Godfrey's Guide

ON THE 24TH DAY OF JUNE 2014...
THE LAST OF THE "MISFITS" DIED.


  It had all begun back in 1960 when John Huston arrived in Reno, Nevada with a crew 0f 130 to direct the movie version of Arthur Miller's The Misfits in the 108 degree heat of the western desert.  The principals of the movie were housed at the Mapes Hotel next to the Truckee River on Virginia Street, a distinctive art deco high-rise with the Lamplighter Bar on the main floor and The Sky Room at the top.  The stars of the movie were Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, along with Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter; and the story centered centered around a recently divorced woman (Monroe) who spent time with three men: Gable, Clift, and Wallach, three cowboys who chased Mustangs in order to make a little side-money roping the horses, who would eventually be shot and turned into dog food for a dog meat factory.   It was said to be a symbolic tale about the death of the old-West written by Monroe's current husband, playwright Arthur Miller.  The marriage was beginning to break apart, due to Monroe's declining mental-health and accentuating use of barbiturate drugs.  It would be nice to say that they lived happily ever after.  Almost nobody does, particularly celebrities who are addicted to drugs.  

  Within weeks reporters and photographers were making their way to Reno.  A large parade was held when the stars arrived.  "They are giving us a million dollars of free publicity," said the owner of the Mapes.  The Reno tourist board was equally excited.  Gable and Monroe were the attraction that elevated the town.  John Huston was back in Reno, hauling his aging bones back to the States after a long sojourn to Ireland, and spent many morning hours strolling along Virginia Street and most afternoon hours in the Lamplighter Bar after taking the morning stroll.  Within the swirling currents of celebrity and alcohol, staff members greeted him fondly.  And Huston had grand fun.  He enjoyed the attention.  "Huston was the greatest drinker I ever saw at my bar.  He could drink anything and ever seemed to get drunk," said the day barman.  The shooting of the movie, of course, had yet to begin.  Far and away the worst irritation in Reno during the wait, was the intense heat.  On most days the leaves of the trees outside of the hotel drooped beneath the hot sun, while the music in the bar was the usual soft-rock pap: watered-down Beatles, creaky Barry Manilow, but at least it was cool and an excellent place for Huston to doze-off now and again between drinks.


 
  Both Monroe and Gable were the  gigantic stars in the old Hollywood galaxy, and their presence captivated the town.  Montgomery Clift, who played a mother-fixated rodeo performer, had been in a car crash in 1956, which left his face partially immobile and his once-perfect-profile altered, was now addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs, and spent the majority of his time reading alone in his room, lonely and isolated.  Monroe was sinking further into alcohol and drug prescription abuse, and Gable, who had gone on a crash-diet in order to get in shape for the film, was not in the best of moods, and began to chain-smoke cigarettes and drink large quantities of alcohol.  The only two performers who seemed normal were the two character actors, Wallach and Ritter; thus, they garnered little attention from the public or the press.  The two of them were said to have been friendly, even sweet.  And yet, one critic wrote that, "From the very beginning, an atmosphere of doom hung over the picture." 


  The movie would not be released until February of 1961.  It would be the final film appearance for both Gable and Monroe.  Gable suffered a heart attack 2 days after the filming came to an end and died 10 days later, on November 16, 1960, at age 59.  Within a year-and-a-half, Monroe passed away from an apparent drug overdose on the 15th day of August in 1962, at the age of 36.  Gable had been her screen idol and she had, as an abandoned child, often claimed that Gable was her father.  And then, on the 23rd of July in 1966, Montgomery Clift died in bed with his glasses on from an apparent heart-attack at 6:30AM in his home on East 61st Street in New York City.  He was 45 years-old.  The evening before his death, his personal secretary, Lorenzo James, had asked him if he wanted to watch the late-late movie on TV  with him, which happened to be The Misfits.  Clift's terse reply was, "Absolutely not!" Ritter would pass away with a heart-attack on February 5th in 1969 in her New York home at the age of 66; and by the end of the decade, the only star left alive was Eli Wallach.  It seemed that the critic had been right-on-target about the atmosphere of doom. 


  As  for John Huston, he would go on to direct 8 more movies, including The Night of the Iguana and The Man Who Would Be King before being diagnosed with emphysema in 1978, and by the last year of his life he could not breathe for more than 20 minutes without needing oxygen.  He eventually passed away on August 28th in 1987, at the age of 81.  The only one to arrive unscathed in that peculiar zone known as old-age was, of course, Eli Wallach, who died in June of 2014 at the ripe age of 98, leaving behind a wife of 66 years, 3 children, 5 grandchildren, and receiving an honorary Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences at the age of 94, after having come to the screen in 1956 in a movie called Baby Doll at the age of 41; a man who the actress, Kate Winslet called, "One of the most charismatic men" she'd ever met.  When he was asked about the theoretical doom which hung over the cast of The Misfits and why he had managed to avoid the curse, Wallach is said to have replied: "The way I figured it, life is a roll of the dice, and maybe God didn't want me to ruin the scenery."