Lists: those American dramas ...

Final List of the season - we are all listed out! After covering British, French and Italian favourites its now a return look at those great American dramas from the Golden Age of the 1950s and 1960s - the heyday of Kazan and Kramer,  Wyler and Wilder, Huston, Mankiewicz, Cukor, Minnelli, Nick Ray, Preminger, Brooks, Ritt, etc. and when American drama was ruled by the likes of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, William Faulkner, William Inge etc. We have covered them in detail here before, so this is a quick roundup. Lots more at labels - particularly Tennessee Williams ,,, (below: NIGHT OF THE IGUANA)

We have to begin of course with those early Kazans; 

• A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
• ON THE WATERFRONT
  
• EAST OF EDEN
• A FACE IN THE CROWD
• Nicholas Ray's THE LUSTY MEN in 1952, a strong rodeo drama bringing out the best in Mitchum and Susan Hayward.(right) 
• More baroque Ray with his 1954 JOHNNY GUITAR - the first film I saw, aged 8. 
• Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE of course, and Stevens' GIANT to complete the Dean hat-trick. 
• Cukor's 1954 A STAR IS BORN, the best musical drama ever
• THE BIG COUNTRY in 1958 is really a William Wyler drama which just happens to be set in the west. 
• CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
• SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER
• BONJOUR TRISTESSE
• SEPARATE TABLES
• THE NUN'S STORY
• ON THE BEACH.

Those 20th Century Fox literarary adaptations came thick and fast:

• THE LONG HOT SUMMER - Faulkner, 1958
• THE SOUND AND THE FURY in 1959 - Faulkner, Good cast: Brynner, Woodward, Leighton
• THE WAYWARD BUS - a long unseen Steinbeck from 1957, Jayne Mansfield and Joan Collins! Its a fascinating mess or Trash Classic
• SONS AND LOVERS - D H Lawrence gets the Fox treatment in 1960 ...
• SANCTUARY - another Faulkner misfire, from Tony Richardson in 1961 - Lee Remick and Yves Montand make the oddest team, but Lee shines ...
• HEMINGWAY'S ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN - 1962, as per recent review. 

The 1960s upped the ranks with those new directors like John Frankenheimer, Arthur Penn, Robert Mulligan, while John Huston went on and on ....

• THE MISFITS
• ONE EYED JACKS - Brando's brooding western, 1961
• ALL FALL DOWN - a perennial favourite
• THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
• SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS
• THE MIRACLE WORKER
• TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
• DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
• LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
• THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS
  
• TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN 
• THE STRIPPER
• NIGHT OF THE IGUANA 
• WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
• REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE
• SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH
• SUMMER AND SMOKE
• THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED
• INSIDE DAISY CLOVER
• THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE 
• MIDNIGHT COWBOY.
  

Still of the day: The Misfits

Sky Movies are running lots of Marilyn movies just now, but never THE MISFITS. I used to be obsessed about this 1961 John Huston film when I was younger, and saw it lots of times in that pre-video world - I had to go to any screening of it. Its one I need to see again now, before too long. Lots on it at MM labels. 

And here's Thelma .....

Monty with .....

Marilyn in THE MISFITS / Elizabeth in A PLACE IN THE SUN / Lee Remick in WILD RIVER / Donna Reed in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, and visiting Jack and Tony on SOME LIKE IT HOT ...

The Misfits and those Sixties dramas

Nice to see THE MISFITS back in selected cinemas again, with a new poster (well, at the BFI Southbank in a new restoration extended run as part of their Monroe season) with interesting reviews in the papers, it seems Huston's 1961 drama (often seen as too melancholy and downbeat for some - lacking the savage humour of Tennessee's NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, another Huston hit - or Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?) so now THE MISFITS has been re-evaluated and appreciated, with its star power as potent as ever and its certainly a key Huston film.

