The movie Clint Eastwood almost made with Marilyn Monroe: “I was kind of excited”
Even though it feels like Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe are Hollywood icons of completely different eras, the two legends were born less than four years apart.
Of course, the biggest reason it feels like they never existed in the same period is that Monroe had already passed away before Eastwood made his mark as an actor. When the former died in 1962, the latter was still best known for his ongoing role in the TV series Rawhide, and as performers at opposite ends of the fame and fortune spectrum, they didn’t travel in the same circles.
It was only a couple of years after Monroe’s death that Eastwood finally caught his big break in the world of cinema after Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy turned him into one of the most popular heroes of the time. He never looked back after that point and set about crafting one of the greatest careers in film history on either side of the camera, but he still carried a tinge of regret that he never got the chance to share the screen with the Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and The Seven Year Itch favourite.
The future four-time Academy Award winner wasn’t even in the same stratosphere as his A-list counterpart when the opportunity arose, but that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. After making his feature debut in 1955’s Revenge of the Creature, Eastwood would go uncredited in seven of his first nine movie roles.
The year after he made his silver screen bow, he found himself in the running for a part in Joshua Logan’s romantic dramedy Bus Stop. It was a major turning point for Monroe after she broke out of the comedy box that the industry was trying to keep her in favour of tackling a more challenging character that tested her acting chops, and Eastwood was unsurprisingly keen to get in on the action.
“I was up for a part in Bus Stop as a young guy,” he recalled to Parade. “I was kind of excited because she was so attractive, and I thought, ‘This could be OK.’ And, of course, it didn’t become OK because Josh cast some other guy in New York. Like, you’re ready to hit the ball out of the park, and then, nothing.”
Although he didn’t name the actor who was chosen over him, but it may well have been the male lead. After all, Don Murray played Beauregard Decker opposite Monroe’s Chérie in Bus Stop, he was less than a year older than Eastwood, and it was the first major role of his career.
Eastwood won’t be too bitter about it when he did just fine in the long run, but it would be a fascinating footnote in both of their careers had they been partnered up onscreen as far back as 1956.
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