Marilyn Monroe

by Michelle Morgan

  Encouraged by Bill’s interest in opera, Marilyn was happy to learn that Madam Butterfly was to be performed at the Hollywood Bowl on 3–4 September 1948, with Eleanor Steber in the title role and Eugene Ormandy conducting. Bill picked her up in his car, and the two headed up to the Bowl to see the performance. Pursel remembered: ‘She sat very close to me, listening intently to the opera. She was very quiet and moody all evening, but I asked if she was okay and she said she was. When we went to eat after the performance, she was melancholy throughout our dinner, so we just sat quietly, with very little talk. It wasn’t until years later that I read Norma Jeane had been in some kind of pageant at the Hollywood Bowl when she was a little child, and she had missed a cue or something. As fragile and fearful of rejection as she was, I thought maybe this little goof may have stayed with her and being in the bowl had turned her thoughts back to that early time in her life, but I didn’t push it. She sure had a right to be blue without me or anyone else tugging at her to explain why.’

  While it is very possible that the trip had stirred up unhappy memories for Marilyn, it is also likely that she was thinking about Fred Karger, who was growing ever colder towards their relationship. She was still in love with the musician but his lack of concern for her feelings and his often hurtful and tactless remarks were hard for her to bear. The relationship was failing fast, and Marilyn knew it.

  For the rest of September, it seemed as though nothing went right for Marilyn. The first stroke of bad luck happened when she was called into the office at Columbia. She had been told by friends at the studio that the rushes of Ladies of the Chorus had gone well, and that she was up for an important role, so it was with happiness and hope that she went into the meeting. Unfortunately, she had not been brought in to arrange a part in a big production, and instead was told that although the studio felt she would go far in her career, there was simply no work for her at Columbia. On 8 September, the shocked actress was dropped from her contract, and was absolutely devastated. Later in her life, she was able to look back on her experience and admit that she hadn’t been ready for a career when she first had the opportunity, but at the time the news came as a crushing blow.

  ‘Things were tough,’ she said. ‘I limited myself to two meals a day – breakfast and dinner – and went back to modelling. I went without new clothes, everything, earning just enough to pay the rent and take my lessons.’ But doing the odd ‘cheesecake’ shot was not enough to keep the wolves from the door, as she was soon to find out. When she had signed to Columbia, a dress shop sent a representative to her home to ask if she would like to buy clothes on credit. Marilyn thought the deal was acceptable, and picked out two suits, a black dress, some shoes and hosiery, coming to $200 in total. However, as soon as the contract expired, the shop demanded she pay for the clothes and as a result, she almost lost her car. ‘Once again I had to scratch enough together to bail it out,’ she said.

  On 12 September she finished her work on Stage Door, and on 21 September she was involved in a minor car crash on Sunset Boulevard, on the way to an audition. By pure chance, a photographer by the name of Tom Kelley was driving down Sunset at the time, and stopped to help. A tearful Marilyn explained that she was late for her appointment and had no money for a cab, so the photographer gave her $5 and his business card. It was an important introduction and one she would utilize in the near future.

  In the autumn of 1948 Marilyn went on a few dates with an editor called Dan Cahn. He was a friend of Stanley Rubin, a producer who was developing a television series. Rubin had made a thirty-minute pilot programme that was a success, and now the American Tobacco Company had commissioned twenty-six episodes, which he was to adapt, cast and produce.

  Rubin had shared his news with Dan Cahn, who in turn told him he was dating a young actress who was beautiful, talented and in need of a job. Rubin remembers: ‘Dan asked if she could be used in the show, and I told him to get Marilyn or her agent to call and make an appointment to come in and read. Her agent called and he brought her into the office. She looked at the script for twenty or thirty minutes then said she was ready to read. She was pleasant and beautiful; she read for me, I thanked her and she left.’

