Film Series

The latest Illustration for my film series is from the movie The Misfits (1961) directed by John Huston, and starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, and written by famed play write Arthur Miller (Monroe's then husband) The plot revolves around Monroe's character moving to Reno the get a divorce, where she falls in with local cowboys, and struggles to accept the ugliness and brutality (the unromantic realism) of the world as she sees it. The film itself is fairly flawed, the writing is subtle and intelligent, but overstated and over dramatized by big Hollywood actors. 

As well, Houston was more suited for pulpy genre flicks like Key Largo, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. That said the film looks great, with many stunningly shot scenes. What is more interesting about the film is the back-story. This would be the last film that Monroe or Gable would make, the both died within the year (Gables wife would go on to blame Monroe for Gables death due to the stress she brought to the set via her struggle with drug addiction at the time).  When Marilyn was a child, she would claim that Gable was her father. (She was and orphan.) One of the main themes of the plot is troubled marriage, Miller wrote this for Monroe specifically, and during production their own marriage was failing, they would be divorced before the films premier. In a final twist, years later on the night Clift suffered a heart attack and died, The Misfits was playing as a late night movie on television, which his secretary had earlier invited him to watch.