by Adam Braver
Mid-October 1960: The Misfits Set, Pyramid Lake, NV
The camera pulls in tight on Gable. He’s laid out on the ground, dressed in leather chaps and boots, his gloved hands holding on to a rope tied to a truck, preparing for a stunt that will simulate him being pulled by a wild horse. His hair is mussed, and his face, sweaty and chapped from the wind, looks both worn and rugged. Makeup will be applied to further the appearance of wear, but salty dust from the lake has stuck to his face as though expertly detailed. It takes strength just to lie there and wait. Huston leans over him, moving the tripod a little more to the left, framing the shot, and then saying to pull the camera in tighter.
The exterior scenes have been shot. It’s how time was utilized when Marilyn showed up late, or when they weren’t sure if she’d show up at all. The second unit filmed horses running wild across the plains. Even though Gable declared he was doing all his own stunts, his stunt double, Jim Palen, still came in for the rougher long-distance scenes involving the horses. Even Gable knew that was too dangerous. It was further emphasized when Palen was kicked in the side of the head by a wild stallion named Boots during the second-unit takes in which the horse is supposed to simulate kicking a fallen Gay. A hoof landed right near the temple. When Palen just lay there, some thought he was dead, or at least brain-damaged, until he finally muttered a few words and sat up. But he was lucky, if it can be called luck. And no one could really call it an accident, because they were wild horses, and that’s what wild horses do. It’s been noticed, but never said, that danger seems to come only when Marilyn throws off the schedule. It’s occurred to her, too. The idea that coincidence might be the true link between apparent cause and effect scares her, and rarely does it exhilarate.
Gable is to be dragged by the truck across the lake bed, about four hundred feet, while the camera hangs back for the long shot. Then they’ll take it again, shooting in tight from another camera mounted on the side of the flatbed. Gable agrees that the truck should drive at a regular speed, about thirty-five miles per hour, the pace of a horse, so that his body will twist and bump the way it should, because for all the time it’s been taking to make this picture, already twenty-five days over schedule, they might as well get it right. They’ll have plenty of time, he says. It ought to be at least a couple of hours more before Marilyn makes it out there. After all, the call is only two hours old.
With a parched voice, Gable says, “Can we get this thing going, already?”
Huston, squinting through the Mitchell’s lens, mumbles it will be a few more minutes.
“A few more minutes,” Gable says. “A few more minutes.” In order to rest his neck, he puts his head down, then lifts it back up quickly, spitting off a layer of dirt stuck to his lips. “This whole film’s been a few more minutes.”
Marilyn arrives as he’s being dragged for the second time. The flatbed is driving in a straight line, with a cameraman tilted over the side, and Gable just barely hanging on to the end of the rope, snaking in all directions. He’s on his side, and his body bounces and twists, and for a moment it seems it could be a stuffed dummy (not even a stuntman!), because the body bounces so freely, rising up with a floating lightness, and then thudding down violently, in a way no one should have to endure. And it pains her to see Gable as just a body, one that’s easily beaten and easily bruised, no different from the next. There was a dog who once lived next door to one of her foster homes, and one day a neighbor came out holding a hoe, and he told the barking dog to keep quiet, and when the dog kept at it, the man lifted up his hoe and he sliced the dog in half. That’s how it is when people are after something for themselves. There are no concerns about consequences. They’ll rip you to shreds. Just to keep their world in order.
