#58 — Marilyn Monroe as Elsie Marina in The Prince and the Showgirl (Laurence Olivier, 1957)

Marilyn Monroe’s professional challenges when filming The Prince and the Showgirl progressed so completely to the stuff of fearsome legend that they inspired a movie, My Week with Marilyn, released more than fifty years later. There are undisputed facts. Monroe routinely arrived late to the set and often didn’t know her lines, at least to the satisfaction of director Laurence Olivier. He was returning to the lead role of a pompous royal after playing it on stage opposite his wife Vivien Leigh, so he had the material down and was ferociously impatient with Monroe’s more exploratory approach. She wanted to find the character she was playing, and he wanted her to say the lines and look pretty. Whatever contentiousness might have been stirred up by the different approaches and temperaments of Monroe and Olivier, the finished film makes the argument that Monroe was right.

Monroe plays Elsie Marina, the showgirl of the film’s title. She’s performing in a silly stage musical in London that’s included on the itinerary of a visiting Carpathian prince (Olivier). He’s charmed by Elsie and invites her to a late-night dinner at his country’s Embassy. She believes it will be a gala event attended by a large group of people, but it’s instead an excuse for the prince to get her alone in posh quarters with suspect intent. His certainty that he has brought a pliant bimbo into his quarters is immediately proved foolish. Elsie has had her skirt chased plenty, and she knows how to rebuff the advances of a confident chauvinist.

The creativity of Monroe is evident in the personality that she infuses into every scene. Her Elsie is abundantly alive, reacting to the tedious bluster of the prince with a mix of umbrage, amusement, and take-no-guff confidence. As someone who has been forced to hone her street smarts, Elsie quickly clocks that she is tougher and wiser than this imperious figure before her. Monroe also signals that Elsie spots the vulnerability behind the prince’s facade, which sets up the plot’s inevitable pivot from conflict to canoodling. In Monroe’s rendering, Elsie might fall for the prince, but that doesn’t mean she relinquishes control. She’s shrewd and constantly engaged in thinking through her options. In a movie filled with flippantly comedic machinations, Monroe insists on playing a real person.

If Olivier was exasperated by Monroe, his condescension and bullying wore her down, too. Monroe came to this project off of the star-making hits The Seven Year Itch and Bus Stop. She was ascendent, and the smart strategy was to jump into more splashy film roles as quickly as she could. Instead, Monroe stepped away from show business for an extended period. Almost two full years passed between the release of The Prince and the Showgirl and her next film. Of course, that next film was Some Like It Hot, the Billy Wilder–directed comedy smash that contains her most enduring performance. That film was central to cementing her as an icon. It’s valuable to remember that she was more than a star, though. She was a real actress.

Previously….

About Greatish Performances
#1 — Mason Gamble in Rushmore
#2 — Judy Davis in The Ref
#3 — Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca
#4 — Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
#5 — Parker Posey in Waiting for Guffman
#6 — Patricia Clarkson in Shutter Island
#7 — Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise
#8 — Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
#9 — Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy
#10 — Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny
#11 — Nick Nolte in the “Life Lessons” segment of New York Stories
#12 — Thandie Newton in The Truth About Charlie
#13 — Danny Glover in Grand Canyon
#14 — Rachel McAdams in Red Eye
#15 — Malcolm McDowell in Time After Time
#16 — John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
#17 — Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander
#18 — Kurt Russell in The Thing
#19 — Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio
#20 — Linda Cardellini in Return
#21 — Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King
#22 — Oliver Platt in Bulworth
#23 — Michael B. Jordan in Creed
#24 — Thora Birch in Ghost World
#25 — Kate Beckinsale in The Last Days of Disco
#26 — Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys
#27 — Wilford Brimley in The Natural
#28 — Kevin Kline in Dave
#29 — Bill Murray in Scrooged
#30 — Bill Paxton in One False Move
#31 — Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight
#32 — Essie Davis in The Babadook
#33 — Ashley Judd in Heat
#34 — Mira Sorvino in Mimic
#35 — James Gandolfini in The Mexican
#36 — Evangeline Lilly in Ant-Man
#37 — Kelly Marie Tran in Star Wars: The Last Jedi
#38 — Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit
#39 — Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient
#40 — Katie Holmes in Pieces of April
#41 — Brie Larson in Short Term 12
#42 — Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums
#43 — Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings
#44 — Matthew Macfadyen in Pride & Prejudice
#45 — Peter Fonda in Ulee’s Gold
#46 — Raul Julia in The Addams Family
#47 — Delroy Lindo in Clockers
#48 — Mila Kunis in Black Swan
#49 — Sidney Poitier in Edge of the City
#50 — Lee Grant in The Landlord
#51 — Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut
#52 — Haley Lu Richardson in Columbus
#53 — Jenny Slate in The Obvious Child
#54 — Ray Liotta in Something Wild
#55 — Jean Hagen in Singin’ in the Rain
#56 — Matthew McConaughey as Dallas in Magic Mike
#57 — Teri Garr in Tootsie