The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

MARILYN MONROE FILMOGRAPHY

The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)

Betty Grable, Dick Haymes, Anne Revere

Boston and the Gay Nineties provide setting and period, as Grable strikes a blow for women’s rights while learning the typewriter. In Technicolor. Monroe appears (unbilled) as a telephone operator. 85 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: William Perlberg

DIRECTOR/WRITER: George Seaton

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Leon Shamroy

Dangerous Years (1947)

Billy Halop, Scotty Beckett, Marilyn Monroe (waitress)

A half dozen former child stars play overage juvenile delinquents in this low-budget exploitation film. They seem unwilling to be rehabilitated, but we don’t really care. Marilyn has a bit as a waitress at the Gopher Hole, a juke joint where the juvies hang out. 62 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Sol M. Wurtzel

DIRECTOR: Arthur Pierson

WRITER: Arnold Belgard

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Benjamin Kline

Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! (1948)

June Haver, Lon McCallister, Marilyn Monroe (girl in canoe)

June Haver competes with a pair of prizewinning mules for the affections of farmboy Lon McCallister in rural Indiana, all dressed up in Technicolor. Marilyn can be spotted in two scenes. 98 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Walter Morosco

DIRECTOR/WRITER: F. Hugh Herbert

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ernest Palmer

Green Grass of Wyoming (1948)

Peggy Cummins, Robert Arthur, Marilyn Monroe (extra at square dance)

A second sequel to Mary O’Hara’s beloved story My Friend Flicka—a boy, a girl, and a wild white stallion, photographed in the lush Wyoming countryside. Charles G. Clark was Oscar-nominated for his Technicolor cinematography. 88 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Robert Bassler

DIRECTOR: Louis King

WRITER: Martin Berkeley

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Charles G. Clarke

Ladies of the Chorus (1948)

Adele Jergens, Marilyn Monroe (Peggy Martin)

Beautiful blonde Adele Jergens is a former burlesque queen who aims to see that her daughter (Monroe) avoids the same mistakes she made. Marilyn is impressive in her first lead, sings two songs. 61 minutes.

Columbia Pictures Corp.

PRODUCER: Harry A. Romm

DIRECTOR: Rick Karlson

WRITERS: Joseph Carole and Harry Sauber

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Frank Redman

Love Happy (1950)

Harpo Marx, Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe (chorus girl)

This is mostly Harpo’s show (he wrote the original story), and is remembered mainly as the sad cinematic swan song of the legendary Marx Brothers. A low-budget backstage romp, involving an impoverished theatrical troupe trying to put on a Broadway show. Detective Groucho is the story’s narrator, his trademark zaniness reined in, as he tries to solve the theft of a Romanov diamond. 85 minutes.

United Artists

PRODUCER: Lester Cowan, Mary Pickford (as a founder of UA)

DIRECTOR: David Miller

WRITERS: Ben Hecht, Frank Tashlin (story by Harpo Marx)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: William C. Mellor

A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950)

Dan Dailey, Anne Baxter, Marilyn Monroe (Clara)

A race between a train and a stagecoach will determine the owner of the rights to the passenger route to Tomahawk, Colorado. Comic, colorful actioner, set against the towering Rockies near Durango. Marilyn has a bit part as one of Madame Adelaide’s showgirls. 90 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Robert Bassler

DIRECTOR/WRITER: Richard Sale

COWRITER: Mary Loos

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Harry Jackson

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Sterling Hayward, Louis Calhern, Marilyn Monroe (Angela Phinlay)

A major jewelry heist by a group of career criminals goes off as planned, but all the principals are either dead or in custody as the gritty film noir’s end credits roll. Told from the criminals’ point of view. Marilyn stands out in a small part as the mistress of an elderly, crooked lawyer, played by Calhern. Nominated for four Oscars, including writing, directing, and cinematography. 112 minutes.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

PRODUCER: Arthur Hornblow Jr.

