Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in THE MISFITS (1961)
The onscreen drama in John Huston’s film of Arthur Miller’s vehicle for wife Marilyn Monroe about horse wranglers and broken relationships in Reno, Nevada runs only a close second to the offscreen drama surrounding the film. Huston drank so much during the production he sometimes fell asleep on set, Monroe wound up in detox at one point during the shoot and died less than two years after delivering her final complete film performance as troubled divorcée, Roslyn Taber. The Misfits also marked the final performance of her equally iconic co-star, Clark Gable, who probably hastened his own death by a macho insistence on performing his own stunts, including (according to our old friend Wikipedia) “being dragged about 400 feet across [a] dry lakebed at more than 30 miles per hour” by a horse. Yet despite the tragedy surrounding the film, Gable and Monroe at least ended their careers (and too-short lives) with a worthy (and timeless) cinematic milestone.
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