The news from Vegas is good today. Bookmakers there have posted Kennedy as a 6 to 5 favorite over Nixon in next month’s election. The shift is major, as Nixon had been running 8 to 6 just last week, perhaps upstaging the report in the papers that George Gallup believes neither he nor anyone else can “predict the outcome of the November presidential election with scientific accuracy,” a reminder that the real forecasting always falls to the oddsmakers. And maybe this news brings a sense of hope, especially given a recent report, called “Community of Fear,” released by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, that anticipates that as the arms race grows, the United States will be forced to move underground, to build factories inside caves, along with apartment buildings and stores. Meanwhile, the New York Times has posted a headline that warns “Caution Is Advised With Dark Lipstick,” and the article goes on to say that “when wearing a blackened red lipstick, do not wear brightly colored eye make-up. The new black eye-shadow looks best or a dark blue shade. Do not wear rouge.” This evening she’s going with Arthur to a party Huston is throwing at the Christmas Tree Restaurant in honor of Arthur’s and Monty’s birthdays, and she’s conscious of wearing a darker eye shadow, not because of how it looks but because it feels a little less dangerous, which she understands is not the same as safe. And she will accompany Arthur because it’s his birthday, and they are still married, and those things still matter, even if it means she’ll sit sideways, scrunching herself against the town car’s window, watching the pines cascade down the side of the Mt. Rose Highway, not saying a word the entire ride up the twisting hill, sick with an unidentified nervousness that she figures will only be cured by a shaker of gin and one of the loose Nembutals at the bottom of her purse, cure enough until she can get back to her own bed, and back in front of the camera the following day.
When they arrive, the Christmas Tree Restaurant is jammed. Their whole Hollywood herd has filled the dark lodge. Even Huston’s mother is there. One day away from wrapping the final scenes, and everyone in the company is falling on top of each other like it’s premiere night. Some sit at the dinner tables carving into their steaks, faces tiger-striped by candlelight. Others crowd around the fireplace, offering toasts and playful salutations. Most spill into the bar or gather around the game tables. But where’s Gable? He’s the one person she doesn’t see.
Standing at the craps table sipping a martini, she peers around the room, trying to catch sight of him. He doesn’t seem to be anywhere. Finally, she asks Huston if he’s seen him. And Huston says Gable begged off. His body was too sore from all the thumping. All those long days in the sun and the hot winds have just about taken it out of him. So he stayed in for the night. Battered and worn.
Marilyn doesn’t say anything. And though she doesn’t suspect she’s been accused, she feels accused.
She throws back the last of her martini and then scoops up a pair of dice off the table. She shakes them in her hand. Huston tells her to throw them. “Come on, honey.” But she keeps rattling them. Almost able to hear them turning in her palm. Changing in combination. Each die catches the scab on her index finger cut from the wire hood. Slow, stilted tumbles, before turning over to the next number. Make it a lucky one. She tries to remember the percentages. Calculate the odds. And she swears her palm is filling with blood. Flooding with it. “Don’t think,” Huston says, stamping his boot. “Just do it.”
November 1960: Los Angeles
By November, Gable is dead. He was at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital for ten days, following a heart attack late on a Saturday night, a day after he shot his last scene on Stage 2 at the Paramount studios, where, at least for him, The Misfits had wrapped. He was in his house when the pains hit, the whole chest cavity constricting and tightening, and it felt like one minute longer and it would strangle him and crush his ribs, while Kay, no stranger to heart issues, recognized the symptoms at once and phoned for the ambulance. Over the course of the ten days he seemed to be progressing, getting cautiously positive reports from Dr. Cerini. Kay, who was six months pregnant, was set up in the empty room beside his. She sat with her husband at all possible times, trying to keep his hand on her rounded belly, and while he slept she had her own heart condition monitored. Hollywood visitors came with occa
sional news about the editing of the film, although nobody really intended to bother him with that kind of talk; it was more to let him know that the life he was part of was going on normally around him (while for some of the industry people it was really all they knew how to talk about). But on the morning of November 17, his heart rebelled again, and when it was done he lay with his head thrashed into a pillow, eyes open, not in peace or in fear, but in somewhat furious defiance of his hospital bed, while the nurse shouted for Kay, and the doctors didn’t bother with pretending. His last day had been his best. Alert and looking far better than his true condition. On that day, Gable stopped thinking about his heart and instead talked to his wife about their unborn child, apologizing to Kay for putting her through this while expecting, and swearing he’d get better, be a father and husband who could stand for his family, and maybe it was the fact that he stopped thinking about his heart that gave it the chance to give out. This man who’d spent a lifetime and career believing only in vigilance. Who’d allowed himself to be dragged around the Nevada desert, waving away the stuntmen, because he couldn’t give a face to Gay’s anguish unless he felt the physical bumping and the physical bruising. Otherwise, he would just be acting.