DIRECTOR/COWRITER: John Huston

COWRITER: Ben Maddow

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Harold Rosson

The Fireball (1950)

Mickey Rooney, Pat O’Brien, Marilyn Monroe (Polly)

Thirty-year-old Rooney plays a teenage fugitive from an orphanage who struggles before becoming a skating star in the roller derby, very big on early TV. Father O’Hara (O’Brien) tries to save him from himself, much as Father Flanagan did for Whitey Marsh in Boys’ Town fifteen years earlier. 84 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Bert Friedlob

DIRECTOR/COWRITER: Tay Garnett

COWRITER: Horace McCoy

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lester White

All About Eve (1950)

Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Marilyn Monroe (Claudia Casswell)

A ruthless, conniving ingénue insinuates her way into the inner circle of a legendary, aging Broadway star, leaving wrecked lives and shattered relationships in her wake, as she claws her way to the very pinnacle of theatrical stardom. Of the set pieces, Marilyn shines in two of them, earning kudos from the critics. Widely considered the best film about the theater ever made and, by the American Film Institute, among others, one of the best films of all time. The script contains a number of memorable lines, not the least being Davis’s warning to her captive audience to “fasten your seatbelts.” Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, winning six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. 138 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Darryl F. Zanuck

DIRECTOR/WRITER: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner

Right Cross (1950)

June Allyson, Dick Powell, Ricardo Montalban, Marilyn Monroe (Dusky LeDoux)

Anglo-Latino romantic entanglements are unresolved as they play out against the story of a Chicano fighter (Montalban) trying to hang on to his boxing career after a hand injury leaves him a noncontender. Allyson is in his corner, but not necessarily in his bed. Marilyn plays a bar girl who has a brief encounter with Powell, Montalban’s best friend. Pretty dull going, but good production values help. 90 minutes.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

PRODUCER: Armand Deutsch

DIRECTOR: John Sturges

WRITER: Charles Schnee

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Norbert Brodine

Home Town Story (1951)

Jeffrey Lynn, Donald Crisp, Marilyn Monroe (Iris Martin)

After losing a hard-fought reelection bid to the legislature, Jeffrey Lynn assumes control of the hometown newspaper and launches a bitter attack on the man he holds responsible for his defeat, Donald Crisp, the powerful head of the town’s biggest business. The film was made on the MGM lot by General Motors’ public relations department, which rejected the final result as substandard. Metro deemed it unworthy of copyright renewal and it languished in the public domain until Marilyn’s fans rediscovered it. She has a two-minute scene as a receptionist in the newspaper office. 61 minutes.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR: Arthur Pierson

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Andriot

As Young as You Feel (1951)

Monty Wooley, Thelma Ritter, David Wayne, Constance Bennett, Marilyn Monroe (Harriet)

A sixty-five-year-old factory worker (Wooley), forced into an unwanted retirement, impersonates the company president and saves the firm from bankruptcy, proving his worth and saving his job. Solid cast makes the story believable, with Marilyn in small role as an office worker. Marilyn devotees know this is the film where she and Arthur Miller first met. 77 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Lamar Trotti

DIRECTOR: Harmon Jones

WRITER: Lamar Trotti (story by Paddy Chayevsky)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joe McDonald

Love Nest (1951)

William Lundigan, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe (Roberta “Bobbie” Stevens)

A post–World War II sex comedy, without the sex and short on comedy, with ex-GI Lundigan and Haver as newlyweds and new owners of an aged brownstone in New York. Tenant and ex-WAC, Marilyn’s role is described in one review as “an extended cameo,” the highlight being a scene in which she emerges from the shower draped only in a towel. 84 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Jules Buck

DIRECTOR: Joseph Newman

WRITER: I. A. L. Diamond

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lloyd Ahern

Let’s Make It Legal (1951)

Claudette Colbert, Macdonald Carey, Zachary Scott, Robert Wagner, Marilyn Monroe (Joyce Mannering)

