The Misfits was published by Viking Press in 1961, simultaneously with the release of John Huston’s film. Miller originally wrote the story as a short fiction published in Esquire in 1957, then expanded it into a screenplay as a vehicle for his wife Marilyn Monroe, hoping the project would give her a serious dramatic role and stabilize their disintegrating marriage. Neither hope was fulfilled: the filming in the Nevada desert in the summer of 1960 was a catastrophe of marital tension, Monroe’s pill dependency, and brutal heat. Miller and Monroe divorced shortly after filming. Monroe died in August 1962. Clark Gable died of a heart attack days after shooting wrapped. Montgomery Clift died in 1966. The film became an inadvertent memorial to all three.
The story follows Roslyn Taber (Monroe), a recently divorced woman in Reno, who falls in with Gay Langland (Gable), an aging cowboy, and his friend Guido (Eli Wallach), a former bomber pilot. They take Roslyn into the Nevada desert for a mustang hunt — rounding up wild horses to sell for dog food. Roslyn, who feels an instinctive empathy with animals and an instinctive horror at masculine violence, tries to save the horses; Gay, whose identity is bound up with the cowboy way of life, must choose between Roslyn and the version of masculinity the hunt represents.
Miller’s themes are characteristically large: the death of the American frontier, the displacement of men whose skills are no longer needed by the modern economy (Gay is a cowboy in a world with no range), and the collision between masculine self-reliance and feminine compassion. The novella version restores interior monologue and descriptive passages that the screenplay format omitted.
Collecting The Misfits
First edition (Viking Press, New York, 1961): Hardcover with dust jacket, film stills.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $75–$200
- Very good: $30–$75