by Lois Banner
The third photograph I have chosen to illustrate Marilyn as a trickster was taken in early February 1956 by British photographer Cecil Beaton in his suite at the Ambassador Hotel. Beaton had created the concept of glamour photography in the 1920s, and he had worked for Vogue and then for Harper’s Bazaar ever since. The official photographer for the British royal family, he was a legend in his own time.
He took a number of photos of Marilyn, all focusing on her natural look. They are effective, although not extraordinary. One is different. What I call the “Japanese photo” shows her lying on a bed on which a Japanese wall hanging has been draped. That photo, among the best taken of her, has multiple meanings. Vogue editor Diana Vreeland interpreted the figure in the wall hanging as linking Marilyn to the geisha girl. “Marilyn Monroe!” Vreeland exclaimed. “She was a geisha. She was born to pleasure, spent her whole life giving it.”71
The figure in the hanging may be a geisha. More important, it is an onnagata, the actor in Japanese Kabuki theater. In that theater, which dates to the sixteenth century, men play all the roles, female as well as male. Thousands of wall hangings of onnagata were made and sold during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is one of them, identifiable by the costume and the hairstyle. First appearing in Kyoto, which was known for its aesthetic culture and its places of pleasure, the onnagata became models for feminine beauty in Japan: their mannerisms, hairstyles, and makeup set the mode. In turning themselves into women, the Kabuki players were perfectionists. Putting on Kabuki makeup took several hours; it was a ritual through which an onnagata transformed his inner self into a woman.72 Marilyn also used the process of applying makeup to transform herself from an ordinary woman into Marilyn Monroe.
There’s an optical illusion at play in the photo that also connects her to the Kabuki performer. When the photo is turned on its right side, her arm seems to extend from the body of the actor, so that the arm and hand of the onnagata seems to be placed on her breast, not her own arm and hand. Thus in the photo Marilyn and the Kabuki actor become one individual, both masculine and feminine, with the Japanese figure asserting dominance over Marilyn.
Beaton, who dressed like a gentleman and spoke with an upper-class accent, was homosexual. A trickster at heart, he often introduced homosexual themes into his photos. Sometimes his subjects knew what he was doing, and sometimes they didn’t. In his photos men sometimes look like women, and women like men. Sometimes he put himself into his photos, often as a figure reflected in a mirror. The wall hanging with the onnagata on it was a perfect prop to use in photographing Marilyn, with her hidden bisexuality. Truman Capote and Beaton were close friends, and Capote was a gossip. Beaton knew a lot about Marilyn. The onnagata figure represents Beaton himself.73
Beaton included the photo in his book The Face of the World, with a description of Marilyn alongside it. The description captures Marilyn’s complexities. She is “narcissistic,” “unkempt,” and a “hypnotized nymphomaniac,” Beaton writes. She is also “as spectacular as the silvery shower of a Vesuvius fountain” and “an undulating basilisk.” “Her performance is pure charade, a little girl’s caricature of Mae West.” She is quintessentially American. She conjures up “two straws in a single soda, juke boxes, running nylons, and drive-in movies for necking. She is a composite of Alice in Wonderland, Trilby, and a Minsky [burlesque] artist.”74
The ballerina photo, the Eve photo, and the Japanese photo—these three portraits show Marilyn as a beautiful blonde, both aesthetic and dramatic; as a clown satirizing cultural icons; as a resonant and joyous symbol of the nation; and as a cross-gendered individual mocking her position as the world’s heterosexual sex queen.
Part IV
New York, 1955–1960
I saw the amazing phenomenon of Hollywood being out-smarted by a girl whom it itself characterized as a dumb blonde.
Philippe Halsman
She was endlessly fascinating, full of original observations and there wasn’t a conventional bone in her body.
