Myth Making: The Misfits (1961)

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller traveled to Reno, Nevada, in the spring of 1956 to divorce his first wife. Fulfilling the state's six week residency requirement until the marriage was legally dissolved, Miller stayed at a cabin on Pyramid Lake, about 100 miles from "the biggest little city in the world." During his time in this "forbidding but beautiful place," he got to know a few modern-day cowboy types who made their living capturing wild mustangs and selling them to be butchered for dog food. Miller was invited to join them on one of these hunts. From his experiences in a "whole state full of misfits," Arthur Miller later fashioned a short story that was published the following year in Esquire magazine.

Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe

But before he wrote the story and just after he returned from Reno, Miller wed Marilyn Monroe, then at the height of her enormous fame. It was a time when the actress was desperate to make films of substance, and once she and Miller moved to New York she began studying at the Actors' Studio and making plans to set up her own production company. After Miller's story appeared in Esquire, a friend suggested he develop it into a screenplay. Inspired by the idea of writing a part for his wife that would allow her to demonstrate her overlooked acting ability, Miller scripted the moody tale of a disaffected divorcee who encounters three disparate cowboys and ends up accompanying them when they go "mustanging" in the high desert of Nevada.

Anticipation began to build the moment word started to spread that the great playwright had written The Misfits for his glamorous movie star wife. Before it was released, the film had become the stuff of legend.

An iconic photo...Front row: Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable. Second row:  Eli Wallach, John Huston. In back: producer Frank Taylor, Arthur Miller (on ladder).

John Huston was living in Ireland in 1959 when Frank Taylor, Miller's one-time publisher and the man chosen by the writer to produce the film, sent him the script. Huston pronounced it excellent and agreed to direct. Huston had been Marilyn Monroe's director of choice for The Misfits. She remembered that he had cast her as Angela in his film, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), one of her early breakthrough roles, was ever grateful to him for it and trusted him to guide her through the challenging dramatic role Miller had written for her.

Clark Gable on the set of The Misfits

Clark Gable, who by this time had been appearing in films for more than 35 years and had been a movie star - "the King" - for most of them, had to be cajoled to accept the male lead. Though he found the script intriguing, he didn't know what to make of the story. Miller persuaded him, calling it an "eastern western," about people trying, but afraid, to connect. 

Huston remembered working with Gable on The Misfits: "He thought of himself as an actor, not a screen personality. He liked reminiscing about his early days in the theater - old-time actors' talk. I saw very soon that Clark knew exactly what he was doing. Two or three times I thought I saw ways to improve his performance. I was mistaken." Gable's portrayal of Gay Langland, an aging wrangler displaced in the modern world, is complex and moving. Co-stars Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, and lately Marilyn Monroe, were committed "method" actors, but Wallach later recalled Gable and the other Hollywood veteran on the set, Thelma Ritter, as true acting "pros."

Clark Gable was impressed, too. Watching Montgomery Clift, as rodeo cowboy Perce, deliver his first major scene (below) in one take, Gable remarked, "My God, he's really good, isn't he?"

The Misfits has been called Arthur Miller's valentine - in Eli Wallach's words, a "love piece" - to Marilyn Monroe, and members of the crew observed that Miller seemed besotted with her as filming got underway. But when the grueling shoot came to an end three months later, not only would the Miller/Monroe marriage be over but Marilyn Monroe would never complete another film.

Marilyn Monroe on the set

Colin Clark, author My Week with Marilyn and The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, wrote that when he met Billy Wilder he mentioned to him that he, too, had worked with Marilyn Monroe. Wilder replied, "Ah, then you know the meaning of pure pain!"

By the time The Misfits was being made in 1960, Marilyn's erratic on-the-set behavior was well known. Cast and crew would wait...and wait...and wait. Sometimes she would appear, sometimes she wouldn't. She had great trouble remembering and delivering her lines and often required multiple takes. Her latest drama coach, Paula Strasberg, was ever present and Marilyn would look to her rather than John Huston for direction while filming her scenes. And there were drugs and alcohol...

Huston recalled, "She was taking pills to go to sleep and pills to wake up in the morning...she seemed to be in a daze half the time." She became less and less reliable, eventually broke down completely and had to be hospitalized. Clark Gable, according to Huston, "...was nonplussed by Marilyn's behavior. It was as though she'd revealed some horrid fact of life that just couldn't be accepted in his scheme of things."

But Huston also remembered, "When she was herself...she could be marvelously effective. She wasn't acting - I mean she was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing."

Marilyn as Roslyn

The Misfits was released on what would have been Clark Gable's 60th birthday, February 1, 1961, but Gable had died of a massive heart attack 2-1/2 months earlier, shortly after the film wrapped. Fortunately, the actor had seen Huston's first cut and was so happy with it he told both the director and Arthur Miller that he thought it the best work of his career. Despite Gable's enthusiasm - and producer Frank Taylor's intention to make "the ultimate motion picture" thanks to an all-star cast and crew - The Misfits was a commercial failure and received a mixed critical response. In Miller's view the critics were "baffled" by it.

If the The Misfits has problems it may be that it was too much Miller's film and not enough Huston's. Regardless of compelling themes, strong performances, photography by Russell Metty, film editing by George Tomasini and an evocative score by Alex North (listen below), the film too often becomes theatrically talky and contrived. And Roslyn, the central character, is so unreal at times that she seems to have been spun out of arty fancies about the actress who portrays her. It is also likely that the difficulties and complications that plagued the production afflicted the film itself.

The Misfits is an unusual and poetic film that may not entirely mesh, but it does fascinate. The powerful climactic mustang capture sequence is as disturbing to watch as it is difficult to forget, and the final scene between Gable and Monroe seems the prophetic farewell of two of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Roslyn: "How do you find your way back in the dark?"

Gay: "Just head for that big star straight on. The highway's underneath it, it'll take us right home."

Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable...fade out...

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The largest remaining band of wild mustangs in the United States roams the high desert areas of Nevada. About 33,000 horses live in 10 western states and another 30,000 are kept in government corrals.  Click here to learn more about the history and continuing plight of our wild horse population.

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Click here to go to My Love of Old Hollywood and links to the other participating blogs in Page's blogathon... 

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Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
The Misfits: Story of a Shoot by Arthur Miller and Serge Toubiana, Phaidon Press (2000)
Making the Misfits, a production of WNET New York, et al (2002)
wild mustang photos by Kat Livengood

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Posted by: Tukiyooo Myth Making: The Misfits (1961) Updated at : 4:00 PM

Monday, May 28, 2012