The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

by Andrew O'Hagan

  * I am no academic, but I feel there is a hole in the great universities. Why is there no Faculty of Extinction? It is a subject of interest to man and beast, or maybe, like most creatures, I merely reveal myself to be a thing of my own time.

  15

  W

  e do not go to bed worthless and wake up wise, but we hope the night may bring some colour to our moral travels. Lying with Marilyn in her bedroom in Fifth Helena Drive, the bougainvillea would often seem to tremble in the darkness outside the window, the moon pulling at our blood as we dreamed. But she mostly slept alone. Into the night she would look at album sleeves or speak lines to herself, her eyes just dots of white in the dark and humid room. If I barked, even once, she plopped me outside the bedroom and closed the door. I would stand there quoting Euripides and scratching on the wood, mewling like a cat. ‘One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.’

  The stuff from Mexico still lay around the house in cardboard boxes. One night it was unseasonably cool when Marilyn finally got to sleep, the curtains billowing from the window and the sound of a dog barking in San Vicente Boulevard. ‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘She’ll put me out.’ She had taken sleeping tablets and she dreamed of Pierre Salinger. It was a press conference she had seen on television, Salinger holding the White House rabbit Zsa Zsa by the ears, telling the laughing reporters that the rabbit was sent to young Caroline Kennedy by a Pittsburgh magician. Zsa Zsa came with a horn and a beer opener. ‘Mr Secretary,’ comes the question. ‘Do you know that this rabbit is a lush?’

  ‘All I know about Zsa Zsa,’ said Salinger, ‘is that she’s supposed to be able to play the first five bars of “The StarSpangled Banner” on a toy trumpet.’

  ‘Could we have the rabbit come over here and run through a couple of numbers for us?’

  ‘I can ask her,’ said Salinger.

  Then it was Khrushchev. In her dream he looked like the producer Joe Schenck. The Soviet wanted more than anything to visit Disneyland. He said he would release the nuclear rockets if they stopped him from meeting Mickey the Mouse and Pluto the dog. Marilyn wanted to speak about Shostakovich and he wanted to speak about the space animals. He boasted about Laika and then about Belka and Strelka, saying the pupniks would honour the Soviet Union for a thousand years. Marilyn then dreamed the face of Mrs Kennedy cradling Pushinka, Strelka’s pup, a present to her daughter from the Russian leader. She held the pup in her arms and it looked up at her. Marilyn stood by herself in a kind of desert, next to a hospital, or was it a fortified house in Coyoacán? In a garden, she saw a man tending his rabbits and cuddling them. The man turned around and smiled for the camera, just as the rabbit opened its mouth. ‘It is as well that the potentialities of art’, the rabbit said, ‘are as inexhaustible as life itself, for those of us who do not simply adhere to the false beauties and vain art of the ruling class may come to believe that art is much richer than life, shedding a variety of light on what it has meant to be together in the world.’

  * For Something’s Got to Give, Mr Cukor got the set-builders at Fox to make a replica of his house on Cordell Drive. It was the same right down to the Roman statues and the shuttered windows, the tables by the swimming pool and the jacaranda. As I told you some time ago, dogs don’t have a natural capacity to separate fact from fiction – we only learn by attending to people’s neuroses – yet the new version of Cukor’s house really tested my faith in the power of actuality. In the end, even the dogs came to feel the house on Stage 14 was more Cukor’s house than Cukor’s house. It was more of a home and less of a stage set, except that the roof of the make-believe house reached upwards from the fake trees and the fake statues to end not in the starry skies of California but in a crowded grid of hot lights and cables. We tried to ignore that.

  ‘Oh look. It’s Hopalong Oedipus.’

  ‘Funny, Dino. That’s very funny.’

  Wally Cox had injured his leg so his voice was even punier than usual. Dean Martin liked to rib him about his smart intellectual friends. ‘Hey, Wally,’ he said. ‘You still friends with all them shrinks? Do you think they’d do me a deal? I need a whole truck-load of ’em over here. Will they do me a deal, Charlie?’

  ‘That’s funny, Dino.’

  ‘Tell them I’m a golf bum from Steubenville, Ohio. Do they do cheap rates for that?’

