She exulted in her carnality. As a rising star she posed naked for a calendar. She didn’t need the fifty dollars; she just liked the idea. (“You mean you didn’t have anything on?” a scandalized woman reporter asked. “Oh yes,” said Marilyn, “I had the radio on.”) Acquiring from the photographer transparencies which showed her pubic hair, she gave them to DiMaggio as a wedding present. “Slugger,” as she called him, was rather prim about sex, and she offended him deeply by straddling a New York sidewalk grating, during the filming of The Seven-Year Itch, until a gathering of cheering fans saw a blast of air toss her skirt above her hips. To her it had been one of the most exciting moments of her life.
In the last days of her life she was poring over Playboy prints of her taken in the nude. It was her ambition to have these pictures appear simultaneously on the covers of girlie magazines all over the world. She anticipated the coming of X-rated movies and yearned for it. When John Huston cut a shot of her exposed breasts from The Misfits, she was crushed. “Let’s get the people away from the television sets,” she said. “I love to do things the censors won’t pass. After all, what are we all here for, just to stand and let it pass us by? Gradually they’ll let down the censorship—sadly, probably not in my lifetime.”
She became as big a star as Chaplin and Garbo, she gave a command performance for the Queen of England—and yet a feeling of achievement eluded her. Her three marriages ended disastrously; she suffered two miscarriages and couldn’t have a child. Hollywood kept casting her in dumb blonde roles. She fled eastward and studied serious acting with the Strasbergs, but after two years she returned to California, still searching for the unattainable.
The release of Some Like It Hot in January 1959 was a personal triumph for her, but under the glitter there was a dark side the public had not yet seen. She was drinking heavily and had become addicted to barbiturates. Never prompt, she had become so unpunctual that she had alienated her fellow actors; Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, playing a pair of merry transvestites, had had to stand around all day waiting for her to appear. Attempts to wake her would begin at 6:30 A.M. with vats of black coffee and masseurs. Her snoring body would be rolled back and forth as attendants made her up horizontally. Sometimes shooting wouldn’t begin until 4 P.M.; sometimes it would be postponed until the next morning, when the ritual would begin again.
She wouldn’t learn her lines. In one scene she was supposed to say, “It’s me, Sugar” at a certain moment. That required forty-seven takes. She seemed to be wholly indifferent to the inconvenience and the expense, which would add as much as a million dollars to the production costs of a movie. Once an assistant director knocked on the door of her dressing room and told her that the other actors were waiting. Marilyn replied, “Go fuck yourself.”
Finally Fox fired her for being absent for all but five days during seven weeks of shooting Something’s Got to Give. It was the summer of 1962, she was thirty-six years old, and she seemed to have lost her zest for life. To a Life reporter she said: “It might be kind of a relief to be finished. It’s sort of like, I don’t know what kind of a yard dash you’re running, but then you’re at the finish line, and you sort of sigh—you’ve made it! But you never have—you have to start all over again.”
Her last affair was with a Washingtonian, a lawyer and a public man. She was afraid of destroying his political career, afraid that she was pregnant by him—and, finally, furious at him because he wanted her to join him for an evening with some friends and two prostitutes. She put a stack of Sinatra records on a spindle, swallowed all the Nembutals in her medicine cabinet, and sank into a lethal coma.
Her corpse, Coroner’s Case No. 81128, lay unclaimed at the Los Angeles County Morgue until Joe DiMaggio arrived to arrange the funeral. Marilyn had given no thought to the disposal of her coffin, but it would be incorrect to say that she had not anticipated her last act. She had, and she had left exact instructions for it. As she had requested, her makeup was by Allan Snyder, her costume by Margie Plecher, and her hair style by Agnes Flanagan.
TWENTY-ONE
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman
Later the specter of Dienbienphu would loom ever larger in the American consciousness, but at the time it was something that was happening to somebody else. Its downfall wasn’t the only major event of 1954, or even one of the top stories. That was a newsy year in the United States. In January the world’s first atomic submarine, Nautilus, was launched in Groton, Connecticut. Six weeks later in Detroit six leaders of the Communist Party in Michigan were found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. Confronted by indisputable evidence of an approaching recession, the President decided in his March 12 cabinet meeting to call it a “rolling readjustment.”
