HOLLYWOOD: Marilyn & the Mustangs

Marilyn Monroe and her husband Arthur Miller are in Reno—but not for the obvious reason. They began working together professionally last week for the first time, making a film called The Misfits, written by Miller (his first screenplay) and embellished by some of the hardest talent west of Mount Rushmore: Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Kevin McCarthy and Director John Huston.

Miller’s yarn, first published as a highly effective short story, follows three Western drifters in their pursuit of wild horses as they force the mustangs out of mountain passes by terrifying them with a low-swooping airplane, eventually trap them for sale as dog meat. Two of the “mustangers” refer to a vaguely mutual mistress named Roslyn. In the movie version, Roslyn has moved to the center and become, by the author’s admission, a closely personal portrait of his wife.

Fear of Fear. Like Marilyn, Roslyn is a fractured, manhandled woman always “searching for relationships,” full of hurtful memories about parents who “disappeared all the time.” Helpless, yet flush with appetite, she is a compulsive time killer, shows a disturbing skill at batting a paddle ball on a string—which Marilyn does constantly. On the set last week, Marilyn was obviously afraid to act and troubled by her responsibility to her husband’s script. Drinking coffee by the urn, she trembled, tried to control her shaking hands, broke out in a blotchy rash, spoke in a voice so constricted that it was barely audible. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember,” she said, apologizing to Director Huston for a series of fluffs. She might well have written again in her dressing-room notebook what she wrote earlier this year during the filming of Let’s Make Love: “What am I afraid of? Why am I so afraid? Do I think I can’t act? I know I can act, but I am afraid. I am afraid and I should not be and I must not be.”

Throughout the shooting, Arthur Miller exhaled cones of reassuring pipe smoke and soothed his wife: “I like the wonderful gradation of mood . . . You got wonderful sex in there. A couple of looks —wonderful thing going with the eyes.”

“Nobody ever commented on my eyes before,” said Marilyn happily.

Monty’s Treat. All this poignancy, immersed as it was in the conventional eccentricities of moviemaking, rested in the big picture like an avocado in a punchbowl full of gin. Marilyn’s entourage included a coiffure specialist who had just flown in from “doing Elizabeth Taylor,” a makeup man in madras shorts, a massive masseur, a maid, a secretary, three wardrobe women (she has three copies of each dress she wears in the film), and Paula Strasberg. Dramatic coach, lay analyst, and wife of the Actors’ Studio’s Lee Strasberg, Paula stayed close to her ward, nib bled away at a large palmetto fan, sent notes around the set on postcards that pictured an ax and a chopping block. Wearing a black babushka, black glasses, black duster and carrying a black bag that seemed to contain everything from tranquilizers to a bunch of half-dead roses, she tossed lavish bouquets at her pupil (“Boom. It’s like electricity”) and steadily quoted her husband’s theatrical dicta.

All the big-name talent has so far rubbed together in the dry Reno air without producing any rope burns. Known to be just as explosive as Marilyn, Montgomery Clift was variously happy, snide, exploding with nervous laughter, once fell to the ground and rolled with joy on seeing some old friends. Drinking whisky and Seven-Up with assorted cowboys, making an elaborate do about picking up their speech and mannerisms, Clift spent his week looking forward to a chartered flight to Los Angeles, where he would see his favorite singer, Ella Fitzgerald; the producer called it “Monty’s little treat.”

Beer in Balmoral. Nearly everyone was staying in the Mapes Hotel with an obvious exception: Clark Gable, his wife, children, servants, gardener and dog took over Reno’s closest approximation to Balmoral Castle, where the King likes to retire in the evening with a carload of cronies and a case of beer.

Gable’s contract calls for a basic wage of $750,000, plus 10% of the film’s gross, top billing, and a 9 to 5 day. Caught between the King and her husband (the Millers have an investment in the picture), Marilyn for the first time in her career is turning up on time for work. When she is a little late, she nervously sidles past Gable. If she or any other factor should cause the shooting to go on beyond its scheduled finish, Gable will collect an extra $48,000 a week.

Patient, comprehending and stoic, looking in his bush jacket as if he had just come in off the veld, John Huston supervised his mustangs with detachment. He probably said as much about himself as about the film when he told the cast: “It is about people who sell their work but not their lives.”