A Long, Hot Misfits Summer

More Stars Soon in Heaven ---Part Two

Problem with event movies was unwashed public needing to agree that they were indeed events. Subject matter still had to matter, doubts frankly as to whether The Misfits would. Robert Mitchum was wanted initially for lead man. Memos I read suggest they wanted him badly. Did Mitchum see this as too much reprise of his previous The Lusty Men for RKO? Was writer Arthur Miller too lofty a prospect? Maybe Monroe as screen mate distanced him. By 1960, would her people have insisted on top billing for MM? There was no argument she’d cede placement to Gable, age before beauty perhaps, or one legend checkmating another. But Monroe was still a working actress at heart, not yet legendary as early and mysterious death would confer. Respective pay level told truth as to that … Gable got $750K, her fee $300K same as director John Huston. Both were in for percentages. I understand Monroe’s estate still gets checks from The Misfits and Some Like It Hot. Gable under such physical stress, and working in Nevada’s beastly heat, made his hardest-earned money, comfort for the widow and unborn son in the end, but what a premature one. Not even sixty … and twenty years too old to play this roistering and hard-luck guy. Wish Mitchum had done The Misfits. But as I’ve said before of other icons who went early, would we wish the sixties upon any of them? Seeing Gable "really act" was maybe a lure, as it evidently was for him going in, though I suspect he’d have done a Pepe cameo if they had given him $750K for it (wouldn’t we all?). As for Gable acting, there is more and I think better of that in both Teacher’s Pet and But Not For Me.

Montgomery Clift was aboard as third of major name trio, billed as such and character support for settled leads that were Gable and Monroe. Clift plays his broken rodeo rider with authority, saddling up against sense or reason for a player seen as delicate since a road accident changed forever a public perception of him. I found myself wishing this time that Clift could somehow have gotten more chance at vigorous work, for sure he was willing to go whatever dangerous distance to make screen action credible. Might someone have mentioned him to John Wayne or Wallis as potential son of Katie Elder? I like Dean Martin, but Monty would have been electric as Tom Elder, even in diminished capacity … or am I just a fan wanting to rewrite history sixty years too late? Eli Wallach has a not very likeable part, and we can admire his not playing in opposition to it. Wallach was gifted at being a rat, or “hypocrite” as his “Guido” character is referred to, the actor for me more accessible where comic emphasis is applied to scurvy sorts, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or The Magnificent Seven. Wallach would become spokesman for The Misfits cast by dent of all others gone before historical inquiry began, which must have been an uneasy sensation for him. The Misfits bore pressure from the start as an expected masterpiece, everyone just sure it would be the screen’s supreme drama, a natural consequence of genius present in all aspects. Were they as sure, however, of commercial acceptance?

Marilyn Monroe predicted that if The Misfits achieved greatness, it would come in retrospect, history awarding laurels, not first-run critics and audiences. This woman had smarts, pretending sometimes not to where it served her purpose. She for instance liked John Huston because he had been kind to her during The Asphalt Jungle, but Huston was here under a same pressure to mine gold from Arthur Miller’s concept. Maybe this caused Huston to look for escapes from over-heated toil that was The Misfits. “John Huston was constantly flouting his macho director image. He was always off to ride in local parades or attend parties,” said Ralph Roberts. There was also raw edge to the director where realism was sought, him by cast/crew agreement going too far to get effects he wanted. “A lot of the action scenes in the desert with the horses were actually shot indoors at Paramount after we’d left the Nevada location. That’s when I saw Gable take a lot of physical punishment. He was doing the close shots with a prop man holding the fake horse legs. He would thrust them at Gable who was lying on the floor trying to dodge the hoofs. John Huston felt that all this fell short of the realism he wanted to achieve and personally took charge of the prop master’s duties. Well, Gable really scrambled now because Huston was coming after him with everything he had. Huston poked and jabbed with those hoofs but Gable took it without complaining It must have been pretty painful though.” Marilyn Monroe caught blame in part for Gable’s post-Misfits heart attack and death, daily waits for her obliging him to sit idle in roasting heat. But did Huston experience guilt for how he drove the star who had after all barely got insurers’ go-ahead to appear in The Misfits?

