Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan (as well as some fun cameos I'll reference in the review)
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
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.
For our final two weeks with Marilyn Monroe, we're going to focus on the very tail end of the actress's career. Last week we talked about one of the biggest triumphs of Monroe's career, Bus Stop, which brought her critical hosannas (serious ones) for the first time in her career, and was a huge box office hit for Fox. This was followed with two legendarily difficult shoots for Marilyn, the first being the now-maligned The Prince and the Showgirl (with Laurence Olivier) and then the smash-hit classic Some Like It Hot, where she feuded relentlessly with costar Tony Curtis & director Billy Wilder. Despite Some Like It Hot's success (it won Monroe her only competitive Golden Globe), she took another year off before making her next movie, today's film Let's Make Love!. The film was a big deal not only for Monroe, but her costar Yves Montand, who was making his English-language debut after a decade of starring roles in European cinema, and becoming the toast of the New York theater scene with his one-man show.
(Spoilers Ahead) In a weirdly similar opening to The Seven Year Itch, we go through the family tree of Jean-Marc Clement (Montand), a billionaire whose ancestors all had a knack for making money and were frequently distracted by "balloons" (the script's entendre, not mine). He is considered a spoiled playboy, and a local theater production about famous figures of the early 1960's is skewering him. He goes down to show he's "in on the joke" as a bit of publicity, but there is mistaken for an actor pretending to be Jean-Marc Clement, and goes along with the casting when he falls for Amanda (Monroe), a beautiful actress who leads the production. Jean-Marc gets to see a woman actually fall for him, and not his money, as she just assumes he's an out-of-work actor. However, Amanda is dating the show's leading man, Tony (Vaughan), so Jean-Marc, along with his assistants (including Tony Randall playing the same role Tony Randall always played in these types of films-the best friend), recruit the help of legendary entertainers in hopes of making the no-talent Jean-Marc a rival for Amanda's affections.
You can imagine how that turns out (happy ending!), but arguably the best part of Let's Make Love! is the scenes with the legendary performers. Milton Berle, Bing Crosby, and Gene Kelly all play themselves, recruited to make the hapless Jean-Marc seem like a funny song-and-dance-man, with amusing results (Berle basically steals the movie during his segment). And I will admit I actually liked the score for the film, even though it's not as memorable as it might have been. The Oscar nomination may have been something of a gimme given the film's high profile (we were entering a period where musicals struggled to gain traction with audiences), but Vaughan can sing, and he-and-Monroe have a gay sort of chemistry that is fun-to-watch.
This is not true for Monroe & Montand. While Montand generally was a popular figure in the era, his comedy bits don't age well and he's stiff in a lead role that would have been a better fit for someone like Cary Grant or Rock Hudson. Montand isn't helped by a script that has no punch. The joke bits aren't that funny (Berle & his segment are the only ones that really work), and while Monroe is enjoyable in her part (George Cukor would never totally fail his leading actress), the script is just sort of there for us to ogle her. One of the striking things between the sex symbols of the 1930's/40's and the 1950's is that while Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth were given different types of roles to excel in, Monroe always played some version of this Amanda. When it was in Some Like It Hot, with great writing and costars like Jack Lemmon, it's glorious. Let's Make Love!, though, is pretty disposable and wouldn't be thought of at all today except it was Marilyn's penultimate film.
The movie had no good memories for any involved. Monroe hated the part, considering it her worst role, and not soon after watched her marriage to Arthur Miller dissolved (she had had a very public affair on-set with Montand, who was married to Monroe's friend Simone Signoret at the time). The film was moderately successful, but considered a disappointment given Monroe's star power and how gossip columns had been swirling about her relationship with Montand. After three rough productions, Monroe was still famous and bankable enough to demand headlines, but producers were worried about hiring her for anything. She lost out at the time on the role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, a part that was written specifically for her by Truman Capote, and which would win Audrey Hepburn an honor Monroe never received: an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Instead, Monroe would make a different film, one that would sadly be her last, and one that we'll discuss next week.
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