He was also bitterly sarcastic about Hollywood’s prim morality:
Two generations of Americans have been informed nightly that a woman who betrayed her husband (or a husband a wife) could never find happiness; that sex was no fun without a mother-in-law and a rubber plant around; that women who fornicated just for pleasure ended up as harlots or washerwomen; that any man who was sexually active in his youth later lost the one girl he truly loved; that a man who indulged in sharp practices to get ahead in the world ended in poverty and with even his own children turning on him; that any man who broke the laws, man’s or God’s, must always die, or go to jail, or become a monk, or restore the money he stole before wandering off into the desert. . . For forty years the movies have drummed away on the American character. They have fed it naïveté and bunkum in doses never before administered to any people. They have slapped into the American mind more human misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade. One basic plot only has appeared daily in their fifteen thousand theatres — the triumph of virtue and the overthrow of wickedness.
We can only wonder whether his astonishing earnings made his complicity in this intellectual decline more – or less – painful:
I received from each script, whether written in two weeks or (never more than) eight weeks, from $50,000 to $150,000 [$500,000 to $1.5 million]. I worked also by the week. David O. Selznick once paid me $3,500 [$35,000] a day.
1946 THE BIG SLEEP
Vivian is not happy that Marlowe has been called in to investigate her family’s affairs.
VIVIAN
I don’t like your manners.
MARLOWE
And I’m not crazy about yours. I didn’t ask to see you. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.
Dir: Howard Hawks • Scr: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman • Based on a novel by Raymond Chandler • Cast: Lauren Bacall (Vivian Rutledge), Humphrey Bogart (Philip Marlowe)
Bogart and Bacall first worked together on To Have and Have Not where they quickly fell in love. Their return to the studio for The Big Sleep effectively destroyed Bogart’s marriage to his third wife, Mayo Methot, and his subsequent heavy drinking often rendered him unable to shoot. He wed Bacall shortly after the production wrapped and they subsequently starred together in Dark Passage and Key Largo.
1948 THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
An old prospector warns of the perils of teamwork when fortunes are at stake.
HOWARD
That’s gold, that’s what it makes us. Never knew a prospector yet that died rich. Make one fortune, he’s sure to blow it in tryin’ to find another. I’m no exception to the rule. Aw sure, I’m a gnawed old bone now, but say, don’t you guys think the spirit’s gone. I’m all set to shoulder a pickaxe and a shovel anytime anybody’s willin’ to share expenses. I’d rather go by myself. Going it alone’s the best way. But you got to have a stomach for loneliness. Some guys go nutty with it. On the other hand, goin’ with a partner or two is dangerous. Murderers always lurkin’ about. Partners accusin’ each other of all sorts of crimes. Aw, as long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last. But when the piles of gold begin to grow, that’s when the trouble starts.
Dir: John Huston • Scr: John Huston • Based on a novel by B. Traven • Cast: Walter Huston (Howard)
1951 THE AFRICAN QUEEN
A Christian missionary and a dissolute river captain are thrown together in the African jungle.
ROSE
Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.
Dir: John Huston • Scr: John Huston, James Agee, Peter Viertel, John Collier • Based on a novel by C. S. Forester • Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Rose Sayer)
Katharine Hepburn disapproved of the amount of whisky John Huston and Humphrey Bogart drank on location and made a great show of sticking to water. Her protest led to a severe bout of dysentery.
1953 STALAG 17
American airmen held in a German prison camp suspect one of their number is an informant.
PRICE
Are you questioning me?
SEFTON
Getting acquainted. I’d like to make one friend in this barracks.
PRICE
Well, don’t bother, Sefton. I don’t like you, I never did, and I never will.
SEFTON
A lot of people say that, and the first thing you know is they get married and live happily ever after.
Dir: Billy Wilder • Scr: Billy Wilder, Edwin Blum • Based on a play by Donald Bevan, Edmund Trzcinski • Cast: Peter Graves (Sergeant Price), William Holden (Sergeant J. J. Sefton)
Director Wilder kept the identity of the informant a secret from the cast so their genuine suspicions would influence their performances.
1955 GUYS AND DOLLS
Sky cautions Adelaide to think hard before walking up the aisle with Nathan, an inveterate gambler.
SKY
No matter who you marry, you wake up married to someone else.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz • Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ben Hecht • Based on short stories by Damon Runyon and a libretto by Jo Swerling, Abe Burrows • Cast: Marlon Brando (Sky Masterson)
1956 GIANT
Towards the end of his life, Bick Benedict reflects on his enduring friendship with his wife.
BICK
You want to know something, Leslie? If I live to be ninety, I’m never going to figure you out.
Dir: George Stevens • Scr: Fred Guiol, Ivan Moffat • Based on a novel by Edna Ferber • Cast: Rock Hudson (Jordan ‘Bick’ Benedict Jr)
1957 SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
A newspaper magnate cautions an embittered press agent.
