The Misfits (film)

The Misfits
Original theatrical poster
Directed by	John Huston
Produced by	Frank E. Taylor
Written by	Arthur Miller
Starring	Clark Gable Marilyn Monroe Montgomery Clift Thelma Ritter Eli Wallach Kevin McCarthy James Barton
Music by	Alex North
Cinematography	Russell Metty
Editing by	George Tomasini
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	February 1, 1961 (1961-02-01)
Running time	124 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4 million

The Misfits is a 1961 American drama film with a screenplay by Arthur Miller which was directed by John Huston. It stars Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach. It was the final film appearance for both Gable and Monroe. The movie was not a commercial success at the time of its release but received positive critical comments for its script and performances.

Plot

In Reno, Nevada, Roslyn Tabor (Monroe), a beautiful new divorcée, meets Gay Langland (Gable), an aging ex-cowboy. Guido (Wallach) and Gay invite Roslyn and her friend Isabelle Steers (Ritter), back to Guido's place in the country to help her forget about the divorce. Isabelle runs a boarding house at which Roslyn has stayed during her divorce hearings. They arrive at the half-finished house Guido built for his wife, who had died in their bed during childbirth. Once there, they all drink and dance. Roslyn does have a lot to drink and Gay drives her home.

Eventually the two move into Gudio's half-finished house and make it a home, complete with a vegetable garden. One day after breakfast, Gay tells Roslyn how he wishes he were more of a father to his own children, whom he has not seen for some years. Later that afternoon Roslyn and Gay have a fight about her thinking it silly that she will not let him kill a rabbit that is eating from the garden because she believes killing is wrong. Guido and Isabelle show up and ask the other two if they want to go to a Rodeo.

On the way, Roslyn and Isabelle meet a drifter cowboy Perce Howland (Clift), a friend of Gay and Guido, who is a rider in the rodeo. After arriving and hearing that they make the horses buck intentionally, she tells Guido that she thinks they should not even have a rodeo because she believes it cruel. Later, after Perce is trampled by a horse, Roslyn begs him to go to a hospital, but he gets back in the saddle, getting thrown from a bull and coughing up blood.

Later, after Roslyn dances with Perce, she realizes that he has suffered sufficient brain injuries to have become slightly mentally deficient. He soon passes out in a back alley, and when he regains consciousness he says that he never had anyone cry for him before and he wished he had a friend to talk to. He tells her how his mother gave his stepfather the ranch his father wanted to leave to Perce after his death. He asks her if not your mother then who can you depend on, and she tells him that there is always the next thing. A drunken Gay then comes and fetches Roslyn, telling her that he wants her to meet his kids, whom he unexpectedly ran into. But when they return Gay becomes upset and causes a scene when he discovers they ditched him.

Later on, during the drive home, a drunken Guido asks if Roslyn even notices him and almost swerves off the road. Guido met Roslyn before Gay and is jealous that she chose Gay over him. Roslyn could not overcome how Guido's wife had died, and how he did not take her to the hospital when things went wrong with the baby because he had a flat tire and didn't have a spare. When she had learned that in the first scene in the half-finished house, she switched her affections to Gay.

Once home, Perce comes to and nearly tears his bandages off, forgetting about his recent injury. Rosalyn puts him to bed. She then sits down with Gay who asks her if a woman like her would ever want to have a child with him. She avoids the issue and then Gay goes to bed.

The next day she is excited to learn that Gay, Guido and Perce are planning on going on an overnight camp-out to capture and sell some wild mustangs. She asks to join them on the overnight trip. But what Gay doesn't tell her is that the only market they sell horses to is a slaughterhouse for the manufacture of dog food. When this information is revealed, Roslyn goes on a mad rampage in the desert, screaming that she hates them for trapping and killing the horses. She then tells Gay she didn't know she was falling in love with a killer, and he tells her that he doesn't take his hat off for any women, i.e., shows them respect and love, but he did for her, by making the house a home and planting the vegetable garden.

Later she begs and cries for Gay to release the horses, and he considers giving them to her. But when she offers to pay $200 to save their lives, Gay becomes angry and changes his mind that she would think of him as so cold. Guido soon tells Roslyn that he would let them go if she would leave Gay for him. She becomes offended that she would have to do something for him so that he would act like a human being. Later, when Perce asks her if he wants him to set the horses free, she declines because she thinks it would only start a fight. He does it for her anyway because she was kind to him.

After Gay tracks down their only targeted horse and goes through the trouble of tying it down himself, he lets it go and says he just didn't want anybody making up his mind for him. He and Roslyn drive off under the starry night sky. She tells him she wouldn't mind having a baby as long as there was somebody there to make sure the child grew up into a human being.

