Marilyn Monroe - The Final Days
by Patty Ivins Specht
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Actor: Gene Allen, George Barris, James Coburn, Lauren Bacall, Steve AllenDirector: Patty Ivins Specht
Brand: Image Entertainment
Producer: Patty Ivins Specht
Producer: Erika Schroeder
Producer: Jason Fine
Producer: Kevin Burns
Producer: Michael D. Stevens
Producer: Scott Hartford
Writer: Monica Bider
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Marilyn Monroe - The Final Days
DVD Review: Marilyn Monroe for the final time on the white screen
Summary: 5 Stars
on the set of 'Something's Got to Give' (1962) :
Ellen Wagstaff Arden (Marilyn Monroe) to her husband Nicholas 'Nick' Arden (Dean Martin) :
Ellen : "Satisfied ?"
Nick : "Completely"
Ellen : "Aren't you ashamed about all those suspicions you had about me ?"
Nick : "Terribly"
then the members of the film crew come in : " Thank You !! " ...
another take from the film 'Something's Got to Give' had finished.
this was the very last one would see of Marilyn Monroe on the white screen.
if one has a look at the documentary "Marilyn Monroe - the Final Days" with the reconstructed short version of the movie 'Something's Got to Give' added, directed by George Cukor, featuring Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse,
one is fully left with the question : 'what is it that happened to Marilyn Monroe' ?
she did a wonderful job on the scene, her 'method acting' coming to full quality, yet ...
the first 30 days of filming were troublesome to say the least.
Monroe was abscent from the film set on 17 of those 30 days. due to this the working on the film went easily 10 days behind schedule, and this had costed an additional 1 million dollars ...
people at 20th. Century Fox Studios had become alarmed, afraid, hopeless, and furious. how on earth could Marilyn Monroe had let the film crew down like this ? ...
the enormous losses resulted during the making of the movie 'Cleopatra' had lamed Fox Industries, which was now facing serious financial debt.
in the process whole departments had been shut down by Fox, and this movie 'Something's Got to Give' should have become the turning point, especially because Marilyn Monroe was in it.
this movie should have raised the box office numbers again, work on the movie started april 23, while release was planned for october 1962.
finally though the movie would be released in december 1963 under a different title, 'Move Over, Darling', and with different actors ... Doris Day, James Garner, and Polly Bergen.
by then Marilyn Monroe was already dead for over a year, and America was in a state of shock once more, after their President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assasinated in Texas in november 1963.
was it the intention of Marilyn Monroe to let the film crew go down ?
not for a minute do I believe this to be the case. Marilyn Monroe was reknowned for being difficult to handle. she was mostly late on every appointment, which worked on the nerves of Clark Gable during the making of the film 'The Misfits' (1961), director John Huston there even brought filming temporarily to a halt, bringing Monroe to a hospital in order to have her detoxicate, as she was on drinks and narcotics. nevertheless the film, once finished, was a highly good production.
and now co-starring actor Dean Martin got so upset after another abscense of Marilyn Monroe on the set, that he walked away in despair. but Marilyn Monroe was herself the purification of a top quality actress, she was also reknowned to be the star with the democratic accessability of a normal human being, highly sensitive, friendly towards anyone on the filmset, even when in private she spoke about Monroe in the third person with playwriter Walter Bernstein stating at once : 'oh no, that is not what Monroe would do here'. why ? let it be said that Monroe had her ideas about the script, and it simply needed to suit what she stood for.
Dean Martin also had his choices if Monroe would become replaced by Fox, he simply would refuse to go ahead himself : ' if Monroe has to go, I go too ' ...
but one can not deny the fact that Marilyn Monroe was in deep personal trouble.
during one of her abscenses from the set she was found at home by producer Henry Weinstein, she was found lying on her bed, overdosed and subsequently taken care of.
as a result of all this it was decided an extra key of her home would be hidden in a segovia plant at her door, so anyone could have access to her home, in case an emergency rescue would need to take place.
weeks later associate producer Gene Allen began to loose his patience, and director George Cukor became very disenchanted with it all, and certainly also with Paula Strasberg, Monroe's acting couch, who in fact acted like a second director, asking several takes to resume.
let me remind you that director Joshua Logan refused to have Paula Strasberg on the filmset during the making of the movie 'Bus Stop' featuring Monroe, that was in 1956.
anyway, the directory of Fox had to make decisions.
then Monroe returned to the set, on june 1 a lovely Birthday celebration was held for her, the swimming pool scene had rounded of to be a succes as well. ironically a while later some of the stills photos of Monroe being half naked aside the swimming pool would blow of Liz Taylor from any front cover of any magazine in no time.
Monroe predicted the photos would become a succes, and indeed all magazines in the States had Monroe on the front cover as such. work on 'Something's Got to Give' was given new life.
but Weinstein finally couldn't figure out anymore what was going wrong with the star, because right after this nice take the mood had changed to grim again, with Monroe again showing no sign of life in the days following the happiness which was clearly found to be on the filmset.
