When The West Was Tamed-With Marilyn Monroe’s Bus Stop In Mind   

 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe, Dom Murray, based on work by William Inge, 1956    

 No question men, many men anyway, of my father’s generation, those who fought their way through the dregs of the Great Depression of the 1930s and sloughed their way through the various theaters of World War II thought that Marilyn Monroe was the cat’s meow. Was the epitome of what we would today call “hot.” Certainly in an age which saw the rise of the busty full-bodied calendar girl which graced many GIs lockers and then the explosion of a mainstream “girlie” magazine like Playboy which helped her career immensely one would be hard-pressed to name an actress who met the fantasies of more guys from that generation.     

Me, and while I won’t speak for my generation I think a lot of guys would agree with me, favored the softer sexuality of somebody like Julie Christie but that is just generational preferences. It took me a long time to not totally dismiss Ms. Monroe as anything but a face and figure until I saw her in the recent past in Some Like It Hot which showed her real comedic talents and then in the great if ill-fated The Misfits. She was still not the kind of woman who would keep me awake at night but an actress who could act more than just fill the screen with a busty figure and ruby red lips.

Of course for some men, some men like Bo in the film, the cowboy rancher from the lost planet of Montana, played by Don Murray, Cherie, Ms. Monroe’s role, the sight of seeing that pathetic nightclub singer whom he ran into heading west was something to keep him up at night. Keep his untutored school-boyish notions of “dating” and marriage on edge. And many an adult male in the movie audience back then would have liked to “rope” her in no questions asked.

Here is how love played out in this one. Bo, an ace cowboy, his true enough skill, was all set to set the world of the rodeo on fire with his skills. All set too to “discover” girls despite his advanced age of twenty-one as a result of leading sheltered life on the ranch. So he and his trusty companion set off for Phoenix by trusty transcontinental bus to the rodeo which will win him his fame. Of course the rodeo, like the carnival, like the gambling towns, has its fair share of distractions. In this case Cherie, a torch-less torch-singer seen in flash got Bo all riled up. Got him thinking that he could rope her in just like those calves he has been roping for years. (He might literally have believed that from some of his antics. Antics which would rate very high on today’s politically incorrect meter, mostly rightly). Cherie, a girl who whatever her lack of musical talents had been around the block more than once, did not know what to make of the kid cowboy. Mostly she spent her time trying to keep away from the grabby Bo.         

After winning almost everything there was to win in the rodeo Bo decided that he needed one more trophy, Cherie, who at best was lukewarm about him and his silly country ways (herself from the country well-versed in such foolishness). So he “kidnapped” her, took her on that forlorn bus back to Montana. Along the way the got stalled by a blinding snowstorm where Bo and the bus-driver finally have it out about leaving Cherie alone to do whatever she wanted. After being wailed by that bus-driver, sufficiently chastised Bo apologized for his misbehavior to Cherie and they part ways. Well not quite part since now that Bo seemed like he was not an escapee from an institution she saw where he might not be such a bad guy after all. And maybe the big sky country wouldn’t be so bad after all for a rolling stone like her. A cotton candy plot but enjoyable enough even if Ms. Monroe was/is not your cup of tea.