Cast

Principal Cast:

• Clark Gable as Gay Langland
• Marilyn Monroe as Roslyn Tabor
• Montgomery Clift as Perce Howland
• Thelma Ritter as Isabelle Steers
• Eli Wallach as Guido
• James Barton as Fletcher's Grandfather
• Kevin McCarthy as Raymond Tabor
• Estelle Winwood as The Church Lady

Other Cast:

• Peggy Barton as Young Bride
• Phillip Mitchell as Charles Steers (Isabelle's ex-husband)
• John Huston as an Extra in Blackjack Scene
• Rex Bell as Old Cowboy
• Ryall Bowker as Man in Bar
• Frank Fanelli, Sr. as the Gambler at the Dayton Bar
• Dennis Shaw as Fletcher
• Bobby LaSalle as Bartender
• Walter Ramage as Old Groom
• Ralph Roberts as Ambulance Driver at Rodeo
• J. Lewis Smith as Fresh Cowboy at Bar
• Marietta Tree as Susan (Gay's Girlfriend getting on the Train at the beginning of the movie)

Production

The making of The Misfits was troublesome on several accounts, not the least of which were the 108 degree heat of the northern Nevada desert and the breakdown of Monroe's marriage to writer Arthur Miller.

Director Huston gambled and drank, and occasionally fell asleep on the set. The production company had to cover some of his gambling losses. His lover Marietta Peabody Tree had an uncredited part. Miller wrote new pages throughout the shoot, revising the script as the concepts of the film developed.

Monroe was sinking further into alcohol and prescription drugs abuse. Huston shut down production in August 1960 to send Monroe to a hospital for detox. Close-ups after her release were shot using soft focus. Monroe was nearly always late to the set, sometimes not showing up at all. She spent her nights learning lines with drama coach Paula Strasberg. Monroe's confidant and masseur, Ralph Roberts, was cast as an ambulance attendant in the film's rodeo scene.

Gable insisted on doing his own stunts, including being dragged about 400 feet across the dry lake bed at more than 30 miles per hour.

In a documentary about the making of The Misfits, Wallach told a story of Huston directing a scene where Wallach was at a bar with Gable. Huston told him that the most intoxicated he had ever been was the day before, even though he had seemed sober. The lesson for the actors was that an intoxicated person tries to act sober.

1930's Western actor Rex Bell (who was married to Clara Bow) made his final film appearance in a brief cameo as a cowboy. Bell was Lieutenant Governor of Nevada at the time.

Thomas B. Allen was assigned to create drawings of the film as it was made. Magnum Photos had staff photographers including Inge Morath and Eve Arnold assigned to document the making of The Misfits. Morath married Miller, Monroe's former husband, soon after the film was released.

During production, the cast's principals stayed at the Mapes Hotel in Reno. Film locations included the Washoe County Court House on Virginia Street and Quail Canyon, near Pyramid Lake. The bar scene where Monroe plays paddle ball and the rodeo scenes were filmed in Dayton, Nevada, northeast of Carson City. The climax of the film takes place during wrangling scenes on a Nevada dry lake 20 miles east of Dayton, near Stagecoach. The area today is known as "Misfits Flat".

Filming was completed on November 4, 1960 and The Misfits was released on February 1, 1961.

Reception

Despite on-set difficulties, Gable, Monroe, and Clift delivered performances that modern movie critics consider superb. Many critics regard Gable's performance to be his finest, and Gable, after seeing the rough cuts, agreed. Monroe received the 1961 Golden Globe Award as "World Film Favorite" in March, 1962, five months before her death. Directors Guild of America nominated Huston as best director.

There were high expectations, given the star power of the writer, director and stars. Producer Frank E. Taylor had heralded The Misfits as "the ultimate motion picture" before its release.

The Misfits was met with mixed reviews and failed to meet expectations at the box office. Despite being shot in black and white, the final cost was about $4 million. It was said to be the most expensive black-and-white film made to that point in time. Its original domestic gross was just over its estimated budget of $4,000,000, making $4,100,000 in its initial USA release. It has brought larger profits to United Artists since its release on DVD.

The film has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 13 reviews.

Aftermath

Gable suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended and died ten days later. Monroe and Clift attended the premiere in New York in February 1961 while Monroe was on pass from a psychiatric hospital; she later said that she hated the film and herself in it. Within a year and a half, she was dead of an apparent drug overdose. The Misfits was the last completed film for both Monroe and Gable, her childhood screen idol.

Montgomery Clift had been badly injured in an automobile accident in 1956 that required reconstructive surgery on his face, evident in his close-ups in The Misfits. He died six years after the filming. The Misfits was on television on the night Clift died. His live-in personal secretary, Lorenzo James, asked Clift if he wanted to watch it. "Absolutely not" was Clift's reply, the last words that he spoke to anyone. He was found dead the next morning, having suffered a heart attack during the night.

Thelma Ritter enjoyed several more movie successes before passing away eight years after the movie was made. Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy went on to movie and stage careers that extend into the 21st century. Wallach, a nonagenarian, is the last surviving primary cast member.

Inge Morath of Magnum Photos married Arthur Miller in 1962; their union lasted 40 years until her death in 2002.

The documentary The Legend of Marilyn Monroe (1966) includes footage shot while The Misfits was being made. Miller's autobiography, Timebends (1987), described the making of the film. The 2001 PBS documentary, Making The Misfits, did the same. Miller's last play, Finishing the Picture (2004), although fiction, was largely based on the events involved in the making of The Misfits.

Further reading

• Goode, James (1986) [First Published 1963 as "The Story of The Misfits"]. The Making of The Misfits. Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-065-6. A detailed day-to-day account on the shooting of the film, written by a journalist.

External links

• The Misfits at the Internet Movie Database
• The Misfits at Rotten Tomatoes
• Site on the production of The Misfits
• Site on the making of The Misfits, including an extensive gallery