Home Town Story (1951)
Jeffrey Lynn, Donald Crisp, Marilyn Monroe (Iris Martin)
After losing a hard-fought reelection bid to the legislature, Jeffrey Lynn assumes control of the hometown newspaper and launches a bitter attack on the man he holds responsible for his defeat, Donald Crisp, the powerful head of the town’s biggest business. The film was made on the MGM lot by General Motors’ public relations department, which rejected the final result as substandard. Metro deemed it unworthy of copyright renewal and it languished in the public domain until Marilyn’s fans rediscovered it. She has a two-minute scene as a receptionist in the newspaper office. 61 minutes.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR: Arthur Pierson
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Andriot
As Young as You Feel (1951)
Monty Wooley, Thelma Ritter, David Wayne, Constance Bennett, Marilyn Monroe (Harriet)
A sixty-five-year-old factory worker (Wooley), forced into an unwanted retirement, impersonates the company president and saves the firm from bankruptcy, proving his worth and saving his job. Solid cast makes the story believable, with Marilyn in small role as an office worker. Marilyn devotees know this is the film where she and Arthur Miller first met. 77 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Lamar Trotti
DIRECTOR: Harmon Jones
WRITER: Lamar Trotti (story by Paddy Chayevsky)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joe McDonald
Love Nest (1951)
William Lundigan, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe (Roberta “Bobbie” Stevens)
A post–World War II sex comedy, without the sex and short on comedy, with ex-GI Lundigan and Haver as newlyweds and new owners of an aged brownstone in New York. Tenant and ex-WAC, Marilyn’s role is described in one review as “an extended cameo,” the highlight being a scene in which she emerges from the shower draped only in a towel. 84 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Jules Buck
DIRECTOR: Joseph Newman
WRITER: I. A. L. Diamond
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lloyd Ahern
Let’s Make It Legal (1951)
Claudette Colbert, Macdonald Carey, Zachary Scott, Robert Wagner, Marilyn Monroe (Joyce Mannering)
Miriam and Hugh Halsworth (Colbert and Carey), after a twenty-year marriage, are in the throes of a divorce when an old suitor (Zachary Scott) of hers rolls into town. Marilyn’s contributions are mostly decorative as she spends much of her screen time in a swimsuit. Of the romantic comedy, one critic wrote, “[It] feels overstretched even at an hour and a quarter.” It’s hard to believe that this is the best Miss Colbert could manage following her withdrawal only a year earlier for medical reasons as Margo Channing in All About Eve, giving Bette Davis the role of a lifetime. 77 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: F. Hugh Herbert
DIRECTOR: Richard Sale
COWRITERS: I. A. L. Diamond and F. Hugh Herbert
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Ballard
Clash by Night (1952)
Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe (Peggy)
After a hard-knock life in New York, Mae Doyle (Stanwyck) returns to her hometown, a coastal California village, to live with her fisherman brother. She is courted by a boat owner, Jerry (Douglas), eventually marries him, has a child, and begins an adulterous, reckless affair with the brutal Earl (Robert Ryan), all under the nose of her husband. Monroe is a cannery worker, married to Mae’s brother, and they both look great in their beachwear, but add nothing to the goings-on in this noirish melodrama. 105 minutes.
RKO Pictures—(A Wald-Krasna Production)
PRODUCER: Harriet Parsons
DIRECTOR: Fritz Lang
WRITER: Alfred Hayes (based on a Clifford Odets play)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Nicholas Musuraca
We’re Not Married (1952)
Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, Eve Arden, Paul Douglas, David Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (Annabel Jones Norris)
Five couples are notified that their marriages are invalid because the license of the justice of the peace who performed the ceremonies had not yet kicked in. The couples react to the news in a variety of ways, with Monroe and Wayne’s solution easily the most comic: Already a winner of the Mrs. Mississippi contest, Annabel is now free to enter the Miss Mississippi contest, which she also wins. First of two so-called episodic movies featuring Monroe. 85 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER/WRITER: Nunnally Johnson
DIRECTOR: Edmund Goulding
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Leo Tolver
Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)
Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe (Nell Forbes)
Marilyn moves from featured player to leading lady in this melodramatic, disturbing film noir. She is a suicidal, perhaps homicidal, babysitter whose flirtatious overtures to a war-damaged pilot (Widmark) have unexpected and near-deadly consequences. The film was mounted by studio honchos to assay Monroe’s dramatic skills, which proved to be considerable. 76 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Julian Blaustein
DIRECTOR: Roy Ward Baker
WRITER: Daniel Taradash
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Ballard
Monkey Business (1952)
Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe (Miss Lois Laurel)
A lab chimp accidentally dumps a youth elixir into the drinking water, creating a fountain of youth. After ingesting some of it, research professor Grant and wife Rogers revert to their teenage selves with predictable results—screwball or slapstick—though the fun can only go so far before it gets tedious. Marilyn is on hand as Charles Coburn’s secretary and holds her own quite well as she fends off his clumsily romantic advances. 97 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel
DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks
WRITERS: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I. A. L. Diamond
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner
O. Henry’s Full House (1952)
Charles Laughton, David Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (as a streetwalker), Farley Granger, Jeanne Crain, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark
Five classic short stories created by the master of the genre, all with an ironic resolution in their denouement, which O. Henry perfected and which became his signature. Each short film is self-contained with its own writer, director, and cast, and each is introduced by future Nobel winner John Steinbeck. First, in “The Cop and the Anthem,” Soapy is an urban hobo (Laughton) who in warm weather sleeps in the park. However, with winter coming, he opts for a nice warm jail cell. But he first must get arrested. A series of petty crimes go for naught: theft of an umbrella, stiffing a restaurant for a meal, vandalizing a window. He tries to offend a lady of the evening (Monroe), to no avail. Finally, he enters a church, has an epiphany, repents, and decides to find a job and go “straight.” Alas, his plan is thwarted when a cop arrests him for vagrancy; he is tried and sent to jail for the next ninety days. 19 minutes for segment; 119 minutes for film.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Andrew Hakim
DIRECTOR: Henry Koster
WRITER: Lamar Trotti
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Lloyd Ahern, Lucien Ballard, Milton R. Krasner, Joseph MacDonald
Niagara (1953)
Joseph Cotten, Marilyn Monroe (Rose Loomis)
A cuckolded, lovesick husband, suffering from Korean War shell shock, and his gorgeous, adulterous wife are at Niagara Falls—for very different reasons: He wants to repair his beyond-repair marriage; she is meeting with her lover to plot her husband’s murder. One can almost feel the presence of Alfred Hitchcock as adultery and murder are played out against the power and grandeur of the unrelenting noise and beauty of Niagara. All does not end well, as Loomis (Cotten) discovers the plot against him and turns the tables on Rose (Monroe) and her lover, dispatching him into the crashing waters. He then goes after Rose, stalking her insistently, finding her in the reso
rt’s belltower, and strangling the life out of her. Production values are very high with the breathtaking location filming, lush, saturated Technicolor, and ear-pounding stereo sound. Monroe’s first big-budget picture, an assignment she handles to a tee. A big hit with the public. First of three important films for Marilyn released in 1953. 89 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Charles Brackett
DIRECTOR: Henry Hathaway
WRITERS: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, Richard Breen
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joseph MacDonald
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe (Lorelei Lee)
Lavishly produced, big-budget film of the hit Broadway musical that starred Carol Channing. In the movie, Jane Russell is first-billed and was paid $400,000 to Marilyn’s costar billing and $11,250. Upon being told by someone that Jane and not Marilyn was the star of the film, Monroe responded with perfect logic, “Maybe not, but I’m the blonde.” The familiar story: After a few harrowing experiences, including a brush with the gendarmes, a couple of naughty-but-nice, gold-digging chorus girls—“We’re Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock”—find notoriety and, eventually, love in the City of Lights. The studio pulled out all the stops in this big-musical treatment—a time-tested Broadway hit, musical score by Jule Styne and Leo Robins, gowns by Travilla, musical numbers staged by Jack Cole with an army of talented singers and dancers, color by Technicolor. Studio boss Darryl Zanuck ordered the big production number at the end of the film, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” to be refilmed in CinemaScope and stereophonic sound, the result of which was then used by Fox to demonstrate the studio-perfected process. Other studios were impressed and began to use the widescreen technology as well. 91 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel
DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks
WRITERS: Charles Lederer, Joseph Fields (based on Anita Loos’s play)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Harry J. Wild
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe (Pola), Lauren Bacall
The studio, since its beginning, has recycled the story of penniless young beauties leaving home to go to the big city in search of bright lights and rich men. These husband hunters acquired the name “gold diggers,” and Warner Bros. made a series of very successful musicals in the early thirties using the name and theme. But it was 20th Century-Fox that manipulated and honed the by now familiar story into box-office gold with this movie. It was the first film shot entirely in CinemaScope, but another Fox film, the prestigious religious epic The Robe, also filmed in CinemaScope, was released to theaters first, claiming bragging rights as the first film in the new process. To make it clear to audiences that the film was an “event,” Alfred Newman, the studio’s musical director for twenty years by this time, and the studio’s symphony orchestra were arrayed on a soundstage set up to replicate an amphitheater and performed Newman’s own composition, “Street Scene.” It lasted eight minutes, and after the final note, Newman turned to face the camera and executed a deep bow, which signaled the beginning of the credits as the film’s musical score came up on the soundtrack. The three-pronged story line provided each of the stars with an equivalent amount of screen time, all with quite satisfactory conclusions. 96 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER/WRITER: Nunnally Johnson