  Rubin liked the actress, but was worried that she was so inexperienced and nervous that she might hold up shooting. When Cahn rang to ask about Marilyn’s fate, Rubin told him that he would not be able to hire her for that particular series, but would possibly use her in the next. For Marilyn this was yet another disappointment on her road to stardom, but when the two finally did work together some six years later, on River of No Return, she never held it against him: ‘She was gracious enough never to mention the failed audition for the TV series,’ laughed Rubin, ‘and the fact that I was now eager to have her in ‘River of No Return’!’

  Several months after being dropped by Columbia, Ladies of the Chorus, the only film she had made there, was released. It received little attention from audiences or critics but there was one person who did take an interest: her ex-husband, James Dougherty. As his nephew, Paul ‘Wes’ Kanteman remembered: ‘Uncle Jim had just come out of the police academy when her first picture came out and he was walking the night-time beat on Van Nuys Blvd. Just about every time he passed the movie theatre he would go in and watch a bit of the movie and continued to do this for a while. I would imagine he saw most of her pictures even though he would never tell anyone. We used to talk about these times when travelling to a place where we were going to hunt. He would open up to me but not to anyone else that I am aware of.’

  Although James had moved on and claimed he was ‘too cotton-pickin’ busy to go to the movies’, Norma Jeane was never far from his thoughts, and as it turned out, his telephone. His nephew, Wes Kanteman remembered: ‘She had become rather disenchanted with the whole Hollywood thing and called Uncle and asked if she could come home. He was or could be pretty stubborn and told her no; that she had already made her bed and would have to sleep in it. She was pretty upset and hung up.’

  For Jim, having Marilyn attempt a reunion – albeit a misguided one – must have been an extremely difficult time for him, but his heart had been broken once, and he was unwilling to let it happen again. Paul Kanteman knows just how much this must have hurt his uncle: ‘He really loved that woman and in my mind did till the day he passed away. I watched him many times and saw the tears come to his eyes. Yes, there was a great love there and I still believe it was mutual. It was a love that had gotten past both of them and they had gone in other directions and could do nothing about it. Of course he had married again which I’m sure was on the rebound but they had children together and that was important to him.’

  By the end of 1948 any serious romance that she had shared with Fred Karger had fizzled out, and as Marilyn looked towards the New Year, a new gentleman entered her life, in the form of Johnny Hyde, an agent who was Vice-President at the William Morris Agency. Marilyn met Hyde one evening at a friend’s house, and they got along so well together that he called her the next day, inviting her to lunch. After that they became very close and it’s fair to say that the fifty-three-year-old Hyde was more than a little smitten with the twenty-two-year-old starlet.

  The already married Hyde was a small, slightly built man with a heart condition, but he was nonetheless one of the most influential agents at William Morris. At first he didn’t know where she lived, but that didn’t stop Hyde bombarding Marilyn with letters, gifts and cards, asking her to write to him at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, where he was staying for a time. ‘What is your street address?’ he wrote in one early letter, ‘All is forgiven because you say you miss me,’ he wrote in another. He called her ‘My Precious Girl’ in one card, and ‘My Dear Marilyn’ in another, while in public he would refer to her as ‘Baby’. Simply put, Johnny Hyde had fallen heavily for Marilyn, and he very much hoped that she felt the same way.

  When he saw her in person, he began to encourage her to continue her acting career and made plans for her to leave her agent,
Harry Lipton, and sign with William Morris. Marilyn later remembered: ‘When I first mentioned my acting hopes to Johnny Hyde, he didn’t smile. He listened raptly and said, “Of course you can become an actress!” He was the first person who ever took my ambitions seriously and my gratitude for this alone is endless.’

