The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

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 Prince 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

PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: Laurence Oliver

WRITER: Terence Rattigan

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jack Cardiff

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Marilyn Monroe (Sugar Kane), Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown

Destined to be at or near the top of a number of “best” lists, including best film, best comedy film, and best movie line (“Nobody’s perfect”), this picture marks the second working arrangement between Marilyn and director/writer Billy Wilder, the earlier being The Seven Year Itch. It was a decision he reached despite the legendary problems she’s acknowledged to have caused on that set, or because he knew she was perfect for this role and her appearance in the film would assure its box-office success. (Marilyn would earn $2.4 million during the film’s initial run, thanks to a lucrative profit-participation deal with the studio.) The story of two out-of-work jazz-era musicians who, after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, go undercover in drag as members of an all-girl band, the premise is established before we even see Marilyn, twenty-four minutes into the film. But what an entrance. For the rest of his life, Billy Wilder would recount the problems Marilyn caused on the set, always forgiving her behavior due to her own insecurities and lack of confidence. And, yes, he would do it all over again. The film received Oscar nominations in six categories—costumes, writing, directing, cinematography, art direction, and best actor (for Lemmon), winning for Orry-Kelly’s costumes. 122 minutes.

United Artists/Mirisch

COPRODUCER/COWRITER/DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder

COWRITER: I. A. L. Diamond