Marilyn Monroe

by Charles Casillo

  * * *

  The whole town seemed to be an engine fueled by sex. Marilyn was learning about the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles always hiding under respectable facades. The Blue Book Modeling Agency, for example, managed by the very proper and soft-spoken Emmeline Snively, also doubled as an escort service. During the war some of the models went out with different men two or three nights a week. Emmeline would later point out that Marilyn never did.

  More and more Marilyn was discovering that everything helpful, everything related to money, everything that assisted in advancement, everything that represented protection—had an infrastructure of sex.

  Very soon Marilyn began getting attention the only way she knew how, by wearing tight clothing, often without panties. Sometimes she would wear a bra under tight sweaters, as was common with glamour girls of the day, because it showed off the figure.

  Marilyn’s hair cascaded past her shoulders—now the color was a very soft, dark blonde or honey colored with hues of amber. Her skin was creamy, pale, almost translucent, which she contrasted with glossy red lipstick. She often wore white. She had a perfect body, and she flaunted it the way some might flaunt a stellar education, or family connections, or great wealth. It was her calling card.

  A friend recalled lending her eighty dollars, which Marilyn used to buy twenty-five bras she would sometimes stuff with tissue and wear under tight sweaters so her breasts would stick out even further. “This is what everyone looks at,” Marilyn explained. “So this will be great. When I walk down Hollywood Boulevard everyone will look at me.”

  “Honey, you don’t want them to do that.”

  “Oh yes I do,” Marilyn replied. “I want everyone to love me.”

  This was indicative of Marilyn’s personality at this time, dressing provocatively and giving off sexual signals, combined with an innocent “who me?” quality that worked.

  It wasn’t an act. There were complexities underneath her provocative exterior. She grew up feeling that she could be uprooted at any moment. Affection was temporary because she didn’t belong to anyone. She often told people she was an orphan, because she felt like one. Marilyn’s vulnerability startled people because she looked cheap, but when they took the time to talk to her they found that she was sensitive and good. And her desire to learn, to improve, to be great, was very real.

  Later she would refer to the “wolves” back in those lonely, drifting days. She would admit that they were always after her, trying to get her to go to bed. In the 1950s, during the height of her career, Marilyn maintained that she always refused these wolves. Many people who knew her claimed differently.

  The actress Susan Strasberg, daughter of the legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg, said that Marilyn once confided that during her lean years she had made ends meet by working “in the world’s oldest profession.” Of course she may have exaggerated her experiences for effect. Marilyn was always an exceptionally private person, with parts of her life that she would never reveal to anyone. There are incidents, experiences in the life of Marilyn Monroe, that will never be fully known.

  Marilyn was not immoral. She was a young woman who was brought up without a moral compass, having no guidance or lasting female role models, or any role models for that matter. What she knew was what she had learned out in the world, on the streets of Hollywood, and she used that knowledge for her own survival. Her sexuality was what they valued. Her sexuality was all she thought she had to offer—so sometimes she gave it. How could it be wrong if it gave such pleasure?

  There was an innocence incorporated with Marilyn’s sexuality which makes it difficult to judge. She grew like a wildflower, never knowing she had anything to contribute until someone found something beautiful in her. Her innocent attitude regarding sex—something she successfully conveyed on screen—made her a trailblazer. Innocence and humor mixed with sex would become character traits of Marilyn’s movie star personality.

  * * *

  In August 1947, still with no steady source of income, Marilyn attracted the attention of an established Hollywood couple, John Carroll and Lucille Ryman Carroll.

  The head of talent at MGM studios, Lucille was already well placed in Hollywood—one of the few women who had power in the movie industry. Her husband was the actor John Carroll, whose resemblance to Clark Gable was so striking that his career was relegated to second-string status. In August, Carroll was playing in the Cheviot Hills Golf Tournament with male stars like Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and Tyrone Power. To add sex appeal to the event, nubile starlets were assigned a star for whom they would caddy. Marilyn was paired with Carroll.

