Romantic comedies are not supposed to make my blood pressure rise when I'm watching them, out of sheer agitation. They're not supposed to get me so upset and worked up that it affects my sleep. And yet here we are. I was actually looking forward to "Bus Stop," which I knew was one of Marilyn Monroe's major hits. I'd just seen Marilyn in "The Prince and the Showgirl," which had a famously troubled production, but the end product came out just fine. And at first, "Bus Stop" seemed promising, starting with a naive cowboy named Beauregard (Don Murray), who arrives in Phoenix, Arizona all the way from Montana, to compete in a rodeo. He's also supposed to be looking for a bride, which he's unsure about, having no experience with women. However, Beau soon meets a cafe singer named Cherie (Monroe), and is instantly smitten.
What I expected to follow was a cute romance between Beau and Cherie, maybe involving some rodeo and nightclub antics. Instead, the film goes the screwball route. Beau comes on so strong that Cherie rejects him almost immediately. Beau, however, refuses to take no for an answer, and goes after her relentlessly. He's gotten everything else in his life by never giving up. Why should a girl be any different? Most of the film is taken up with Cherie being dragged around town and eventually outright kidnapped by Beau, despite rejecting him again and again. She orchestrates multiple escapes, but all of them are thwarted. The most outrageous moment comes when she almost makes it on to a bus to Los Angeles, but Beau literally lassos her like a steer, and forces her on to a bus to Montana. It's only when the bus gets stranded at a local diner due to snow that Beau is finally stopped. The bus driver, played by Robert Bray, intervenes in the situation and beats up Beau until he promises to leave Cherie alone. Of course, Beau and Cherie get together in the end anyway, because Beau turns out to be perfectly charming when he minds his manners, and Cherie just wants a man who doesn't mind that she has a checkered past.
However, for about an hour "Bus Stop" plays like a horror film, and has more in common with the latest version of "The Invisible Man" than any modern romance. It is absolutely infuriating to watch Beau steamroller Cherie's objections and assert his outsized entitlement so many times. He grabs her arms to keep her from leaving, picks her up without asking permission, and at one point tears her dress and humiliates her. Even in their earliest conversations, he's already deciding what their life in Montana will be like, totally disregarding any notion to the contrary. What's more terrifying, however, is that Beau is so often aided and abetted by everyone else in the film. Cherie's landlady lets him into her room while she's sleeping. Nobody tries to help at the bus depot when he abducts her, despite there clearly being police and many other people around. It's only when Beau is particularly brutish to Cherie at the diner, throwing her over his shoulder and smacking her rear, that the bus driver finally intervenes. Well, there is one additional dissenter - Beau's mentor Virgil (Arthur O'Connell) comes along on the trip with Beau, and disapproves of Cherie because he thinks a showgirl isn't good enough for him. He becomes exasperated enough with Beau's antics to help the bus driver beat him up in the end.
Beau's behavior is treated as a symptom of extreme ignorance, but it's still tolerated. Several people describe him as having no manners, but nobody ever points out that he's committing assault, false imprisonment, and kidnapping, or gets law enforcement involved. In the end, the bus driver calls him out as a bully, and the only way to deal with a bully is for someone stronger to knock him down. Afterwards, Beau sulks like a little boy and then reluctantly goes to apologize to everyone he's inconvenienced. Soon, all is forgiven because Beau is truly remorseful. However, he gets exactly what he wants in the end without compromise. After ten minutes of sweet talking Cherie, she's getting on the bus to Montana again. Never mind that we know she wants to go west and try her luck in Hollywood, which is painted as a foolish dream, but something that is important to her. She's so in love with Beau in the end that she literally throws her plans away.
At the time, "Bus Stop" was a critical and commercial success. Marilyn Monroe proved she was a star who could carry a film, Don Murray got an Oscar nomination for his work, and there was a spinoff television series that is well-regarded. However, from a modern POV, nothing about the relationship between Beau and Cherie is okay, and Beau is possibly the best example I've found yet of blunt force "boys will be boys" male privilege being taken so lightly. I was immediately reminded of a similar situation in Steven Spielberg's war comedy "1941," where the female lead spends the whole film trying to get away from a boorish corporal. That character was portrayed as a villain, but the whole situation was still played for laughs, and there are several disturbing sequences where nobody will help the poor woman get away from an obviously unwanted suitor.
If "Gone With the Wind" gets warning notices about the outdated portrayal of race relations, "Bus Stop" deserves one too for its utterly appalling misogyny. Part of me wishes I could delete the film from history, it made me so disgusted, but then, it's better that it still exists as a warning of how bad things used to be, and far, far too recently.
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