In Projection Room 5 at Paramount, Huston works furiously with his main editors, George Tomasini and Doc Erickson. They focus as though they’re starving, watching take after take, debating points of view, second shots, lighting, cuts, angles; reel by reel, they work to put this movie together with a little more urgency. With Gable’s death, the studio wants to push up the release of The Misfits, get it into the theaters sooner. Huston doesn’t fight it. He justifies the studio’s decision to capitalize on the situation by rationalizing that if he can beat the December 31 screening deadline for the Academy Awards, he should be able to get Gable a nod for the nomination. Gable’s work is that good, he says; he deserves an honest shot at next year’s Oscar. And so they trim and they shape and they splice and they stitch to bring the multitude of pieces to life.
In the middle of his hospital stay, on Armistice Day, Gable received a telegram from President Eisenhower encouraging him to stay strong. Eisenhower had had some experience in these matters. He wrote not to worry. Stay strong. To do what the doctor ordered. And not to get angry.
On the same day, across the country, at one thirty in the afternoon, under the awning at 444 East Fifty-Seventh Street, where Marilyn had returned to live, her assistant, Pat Newcomb, announced to a hastily gathered group of reporters that Marilyn was separating from Arthur Miller. Although it was emphasized that there were no plans for a divorce at this point, Newcomb did make clear that the parting was amicable, the result of several meetings between Mr. Miller and Miss Monroe (she pointed up behind her to Marilyn’s apartment), all arranged and negotiated without lawyers. Miller didn’t say anything publicly but is reported to have told people close to him that there was no chance of reconciliation. Marilyn didn’t come down during the announcement. Never weighed in. Newcomb said she wasn’t yet dressed.
Gable is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Nearly five hundred people crowd the Church of the Recessional, with another three hundred gathered outside. The New York Times describes the coffin as being “blanketed by red roses, atop which rested a small crown of miniature, darker red roses.” Because he was a major in the air force, he’s given a full military funeral—an air force honor guard stands over his casket, while Johnson West, an air force chaplain, delivers the eulogy. And Hollywood, of course, is present—sprinkled throughout the pews, and most notably among the pallbearers, whose ranks include Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, and Robert Taylor. Gable’s remains will be entombed the following week, taking their place beside his third wife, Carol Lombard. An empty tomb waits on the other side, for Kay, when the time comes.
Some time later, Kay Gable is quoted as saying it was The Misfits that contributed to her husband’s heart attack, specifically “the eternal waiting” on the set. The quote is interpreted by some as an implication of blame directed at Marilyn; her inability to stay on schedule throughout the filming, either showing up late or not coming in at all, and the emotional stress that would’ve caused Gable, not to mention the physical stress of having to wait around in the desert heat. Kay Gable denies any intention of indicting Marilyn, and, in fact, she later invites Marilyn to the christening of the newly born John Gable. But still it eats away at Marilyn. That she may have been culpable in the death of Gable, whom she idolized and relied upon for as long as she can remember, is too much for her.
It’s one thing to wave the gun in your own face. It’s another thing when it accidentally fires in the wrong direction.
July 27, 1962
Cal Neva Lodge, Crystal Bay, NV
Talking to a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Phyllis McGuire, of the singing group the McGuire Sisters, reflected on how Sinatra “never could understand” the stigma of friendship with Giancana. She had the insight, due to the McGuire Sisters regularly playing the Celebrity Showroom and, more importantly, due to her being Giancana’s girlfriend. McGuire said, “He’d been friends with the boys for years.” In filing his report on October 11, 1962, the special agent of the Chicago field office (name redacted) made sure to note that “GIANCANA SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS SINCE HE HAS A VICIOUS TEMPERAMENT, A PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITY AND IS KNOWN TO HAVE CARRIED FIREARMS.”
