"The Misfits" and Me - by Christian Esquevin

Where does the first step begin on a journey to fate? For me it was sometime in August of 1960, just a kid on a camping trip with his parents and their friends. Lake Tahoe was the destination, with side trips to Squaw Valley, Reno, Carson City, and Virginia City, Nevada. Little did I know, nor anyone else in our little party, that we would run into the production of The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, as directed by John Huston. It was clear from the entourage around Gable and Marilyn that this was a very big deal. And my father reinforced this message with his excited exclamation, “there’s Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable!” although he probably uttered this in French, my parents’ and their friends’ native language. 

My recollections of this event are from the mists of time, and likely distorted by accretions of images and later reflections on the significance of the occasion, and the powerful warping auras of the stars themselves. As a kid turning twelve I was already highly aware of the significance of stardom. We did after all live very close to Hollywood, and in those days before paparazzi, seeing stars was not uncommon. But seeing Marilyn and Clark Gable at work was like entering the stratosphere. My best recollection of the scene was that it was taking place in a casino in Reno, likely Harrah’s Club. Production personnel were orbiting around the magic couple.  An aura emanated from Marilyn. In spite of the effects on her of nerves or drugs, which I wouldn’t have known anything about, she was glowing from the lights and the sheen of her platinum blonde hair. I don’t believe a scene was being filmed at the moment, since she seemed to be smiling and basking in the rapt attention of the small audience that was there, of which we were a part. Clark Gable was smiling too, though in a sort of cool, smirky way, aging, but still the king of the jungle. I couldn’t see their figures very well, and I was old enough to know that Marilyn’s figure was very special. But with the big stars, then and now, “we had faces” was all-important, and with these two in particular, their very unique faces reverberated in the room.  I had a particular affinity to Clark Gable. I grew up with prominent ears, the cause of a childhood complex, and my father would always tell me that this physical feature was what made Clark Gable famous. I believed him, and as a chubby kid with a funny name, I believed in the possibility that there was hope for me yet. Seeing Clark Gable in person might just provide that twist of fate that would correct my negative self-image. “See what I mean,” my father said to reinforce his message. 

That perception of Clark Gable, directly seen and experienced, provided me the kind of connection that seems magically possible to children; a more direct connection than just seeing him on the screen, as I had done, during a re-release of Gone with the Wind.  

Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift

Marilyn seemed even more magical. Here in real life and in plain sight she still seemed ethereal. Perhaps it was that very quality that made people, especially men, want to possess her, and somehow to hold onto a cloud. She was the embodiment of contradiction, an ethereal, almost angelic image that was hotly desired for her earthly body, and that most famous of movie stars, capable of moving mountains, yet unable to control her own life or emotions.

Finally we moved away from all the action, onward to seeing other sights, me looking backward at the marvel just beheld. Alas, the whole scene was destined to be an ethereal vision. Clark Gable, “the King” died of a heart attack three months later in November 1960. The Misfits premiered in February 1961, to mixed reviews.  Then my father died on June 5, 1962 and Marilyn Monroe died two months after that on August 5, 1962, now fifty years ago.  How could these giants just disappear? My own fate had indeed led me to The Misfits, a rendezvous with the realization that I too might become one.  Marilyn’s star now shines ever more brightly, a testament to film and the power of image. We continue to try to hold onto a cloud.

The Misfits was not a hit in 1961. No one then knew, of course, that it would be the last film that both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe would ever star in, nor that Montgomery Clift would also die five years later. The audience wasn’t ready for this modern, existential film in 1961. Its reputation, because of all its baggage, doomed it to the “missed opportunity,” or “underrated film” category. Today it is being rediscovered. The Misfits is not a fun film to watch, its barren landscape parallels its wounded characters. But it is a true reflection of the human condition, and for film buffs, a unique view into the life of several movie legends. For me, it was a rendezvous with destiny – an opportunity to see those legendary stars before they faded, and the passion to now write about them and the world they lived in, a world I briefly transited.

