Posts Tagged with Don Murray

DON MURRAY REMEMBERS MARILYN
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DON MURRAY REMEMBERS MARILYN

Marilyn Monroe’s co-star Don Murray recalls working with the actress on “Bus Stop” from a fairly recent interview he did for CLOSER Magazine

“Marilyn was very kind to me, I thought she was magnificent. I never understood why she was not nominated for an Academy Award.

I had been overseas, so I didn’t know much about her, I was totally taken aback by how important a movie star she was. There was press around all the time because of her.

She had difficulty remembering her lines, so we had to do many takes. Often, when we were doing a scene, she would get so emotionally involved that she’d go off her mark. The director told me to put my hands on her hips and move her to her marks. That’s what I did whenever we were shooting above her waist.

“She was always late. Not 10 minutes, but two hours or half a day! She also took a week off and called in sick, but she was actually having a romance with Arthur Miller at the Chateaux Marmont! It was quite a trial. Being from theater, I wasn’t used to that!”

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY DON MURRAY


Here at Marilyn Remembered, we are wishing Don Murray a very happy Birthay on his 90th birthday!

Don Murray ( born July 31st 1929) is an American actor who is best known for his breakout preformance in the 1956 drama “Bus Stop” which earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Having worked in movies and television since 1954, some of his biggest credits include: “Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes,” “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “Knots Landing.”

Murray with his wife Bettie Johnson at the New York premiere of “My Week With Marilyn” in 2011

Speaking in 2014, Murray said of his time working with Marilyn Monroe on Bus Stop:

“Bus Stop” was her comeback film. And I thought she was magnificent in it, although she was always late on the set and she had a hard time remembering her lines. She also had a very short concentration span: she would start a scene and stop in the middle because she forgot her lines. So she had to do all her scenes in tiny, little pieces because she couldn’t sustain a scene all the way through. We never saw a complete scene with her. All the actors in the film came from the stage, like Hope Lange and I, Arthur O’Connell, Eileen Heckart – everyone in the film – so we were used to having a continuous performance and we would go to the rushes to see yesterday’s work. We would see all these little pieces and we thought the film was going to be a disaster. However, the first time we saw it at a preview, all of a sudden we realized what the magic of films was, with the editing and cutting it all together: she was magnificent! I never understood why she was not nominated [for an Academy Award] for “Bus Stop”.

Happy Birthday Mr Murray!