Marilyn Monroe

by Michelle Morgan

  ‘Every other actor I worked with would use a red grease pencil to put an X through the negatives they didn’t like, but not Monroe. She took scissors and cut out every one she did not like, then cut those into tiny splinters and threw them in the wastebasket. This laborious process took three hours, during which I repeatedly got up to leave. Marilyn kept ordering me to sit down. To be young is to be stupid, someone said, and if I were ever in a situation like that again, I might be out of a job, but I might have still had a wife. It was my first evidentiary of Marilyn Monroe’s capacity for cruelty.’

  Despite suffering from flu, Marilyn continued with her own projects, among them getting out of her contract with MCA; and hiring a new lawyer, in the shape of Milton ‘Mickey’ Rudin – Greenson’s brother-in-law. On a creative level she attended a meeting with Alan Levy from Redbook on 25 January and then another with Richard Meryman, who wished to do an interview for Life magazine. According to memos from the Arthur P. Jacob’s agency, Marilyn reacted very well to Meryman, though less so with a reporter who was also in attendance and apparently a little drunk. Constantly interrupting both Marilyn and Meryman, the reporter spoke to the actress as if she were ‘underprivileged’ and became absolutely hysterical when told that all photos not approved by Marilyn would be destroyed. ‘How can you dare such a thing?’ she demanded, to which a surprised Marilyn replied, ‘You’re giving me a fishy-eyed stare but I love you anyway.’

  On a personal level, Marilyn decided she wanted her own home, becoming tired of living in hotels and rented apartments. She ideally wanted something near to the coast and with a Mexican style close to that of the Greenson home, which she idolized. Eunice Murray was pleased to help and over the course of several weeks took Marilyn to various locations, looking for the ideal home. Unfortunately, the happy search was marred slightly when she was literally thrown out of one house by the female owner who resented the presence of the movie star in her home. This was not a happy incident by any means, and according to friends it disturbed Marilyn greatly.

  However, not long after there was cause for celebration when Murray found the ideal property in the shape of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, a small house in Brentwood, located at the end of a tiny side street. The bungalow had thick walls, heavy beams and bars on the front windows, which afforded Marilyn a sense of security, along with a tile at the front door which read ‘Cursum Perficio’ – meaning ‘I’ve finished my journey’. At the back of the house there was a terrace, a kidney-shaped swimming pool and large garden that cascaded down the hillside, giving out to a magnificent view of the streets below; Marilyn loved it.

  After asking Joe DiMaggio to look over the house for her, it was decided that the kitchen would be remodelled completely and other rooms would be decorated in both Mexican fixtures and fittings. She had her lawyer, Milton Rudin, draw up the papers and, despite feeling saddened by the fact that she was buying a home on her own, she signed and began making plans for the future. ‘The house was important for Marilyn,’ recounted Eunice Murray, ‘her doctor thought it would take the place of a baby or husband.’

  Marilyn herself expressed her love for the house by exclaiming, ‘It’s the first house I’ve ever owned and I bought it because it reminded me so much of the orphanages I was brought up in as a child.’ This was a strange comment based on her previous statements about orphanage life, but showed a positive shift with regards to the way she viewed her childhood memories.

  A variety of people were hired to help restore the Fifth Helena Drive home, including handyman Norman Jeffries and his brother Keith. There was also the Twentieth Century Fox electrician, James A. Gough, whose son Jim went with him to the home one Saturday afternoon. He remembered: ‘Marilyn and Mrs Murray were delighted as they had just discovered the original fireplace with Mexican tiles, under a layer of plaster, and they were happily cleaning the tiles when we arrived. Marilyn showed us around the home and the garden and I was surprised to discover that the house wasn’t grand. It was a simple, 1930s Spanish renaissance style and Marilyn had found that she loved gardening, although she had never had the opportunity to do it before.’