 "Monroe and Clift are both truly remarkable, especially together" says The Daily Telegraph, at:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/the-misfits/review/

Against the odds a highly erratic Marilyn Monroe gives an extraordinary performance in John Huston's elegaic film  of Arthur Miller's script, conveying her character's great empathy with the cowboys (Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift) out of kilter with a modern, wages-based world, and her identification with the wild mustangs they're plannng to kill for petfood. Gable and Clift are also exceptional (as is Eli Wallach as the resentful car mechanic Guido) in roles that celebrate and subvert their screen images. 

I was obsessed about THE MISFITS for a long time, back in my twenties when back in that pre-video age before we could own copies of favourite films, I could never miss a screening. Apart from the cast, it has maybe the most perfect black and white photography, as lensed by Russell Metty (who did TOUCH OF EVIL among others) . It was a very difficult shoot, with all the world press covering it - including Magnum's Eve Arnold, who knew Monroe and later published her book on the film and its making - Eve Arnold label. I was a kid at the time and remember all the press coverage.  Like EAST OF EDEN, PLEIN SOLEIL or the later BLOW-UP, it was a film that just spoke to me .... particularly as the Monroe mythology took off in the early '60s. 

Gable seems sadly aged here, after his previous one IT STARTED IN NAPLES where he looks fine with Sophia Loren (over 30 years younger than him), Clift is of course marvellous as usual, after his great WILD RIVER with Kazan, and before going back to Huston for the questionable FREUD, Wallach (who lived on to 98, it was fascinating seeing him as a wizened old man) scores as the bitter, resentful Guido using the death of his wife to try to score with Marilyn's Roslyn, while Thelma Ritter is bliss as the Reno landlady used to the ways of those cowboys. As in ALL ABOUT EVE (which of course Marilyn was also in as Miss Caswell) she vanishes from the film too soon.

Thats another fascinating thing about THE MISFITS - its a mere ten years from those bit parts in Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE and Mank's ALL ABOUT EVE in 1950 to her final completed role here, filmed in 1960, as Miller's heroine. She has some great moments here, hugging the tree or relating to the dog, and just with Gable and that marvellous ending with them in the car .... its a very affecting moment. (She did though look marvellous in the uncompleted SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE, back with Fox and Cukor). 
The scenes with the horses too are perfectly done and perfectly Huston. 

It is of course a great early Sixties black and white drama, along with other favourites like ALL FALL DOWN, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES Demy's BAY OF ANGELS, Malle's LE FEU FOLLET, Losey's THE SERVANT, Huston's NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, Nichols' WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? etc. Sixties dramas, we love them. 
More on THE MISFITS at label.  

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

Coming up (before my 1,500th post): A STAR IS BORN and those Fifties dramas / REBECCA at 75 / A new MR RIPLEY at 60 / Bette Davis / Flora Robson / Diana Dors / Dorothy McGuire - the perfect mother / British B-movies continued / and back to Marcello, Romy, Catherine, Dirk, Antonioni, Lee Remick  et al ...

Grant & Stewart -v- Cooper & Gable ...

Cary Grant and James Stewart now seem the most popular and timeless of the classic male stars – maybe each having done 4 films with Hitchcock, which are always on show somewhere, helps? (NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST are certainly timeless classics). Whereas Clark Gable and Gary Cooper seem not as popular now and did not leave any late classics for us to mull over –well, apart from the elegaic THE MISFITS for Gable …

Both Grant and Stewart also had runs of popular films in the second half of the Fiftes; Grant squiring the likes of Kelly, Kerr, Bergman, Loren and continuing into the Sixties with the tailormade hit CHARADE, before bowing out in 1966; whereas Stewart also had that good run of Anthony Mann westerns and popular hits like THE GLENN MILLER STORY and ANATOMY OF A MURDER, he too continued into the Sixties playing bumbling fathers in Fox comedies and still busy in westerns.

Gable and Cooper though had gone by the dawn of the Sixties – Gable dying at 59 in 1960, and Cooper aged 60 in 1961. Like Spencer Tracy they seem to have aged rapidly, perhaps after years of hard living. Their later films, while entertaining and popular enough at the time, do not get much exposure these days ... 

