That would be Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe and Eli Wallach watching Clark Gable in The Misfits.
Robert Forster liked to tell the story of his first day acting in John Huston's Reflections of a Golden Eye, when Forster, new to movies and looking a little lost—he'd only done stage work and he was hired by 20th Century Fox after some time as a construction worker and teaching substitute—when Huston told him to prep for his first shot. "What do I do?" Forster asked the maverick director. Huston led him to the back of the camera and made him look through the view-finder. "You see that?" Huston grinned at the actor. "Fill it up!"
The Misfits is one of those movies where the actors do "fill it up."
The script for The Misfits is by Arthur Miller, who gave it to his wife, Monroe, as a present, but while filming was going on, the marriage was in its last throes. And the script, by that time, had undergone a bit of a transformation. Huston, who made his initial reputation in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, may have had a hand in that.
You read Miller's script and it's wordy and stagy. Gable's character of old cowboy Gay Rowland is in such bad shape from roping the horses that it's the character of Pence who drives Roslyn and Gay home. For whatever reasons, Huston ended up with just Gable and Monroe on the drive and, dramatically, that seems right. And the dialogue is whittled down to as spare as can be—most of the drama is in the actor's faces. Clift's wry farewell to Roslyn (after she tells him not to get hurt in the rodeos so damn much). Gable's shifting pains, both physical and mental, as he drives on not much sure of the future, but sure of the way. And Monroe's mercurial choices that play in her eyes and brows, unsure moment by moment of what she's gotten herself into in Reno, Nevada.
And it's not in the dialogue...it's in the faces...young and old alike. Miller wrote for the stage...film's another story...things are communicative and effective if they're seen but not necessarily heard.
And Huston doesn't put an "The End" credit at the tail of the film. Just the fabled star that Gay says will take them home...with an odd closing coda from composer Alex North that is...in a word..."spooky."
It would be the last time audiences saw Gable...or Monroe...acting on the big screen.
The Set-Up: From Premiere Magazine "Classic Scene" April, 1998: "To stay free, aging cowboy Gay Langland (Clark Gable) rounds up wild horses, even though, in the new West, the mustangs are led to slaughter and turned into pet food. "Everything else is just wages," he tells the horrified Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe), with whom he's fallen in love, but who remains distant. Here, in the film's final scene, this group of misfits—his friend Guido (Eli Wallach), battered rodeo cowboy Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), and Roslyn—has gone to the desert highlands for a last roundup. Roslyn begs Gay to free the horses, but he goes on until, in a fierce battle, he ropes off the last stallion. Filming The Misfits was arduous. The production was plagued by delays and 130-degree heat. In an effort to combat boredom, the 59-year old Gable insisted on doing many of his own stunts, which put a strain on his weak heart. Shortly after filming was completed, Hollywood's quintessential leading man suffered a massive heart attack. He died days later.
Action.
[After Gay has singlehandedly roped off the last horse in the twilight]
[Bloody and exhausted, Gay looks harshly at Guido]
Words by Arthur Miller
Pictures by Russell Metty and John Huston
The Misfits is available on DVD from M-G-M Home Entertainment.
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