On October 6, 1959, Giancana appeared for fifteen minutes before a federal grand jury in Chicago to testify in an investigation of “hoodlum control” in the Rush Street belt, a downtown nightclub district. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that “Giancana growled obscenities at the United States Court House and broke into seemingly meaningless prattle ‘tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow.’”
6:25 PM
* Elizabeth Arden “Pat-a-Crème” makeup
* Erno Laszlo blush, face powder, and cream
* Helena Rubinstein mascara
These are among the items in her zippered carrying case. Many primitive cultures dress in masks and costumes to frighten off their enemies.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she draws on lipstick, then traces the edges with a darker lip liner. Behind her, the lake is a dark splotch beneath a passing cloud; it has swallowed up any trace of sunlight. The two large pines directly in view are only shapes. Within the hour, she’ll make her way to Frank’s show. It seems like that will be the best place to actually disappear. Somewhere on a song.
She thinks about this character, Marilyn Monroe: someone who has been under constant fire but has always assumed herself safe.
Or, it’s as if you’re trying to do something as simple as light a cigarette, but you end up burning down the house. And everybody’s screaming, hollering, and the place is a stinking nightmare, but all you can do is stand there with a butt dangling off your lip, thinking, “I wonder if I can catch a light off one of the flames.”
That’s more what she’s like.
The wrinkles in her evening dress need smoothing. She palms down the fabric over her hips; the darted seams show off the dress’s construction. Then she cranes her arm down in one smooth gesture toward the bed and scoops up a scarf out of the valise. She nearly loses her balance, trying to stand straight again.
She folds the scarf into a triangle and wraps it around her head, tying it loosely under her chin. It could be the weather. Or the dyes. Or maybe something has changed hormonally. But she’s lost control of her hair. It resists a brush. Collapses under the sprays. It’s just best covered up. Held down and hidden. No one needs to know what’s going on under there.
7:40 PM
Pat Lawford is elegance; she wears a sleeveless black taffeta cocktail dress, conservative, with only a slight, almost futuristic, slit cut into the top, not really meant to reveal her cleavage, but instead to display the double strand of pearls strung around her throat. Her hair, dyed dark black, is pulled back and combed tightly against her scalp, enunciating the Kenned
y familial jawline.
A cocktail waitress pushes through the crowded casino floor, overfilled drinks sloshing on her tray. The lodge’s dark red carpets contrast perfectly with the pinewood walls and the buckhorn chandelier dangling over the center of the game room. A real rustic getaway. The waitress turns sideways, passing right behind Pat and Marilyn, who have just found each other, the ridge of her rear scraping Marilyn’s hip.
Maybe it’s the scarf over her head that’s kept her unnoticed, but she’s passed through the room nearly invisible.
Pat turns to Marilyn, looking her straight in the eye. As though they’re the only ones in this crowded area. “Now back to what I was going to tell you on the plane.”
“Oh no,” Marilyn says. “I remember that I said I wouldn’t forget. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I’ve forgotten what I wasn’t going to forget.”
In a burst of sentences, Pat delivers her news. On the airplane, she says, it still had been speculation, something she’d heard through her assistant just before the car came to pick her up. That’s why she’d been keeping it from Peter. But now it’s confirmed. She had her assistant check in with a contact at the hotel. Pat hesitates, as though pausing for effect. Her eyes widen. Sam Giancana is here. Somewhere at the Cal Neva. As soon as Sinatra’s plane dropped them off, it turned right around and headed back to Los Angeles, where it picked the mobster up and delivered him to Reno. She nods three times, holding her mouth tight. And then continues, saying he was chauffeured to the lodge in the very same car that had brought them here earlier. How sick is that?