The Easter 1954 issue of McCall’s introduced “togetherness,” a concept which quickly became so popular that it took on overtones of a social crusade and became almost a national purpose of the 1950s. The Air Force Academy was created on April 1; its first class was sworn in at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado. Rejecting a lower British bid, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson awarded contracts for construction of the Chief Joseph Dam in the state of Washington to an American firm, and both houses of Congress approved the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been executed after a demonstration outside the White House in which picketers protesting the sentence were accosted by noisy young demonstrators bearing placards which read TWO FRIED ROSENBERGERS COMING RIGHT UP. Admiral Robert B. Carney, Chief of Naval Operations, contributed to cold war tensions by telling reporters that he and his staff expected a Chinese Communist attack on the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu within a month. “They have information I do not have,” said the President. Nevertheless, he warned that any assault on Formosa “will have to run over the Seventh Fleet.” The cabinet was elated at its July 23 meeting to learn that economic indicators would soon turn upward, ending the rolling readjustment. August’s Hurricane Carol blew down the steeple of Boston’s historic Old North Church. Other hurricanes named Edna and Hazel followed in September.
Eisenhower and Churchill conferred in Bermuda on world peace. The Atomic Energy Commission on October 5 approved a contract under which a West Memphis power plant would be built for the TVA by a southern utility group headed by Edgar H. Dixon and Eugene A. Yates. President Eisenhower described his administration’s political philosophy as “dynamic conservatism,” then as “progressive, dynamic conservatism,” then as “progressive moderation,” then as “moderate progressivism,” and then as “positive progressivism.” On December 21, 1954, Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard, a Cleveland osteopath, was convicted of murdering his wife Marilyn on July 4. Sir Edmund Hillary, conquerer of Mount Everest, was thrilling lecture audiences in the Middle West, and nationwide circulation was given to the first authoritative reports linking cigarette smoking and heart disease.
Playboy was selling for fifty cents, competing on newsstands with such other publications of the decade as Flair (fifty cents), Confidential, “Uncensored and Off the Record” (a quarter), Mad (a dime), and, at fifteen cents, the most successful periodical of the 1950s, TV Guide, which by the end of the decade would be running fifty-three regional editions for seven million subscribers.
America’s drug culture lay far in the future, but the roots of its idiom could be heard at bebop sessions where one heard the esoteric jazz of such maestros as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. They called money bread and girls chicks. To understand was to flip; something which in the past had been fabulous was now crazy. Superlatives of crazy were cool, groovy, the end, and far out (later to become out of sight). To be appreciative was to be hip, and someone who was so hip that he had passed into an ecstatic trance would soon be called a hippy.
Better known then, and a source of amusement in intellectual circles throughout the decade, was advertising cant. As society became more aware of advertisers, and as they became more clever, their instant clichés briefly became part of the language. In 195
4 the reigning platitude was the suffix “wise,” meaning “with regard to,” “in respect of,” or “in the manner of.” Battered by overuse, it became an all-purpose word. Instead of saying “This year’s cars are all chrome,” you said, “Stylewise, this year’s cars are all chrome.” Moneywise, a tycoon was rich. Sequencewise, a loser was last. Agewise, a girl was young; clotheswise, she might be chic; and personality-wise, she would be attractive. Boozewise, you might have a big night. Head-wise, you would feel terrible in the morning, but jobwise, you would make it to the office.
