On February 1, 1961, the movie “The Misfits” premiered. It was the only movie Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe appeared in together. Gable performed all of the movie stunts. He suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended and died ten days later. The premiere date would have been his 60th birthday. Monroe received the 1961 Golden Globe Award as "World Film Favorite" in March 1962, five months before her death. Directors Guild of America nominated John Huston as best director. “The Misfits” was the final completed film for both Monroe and Gable.

The film began shooting 16 months after the 1959 “Wild Horse Annie Act” was passed (that prohibited the use of motorized vehicles to capture wild horses and forbade the poisoning of water holes) and mustanging was in the public eye. The law was proving to be unenforced and the work was underway to gain broader protections and federal jurisdiction that would be realized in the 1971 Act that turns 50 years old this year.

“This movie is about broken dreams and broken people, in a harsh world. This movie is a character study about people who are unable or stubbornly unwilling to adapt to the world. Each of the characters in this movie is wounded and lost in some way, in the process of living and searching.” archived review Bygonely. (images below from Bygonely, taken by various onset photographers)

The climax of the film, as featured in the two clips below, takes place during wrangling scenes on a Nevada dry lake 12 miles east of Dayton, NV, near Stagecoach. The area today is known as "Misfits Flat" and is part of the Virginia range horse area managed by the state. Ironically, after all of the attention these horses drew to wild horses in the West, they did not live on federal land and were not protected by the law that passed a decade later.

Use the buttons above to move through the online exhibit.

Or you can sit back and watch a full documentary on the making of “The Misfits” below. The documentary runs for nearly 1 hour.

If you do not have time to watch the entire documentary, above, the following time code should provide worthwhile highlights: 42:00 – 52:20 (the end).

Exhibit created and presented by Wild Horse Education.

We thank the Nevada Historical Society and the University of Nevada Reno for providing permissions to feature material from their collections.

The content of this exhibit is protected under copyright laws. Much of this content can only be reproduced through written permission. Contact Laura@WildHorseEducation.org for more information.