Miriam and Hugh Halsworth (Colbert and Carey), after a twenty-year marriage, are in the throes of a divorce when an old suitor (Zachary Scott) of hers rolls into town. Marilyn’s contributions are mostly decorative as she spends much of her screen time in a swimsuit. Of the romantic comedy, one critic wrote, “[It] feels overstretched even at an hour and a quarter.” It’s hard to believe that this is the best Miss Colbert could manage following her withdrawal only a year earlier for medical reasons as Margo Channing in All About Eve, giving Bette Davis the role of a lifetime. 77 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: F. Hugh Herbert

DIRECTOR: Richard Sale

COWRITERS: I. A. L. Diamond and F. Hugh Herbert

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Ballard

Clash by Night (1952)

Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe (Peggy)

After a hard-knock life in New York, Mae Doyle (Stanwyck) returns to her hometown, a coastal California village, to live with her fisherman brother. She is courted by a boat owner, Jerry (Douglas), eventually marries him, has a child, and begins an adulterous, reckless affair with the brutal Earl (Robert Ryan), all under the nose of her husband. Monroe is a cannery worker, married to Mae’s brother, and they both look great in their beachwear, but add nothing to the goings-on in this noirish melodrama. 105 minutes.

RKO Pictures—(A Wald-Krasna Production)

PRODUCER: Harriet Parsons

DIRECTOR: Fritz Lang

WRITER: Alfred Hayes (based on a Clifford Odets play)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Nicholas Musuraca

We’re Not Married (1952)

Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, Eve Arden, Paul Douglas, David Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (Annabel Jones Norris)

Five couples are notified that their marriages are invalid because the license of the justice of the peace who performed the ceremonies had not yet kicked in. The couples react to the news in a variety of ways, with Monroe and Wayne’s solution easily the most comic: Already a winner of the Mrs. Mississippi contest, Annabel is now free to enter the Miss Mississippi contest, which she also wins. First of two so-called episodic movies featuring Monroe. 85 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER/WRITER: Nunnally Johnson

DIRECTOR: Edmund Goulding

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Leo Tolver

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)

Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe (Nell Forbes)

Marilyn moves from featured player to leading lady in this melodramatic, disturbing film noir. She is a suicidal, perhaps homicidal, babysitter whose flirtatious overtures to a war-damaged pilot (Widmark) have unexpected and near-deadly consequences. The film was mounted by studio honchos to assay Monroe’s dramatic skills, which proved to be considerable. 76 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Julian Blaustein

DIRECTOR: Roy Ward Baker

WRITER: Daniel Taradash

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Ballard

Monkey Business (1952)

Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe (Miss Lois Laurel)

A lab chimp accidentally dumps a youth elixir into the drinking water, creating a fountain of youth. After ingesting some of it, research professor Grant and wife Rogers revert to their teenage selves with predictable results—screwball or slapstick—though the fun can only go so far before it gets tedious. Marilyn is on hand as Charles Coburn’s secretary and holds her own quite well as she fends off his clumsily romantic advances. 97 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel

DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks

WRITERS: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I. A. L. Diamond

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner

O. Henry’s Full House (1952)

Charles Laughton, David Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (as a streetwalker), Farley Granger, Jeanne Crain, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark

Five classic short stories created by the master of the genre, all with an ironic resolution in their denouement, which O. Henry perfected and which became his signature. Each short film is self-contained with its own writer, director, and cast, and each is introduced by future Nobel winner John Steinbeck. First, in “The Cop and the Anthem,” Soapy is an urban hobo (Laughton) who in warm weather sleeps in the park. However, with winter coming, he opts for a nice warm jail cell. But he first must get arrested. A series of petty crimes go for naught: theft of an umbrella, stiffing a restaurant for a meal, vandalizing a window. He tries to offend a lady of the evening (Monroe), to no avail. Finally, he enters a church, has an epiphany, repents, and decides to find a job and go “straight.” Alas, his plan is thwarted when a cop arrests him for vagrancy; he is tried and sent to jail for the next ninety days. 19 minutes for segment; 119 minutes for film.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Andrew Hakim

DIRECTOR: Henry Koster

WRITER: Lamar Trotti

CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Lloyd Ahern, Lucien Ballard, Milton R. Krasner, Joseph MacDonald

