Whether or not George Cukor would have made a good, sexy comedy from "Something's Gotta Give" is a moot point. We'll never know if it would have been compared favorably to its source, the very funny Cary Grant/Irene Dunn movie "My Favorite Wife." It would have to have been better than "Move Over, Darling," the mess it turned into after Marilyn Monroe died.
We don't know what sort of screen chemistry would have been generated by Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin (though if an actor ever came off bad with Martin, it wasn't Martin's fault). We don't know if the public would have accepted Monroe as a performer of significance for the emerging nineteen-sixties; each new decade necessitates weeding out what or whom isn't going to work from the previous one. We don't even know if this movie would have been entertaining or embarrassing, or both like "Some Like It Hot."
But thanks to the 37 minutes of footage that someone managed to find, process, and splice together, we do know a couple of things:
1. Though a little underweight, Marilyn Monroe still looked like she would glow in the dark; sexy, funny, tremendously likable to men and to women, and unlike any of her imitators. She drops a lot of the breathless affectations she picked up around "How to Marry a Millionaire," using mostly the sweet voice we hear in her TV interviews.
2. She missed lines here and there but Marilyn was touching and convincing as a mother of two kids (!) as well as a sexy wife. Nobody seems to be enjoying the famous nude swim scene more than she.
It's common knowledge that a few weeks into shooting "Something's Gotta Give" Marilyn was fired by 20th Century Fox. What too few people know is that shortly thereafter the studio and her agents were already negotiating a new contract for Marilyn, one that would guarantee her better material, choices of directors, and a substantially higher salary. A few upcoming projects that were being considered for her were "Period of Adjustment," "Irma La Douce," "Two for the Seesaw," and "What a Way to Go."
If you have a chance to see this 37-minute curiosity, do so by all means. It isn't much, but it's like Marilyn popping out of the sky, laughing and giving us one last wink.
We don't know what sort of screen chemistry would have been generated by Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin (though if an actor ever came off bad with Martin, it wasn't Martin's fault). We don't know if the public would have accepted Monroe as a performer of significance for the emerging nineteen-sixties; each new decade necessitates weeding out what or whom isn't going to work from the previous one. We don't even know if this movie would have been entertaining or embarrassing, or both like "Some Like It Hot."
But thanks to the 37 minutes of footage that someone managed to find, process, and splice together, we do know a couple of things:
1. Though a little underweight, Marilyn Monroe still looked like she would glow in the dark; sexy, funny, tremendously likable to men and to women, and unlike any of her imitators. She drops a lot of the breathless affectations she picked up around "How to Marry a Millionaire," using mostly the sweet voice we hear in her TV interviews.
2. She missed lines here and there but Marilyn was touching and convincing as a mother of two kids (!) as well as a sexy wife. Nobody seems to be enjoying the famous nude swim scene more than she.
It's common knowledge that a few weeks into shooting "Something's Gotta Give" Marilyn was fired by 20th Century Fox. What too few people know is that shortly thereafter the studio and her agents were already negotiating a new contract for Marilyn, one that would guarantee her better material, choices of directors, and a substantially higher salary. A few upcoming projects that were being considered for her were "Period of Adjustment," "Irma La Douce," "Two for the Seesaw," and "What a Way to Go."
If you have a chance to see this 37-minute curiosity, do so by all means. It isn't much, but it's like Marilyn popping out of the sky, laughing and giving us one last wink.