From the 1950s: River of No Return

1954 Western

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Otto Preminger

Starring

Robert Mitchum

Marilyn Monroe

Rory Calhoun

Tommy Rettig

Murvyn Vye

Douglas Spencer

Call me a fool in love when it comes to this movie... always have been and make no apologies.  I own the DVD and yet if I see it on the tube, I will usually watch it.  At its center is the biggest movie star the world has ever known (looking gorgeous and singing four nice songs), one of my top favorite actors, a treasured kid actor, filmed in gorgeous Cinemascope and in one of the most beautiful places imaginable, the Canadian Rockies.  Ok, settle in.  Get your own popcorn.

If you listen you can hear it call.

Neither Marilyn Monroe nor Otto Preminger wanted to make the movie and after it was done both preferred to forget it.  This was also about the only common ground the director and the actress would share.  But Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, had them both under contract and unless they wanted a suspension, they would do as they were told.  Zanuck had a yen to film this story which had been reworked from The Bicycle Thief where the hero's bicycle is stolen and he has no way to support himself or his son.  The writer wanted to make it as a western and Zanuck was listening.

At first it was simply going to be a B picture done on a modest budget but while the first draft was being worked out, Fox had acquired Cinemascope and Zanuck wanted the movie done in its gorgeous widescreen.  That changed the game.  The budget became far from modest and a gorgeous location was sought to allow Cinemascope to showcase it beautifully.

Preminger had a fit when Zanuck first approached him.  The German autocrat screamed vat do I know about vesterns?  Some would echo those thoughts at the time and after seeing the film.  But Preminger was intrigued with the Cinemascope process, another new thing for him, and he acquired a new attitude.

He was skeptical of hiring Robert Mitchum as the hero because they'd had a war while filming Angel Face a year earlier.  Mitchum was equally skeptical but signed on anyway.

River's producer Stanley Rubin was the one who insisted upon Monroe.  Despite her recent phenomenal successes in the studio's Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Zanuck didn't know what to do with her.  She had just finished How to Marry a Millionaire but it had yet to be released.  He saw her only in dumb blonde roles and she wanted to do great acting.  She was sure that wouldn't come about in a western but she wasn't otherwise engaged so Zanuck told her to head on up to Calgary.

Mitchum was pleased that she would be his costar.  He had known her for years, before either had ever made a single film.  He worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica with her first husband, James Dougherty, and had even been to their home.  Mitchum said that he thought he worked well with her because he was not the least bit attracted to her.  Not my type, he would say.

It beats jumping in the raging river

The story, which is supposed to take place somewhere in the American northwest, concerns a man (Mitchum) and his son (Rettig) living on a remote farm, next to a river, in Indian country.  They have just been reunited after the father served a prison stretch for shooting a man in the back who was going to shoot Mitchum's friend.  One day they spot a couple on a raft having trouble negotiating the wild river.  With ropes they are able to pull them to safety.

On board are a sleazy gambler (Calhoun) and his saloon-singing girlfriend (Monroe).  The boy had struck up a friendship earlier with Monroe in a goldmining tent city while waiting for Mitchum to come collect him.  The gambler has a claim he must file (won in a card game) in Council City asap.  He asks Mitchum if he can borrow his only horse but is declined.  So Calhoun hits Mitchum on the head with the butt of the gun and takes the gun and the horse and leaves.  Monroe refuses to go with him, saying she wants to care for Mitchum and will catch up later.

Love is a traveler on the river of no return.

As Mitchum recovers the trio spots Indians coming down the mountainside, obviously on the warpath.  Mitchum, Monroe and Rettig hightail it for the raft.  Most of the film, of course, concerns the dangerous rafting journey... navigating (or not) around huge rocks, dodging Indians' arrows and boulders they hurl from mountaintops, batting Indians with oars as they climb aboard the raft, two bad hombres, a mountain lion and each other.

Ultimately they make it to Council City and the boy kills Calhoun who is about to shoot Mitchum.  It ends with Monroe back atop the piano in a crowded saloon singing the title tune.  When she finishes, Mitchum grabs her, slings her over his shoulder and deposits her in a buckboard next to a smiling Rettig.  Where are you taking me, she asks Mitchum.  Home, he says.  We're happy but we can hardly believe it.

I loved Marilyn Monroe.  Whatever she had, whatever it was, she bloody had it like no one else ever did.  She and the camera were lovers... the best she ever had.  But I'll tell you... in some ways she was wrong for River of No Return.  If a woman had looked like that in the Old West, more men would have been shot and western history would have had a whole other ending.