Niagara (1953)

Joseph Cotten, Marilyn Monroe (Rose Loomis)

A cuckolded, lovesick husband, suffering from Korean War shell shock, and his gorgeous, adulterous wife are at Niagara Falls—for very different reasons: He wants to repair his beyond-repair marriage; she is meeting with her lover to plot her husband’s murder. One can almost feel the presence of Alfred Hitchcock as adultery and murder are played out against the power and grandeur of the unrelenting noise and beauty of Niagara. All does not end well, as Loomis (Cotten) discovers the plot against him and turns the tables on Rose (Monroe) and her lover, dispatching him into the crashing waters. He then goes after Rose, stalking her insistently, finding her in the resort’s belltower, and strangling the life out of her. Production values are very high with the breathtaking location filming, lush, saturated Technicolor, and ear-pounding stereo sound. Monroe’s first big-budget picture, an assignment she handles to a tee. A big hit with the public. First of three important films for Marilyn released in 1953. 89 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Charles Brackett

DIRECTOR: Henry Hathaway

WRITERS: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, Richard Breen

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joseph MacDonald

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe (Lorelei Lee)

Lavishly produced, big-budget film of the hit Broadway musical that starred Carol Channing. In the movie, Jane Russell is first-billed and was paid $400,000 to Marilyn’s costar billing and $11,250. Upon being told by someone that Jane and not Marilyn was the star of the film, Monroe responded with perfect logic, “Maybe not, but I’m the blonde.” The familiar story: After a few harrowing experiences, including a brush with the gendarmes, a couple of naughty-but-nice, gold-digging chorus girls—“We’re Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock”—find notoriety and, eventually, love in the City of Lights. The studio pulled out all the stops in this big-musical treatment—a time-tested Broadway hit, musical score by Jule Styne and Leo Robins, gowns by Travilla, musical numbers staged by Jack Cole with an army of talented singers and dancers, color by Technicolor. Studio boss Darryl Zanuck ordered the big production number at the end of the film, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” to be refilmed in CinemaScope and stereophonic sound, the result of which was then used by Fox to demonstrate the studio-perfected process. Other studios were impressed and began to use the widescreen technology as well. 91 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel

DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks

WRITERS: Charles Lederer, Joseph Fields (based on Anita Loos’s play)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Harry J. Wild

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe (Pola), Lauren Bacall

The studio, since its beginning, has recycled the story of penniless young beauties leaving home to go to the big city in search of bright lights and rich men. These husband hunters acquired the name “gold diggers,” and Warner Bros. made a series of very successful musicals in the early thirties using the name and theme. But it was 20th Century-Fox that manipulated and honed the by now familiar story into box-office gold with this movie. It was the first film shot entirely in CinemaScope, but another Fox film, the prestigious religious epic The Robe, also filmed in CinemaScope, was released to theaters first, claiming bragging rights as the first film in the new process. To make it clear to audiences that the film was an “event,” Alfred Newman, the studio’s musical director for twenty years by this time, and the studio’s symphony orchestra were arrayed on a soundstage set up to replicate an amphitheater and performed Newman’s own composition, “Street Scene.” It lasted eight minutes, and after the final note, Newman turned to face the camera and executed a deep bow, which signaled the beginning of the credits as the film’s musical score came up on the soundtrack. The three-pronged story line provided each of the stars with an equivalent amount of screen time, all with quite satisfactory conclusions. 96 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER/WRITER: Nunnally Johnson

DIRECTOR: Jean Negulesco

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joe MacDonald

River of No Return (1954)

Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe (Kay)

Ordained by happenstance or destiny, a beautiful woman, an innocent man newly released from prison, and his son are thrown together in a rough-and-tumble western adventure, photographed in CinemaScope on location in the Canadian Rockies and set in the era of the California gold rush. Monroe called this beautiful, immensely watchable film her worst film: “Grade Z cowboy stuff.” It is very likely that her negative assessment had more to do with shooting the film and problems with the director than what ended up on the screen. Despite the rigors of the location shoot and the requirements of the script, including a swamping of the raft in the river rapids, Marilyn, wringing wet, out of sorts and out of breath, is still a vision. 91 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Stanley Rubin