Arthur Miller, quoted by James Kaplan in “Miller’s Crossing,” Vanity Fair, November 1991
Chapter 9
New York, 1955–1956
In December 1954 Marilyn left Hollywood for New York with Milton Greene, telling only close associates where she was going. News about her sudden departure and the mystery of her destination soon hit the front pages of newspapers nationwide. According to Screen Life, Hollywoodites couldn’t believe that someone they considered to be a dumb blonde had been so bold, or that she would desert Hollywood for New York, especially after the dinner at Romanoff’s in November 1954 honoring her for her brilliant success in The Seven Year Itch, with elite Hollywood attending the dinner.1
Marilyn’s ability to steep her life in drama and mystery and stoke the public’s interest had worked again. Using the pseudonym Zelda Zonk on her ticket, she and Milton took a night flight to New York. Amy Greene picked them up at LaGuardia Airport. No reporters were there: the deception had worked so far. They drove to the Greenes’ converted barn in Weston, Connecticut. Learning that journalists and photographers were camping outside the house, Marilyn opted to hide out until the press went away. She stayed at the nearby home of Fleur Cowles, Milton’s editor at Look and the founder of Flair.
Fleur had another houseguest: Bertha Spafford Vester, who ran a hospital for abandoned Arab children in Jerusalem. She was in the United States soliciting funds for her project. Marilyn was impressed by her, and Vester was enthralled by Marilyn, the great movie star, who wore a baggy pullover, wrinkled slacks, and sneakers and was happy and relaxed.
Vester was surprised that a movie star could be so approachable. Fleur Cowles spoke about Vester’s courage in the midst of the gunfire of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Marilyn vowed, “I must do good for the world in some way. I promise you I will never waste my life again!” Writing about the episode long after it occurred, Cowles wondered if Marilyn ever remembered it in the years ahead.2
During her early years in New York, Marilyn would reshape her life. Studying at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, dating Marlon Brando and Arthur Miller, and making many friends, she was in the mecca of her dreams. Sometimes she felt like a character out of the pages of Flair magazine. She formed her own production company with Milton Greene; and in the culmination of her dreams, she married Arthur Miller. She was, as Eli Wallach put it, reborn in New York.3 It was a halcyon period for her, although she continued to take prescription drugs, a portent of problems that lay ahead.
By Christmas, Marilyn was back at the Greenes’ home, after her stay with Fleur Cowles. She had sent all her California possessions, including the white piano, there: she expected to stay with them for some time. At Christmas the three of them went to New York for a party at Clifton Webb’s apartment in honor of Noël Coward, who wanted to meet Marilyn.4 Returning to the Greenes’, she took long baths, walked in the woods, went antiquing with Amy, and gardened when the weather permitted. She played with the Greenes’ son and met their friends at their weekend dinner parties. Prominent New York artists who had second homes in Connecticut near Weston attended these parties: Leonard Bernstein, symphony conductor and composer, and his wife, Felicia; Richard Rodgers, the composer of musicals like Oklahoma!, along with his wife, Dorothy; and Mike Todd, the flamboyant theater impresario.
Marilyn helped out in the kitchen. She peeled potatoes, snapped green beans, and washed dishes. She became friendly with Kitty Owens, the Greenes’ housekeeper and cook, an African-American daughter of sharecroppers in the South. She told Kitty that she wanted three or four children of her own, but she intended to adopt children from a number of ethnic backgrounds. She was upset, she told Kitty, when she heard that Indian children were difficult to raise. Kitty told her to pay no attention to such nonsense.5
On Sundays, Norman Norell, the designer, and John Moore, his protégé, would visit. They sat in the Greenes’ living room in front of a roaring fire, and Norell told stories about designing costumes for Broadway s
tars in the 1930s, an age of elegance on the stage. Norell looked like an aristocrat, but he was born Norman Levinson in Indiana, the son of the owner of a men’s clothing store. He used earthy talk, with a swift slangy rhythm. Marilyn liked talking that way. He and Moore were homosexual, and Marilyn felt safe with them.
