The Misfits (1961) – UK Trailer

With ghosts from the past lingering, the characters in director John Huston‘s 1961 film The Misfits are trying to survive in a world they’ve lost connection to. In a role written for her by her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe stars as Roslyn, a recently divorced woman in Reno who attracts the attention of three troubled men who think she might be their salvation, despite the her having has issues of her own. Clark Gable plays a womanizing older cowboy, Eli Wallach is a former WWII pilot and mechanic, and Montgomery Clift arrives later as a charismatic rodeo performer who is down on his luck. The group eventually decides to head off into the Nevada desert to capture a group of wild horses in the film’s most dramatic scene. Shot in black and white, it’s visually stunning, and all of the actors, including Thelma Ritter as Roslyn’s landlord and friend, put in exceptional performances.

Watching The Misfits, it’s hard not to also be reminded of the actors’ lives outside of the film, and what was to come. While writing her character, Miller used aspects of Monroe’s past and personality. This mixture of fact and fiction feels present in her performance and was complicated by her health struggles, substance abuse, and the continuing problems in her marriage to Miller. They divorced soon after, and within a year and a half, Monroe died, at 36, from a drug overdose. Clark Gable, who has some physically demanding scenes in the film, had a heart attack two days after the film was completed and died ten days after that. He was 59 years old. Montgomery Clift’s self-destructive behavior and substance abuse issues led to his death in 1966, at the age of 45.

Several photographers from Magnum photo agency were hired to shoot the making of the film. It’s an incredible list of famous photographers that includes Henri Cartier-Bresson, Inge Morath, Eve Arnold, Bruce Davidson, Cornell Capa, Ernst Haas, and Erich Hartmann. In Magnum’s On Set series, Inge Morath and Arthur Miller discuss working on set, and in another Eve Arnold‘s work is highlighted. Arthur Miller would later go on to marry Morath in 1962.

US actress Marilyn Monroe on the Nevada desert going over her lines for a difficult scene she is about to play with Clarke Gable in the film “The Misfits” by John Huston. Nevada. USA. 1960. © Eve Arnold | Magnum Photos

Inge Morath | Set of “The Misfits”. Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Reno, Nevada. USA. 1960. © Inge Morath | Magnum Photos