Wyler’s FRIENDLY PERSUASION may be Coop’s last big hit, in 1956, we like it a lot and he is perfect in it.. He followed this with LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON which - despite Audrey Hepburn -  was a lesser-seen Wilder (which did not work for me at all), then a Jerry Wald literary adaptation (from O’Hara) for Fox: TEN NORTH FREDERICK, and two tough westerns: Mann’s MAN OF THE WEST and Daves’ THE HANGING TREE, in Rossen’s turgid THEY CAME TO CORDURA in 1959 he and Rita Hayworth are both touching – two beauties ravaged by time (what a difference 20 years makes), and he finished with two Michael Anderson thrillers made in England: he is effective in THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE with Heston, but ill-at-ease as the murder suspect (as if he would kill Deborah Kerr!) in the weak THE NAKED EDGE in 1961.

Gable after some routine westerns scored with Doris Day in TEACHER’S PET, and guyed his older image in the delightful BUT NOT FOR ME with Lilli Palmer and Carroll Baker in 1959, and was then off to romance Sophia Loren (30 years younger than him) in the popular IT STARTED IN NAPLES (left) before returning to the States for the tough shoot of THE MISFITS for Huston. Did all the delays and doing those stunts with the horses bring on his early demise? He certainly looked sadly aged here.

Perhaps if they – Coop and Gable – had the longevity of Grant and Stewart we may have seen more from them and maybe some more classics – not from Hitchcock though, by the Sixties he was using younger actors: Rod Taylor, Connery, Newman. 

Perhaps the Grant and Stewart personas with their constant sense of humour (even in serious roles)  fitted in better with suit-and-tie mid-century America, and those Hitchcocks certainly helped, Gable and Coop seemed more at home at war or out west. Gable used to finish at 5.00pm every day regardless and seemed happy doing mainly routine fare, cast with the likes of Lana Turner, Jane Russell or Ava Gardner. At least his later films got him Doris Day, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, and of course he had those constant revivals of GONE WITH THE WIND to keep his brand alive. 

Marilyn at the BFI ...

Marilyn Monroe finally gets a retrospective season in June at London's BFI Southbank cinema - viewing her, accordng to the programme notes, from a feminist slant, with practically all of her major films, including those interesting early ones CLASH BY NIGHT, MONKEY BUSINESS, DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK and the delicious WE'RE NOT MARRIED and from NIAGARA onwards. 
It shows what a sparking comedienne and singer she was as well as dramatic actress ....SOME LIKE IT HOT plays a few times too on Sky this week, I shall of course be loving it all over again. (Jack and Tony really should have shared Best Actor Oscar in 1959 - sorry, Charlton). 

Now, do I need to see THE MISFITS again on the big screen, its only getting an extended run of 34 screenings - yes, it might be nice, for old times sake - it was a movie I was obsessed about (like I was with James Dean's) and go to all the time, back in that pre-video/dvd/blu-ray age.  Lots more Marilyn of course at label. 

RIP continued

Eli Wallach  (1915-2014). Its a cause for celebration if someone reaches the grand age of 98 ! What a long and varied career he had. For me he will always be the mean and resentful Guido in THE MISFITS (above, left) - and he certainly outlived that cast! It was also fun seeing him pop up in items as diverse as HOW TO STEAL A MILLION or GENGHIS KHAN, and much later in THE GHOST, and of course those baddies in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN or HOW THE WEST WAS WON. He was also good with Jeanne Moreau in their episode of THE VICTORS in 1963. I really will have to re-see BABY DOLL now. Eli turned up in the most surprising places, after films with Marilyn Monroe and Jeanne Moreau, it was odd but fun seeing him as the comic villain in Disney's THE MOONSPINNERS in 1964  with Hayley Mills and Pola Negri, not to mention Irene Papas and Joan Greenwood - Eli worked with them all! - right up to Kate Winslet in THE HOLIDAY. Not to mention his career in the theatre, and with his wife Anne Jackson, who survives him. 