Christian Esquevin is the author of Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label, published by the Monacelli Press in 2008. The book is about the life and career of MGM’s famed Golden Age costume designer Gilbert Adrian and his subsequent fashion business. Christian also produces his Silver Screen Modiste blog covering classic film fashion. This is Christian's third guest contribution to this blog, and for each piece I am eternally grateful...
TLE

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Myth Making: The Misfits (1961)

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller traveled to Reno, Nevada, in the spring of 1956 to divorce his first wife. Fulfilling the state's six week residency requirement until the marriage was legally dissolved, Miller stayed at a cabin on Pyramid Lake, about 100 miles from "the biggest little city in the world." During his time in this "forbidding but beautiful place," he got to know a few modern-day cowboy types who made their living capturing wild mustangs and selling them to be butchered for dog food. Miller was invited to join them on one of these hunts. From his experiences in a "whole state full of misfits," Arthur Miller later fashioned a short story that was published the following year in Esquire magazine.

Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe

But before he wrote the story and just after he returned from Reno, Miller wed Marilyn Monroe, then at the height of her enormous fame. It was a time when the actress was desperate to make films of substance, and once she and Miller moved to New York she began studying at the Actors' Studio and making plans to set up her own production company. After Miller's story appeared in Esquire, a friend suggested he develop it into a screenplay. Inspired by the idea of writing a part for his wife that would allow her to demonstrate her overlooked acting ability, Miller scripted the moody tale of a disaffected divorcee who encounters three disparate cowboys and ends up accompanying them when they go "mustanging" in the high desert of Nevada.

Anticipation began to build the moment word started to spread that the great playwright had written The Misfits for his glamorous movie star wife. Before it was released, the film had become the stuff of legend.

An iconic photo...Front row: Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable. Second row:  Eli Wallach, John Huston. In back: producer Frank Taylor, Arthur Miller (on ladder).

John Huston was living in Ireland in 1959 when Frank Taylor, Miller's one-time publisher and the man chosen by the writer to produce the film, sent him the script. Huston pronounced it excellent and agreed to direct. Huston had been Marilyn Monroe's director of choice for The Misfits. She remembered that he had cast her as Angela in his film, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), one of her early breakthrough roles, was ever grateful to him for it and trusted him to guide her through the challenging dramatic role Miller had written for her.

Clark Gable on the set of The Misfits

Clark Gable, who by this time had been appearing in films for more than 35 years and had been a movie star - "the King" - for most of them, had to be cajoled to accept the male lead. Though he found the script intriguing, he didn't know what to make of the story. Miller persuaded him, calling it an "eastern western," about people trying, but afraid, to connect. 

Huston remembered working with Gable on The Misfits: "He thought of himself as an actor, not a screen personality. He liked reminiscing about his early days in the theater - old-time actors' talk. I saw very soon that Clark knew exactly what he was doing. Two or three times I thought I saw ways to improve his performance. I was mistaken." Gable's portrayal of Gay Langland, an aging wrangler displaced in the modern world, is complex and moving. Co-stars Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, and lately Marilyn Monroe, were committed "method" actors, but Wallach later recalled Gable and the other Hollywood veteran on the set, Thelma Ritter, as true acting "pros."

Clark Gable was impressed, too. Watching Montgomery Clift, as rodeo cowboy Perce, deliver his first major scene (below) in one take, Gable remarked, "My God, he's really good, isn't he?"

The Misfits has been called Arthur Miller's valentine - in Eli Wallach's words, a "love piece" - to Marilyn Monroe, and members of the crew observed that Miller seemed besotted with her as filming got underway. But when the grueling shoot came to an end three months later, not only would the Miller/Monroe marriage be over but Marilyn Monroe would never complete another film.

Marilyn Monroe on the set

Colin Clark, author My Week with Marilyn and The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, wrote that when he met Billy Wilder he mentioned to him that he, too, had worked with Marilyn Monroe. Wilder replied, "Ah, then you know the meaning of pure pain!"