  ‘They’d probably charge you more, Dino,’ said Mr Cukor crossing from the pool and clapping his male lead on the shoulder.

  ‘That’s sick, George. It’s Nutsville in here.’

  ‘You think this is Nutsville? You should see the laughs they’re having in the old country.’

  ‘In Italy?’

  ‘That’s right, Dino. On the set of Cleopatra. They’ve gone thirty million dollars over budget.’ I wondered if that nice Roddy McDowall might be enjoying himself over there. I’m sure he likes a bit of chaos. Mr Martin grinned and turned to Mr Cox.

  ‘Hey, Wally. Is that where all the shrinks are at? The expensive New York guys? They all in Cinecittà helping Liz with her make-up?’

  ‘Funny.’*

  Mr Martin could talk about make-up. His face was a brown olive ripening on the ancient coast of Liguria. ‘Don’t talk to me about budgets, Harvey,’ he said in the direction of Mr Cukor. ‘I got seven children. Ask Wally. Seven kids. I spend more on milk than I do on bourbon, Clyde. That’s no joke. And Hopalong here, he won’t give me one of his fancy shrinks. Isn’t that just the meanest thing you’ve ever heard?’

  Marilyn had flown Mrs Strasberg over from the East Coast to help her with her lines. But my owner didn’t come to the sound stage most days, feeling sick, feeling low, and when she did come she was wired, I’d say, feeling anxious one minute and rebellious the next. Since coming back to LA, Marilyn’s panic about who she was had become who she was. I am probably too ignorant of normality to notice when things are getting beyond repair. But Marilyn was off the hook during that last film, no doubt about it. Mr Levathes the studio lizard was always popping his head round the

  * Mr Cox was a model of human freedom, at least of human freedom as it was understood by Jean-Paul Sartre. He was free to be and not to be, and, in the end, like Mr Hemingway and others, he proved his existence by ending it.

  door of her bungalow and sticking out his tongue. ‘You good for work today, Marilyn dear?’ I wanted to bite him and I wanted to pee in his golf cart. One day I heard him speaking with an associate producer behind the set. He said, ‘She’s out of control but she’s still bankable. Greenson says he can probably pull her though.’ Sometimes I would just wander round the set looking for adventure and pestering the electricians for scraps of their sandwiches. Dean Martin was often to be found in the little road outside the sound stage, swinging his golf club and smoking. Mr Cukor had shot around Marilyn for weeks and now there was nothing to do but sit and wait for her. He brought his dog Sasha to the set in the hope it would calm his nerves. He lost sight of the dog in all the annoyances, but soon Sasha and I were outside the sound stage and running over the road to investigate the snacks situation. We ran past a phoney cowboy saloon bar, then slowed down near the front office, where Sasha nodded up at the windows. ‘They will fire her, little dog. Listen to me, the studio will fire her soon.’

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ I said. I was shocked. I was no longer able to see anything clearly.

  ‘Soon. They will do it.’*

  It was a very hot day and the lot was silent. ‘People have rights,’ I said. ‘The workers have rights.’

  ‘They also have duties-eh,’ said Sasha, licking one of her paws and tapping the ground. ‘They have a duty to turn up and twinkle.’

  ‘So you think they will fire her?’

  ‘I heard them. They will do it. She is threatening to go to New York-eh, next week-eh, to sing at Kennedy’s birthday party.’

  ‘Aye. That’s right. I heard Mrs Murray talking about it on the telephone.’

  ‘At Madison Square Garden, oui?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘If she d
oes it-eh, they will fire her.’

  ‘They’ll fire her? They’ll poind her gear?’

  ‘Is a funny way of putting it, no?

  ‘Robert Burns,’ I said. ‘You know his poem “The Twa Dogs”?’

  ‘I never had that.’

  ‘Caesar and Luath. The two dogs. The poet records their discussion about the behaviour of evil landlords.’*

  We rounded a corner at the end of the road and saw the open doors of the refectory. We stopped and Sasha turned to me with a French look of sadness. She licked my ear. ‘She is lost,’ said Sasha.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘She is just beginning. It is her thirty-sixth birthday soon. We went to Mexico and found items for her new house: she is smart and political. In Mexico she was like a new person.’