DIRECTOR: Otto Preminger

WRITER: Frank Fenton

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joseph LaShelle

There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954)

Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Marilyn Monroe (Victoria Hoffman/ Vicky Parker)

All the stops are pulled out in this big, brassy, over-the-top musical, with the studio creating a role in it especially for Marilyn as insurance against a fizzle at the box office. (She agreed to make the film only if the studio would purchase the film rights to The Seven Year Itch for her.) The Irving Berlin songbook is used to tell the story of the Donahue family of vaudevillians, covering the period between the two world wars. The CinemaScope camera captures all seventeen of the dazzling production numbers, including the title song and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” with Marilyn also scoring well in her solo production number, “Heat Wave.” Oscar nominations went to Lamar Trotti (original story), Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman (scoring of a musical), and to Charles LeMaire and Travilla for their costumes in a color film. 117 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel

DIRECTOR: Walter Lang

WRITERS: Henry and Phoebe Ephron; original story, Lamar Trotti

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Leon Shamroy

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe (The Girl)

Manhattan book editor Richard Sherman, thirty-eight, dispatches his wife and son to the Maine coast for the summer to escape the sweltering city heat. A gorgeous twenty-two-year-old television spokesperson (Marilyn) subleases the apartment in his building just above his own. She’s never referred to by name and the credits list her as The Girl. If this were a device used by George Axelrod, the playwright, to keep an emotional distance between the two, it only works to a point. Although Richard doesn’t get to first base with The Girl, he imagines making love to her, leaving him with an overwhelming sense of guilt. Despite this, he continues to set the stage for the great seduction—the smoking jacket, chilled champagne, potato chips, and Rachmaninoff on the record player—all with hilarious results as The Girl successfully avoids the seduction. Marilyn with her skirts a-flying over a subway grate is one of the most famous film images of all time. DeLuxe color and CinemaScope. 105 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Charles K. Feldman

DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder

WRITERS: Billy Wilder, George Axelrod

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner

Bus Stop (1956)

Marilyn Monroe (Cherie), Don Murray (Bo)

A macho, twenty-one-year-old rancher from Montana travels to Phoenix to enter several rodeo events and while there finds his “angel” in the person of Cherie, a vocally challenged saloon singer, who’s also been known to turn a trick to make the rent money. She is repulsed by Bo’s boorish behavior and crude attempts to woo her, only making him more determined. He kidnaps Cherie and forces her to accompany him back to Montana. A snowstorm forces their bus to wait out the bad weather at a bus stop. Cherie is won over by his heartfelt profession of love and accepts his marriage proposal. Marilyn’s touching performance earned her some of the best reviews of her career. Murray received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination. 96 minutes.

PRODUCER: Buddy Adler

DIRECTOR: Joshua Logan

WRITER: George Axelrod (based on the William Inge play)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner

The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)

Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe (Elsie)

The world’s greatest actor and the movies’ love goddess join forces to bring Terence Rattigan’s stage play The Sleeping Prince to the screen, with Olivier repeating his stage role and Monroe playing the role essayed by Olivier’s then wife, Vivien Leigh. Grandduke Charles of Carpathia (Olivier) is on a mission of state to London to attend the coronation of British king George V on June 22, 1911. On his one evening free from official duties, he visits the Coconut Girl club and invites the voluptuous Elsie Marina to a dinner party at the embassy, only the alleged party is a party of two. The game of seduction begins, the outcome of which is clear from the start, but it is the getting there that makes this sex comedy work as well as it does. Marilyn was never more gorgeous and rarely funnier than in this picture. 117 minutes.

