Death of Marilyn Monroe: the images of her last unfinished film

Find out about Marilyn Monroe’s last film, shot after Les Désaxés, and why it never came out.

Something’s Got to Give is the story of Ellen Arden, who returns home five years after disappearing during one of her travels. Having been declared legally dead, her husband Nick remarried, but Ellen is determined to get him back. The film was to be a remake of the comedy My Favorite Wife (1940) starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, itself adapted from an 1864 poem by Alfred Tennyson.

After more than a year of absence from the sets, Marilyn has to give the reply to James Garner, but he is finally taken by The Great Escape. Besides, he doesn’t suit her and she has him replaced by Dean Martin, whom she knows well, and both shoot under the direction of George Cukor, who had already directed the actress on The Billionaire in 1960. Arnold Schulman is in charge of the scenario, which is not finished when the shots are launched.

From the first day of filming on April 23, 1962, Marilyn is absent. Recently operated on for the gallbladder and having lost 11 kilos, the actress is not in good physical shape and even less mentally. Very unsure of herself on a set, the star also has health problems, including bronchitis and chronic sinusitis.

Marilyn is very little present during the first month of filming, Cukor rather canned scenes with Dean Martin and/or Cyd Charisse, who plays Nick’s character’s new wife. The shooting is 10 days late, which a priori announces a budget overrun.

Among the scenes shot by Marilyn, one has remained famous: the one in the swimming pool, in which she only appears with flesh-colored bikini bottoms and therefore topless, which, if the film had been finished, would have been a first for a star in the history of cinema. It is finally to Jayne Mansfield that will return this historical distinction in Promises! Promises! (1963).

Not to help a weakened Marilyn, the script not being finished, the dialogues and the scenes are changed overnight and the actress struggles to remember her lines. Her checkered presence on the set ended up getting the better of producer Henry Weinstein and Cukor, who fired her from the film on June 8, 1962.

Above all, Something’s Got to Give was to be released at Christmas to compensate for the pharaonic budget of the film Cléopâtre with Elizabeth Taylor, very very behind schedule, and in particular impacted by the demands of its main star. In the end, neither of the two projects advancing, the smaller in terms of budget is instantly interrupted. Except that Dean Martin, who has the right by contract to choose his female partner, refuses to finish the film without Marilyn.

Twentieth Century Fox

The studio is at an impasse, and chooses to renegotiate with the actress. She returns to finish Something’s Got to Give for $500,000 (2022 $4.9 million) from $100,000 previously, with a bonus if filming is completed on time, and pledges to film another feature film afterwards, Madame Croque-maris, for another 500,000 dollars.

Marilyn demands Cukor’s departure in favor of Jean Negulesco, with whom she worked on How to Marry a Millionaire. The end of filming is postponed to October.

But on August 4, 1962, Marilyn was found dead at her home. She was 36 years old.

Twentieth Century Fox

Twentieth Century Fox decides to take Something’s Got to Give from the beginning with a new cast. The film was released in 1963 under the title Push yourself, darling, with Doris Day, James Garner (again available) and Polly Bergen in the cast. As for the Madame Croque-maris project, it is finally carried by Shirley MacLaine against Paul Newman, Gene Kelly, Robert Mitchum, Dick Van Dyke and … Dean Martin.

In 1990, images of Something’s Got to Give were broadcast by Fox in the documentary Marilyn: Something’s Got to Give, then in Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days, broadcast in 2001.