By the time The Misfits was being made in 1960, Marilyn's erratic on-the-set behavior was well known. Cast and crew would wait...and wait...and wait. Sometimes she would appear, sometimes she wouldn't. She had great trouble remembering and delivering her lines and often required multiple takes. Her latest drama coach, Paula Strasberg, was ever present and Marilyn would look to her rather than John Huston for direction while filming her scenes. And there were drugs and alcohol...

Huston recalled, "She was taking pills to go to sleep and pills to wake up in the morning...she seemed to be in a daze half the time." She became less and less reliable, eventually broke down completely and had to be hospitalized. Clark Gable, according to Huston, "...was nonplussed by Marilyn's behavior. It was as though she'd revealed some horrid fact of life that just couldn't be accepted in his scheme of things."

But Huston also remembered, "When she was herself...she could be marvelously effective. She wasn't acting - I mean she was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing."

Marilyn as Roslyn

The Misfits was released on what would have been Clark Gable's 60th birthday, February 1, 1961, but Gable had died of a massive heart attack 2-1/2 months earlier, shortly after the film wrapped. Fortunately, the actor had seen Huston's first cut and was so happy with it he told both the director and Arthur Miller that he thought it the best work of his career. Despite Gable's enthusiasm - and producer Frank Taylor's intention to make "the ultimate motion picture" thanks to an all-star cast and crew - The Misfits was a commercial failure and received a mixed critical response. In Miller's view the critics were "baffled" by it.

If the The Misfits has problems it may be that it was too much Miller's film and not enough Huston's. Regardless of compelling themes, strong performances, photography by Russell Metty, film editing by George Tomasini and an evocative score by Alex North (listen below), the film too often becomes theatrically talky and contrived. And Roslyn, the central character, is so unreal at times that she seems to have been spun out of arty fancies about the actress who portrays her. It is also likely that the difficulties and complications that plagued the production afflicted the film itself.

The Misfits is an unusual and poetic film that may not entirely mesh, but it does fascinate. The powerful climactic mustang capture sequence is as disturbing to watch as it is difficult to forget, and the final scene between Gable and Monroe seems the prophetic farewell of two of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Roslyn: "How do you find your way back in the dark?"

Gay: "Just head for that big star straight on. The highway's underneath it, it'll take us right home."

Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable...fade out...

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The largest remaining band of wild mustangs in the United States roams the high desert areas of Nevada. About 33,000 horses live in 10 western states and another 30,000 are kept in government corrals.  Click here to learn more about the history and continuing plight of our wild horse population.

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Click here to go to My Love of Old Hollywood and links to the other participating blogs in Page's blogathon... 

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Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
The Misfits: Story of a Shoot by Arthur Miller and Serge Toubiana, Phaidon Press (2000)
Making the Misfits, a production of WNET New York, et al (2002)
wild mustang photos by Kat Livengood

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Over the Rain-Forest and the Still Water Beach

Abandoned movie set, Mismaloya, Mexico: photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

The programmers at Turner Classic Movies may not have planned the schedule with me in mind, but they’ve lined up a fine mix of films for me on my birthday this year.

Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire

I share my day with Sir Laurence Olivier (born May 22, 1907), and TCM has programmed some films of his that I haven’t seen, including Term of Trial (1962) co-starring the great French actress, Simone Signoret. Later on in the day my beloved San Francisco provides the setting for the 1955 sci-fi classic, It Came from Beneath the Sea, in which the city is attacked by a radiation-enlarged octopus. In the evening, this month's TCM guest programmer, Deborah Winger, is set to appear. Among her choices is one film I haven’t seen but have had on my to-watch list for a long time: Wim Wenders' 1987 classic, Wings of Desire brought its director the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1987 and won or was nominated for a raft of other awards.

Winger has also chosen to spotlight John Huston’s masterful production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana (1964), one of the great film adaptations of Williams' work.