Norell and Moore dressed Marilyn during her New York years. They had her wear simple clothes for the day—plain skirts and blouses; suits, often beige or black, with white gloves and pearls; for her daytime clothes, they designed simple black silk sheath dresses with spaghetti straps and short jackets. Nighttime was for the glamour of satins and sequins. Norell was famous for his sequined mermaid evening dresses, which Marilyn wore. She also wore casual clothes from Jax and cotton dresses with full skirts from Anne Klein. When the bright, simple silk sheath dresses designed by Pucci came into vogue, she wore that style. Fashion critics accused her of dressing badly, but she created an elegant look with the help of major designers.6
During her stay with the Greenes, she read books from their library and from a list that Michael Chekhov had drawn up for her. She read biographies of turn-of-the-century actresses Ellen Terry and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, as well as of consorts of conquerors and kings, such as Marie Antoinette and Napoleon’s Josephine. She read one of dancer Isadora Duncan—the epitome of the “new woman” of the early 1900s. When reading these books, she may have been thinking of Arthur Miller as her prince and Broadway as a kingdom, but Fleur Cowles had approached her about marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco, who was looking for a movie-star wife to boost the popularity of his principality as a tourist resort. Before Marilyn replied, Grace Kelly was chosen.7
During the Christmas holidays Milton photographed Marilyn in his Lexington Avenue studio in the “ballerina sitting.” On January 7, he held a cocktail party–press conference in the New York townhouse of Frank Delaney, his lawyer, to announce the formation of Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP). Delaney announced that Marilyn’s contract with Fox was no longer valid because the studio had missed several deadlines. Fox didn’t agree, and the studio lawyers contested the issue with MMP’s lawyers during the next year, negotiating over a new contract for Marilyn. For the press conference, Amy asked Norell to design a white spaghetti-strap dress, which Marilyn wore with dangling diamond earrings, white shoes, white stockings, and a white ermine coat. Amy liked an integrated color look, and Milton chose white. The reporters covering the event were sarcastic in writing about it. Diamonds and furs seemed appropriate for the old Marilyn, not the new one, who was a company president. She was also an hour late, which annoyed them. And she didn’t seem to know much about MMP.
When asked what movie role she wanted to play, she answered Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov. The reporters laughed. How could a dumb blonde appear in a work by Dostoyevsky? (They didn’t know that Dore Schary had considered casting her in this role or that the descriptions of Grushenka in the novel fit Marilyn perfectly.) Even Billy Wilder was sarcastic, saying he would direct a sequel to any Brothers Karamazov film she made and title it “Abbott and Costello Meet the Brothers Karamazov.” (Comedy team Bud Abbott and Lou Costello had made Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.) Hedda Hopper and Dorothy Kilgallen were especially vicious, but Louella Parsons and Earl Wilson were on Marilyn’s side. Along with other journalists, they contended that she was more focused and mature since she had moved to New York.8
In mid-January, Marilyn went with Milton and Amy to Hollywood for a week to do final scenes on The Seven Year Itch. Fox executives tried to sign her for How to Be Very, Very Popular, but she eluded them. Gossip columns reported her as saying that she loved New York and didn’t know how she’d ever stood Hollywood. Back in New York, she moved part-time into the Gladstone Hotel, near Milton’s studio. With a lot of appointments in New York, she needed a place to stay there. She also needed a place to meet Arthur Miller. Biographers trace their reintroduction to a cocktail party later that spring, but Amy Greene indicated that they reconnected soon after Marilyn moved to Connecticut. They began an affair. This earlier date suggests that they had had some contact in the years since their original meeting in January 1951, but all we know for certain is that on one occasion Marilyn flew to New York, expecting to meet Arthur in her hotel room, but he never showed up.
In fact, two plays he began writing soon after he left Marilyn in Hollywood in 1951 indicate that he didn’t see much future for them as a couple. The first play had the working title “The Third Play.” It concerns a sexually free woman and her love affairs with two men. (He named the woman Lorraine—echoing the name Marilyn.) Both affairs end miserably for the men, as Lorraine leaves the first man, hurting him deeply, and the second man stays with his wife and is equally miserable. This play, existing only in unfinished drafts, eventually evolved into After the Fall.
