bones and lost dreams, Guido [Eli Wallach and the villain of the piece, if there is one] is too self-centered and petty to find any lasting happiness, Isabelle leaves before the round up in the desert to hang out with her ex-husband who is now married to her old childhood friend [wtf?]. Only Roslyn and Gay appear to make an attempt to build a place where no fear of abandonment will infiltrate their lives. I feel this was Miller's attempt at his fantasy of going off with Monroe to the theater in New York and creating character's for her to inhabit.

'The Misfits' premiered in February 1961 by which time Gable had died of a heart attack the previous November. Many would blame Marilyn for those torturous waits in 100 degree heat on location and Gable's decision to do alot of his stunts rather than wait it out. Marilyn put blame on herself also and was haunted by it. Marilyn was always haunted by something. As for the film, it has a haunting quality itself, but at the time most critics were divided as to its merits. The public failed to turn out for The King's last film and it was a box office loser. Time has been kind to it, however, and it plays better than it probably did at the time, it currently holds a 100% 'fresh' verdict on RottenTomatoes. The movie was the last of Monroe's too. She would be dead little more than 18 months after it's release.

Death house. Marilyn's final home in Brentwood. She was found here, dead on Aug 5, 1962.

Marilyn died before women's lib. Before the 60's got started, before nudity on screen was acceptable. What would have became of her? Of course no one can say, but it is interesting to speculate. She would have been 86 this past June 1st. I for one wouldn't want to know what she would have looked like. She may have wound up like 'Sunset Blvd's' Norma Desmond, alone in a great house, living out past achievements and exploits in her mind?  Or would she have been like a Liz Taylor, going from husband to husband, looking for love but finding a lasting one elusive? Most all the great stars from the 1950s died somewhat young or at least middle-aged. Only Brando & Liz lived on past their 70s. Grace Kelly died 1982 at age 52, Audrey Hepburn in 1993 at age 63, James Dean at 24. They all died tragically and the one's who did survive to an old age had enough pain to last more than one lifetime. These few along with Marilyn, epitomized the 50s Hollywood. They ruled it like Clooney, Brad and Angelina, etc do today. As heartless as this may sound, Marilyn's death, like Elvis's, was big box office and has kept her legend alive long after she has past. But her movies. Watch her movies, remember her movies, for that is where the real Marilyn Monroe still lives and still reigns supreme.