Warner/Marilyn Monroe Productions

PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: Laurence Oliver

WRITER: Terence Rattigan

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jack Cardiff

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Marilyn Monroe (Sugar Kane), Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown

Destined to be at or near the top of a number of “best” lists, including best film, best comedy film, and best movie line (“Nobody’s perfect”), this picture marks the second working arrangement between Marilyn and director/writer Billy Wilder, the earlier being The Seven Year Itch. It was a decision he reached despite the legendary problems she’s acknowledged to have caused on that set, or because he knew she was perfect for this role and her appearance in the film would assure its box-office success. (Marilyn would earn $2.4 million during the film’s initial run, thanks to a lucrative profit-participation deal with the studio.) The story of two out-of-work jazz-era musicians who, after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, go undercover in drag as members of an all-girl band, the premise is established before we even see Marilyn, twenty-four minutes into the film. But what an entrance. For the rest of his life, Billy Wilder would recount the problems Marilyn caused on the set, always forgiving her behavior due to her own insecurities and lack of confidence. And, yes, he would do it all over again. The film received Oscar nominations in six categories—costumes, writing, directing, cinematography, art direction, and best actor (for Lemmon), winning for Orry-Kelly’s costumes. 122 minutes.

United Artists/Mirisch

COPRODUCER/COWRITER/DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder

COWRITER: I. A. L. Diamond

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Charles Lang Jr.

Let’s Make Love (1960)

Marilyn Monroe (Amanda Dell), Yves Montand

Marilyn was welcomed back to the studio after a four-year absence, and while the return was not widely applauded among some Fox execs who knew too well the havoc precipitated whenever a Monroe picture was in production, this is a charming musical, vastly underrated at the time, with Marilyn at her comedic best, singing Cole Porter songs and dancing to moves created for her by Jack Cole. As Amanda, she is appearing in an off-Broadway review that targets the foibles of celebrities: Callas, Cliburn, Elvis, and Jean-Marc Clement, a French-born billionaire industrialist living in Manhattan (Montand). Clement impersonates an actor and auditions for the part of Clement himself and wins the role. Inevitably, after a few missteps, Jean-Marc and Amanda fulfill the promise in the film’s title. Color by DeLuxe in CinemaScope. Oscar nomination for best scoring of a musical. 118 minutes.

PRODUCER: Jerry Wald

DIRECTOR: George Cukor

WRITER: Norman Krasna

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Daniel L. Fapp

The Misfits (1961)

Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe (Roslyn Taber), Montgomery Clift Roslyn, an actress, is in Reno for a divorce when she meets and falls for Gay Langland, an aging, sexily macho ex-cowboy. The stark Nevada desert is the habitat for wild mustangs that are targeted by Gay and two other cowboy roughnecks for capture, an exercise that is as painful to watch as it is to figure out—until we learn the horses are to be sold to slaughterhouses to process as dog food. When Rose learns their fate, she goes ballistic, her passion so intense that she ultimately secures the mustangs’ freedom and their return to the wild. Film chronicler Leslie Halliwell wrote: “a solemn, unattractive, pretentious film, which seldom stops wallowing in self pity.” Considered a failure when released, it has since gained cultlike status because of the untimely deaths of the three principles. 124 minutes.

United Artists/Seven Arts

PRODUCER: Frank E. Taylor

DIRECTOR: John Huston

WRITER: Arthur Miller

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Russell Metty

Something’s Got to Give (1962)

Marilyn Monroe (Ellen), Dean Martin

A remake of the 1940 screwball comedy My Favorite Wife,starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, the movie’s thirty-seven minutes of footage, salvaged from eight boxes of raw film in a 20th Century-Fox warehouse, were included in a documentary about the film that was shown as a television special in 2001, Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days. Marilyn lost eighteen pounds for this role, which brought to mind her beauty of ten years earlier when she was in her prime. Film purists do not consider this movie to be part of the Marilyn Monroe filmography, since it was incomplete and unreleased to theaters. But given its importance to the Monroe legacy, and that it perhaps indirectly contributed to her death, I felt compelled to include it. The film was finally made in 1963 with Doris Day and James Garner as Move Over, Darling.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCERS: Gene Allen, Henry T. Weinstein

DIRECTOR: George Cukor

WRITERS: Nunnally Johnson, Walter Bernstein

CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Franz Planer, Leo Tover