Putting the Pieces Together: “The Misfits”

The Misfits (1961) is an ambitious contemporary western that seems to be laced with tragedy. The film, written by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston, was shot on location in rural Nevada, and placed heavy demands on cast and crew. Top-billed Clark Gable, age 59, suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended, and died ten days later. Though Miller’s script was tailored to the talents and the persona of his wife, Marilyn Monroe, their marriage was fracturing by the time production began. An exhausted and emotionally unstable Monroe was hospitalized for two weeks in August, forcing Huston to suspend filming. Ultimately The Misfits would prove to be the last picture Monroe ever completed: in 1962 she began work on the ill-fated Something’s Got to Give before dying of a barbiturate overdose at age 36. Co-star Montgomery Clift, suffering from substance abuse and emotional trauma following a serious car wreck, made only three  more films before his death at age 45. (Happily, character actor Eli Wallach, the third of the ageing cowboys who lust after Monroe’s character in the film, remained with us—an invaluable cinematic presence—until the ripe old age of 98.)

 The opening credits for The Misfits appear against a backdrop of puzzle pieces. It’s an effective hint at the film to come: the focus is on people of various shapes and sizes, people who come into close contact with one another but simple don’t fit together in neat combinations. We also know from the opening that The Misfits will unfold in black-&-white. It’s a good choice for a movie that is largely bleak. It’s also effective to see Marilyn Monroe removed from the Technicolor glory of platinum hair and ruby-red lips, so that we view her less as a movieland goddess and more as a human being, slightly wounded, slightly lost.

 Monroe reportedly disliked her role, and I can understand why. Though she has never looked more beautiful on film, her role as Roslyn, the recent divorcee who’s introduced by the cowboys  to the west’s wide open spaces, is underrealized within Miller’s script. At the beginning of the story, she’s staying in Reno in search of a quicky divorce But we never completely understand her marital problems, and much of the focus is on the always welcome Thelma Ritter, who plays her crusty but kind-hearted landlady. It’s Ritter’s character, Isabelle, who has a yen for cowboys, even while she’s quite clear about the downside of their itinerant way of life.

 Soon the newly-divorced Roslyn is heading out to the wide open spaces with the rough and tumble Gaylord (Clark Gable) and his pal Guido (Wallach). Their goal is to round up and sell the mustangs, now diminishing in number, who freely roam the plains. In search of a third man to help them, they come upon Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), a rodeo cowboy who’s seen better days. Each of the three men has a tale of woe, and Roslyn—positioned as a life force—listens sympathetically to all their problems. But she doesn’t express her own will until she’s faced with the actual mustang round-up, and comes to realize that these wild and beautiful creatures will be captured and sold for pet food. Her pained opposition to the round-up becomes a catalyst for the men to respond, each in his own way, leading to an ending that doesn’t exactly convince.

 When Clift’s character says, “I think I love you,” Roslyn answers, “You don’t know me.” But no one here truly knows anyone . . . or anything.  

 

Why It Happened One Night (at the Biltmore Hotel in 1935)

It’s rare that a comedy wins the Oscar for Best Picture. You wouldn’t think a slight romantic farce about a runaway heiress and a down-and-out newspaperman would stand a chance. Oscars usually go to intensely dramatic films, especially those linked to major historical events like the Civil War (see Gone With the Wind), World War II (see Patton, The Bridge on the River Kwai, From Here to Eternity), and Vietnam (The Deer Hunter, Platoon). Social problem movies like Gentleman’s Agreement and 12 Years a Slave also make for Oscar bait.

 But in 1935 the five top Oscar categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay) were filled by a quickly-made little picture called It Happened One Night. It wasn’t expected to be a hit. Robert Riskin’s script was turned down by many stars. Claudette Colbert, no fan of director Frank Capra, demanded that she receive twice her usual salary (that is to say $50,000) to play Ellie Andrews, and that shooting be finished in four weeks so she could go on a planned vacation. Male lead Clark Gable also had his doubts about the project. Fortunately, the film was a simple one to shoot (entirely on the Columbia lot and in the L.A. area), and interaction between Colbert and Gable turned out to be comedy gold.

 To understand the accolades for It Happened One Night, it helps to look back on the Oscar ceremony for 1935, only the seventh time that the golden statuettes were presented to Hollywood’s finest. The stars and the moguls gathered in the ballroom of L.A.’s Biltmore Hotel to fête the winners. No fewer than 13 nominees vied for best picture. I’ll name a few: Flirtation Walk (starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell in a romantic film about West Point cadets),The Gay Divorcee (an Astaire/Rogers musical), The Thin Man (first in a long series of comic  mysteries), Viva Villa1 (a much-fictionalized biography of the Mexican revolutionary starring Wallace Beery). The ultra-serious prestige picture as top vote-getter was something Hollywood had clearly not yet discovered.

 Frank Capra competed with only two other directors: Victor Schertzinger for One Night of Love and W.S. Van Dyke for The Thin Man. Clark Gable, who beautifully played a raffish reporter in It Happened One Night (and changed men’s sartorial habits overnight when he took off his shirt and revealed a bare chest), vied only with the always amusing William Powell (The Thin Man) and Frank Morgan, playing an Italian duke in The Affairs of Cellini. Colbert, as the headstrong heiress, had more competition: opera star Grace Moore for One Night of Love and Norma Shearer, playing the frail Elizabeth Barrett Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, along with a popular write-in candidate, Bette Davis as a slatternly waitress in Of Human Bondage. Colbert, who disliked her own film, was so sure she would lose that when the winner was announced she was boarding a train for a cross-country trip. Studio chief Harry Cohn immediately dispatched an underling to drag her off her train so she could appear at the ceremony. Though Colbert was quite cranky about the whole production experience, she’s delightful as the petulant Ellie—and it’s worth noting that she starred in three other films that same year, including two additional Best Picture nominees, the epic Cleopatra and the socially-conscious Imitation of Life. So maybe she really did need a vacation.

  Why the film’s popularity? It’s fun, it’s fresh, and it comically addresses the  inequities of the Depression era, with the common folk coming out on top. What’s not to love?