On the other side of the island from Madison Avenue lay Tin Pan Alley, and there sovereignty still rested in the clammy hands of the balladeers. The biggest hit of 1954 was Kitty Kallen’s “Little Things Mean a Lot.” Runners-up included Perry Como’s “Wanted,” Frank Sinatra’s “Young at Heart,” and the Crew Cuts’ (only classical musicians wore their hair long then) “Sh-Boom.” Archie Bleyer’s “Hernando’s Hideaway” was another memorable ditty that year. The Four Aces’ “Three Coins in the Fountain” was from the motion picture of the same name, a Cinemascope production in De Luxe Color starring Dorothy McGuire, Clifton Webb, and Jean Peters. Waterfront corruption in New York was a running story throughout 1954—on April 15 Albert Anastasia was deprived of his citizenship—and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded its Oscar for the best picture of the year to On the Waterfront. Other honored films were The Caine Mutiny, The Country Girl, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Sabrina, Executive Suite, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Movies still weren’t making much money, but for the time being the big talent was staying in Hollywood.
Variety listed as 1954’s most popular television programs I Love Lucy, Dragnet, and the mixed bags of Groucho Marx and Ed Sullivan. The only really bright hour of TV comedy, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca’s Saturday evening Your Show of Shows, folded in 1954 after 160 performances; the network blamed lack of audience interest. Above all, 1954 was the year of the quiz show: I’ve Got a Secret, Stop the Music, Place the Face, Name That Tune, and What’s My Line. The big money quiz programs, Twenty-one and The $64,000 Question, were in the wings. TV spectaculars—long, lavish, one-performance extravaganzas—were more interesting. Amahl and the Night Visitors, a Christmas Eve opera written for television by Gian-Carlo Menotti in 1951, had been acclaimed everywhere. As it happened, 1954’s chief spectacular, Satins and Spurs, was so terrible that its star, Betty Hutton, retired from show business. Next year promised to be much better, though. Contracts were out for Mary Martin’s superb Peter Pan, to be telecast March 7, 1955.
Obviously television was having an immense impact on American mores, but defining the nature of the impact was difficult. Some thought the networks were too wide-open, too permissive. TV fare was more violent than radio, and franker about sex. Plunging necklines, an exciting development of the early 1950s, left little doubt that female performers were mammary and proud of it. When Desi Arnaz impregnated his wife and costar, Lucille Ball, the producers of I Love Lucy took it as an opportunity; each week’s episode offered late bulletins on Lucy’s condition, and Desi was even depicted suffering from sympathetic morning sickness.
In reality TV was merely noting a trend here, one whose implications would not emerge until another decade. The medium itself would never be a pace-setter. Like the life-styles of the 1950s of which it was so faithful a mimic, it was bland, innocuous, noncontroversial. Its most familiar themes were charming but irrelevant to real issues: the bromides Loretta Young read at the end of each program, Dave Garroway’s “Peace,” and the “Ho-Ho Song” to which Red Buttons danced offstage.
Commercial? Absolutely: the profit motive was as sacred as togetherness. Sneering at it was almost prima facie evidence of subversion. Everybody was selling something, and Americans approved; the diversity of their marketplace was the marvel of the world. A confidential survey made for the Republican National Committee by Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn reported that foreign policy was the number one issue for American voters, with Communist infiltration in the U.S. second, but it was untrue. The agency was telling its clients what they wanted to hear. Prosperity was what Americans wanted, and they had it, were getting fat with it, and enjoyed reading the scales. It was a bull market that was going to get bullier. Detroit was counting on Chevrolet’s Dinah Shore to be especially alluring in 1955. The automotive industry’s confident—and justifiable—expectation was that nearly eight million cars would be sold, nearly a million more than in any previous year.
In February 1954 over 7,500 Republicans descended on Washington to eat fried chicken box lunches in the Ellipse and observe Lincoln Day by singing “God Bless America.” The President came out for a few brief remarks. At the moment he wasn’t toying with “moderate progressivism” or any of that; he used the simple term “conservative,” paused, then added firmly: “And don’t be afraid to use that word.” They cheered. Middle-class Republicans were feeling their oats. They were proud to be conservative, prosperous, conformist, and vigilant defenders of the American way of life, and they wanted no truck with crackpots, Reds, heretics, Bohemians, radicals, nuts, Bolsheviks, loonies, pinkos, fellow travelers, galoots, geezers, or screwballs. Eggheads were subjects of particular scorn. No wild-eyed college professors were going to be allowed to gum up the works. On April 13, 1954, James Reston reported in the New York Times that the Atomic Energy Commission, at the direction of President Eisenhower, had withdrawn the security clearance of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer pending an investigation of charges that he had, among other things, “worked tirelessly from January 21, onward, to retard the United States H-bomb program.”
