The Misfits. A film that may have had more going on behind the scenes than it did during the actual film. For one: it was both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable's last completed film. However, before that, much was also happening behind the scenes - sweet and bitter. The Misfits was written by Marilyn's husband at the time, Arthur Miller. It was supposed to be a gift to Marilyn - a script where she had a character that was complex and not the stereotypical 'dumb blonde' Marilyn played often before and was tired of. Not only was Marilyn's character, Roslyn, complex - it was also based off of Marilyn. Turning out the opposite of how Arthur had hoped it would, Marilyn felt betrayed by how her character was written and had many disagreements about how the script was written.
Once filming began in July 1960 in Nevada, things only seemed to continue going downhill. The night before Marilyn's first scene with Clark Gable (who she would imagine was her father when she was younger), Marilyn was so nervous she took a large dose of Nembutal to fall asleep. This caused her to sleep in late and show up late to filming. Adding to this, throughout filming, Marilyn experienced an incredible amount of anxiety: her marriage was falling apart, she felt like John Huston (the director) treated her like she was unintelligent, and her nerves from being on set/filming in general. All this caused for Marilyn to depend more and more on alcohol and pills - therefore causing her mental and physical health to decline. Marilyn's costar, Montgomery Clift, was suffering with both things as well and a doctor was on 24-hour call for the two throughout filming. Marilyn would apparently say about Mr. Clift, "I've never met someone in worse shape than me." Throughout all of this, Marilyn would show up late to set due to everything she was experiencing (it also didn't help that Arthur would do rewrites for scenes the night before or morning it had to be filmed) - therefore delaying filming. Arthur and Marilyn would soon become divorced about a month before the film was released. When the film did premiere, Marilyn was placed in a psychiatric ward - worsening her condition. Joe DiMaggio would eventually help her out. Marilyn would go on to say that she hated the film and her performance in it. On a happier note, recently, I was lucky enough to come across a neat story of Steve Armstrong's about his meeting with Marilyn while he was an extra on The Misfits. "When I asked Marilyn for the autograph, the man standing behind her in the photo told her not to stop for autographs and said she needed to get to the shoot. Marilyn just ignored him and was extremely nice to me (I think he may have been her masseur, he also had a small part in the Misfits as well). As I recall she called me sweetie or something similar (I admit that was an awful long time ago and memories do fade). I think my cousin may have taken the autograph while I was away in Vietnam, as I can’t find it. My stepfather and our neighbor were the two men that rounded up the wild mustangs that were used in the movie. We actually lived in old Washoe City at the time. Marilyn also attended the first ever Camel Races in Virginia City that same week (my mom took some photos of the races). I always wonder what I should do with all the photos as they are 35mm Kodak slides." It breaks my heart to hear how difficult filming was for Marilyn and all that she had to go through, but her heart still remained kind. While The Misfits was extremely difficult for Marilyn, she toughed through it all.
Thank you all for reading today's blog post! I hope you have a lovely day! <3 xoxo, Sophia, Mesmerizing Marilyn Monroe
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AuthorHi there! My name is Sophia! Welcome to Mesmerizing Marilyn Monroe! ♡ (To read more about me and this corner of the internet, click here!) Archives
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