The Misfits is a 1961 American contemporary Western film directed by John Huston and written by Arthur Miller, who adapted his own 1957 short story. It stars Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift, alongside Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach. The plot centers on a newly divorced woman (Monroe), and her relationships with a friendly landlady (Ritter), an old-school cowboy (Gable), his tow-truck driving and plane-flying best friend (Wallach), and their rodeo-riding, bronc-busting friend (Clift). The Misfits was the last completed film for both Gable (who died three months before the premiere) and Monroe (who died a year after its release).
The Misfits was released by United Artists on February 1, 1961. It was a commercial failure, but received critical acclaim for its script and performances. Its reputation has enhanced over the years, and many critics now consider it to be a masterpiece and one of the best films of the 1960s. The film also gave name to the punk band Misfits formed in 1977.
Plot
In Reno, Nevada, 30-year-old Roslyn Tabor files for a quickie six-week residency divorce from her inattentive husband, Raymond. Afterward, Roslyn's landlady Isabelle takes her to a cocktail lounge at Harrah's for drinks. They meet an aging cowboy named Gaylord Langland, and his tow truck driver best friend, Guido. The friendly Guido tells Roslyn and Isabelle about his unfinished house in the country. Later that day, the group goes to the unfinished house Guido has built for his late wife. After drinking and dancing, Roslyn has had too much to drink, so Gaylord drives her home to Reno.
Eventually, Roslyn and Gaylord move into Guido's half-finished house and work on it. One day, Gaylord tells Roslyn how he wishes he were more of a father to his children, whom he has not seen for years. Later, he discovers rabbits have been eating the lettuce in the garden they have planted. Gay wants to kill the rabbits with his shotgun, an idea that Roslyn opposes.
When Guido and Isabelle show up, Guido suggests that they round up wild mustangs to sell. They go to a local rodeo in Dayton to hire a third man. They run into Perce Howland, a cowboy friend of Gaylord's, who wants to compete in the rodeo. Gaylord offers to pay the broke Perce's $10 entry fee if he will help round up mustangs the next day. Guido, Perce, Roslyn and Gaylord go to a bar and nearly get into a fistfight when a drunk spanks Roslyn's bottom.
At the rodeo, Roslyn becomes somewhat upset when Guido tells her how the horses are made to buck with an irritating flank strap. Perce is thrown by a bucking horse, and Roslyn begs him to go to a hospital, but he insists on riding a bull he had already signed up and paid to ride. He gets thrown again, sustaining a head injury.
Later, he passes out in a Dayton back alley. When he regains consciousness, he sees Roslyn crying over him. He says that he never had anyone cry for him before and that he wished he had a friend to talk to. He tells her how his mother changed after his father died, giving his stepfather the ranch Perce's father wanted to leave to Perce. A drunken Gaylord then fetches Roslyn, telling her that he wants her to meet his kids, claiming he unexpectedly ran into them. When Gaylord discovers his children have already left Dayton, he causes a public scene.
Later on, during the drive home, a drunken Guido asks if Roslyn has left Gaylord and offers to take his place. Back at Guido's house, Guido attempts to finish the patio he started. Later, Gaylord asks Roslyn if a woman like her would ever want to have a child with him. She avoids the issue.
The next day, Gaylord, Guido and Perce go after the mustangs, with Roslyn reluctantly tagging along. Roslyn becomes upset when she learns that they will be slaughtered for dog food. Gaylord tells Roslyn that he did things for her that he never did for any other woman, such as making the house a home and planting the garden. After they catch a stallion and four mares, Roslyn begs Gaylord to release the horses. He considers it, but when she offers to pay him $200, it angers him. Guido tells Roslyn that he would release them if she would leave Gaylord for him. She rebuffs him. Perce asks her if she wants him to set the horses free, but she declines because she thinks it would only start a fight. Perce frees the stallion anyway. After Gaylord chases down and subdues it by himself, he lets it go and says he just did not want anybody making up his mind for him. As they are driving away in Gaylord's truck, Roslyn tells Gaylord that she will leave the next day. He stops the truck to pick up his dog and watches her joyfully untethering him. They realize that they still love each other and drive off into the night.
The making of The Misfits was troublesome on several accounts, not the least of which was the sometimes 100°F (38°C) heat[4] of the northern Nevada desert and the breakdown of Monroe's marriage to writer Arthur Miller. Miller revised the script throughout the shoot as the concepts of the film developed.