***
The accusation had been lodged five months earlier by William L. Borden, former executive secretary of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy and senior assistant to Senator Brien McMahon. Borden had written J. Edgar Hoover on November 7, 1953, that “more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.” A bill of particulars followed, including charges that prior to April 1942 “He was contributing substantial monthly sums to the Communist Party,” that “His wife and younger brother were Communists,” and that “He had no close friends except Communists.”
Borden’s motives are obscure. He had nothing new. The government had long known that Oppenheimer had been a freewheeling left-of-center ideologue in the 1930s. It hadn’t affected his work. Lately he hadn’t had much to do with Washington anyhow. At one time he had been a member of no fewer than thirty-five government committees, but in July 1952 he had resigned as chairman of the AEC General Advisory Commission, and since the beginning of the Eisenhower administration he had been devoting most of his energies to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, of which he was the director. As a government consultant he retained his top-secret Q clearance, but he never used it. At the time of Borden’s accusations Oppenheimer wasn’t even in the country. He had been chosen to deliver the BBC’s prestigious Reith Lecture for 1953, and while he was in Britain Oxford decided to award him his sixth honorary degree. It was a question of who was more honored by the occasion, Oppenheimer or Oxford. By this time America’s most eminent scientist had been elected to every learned society in Europe. Prizes, awards, and foreign decorations had been showered upon him. At home he had been chosen for everything from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to the Popular Mechanics Hall of Fame.
Now Borden said he was a Russian spy. What is far more likely is that he was a victim of scientific politics. A savage dispute was raging between nuclear physicists belonging to two schools of thought named for America’s two great nuclear laboratories, Los Alamos and Livermore. The Los Alamos group, comprising Oppenheimer’s colleagues and protégés, held that nuclear missiles should be only one of many kinds of weapons in the American arsenal. This was called “finite containment.” The Livermore, or Teller, group believed that the nation’s security depended upon the unlimited development of nuclear striking
power. That was “infinite containment.” Most scientists took the finite view, but an administration that advocated “massive retaliation” was plainly thinking in infinite terms. The Livermore men were in power, and this, in fact, was one reason Oppenheimer had withdrawn to Princeton. But that wasn’t enough for his adversaries. The debate had turned some men of science into fanatics—which is not really surprising, since the issue could determine the future of the human race—and certain admirers of Edward Teller were determined to discredit Oppenheimer. Almost certainly they were behind Borden.
Borden, however, merely wrote a letter. Washington desks were covered with such letters then. There was no reason why an official should pay attention to a new smear, unless, of course, he thought there was something in it. That was true in this instance. J. Edgar Hoover had been suspicious of J. Robert Oppenheimer for a long time. In 1947 Hoover had done all he could to tag Oppenheimer as a security risk. The Herald Tribune reported that the FBI file on Oppenheimer was four feet six inches high. Borden could hardly have sent his letter to a more receptive addressee, and the chances are that he knew it.
Hoover spent the next three weeks preparing an inch-thick digest of the Oppenheimer file. On November 30 he sent it to the White House. Copies went to Lewis A. Strauss at the Atomic Energy Commission and Charlie Wilson at the Pentagon. After reading his, Wilson phoned the President; he wanted Oppenheimer barred from all military installations at once. Eisenhower called it “very disturbing” (which of course it was, however you felt about Oppenheimer) and called an emergency meeting to weigh the charges. Had the scientist ever been confronted with them? he asked. Told he hadn’t, Ike ordered a hearing. Meantime, he said, he wanted a “blank wall” put between Oppenheimer and all government secrets. It was an arresting phrase, and although only Wilson, Strauss, Brownell, and Robert Cutler of the National Security Council had been present, word of the decision reached the Washington gossips and, through them, the Capitol Hill home of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.
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