budgie_uk just posted about the rather wonderful closing scene in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and the fact that Spencer Tracy died almost straight after filming was complete. The fact that he's sharing the scene with Katherine Hepburn, who knew he was dying, makes the scene even more powerful than it already is and it got me thinking about things like that, real life that adds something to a film in a way that just makes the whole even more than it would be otherwise.
The one other film that really springs to mind that that's true of is The Misfits. Now, The Misfits is far from a perfect film. Marilyn sleepwalks through much of it, Gable is clearly slaughtered half the time and the trouble on set shows in some of the film. When it's good though, it's brilliant. You have a film about a group of angry, damaged people trying to find their place in the world being acted by... a group of angry, damaged people trying to find their place in the world. Apart from Bus Stop (a much better film, although that's not to say The Misfits isn't well worth watching if you've not seen it) it's the best straight acting that Marilyn did and showed quite how good she could have been if she hadn't been typecast as the comedy blonde (which she did brilliantly, but that's not the point) and hadn't let people tell her what to do so much and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that she's clearly putting so much of herself into it. The moment at the end of this clip with her in long shot screaming at the world just strikes me as being her, the actress, doing the same thing.
Unfortunately it was the last completed film of both Monroe and Gable. Gable actually had a heart attack two days after shooting finished and died ten days later, a heart attack almost certainly induced because he insisted on doing his own stunts despite not being a well man already, and Marilyn committed suicide a year and a half later. Even during filming she had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital and had previously attempted to take her own life. Add to that the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller (who write the screenplay for The Misfits) at the same time and you can understand why the anger and the hurt in her voice are there to such a large extent.
Like I say, it may not be a perfect film and may not be the best final roles that an actor could have wished for, but in it's own way it's fitting finale for two such messed up people as Monroe and Gable (Montgomery Clift, the other major role, died four years later as well but had a few other roles afterwards so this isn't his last film as a lot of people think. Freud, Judgement At Nuremberg and The Defector all followed The Misfits).
Hmm, now mentioning Judgement At Nuremberg makes me want to go and watch that as well. A truly remarkable piece of cinema with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift all absolutely delivering some of the best performances of their respective careers. William Shatner is in it too...