In a funny way, Marilyn Monroe’s posthumous rep never recovered after Norman Mailer’s deep-think coffee-table monograph (MARILYN) took pains to celebrate what was least special about her work. Worse, his attempts to take her seriously largely when she was trying to be serious have now hardened into critical dogma, a sort academic Party Line on Monroe. So, what a relief to read this film’s director George Cukor’s take on what was special, unique and impossible about her, seeing Marilyn Monroe plain.* ‘There’s been an awful lot of crap written about Marilyn Monroe and there may be an exact psychiatric term for what was wrong with her. I don’t know - but truth to tell, I think she was quite mad . . . I know people say, “Hollywood broke her heart,” and all that, but I don’t believe it. She was very observant and tough-minded and appealing, but she had this bad judgement about things. She adored and trusted the wrong people . . . I knew that she was reckless. I knew that she was willful. She was very sweet, but I had no real communication with her at all. You couldn’t get at her. She was very concerned about a lot of pretentious things (she’d done a lot of shit-ass studying), and I’d say, ‘But Marilyn, you’re so accomplished, you do things that are frightfully difficult to do.’ She had this absolute , unerring touch with comedy. In real life she didn’t seem funny, but she had this touch. She acted as if she didn’t quite understand why it was funny, which is what made it so funny. She could also do low comedy - pratfalls and things like that - but I think her friends told her it wasn’t worthy of her.’ And this, her penultimate film, is the last in the line of sexy comic Marilyn (with a hint of melancholy) that Cukor was talking about. It’s no more than adequate, at best, and wasn't particularly well received critically or commercially at the time. But the years have improved it, and Cukor, working off a Norman Krasna/Hal Katnter script, refuses to push too hard. The basic idea (a variation on three previous 20th/Fox films: FOLIES BERGÈRE DE PARIS/’35; THAT NIGHT IN RIO/’41; ON THE RIVIERA/’51) all deal with an ultra-rich womanizing Frenchman being parodied in a musical revue. Here, Yves Montand’s the billionaire manufacturing mogul taken by public relations man Tony Randall (effortlessly sly & funny) to a show making fun of him. Mistaken for an actor auditioning to play . . . himself (!), he’s gets the part on looks (naturellement) and signs a run of the play contract after he spots Monroe in the cast. If only she didn’t already have the star of the show as a boyfriend. Yet rather than bringing out the womanizer in him, the situation brings out sincerity. She’s the first sympathetic woman he’s met who doesn’t know his finances! Desperate to enlarge his skill set and his chances for doing a number with Monroe, he hires Milton Berle, Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly as coaches.* Trusting in the situation rather thsn the gags, Cukor wisely sticks to low-stakes charm and a relaxed tone. No more than pleasant piffle, but so elegantly laid out by Cukor and cast.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Taken from a short chapter about working with Monroe in Gavin Lambert’s interview book ON CUKOR. Out a year before Mailer’s game changing photo book.
DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Stateside, Montand known if at all for tough guy movie roles. Back in France, he was a huge Music Hall/nightclub singer, often accompanying himself on guitar, with a mature style of his own. He’d have needed little help from this stellar trio. His only other Hollywood musical, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER/‘70, against Barbra Streisand (against is the word) gives him even less to do. Why he never got a shot at playing Emile De Becque in SOUTH PACIFIC; a real lost opportunity.
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