'The Misfits' stars not lovers, new tell-all contends

By Stone Martindale Jul 8, 2007, 12:30 GMT

Andy Warhol\'s Lemon Marilyn REUTERS/Christie\'s/Handout

Arthur Miller's penned "The Misfits" was the last movie that Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable made before they died.

All three of the John Huston directed film's primary actors, Montgomery Clift, Gable and Monroe were dead within four years of the film's release.

Three days after filming wrapped, Clark Gable had a heart attack and died eleven days later.

During filming, Marilyn Monroe suffered depression and was remanded to detox during the shoot. Within a year and a half of the premiere of the movie, Monroe was found dead in her bed of a drug overdose.

"The Misfits" had joined Monroe with her childhood screen idol, Gable.  Rumors abound that the two were lovers during production.

Montgomery Clift suffered a terrible automobile accident in 1956 and had reconstructive surgery on his face, he died four years after the filming.

Now, the stories that Monroe and Gable's alleged affair during "The Misfits" has been challenged in a new book on Gable.

The New York Post's Richard Johnson reports according that a new tell-all titled "Clark Gable: Tormented Star," out this September, has author David Bret claiming Gable was "not in the least amorously interested in Marilyn.

In as much as he had a fetish for cleanliness, she could not have been less fastidious regarding personal hygiene. Like Jean Harlow, she bleached her pubic hair and never wore panties . . . She suffered from what today would be described as a form of irritable bowel syndrome."

Johnson reports that author Bret writes, "she rarely bathed, slept in the nude and ate a lot in bed - shoving what was left on her plate under the sheets before going to sleep."

The 1961 film featured critically acclaimed performances by the cast of Gable, Monroe, Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter.  Playwright Arthur Miller had written the movie for his wife, Monroe. 

Despite their marriage faltering during the filming process, Monroe, according to Johnson, "was so smitten with Gable that she was heard proclaiming on the set: 'Mr. Gable's in love with me!' And she kept a signed photo of him in her bedroom."