The Misfits (1961 film)

The Misfits
Original theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Huston
Written by	Arthur Miller
Produced by	Frank E. Taylor
Starring	Clark Gable Marilyn Monroe Montgomery Clift Thelma Ritter Eli Wallach
Cinematography	Russell Metty
Edited by	George Tomasini
Music by	Alex North
Color process	Black and white
Production company	Seven Arts Productions
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	February 1, 1961 (1961-02-01)
Running time	125 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4 million
Box office	$4.1 million (US/CAN rentals)[2]

The Misfits is a 1961 American drama western film written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift. The supporting cast features Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy. The Misfits was the last completed film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. For Gable, the film was posthumously released, while Monroe died in 1962.

The plot centers on a newly divorced woman (Marilyn Monroe) and her time in Reno and Northern Nevada, spent with her friendly landlady Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter), an old-school cowboy (Clark Gable), the cowboy's tow truck-driving and plane-flying friend (Eli Wallach) and their rodeo-riding, bronc-busting friend (Montgomery Clift) in Dayton, Nevada, and in the western Nevada desert in 1960. The Misfits was a commercial failure at the time of its 1961 release but received critical acclaim for its script and performances. Its reputation has shifted over the following years, and many critics now consider the film to be a masterpiece and one of the best films of the 1960s.

Plot[]

In Reno, Nevada, 30-year-old Roslyn Tabor files for a quickie divorce from her inattentive husband Raymond. Afterward, Roslyn's landlady Isabelle takes her to a cocktail lounge for drinks. There, they meet an aging cowboy named Gaylord "Gay" Langland and his tow truck driver best friend Guido. The group goes to the unfinished house Guido built for his late wife. Roslyn has too much to drink, so Gay drives her home to Reno.

Eventually, Roslyn and Gay move into Guido's half-finished house and work on it. One day, Gay 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 planted. Gay wants to catch and kill them, which Roslyn opposes.

When Guido and Isabelle show up, Gay 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 Gay's, who wants to compete in the rodeo. Gay offers to pay the broke Perce's $10 entry fee if he will help round up mustangs the next day. Guido, Perce, Roslyn and Gay 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 Gay then fetches Roslyn, telling her that he wants her to meet his kids, claiming he unexpectedly ran into them. When Gay 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 Gay and offers to take his place. Back at Guido's house, Guido attempts to finish the patio he started. Later, Gay asks Roslyn if a woman like her would ever want to have a child with him. She avoids the issue.

The next day, Gay, Guido and Perce go after the mustangs, with Roslyn reluctantly tagging along. After they catch a stallion and four mares, Roslyn becomes upset when she learns that they will be slaughtered for dog food. Gay 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. Roslyn begs Gay 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 Gay 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 Gay 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 Gay's truck, Roslyn tells Gay that she will leave the next day. He stops the truck to pick up his dog and watches her joyfully untethering it. They realize that they still love each other and drive off into the night.

Cast[]

Production[]

The making of The Misfits was troublesome on several accounts, not the least of which was the sometimes 100 °F (38 °C) heat^[3] 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, while her marriage to Arthur Miller had issues, Marilyn Monroe was drinking too much after work, and was using prescription drugs; according to Huston in a 1981 retrospective interview, he was "absolutely certain that she was doomed" a conclusion he reached while working on the film:^{[4][date missing]}"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."^[4] 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.^[4] Monroe was nearly always late to the set, sometimes not showing up at all. She 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 did not complain to Monroe about her lateness—they knew they needed her to finish the movie. Gable reminisced with 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 including 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 stunts.^{[citation needed]}

Veteran 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.^{[citation needed]}

Thomas B. Allen was assigned to create drawings of the film as it was made. Magnum Photos had numerous staff photographers, including Ernst Haas, Inge Morath, and Eve Arnold, all were assigned to document the making of The Misfits. Inge Morath later married 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.^[5][6] 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^[6] east of Dayton,^[7] near Stagecoach. The area today is known as "Misfits Flat".^[8]

Filming was completed on November 4, 1960, twelve days before Clark Gable's death,^[9] and The Misfits was released on February 1, 1961, on what would have been Gable's 60th birthday.^[10]

Reception[]

There were high expectations, given the star power of the writer, director and actors. Producer Frank E. Taylor had heralded The Misfits as "the ultimate motion picture" before its release.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[11] 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. It has brought more substantial profits to United Artists since its initial home video release and later re-releases.^{[citation needed]}

Critical reception[]

Despite on-set difficulties, Gable, Monroe, Clift and Wallach delivered performances that modern critics consider superb.^[12] Many critics regard Gable's performance as his finest, and Gable, after seeing the rough cuts, agreed.^[13] 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.

On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 30 critics have given The Misfits a positive review and an average rating of 8/10.^[14]

In 2005, the film was nominated by the American Film Institute in the AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list.^[15]

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. As a child, Monroe often claimed that Gable was her father.^{[citation needed]}

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 in 1996, directed by Hersov and starring Lisa Eichhorn as Marilyn Monroe.^[16]

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 un-released 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.^[17]

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.

See also[]

• List of American films of 1961

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Goode, James (1986). The Making of The Misfits. Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-065-6. First published as The Story of The Misfits (Bobbs-Merrill, 1963)

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Misfits (film).

• The Misfits at IMDb
• The Misfits at AllMovie
• The Misfits at the TCM Movie Database
• The Misfits at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Misfits at Rotten Tomatoes
• Site on the production of The Misfits