The Lost Marilyn Monroe Film That Never Was: What Something’s Got to Give Could Have Been

Hollywood is a place where dreams are made — and sometimes, tragically, left unfinished. Among its most haunting tales is that of Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe’s ill-fated final project that was supposed to mark her triumphant return to the screen. Instead, it became a ghost of what could have been, a shimmering fragment of a legend cut short.

After her celebrated performance in The Misfits (1960), Monroe sought to reinvent herself once more, stepping into Something’s Got to Give, a remake of the 1940 screwball comedy My Favorite Wife. Paired opposite Dean Martin, she was cast as a long-lost wife returning home to find her husband remarried, promising a lighthearted, romantic romp. On paper, it was the perfect comeback. In reality, it spiraled into chaos.

From the start, the production seemed cursed. Monroe, physically frail and emotionally worn from years of battling illness, addiction, and depression, struggled to meet the studio’s grueling expectations. Her frequent absences — exacerbated by surgeries and personal turmoil — drove 20th Century Fox executives to fury as the production hemorrhaged money and time.

Tensions reached a boiling point when Monroe famously skipped a day of shooting to perform “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” for John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. While her dazzling appearance became immortalized in pop culture, it was a fatal blow to her already strained relationship with the studio. Monroe was fired shortly after, and the studio frantically sought replacements, considering Kim Novak and Shirley MacLaine. But Dean Martin, loyal to his co-star, refused to continue without her, forcing Fox to begrudgingly rehire Monroe.

Plans were made to resume filming in October 1962. But Monroe would never make it back to the set. Her untimely death on August 4, 1962, abruptly ended any hope of finishing Something’s Got to Give. What remained was a broken dream, gathering dust in the studio vaults.

Yet not everything disappeared into history’s shadows. In 1989, about 30 minutes of Monroe’s filmed scenes were rediscovered and pieced together for documentaries, offering a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been. Fans still swoon over footage of Monroe, ethereal and vulnerable, slipping into a pool wearing nothing but a robe — an unforgettable image of a woman trying to reclaim her place in a world slipping through her fingers. Whispers persist that up to nine hours of raw footage may still exist, locked away, perhaps never to be seen.

Something’s Got to Give was never finished. It never had a premiere or a final curtain call. Yet, in the fragments that survive, it captures the raw edge of Marilyn Monroe’s final days — a portrait of a star burning bright even as her world unraveled. It stands as one of Hollywood’s most poignant unfinished legacies, a reminder that some of its greatest stories are the ones that never got to be told.