River of No Return

Matt Calder comes out of prison to collect his son, who has been staying with Kay, a saloon singer. Kay's man is a gambler chasing a gold claim; he takes Matt's horse and rifle and rides off. Father, son and Kay set out on the river on the one thing left to them, a raft. The current, the rocks and attacks along the bank are what they have to get through. Otto Preminger directed. Robert Mitchum plays Matt, Marilyn Monroe plays Kay and Tommy Rettig plays the boy. It was shot in CinemaScope, which raised the budget. Nothing on the shoot went well. Both Preminger and Monroe made the film reluctantly, under contract, and both thought the script was below par. Monroe brought her acting coach Natasha Lytess with her and Preminger clashed with her from the start. The river scenes were genuinely dangerous. On 19 August Monroe fell from the raft onto the rocks; her waders filled with water and she could not get up, Mitchum and others went into the river to pull her out, and her ankle was sprained. The injury kept her off set for days and eventually put her in a cast. Worse happened on another take. As the three went down the river on the raft one of the ropes broke and it nearly got away from the handlers off camera. One of the two standby rescue boats broke down. Monroe and Rettig held onto each other and a post; Mitchum was thrown into the water and pulled out several hundred yards downstream. The actors learned afterwards that their doubles had refused the stunt as too dangerous, and that Preminger had invented a need for close-ups to get the stars into it. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties widescreen westerns and want Mitchum and Monroe in the same frame. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a good script. That was the actors' own complaint, and the film survives on how it looks.