The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

River of No Return

Also at about this time, Marilyn made another film, River of No Return, with Robert Mitchum, directed by Otto Preminger.

Earlier, in 1949, the movie’s producer, Stanley Rubin, had been coaxed by film editor Danny Cahn to audition Marilyn for a TV show he was manning called Your Show Time. It was a series of short stories dramatized for television. After her reading, he thought Marilyn was beautiful, of course, but extremely nervous and inexperienced, thus he didn’t give her a job. However, he remembered her when it came time to cast this film. In fact, he says that he realized how much she’d improved after seeing some of her recent movies, and had the part in River written with her in mind. When he contacted her, Stanley says that she didn’t want to do the movie, “because she didn’t want to do what she thought was a western. I told her I thought of it as a piece of Americana, but she still figured it to be a western. However, when I sent her a tape of the songs she would be singing in the film, she said, yes, she would do it. So, really, she did it so that she could sing those songs more than for any other reason.”

Those who predicted the oil-and-water lack of chemistry between the autocratic Austrian-born director Otto Preminger and the sensitive, shy, insecure Marilyn would be right—to a point. Curiously, the director began the film seemingly quite pleased with Monroe as a person and artist, treating her on the set with truly European courtliness. However, by this time, Natasha Lytess had Marilyn reading her lines with exaggerated facial gymnastics, enunciating every syllable like a robot—and while no one liked it, no one could change it, either, not even Preminger. Again, the big problem on this set was the same as always—Natasha telling Marilyn how to act and usurping the director’s influence over her. It caused major problems between Marilyn and Preminger.

Set in the American Northwest during the gold rush, River of No Return depicts Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum), his young son Mark (eleven-year-old Tommy Rettig), and saloon gal Kay Weston (Marilyn) as they follow her ex, a handsome horse thief and gambler, Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun), who needs to get upriver to Council City to register a claim on a gold mine he has cheated another gambler out of. With no transportation and time running out, Kay and Harry make the trip via raft. The trip is fraught with gripping, heart-stopping action, including a swamping of the raft in the treacherous river rapids. Wringing wet, out of sorts and out of breath, Marilyn is still a vision.

Shot on location in two national parks in the Canadian Rockies—Banff Springs and Jasper in Alberta—in Technicolor, CinemaScope, and released initially in 3–D, River of No Return gives Marilyn, sexier and more sensuous than ever, a chance not only to flex her dramatic acting muscles, but to prove her real muscles are up to the physicality the script demands of her character, as she raft-rides the swirling, potentially deadly whitewater of the river of the movie’s title. Marilyn also sings four songs in the film and performs them admirably. She’s more than admirable in her acting. She’s forceful and vulnerable by turn as she comes to realize what a no-good rat Harry is and what a good man and father Matt is.

The ninety-minute film began shooting on July 28, returning to Hollywood on September 29 to complete the shoot. River of No Return would open toward the end of April 1954, to generally favorable reviews. ^*