‘Help.’
Marilyn Monroe’s Roslyn utters this simple yet profound plea with a mixture of worry, exhaustion and sadness, but also a mysterious strength. For she, whether she wants it or not, is the centre of this universe – a contemplative woman of beauty and empathy, yes, but maybe stronger and angrier than anyone knows in John Huston’s The Misfits.
‘Help.’ In the pre-dawn darkness, her back resting against an unfinished house deep in the Nevada desert, her entreaty feels philosophical, poetic – to the sky, to the stars, to anyone or anything up above to ‘God’s country’, as she will later scream to three men.
Marilyn’s moment comes after an all-nighter spent looking after three inebriated men – men who keep trying to figure her out. They are ageing cowboy Gay (Clark Gable), who she’s already involved with (and has moments of fear about: ‘What if, someday, you suddenly turn around and you don’t like me any more?’); pilot Guido (Eli Wallach), who, though sweet at times, possesses a simmering bitterness that will reveal itself as the film goes on; and sensitive rodeo cowboy Perce (Montgomery Clift), a wandering soul who was thrown from his horse earlier that day, and who tells her, ‘Don’t you let them grind you up here.’ (This reads especially touching when Perce unties the horses for Roslyn later in the picture.)
After a divorce in Reno, Roslyn ventures off with two men – first, with Thelma Ritter in tow (Clift will show up later), to see the country, living for the ‘next thing that happens’; but she will wind up distraught over her eventual job, rounding up misfit horses to be ground into dog food. Those unlucky mustangs lead to Marilyn’s blisteringly powerful scene where, in a wide shot, blonde and denim in the vastness, she unloads her anger and frustration on the three men. She screams: ‘Killers! Murderers! You’re liars! All of you, liars! You’re only happy when you can see something die! Why don’t you kill yourself to be happy? You and your God’s country! Freedom! I pity you! You’re three dear, sweet, dead men!’
It’s the culmination of Roslyn’s frustrations, a purging, made more interesting by how Huston films her at a distance, much like how the men look (all three gaze at her with different expressions, different thoughts). Her truth, anger and even enraged empathy speaks to all of us. As Jonas Mekas’s 1961 Village Voice piece pondered: ‘One doesn’t know if she is saying those words to Gable and Wallach or to the whole loveless world.’
One does wonder how Monroe was feeling in this scene. On a notoriously troubled shoot, she reportedly had issues with the screenplay by her soon-to-be-ex-husband Arthur Miller, which seemed to include reflections of Marilyn’s own life and how the world perceived her, threatening to reduce Roslyn to a symbol. But Marilyn’s magic and intelligence with the camera and her craft and complexity as an actress brought sadness, wisdom, kindness, anger, nervousness, and also an earthly fortitude to the part.
Part of the power of The Misfits is in its mythic poignancy: the finale of these characters, wherever they may go; the finale of their way of life, and yes, of the actors themselves. We know these movie stars (Gable, Monroe, Clift) are not long for this world, and it’s hard not to be haunted by this. And then there’s Marilyn at the centre of it all – yelling at these men to wake up.
It’s just so moving to watch Marilyn, nonconformist that she was, as Roslyn. She was already an often excellent, thoughtful actress and performer – ahead of her time, really – but just think of the pictures she could have made in the emerging cinema of the 1960s and 70s. Surely she would have been inspired. Because she was, truly, in the best possible way, a magnificent misfit.
Kim Morgan, Sight and Sound, June 2026
The Misfits
Director: John Huston
©/Production Company: Seven Arts Productions
Producer: Frank E. Taylor
Production Manager: C.O. Erickson
Assistant to the Producer: Edward Barone
2nd Unit Director: Tom Shaw
Assistant Directors: Carl Beringer, John Gaudioso
Script Supervisors: Angela Allen, Frank Remsden
Screenplay: Arthur Miller
Director of Photography: Russell Metty
Editor: George Tomasini
Art Directors: Stephen Grimes, William Newberry
Set Decorator: Frank McKelvy
Miss Monroe’s Wardrobe by: Jean Louis, Shirlee Strahm
Make-up: Allan Snyder, Frank Prehoda, Frank Larue
Body Make-up: Bunny Gardel
Hairstyles: Sydney Guilaroff, Agnes Flanagan
Main Titles: George Nelson & Co Inc
Music Composed and Conducted by: Alex North
Sound Recording: Philip Mitchell, Charles Grenzbach
Wranglers: Billy Jones, Cindy James, Bobby Davenport
uncredited
Camera Operator: Ledge Haddow
2nd Unit Camera Operators: Harry Underwood, Richard Kelley
1st Camera Assistant: Louis Schwartz
2nd Camera Assistants: Eddie Pyle, Michael Moramarco
Gaffer: Lefty Budman
Key Grip: Charles Cowie
Stills: Al St. Hilaire
Special Effects: Cline Jones
Assistant Editor: Stewart Linder
Property Master: Ross Burke
Construction Co-ordinator: Arnold Pine
Painter Gang Supervisor: Robert L. Stephen
Costumes: Jesse Munden
Boom Operator: Al Marsh
Stuntmen: John Day, Jim Palen, Richard Pasco, Chuck Roberson
Dialogue Coaches: J. Louis Smith, Paula Strasberg
Additional Wrangler: Buford Randall, James Sherwood
Cast
Clark Gable (Gay Langland)
Marilyn Monroe (Roslyn Taber)
Montgomery Clift (Perce Howland)
Thelma Ritter (Isabelle Steers)
Eli Wallach (Guido Delinni)
James Barton (old man in bar)
Kevin McCarthy (Raymond Taber)
Estelle Winwood (church lady)
uncredited
Dennis Shaw (young boy in bar)
Phil Mitchell (Charles Steers)
Walter Ramage (old groom)
Peggy Barton (young bride)
J. Louis Smith (fresh cowboy in bar)
Marieta Tree (Susan)
Bobbie La Salle (bartender)
Ryall Bowker (man in bar)
Ralph Roberts (ambulance attendant)
USA 1961
125 mins
Digital
A BFI re-release (courtesy of Park Circus/Amazon MGM Studios)
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
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