Ruby Dee (1922-014), aged 91, was an acress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and activist. She is best known for films like A PLACE IN THE SUN in 1961, DO THE RIGHT THING in 1989 and AMERICAN GANGSTER in 2007 for which she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress. She was married to Ossie Davis until his death in 2005 She began her illustrious theatre career working with Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Her other films include Mankiewicz's NO WAY OUT in 1950 (review at Mank label), THE BALCONY in 1963 and THE INCIDENT. On television she did everything from PEYTON PLACE and POLICE WOMAN to THE GOLDEN GIRLS. 

Gerry Goffin (1939-2014), aged 75. He wrote (writing intially with his wife Carole King) the songs we grew up with: "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow", "Take Good Care Of My Baby", "Go Away Little Girl", he penned over 50 Top 40 US hits, and 21 UK hits. I particularly like his lyrics for "Up On The Roof",  and "It Might As Well Rain Until September", "One Fine Day", "Halfway to Paradise" (a UK hit for Billy Fury), Dusty's "Some Of Your Loving" and Rod Stewart's "Its Not The Spotlight".

Francis Matthews (1927-1986) aged 86, British actor, successful in the Hammer Horror films like THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS, and RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK. He played PAUL TEMPLE for the BBC and was the voice of CAPTAIN SCARLETT.

Alan Bestic, (1921-2014), aged 92. Irish Journalist and author, his 1969 THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IRISH is still a very droll read. 

Me in front of a OZ graphic in 1967

Felix Dennis (1947-2014), aged 67. Felix was one of the 1960s movers and shakers, a founder of the notorious OZ magazine, which led to a court trial on charges of "conspiracy to corrupt pubic morals" due to a sexually expicit Rupert Bear cartoon - the counterculture magazine was influential in other areas too with its psychedilic graphics and design - one had to buy it every month. The court case was defended by John Mortimer and Dennis and his colleagues Richard Neville and Jim Anderson, were acquitted, but convicted of minor charges. He was also a publisher, poet and philantropist, who became very wealthy with his publishing company with ground-breaking computer titles. 

More Brando: the Countess & Reflections ...

Two more Brando films from his great era in the '60s. After Penn's marvellous THE CHASE in 1966 (see below), its a return visit to A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG - Charlie Chaplin's last film which opened in January 1967 (I was in the crowd at the London premiere and saw Brando and the Chaplin family arrive, but no Loren ....). Being 20 at the time I did not like this one at all, it seeming hopelessly old-fashioned. Looking at it again now I have mixed feelings, it does not really work as a comedy or a romance, as there is so little chemistry between the two leads ....

Natascha, a White Russian countess, stows away on a luxury liner at Hong Kong, determined to seek a new life in America. Natascha hides in the cabin of Ogden Mears, a millionaire diplomat, thereby causing an endless stream of misunderstandings and complications; particularly when his wife, Martha, joins the trip at Honolulu, necessitating a 'marriage' to Ogden's valet, Hudson, a saronged-dive overboard and more subterfuge on the part of Ogdon and his associate, Harvey.

Loren & Chaplin by Eve Arnold

Brando and Loren did not get on at all, the early scenes are fitfully amusing as we are entranced by the old-fashioned feel of it all. We are obviously on a studio set for the ship's suite with all those doors and endless dashing in and out of rooms. Loren carries it all by herself and certainly worked hard, she apparantly had good rapport with Chaplin and was pleased to work with him. Brando though is the wrong leading man here, he had done comedy before but seems bored and ill at ease here, and looks fed up with it all by the end, but it seems he had to replicate exactly what Charlie wanted as Chaplin used to act out the scenes for them .... so it probably didnt give him any room to improvise. Someone like James Garner would surely have been more ideal

