Considering how popular the Western was in 1950s Hollywood, Marilyn did relatively little work in the genre. She had a bit part as a chorus girl in A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950), which was primarily a comedy; while The Misfits (1961), with its modern-day setting, is more akin to a New Wave existential drama.
That leaves us with River of No Return (1954): and while not generally considered among her very best films – or the greatest Westerns – it’s visually stunning and action-packed, with musical numbers bringing added depth to Marilyn’s performance.
Writing for Collider, Adam Grinwald takes a fresh look at how River of No Return stands up today.
“River of No Return plays all the notes a Western film in the ’50s would be expected to: there’s heroism, danger, gunplay, thrills, and scenery of a beautiful American landscape. Helmed by the great Otto Preminger, the film places Monroe on a top-billing along with Robert Mitchum … It’s Monroe, though, that truly deserves the top billing in River of No Return. It’s her that makes this picture as memorable as it is … She walks around with her Rapunzelesque blonde hair and her blue jeans, and she croons her lines with a breathy vulnerability that pulls you in. She sings a short setlist of musical numbers (for which Monroe did her own singing), guitar in hand, and reminds us time and time again that her gargantuan level of fame is very much deserved. When she’s not singing, she’s extracting sympathy through her fluttering eyelashes and wounded vulnerability or giving zingy little punchlines that show her knack for comedic timing … When we see Marilyn Monroe sitting out on a charred-up tree stump, plucking a guitar and warbling a nice tune about woodland critters, her thick blonde locks cascading down to her waist, an ancient mountain range rising up from nothing like some divine beast, it feels like something much greater than anything anywhere else in the film. It feels like a movie as movies should be: glamorous, majestic, and larger than life.”
The Marilyn Report 