This short tape is not the skeleton of the sex comedy that never was, but a documentary on how it didnt get made. intended as a remake of the witty little Cary Grant-Irene Dunne romp My Favorite Wife (1940), Somethings Got To Give was the last film of Marilyn Monroes Fox contract.
Despite the lukewarm reception for her last pictures, she still had director approval poor George Cukor and chose her own leading man, her friend Dean Martin. His salary, though, reflected Foxs disenchantment: $100,000, when they were paying Elizabeth Taylor $1 million. What we get is a detailed but weak account of the eight tortuous weeks of production from April to June 1962, when Cukor desperately shot everything he could without the star, even to Martin doing his half of the scenes alone.
Meanwhile, Marilyn was pleading ailments like sinusitis at every turn, and was found at least once in May in a barbiturate coma. When she was around she was apparantly preoccupied with bizarre anxieties like complaints about the size of co-star Cyd Charisses breasts. As chronicles of disasters go, its sketchy stuff in the absence of interviews with Cukor, Martin or major Fox players.
Schipper resorts to the not-very-useful reminiscences of the two people who played Monroes children (aged four and eight when they did their scene with her) as well as the line producer, the film editor, MMs overworked stand-in and her psychiatrists daughter. There is not much from the shoot, either, since she filmed so few scenes, except take after take with the kids and a 15-second scene with a dog that took a whole day to shoot not Marilyns fault, it was the pooch who kept fluffing. The famous moonlight skinnydip is included, however, as is the newsreel footage of Marilyn panting Happy Birthday, Mr. President for JFK in New York.
That little jaunt in May enraged Cukor and the Fox honchos, who went ballistic, fired her on June 8 for spectacular absenteeism and filed a breach of contract suit. Lee Remick was hired to replace her, but Martin walked. So within weeks the studio rehired Monroe at double her original salary to complete the picture in September. And then she died. Later the production was begun anew, retitled Move Over Darling and starring Doris Day and James Garner. That was lightly entertaining.