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The Misfits (1961 film)

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
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Huston
Screenplay byArthur Miller
Based on"The Misfits"
by Arthur Miller
Produced byFrank E. Taylor
StarringClark Gable
Marilyn Monroe
Montgomery Clift
Thelma Ritter
Eli Wallach
CinematographyRussell Metty
Edited byGeorge Tomasini
Music byAlex North
Color processBlack and white
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • February 1, 1961 (1961-02-01)
Running time
125 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$4 million
Box office$4.1 million (domestic)[2][3]

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

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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.

 
Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Rex Bell, Eli Wallach, and Montgomery Clift

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.

Cast

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Production

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Estelle Winwood, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in foreground, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift in background at left

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 (120 m) across the dry lake bed at more than 30 miles per hour (48 km/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

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Box office

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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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Despite on-set difficulties, Gable, Monroe, Clift and Wallach delivered performances that modern critics consider superb.[13] Many critics regard Gable's performance as his finest, and Gable, after seeing the rough cuts, agreed.[14] Monroe received the 1961 Golden Globe Award as "World Film Favorite" in March 1962, five months before her death. Huston was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film. In 2005, the film was nominated by the American Film Institute in the AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list.[15]

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

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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

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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

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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.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "THE MISFITS (A)". United Artists. British Board of Film Classification. February 9, 1961. Retrieved August 19, 2013.
  2. ^ a b Guider, Elizabeth (December 18, 2005). "Conspiracy theories grew with icon's legacy". Variety. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  3. ^ "All-Time Top Grossers". Variety. 8 January 1964. p. 69.
  4. ^ Arthur Miller (1995). Timebends: A Life. Penguin. p. 470. ISBN 978-0-14-024917-0.
  5. ^ a b c Huston, John (February 19, 1981). "Saints and Stinkers". Rolling Stone (Interview). No. 337. Interviewed by Peter S. Greenberg. p. 25.
  6. ^ Miller, 1995, p. 508
  7. ^ a b James Goode (1986) [First Published 1963 as "The Story of The Misfits"]. The Making of the Misfits. Limelight Editions. p. 55,123. ISBN 0-87910-065-6.
  8. ^ Rocha, Guy. "Myth #60 – Myths and "The Misfits"". Archived from the original on 2012-03-05. Retrieved 2010-04-17Sierra Sage, Carson City/Carson Valley, Nevada, January 2001 edition{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  9. ^ "Misfits Flat". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
  10. ^ "Behind the Camera: The Misfits". Retrieved 2014-04-12.
  11. ^ Crowther, Bosley (February 2, 1961). "The Misfits (1961): Gable and Monroe Star in Script by Miller". The New York Times. Retrieved August 2, 2012. 'The Misfits,' which came to the Capitol yesterday....
  12. ^ Hardy, Phil (1983). The Encyclopedia of Western Movies. Octopus. p. 279. ISBN 9780706425550. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  13. ^ a b The Misfits at Rotten Tomatoes
  14. ^ Miller, Arthur (1987). Timebends. New York: Grove Press. p. 485. ISBN 0-8021-0015-5.
  15. ^ "AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-08-06.
  16. ^ "The film that fate helped make a classic: The Misfits". 12 June 2015.
  17. ^ "The Misfits reviewed – archive 10 July 1961". TheGuardian.com. 10 July 2018.
  18. ^ "Marilyn Monroe: 10 Facts You Didn't Know About the Legendary Actor". Glamour. 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-11-20.
  19. ^ Finlayson, Alex. Plays. Oberon Books. London, 1996.
  20. ^ "Marilyn Monroe's lost nude scene from The Misfits resurfaces". The Daily Telegraph. 2018-08-13. Archived from the original on 2018-09-24. Retrieved 2019-02-14.

Bibliography

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