Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/637797
27 Q1 2016 / CINEMONTAGE THIS QUARTER IN FILM HISTORY over schedule. Editor Tomasini had been continuously working on the first assembly during shooting and was prepared to show most of it on that last day. Before leaving the lot, Gable told Huston, "Hell, John! If the studio is unhappy about the cost, I'll buy this picture for $4 million. I think it's the best thing I've ever done." Two days after, on November 6, the Oscar winner for It Happened One Night (1934) suffered a heart attack and died 10 days later. Miller later wrote to biographer Tornabene that Gable "defended the original script even after I had lost the will to and ceased to care very much except that the project be finished as well as it could be." Huston wanted to rush the picture into release before the end of the year for Gable's work to qualify for Academy consideration. Alex North, the film's composer, completed the score in three weeks but was unable to record it until December 29. Before release, however, the film faced censorship issues concerning its treatment of animals and, of course, sex. Having supervised all of the movie's animal scenes, the American Humane Association issued a statement which described, step by step, how the action was arranged and filmed, declaring that "no animals were cruelly treated or injured." The Production Code Administration objected to the "over-emphasis of nudity" and Monroe's "bikini-type costume." The movie received its Seal of Approval with the note: "Approved with replacement of breast shot." Meanwhile, the Catholic Legion of Decency gave it a B rating only after the number of times Monroe's fanny is slapped in the "paddle ball sequence" was cut down from six to two. Oddly, these objections point up one of the central themes of The Misfits — the ways that men view women as objects. The three modern cowboys, portrayed by Gable, Clift and Wallach, relate to Monroe's Roslyn Tabor as a creature fulfilling their own personal emotional needs — not as a human being with her own needs, concerns and desires. Gable would have celebrated his 60th birthday on the day the movie opened. Monroe attended the New York premiere on a pass from a psychiatric hospital where she was under treatment for barbiturate dependency; 12 days earlier, she and Miller had gotten a divorce in Juarez, Mexico. The Misfits was also Monroe's last completed picture; she died from a drug overdose on August 5, 1962. f