Tennessee Williams had vacationed in Mexico during 1940, and his experiences at the Hotel Costa Verde outside Acapulco later formed the basis for his 1948 short story entitled The Night of the Iguana. Over time, the story evolved into a stage play that debuted on Broadway in 1961 starring Bette Davis in the role of Maxine Faulk, Margaret Leighton as Hannah Jelks and Patrick O’Neal as The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. It is Tennessee Williams' final masterpiece.

Margaret Leighton, Tennessee Williams and Patrick O'Neal

Reverend Shannon is an alcoholic Episcopal priest locked out of his church for stirring up scandal and reduced to working as a guide on a bus tour south of the border. A new scandal involving a nubile young woman in his group of mostly biddies has consumed him. As the play begins, Shannon brings his party to the broken down hotel of his friend Maxine and her late husband Fred on the Mexican seacoast. Also staying at the hotel are Hannah Jelks, an itinerant artist, and her elderly grandfather, a 'practicing' poet.  As Shannon wrestles with his demons he forms a bond with Hannah who is also in spiritual crisis.

The stage production was rocky from the beginning, but it was also acclaimed and successful, running for 316 performances. The Night of the Iguana received Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Producer and Best Actress - for which Margaret Leighton won the award - and was also chosen the best new play of the year by the New York Drama Critics' Circle.

Bette Davis as Maxine Faulk on Broadway

Legendary writer/director/producer Joshua Logan’s reaction to Bette Davis’ performance was enthusiastic: “She was svelte, handsome, voluptuous, wicked, wise, raffish, slightly vulgar – in fact, she was ideal for the part and gave the play added dimension.” But Davis was deeply unhappy in the production and began regularly missing performances. She left the show in April 1962 and Shelley Winters, who replaced her, quickly understood why Davis and her understudy, Madeleine Sherwood, had both been miserable in the part. It seems co-stars Patrick O’Neal and Margaret Leighton routinely undermined the actresses who played Maxine by using the age-old stage trick of moving slightly for a few seconds to divert the attention of the audience whenever they set up her lines. 

Richard Burton and Ava Gardner

The journey of The Night of the Iguana from stage to screen began with a call from producer Ray Stark to writer/director John Huston during the play's Broadway run. Huston, no stranger to adapting great works (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby Dick, etc.), was interested and the two quickly began working out the details of their collaboration. They agreed on casting: Richard Burton as Shannon, Deborah Kerr as Hannah and Ava Gardner as Maxine. Burton and Kerr signed on immediately but Miss Gardner required some courting. Both Stark and Huston flew to Madrid, where Gardner was then living, and spent days wining and dining her until she agreed to take the part. 

Huston and Stark disagreed on one major point, Stark wanted to film in color but Huston preferred black and white for fear that the vibrant colors to be found everywhere on location in Mismaloya, Mexico (azure skies and seas, multi-hued flora and fauna) would distract from the story. Years later, in his memoir, Huston wrote, “Looking back now, I think I was probably wrong.” He was. Color could only have underscored the power of Williams' evocative meditation on the tangle of spiritual and physical yearnings that drive human life.

John Huston and Richard Burton

At the time location work began on The Night of the Iguana, Richard Burton had not yet sacrificed his talent for fame and riches. One of the great, classically trained actors to emerge from Britain in the post-war era, Burton’s finest performances were defined by depth and soul and enriched by his majestic voice, piercing blue-green eyes and potent physical presence. As Deborah Kerr observed in a diary she kept during the shoot, Burton was at his peak as an actor at this point and she agreed with Ava Gardner that "he makes everyone else act well, he is so good himself." Burton’s agonized rendering of the Reverend Shannon's dark night of the soul seems, at times, a glimpse into his own conflicted nature. Though he was not Oscar-nominated for this role (it was for his performance in Becket that earned his Best Actor nod in 1964), Burton would be nominated a total of seven times for an Academy Award, winning none, though he was otherwise acknowledged with BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony awards. When the filming of The Night of the Iguana got under way in October 1963, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were living together but not yet married; their life of paparazzi-infested, glittering excess had just begun. Even so, Huston later wrote, "There were more reporters on the site than iguanas..."