though the whole selling point is that this is Brando in a romantic comedy with Loren, written and directed by Chaplin, who did the music too, including that nice tune "This Is My Song". His script though may have been fine in the '30s and '40s (where there were lots of movie stowaways and runaway heiresses) but in the middle of the Swinging '60s seemed hopelessly old-fashioned. Margaret Rutherford has a delicious scene, English farceur Patrick Cargill has his moments, and our THE BIRDS favourite Tippi Hedren pops in to play Brando's icy wife. Questions remain unanswered: how does our  countess who has no money get the changes of clothes including the Hawaiian outfit to dive overboard in, and the scenes in Hawaii and on the beach are obviously studio too and rather clumsy.
That other older English director Alfred Hitchcock also did a film at that year TORN CURTAIN with another top two '60s stars (Newman and Andrews)  similarly ill at ease.  A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG then is fitfully amusing, but does not really work. Various Chaplin children pop up, including Geraldine, and the venerable Chaplin himself too.Its a pity Loren's mid-'60s two with Brando and Newman (Ustinov's LADY L, also fitfully amusing and good to look at) were not better films or better received. She didn't fare much better with Burton and O'Toole in the early '70s (1972's MAN OF LA MANCHA is certainly worth discovering now, as per review, Loren/O'Toole labels.)

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE - Southern Fried Gothic!

In 1967 Marlon headed John Huston's drama, replacing Montgomery Clift (who died in 1966) initially cast in what would have been his 4th outing with Taylor .... we are back in that Deep South Gothic universe as created by Tennessee Williams or Carson McCullers or William Inge.  This is a McCullers tale and a very twisted bizarre one it is ...

On a U.S. Army post circa 1948, a major who is an impotent, latent homosexual is married to an infantile wife who never misses an opportunity to ridicule his masculine failings. He displaces his hostility by brutally flogging her horse and she retaliates by humiliating him before a houseful of guests, repeatedly slashing him across the face with her riding crop. She is also committing adultery with the officer next door, who's wife cut off her nipples with garden shears after the death of her baby, and has sought solace in the ministrations of her effeminate houseboy. The sixth character, coveted by the major, is a darkly handsome soldier, a voyeur and lingerie-fondler, given to nightly appearances as a peeping tom in the wife's bedroom and daily sessions of horseback riding in the middle of the woods stark naked.....

 I think that about covers it. Naturally it all climaxes in an outpouring of violence as repressed feelings come to the surface. The cast is the thing here ... Brando acquits himself well as the oddly gay major (Steiger was also playing repressed gay that year in THE SERGEANT, also set on a military base - in France - in contrast to his more flamboyant gay in '68's NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY, Steiger label); Elizabeth Taylor is over-ripe and note perfect in another of her Southern roles as the rather dim, rather coarse insensitive wife (her hilarious party food monologue is a career highlight), and the great Julie Harris is back in McCullers territory (as in THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING) as the other wife, with her houseboy. Seeing Taylor and Harris together inevitably reminds one of Abra in EAST OF EDEN and Leslie Benedict in GIANT and how they both liked James Dean .... Brando shows what a fascinating actor he is when engaged in a role, he has some great moments here, the scene with Firebird the horse and his breakdown, his monologue on the enlisted men's lives and comeraderie "without clutter", and Taylor whipping him in her Alexandre of Paris hair creation! Brian Keith is solid as Harris's baffled husband, and Robert Forster is the naked solider. One can see too Huston's fascinating with the horses ....

Huston's film was originally meant to be shown in washed-out, desaturated golden tones, which certainly did not happen with the prints on general release, but the dvd now has the correct look. Good now to savour this again - it has long been unseen here, and this is in fact a Korean dvd issue I got. Key moments include Brando talking to himself and rubbing cosmetics into his face, and a supposedly naked Taylor (body double obviously) and all Julie Harris's scenes ... its all a weird mix of camp and drama, Southern Fried Gothic! - certainly one of Huston's most intriguing and under-rated, from his great '50s-'60s period (which included HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON, THE UNFORGIVEN, THE MISFITS (see label), NIGHT OF THE IGUANA).  Must dig out his equally odd 1969 THE KRELIN LETTER again soon too.

BAFTAs, Terence, Gina, Rupert, Clark & Coop ...

Musings on a snowy day indoors on the BAFTA awards and other stuff ... it was amusing (for a while anyway) seeing the impossible-to-get-away-from-here Stephen Fry hosting, spouting a beard and commenting on the amount of actors who had come with their beards (cue Clooney, Jackman, Cooper, Bardem, Affleck, Phoenix, all spouting lots of facial hair - is this a new trend? I shaved off my own beard in my late 30s when it was getting a bit too greyish ....) .

