When Marilyn Monroe filmed “The Misfits” in 1961 with Clark Gable, she stripped off her bed sheet as she was going to expose her nude body in what was going to be the first time an American actress appeared naked on camera.

Director John Huston ended up leaving the scene on the cutting room floor, and the footage was thought to have been destroyed decades ago. Now, over fifty years later, the author of a new biography of Monroe has learned that the scene actually survived all these years!

Charles Casillo was stunned when he interviewed Curtice Taylor, son of the film’s producer Frank Taylor, and learned that the scene had been in a locked cabinet since his father died in 1999.

“The Misfits” was the last movie that Monroe ever completed, as she passed away the next year due to a sleeping pill overdose at the age of 36.

“If you read [The Misfits] script… it doesn’t say anything about nudity… When she did the scene, everyone was shocked on the set,” Casillo said. “Huston sighed and said, ‘Honey, I’ve seen them before’ Gable and others… wanted [it] to be left in. Huston didn’t… because he felt it… was totally unnecessary to the scene.”

Taylor said that he could understand why his father wanted the scene, which lasted around 45 seconds, to be in the film.

“It’s much more passionate,” he said.

“So Gable’s fully clothed. He comes into her bedroom. She’s asleep. He caresses and kisses her neck, turns her face around and gives her a good lip-lock,” Taylor said, describing the scene. “That exists in the scene in the [final] film – but not to the passionate degree of this one, which is much better. The smile on her face when he’s kissing her shoulder is just sublime.”

Taylor believes it was Monroe’s training as a method actress that had her drop the sheet.

“Why would a woman sitting up in bed, with nobody in the room, pull the sheet up and then try to put a blouse on at the same time? It makes no sense,” Taylor said. “So she just drops the sheet. I think it’s one of the reasons she did this. There are quite a few takes of this scene. Whenever she dropped the sheet, which she did a few times, Huston would say  ‘Cut, remember the sheet, Marilyn.'”

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