  ‘They are always being new,’ said Sasha. ‘And yet they are always being the same.’

  A cat came out of the refectory, his whiskers damp with milk. Two carpenters walked between us with a length of coloured glass and for a dazzling moment we all seemed like figures in a stained-glass panel. I thought of Duncan Grant’s favourite panel, William Morris’s Sir Tristan is Recognised by Isolde the Fair’s Dog. It was exactly two years since those easy days in the garden at Charleston, and it was a different sun that shone down on the bleached pavements of 20th Century Fox.

  The milky-faced cat was no Tristan, but I was reconciled to his fame. Sasha was not. ‘You know that’s Orangey over there-eh?’ she whispered. ‘He won a Patsy for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’

  ‘He got a statue?’

  ‘Oui,’ said Sasha. ‘His second one.’

  ‘How lovely,’ I said. ‘He must be very talented.’

  ‘I think he over-acts,’ said Sasha. ‘He can only play one part – himself.’

  ‘Ah, well.’

  ‘You try to be too nice, Maf. Mon Dieu. Once you start believing in cats, it’s time to give up!’

  ‘No, Sasha,’ I said. ‘We never give up.’ I stomped my paw. ‘We move on. New adventures. New people. More snacks.’

  ‘Snacks, yes!’ said Sasha. She looked up and sneered at Orangey. ‘Monsieur,’ she said. ‘I see you are content to be a bourgeois pig. Look at this milk. They give you extra at the commissary, no?’

  Orangey just smiled. I wondered whether cats weren’t really the most intelligent of creatures. Sufficient unto themselves, they turned solitude into a great and sustaining thing, while dogs and men, in order to be happy, needed each other. The famous cat seemed a paragon of poise and self-awareness, licking his ginger moustache, taking several gentle steps across the road while quoting William Butler Yeats. ‘Minnaloushe creeps through the grass,’ he said,

  * I suddenly understood why Jean Renoir called this place 16th Century

  Fox.

  * It was the favourite poem of my breeder, Mrs Duff. In her political heyday, she would often copy out the lines and send them to government officials. She imagined it might take the innocence of dogs to put them straight.

  alone, important and wise,

  and lifts to the changing moon

  his changing eyes.

  A while later we were retrieved from the kitchens by a second assistant director who was swearing. He intended to be a great auteur one day and didn’t care for chasing a couple of mutts around the lot for an hour. Back on set, Marilyn was available for work. The big news now was not Marilyn’s lateness or Marilyn’s absence but the horrific unprofessionalism being displayed by the dog Tippy, who was supposed to recognise Marilyn’s character when she returns from a desert island. I might be alone in thinking Something’s Got to Give was quite a nice script; admittedly, it was not The Brothers Karamazov, but it was perfectly minxy and funny and not without style. Marilyn hated it, though, and I guess she felt a failure coming back to that after Anna Christie and the Trillings and her young publishing friend Charlie, the intelligent beings of New York.

  But if it’s prima donna you want, see under: Tippy. The willing Marilyn, despite a temperature of 101, was platinum and smiling by the pool, trying take after take, but the outrageous Tippy just wouldn’t perform. ‘I told you-eh,’ said Sasha. ‘She is not right for the part. This dog has no feeling for the character. Phoof. Mr Cukor was smitten by her bright coat – always the décor. He thinks of the décor before he thinks about her talent.’

  ‘She is pretty bad. They’re on the twenty-third take.’ ‘Ego,’ said Sasha. ‘I’m afraid it is just the ego. Toto would never have behaved like this.’

  ‘Sasha, Toto was the character in The Wizard of Oz. The dog’s real name was Terry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  I pawed the ground. ‘I think it does matter,’ I said.

  Sasha wasn’t listening to me. ‘Look at this one,’ she said. ‘This Tippy, how she snaps at the trainer. Tsk. Tsk. What a waste of fur.’

  Playing Ellen, my owner just put down her little United Airlines bag and knelt before the dog. The motivation was pretty simple: the dog hadn’t seen Ellen in five years and she recognised her, even though her children in the pool did not. But Tippy kept missing her cue and she refused to invest in the scene. ‘I wonder what Lee Strasberg would say about her,’ I said to an obviously glowing and vindicated Sasha.

