The Misfits (CTBA)

Nevada, the "leave it" state: a gathering ground for misfits, burnouts, empty bottles and spare atom bombs. It's home to a host of interesting strangers.

Roslyn is a beautiful but naïve woman, set adrift after a shotgun divorce. Guido and Gay are cowboys with a half-finished house in the sticks and bittersweet memories of a west that's no longer wild. And Perce is a rodeo-rocked bull rider, lost and looking for his next trip.

The Misfits is a haunting piece of Hollywood history, troubled on and off screen by the ghosts of eras gone by.

 
On the surface, John Huston's film is an off-beat drama of broken-hearted cowboys and broken-down marriages; of a dying American Dream and the lost souls struggling to keep it alive. Behind the scenes, the production itself was fraught. As well as contending with the searing heat of the desert and challenging production logistics, Marilyn Monroe’s own marriage to screenwriter Arthur Miller was in trouble, and the actor’s mental health was spiralling.

The film would be the last for both Monroe and her co-star Clark Gable. Miller's script proved poignant and prophetic when it had one character, shotgun in hand, explain to the crew of horse wranglers gathered on the barren Nevada desert: "you'll probably never see this again in history, you know."