For today's Throwback Thursday, let's talk about an icon: Marilyn Monroe. I specifically wanted to talk about one of her greatest performances which also happened to be her last. #TBT to Marilyn Monroe's final movie, The Misfits.
Marilyn Monroe was obviously a sex symbol who made her career doing comedies that played off of her naturally seductive nature. Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry A Millionaire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - they are all classic comedies that show off the Marilyn we all know and love to this day. On a personal note, I adore Marilyn's movies. I think she was a comedic genius! Rewatch any of those movies and tell me I'm wrong!
But as Marilyn got older, she yearned to be respected as a real actress. She proved herself in the 1953 film noir Niagara, but it was her role in The Misfits that really showed off her dramatic chops. The Misfits was a turning point for the mid-30s Marilyn.
Marilyn plays Roslyn, a recently divorced woman who went to Reno to make it official. She meets Gay and Guido played by Clark Gable and Eli Wallach and they all travel together to the countryside. They stop to visit a man named Perce, played by Montgomery Clift (also a very tragic figure in Hollywood history!), and soon it's a battle between Gay and Perce to see who can win Marilyn's affections.
Marilyn, however, no longer becomes into the idea of any of these guys after she learns that these cowboys plan to catch wild horses and make some money from turning them into food for dogs. Not if Marilyn can help it! As the sensitive, animal-loving character who has a new lease on life, she is determined to stop these boys from hurting animals. It's a lot more dramatic and meaningful than I just made it sound. It really is a good film and she is wonderful in it.
The story behind this movie, like Marilyn's life story, is a bit tragic. Due to the movie's star power, writer, and director, it was highly anticipated as "the ultimate" movie. Things did not exactly turn out that way.
John Huston directed this script from Arthur Miller (Marilyn's playwright husband with whom she was experiencing a lot of problems). Everything about this production went wrong. It was shot in the scorching Nevada desert. Arthur Miller made constant revisions as they were shooting. Marilyn was having so many problems with him that she had turned to drinking and taking pills which made her arrive late and hungover - if at all - to her scheduled film shoots.
John Huston said in a 1981 interview that he was "absolutely certain that she was doomed" after seeing her come in every day in such a wreck. They even shut down production for two weeks when she was hospitalized for mental health reasons. As a result of her physical and mental state, a lot of closeups are shot in soft focus.
Marilyn wasn't the only person who was trouble on set! The men all reportedly fought with each other. Clark Gable, perhaps forgetting that he was getting on in years, wanted to do his own stunts.
Luckily, John Huston would not let him do the scene where his character had to be dragged across a dry lake bed. Strangely enough, Clark Gable died only 12 days after shooting wrapped in 1960. This was Clark and Marilyn's final film and even their casting was something of a dream for Marilyn who always said he was her favorite childhood actor.
Monroe sadly died in 1962, a year after the film was released. While it was not a box office hit, it did receive critical acknowledgment for the good script and great acting. As time has gone on, however, The Misfits has become known as one of the best films of the 1960s.
It really is fascinating to watch these three Hollywood titans - Monroe, Gable, and Clift - act together in this film under John Huston's legendary directing (and Miller's script, sure, even though I don't want to give the guy too much credit. I can't help it. I'm a big Marilyn fan!). In a lot of ways, this film feels like capturing lightning in a bottle and it is incredible to know that this masterpiece is what came out of what sounded like a grueling and temperamental process.