Marilyn Monroe was married to Arthur Miller, this a reason for his writing The Misfits. For her part, there was Miller’s looking like Lincoln, and she had a thing for men who looked like Lincoln. Has this been analyzed since? Surely one or more head doctors who grazed on MM explored it. I get the impression that most any guy with an Abe-face could have Marilyn on a plate. How far back did this quirk go with her? Another of Great Emancipators in her life was Yves Montand, who emancipated MM from Miller bed during Let’s Make Love, a last before The Misfits and done for Fox under George Cukor direction. Monroe knew the picture wasn’t much, but seemed intent on transitioning to Montand, this much to Miller’s humiliation and planned get-even to follow. Best way accomplishing this was to write revenge upon The Misfits, a to start love letter he’d rewrite with a now poison pen. Ralph Roberts witnessed the explosion to follow: “ I was standing outside Mr. Gable’s trailer one afternoon talking to his makeup man. The Misfits was nearing the end of production. Suddenly we heard Gable let out a roar to someone over the phone. He was talking to his agent and was obviously very upset and angry. Gable told his agent that he wanted to see “everything we have on The Misfits” the next morning. It turned out that Arthur Miller at this late date had decided to rewrite the screenplay. By now, Marilyn was completely estranged from him and he seemed to be taking it out on the characters in The Misfits. Gable was now an unsympathetic bum, Marilyn nothing more than a whore, and Eli Wallach suddenly emerged as the hero!”

“Monty Clift was eliminated altogether from the new script. You can imagine how Gable felt about these changes. The next day, he screened the footage they had shot and realized that there was enough to release the picture --- so he went to Frank Taylor (the producer) and John Huston and told them he was going home, that he’d done his last day’s work on The Misfits. Since Gable had script approval in his contract, he didn’t have to speak a word of dialogue unless it suited him. Marilyn was very grateful for the action he took since her contract would have required her to go ahead and complete the film under any circumstances.” Thus spake ego and love now thwarted, Miller more sanguine on the matter when interviewed for The Misfits documentary years later. Ralph Roberts was in a unique position for seeing the whole thing and living to tell it. Deep in Marilyn’s confidence, he was able to get her reaction and fear that a cast-off husband might ruin all of work she and others had done up to crisis point. The confrontation apparently did not get press at the time, curtain of silence lowered over all of professionals attached to The Misfits. It would have done none of them good to have this laundry aired. Work wrapped and The Misfits was released, some months after Clark Gable died. There was avalanche of publicity, but the movie was perceived a downer, partly for loss of Gable, plus Monroe’s personal circumstance being so unsettled, The Misfits sort of “meta” but not to anyone's benefit for being so. There was $3.904 million in domestic rentals and two million foreign, not enough to break even. The Misfits had 14,404 bookings, fair enough till you realize other UA product got many more, Follow That Dream for instance with 23,475, or Alias Jesse James which had 24,926.

The Misfits would for many become a movie inhabited by ghosts. An interesting incident saw Gable having supper alone in the hotel dining room, the casino within view and Huston doing nightly drop of thousands. “Look at him,” CG said to management, “No sleep, full day’s work ahead of him … Huston won’t live long like this.” Irony would write its own coda, however, Gable gone within a month, Huston thriving on till 1987. Apropos to gamble setting, one never knew how chips would fall. For Marilyn Monroe, there would come one more feature partially made. Roberts again: “Marilyn had agreed to do Something’s Got to Give in order to work off a contractual commitment to Fox, though she had no respect for the material. She wanted to get it out of the way and move on to something more interesting. She’d always liked Betty Comden and Adolph Green and wanted to do What a Way to Go with them. Anita Loos had written a sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes wherein Marilyn would play an older Lorelei Lee.” Monroe always sought to improve, and to be in better pictures. Added Ralph Roberts: “She was a big Garbo fan. She used to go to the Museum of Modern Art whenever they had a Garbo film.” There was every intent to finish the Fox job, said Ralph: “Marilyn wanted to finish Something’s Got to Give only a few days before her death. She had met with Fox, and they agreed to reactivate production on the film. At one point they had announced that Lee Remick would take over Marilyn’s role. She was very concerned about this and called Dean Martin to tell him she’d be back to finish it up. She wanted Dean to intercede with Fox. I remember her telling him on the phone, Don’t use Lee Remick.” The Misfits is on Blu-Ray and streams most places in High-Def.