The Genius and the Goddess (33 page)

Once Marilyn was secured and Huston agreed to direct, the other
pieces fell into place.
Lew Wasserman, the powerful head of the MCA
agency that represented both Miller and Marilyn, launched the project
with
United Artists. The budget was $3.5 million, but overwhelming
problems made the picture run forty days over the ninety-day schedule
and half a million dollars over budget. It was, at the time, the most
expensive black-and-white film ever made. Miller was paid $225,000;
Marilyn and Huston got $300,000 each. Clark Gable was fifty-nine,
had a heart condition and hadn't made a good movie since his military
service in World War Two. But he got a great deal: top billing
and a spectacular $750,000, plus $48,000 a week overtime.

The writers' strike had delayed the completion of
Let's Make Love
,
so the cast and crew arrived in the desert at the hottest time of the
year. They stayed at the Mapes Hotel on North Virginia Street in
Reno, and began the first stage of shooting on July 20. As sand blew
into their eyes and into the cameras, they worked in Nevada until
September 21 in temperatures of 110º Fahrenheit. There was a lot of
dusty driving, in real life and in the film, from Reno to the distant
locations. They piled into cars, trucks and busses, and drove through
the desert for the mustang hunt at Pyramid Lake. The scenes in the
unfinished house were shot in Quail Canyon, about twenty miles
from the lake, and the rodeo scenes were filmed in Dayton, about
twenty miles southeast of the city. The rest of the film was completed
in the Hollywood studio.

In those days Reno was still a frontier town pushing into the edge
of the desert, and the film reflects the crude atmosphere of the city,
the fierce emptiness of the land and the harsh rigors of the climate.
The French photographer
Henri Cartier-Bresson, working on the
scene for Magnum, noted the contrast between the lively activity in
Reno and the empty, barren hills surrounding it.
⁴
Reno was famous
for its waves of well-heeled women visitors, who gambled in the
casinos and slept with the local studs during their six-week wait for
a divorce. The town fathers, always on the make, seeded the Truckee
River under the Virginia Street bridge with old wedding rings, encouraging
the new divorcées to cast off the symbols of their bondage and
contribute their gold to the city. At the beginning of the film Gable
(Gay) bids a hasty farewell at the train station to a stylish divorcée
(played by Huston's former mistress Marietta Tree) with whom he's
had a brief fling. After getting her divorce, Marilyn (Roslyn) hesitates
and then decides not to throw her ring into the river. On August 20
the dry heat of the summer intensified when a natural disaster hit
Reno, and the sky was blackened with smoke from two huge forest
fires in the western mountains. The flames cut the only power lines
and the town went dark – except for the big gambling casinos, lit by
auxiliary systems – for three days. The film crew ran special electric
lines to Miller's room so he could continue to turn out the words.

The rodeo and round-up were difficult and dangerous to shoot,
and both Gable and Clift were injured in these scenes. Directors
almost never allowed movie stars to do their own stunts – the risk
was far too great. If an accident occurred, the actors would not be
covered by insurance and the costs would be catastrophic. But both
Huston and Gable were swaggering machos. Despite his illness and
the warnings of his fifth wife, pregnant with his son, Gable insisted
on doing some of his stunts in the exceptionally fierce heat. Though
it seemed in the picture as if the wild stallion was dragging him across
the dry lake bed, he was actually holding on to a rope attached to a
moving camera truck. When the driver asked Huston how fast he
should go, Huston – enjoying the spectacle of Gable's discomfort and
testing his strength – replied, "About thirty-five, the speed of a horse,
or until Clark begins to smoke." Gable was covered with an armor
of "chaps, shoulder pads, gloves and a sort of all-over corset to be
worn underneath . . . to protect him from bruises and sand burns."
But it was extremely tough work, and he was cut and bruised.

The horses were vital actors in the film, in which they are meant
to look terrified and traumatized. When the film came out a number
of people complained about their cruel treatment. Huston, who himself
took the trouble to write a long, angry and abusive response to one
of them, declared, "I have received low-minded letters before and
misinformed letters – occasionally even vicious letters, but never have
I seen one single missive contain all of these qualities – and in such
abundance." In his review of
The Misfits
J.M. Coetzee noted the cruelty
to the animals, and lamented the "exhaustion and pain and terror one
sees on the screen." But officials were on the scene to make sure the
animals were treated properly; and the mustang captured at the end
by Gable was a trick horse, specially trained by the studio to rear up
in Hollywood movies.

