“Please forgive me, it was not my doing”: Why was Marilyn Monroe fired from her final movie?
Some actors are good, some actors are great, and a rare few transcend the art altogether. Marilyn Monroe was one of those rare few. Her performances were brilliant, there’s no denying that, but it’s everything else about her that has become so famous. Her looks, her voice, her wardrobe, her personal life, it all exists in a universe entirely of its own. The fact that she died so young – aged just 36 – only adds to her legend.
Monroe passed away in 1962, following a suspected suicide via barbiturate overdose. Her death rattled the industry. She was at the height of her fame, with so much more to give. The year before, she had appeared in The Misfits, a John Huston-directed contemporary western written by Arthur Miller, Monroe’s ex-husband. The film wasn’t a commercial hit, but it did receive solid critical appraisal. However, if things had gone differently, this wouldn’t have been a curtain call for the blonde bombshell.
In April 1962, less than four months before her death, Monroe started work on a film by George Cukor called Something’s Got to Give. The movie was going to be a remake of a previous piece called My Favorite Wife, and was also set to star singer Dean Martin and Singin’ in the Rain’s Cyd Charisse. In an attempt to promote the project, members of the press were invited to set on the day Monroe was due to shoot a nude scene in a swimming pool. Pictures of the starlet in the buff were published in Life magazine, an unheard-of scenario at the time. Unfortunately, while these photos saw the light of day, the movie never did.
Something’s Got to Give was troubled from the very start. Following the disastrous production of Cleopatra, distributor 20th Century Fox was in major financial peril. The studio was far less forgiving as a result, so when Monroe’s personal life began affecting their latest venture, they became ruthless.
Long before her final year on Earth, the former Norma Jeane Mortensen had developed a difficult reputation. She regularly forgot her lines to the point where they had to be written on props for her to read during filming. Her poor work habits almost drove director Billy Wilder out of Hollywood altogether during the making of The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. This behaviour didn’t get any better while making Something’s Got to Give.
Prior to shooting, Monroe informed producers that she would be taking time off to sing at President John F Kennedy’s birthday, which would delay things. Reports began to surface of more unprofessionalism on set, including a rambunctious celebration of her 36th birthday, before Cukor finally snapped. He argued hard for her dismissal, and on June 4th, 1962, she was removed from the project. Heartbreakingly, a telegram from Monroe to Cukor has since surfaced, detailing the actor’s sadness at being let go.
“Dear George, please forgive me,” she wrote, “It was not my doing. I had so looked forward to working with you.”
Following Monroe’s death, plans to finish Something’s Got to Give were put on hold indefinitely. To this day, it has never been completed, and most of the footage that was filmed is locked away in a Fox vault. It lives on only as a tragic footnote in the career of one of Hollywood’s most enigmatic figures.
