Summer of Marilyn: Monkey Business and All About Eve

A sinus thing that wasn’t exactly an illness but a weather change thing hit me last week so I ended up forgetting to finish watching my one Marilyn movie and watching the other one. In other words, I have a good excuse for being late on my Marilyn movie impressions.

I’m going to be sharing about two Marilyn Monroe movies this week since I have been so behind on watching and writing about them. They are two very, very different movies on different ends of the spectrum – Monkey Business and All About Eve.

First up: Monkey Business.

Cary Grant is an absent minded professor in this screwball comedy that he stars in with Marilyn and Ginger Rogers.

Ginger is the straight man (woman) in this one with Cary being more of the goofball with the biggest bottle cap glasses I have ever seen him in. They looked more like something Jerry Lewis would wear.

This is very early Marilyn, so she almost likes like Norma Jean probably looked before she became Marilyn, but not quite. She still has the pouty lips and short hair, but the hair looks darker to me in th is film.

Marilyn plays the secretary of Cary’s boss and in their first scene together she shows Cary the stockings he invented and how they look on her legs. Cary’s character, showing his true nerdy self, is more interested in the stocking than the legs they are covering, of course.

The premise of the movie is rather silly but silly is a wonderful escape from life so I liked that it was silly.

Cary is working on a formula that could help people look and feel younger. It also, apparently, makes them more virile – ahem. The monkey they test it on is very interested in the female monkey, despite being 84 in monkey years. The monkey Is also able to move around like a young monkey after taking the formula.

This is after many of the tests did not yield any results.

 
(As I side note here, I must say that I don’t know many other actresses who have a hip sway like Marilyn. I am completely jealous of it and the shape of her. Sigh.)

It’s the monkey that finally mixes the winning concoction for a type of youth formula and then proceeds to pour it in the water cooler. Cary and his fellow professors don’t know this, of course, so when Cary decides he’s going to be the guinea  pig and take his own formula and then wash it down with the water from the cooler. So Cary believes that his formula is what helps him when he suddenly can see without his glasses and then becomes like a teenager and runs off with Marilyn’s character to buy a new car.

After Ginger learns that Cary tested the formula on himself, she decides she should be the test subject and she takes the formula, which we know doesn’t work, but it tastes so awful she washes it down with the cooler water.

Now she becomes the young and crazy 20 something year old.

She ends up with teenage angst complete with crying and breaking down at Cary. It’s a hilarious but ridiculous scene. I have a feeling Ginger had a blast filming it.

Ginger even gets a chance to dance a bit in the film, even though that isn’t the main focus, when she’s feeling a lot younger.

The film is a low-key romance with the two of them realizing even under the influence of the formula how much they love each other.

Luckily the formula does wear off and when both have had it wear off, they decide the formula could cause more harm than good. Cary is going to destroy the formula and that’s when they decide to make a pot of coffee with the water from the cooler. Ah, yes, I’m sure you know where this is going. Craziness is about to ensue so hold on to your seats.

You’ll have to watch it to see what happens, which reminds me, you can watch it for free on YouTube here:

I pulled a bit of trivia off of IMbd about the movie and some of it was very interesting. Here are a few tidbits:

The exterior shots of the Oxly Chemical Co. office building where Barnaby works were actually shots of the Executive Building on the 20th Century Fox studio lot. The building is now known as the Old Executive Building.The sports car used in the film was a red 1952 MG TD Roadster, which was put into storage by 20th Century-Fox after filming wrapped. It was purchased by  in a 1971 sale of  memorabilia (despite the fact Monroe herself never owned the car). It sustained a dent in the front bumper when  hit a fence while driving it. Reynolds had the transmission rebuilt, then put it up for auction in 2011. It sold for $210,000.Among the movie star photos  taped to her bedroom wall when she was a foster child were several of Cary Grant. She was thrilled to be co-starring with him in this film, a break-through role in her then fast-rising movie career.Forty year old (forty-one at the time of release)  was the oldest leading lady to ever star in a  picture. plays the character Lois Laurel. The real Lois Laurel is the only daughter of comedian Stan Laurel of the comedy team Laurel & Hardy.Shares a title with the otherwise unrelated 1931 Marx Brothers comedy “Monkey Business,” though the films have some vague connections: Early in his career, Cary Grant was partly inspired by Zeppo Marx, the team’s parodic juvenile straight man. In addition, the 1931 film co-starred Thelma Todd, whose life, career, and mysterious death parallel Grant’s co-star here, Marilyn Monroe.

This movie was so much fun and I really did enjoy it. I mentioned above that Ginger must have had so much fun filming that one scene but I have a feeling they all had a ton of fun. It was absolute ridiculous and hilarious fun.

All About Eve

Now, Marilyn is not a main actress in this film, but it was one of her first movies and she was considered a standout in it, and my husband suggested it, so I included it in my list to watch this summer. Marilyn was 23 when the movie was made and just about to break her career wide open.

This movie was nominated for 14 Oscars and won six, including best picture. It is the only film in Oscar history to have four women nominated, including Bette Davis, Anne Baxter for actress and Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter for supporting actress. Released in 1950, it made $3.1 million, more than half of it’s $1.4 million production costs.

Bette Davis is a famous stage actress named Margo who Eve Harrington, played by Anne Baxter, goes to meet one night after watching her show every single night during its run.

This is my first movie with Bette, by the way, and it did not disappoint.