  In early February 1962 Marilyn went briefly to New York and then on 17 February travelled to Miami in order to visit her former father-in-law, Isidore Miller. He had been staying at the Sea Isle Hotel for some time, but feeling lonely had been delighted when Marilyn told him of her plans to visit him. On 19 February, after a poignant few days with ‘Dad’, Marilyn flew to Mexico along with Pat Newcomb and several other members of staff. There she met up with Eunice Murray, who had travelled down the week before, scouting out places of interest and visiting with her brother-in-law, Churchill Murray.

  Despite the fact that the trip was officially to buy furniture for her home, it captured the attention of the FBI, who had been keeping a discreet, watchful eye on Marilyn since the mid-1950s after she expressed a desire to visit Russia, and then began dating Arthur Miller. From Mexico an unnamed informant sent little snippets of information to Washington, DC, declaring that Marilyn had been associating closely with certain members of the American Communist Group in Mexico (ACGM) and that a mutual infatuation had developed between Marilyn and a gentleman called Frederick Vanderbilt Field. Field had served nine months in prison for refusing to name his communist friends, before finally moving to Mexico in 1953. (Although his name is blanked out on most of the FBI documents, there remains one instance where his name has been mistakenly left in, making it almost certain that Fields is the man to whom the reports referred.)

  According to the documents, Marilyn spent a great deal of time with the married Field. Whether or not there was any real romance between Field and Marilyn, they certainly spent some time together, such as on 21 February when he was said to have visited her in Suite 1110 of the Hotel Continental Hilton and on 24 February when she travelled with him to a native market in Toluca.

  Whoever the informant was for this and other information remains unclear, but it was most definitely somebody who was able to gain access both to Marilyn and her entourage – particularly Eunice Murray (who is falsely identified as Eunice Churchill in the FBI files). The informant seems to have spoken with Murray, quoting her as saying that Marilyn was greatly disturbed by Miller’s recent marriage to Inge Morath, a photographer he met on The Misfits set, and that she felt like a ‘negated sex symbol’.

  If the informant is to be believed, the friendship with Field caused ‘considerable dismay’ both among members of the ACGM and Marilyn’s entourage, particularly Eunice Murray, who felt that Marilyn was becoming increasingly dependent on him and was very vulnerable at the present time due to her rejection by Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra.

  The exact nature of their relationship will probably never be known, but Field was married at the time and his wife Nieves was certainly in attendance during the Mexico trip and later travelled with her husband to New York, staying in Marilyn’s apartment for three weeks while she was in Los Angeles. So unless the relationship was carried out in full view of Field’s wife and with her approval, it would seem most likely that there was a mutual attraction, rather than a full-blown affair. As well as that, on 25 February Marilyn cancelled a date with a furious Field just five minutes before he was due to collect her, which is hardly the behaviour of a lovestruck woman.

  One person who was touted as boyfriend material was José Bolaños, a Mexican fan/scriptwriter who lived with his parents, brothers and a daughter by a previous marriage. How they met remains something of a mystery, but Bolaños showed Marilyn around local nightspots and at the end of the visit gave her every photo he could find of them together. ‘She was the most funny person I have ever met,’ he later told reporter Glenn Thomas Carter. ‘She had one quality that really delighted me – the ability to demolish verbally anyone who proved to be obnoxious to her.’

  Apart from an official date at the Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles, the ‘romance’ between Bolaños and Marilyn does not seem to have been very serious
. However, he did agree to help her with something much more important than a relationship – the possible adoption of a child.

  According to an intriguing article published in Motion Picture magazine, reporter Glenn Thomas Carter accompanied Marilyn during a night out in Acapulco, where she came face to face with an eight-year-old boy who was entertaining customers. The article did not name the child but, according to Carter, Marilyn became intrigued by the youngster and bombarded him with questions about his background. His parents were dead, she discovered, and he had run away from his uncle and then worked on a construction site, where he was allowed to sleep in a hammock on the scaffolding. He no longer worked on the site but his life had not improved, since he was now living in a shack with foster-parents who had taught him how to dance and pickpocket tourists.

