Tag Archives: The Misfits

The Last Misfit: Eli Wallach 1915-2014

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Film, Marilyn Monroe

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‘The Misfits’ (1961)

This article can also be read at Immortal Marilyn.

The Last Misfit: Eli Wallach 1915-2014

Eli Herschel Wallach was born at Union Street, in Brooklyn’s Red Hook district, in December 1915. One of four children, he grew up above Bertha’s candy store, managed by his Polish immigrant parents – one of the few Jewish businesses in a predominantly Italian neighbourhood. Two months previously, Arthur Miller had been born in Harlem; while Elia Kazan, born in Istanbul in 1909, was living in New York with his Greek Orthodox family. Continue reading →

Eve Arnold 1912-2012

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Art and Photography, Film, Marilyn Monroe

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This article is also published at Immortal Marilyn

Grit and Glamour: Marilyn and Eve Arnold

“I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.”

The pioneering photo-journalist, Eve Arnold, died on January 4th, 2012, at a London nursing home, three months short of her centenary. Continue reading →

Finishing the Picture

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Theatre

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Finishing the Picture: Miller, Monroe and The Misfits

Finishing the Picture, Arthur Miller’s last play, opened in Chicago in October 2004, a few months before his death. It was inspired by Miller’s own memories of The Misfits, the movie he wrote for his then-wife, Marilyn Monroe. The play is based on actual events that took place during the shoot: the fire that halted filming in Reno, causing power to be cut throughout the city – except for in Miller’s hotel suite, where he stayed up all night rewriting scenes from his script. Miller revisits that evening to explain why another ten days passed before work resumed. Continue reading →

Nan Taylor Abell

12 Monday Jul 2010

Posted by in Film, Marilyn Monroe

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‘The Misfits’, 1960 – producer Frank Taylor at far left

Nan Taylor Abell, formerly married to Frank E. Taylor, producer of The Misfits, has died in Greenwich, Connecticut, aged 94.

Born in Minnesota, Nan was the daughter of a mine engineer. After graduating, she moved to New York and became a children’s radio host. She gave up her career on marrying Frank Taylor, who was then a publisher and editor to the playwright Arthur Miller.

In the late 1940s, the Taylors moved to Hollywood with hopes of bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, Tender is the Night, to the big screen. However, this project failed to get off the ground, and by 1952 they had returned east with their four sons.

After Taylor’s client, Arthur Miller, married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, he bought a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, close to the Taylors’ home at Belle Haven, Old Greenwich. In his 1969 biography, Norma Jean: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe, author Fred Lawrence Guiles remarked that ‘to Marilyn, the Taylors were by far the liveliest and most convivial of Miller’s married friends. She came in time to confide in both Frank and Nan Taylor…’ Continue reading →