  Actually he wasn’t the first person who had taken her seriously, but Marilyn was so grateful to him that she was willing to give him full credit. In return Hyde introduced Marilyn to a great deal of literature and classical music, and taught her how to manage her time. Usually when out of work, Marilyn would sleep late, have a long breakfast and while away the hours on the telephone, but Hyde encouraged her to stop that; to study and use every spare moment to better herself. As a result, she became more confident, started speaking up for herself and even improved her punctuality. Introducing her to a dramatic script entitled The Brothers Karamazov, Hyde encouraged Marilyn to aim for dramatic parts and take herself seriously, and as a result, he soon became an inspiration, a father figure, protector and, soon, her lover. Johnny Grant remembered: ‘He was a short little fellow and he really broke his ass on her behalf. I used to see them together at Ciros quite a bit – she was truly fond of him.’

  Although Hyde was an obvious mentor to Marilyn, she was still experiencing the occasional let-down, as witnessed by model and contracted actress Annabelle Stanford. ‘I remember one day I was at Columbia studios when I came across Marilyn standing with a small, beautifully dressed man [Hyde]. She was wearing a black satin cocktail dress and I remember thinking that she shouldn’t be wearing such a dress at that time of day. Marilyn was crying because she had been turned down for a part; turned out that it was a part that had just been given to me.’

  On 29 February 1949 Marilyn’s contract with the Carrolls came to an end, and on 2 March 1949, thanks to Johnny Hyde, Marilyn signed with the William Morris Agency. Later that month, on 13 March, she left the Hollywood Studio Club and moved into a one-bedroom suite at the Beverly Carlton Hotel, complete with kitchenette and plenty of room for her books. By this time Hyde had left his family and moved into a large house at 718 North Palm Drive, installing booths and a dance floor in the dining room, to emulate Romanoffs, Marilyn’s favourite restaurant in Hollywood. She spent many nights in the house – probably far more than she spent at the Beverly Carlton – but by keeping her room at the hotel, she was assured not only independence, but also respectability.

  But just living part-time with Marilyn was not enough for Hyde. He had fallen deeply in love with the actress and on more than one occasion, begged her to marry him, emphasizing that if he were to die she would inherit everything if she was his wife. ‘A producer I discussed it with said, “What have you got to lose?” I said “Myself – I’ll only marry for one reason: Love.”’ Unfortunately for Hyde, Marilyn would never be in a position to marry him, and she was most certainly still seeing other men at the time.

  Still, even though Hyde adored Marilyn, he didn’t consider her completely perfect, and made an appointment for her to see plastic surgeon Dr Michael Gurdin. Gurdin decided that she needed her chin reshaped (but not her nose as some have claimed) and inserted a prosthesis into her jaw to soften her profile. The scars from this procedure are revealed in James Haspiel’s book, Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend.

  When Fred Karger discovered that Marilyn was dating Johnny Hyde he became extremely jealous and went to her house to ask for her hand in marriage. Despite any feelings she may have had in the past, she turned Karger down flat, but this didn’t stop his new-found infatuation, and eventually his mother paid a visit, asking Marilyn to reconsider. She refused, but the two women remained friends until the end of Marilyn’s life.

  In April 1949, photographer Philippe Halsman was assigned to write a story for Life magazine, to find out how good eight Hollywood starlets were at acting. The starlets were found by editor Gene Cook, and Halsman photographed them in his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, asking each girl to act out four basic situations: listening to a good joke, enjoying an invisible, delicious drink, being frightened by a monster and kissing a fabulous lover.

  When Marilyn walked into the room Halsman discovered a painfully shy girl who was wooden in her actions, and he was not impressed. But when she embarked on the kissing part of the exercise, his opinion changed and he discovered that she was an intense and hard-working starlet. He wanted to encourage her and told her that while most models couldn’t act, she showed great promise and thought she should move to New York to continue her acting career. ‘I didn’t go,’ she later said, ‘but I was thrilled by his encouragement.’

  Chapter 8

  Highs and Lows

  In spring 1949, Marilyn’s finances were becoming a great concern once again, and she fell behind not only with her rent, but also with the payments on the car she relied on to get to auditions. Tom Kelley, the photographer who had helped when she crashed on Sunset Boulevard, had asked her to pose nude for him several months before, but she had turned him down. However, when she was threatened with the repossession of her car, she decided enough was enough, and called his number.