J. J. HUNSECKER
Don’t remove the gangplank, Sidney — you may want to get back on board.
Dir: Alexander Mackendrick • Scr: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman • Based on a novella by Ernest Lehman • Cast: Burt Lancaster (J. J. Hunsecker)
This film’s shoot was filled with macho tensions and at one point the temperamental Burt Lancaster threatened to punch the film’s writer, Ernest Lehman. The witty scribe replied: ‘Go ahead, I need the money.’
1958 VERTIGO
SCOTTIE
Don’t you think it’s sort of a waste for the two of us to...
MADELEINE
Wander separately? Ah, but only one is a wanderer. Two together are always going somewhere.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock • Scr: Alec Coppel, Samuel A. Taylor • Based on a novel by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac • Cast: James Stewart (John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson), Kim Novak (Madeleine Elster)
A tough call among so many outstanding Hitchcock pictures, Vertigo was recently voted the greatest film of all time in the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine.
1959 SOME LIKE IT HOT
Jerry, a jazz musician, disguises himself as a woman to escape his mobster pursuers but finds he has attracted the attentions of an amorous millionaire.
JERRY
Oh no you don’t! Osgood, I’m gonna level with you. We can’t get married at all.
OSGOOD
Why not?
JERRY
Well, in the first place, I’m not a natural blonde.
OSGOOD
Doesn’t matter.
JERRY
I smoke! I smoke all the time!
OSGOOD
I don’t care.
JERRY
Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I’ve been living with a saxophone player.
OSGOOD
I forgive you.
JERRY
I can never have children!
OSGOOD
We can adopt some.
JERRY
But you don’t understand, Osgood! Ohh...
Jerry gives up and pulls off his wig. His voice is deeper now.
JERRY
I’m a man!
Osgood just smiles uncomprehendingly.
OSGOOD
Well, nobody’s perfect!
Dir: Billy Wilder • Scr: Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond • Based on a story by Robert Thoeren, Michael Logan • Cast: Jack Lemmon (Jerry/’Daphne’), Joe E. Brown (Osgood Fielding III)
There was no love lost between Billy Wilder and Marilyn Monroe on set; as the director described the shoot, ‘We were in mid-flight and there was a nut on the plane.’ The star required forty-seven takes to get ‘It’s me, Sugar’ correct, instead saying either ‘Sugar, it’s me’ or ‘It’s Sugar, me’. After take 30, Wilder had the line written on a blackboard. On another occasion, Monroe had to search some drawers before saying ‘Where’s the bourbon?’ After forty attempts, including ‘Where’s the whiskey?’, ‘Where’s the bottle?’ or ‘Where’s the bonbon?’, Wilder wrote the line inside one of the drawers. Even so Monroe could never seem to find the drawer containing the prompt, so Wilder had it written in every drawer. By the fifty-ninth and final take Wilder asked Monroe to stand with her back to the camera, giving him the option to overdub the line if need be.
‘I JUST WANT TO BE WONDERFUL’
All stars wax and wane but none, male or female, has achieved the enduring fame of Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson, 1926–62). Although she appeared in classic films including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), she has far outlived the pictures themselves and the bittersweet story of her own life remains her true legacy.
Discovered in 1945 by army photographers during a wartime propaganda photo shoot at the factory where she was working, she signed with the Blue Book modelling agency where her first assignment paid $5 [$65]. Over the coming years she changed her stage name so frequently that when she gave her first autograph as Marilyn Monroe she had to ask a friend how to spell it. Within a matter of years she was Playboy’s first ever ‘Sweetheart of the Month’; forty years after her death, People magazine still voted her ‘Sexiest Woman of the Century’.
While she was universally adored by the public, her reputation among her peers was less flattering and her habit of turning up late for work infuriated directors and co-stars. Billy Wilder said: ‘She has breasts of granite and a mind like a Gruyère cheese.’ Otto Preminger claimed: ‘She’s a vacuum with nipples’ and Tony Curtis complained: ‘It’s like kissing Hitler.’
Her suicide at the age of thirty-six from an overdose of sedatives caused huge controversy as her recent affair with John F. Kennedy had become widely known; rumours quickly spread that her death was in fact ordered by the government to protect the president’s image. Startling inconsistencies in the investigation itself and destruction of key evidence were subsequently revealed but no murder charges were ever filed. The inquest was periodically reviewed and on each occasion a verdict of suicide was returned, but the idea of a murderous conspiracy was reignited in 1972 when the home where she died was refurbished and contractors discovered a standard-issue FBI eavesdropping system in every room.
It is widely accepted now that Monroe was a depressive and that the conflict between her desire for fame and the pressures it brought exacerbated her condition. As she said herself:
• I want to be a big star more than anything. It’s something precious.
• I’m not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful.