  Marilyn was dumbfounded and when she broke down in tears, the young boy joined her, crying and asking if he might be able to live with her in California. Impulsively Marilyn said yes, and the next day went to visit his foster-parents, informing them that her friend Jose Bolaños would arrange all the details of the adoption for her.

  Shortly afterwards, Marilyn visited a Mexican orphanage where she was given the opportunity of adopting a baby, but turned it down, instead donating $10,000 to further their cause. Then at a farewell party, Marilyn told other guests of her intentions to adopt a Mexican child, and later, her stand-in Evelyn Moriarty recalled, ‘It was around this time that I first heard talk of Marilyn trying to adopt a child. I heard that her trip to Mexico was for more than buying furniture.’

  Chapter 20

  Cursum Perficio

  On her return to Los Angeles from Mexico, Marilyn attended the Golden Globe Awards with José Bolaños, where she received an award for the World Film Favourite, then in early March 1962 she enrolled the help of Joe DiMaggio to help move into her new home. The house was still being heavily remodelled and there was virtually no furniture, but Marilyn didn’t care. ‘I just want to live in my own house,’ she told friends, as she busied herself with making the property into a home, ready for the arrival of the child from Mexico.

  One or two items were lost in the relocation, among them some questions submitted to Marilyn from Paris Match, which were due to run alongside photos by photographer Willy Rizzo. These photos showed a very different side to Marilyn, in that her hair is rumpled, her clothes are plain and she looks thin and exhausted. Still, she loved them and on 9 March Pat Newcomb wrote to Rizzo to express that Marilyn thought the photos were sensational and she looked forward to working with him again.

  Meanwhile, costume tests were looming for her next film, Something’s Got to Give, and she undertook fittings at Fifth Helena with designer Jean Louis, while hosting a champagne and caviar party for the seamstresses and fitters. She seemed happy to begin what was to be her last Fox film, even though the script was still undergoing rewrites. Indeed, from 1960 to 1961 there had been five writers assigned to the project: Edmund Hartman did at least three versions of the script, while Gene Allen, Nunnally Johnson and Arnold Schulman all tried their hands at it. Finally, Walter Bernstein was brought in to do final rewrites to a script that was shaky at best.

  One Fox executive said in 1961 that the script was old-fashioned, full of hokum and just not funny, while adding that there was nothing to suggest a successful film could be made from it. He was perhaps right; the story was of a woman who has been stranded on a desert island for five years, only to return home to find herself legally dead and her husband remarried. Her young children do not remember her, so she instals herself in the home as a maid in order to get to know her family once again and win back her husband.

  As late as February 1962, the leading man had yet to be cast, while quite disturbingly, Fox Studio Chief Peter Levathes got Greenson involved in production, in order to control Marilyn. This resulted in producer David Brown being ‘discreetly’ replaced by the psychiatrist’s friend Henry Weinstein, much to the dismay of the director, George Cukor.

  Already the production was going over budget, which was not a good sign, as Fox was in dire financial straits over the disruption and delays on the set of the Elizabeth Taylor film, Cleopatra, being filmed in Rome. Fox employees had been told they had to water their own plants and bring their own lunch to the studio, since the gardeners and cafeteria staff had been laid off. ‘The place was like a ghost town,’ remembered one Fox employee.

  Still, plans continued to ensure Something’s Got to Give would be ready to begin shooting as soon as possible, and actress Edith Evanson was brought in to help Marilyn with the Swedish accent she would need in order to play ‘Miss Tic’, the woman ‘Ellen’ pretends to be when she realizes her husband has remarried. Marilyn was in a philosophical mood during the time they spent together, asking on one occasion, ‘Isn’t it a terrible thing about life that there always must be something we have to live up to?’

  One morning Marilyn came into the house with a magnolia, and when Evanson asked where she got it from, she explained that she picked it while out walking with her boyfriend the night before. Evanson did not ask who her boyfriend was, but assumed that it must have been José Bolaños. When it came time for Evanson to leave, Marilyn pleaded with the actress to accompany her to New York for the weekend, but it was not a possibility: ‘She was so pleading,’ recalled Evanson, ‘but I couldn’t leave my husband and my home. She understood.’