There was, however, one unfortunate accident when the 1939
Meyers biplane was driving the mustangs through the narrow
canyon to be captured on the desert lake. The cameraman asked
the daredevil pilot "to keep the plane as close as possible to the
horses" and he "buzzed them with a foot or so to spare. But one
of the mares heard the plane at the last moment and raised her
head. The left wing . . . struck the mare, breaking her neck, and
causing [the plane] to veer sharply off to the left. [Ken] Slater
found himself flying ninety degrees from his original course and
barely recovered the controls without crashing."
⁵
Though Huston
regretted the accident, he loved this kind of daring and danger.

The drama off the set of
The Misfits
was as great as the drama
portrayed in the film. The searing heat and arduous drives, forest fires
and power cuts, difficulties with shooting the rodeo and the wild
mustangs, reckless pilots and fragile planes were external factors that
Huston could not control, and he handled them as best he could.
But he also had to deal with the actors, always on the edge of a crisis.
Gable's health was a serious concern, Montgomery Clift indulged in
lethal drinking bouts and Paula Strasberg constantly interfered with
Huston's direction. Marilyn caused frequent delays and huge cost overruns,
and her wrangles with Miller led to endless revisions of the
script. Despite all the chaos, Huston's intuitive understanding of his
cast as well as his own commanding presence and creative temperament
kept the whole show together. He extracted brilliant performances
from all the actors and created a superb film.

Huston believed in taking advantage of every film location to lead
a risky way of life. He gamely rode in an exciting Labor Day camel
race. He often stayed up all night gambling in the casinos, losing as
much as $10,000 in one session; Marilyn stayed up all night with
insomnia. Huston turned up on time for work the next morning (his
stylish clothes always neatly pressed); Marilyn, still in a drugged state,
did not. But Huston sometimes fell asleep on location. When he woke
up and forgot what scene he was directing, he'd say, as if still in
control, "now we'll shoot scene twelve." Angela Allen would whisper,
"we've already done that one" and he'd casually declare, "Fine, then
we'll do the next one."

Marilyn thought Huston was the only
director who gave her the
proper respect and treated her like a serious actress. He did not discuss
motivation and provided minimal direction, but was always gentle –
the only way to deal with her – and encouraged her by saying, "that's
okay, darling." The photographer Eve Arnold recalled, "in the love
scene on a bed with Gable, when he, fully dressed, woke her with a
kiss, she, nude and covered only in a sheet, sat up and dropped the
sheet, showing her breasts. . . . Huston let her finish the scene her
way, didn't say 'Cut' to the cameraman until she was through, but he
did cut it in the editing. And when she looked at him for approval,
all he said was, 'I've seen 'em before.'" Truman Capote, with some
exaggeration, declared, "My old friend John . . . he hated Montgomery
Clift. And he hated
Marilyn Monroe. But if you ask him, he'll just
say (
imitating Huston's deep voice
): 'Oh, I just love Marilyn, I put her
in her first picture and in her last.'" But Huston was actually more
sympathetic than hostile. "There was something very touching about
her," he observed, "one felt protective about Marilyn. . . . You felt that
she was vulnerable and might get hurt, and she damn well did."
⁶
Her
four best films –
The Asphalt Jungle
,
All About Eve
,
Some Like It Hot
and
The Misfits
– were all shot in black and white.

Frank Taylor, the unflappable producer of the film, was an old friend
of Miller and shared his intellectual interests and political views. From
a Catholic family in upstate New York, near the Canadian border,
he'd graduated from Hamilton College in 1938. He'd been an editor
at Reynal & Hitchcock, where he hired Miller's first wife as his secretary,
and published
Focus
and
Situation Normal
. In 1948 he was invited
to become a Hollywood producer by Louis Mayer, who wanted to
bring some class and intellectual prestige to MGM. Taylor later moved
to Fox to work for Darryl Zanuck, but during the McCarthy era he
was blacklisted for his political activities and forced to leave Hollywood.
He returned to publishing, founded Dell Books, and brought out
both classics and serious contemporary works. Producing
The Misfits
united his love of literature with his interest in film. Miller, who
admired Taylor's style, taste and intelligence, called him "a gaunt,
sophisticated man of great height, an imaginative mixture of aggressive
entrepreneur and aficionado of literature."

