Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/637797
25 Q1 2016 / CINEMONTAGE THIS QUARTER IN FILM HISTORY and they talked a lot about a young woman the three of them all knew. After getting his divorce, America's foremost playwright married Monroe, Hollywood's most prominent sex goddess, on June 29, 1956. Variety announced their wedding with the headline: "Egghead Weds Hourglass." In 1957, while in London with Monroe to film Laurence Olivier's The Prince and the Showgirl, Miller wrote a short story about three Nevada cowboys hunting mustangs and reflecting on their experiences with a young divorcée to whom they were all attracted. The story, titled "The Misfits," appeared in Esquire magazine in October 1957. Miller saw it as "a story of three men who cannot locate a home on earth for themselves…and a woman as homeless as they but whose intact sense of life's sacredness suggests a meaning for existence…" In January 1958, back in New York, Monroe lost a child early in pregnancy. Miller, in his 1987 memoir Timebends: A Life, recalled a friend, photographer Sam Shaw, visiting with them in the hospital. Shaw told Miller that he thought his short story "would make a great movie and…a woman's part she could kick into the stands." A few days later, the writer started expanding the story into a screenplay as "a kind of a gift…the expression of a kind of belief in her as an actress… Whatever Marilyn was, she was not indifferent; her very pain bespoke life and the wrestling with the angel of death." Nearing the end of the first draft in July 1958, Miller thought of Huston to direct. Recognizing Monroe's potential, the director had cast her in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) at MGM, causing 20th Century-Fox to put her back under contract. Miller wrote that the director "was one of her few good Hollywood memories." Miller shared the completed draft with Frank Taylor, editor-in-chief at Dell Books. Taylor had worked in Hollywood for a few years and produced Mystery Street (1950) at MGM, where he got to know Huston. Volunteering to produce The Misfits, Taylor sent the script to the filmmaker who agreed to direct immediately. By the early part of 1959, Lew Wasserman of MCA (three years before acquiring Universal) had lined up Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter for the cast. Their contracts, combined with Huston's, Monroe's and Miller's, brought the above-the-line budget alone to more than $2 million. Scheduled for a September 1959, shoot in Nevada locations, the start was delayed because of conflicts for the principals. Monroe's Fox contract committed her to star with Yves Montand in Let's Make Love (1960), directed by George Cukor, and Gable had signed to do It Happened in Naples (1960) with Sophia Loren. Production finally began on July 18, 1960. The night before, the director had asked the native Paiutes of Pyramid Lake to perform a rite for good weather. An hour later it rained. The real problems, though, were temperatures rising to 110° and further delays caused by a company flu epidemic, Huston's emphysema and gout, a forest fire, Monroe's state of mind and the deterioration of her marriage. United Artists arranged for Magnum Photos to send successive pairs of its world-renowned photographers every two weeks to cover the entire shoot. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Inge Morath were Magnum's first team. Morath's famous portrait of star and author in their suite at Reno's Mapes Hotel reflects the discomfort between the couple. Production started efficiently with Huston and cinematographer Russell Metty shooting scenes around Reno a few days before the major stars' first call dates. Less than a year earlier, Metty had shot Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960), for which he would win an Oscar. Miller described him as "a tough old hand…[who] rarely used more than three lights for his shots and set them up in a matter of minutes." The writer also liked how he gave "the film the look of a reported event rather than a fiction." Aware of Monroe's reputation for being late on the set, Huston wrote in his autobiography, "I had the daily call changed from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., hoping this would make things easier on her. It didn't." Still, he kept treating her respectfully as a professional in a role that had been tailored for her The Misfits. United Artists/ Photofest