  ‘Come on. Come on. Speak boy! Speak!’ said the trainer, with Cukor shaking his head.

  Marilyn laughed. She seemed pleased to know someone else was fluffing their lines. Cukor’s patience was frayed to nothing. It was obvious he felt humiliated by Marilyn’s absences, and now he felt cursed by Tippy, the dog resting its head vacantly on his star’s shoulder and lolling its useless tongue, while the hours rolled past. ‘Some animals-eh, they simply don’t have the guts,’ said Sasha. ‘They don’t know how to give enough, you know-eh?’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘It’s a shame.’

  ‘No, it is shameful,’ said Sasha. ‘The dog has no bravery. No heart.’

  Cukor finally got a take he could use and Tippy wandered over to our water bowls without an ounce of embarrassment.

  ‘How was it?

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘You really carried the mood of the scene. Beautiful piece of work, that.’

  ‘Inspired,’ said Sasha. ‘The whole thing depended on a certain restraint, no? And you had that.’

  ‘Thanks guys,’ said Tippy. ‘It took a few goes, but what the hell? It’s worth holding out for it, right? It’s worth holding out for The One. I based the whole thing on The Two Gentleman of Verona. You know Launce’s dog, Crab, the one not shedding tears or saying a word? Yeah, man. It was heavily based on Crab and I think I nailed it. I really worked through the emotions. It started with thoughts of rain. I remember rain on the roof of the kennels the night my grandmother died. I knew rain was the key. It was all in the silence. I just had to get back to that and I remembered Launce’s lines.’

  ‘Bravo,’ I said. ‘It worked wonders.’

  ‘In the scene-eh,’ said Sasha. ‘The motivation was beautiful. You might win a Patsy.’

  ‘Oh, don’t, guys,’ said Tippy. ‘I just can’t, you know, I can’t allow myself to think about that.’

  Next time we looked over, Marilyn was on one of the sun loungers having each of her sinuses checked by the studio doctor. Paula Strasberg was at her side in a black cape, whispering into her ear. Whitey Snyder was hovering with a lip brush. Pat Newcomb was there with a frown and a sheaf of telegrams from New York. And towering over us all was the simulacrum of Cukor’s house, the house with the white shutters. Marilyn caught my eye. She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came, and I felt she might be looking for a distraction that could replace the many distractions in her immediate circle. There were always phone calls to Dr Greenson, and this day he turned up on the set and we stood outside with him waiting for the car. He was arguing the studio’s case. ‘Maybe it’s just me,’ he said. ‘I’m just being me.’ Marilyn looked him in the eye.

  ‘I was once me,’ she said.

  ‘We’re working on that.’

 
‘Good news,’ she said.

  In the society of the future, Trotsky wrote, all art would dissolve into life. That is how the world would know good philosophy had triumphed. No need for dancers and painters and writers and actors: everyone would become part of a great living mural of talent and harmony. Ever since I bounded from the gate of the farm in Aviemore and jigged down the road in Walter Higgens’s van, I know that I had been looking for the great operatic moment, the supreme fiction, a place where politics and art would show themselves united however average the day. We didn’t know much but we knew one thing, that earth is so constituted that heaven could never better it.

  You find things out. Pups ask me what happens in life and I say you find things out. That day back in my youth, when Mrs Bell went down to the wine cellar and struck a match for one of her Gauloises and asked me to swipe out the flame with my paw, I think I was too young to work out that she must have been thinking about her dead sister. (Virginia had trained each of her dogs to perform the same trick for her.) During that day’s lunch at Charleston, Mr Connolly’s mentioning of Virginia had brought Vanessa up short, confronting her, all of a sudden, with echoes and portents. And something of the same atmosphere filled the limousine that took us away from Pico Boulevard the last time I was on the set of Something’s Got to Give. Marilyn told her driver to give everybody the slip and head for the freeway. ‘Take us to Forest Lawn, Rudy,’ she said. ‘I feel like walking. You know how you sometimes want to just walk and walk and get everybody’s worries out of your hair?’ The car was a neat refrigerator, a perfect place to be if you’re going to live in California. A book about Mexican gardens sat under the rear window.