Bus Stop

No need to recap the plot. This is a badly flawed movie, despite "That Old Black Magic", though the magic clearly works for Monroe as she croons out the tune. It's clear that as an actress she's most comfortable with musical numbers, where her sparkle really gels.

The basic problem, as I see it, is with the script. There really isn't much story; as a result, something has to be added to hold audience interest besides budding super-star Marilyn. Apparently, colorful character was encouraged to pick up the slack. It looks like TCF found their answer in Murray's ear-splitting version of a Montana cowboy. I guess rural Montana doesn't have any grade schools where basic civility is taught. No need to belabor his maddening effect since others have made the same point at some length. Nonetheless, Murray's witless hollering of every line takes down the entire film. Nor does Monroe's squeaky southern accent that sort of comes and goes help. Nor is the over-extended final scene, where both actors revert to something more normal, enough to compensate for all the gaudiness that's gone before.

All in all, the movie's worth a 3, mainly for its excellent Technicolor staging, Monroe's singing, and the catchy title tune that was a chart-topper at the time. But beware the movie's moral, which seems to be a version of "All some people need in order to straighten out is a good beating"!

(In passing—Despite his misfire here, Murray was an excellent actor. Catch his carefully shaded performance in A Hatful of Rain (1957) or in The Bachelor Party (1957) to sample his true potential.)

Marilyn Monroe is so good here it's startling. Her Cherie (with the accent on the first syllable, remember) is one of the most lovable characters in the history of film. That the rest of the movie is rocky-going and her co-star is no match for her is unfortunate, but not fatal.

Apparently the director, Joshua Logan, was able to create a relatively peaceful environment where Monroe could completely "let go" and allow her natural fragility and sex appeal to take over. When she's on screen it's impossible to take your eyes off her, not just because she's beautiful (what starlet from the 1950's WASN'T beautiful?) but because she's laying bare her character's soul for the camera (and in the process much of her own soul as well). She isn't just reading lines with various inflections or doing bits of business like so many actors do, she's bringing the character to life.

Unforgettable is the moment where she finds herself perched on the shoulder of the crazy, lovestruck cowboy watching a parade and she's trying to pantomime to a friend in the crowd how she wound up up there. Or the way she keeps "shushing" the loud-talking bus driver so that he won't wake up the sleeping cowboy as she's planning her escape. Or the way she can't make eye contact or get her lazy backwoods accent (that is incredibly charming) to sound firm enough when she keeps trying to tell the cowboy to get lost. Her comic timing is just sublime and unteachable.

Don Murray's performance as the cowboy, criminally and inexplicably Oscar-nominated, is cloying, two-dimensional and geared for the stage, not the intimacy of film. He needs to provide some hint of vulnerabilty before he's humbled in the fist fight with the bus driver, but he is tragically not up to the task. His Beauregard is the kind of loud-mouthed, uncouth buffoon that only a greatly skilled comic actor can make sympathetic, and Murray simply doesn't know how to finesse the comic moments and make them work.

Monroe receives fine support from Arthur O'Connell as Beau's older, wiser friend Virgil Blessing, but this is her show all the way. She makes it a good movie, but one can't help imagining how much better it could have been had it been directed by someone like Kazan and co-starred possibly Rock Hudson.

The movie is based on a play that I haven't read so maybe I'm missing some of the subtext but as pure entertainment I wouldn't recommend this movie. The characters aren't well-defined and are little more than stereotypes, e.g. Grace, the sassy diner waitress, Cherie, the showgirl with a heart of gold. Marilyn Monroe plays the same type of character that she more or less played for her entire career, but she does it very well; she and Hope Lange provide the only good performances. Don Murray's unsophisticated cowboy was so obnoxious he practically ruined any enjoyment to be had from the movie. The supporting players are decent but that's all. It's a shame, this movie could have been pretty good if they had made one or two different casting decisions.

To the naysayers I say "you missed it" but I guess people either like MM or they do not. I was braced for the 50s-style corn, but not for the underlying sadness of Cherie, as rendered by Monroe, and in the end feel she did an incredibly good job with the role--not a false note anywhere.

An extra star (or two) for that very special performance.

"Bus Stop" is named for the setting of the last half-hour of this film, the bus stop in the snow, somewhere in Wyoming, where Beau finally gets his 'comeuppance', right before he and Cherie reconcile. If this movie had not been made in 1956, but instead in modern times, it would have received a very laughable reception. As it is, I consider it a cult classic in the genre of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", so horrible and fake are the characters and the dialog.

However, Marilyn Monroe, in her 26th film, playing a simple showgirl from Arkansas, does very well with her role. Don Murray as "Beau", in his very first film, is so obnoxious that by the time he apologises for his bad behavior, we no longer care about him, and "Cherie's" accepting him just doesn't make sense. Hope Lange has a small part as "Elma" on the bus, in this her first film. She and Murray married afterward in real life, but it didn't last. Murray made a number of other films, including the father in "Quarterback Princess" in 1983 with Helen Hunt.

The reason to see this film is Marilyn Monroe in her prime, almost 30, and only 6 years from her death. The story, of the possessive cowboy who decides to marry Cherie and haul her away to his ranch in Montana, is pretty simple and pretty implausible. The scene in the bus stop, where he finally kisses her "for serious", was also featured in an episode of Northern Exposure, with Chris playing Beau and Maggie playing Cherie, for a community theater production they were rehearsing for.