• My problem is that I drive myself. . . I’m trying to become an artist, and to be true, and sometimes I feel I’m on the verge of craziness, I’m just trying to get the truest part of myself out, and it’s very hard. There are times when I think, ‘All I have to be is true’. But sometimes it doesn’t come out so easily. I always have this secret feeling that I’m really a fake or something, a phony.
After The Seven Year Itch (1955) she grew tired of disparaging comments about her acting skills and attended Lee Strasberg’s New York’s Actors Studio where Marlon Brando and other notable actors had studied. Her next film, Bus Stop (1956), gained more respectful reviews and the press was equally surprised by her marriage the same year to leading playwright Arthur Miller. Interviews and tributes from her friends in later life emphasized her desire to gain intellectual credibility, citing her love of poetry, a library filled with books on history, philosophy and literature and an IQ (never actually substantiated) of 168.
Even so, Monroe found it hard to shake off the public image she had already created and the pressures of the industry grew increasingly intolerable. Her later comments are classic cries from the heart:
• My illusions didn’t have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve! No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t.
• I knew I belonged to the public and to the world not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I never had belonged to anything or anyone else.
• I did what they said and all it got me was a lot of abuse. Everyone’s just laughing at me. I hate it. Big breasts, big ass, big deal.
• In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You’re judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood’s a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.
• Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. . . I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity.
• Dogs never bite me. Just humans.
• People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.
• A sex symbol becomes a thing, I just hate being a thing. But if I’m going to be a symbol of something I’d rather have it [be] sex than some other things we’ve got symbols of.
• Suicide is a person’s privilege. I don’t believe it’s a sin or a crime, it’s your right if you do. Though it doesn’t get you anywhere.
Early in the morning of 5 August 1962, Monroe’s body was discovered naked in her bed in her Los Angeles home, a telephone in her hand. She left 75 per cent of her estate to Lee Strasberg and the remainder to Marianne Kris, her first psychoanalyst. Even today the licensing of her name and likeness alone nets the Monroe estate about $2 million a year.
1962 THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Raymond, unwittingly brainwashed to be a killer, finds it hard to relax with his lover.
RAYMOND
My dear girl, have you ever noticed that the human race is divided into two distinct and irreconcilable groups: those that walk into rooms and automatically turn television sets on, and those that walk into rooms and automatically turn them off. The trouble is that they end up marrying each other.
Dir: John Frankenheimer • Scr: George Axelrod • Based on a novel by Richard Condon • Cast: Laurence Harvey (Raymond Shaw)
1964 MARY POPPINS
On learning that their children have disappeared, George attempts to calm his distraught wife.
MR BANKS
Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts.
Dir: Robert Stevenson • Scr: Bill Walsh, Don DaGradi • Based on a novel by P. L. Travers • Cast: David Tomlinson (George Banks)
1967 TWO FOR THE ROAD
A couple on a long journey recall the beginning – and end – of their marriage.
MARK
Just wish that you’d stop sniping.
JOANNA
I haven’t said a word!
MARK
Just because you use a silencer doesn’t mean you’re not a sniper.
Dir: Stanley Donen • Scr: Frederic Raphael • Cast: Albert Finney (Mark Wallace), Audrey Hepburn (Joanna Wallace)
1968 CARRY ON UP T
HE KHYBER
THE KHASI OF KALABAR
May the benevolence of the god Shivoo bring blessings on your house.
SIR SIDNEY RUFF-DIAMOND
And on yours.
THE KHASI OF KALABAR
And may his wisdom bring success in all your undertakings.
SIR SIDNEY RUFF-DIAMOND
And in yours.
THE KHASI OF KALABAR
And may his radiance light up your life.
SIR SIDNEY RUFF-DIAMOND
And up yours.
Dir: Gerald Thomas • Scr: Talbot Rothwell • Cast: Kenneth Williams (The Khasi of Kalabar), Sid James (Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond)
Perhaps only the British truly delight in the schoolboy humour of the Carry On. . . movies. Foreign distributors would certainly have had a hard time translating the title: ‘Khyber (Pass)’ is cockney rhyming slang for arse.
1972 LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Paul mourns his wife’s suicide with a mixture of rage and grief.
PAUL
Even if a husband lives two hundred fucking years, he’ll never discover his wife’s true nature. I may be able to understand the secrets of the universe, but. . . I’ll never understand the truth about you. Never.
Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci • Scr: Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Arcalli, Agnès Varda • Cast: Marlon Brando (Paul)
1973 THE LAST DETAIL
MULHALL
You ever been married?
BUDDUSKY
Not so you’d notice.
Dir: Hal Ashby • Scr: Robert Towne • Based on a novel by Darryl Ponicsan • Cast: Otis Young (Richard ‘Mule’ Mulhall), Jack Nicholson (Billy ‘Badass’ Buddusky)
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