Bus Stop

[ken123]

Marilyn is so lovable !

[MichiganJ]

Yup.
Love her accent and the holes in her stockings.

[mrsl]

.
All I can say is, Thank God for Marilyn. I saw Bus Stop years, and years ago, and remember it was hard to stomach Don Murray's character. Some may call it naive, but I just call it stupid. I guess it was on today since it's on two threads today, but I wouldn't have watched it anyway. When I saw it, it wasn't as a young teen, I was already grown with kids, so there was no misunderstanding. This is nothing against Don Murray - the part was written that way, but I felt sorry for him having to play such a jerk.

[jdb1]

.
All I can say is, Thank God for Marilyn. I saw Bus Stop years, and years ago, and remember it was hard to stomach Don Murray's character. Some may call it naive, but I just call it stupid. I guess it was on today since it's on two threads today, but I wouldn't have watched it anyway. When I saw it, it wasn't as a young teen, I was already grown with kids, so there was no misunderstanding. This is nothing against Don Murray - the part was written that way, but I felt sorry for him having to play such a jerk.

I watched part of it again this weekend. I've never really cared for Don Murray in this movie. He's not terrible, he's just not .... I don't know. I think I just don't believe him. I've always thought the part would have been perfect for Earl Holliman. He was very, very good at the country boy ingenue, and played many such roles with complete conviction and believability.

[MichiganJ]

Don Murray is great in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Different kind of movie, though.

[ken123]

Where are the Marilyn admirers ?

[silentscreen]

Where are the Marilyn admirers ?

I like Marilyn very much! I thought she was a very much underrated actress and she proved it later on. I haven't seen Bus Stop in so long though, that it's hard to comment on her performance in this one.

[mrsl]

.
jdb1:

Perhaps you're right. Maybe it is the actor and not the character. Watching Trooper Hook for what seems like the 100th time the other night, Earl played that 'poke your toe in the dirt' kind of role in that one and you are correct, he may have been a better choice for the part. Did Don Murray do it on Broadway?

[jdb1]

.
jdb1:

Perhaps you're right. Maybe it is the actor and not the character. Watching Trooper Hook for what seems like the 100th time the other night, Earl played that 'poke your toe in the dirt' kind of role in that one and you are correct, he may have been a better choice for the part. Did Don Murray do it on Broadway?

It was Albert Salmi who created the role of Bo on Broadway in the mid 50s. I've never seen the stage version, but I understand it to be rather different from the screen version. I think Kim Stanley played Cherie on Broadway.

I really like Holliman in Trooper Hook. He played essentially the same "aw shucks" character in a lot of movies of the 50s (as Katharine Hepburn's baby brother in The Rainmaker, for example). I find that his readings of this sort of character never grate. He was just winsome enough, but nobody's fool. I think he would have made a terrific Bo.

[klondike]

I think that one of the most interesting & often overlooked performances by Earl Holliman was the solo tour-de-force role from him that kicked-off the debut episode of "Twilight Zone" back in '57!

[charliechaplinfan]

It's years since I saw Bus Stop, I didn't strike much of a chord with me then, it's one of the weaker of her films, I've always liked Marilyn but felt this material let her down.

[jdb1]

It's years since I saw Bus Stop, I didn't strike much of a chord with me then, it's one of the weaker of her films, I've always liked Marilyn but felt this material let her down.

I don't agree, Alison. I think Cherie may be MM's greatest performance. She never looked more gorgeous - as though she were somehow lit from within, and I completely believe that she is that determined yet wistful person. Her rendering of "Old Black Magic" is so painfully bad, and yet seems so very natural. It takes real skill to pull something like that off.

[mrsl]

.
Marilyn had a valid complaint about being used as strictly a dumb blond sex bomb. I don't know if she committed suicide or if she was murdered, but if it was suicide, I wish she had realized that her recent parts, although sex oriented, still gave her the option to act. In Niagra she was scary as the crazy wife, and she certainly held her own against her competition of Betty Grable, in How to Marry a Millionaire, and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. There is a line in No Business Like Show Business that I think may have been based on truth. When she first meets Donald O'Connor she talks with that phony 5th Avenue accent, but later when he runs into her again, she's speaking normally, and I noticed that weird way of speaking was in her first movies but stopped later.

In the early 60's, women were considered over the hill at 40 and she was afraid of reaching that peak in 4 years. Her insecurity shows in her previous suicidal attempts but as beautiful as she was, and finally getting a part that was non-sexy; these lead me to suspect foul play in her death. Doing a part that eventually went to virginal Doris Day shows that maybe someone was finally taking her seriously. Then of course, there is her role in The Misfits. I wonder if she was one of those actors who cannot watch themselves on screen. If that were the case, she had no idea how great she was in that. I am not a fan of the movie, or wild about any of the 3 leads, but I can easily give credit where credit is due, so I doubt if she ever saw herself in The Misfits. Actually, you can go all the way back to one of her first roles - with Richard Widmark in Don't Bother to Knock, that was kind of a preparation for Niagra as a nutty babysitter. If she had completed Something's Got To Give, and seen herself in it, she may have been with us for another 10 or 20 years.

I may be rambling a bit, but I like MM as a person. I have never heard anyone say a bad thing about her. I've heard that she was often late on the set, but so was Judy Garland, and most people say MM was a sweet, timid girl, who needed a strong hand to lead her.
.

[ken123]

mrsl
BRAVO !

[charliechaplinfan]

It's years since I saw Bus Stop, I didn't strike much of a chord with me then, it's one of the weaker of her films, I've always liked Marilyn but felt this material let her down.

I don't agree, Alison. I think Cherie may be MM's greatest performance. She never looked more gorgeous - as though she were somehow lit from within, and I completely believe that she is that determined yet wistful person. Her rendering of "Old Black Magic" is so painfully bad, and yet seems so very natural. It takes real skill to pull something like that off.

Maybe I need to see it again, it wasn't Marilyn's perfromance that let the film down, it was the storyline, I just never got caught up in it. I think this was the first film she made when she got her own production deal. I admire her fighting for better roles because the studio would have put her in anything that would capitalise on the dumb blonde. I don't think she was a dumb blonde, I think she was timid and unschooled but determined to correct this in herself, getting better roles was part of this. If she were dumb I'm not so sure Arthur Miller would have married her, she wasn't a trophy wife but someone who's intelligence he admired. I prefer her in The Prince and the Showgirl, she was notoriously late on that set but I don't think Laurence Olivier had a great deal of sympathy with her. The Misfits for me is her finest dramatic performance, Some Like it Hot her finest comedy. She looked lovely in her mid thirties and I think the public would have continued to want her, it's a pity they never got the choice.