“Let’s Make Love” and “The Misfits” — the only movies Monroe made in the 1960s before her death in 1962 — are paired together on 35mm Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 26-27, as the Stanford Theatre’s summer-long tribute to Monroe celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth winds down.
Following Billy Wilder’s classic “Some Like It Hot” (1959), a massive box office hit, George Cukor’s musical “Let’s Make Love” (1960) was seen as an antiquated comedown, largely dismissed by audiences and critics. Its corny plot follows a billionaire (Yves Montand, miscast) who uses all his wealth and power to star opposite Monroe’s saucy Amanda Dell in a Broadway musical. That means hiring Bing Crosby, Milton Berle and Gene Kelly — all playing themselves — to teach him to sing, act and dance.
But “The Misfits” is a masterpiece, a complex drama of loneliness and broken dreams. While waiting out a Reno divorce, Monroe’s Roslyn Taber is pulled into the orbit of three rugged men of the West, played by Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach.
Based on a short story by her ex-husband, Arthur Miller, and directed by John Huston, “The Misfits” allows Monroe to put to use her training at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. It’s a modern performance, and had she lived, she likely would have fit right into 1960s cinema’s new waves.
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