Monroe would appear to be in a constant different change of mood. one moment she was brilliantly doing fine, the other moment she would be found depressed.
even more dangerous is the fact that a whole range of chemical products were at her disposal, both on the table beside her bed, apart from a large inventory of products to be found in her bathroom.
when it comes to all of these products which were to her availability, her personal physical Doctor, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, pointed out that Monroe later would be found dead with a high dosis of the tranquiliser Chloral Hydrate in her system as well, besides the lethally high concentration of Nembutal sleeping tablets.
Engelberg had never prescribed Chloral Hydrate to her according to his statement in the documentary.
he feels she must have found this material when she was briefly visiting Mexico. some years ago a re-study on the autopsy report by Dr. Cozzi made it clear that the amount of Chloral Hydrate found in her system not necessarily must have been lethal, but the dosis of Nembutal was. Donald Spoto would write in his biography on Marilyn Monroe that on july 25 of 1962 Monroe would have received a prescription for an unknown quantity of Nembutal sleeping tablets by the Studio Doctor Lei Seigel.
so obviously Dr. Hyman Engelberg was not the only one to have prescibed drugs to her, the way he himself prescribed a dosis of 25 tablets of Nembutal on august 3 of 1962, one day before her untimely death. in itself there was nothing wrong in prescribing the Nembutal. it was done while she was in fact weaning of from these products, and in order to fight the effects of weaning of, she was allowed to use one before going to sleep. according to the history these sleeping tablets came into play as Marilyn Monroe found extraordinary trouble in order to gain sleep, suffering from a sincere insomnia.
but there is no doubt in my mind either that a range of private matters have caused Monroe to become deeply depressed.
it is mentioned by her stand-in on the filmset Evelyn Moriarty how she felt that the scene where Monroe plays with the two kids must have reminded her about the fact that these kids easiily could have been hers, if not two miscarriages had happened in life.
her marriage with playwriter Arthur Miller had finished, Miller and his newly married wife Inge Morath were expecting a baby, exactly this was left unfulfilled due to a miscarriage during the relationship Monroe had with Miller.
there was the fact that she had come close to Robert Kennedy as a friend, but now she felt sincerely left abandoned by the Attorney General. as researchers strongly suggest, this may well have caused a serious argument going on between Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe on the afternoon of august 4 of 1962, the last day of her life.
when then Dr. Ralph Greenson was asked by Monroe to visit her, he found her 'somewhat drugged', leading to the thesis that Monroe may well have taken some of the Chloral Hydrate after the discussion with Robert Kennedy had come to an end, in order to calm herself down.
and subsequently also Fox made life hard on her, let's be honoust.
Marilyn Monroe was found to be ill, but it seems she had to swallow the blame of the 'runaway production' of the movie 'Cleopatra' on top of it.
however when Marilyn did appear on stage, she was doing extremely well as one could expect from the highly ranked actress.
the medical doctor of Fox had suggested the start on the production of the movie to be postponed by one month, following a clear diagnosis of Monroe having caught a virus, a chronical sinusitis, later on a cold. Fox declined, so Monroe stayed away from the set, no surprise.
Weinstein had opted to postpone production on the movie when he found Monroe lying on her bed at home, explaining that at this very moment she wasn't ready to do the job properly, but Fox once more had declined.
when Dean Martin caught a cold, she refused to work with him for a few days, being afraid she would contract it from him.
Monroe showed signs of fatigue, asked specifically to director George Cukor not to film any close ups of her.
I regard it a sheer total nonsense that work on the film was only temporarily good because Monroe was shining during the shooting of the swimming pool scene, and a few other shots, as some of the production members would like to have it. I suggest people have a look for themselves, Monroe was firmly acting deliciously, for many years Fox had shelved the images of the movie, but they are now available to the audience in the disc which comprises the documentary concerning the difficulties which had surrounded the making of the film, as well as the shortfilm which it finally had become because of the unexpected death of Marilyn Monroe.
when on may 19, which was after all contractually agreed with Fox, Marilyn Monroe took a few days of leave to head for New York as she was invited amongst so many other guests like Opera Diva Maria Callas to be present at the Birthday Gala of John Kennedy,
executive producer Peter Levathes initially refused to let her go, since the filming on 'Something's Got to Give' was in serious trouble, he wanted work to commence. Monroe did however leave for New York as was first agreed with her employer.
the mixture of all of these troubles accumulating made Fox decide to finally fire actress Marilyn Monroe ... this would have meant that her career was as good as over, finished, and she would not find any work anymore in this town.
this came as a shock to Marilyn.
later she would tell Richard Merymen from Life Magazine in her final interview : " I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus " - " this Industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. "
her personal psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson then started negotiating with Fox Industries to keep them from firing the movie star.
also the leading man from the Fox Industry, Darryl Francis Zanuck, stood up against the decision to fire Monroe. finally it was agreed that work on 'Something's Got to Give' was to be resumed with her as the leading actress.
albeit that it must be said Monroe's lawyer Mickey Rudin was afraid Monroe would never be able to live up to this new agreement, as he feared she would be mentally too weak to resume.
it is my sincere opinion that if Marilyn Monroe would have been able to finish this product, 'Something's Got to Give' would have been a wonderful achievement by all means.
the deal got sealed on wednesday august 1 of 1962.
but Marilyn Monroe would never make it to the end of the week ...
Description of Marilyn Monroe - The Final Days
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