One actor not there was veteran Terence Stamp, but he turned up next morning on breakfast tv, to promote this new film SONG FOR MARION (another of the 'movies for and by oldies') which teams him with that other great '60s survivor Vanessa Redgrave. Stamp, always so stylish and clothes conscious, looked smart and dapper, if older, at 74 now.  I did a post on him recently here, (Stamp label), on his role TOBY DAMMIT for Fellini in 1968.  Terence was pleased that another veteran, 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva had won the BAFTA Best Actress award for AMOUR, and I had to agree with his comment that it was a shame that Trintignant "so beautiful when he was young" as Terry said, was also not nominated for that very brave performance.

Also in the news lately, is that other veteran: Gina Lollobrigida, also 85, with those stories about a fake marriage by proxy.  Here, in "The Sunday Times", Gina gave her version of events and is seen posed in front of that 1954 photo I have used here before, of her with Marilyn Monroe, in this photo by Nick Cornish. Marilyn had told her that she Marilyn was the American Gina Lollobrigida! Gina also says Marilyn was "modest, an exceptional woman. I was fond of her because she was really undefended and what happened to her happened becasue she wasn't a strong character. I was strong and I defended myself more". She also referred to the time when Howard Hughes was chasing her, he was the most persistent suitor she ever had.

Meanwhile, also in the news here, is a new food scare with horsemeat, labelled as beef, found in ready-meals, burgers and kebabs. Seemingly to originate from horses in Romania, but now also found in abbatoirs and processing plants here in the UK. Thankfully I do not use those kind of meals ..... but did eat horse once in France, in the '70s, but did not know what it was until afterwards, it did taste sweeter than usual beef though .... here is that marvellous round-up scene from Huston's THE MISFITS where the mustangs were caught and sold for pet-food. Now, its food for humans ...

Meanwhile, good to see the run of THE JUDAS KISS continues until April - we saw this last year, as per review (theatre label), and it has been a success, and is now back in business in London's west end, with career-best notices for Rupert Everett.  His latest book of memoirs "Vanished Years" is also in my pending pile to read, that attracted rave reviews too. My next theatre date is next week, for that well-received revival of PRIVATES ON PARADE, more on that then.

Watching (again) those recent Hitchcock revivals - several titles get screened every week here - got me musing on how timeless Cary Grant and James Stewart appear now, and that is due in large part to their 4 each for Hitchcock, which are always on view out there .... their contemporaries Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, after their great years in the '30s and '40s, do not seem as fortunate; no Hitch's for them and their last films in the '50s are not that noteworthy or seldom revived (apart from THE MISFITS), they both also died on the cusp of the '60s, whereas too Grant and Stewart worked well into the 1960s. 

Coop had a few modest successes after that hit FRIENDLY PERSUASION which I like a lot, from 1956 - some more tough westerns with Anthony Mann's '58 MAN OF THE WEST and Daves' THE HANGING TREE in '59; but I find him all wrong and too old opposite Audrey Hepburn in Wilder's disappointing - for me - LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, and in that Fox version of O'Hara TEN NORTH FREDERICK in '58. THEY CAME TO CORDURA is a good one, but little seen, for Rossen in 1959 where he and the equally aged Rita Hayworth are touching; then those final two made in England with Michael Anderson: the so-so WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE with Heston and a good English cast, and the dull thriller THE NAKED EDGE with Deborah Kerr in 1961 where he clearly looks unwell. 

Gable fared better: TEACHER'S PET with Doris was a hit in '58, as was IT STARTED IN NAPLES with Sophia in '60 , then he was suddenly aged for his final, THE MISFITS with Monroe and a quality film by Arthur Miller for Huston, still a key movie now. I also like BUT NOT FOR ME a nice comedy, due for a re-watch, with Lilli Palmer and Carroll Baker, in '59. Clearly though for both maybe years of hard living, drink and smoking had taken their toll.

Gable died in 1960 aged 59; Coop in 1961 aged 60, whereas Cary went on until 1986 aged 82,  and Stewart till 1997 aged 89 ...