Accepting her as a 19th century character out in the bush could be difficult in its way.  It was those tight-fitting jeans, stylish blouse, an obvious, long, blonde fall, the perfect makeup and how she spoke (more on that last one shortly).   Once said... and this may confuse... she was perfect.  No matter how she looked because it ultimately didn't matter because it's Marilyn Monroe and her special magic.  After seeing the final cut, Mitchum said he couldn't believe what she could deliver.  He hadn't expected that from actually working with her.  Of course, doncha know, that difference is the camera.  When he saw what the camera saw, he was blown away.

Unfortunately it was not a happy shoot... one could cut the tension.  Mitchum was drunk most of the time (after work).  Monroe was always in a tizzy about something, stunts were difficult and stunt people were hurt, there was constant rain, the treacherous Bow River made filming difficult, Monroe nearly drowned and did injure her ankle and she and Preminger were not speaking and there was that interfering acting coach.  

Monroe and Preminger absolutely detested one another.  As I've outlined before, the director was a horrible bully who always needed someone on his film sets to pick on... publicly.  It was not always an actor but it was always someone he regarded as weak.  He told her she was selfish, unprofessional, a bad actress, had a fat ass and was only where she was because she'd slept her way to the top.  He saw her insecurities and berated her for her clinginess to her drama coach.

In Banff a director helps his injured star

We mentioned Natasha Lytess in our last piece on Ladies in the Chorus.  This tiny, austere German, told people she was a Russian countess, invaded Monroe's life calling herself MM's drama coach but taking over everything.  They were even roommates for awhile.  She eerily detected Monroe's insecurities and pounced on them.  The truly detrimental aspect was that Lytess was present on MM's movie sets for years.  A director would tell Monroe to do something in a scene and the actress would shoot a look at Lytess who would articulate what she wanted and MM would follow her advice.

It drove Preminger nuttier listening to MM speak.  Can't you speak like a normal person, he would shout.  But Lytess would insist that she speak with ar-tic-yew-lay-shun which caused her lips to undulate.  Mitchum had noticed her affectation and of course Preminger's anger and so he stepped in.  Just as the camera would start whirring, he would slap her on her butt and say stop that nonsense.  Let's play it like human beings.  Now come on!  And she would play it straight... as long as he was in the scene.

Preminger became so exasperated with Lytess that he threw her off the set.  But Monroe called Zanuck and soon the coach was back.  Lytess wasn't done, however.  Some of the strongest scenes in the film are with the boy.  Of course I really got to know Rettig as Jeff Martin on TV's Lassie and then he was in one film after another which I happened to see.  A fine kid actor.  His scenes with Mitchum are touching and the boy and MM play it like the good friends they had actually become.  Others said that it was Rettig who brought whatever solace MM might have had on the project.  That fact likely made Lytess jealous.

Rettig knew his lines perfectly, always understood what he was to do.  He was never once a problem... until Lytess spoke to him privately one day and told him that at 11-12 years of age, he was about to lose his talent.  That was the age, she purred, when child actors usually lose it.  Then he started having trouble with memorizing his lines and had a number of crying fits.

Sometimes it's peaceful and sometimes wild and free.

MM said she'd never made a movie this physically exhausting.  Mitchum at one point in their journey says the Indians call it the river of no return... from here on, you'll find out why.  And boy, do we ever.  Yet, don't think for a minute that the three principles were ever on a raft that wasn't anchored to a tree out of camera range.  They all had stunt people... Rettig's was a midget.

MM and her stunt double

Before she went to Calgary, Monroe recorded four tunes written by Ken Darby and Lionel Newman.  Down in the Meadow she sings to the kid on the farm and the others she sings in the saloons, dressed to kill.  One Silver Dollar is a torch song, I'm Gonna File My Claim a bawdy tease for a bunch of horndogs filing claims and finally the title tune, a mournful ballad heard musically throughout the film.  I think the film proves she was a lovely movie singer.  An uncredited Tennessee Ernie Ford sings the title song over the opening and closing credits.

Cinematographer Joseph LaShelle's contributions are patently obvious from capturing high-angle shots of the raft in the middle of those massive rock canyons to low-angle shots of the Indians on the high cliffs to the panoramic vistas of the Canadian Rockies to the closeups of the beautiful Monroe face.

When some call it a routine western, I usually ask how many of them take place on a raft?  It was a popular western (sorry Marilyn, sorry Otto) when it was first released and that popularity has never waned.

Waileree.

Next posting:

A most handsome actor-singer