Written for Monroe by then husband Arthur Miller, the role of Roslyn is contradictory and complex. It signalled a potential new phase in her career<\/p>\n
What else can you call it but star quality? It was that \u2013 that ineffable, incalculable thing that makes certain actors on film seem almost holy \u2013 which made Marilyn Monroe one of the icons of cinema, perhaps the<\/em> icon. That, coupled with her untimely death, which meant Monroe never grew any older on screen, is surely why she endures even now, 100 years after her birth. Whether performing Diamonds Are a Girl\u2019s Best Friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/a>, vamping in Niagara or throwing off sparkling dialogue in Some Like It Hot<\/a>, Monroe seems to belong up there on the big screen \u2013 so much so that you might believe she never actually existed down here with us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Monroe\u2019s last picture, 1961\u2019s The Misfits, that shows the star was mortal after all. It begins in Reno, where Monroe\u2019s out-of-towner Roslyn gets a quickie divorce from her absentee husband (Kevin McCarthy) before falling in with a group of local oddballs, among them ageing cowpoke Gay Langland (Clark Gable) and buck-drunk bronco rider Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift).<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/578c5563d85bdf96e7d8e8798dc96d7f4bcaec80\/0_15_4188_3349\/master\/4188.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=1111377417e9b2a81690fd3dfc0e47a4\" "\\"The")
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