  In spring Marilyn was happy to hear from an old friend, Norman Rosten, who had travelled to California for six weeks. He visited her often during his trip and she showed him around her new house, urging him to use her pool and laughing at things that had gone wrong in her life. She was optimistic about the future, but still Rosten couldn’t help worrying about her, sensing that she was ‘tired to her soul’. When it came time for him to travel back to New York, Marilyn seemed frightened to see him go and berated him for not using her pool. To help cheer her up, he took her to an art gallery where she bought a bronze copy of a Rodin statue for over $1,000, before finally bidding her old friend goodbye.

  April had the beginnings of a busy month. On 6 April Marilyn heard news of someone who had meant so much to her years before – Milton Greene. She received a telegram from Kathleen Casey, the editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine, asking her to join other famous women and the famous hairdresser, Kenneth, for a portrait Greene was taking on 13 April. Although she could probably have gone if she wanted to, she asked Pat Newcomb to send her regrets, and busied herself with other things, such as giving her consent on 9 April to become a Founder Member of the Hollywood Museum, sending her (tax-deductible) fee of $1,000.

  On 10 April she attended costume tests at Fox, then on the morning of 11 April Marilyn spoke with photographer Bert Stern about a session he wished to shoot for Vogue. She was delighted with his ideas for the shoot. She gave her suggestions as to which designers they should use, and then told him she’d be happy to dedicate an entire weekend to give him ‘all the time you need’. There were also plans afoot to film a Christmas Seal charity trailer, which Newcomb thought to be an important public service for Marilyn to take part in, and on 11 April urged Henry Weinstein to film it whenever possible.

  Everything appeared to be looking up, but Henry Weinstein remembered a disturbing event on one particular day, when Marilyn was due to attend a production meeting with him. When she didn’t show up, he was worried enough to go to Fifth Helena Drive, where he claims to have discovered an unconscious Monroe, almost naked and sprawled across the bed. She had apparently taken an overdose, but Weinstein had arrived just in time, summoning Dr Greenson and Dr Engelberg for help. Both doctors had long-since been concerned with Marilyn’s sudden mood swings and her habit of mixing sleeping pills with champagne, to the extent that Engelberg had kept a key to Doheny Drive and both had access to keys at Fifth Helena. When Weinstein returned to Fox that day, he begged executives to postpone the production of Something’s Got to Give. They refused.

  Picking herself up once again, Marilyn headed t
o New York where she studied with the Strasbergs and saw friends. Unfortunately, she also caught a cold and by 19 April, when she returned to Los Angeles with Paula in tow, she was in the grips of a bad case of sinusitis, which quickly turned into a bronchial infection.

  On 23 April, the first official day of shooting, Marilyn did not show up and the schedule was quickly rearranged to shoot scenes between Dean Martin, Cyd Charisse and the child actors. They worked around her for a full week, until finally on 30 April Marilyn arrived on set, where she was greeted by a friendly telegram from Arthur P. Jacobs, wishing her luck for her new movie and signing it with love and kisses, ‘The Right Arthur’.

  Despite running a 101°C temperature due to her persistent sinusitis, Marilyn worked a full day, shooting a scene in which she reacts to seeing her children for the first time in five years. The next day, 1 May, she arrived once again with a temperature, only this time the studio physician Lee Seigel examined her, decided it was extremely unwise to expose the children to her contagious virus infection, and sent her home.

  Taking to bed on the advice of Dr Seigel, Marilyn was absent for the rest of the week, while shooting continued at Fox, up to the point where executives declared that no more could be done without her cooperation. Adding to her problems was the re-emergence of old teacher Natasha Lytess, who had been found by France-Dimanche magazine, and had been paid $10,000 for her cooperation with a tell-all story. Some of the memories she shared with the magazine were so intimate they could not be published, but although the Arthur P. Jacobs agency offered to buy the article from them, the publishers refused, convinced that they could make at least $200,000 if they ever decided to publish.