Meanwhile, with her marriage to Arthur Miller troubled, Marilyn Monroe was drinking too much after work and using prescription drugs. According to Huston in a 1981 retrospective interview, he felt "absolutely certain that she was doomed," a conclusion he reached while working on the film:[5] "There was evidence right before me almost every day. She was incapable of rescuing herself or of being rescued by anyone else. And it sometimes affected her work. We had to stop the picture while she went to a hospital for two weeks."[5] Huston shut down production in August 1960 when Monroe went to a hospital for relaxation and depression treatment. Some close-ups after her hospital discharge were shot using limited soft focus.[5] Monroe was nearly always an hour late to the set, sometimes not showing up at all. Monroe spent her nights learning newly written lines with her drama coach Paula Strasberg. Monroe's confidant and masseur, Ralph Roberts, was cast as an ambulance attendant in the film's rodeo scene. The other actors and Huston did not complain to Monroe about her lateness—they knew they needed her to finish the movie. Gable reminisced with The Making of the Misfits author James Goode saying, "Long ago, if an actor was late, they were fired."[citation needed]
Clark Gable insisted on doing some of his own stunts, but not the scene of being dragged 400 feet (120m) across the dry lake bed at more than 30 miles per hour (48km/h). Director John Huston said after Gable's death he would never have allowed Gable to do the more dangerous mustang stunts.[citation needed]
Veteran B-movie Western actor Rex Bell, who had been married to Clara Bow, made his final film appearance in a brief cameo as an amusing elderly cowboy. Bell was lieutenant governor of Nevada at the time.[citation needed]
Thomas B. Allen was assigned to create drawings of The Misfits as the film was made. Magnum Photos had numerous staff photographers, including Ernst Haas, Inge Morath, and Eve Arnold assigned to document the making of The Misfits. Inge Morath later married Arthur Miller, Monroe's former husband, a year after the film was released.[citation needed]
During production, the cast's principals stayed at the now imploded Mapes Hotel in Reno. Film locations included the Washoe County Court House on Virginia Street, and Quail Canyon, near Pyramid Lake.[6][7] The bar scene wherein Monroe plays paddle ball and the rodeo scenes were filmed in Dayton, Nevada, east of Carson City. For the final three weeks of shooting, Miller and Monroe moved to the nearby Holiday Hotel and Casino, now the Renaissance Hotel, on Center Street in Reno. The Renaissance Hotel no longer has a casino. The climax of the film takes place during wrangling scenes on a Nevada dry lake twelve miles[7] east of Dayton,[8] near Stagecoach. The area today is known as "Misfits Flat".[9]
Filming was completed on November 4, 1960, twelve days before Clark Gable's death,[10] and The Misfits was released on February 1, 1961, on what would have been Gable's 60th birthday.[11]
Reception
Box office
The Misfits failed to meet expectations at the box office and has been historically referred to as a "box office disaster" of its day.[12] Despite being shot in black and white, the final cost was about $4 million, which was the estimated budget. The film grossed $4,100,000 in its initial USA release.[2]
Critical reception
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On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 31 critics have given The Misfits a positive review, with an average rating of 8.1/10.[13] In later years, the film came to be described as a cult classic.[16]The Guardian wrote that the film is one of the films that "marked a turning point in the cinema, influencing directors, actors, and audiences."[17]
Aftermath
Gable suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended and died ten days later on November 16, 1960. Monroe and Clift attended the premiere in New York in February 1961, while Arthur Miller attended with his two children. Monroe later said that she hated the film and her performance 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. In her last interview, Monroe, who never knew her father, said she often fantasized that Gable was her father.[18] Montgomery Clift died five years later, and made only three more movies.
Monroe in The Misfits
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. Primary sources such as The Making of the Misfits by James Goode, Conversations with Marilyn by W.J. Weatherby, and Miller's account, particularly his assertion that The Misfits script was a "valentine" for Monroe, inspired the docu-drama play Misfits by Alex Finlayson, which was commissioned by director Greg Hersov. Misfits premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, UK in 1996, directed by Hersov and starring Lisa Eichhorn as Marilyn Monroe.[19]
Arthur Miller's last play Finishing the Picture (2004), although fiction, was based on the events involved in the making of The Misfits.
Discovered scene
In August 2018, an unreleased nude scene where Marilyn Monroe exposes herself while making love with Clark Gable's character, and which was thought to have been lost, was discovered.[20]
Home media
The Misfits was released to DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on May 8, 2012 as a Region 1 widescreen DVD and on May 10, 2011 on Blu-ray.
