英语文摘:Public fascination with Monroe endures

BEIJING, Sept. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Toni Westbrook-VanCleave was only 6 years old at the time, but she still remembers Marilyn Monroe strapping on a toy gun belt and playing cowboys and Indians with her young brother during a break in filming of "The Misfits."

Like other residents of the small northern Nevada town of Dayton, the US, she had no clue of the demons that drove Monroe to be consistently late on the set, causing frustrating delays for director John Huston and co-stars Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.

"She was gorgeous, very sweet, naive," recalled VanCleave, who was a US$10-a-day extra during a rodeo scene. "She wasn't snobby. She seemed real down to earth and friendly."

In testimony to the public's enduring fascination with Monroe, VanCleave and other locals will gather tomorrow and Sunday in Dayton, about 64 kilometers southeast of Reno, to mark the 50th anniversary of filming for the last complete movie for both Monroe and Gable.

The celebration will include a Monroe and Gable look-alike contest, a display of photographs of the stars taken in Dayton, a session of old-timers' reminiscences about the filming, and tours of the old bar where a lighthearted scene was shot of a bouncing Monroe playing paddle ball to the delight of male patrons.

Residents of Dayton, then an agricultural community of about 250, turned out en masse in 1960 to serve as extras or watch the filming, and those who are still around rave about the cast's friendliness and accessibility. The town has since mushroomed into a Reno bedroom community of more than 10,000.

"It was a big deal to have these Hollywood legends in town for a month or so. It's a source of pride for us," said Laura Tennant of the Historical Society of Dayton Valley, the celebration's sponsor.