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The Misfits: Car Wrecks, Heart Attacks, Marilyn Monroe, and One of Hollywood’s Most Cursed Films

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Glenn Danzig named his punk band after one of the most cursed Hollywood films of all time. The Misfits was where actor Montgomery Clift, permanently disfigured from a car accident, tried in vain to restart his stalled career. The director, John Huston, lost the film’s entire production budget at a craps table. The lead actor, Clark Gable, suffered a heart attack the day after shooting ended and died ten days later. But was there any truth to the rumor that Gable was driven to an early grave not because of a grueling shoot or poor health, but by his demanding co-star, Marilyn Monroe?

Sources

The Misfits: Story of a Shoot, by Arthurt Miller & Serge Toubiana

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, by Donald Spoto

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, by J. Randy Taraborrelli

Montgomery Clift: A Biography, by Patricia Bosworth

Clark Gable: A Biography, by Warren G. Harris

Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable Weren't the Only 'The Misfits' Stars to Experience Tragedy (Cheat Sheet)

Scandals of Classic Hollywood: The Long Suicide of Montgomery Clift (Vanity Fair)

‘The longest suicide in Hollywood history’: who was the real Montgomery Clift? (Telegraph)

`I've Been Knifed’ (NY Times)

Cocktail recipe: The Right Profile (The Cocktail Hour)

Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

Credits

Hosted by Jake Brennan.

Written by Zeth Lundy.

Copy edited by James Sullivan.

Scored and mixed by Colin Fleming.

Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.

*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak