OVP: Bus Stop (1956)

Film: Bus Stop (1956)
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O'Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Hope Lange
Director: Joshua Logan
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Don Murray)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

After Monroe's massive success with The Seven Year Itch, she started a very public feud with her studio, Fox, publicly trying to demand more power and money in exchange for the clear value she was bringing to the studio.  Though initially rebuffed by the press, Monroe won the standoff, and was one of the key contributors to taking down the studio system with a then unheard-of deal: Monroe signed a seven-year contract with Fox, and would through that only make four films for the studio, with near complete creative control (she'd get to pick the projects, directors, and cinematographers).  More groundbreaking was the fact that she would get to make movies not at Fox of her own choosing, and would get to produce them as well.  Fox did this because they were in need of Monroe-with the decline of Betty Grable a few years earlier, she was by-far the most important actress on the lot, and was too valuable to deny, even if her demands were high.  Monroe's first film for Fox after the standoff was a bit risky on-paper: a drama, albeit a lighter one, which would be the most challenging acting role of her career to-date.  However, as we'll see, Bus Stop benefited both Monroe and the studio in 1956.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Beau (Murray), a young man from the backwoods of Montana, who is an excellent cowboy, but has no social graces, and has no experience with girls (it is heavily underlined throughout the film that he is a virgin).  He and his father-figure friend Virgil (O'Connell) go down to Phoenix for a rodeo, and once there, they meet Cherie (Monroe), a girl who sings (badly) at a saloon, and is basically there to swindle men into buying her drinks.  Beau doesn't see Cherie the way that the rest of the world does, thinking her an "angel" rather than a washed-up saloon girl who has had "experience" with other men.  He proclaims they are going to get married, to her chagrin, and we proceed to see his courtship of her.  Eventually, he learns he cannot take her by force, and that it's time for him to grow up, but at that exact moment, Cherie has a change-of-heart, and ends up going off into Montana with him, with Virgil abandoning the two of them, knowing that his time as caretaker for his friend is done.

With the perspective of hindsight, Bus Stop is, well, an odd movie.  Monroe is a weird fit for straight drama, and as a result the film doesn't always play as seriously as it should have (it was even submitted at the Golden Globes as a comedy).  Some have said that Monroe borrowed her accent and line readings from watching Kim Stanley originate the role of Cherie on Broadway, but if that's the case than Stanley also had an odd inflection, because while the accent work is fine, it's hard to tell what Cherie is thinking most of the movie.  She wanders back-and-forth between being curious about Beau and then repulsed by him, but there's no indication as to why she loves him.  In the hands of a different actress (say, Elizabeth Taylor), she might have underscored the reason that she finds him attractive is that he wants to see the real girl everyone else assumes isn't there, but that's not what Monroe gives us, and it's not really what's coming from Murray, either.  Murray is undoubtedly a lead performer here, and does a better job in finding consistency to his Beau, but without a better script, Murray as written is such a louse you don't want him to end up with Marilyn.  He's devastatingly handsome (one of the rare times that Monroe was cast opposite someone that might conceivably rival her own sex appeal), but Beau is a one-note jerk, someone who gets by because he's too stupid and too naive to be mad at for long, as he basically kidnaps Cherie two-thirds of the way through the movie, and doesn't nearly pay for it enough.  Murray's performance works in parts because he so fully-commits, but neither he nor the script can figure out exactly why Cherie is better off with Beau or why Beau should be rooted for by the audience other than "it's better than keeping her in the saloon," and, well, that's kind of a terrible answer.

But that didn't matter for Monroe.  This film gave her serious acclaim in a way that she'd never experienced before, and to some degree, would never experience again.  She was nominated for a Golden Globe award for the film, and though she didn't get an Oscar nomination, Murray did and Logan was cited by the DGA.  Bus Stop proved to critics that Monroe might be a serious actress to consider (my opinion was in the minority that she feels a bit over-her-head), and it also came with a massive pile of cash.  The movie was a huge hit for Fox, proving that the studio had been correct to sign Monroe to such an unusual contract, and it proved that Monroe understood her fans enough to take a risk that would pay off.