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Marilyn Monroe

posted 18 years ago by Williliwaw
2 replies | jump to latest

John Huston who fought with MM so famously on The Misfits wanted the great MM to do this film but allegedly per Huston MM's pychiatrist urged she not do it.
Me thinks Huston was trying to settle a score and just said that. The point is that MM was the superstar of the world and why would she take a role supporting Monty Clift ( her good friend)...in those days, stars were stars.
Remember the quote from Spencer Tracy...when asked why he always got top billing over Katharine Hepburn..." This is a business not a Lifeboat")

I recall this was a Universal pic and MM was a Fox star with permission to do outside pics and she was negotiating with Universal to do Catherine the Great with Rock Hudson as Peter in Peter and Catherine.

[–] Martiin 14 years ago

I just read in Elisabeth Roudinesco's Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (in the 'United States' entry) that it was Marianne Kris (her psychiatrist) who prevented Marilyn Monroe from playing the role of Bertha Pappenheim ('Anna O.') in this film since this work had collided with the sensitivity of the representatives of the annafreudian orthodoxy. In fact, the way in which post-war american filmmakers used psychoanalysis was very different from that one of the proffesionals who practised it, because in cinema it was used to criticize the ideals of american society.
I'm not aware of the studio issues you mention, so I don't think it was improbable. But since it's a psychoanalytic text I'm quoting, there's also likely to have been a theoretical reason in the background.

[–] hootson21 14 years ago

I read somewhere that it was actually Jean Paul Sartre (author of the unused screenplay) that wanted Marilyn Monroe to star in the film.