DIRECTOR: Jean Negulesco
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joe MacDonald
River of No Return (1954)
Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe (Kay)
Ordained by happenstance or destiny, a beautiful woman, an innocent man newly released from prison, and his son are thrown together in a rough-and-tumble western adventure, photographed in CinemaScope on location in the Canadian Rockies and set in the era of the California gold rush. Monroe called this beautiful, immensely watchable film her worst film: “Grade Z cowboy stuff.” It is very likely that her negative assessment had more to do with shooting the film and problems with the director than what ended up on the screen. Despite the rigors of the location shoot and the requirements of the script, including a swamping of the raft in the river rapids, Marilyn, wringing wet, out of sorts and out of breath, is still a vision. 91 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Stanley Rubin
DIRECTOR: Otto Preminger
WRITER: Frank Fenton
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joseph LaShelle
There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954)
Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Marilyn Monroe (Victoria Hoffman/ Vicky Parker)
All the stops are pulled out in this big, brassy, over-the-top musical, with the studio creating a role in it especially for Marilyn as insurance against a fizzle at the box office. (She agreed to make the film only if the studio would purchase the film rights to The Seven Year Itch for her.) The Irving Berlin songbook is used to tell the story of the Donahue family of vaudevillians, covering the period between the two world wars. The CinemaScope camera captures all seventeen of the dazzling production numbers, including the title song and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” with Marilyn also scoring well in her solo production number, “Heat Wave.” Oscar nominations went to Lamar Trotti (original story), Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman (scoring of a musical), and to Charles LeMaire and Travilla for their costumes in a color film. 117 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel
DIRECTOR: Walter Lang
WRITERS: Henry and Phoebe Ephron; original story, Lamar Trotti
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Leon Shamroy
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe (The Girl)
Manhattan book editor Richard Sherman, thirty-eight, dispatches his wife and son to the Maine coast for the summer to escape the sweltering city heat. A gorgeous twenty-two-year-old television spokesperson (Marilyn) subleases the apartment in his building just above his own. She’s never referred to by name and the credits list her as The Girl. If this were a device used by George Axelrod, the playwright, to keep an emotional distance between the two, it only works to a point. Although Richard doesn’t get to first base with The Girl, he imagines making love to her, leaving him with an overwhelming sense of guilt. Despite this, he continues to set the stage for the great seduction—the smoking jacket, chilled champagne, potato chips, and Rachmaninoff on the record player—all with hilarious results as The Girl successfully avoids the seduction. Marilyn with her skirts a-flying over a subway grate is one of the most famous film images of all time. DeLuxe color and CinemaScope. 105 minutes.
20th Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Charles K. Feldman
DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
WRITERS: Billy Wilder, George Axelrod
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner
Bus Stop (1956)
Marilyn Monroe (Cherie), Don Murray (Bo)
A macho, twenty-one-year-old rancher from Montana travels to Phoenix to enter several rodeo events and while there finds his “angel” in the person of Cherie, a vocally challenged saloon singer, who’s also been known to turn a trick to make the rent money. She is repulsed by Bo’s boorish behavior and crude attempts to woo her, only making him more determined. He kidnaps Cherie and forces her to accompany him back to Montana. A snowstorm forces their bus to wait out the bad weather at a bus stop. Cherie is won over by his heartfelt profession of love and accepts his marriage proposal. Marilyn’s touching performance earned her some of the best reviews of her career. Murray received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination. 96 minutes.
PRODUCER: Buddy Adler
DIRECTOR: Joshua Logan
WRITER: George Axelrod (based on the William Inge play)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner
The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe (Elsie)
The world’s greatest actor and the movies’ love goddess join forces to bring Terence Rattigan’s stage play The Sleeping Pri
nce to the screen, with Olivier repeating his stage role and Monroe playing the role essayed by Olivier’s then wife, Vivien Leigh. Grandduke Charles of Carpathia (Olivier) is on a mission of state to London to attend the coronation of British king George V on June 22, 1911. On his one evening free from official duties, he visits the Coconut Girl club and invites the voluptuous Elsie Marina to a dinner party at the embassy, only the alleged party is a party of two. The game of seduction begins, the outcome of which is clear from the start, but it is the getting there that makes this sex comedy work as well as it does. Marilyn was never more gorgeous and rarely funnier than in this picture. 117 minutes.
Warner/Marilyn Monroe Productions
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe Page 57