John Huston

A very young Ava Gardner

Ava Gardner’s Maxine Faulk was a departure from the character as written by Williams and portrayed on the stage. Warmer and softer, Ava’s Maxine personified the “openness and freedom of the sea” Williams had envisioned, but lacked the man-eating qualities of the original. Huston, who felt Williams’ Maxine became far too devouring by the play's end, was responsible for these changes. Ava Gardner later recalled that Tennessee was never entirely happy about Huston’s tinkering with the character but she also noted, “…anyone seeing the film knows that John’s choice was the only one that fit.” And Gardner committed herself fully to her role. In an earthy, raucous performance, she allowed herself to appear casual to the point of dishevelment. Clad in a loose serape and toreador pants through much of the film, she had lines penciled in under her eyes and her hair tied back into a loose ponytail to de-emphasize her glorious good looks. During filming, Kerr recorded a comment of Huston's that for Ava it may have been a real disadvantage to be so beautiful, "...it has made her appear publicly as someone she is not, and in her work has made her appear the kind of actress she is not." For this performance Ava Gardner received the best reviews of her film career. Reflecting in her memoirs she wrote, “I have only one rule in acting – trust the director and give him heart and soul. And the director I trusted most of all was John Huston. Working with him gave me the only real joy I’ve ever had in movies.”

Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr

Hannah Jelks is an intriguing entry in Deborah Kerr's filmography. Kerr portrayed sensitive ladies of delicacy and reserve to perfection, but Hannah was slightly different, a "Thin-Standing-up-Female-Buddha," in Tennessee Williams' words. Down-on-her-luck, adrift in Mexico and living by her wits and intuition, the spinster has only her remaining dignity, the care of her 97-year-old grandfather and her paintbox to keep her going.

As the international press descended on the set, Kerr admitted that she was beginning to "feel more and more like Hannah in this movie." Reporters insisted on quizzing her for 'dirt' on Burton, Taylor and others, and, in her diary, she quoted Hannah's sentiments, "Nothing human disgusts me unless it is unkind or violent." Kerr added, "I do loathe and detest unkindness and violence and gossip and troublemaking and envy and malice."

On the day filming of The Night of the Iguana ended in late 1963, Deborah Kerr put down her thoughts in her journal, "It's funny how you get so close to a bunch of people on a movie. It is constant making and breaking of emotional relationships - some of the people you work with and get to know so closely, you may never see again." An interesting reflection, coming on the heels, as it did, of completing a film about the redemptive power of human connection.

It was on an evening in 1940 while in Mexico, that Tennessee Williams watched the sun set on a tree of golden lemons. He would later write a poem about it that provided inspiration for the story that became a play and then a film.  The poem was revised slightly and incorporated into The Night of the Iguana.  Here, Cyril Delevanti, who portrayed Nonno in the film, recites the verse popularly known as "Nonno's Poem" (click title to view).

Cyril Delevanti and Deborah Kerr

John Huston spent many, many years of his life in Mexico, and was living not far from Mismaloya, in Las Caletas, while working on his autobiography in the late 1970s. Sixteen years had passed since the making of The Night of the Iguana and the location site was now deserted. All that remained were the ruins of the buildings constructed for his film. Huston wrote, "No one - other than an old man who passes there on an occasional trip between Las Caletas and Vallarta - seems to give a damn what happens to the place. He would like to see it torn down and given back to the iguanas. The old man is me of course."

John Huston in Las Caletas, 1979

...I was at the Hotel Costa Verde over the rain-forest and the still-water beach which were the off-stage background for Night of the Iguana.

~ Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
Ava: My Story by Ava Gardner, Bantam (1990)
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis by Ed Sikov, Henry Holt (2007)
Deborah Kerr Personal Collection: http://www.deborahkerr.es

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