  On 27 May 1949, Marilyn arrived at Kelley’s studio at 736 North Seward Avenue. Kelley was known as a perfect gentleman, but to add a touch of respectability to the proceedings, Marilyn requested that his partner Natalie Grasko be in attendance. And so it was that with ‘Begin the Beguine’ playing on the record player, Marilyn removed her clothes, reclined on a red velvet blanket, and afterwards was paid $50 for her efforts. When asked years later what it felt like, Marilyn replied, ‘Very simple . . . And draughty!’ and although the photos are considerably tame compared to modern standards, she was so anxious not to be recognized that she signed the release ‘Mona Monroe’.

  Initially Marilyn had felt OK about posing nude, since she certainly needed the money and was somewhat naively convinced that no one would actually see the photographs. However, as time wore on she became increasingly worried, especially when it became clear to her that Kelley intended to sell them to a calendar company. She admitted her concern to Bill Pursel, who remembers: ‘She told me she had done something she was ashamed of, and she wanted to tell me about it before I found out elsewhere.

  ‘She said she wanted to apologize and started to cry, before finally telling me she had posed nude and had done it because her rent was way past due. She then asked if I would look at the pictures and when I said yes she produced them. My first reaction was that these photos were not pornographic at all and they were actually very good. She said the photographer had promised not to sell them but I told her that he probably would, since selling photographs was what he did for a living. I told her that I thought the pictures were in good taste and she asked if I was ashamed of her, to which I said no, but that neither she nor I could undo something that was already done and I was in no position to object to them anyway.’

  Early in 1949, Marilyn was stopped by agent Louis Shurr who told her: ‘Lester Cowan, producer of “Love Happy” was looking for someone “just your type” for added scenes. I rushed over and was hired on the spot. I not only got on the screen but stayed there for one full minute. I could hardly believe it.’ The film was a Marx Brothers comedy acting alongside Groucho in a small but memorable role, playing a woman who requires detective Groucho’s help, because ‘Men keep following me.’ The detective rolls his eyes, shrugs and exclaims, ‘Really? I can’t understand why.’

  This was the extent of Marilyn’s cameo appearance, but it was an important role, and took her on a publicity tour in the summer of 1949, taking in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Rockford and Oak Park, Illinois. The tour was an important step for the actress, but she was confused as to why they had asked her to appear at all: ‘I was on screen less than sixty seconds but I got five weeks work out of the part by going on the PA tour, which promoted the film in eight major cities. I felt guilty about appearing on the stage when I had such an insignificant role in the film, but the
people in the audiences didn’t seem to care.’

  On the morning of 21 June, she travelled to Warrensburg, New York, to present the Photoplay Magazine dream house to Mrs Virginia MacAllister and her son, Rusty. Mrs MacAllister had lost her husband to polio in 1945 and had been forced to move in with her parents in order to get her life back together. Marilyn and actors Don DeFore, Donald Buka and Lon McCallister were watched by a crowd of 500 local people, as they visited the house on James Street and presented Mrs MacAllister with the keys. The actors also gave interviews to the media; met local people; and posed for dozens of photos both inside and outside the house. It was good exposure for Marilyn, and the results were eventually published in the November 1949 issue of Photoplay, which was quite an achievement for the budding actress.

  By sheer chance, Andre de Dienes was in New York at the time of the Love Happy tour, and he took Marilyn to Long Island in order to take some photos on the beach, wearing bathing costumes. She also did an interview with columnist Earl Wilson, who later wrote about the encounter in his 27 July 1949 column. He was not overly impressed with the twenty-three-year-old-actress, and regarded some of what she told him as being the work of her publicists. She had been nicknamed the ‘Mmmm Girl’ by cinemagoers who had seen Love Happy, and most of the interview was taken up with discussing this tag, along with some other minor details about her early life and the film. In all, Wilson was very dismissive of Marilyn in the interview – something that he was to apologize for later in her career.