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.
Eli Herschel Wallach was an American film, television, and stage actor from New York City. Known for his character actor roles, his entertainment career spanned over six decades. He received a BAFTA Award, a Tony Award, and an Emmy Award. He also was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1988 and received the Academy Honorary Award in 2010.
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962.
William Clark Gable was an American film actor. Often referred to as the "King of Hollywood", he had roles in more than 60 films in a variety of genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades of which was as a leading man. He was named the seventh greatest male movie star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1980.
Dayton is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lyon County, Nevada, United States. The population was 15,153 at the 2020 census. Dayton is the second oldest Nevada settlement. It is home to the oldest hotel in Nevada.
Edward Montgomery Clift was an American actor. A four-time Academy Award nominee, he was known for his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men", according to The New York Times.
Misfits or The Misfits may refer to:
Ingeborg Hermine "Inge" Morath was an Austrian photographer. In 1953, she joined the Magnum Photos Agency, founded by top photographers in Paris, and became a full photographer with the agency in 1955. Morath was the third wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller; their daughter is screenwriter/director Rebecca Miller.
Bus Stop is a 1956 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Joshua Logan for 20th Century Fox, starring Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O'Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Robert Bray, and Hope Lange.
Eve Arnold, OBE (honorary), FRPS (honorary) was an American photojournalist, long-resident in the UK. She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951, and became a full member in 1957. She was the first woman to join the agency. She frequently photographed Marilyn Monroe, including candid-style photos on the set of The Misfits (1961).
Norma Jean & Marilyn is a 1996 American biographical drama television film directed by Tim Fywell, based on the 1985 book Goddess, the Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers. The film stars Ashley Judd as Norma Jean Dougherty and Mira Sorvino as Marilyn Monroe. It premiered on HBO on May 18, 1996.
Finishing the Picture is Arthur Miller's final play. It was produced at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, in October 2004, four months before Miller's death on February 10, 2005.
Let's Make Love is a 1960 American musical comedy film made by 20th Century Fox in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope. Directed by George Cukor and produced by Jerry Wald from a screenplay by Norman Krasna, Hal Kanter, and Arthur Miller, the film stars Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, and Tony Randall. It would be Monroe's last musical film performance.
Rex Bell was an American actor and politician. Bell primarily appeared in Western films during his career. He also appeared in the 1930 movie True to the Navy, starring Clara Bow; Bell and Bow married the following year.
Freud: The Secret Passion, or simply Freud, is a 1962 American biographical drama film directed by John Huston and produced by Wolfgang Reinhardt. Based on the life of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, it stars Montgomery Clift as Freud and Susannah York as his patient Cecily Koertner. Other cast members include Larry Parks, Susan Kohner, Eileen Herlie, Eric Portman, and David McCallum. The screenplay was by Charles Kaufman and Reinhardt, with some elements from a script by Jean-Paul Sartre, who withdrew his name from the film.
Velma Bronn Johnston, also known as Wild Horse Annie, was an American animal welfare activist. She led a campaign to stop the eradication of mustangs and free-roaming burros from public lands. She was instrumental in passing legislation to stop using aircraft and land vehicles from inhumanely capturing wild horses and burros.
Alex Finlayson was an American playwright whose work found more success on the English stage than in the United States. After winning a Mobil Oil International Playwriting Prize, Winding the Ball was produced by The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, which also commissioned and produced Finlayson's Misfits (1996) and Tobaccoland (1999). All three plays starred American stage and film actress Lisa Eichhorn and were directed by Greg Hersov.
Marilyn: The Untold Story is a 1980 television film, about the life of the 1950s sex symbol-movie star, Marilyn Monroe. The feature stars Catherine Hicks as Monroe; Richard Basehart as her early-career agent Johnny Hyde; Frank Converse as her second husband Joe DiMaggio; Jason Miller as her third husband Arthur Miller; Kevin Geer as her first husband James Dougherty; Viveca Lindfors as her acting coach Natasha Lytess; and Sheree North as her mother Gladys Pearl Baker.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes is a 2022 American documentary film directed by Emma Cooper for Netflix. It is centered on the life and untimely death of American actress and cultural icon Marilyn Monroe and is told through archival footage and unseen interviews with friends of the star. The film was released on April 27, 2022.
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