This film really took me by surprise. After all, by 1956, Marilyn Monroe was a bona fide star, having appeared in such blockbusters as GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, RIVER OF NO RETURN and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, so you would have expected 20th Century Fox to pull out all the stops with BUS STOP. However, despite some decent reviews, the film was a terrible mess due to a poor script and one performance in particular.

The biggest fault with the movie isn't Marilyn's overly broad performance but Don Murray's. Her acting was bad--no question about it. However, his overacting not only overshadowed Miss Monroe's shortcomings in her role, but really grated on my nerves. No young man can be THAT naive when it comes to women or when it comes to leaving their home--and that would even include Mowgli from THE JUNGLE BOOK! His performance (if you want to call it that) is more akin to having Jethro Bodine play the role!! It was that ridiculously overplayed and unsubtle. Murray, of course, can be blamed for much of this. However, I assume the film had a director (though it's not obvious) and someone had to write this drivel. You really have to see it to believe it. However, I am not the only one who thinks this about Murray in this film. One reviewer describes him as acting as if he escaped from a mental hospital and is off his medication!! Another said they wanted to shoot him in the head! In hindsight, I guess I'm being pretty kind with my review.

Now I am going to admit something that I very rarely do with films. For probably only the second or third time out of over 5300 reviews that I simply couldn't finish watching the film--Murray's character was THAT irritating. That's pretty bad--especially considering all the Ed Wood, Jr., Ray Dennis Steckler and Al Adamson films I have seen! Their films are cheap and meant to be grade-D drive-in movies--what's the excuse for this film for being almost equally bad?!

I did want to like Bus Stop, seeing as I always find Marilyn Monroe watchable, but I just didn't care for it. The film does look very nice, the costumes are very pretty, the sets and scenery don't look wobbly and superficial and the cinematography is excellent mostly. Bus Stop does have some good music too, and while her character isn't the most likable of all in her career Marilyn Monroe is very beautiful and charming. If you forgive the fact her acting feels occasionally tired in comparison to her other roles, she does do very well with a more tortured and very touching characterisation than ever before.

However, Joshua Logan's direction is quite poor. I have never particularly cared for Logan as a film director, excepting the flawed but entertaining South Pacific. His direction is reminiscent of his directing style in Paint Your Wagon, for me that means stage-bound and too smug. The writing feels stale and forced, I accept it was intended as a sort of absurdist kind of humour, but the script was mostly unfunny and lacked freshness. The story is on the weak side as well, in its structure it is an odd and predictable(in the way the romance is developed) one complete with an ending that felt very tacky and artificial and a closing sequence that fitted all too easily. The romance does have its poignant and heartfelt moments, but sometimes it also didn't work. A lot of the problem is to do with the fact that Monroe has the most irritating and at the same time blandest co-star of her career, even more so than Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl, in the form of Don Murray who overdoes it to no further ado and it doesn't help Bo isn't a particularly relateable and entirely unsympathetic character to begin with. And that's the problem, a vast majority of the characters I found more annoying than likable.

All in all, sorry as much as I do love Monroe I didn't care for Bus Stop really. 4/10 Bethany Cox

I doubt that there's ever been any movie hero as naive or as bumptious as Don Murray's Beau Decker in Bus Stop. By his standards the Pontipee family in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers were Oxford Dons. Still apparently in the courtship of women Decker seems to emulate the Pontipees.

Apparently in 1954-55 when Bus Stop was running on Broadway there were still parts of the west where women were a scarce comedy. So Murray who apparently has been somewhat housebroken by Arthur O'Connell in a lot of ways, just has had no schooling in the facts of life. Personally I think the greatest schooling you could have is either on a farm or a ranch, but what do I know?

Anyway Murray and O'Connell are taking Robert Bray's bus to Phoenix for the rodeo, but Murray has it in mind to bring back a wife. He does in the form of stripper Marilyn Monroe. She's a kid from the country herself, but with a bit more experience, after all she was almost married at 14.

William Inge who wrote a lot about rural life wrote Bus Stop following his acclaimed Picnic which also came to the screen in 1956. Bus Stop had a run of 478 performances with Kim Stanley and Albert Salmi in the roles of that Monroe and Murray played. Elaine Stritch won a Tony Award for the owner of the greasy spoon that is the Bus Stop of the title. Her part is played by Betty Field on the screen.

Don Murray was inexplicably nominated in The Supporting Actor category, inexplicable because that's one of the leads. It was Bus Stop's only Oscar nomination and he lost to Anthony Quinn for Lust For Life.

Bus Stop is one odd story, but thanks to William Inge's writing and Joshua Logan's direction of his ensemble cast, the story actually is sweet and entertaining. And I did love the theme with The Four Lads at the beginning and end of the film.

Does Murray get his 'angel'? Well the wrap him up like them their Romans do style did work for the Pontipees.