Eve is very peculiar to say the least as this movie starts. She tells the actress and the producer and writers about her sad life of losing her husband early in their marriage and staying in San Francisco to make a new life for herself and her love of acting and the theater.

You know right away that something just feels off about her, even though the movie starts with her being honored as a well-known actress. She really inserts herself into the lives of these people and weasels her way into the acting jobs she wants, pushing others out of the way for it.

With her sob story, Margo welcomes her into her home and she becomes her confidant, her assistant, and everything you can think of that requires Eve to wait on Margo. It’s clear that Eve wants Margo’s job and as time goes on it is clear she’ll find a way to get it, mainly by being Margo’s everything. Actually, she’s a little too everything. She starts doing things that Margo doesn’t ask her to do and making herself look better than Margo. It’s a very strange obsession.

Margo begins to notice how attentive Eve is to her boyfriend and everything else. She also begins to compare herself to Eve and feel old around her. To her it’s time for Eve to move on because she has a feeling Eve is much more interested in taking her place, not just waiting on her. |

Marilyn doesn’t come in until more than 40 minutes into the movie and I didn’t even recognize her. She was beautiful, sure, but her hair was styled differently and she was a minor character. It was clear she was ready for stardom though and George Sanders uttered a premonition of sorts when he said, “Well done. I can see your career rising in the east like the sun.”

And soon after this movie, it did just that.

Her character Miss Casswell has the middle name of the author of the short story that was never credited for her part in the movie – Mary Orr.

She’s so young looking in the movie – it’s crazy. And, of course, she’s sort of passed off as someone sent in to make producers and directors happy because she’s sexy and flirtatious.

I searched online to see what critics said of Marilyn’s performance and found a few opinions. Here s one:

Lyvie Scott on Slashfilms.com said Marilyn stole the scenes she was in in All About Eve and I’d have to agree. She had some of the best lines, such as where Eve says she doesn’t know what she’d talk about with Dr. Dewitt (George Sanders) and Marilyn says, “Don’t worry about it. You won’t even get a word in the whole time.” Or something along those lines.

A bit off topic here, but George Sanders always reminds me of John De Lancie who played Q on Star Trek.

Scott wrote of Marilyn, “Monroe’s role in “All About Eve,” though small, is one of the most memorable of the film. It’s difficult to focus on anyone but Monroe when she’s in the room. Knowing just how famous she would become, it all feels like a testament to her inescapable star power.”

Scott, of course, details what others detail about Marilyn on film sets throughout the years. She was often late and had a hard time nailing her lines and was a bit difficult to work with overall. Marilyn tried to blame her inability to remember her lines on nerves and that very well may have been the case since she was acting next to Bette Davis and the fact that she’d only come off the success of one other film, “The Asphalt Jungle” before this.

Davis wasn’t really buying her excuses. According to Scott’s article: “Unfortunately, Davis was less than impressed with Monroe. Famously temperamental on set, she was already put off by the younger actress’s tardiness. And after so many retakes for a scene which, to her, must have been a breeze, Davis apparently snapped — and Monroe had to excuse herself to vomit offstage.”

Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/806889/filming-all-about-eve-was-more-than-marilyn-monroe-could-handle/

It’s just so humorous to me that in this movie they pan Marilyn’s audition to be the understudy of Bette’s character when she would rise to stardom faster than almost all of them, except Bette. She might not have been as good of an actress, especially when compared to Bette, but she still seemed to shoot up even faster – probably because of her looks (aka breasts and hips).

I’m talking more about Marilyn in this post because my feature is called Summer of Marilyn, but I should be talking about Anne Baxter and Bette Davis more, especially considering Marilyn was only in this movie about ten minutes, if that. Both of the other actresses were very good in this, even though I could not stand the way Anne Baxter talked and how overly dramatic and maudlin she was. That was, however, her character so, in other words, she was brilliant in making me hate her.

As for Bette – wow. She knocked it out of the park. Here is what Roger Ebert said about her performance on his site:

Growing older was a smart career move for Bette Davis, whose personality was adult, hard-edged and knowing. Never entirely comfortable as an ingenue, she was glorious as a professional woman, a survivor, or a b***** predator. Her veteran actress Margo Channing in “All About Eve” (1950) was her greatest role; it seems to show her defeated by the wiles of a younger actress, but in fact marks a victory: the triumph of personality and will over the superficial power of beauty. She never played a more autobiographical role.”

Besides Bette and Anne Baxter, George Sanders was absolute perfection at being a dirty, crooked journalist. His speech toward the end of the movie was just absolutely outstanding and  

She seems so innocent and idealistic but deep down she’s just pretty selfish to me. She wants a career and she doesn’t care whose coat tails she rides, or whose head she steps on, to get there. She’ll do it with big, watery eyes and a tipped head, of course.

The film is mainly about jealousy and ambition and the tangled web that both can weave, but it is also very much about the dread of getting older, especially for women. Margo feels that Eve is stealing everything from her because she is young. Off screen, Bette Davis was terrified of growing old and this part fit her well, as Ebert said. When she was talking about the dread of growing old in the movie, she was speaking from personal experience, not just from the experience of the character.

At one point she says, “Funny business, a woman’s career — the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you’ll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That’s one career we gals have in common is being a woman.”

So far All About Eve has been one of the best films I’ve watched but not because of Marilyn, even though she was great in it. The best film I watched with her in it was a tie between Niagra and Some Like it Hot. We will see if The Misfits knocks one of those movies off the list when I watch it later this week.

Have you seen either of these movies? What did you think?