In 1957, three years before appearing in
The Misfits
, Montgomery
Clift smashed up his handsome face in a near-fatal car crash and had
to have it rebuilt. In the film, the scars from his plastic surgery fitted
his character, and seem to have come from his frequent falls and fractures
in the rodeos. He reassures his mother, on the telephone, that
she'll still recognize him after all his injuries. A covert homosexual
and heavy drinker, with a tortured personal life, the fragile Clift was
delicately balanced on an emotional high wire. Huston said, "he was
a mess; he was gone," and called him "the male counterpart of Marilyn
– of that thing in her that touched people . . . a sense that she was
headed for disaster."
⁷
Nevertheless, his performance was perfect.

The rough-hewn
Eli Wallach, a distinguished stage actor and leading
exponent of the Method, had known Marilyn in New York. He'd
made his screen debut as the unscrupulous seducer in Elia Kazan's
Baby Doll
and had been the bandit leader in
The Magnificent Seven
, a
popular western based on the Japanese
Seven Samurai
. The raspy-voiced,
Brooklyn-born
Thelma Ritter, who played Roslyn's friend
Isabelle, was twenty years older than Marilyn. She appeared as Bette
Davis' maid in
All About Eve
and was greatly valued as a cynical, wisecracking
character actress.

A revealing group photo was taken during the shooting of
The
Misfits
. Marilyn – shoulders thrown back, breasts thrust out and wearing
a white dress patterned with red cherries – sits at the center of a
triangle. The three main male characters – Clift, Gable and Wallach
– are placed around her. With one hand on her hip and the other
on Clift's shoulder (who's also wearing white), Marilyn suggests their
emotional bond. Gable, his booted foot on a crate, leans possessively
toward her. Wallach, sitting sideways, hints at his outsider's role in the
film. Huston, Miller and Taylor, all unusually tall and slim, form a
second triangle around the actors. Huston, the presiding genius, is
centered above Marilyn. Miller, balding and with thick spectacles,
stands outside the charmed circle. Taylor, looking rather apprehensive,
grips the edge of a high triangular ladder that seems to trap him
under it.

Marilyn's mental state had a greater impact on the making of
The
Misfits
than all the other problems put together. Often sick and
depressed, drinking heavily and addicted to prescription drugs, she
was usually four or five hours late. After the assistant producer had
picked her up at the Mapes Hotel in Reno, he'd drive ahead of her
chauffeured car to announce her imminent arrival. But the cast and
crew were astonished to find that after she got to the site she needed
yet another hour to get ready to appear. They were forced to wait
patiently and never dared utter a word of criticism. Marilyn's coming
late, forgetting her lines and needing infinite takes cost the studio a
great deal of money (though it was no longer Marilyn's money), and
her entire entourage was on the payroll. She had, a journalist satirically
noted, "ten people to take care of her: a masseur for her body;
a drama coach for her psyche; a make-up man for her face; a makeup
woman for her limbs; a secretary for her affairs; a maid for her
convenience; a lady to comb her hair; three wardrobe women for her
clothes."

Her masseur,
Ralph Roberts, four years older than Marilyn, was a
big, gentle, slow-moving Southern gentleman. He'd studied the
Method, was a friend of the Strasbergs, massaged Susan, and became
Marilyn's close friend and confidant. He played a bit part as the ambulance
attendant at the rodeo. Her secretary, the petite, mild-mannered
May Reis, had worked for both Kazan and Miller before being annexed
by Marilyn. Intelligent, well-organized and capable, a great supporter
of liberal causes, she had no family and (like Roberts) was absolutely
devoted to Marilyn. Besides this extensive support group, she had
Miller, Huston and Taylor, who tried to please her on location, as
well as Lee Strasberg and Dr. Ralph Greenson, who were on call to
solve dramatic crises and nervous attacks.