The second play, The Crucible, set during the Salem witch trials of 1692, deals with broad issues of guilt, innocence, and individual and legal responsibility—in an analogy to the HUAC investigations. But its plot also concerns a farmer who has an affair with a young woman. When his wife learns about the affair, she is unforgiving. Then the young woman tries to seduce him a second time. When he refuses, she denounces him as a witch, and he is hanged. The resemblances to Arthur, his wife Mary, and Marilyn are uncanny in this play. Again, it appears that there is no future for his relationship with Marilyn, although he seemed to overlook the conclusions of these plays when he met Marilyn in New York and immediately fell for her again.9
Amy didn’t approve of Marilyn and Arthur’s affair because, she said, she didn’t approve of married people having affairs. She wouldn’t let them meet at her home. She may have known about Marilyn’s affair with Milton, although she always denied that it had happened. She may also have not wanted to spend time with Arthur, nor he with her. So Marilyn used the Gladstone Hotel.10
Neither Amy nor Milton liked Arthur. Amy was a naturalized citizen from Cuba who adored the United States, and she didn’t like it when Arthur criticized her new country. She thought he was stingy—which was true. The Miller family had been wealthy during the 1920s, had gone broke during the 1929 stock market crash, and had barely gotten by during the Depression. As a result, he feared poverty to the point that he was very frugal. Both Greenes found him egocentric, holding court, telling uninteresting stories. (Others found him a gifted storyteller.)11 He lectured Marilyn, and Amy didn’t like it when Marilyn repeated his ideas as though they were her own. Amy and Milton were leaders in creating high style for the elites, and Arthur wasn’t interested in fashion. That was another point of contention. As might be expected, Arthur wasn’t taken with the Greenes. Milton was too interested in making money, too “show business.” Milton saw Arthur’s dedication to high art as “dreariness” and “long hairiness.” “I write and believe in ‘gloomy things,’ not ‘pink tights,’ “Arthur wrote to Marilyn, who was doing a balancing act among these powerful people.
Meanwhile, Amy took over the easily disorganized Marilyn. She encouraged her to go to movies and plays, because Arthur, who was living with his wife and children, saw her only two afternoons a week. She went to museums, and she went antiquing in the many antique shops on Second Avenue. Amy stated that Marilyn didn’t like to be alone at night, and she often drove to Connecticut to be with them.12
In early February, Marilyn began studying the role of Hamlet’s Ophelia with drama coach Constance Collier, who had been a renowned actress on the London Edwardian stage. Collier belonged to a lesbian circle that included Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich; she was herself involved with Katharine Hepburn. She held lunches that Marilyn attended, placing her again at the fringes of a lesbian group. Amy remembered that Marilyn, Milton, and she went to a dance at which Collier tried to seduce Marilyn. Collier, age seventy-seven, had a hawk nose and one of those masculine faces that Edwardians found attractive but that were considered witchlike in the 1950s. Marilyn was probably frightened of her. When Collier compared Marilyn’s acting talent to a fluttering
butterfly, she may have picked up Marilyn’s unease in her presence. Marilyn’s studies with her ended abruptly when Collier died at the end of April.13
Reporters saw Marilyn with Joe DiMaggio, especially at Toots Shor’s. He helped her move into the Gladstone, and in late January she went to Boston with him for several days, to raise money for MMP and to visit his brother Dom, a former outfielder with the Boston Red Sox. She also went to New Jersey with Joe to visit Mary Short, Anne Karger’s daughter, who had moved there to rejoin her husband, an army officer stationed there. Mary was an excellent golfer, and Joe liked playing the game with her. Did Marilyn use Joe as a screen to hide her affair with Arthur? It’s possible.
To counter the negative publicity that Fox was generating about her in the newspapers, Marilyn appeared at several benefits. On March 20 she rode an elephant painted pink in a Madison Square Garden gala to benefit the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. She dressed in an abbreviated showgirl outfit, with spangles and feathers. The production was themed around holidays: a troupe of comics dressed in green uniforms personified St. Patrick’s Day; ice-skating star Sonja Henie rode on a Christmas float; and Marilyn represented the day after New Year’s Eve, or “a pleasant hangover.” The elephant behaved impeccably, bowing before celebrities and before the Short children, who were there with Joe DiMaggio. Milton had dreamed up the pink elephant stunt. Yet reporters pointed out that the showgirl outfit Marilyn wore seemed counterproductive to her attempt to redefine herself as a company president.14
The sense of accomplishment that Marilyn and Milton felt from the pink elephant event, which was a smash hit, was damaged by their weak performance with Amy on the popular Edward R. Murrow television show Person to Person a month later. The fifteen-minute episode with Murrow was filmed at the Greenes’ home in Connecticut. Marilyn and Milton had arranged it as a treat for Amy, who was a huge fan of Murrow. When both of them became quiet on the set, Amy took over. She became a dynamo, feeding lines to Marilyn, whose voice went soft and who stumbled in replying to Murrow. Critics excoriated her, and producers offered Amy leading roles in several movies, which angered Marilyn. Darryl Zanuck probably had a hand in these offers, in an attempt to drive a wedge between Milton and Marilyn. Amy turned everything down, but damage was done to the relationship between Amy and the overly sensitive Marilyn.