  Lucille watched bemused on the sidelines. Marilyn was wearing a pair of very revealing shorts and a tight sweater. “She thought the only thing she had were her breasts,” Lucille commented. “She felt ‘This is my only chance at stardom.’” The Carrolls found Marilyn to be a fascinating creature under the seductive but tawdry-looking exterior. The contrast of her lack of social skills with her exquisite face and body had a quirky adorability, like a kitten’s. In fact Lucille would call her “a stray little kitten.” John said to his wife, “We must help this little girl.”

  What the Carrolls expected from Marilyn isn’t totally clear. Both Lucille and John Carroll would always claim that their interest in her was strictly in her well-being and career potential. But there is something strange, almost with a whiff of impropriety, in their preoccupation with Marilyn.

  The previous year the couple had a beautiful eighteen-year-old runaway, Lila Leeds, living with them. Miss Leeds, known as a “bad girl” struggling starlet, missed an important test Lucille had set up for her at MGM because she had gotten high the previous evening. (In 1948 Leeds would make headlines when she was arrested with Robert Mitchum for possession of marijuana.) Later, the Carrolls were the subject of an article in the gossip magazine Confidential alleging that the couple often threw all-nude parties.

  In 1947 Marilyn seems to have surpassed Lila Leeds’s place in their affection and devotion. Certainly the couple, who were twenty years older than Marilyn, were captivated by her. Lucille would refer to her as “a cute little trick.” And even though she stated that Marilyn was “constantly” trying to seduce her husband, Lucille gave her many of her expensive evening gowns as well as cash gifts for cosmetics and other living expenses.

  Shortly after the Carrolls met her, they took Marilyn into their home. For more than six months Marilyn lived in the couple’s apartment in West Hollywood—the El Palacio Apartments on Fountain Avenue—and on weekends at their sprawling horse ranch in the Valley.

  In December 1947 John Carroll drew up and signed an informal contract with Marilyn under which he would pay her one hundred dollars a week, agreeing to “use my best efforts to guide and counsel you to the end that your professional career will be furthered and enhanced.”

  As weeks turned to months, the Carrolls continued to pay Marilyn one hundred dollars a week, but she was becoming a problem. She bombarded them with phone calls during the workday. Marilyn would call Lucille at the office on her private line asking about trivial things like what color lipstick to wear or how she should do her hair. Or she might call with an imaginary crisis, like the time she claimed a Peeping Tom was watching her through the bathroom window.

  Ultimately Lucille talked to her husband, and decided to continue with Marilyn’s salary but move her into the Studio Club, a residential facility in Hollywood for aspiring actresses. The rent was fifty dollars a month, and Lucille paid six months in advance.

  * * *

  In the days of the Hollywood casting couch, there weren’t many avenues for an unknown actress to take toward movie stardom. In the male-dominated world of the 1940s and 1950s, if a woman wanted opportunities in the film industry, giving sexual favors was something that was expected of her.

  Like many starlets of the era, Marilyn discovered the Hollywood party circuit. These were weekend parties that single executives in the movie industry held in their mansions, makin
g use of the abundance of very beautiful, very young women who were trying to break into the business. Known as “party girls,” they were viewed by the executives as a kind of salacious smorgasbord.

  Marilyn went to these gatherings looking for contacts, but what she sought from these men was—if not love—recognition and respect. And while she did come into contact with some top players in the industry, many didn’t take the time to get to know Marilyn. As far as they were concerned, she was just another sexy blonde with a nice body. Often these men were vulgar, degrading, and could also turn violent.

  Marilyn would remember being held down in a room by two men while another tried to rape her. Orson Welles recalled being at a party where Marilyn was surrounded by men and one reached out and tore off her top, revealing her breasts. Marilyn, Welles said, laughed with the others at this indignity. Laughter hid her fury.

  When Marilyn was a star she loathed the powerful men who ran the studio system, and she did everything in her power to defy them—and they hated her because she knew what they were. “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul,” she wrote contemptuously.

  * * *

  In 1948 Pat DiCicco, a sometime Hollywood agent and movie producer, invited Marilyn to one of Joseph Schenck’s infamous poker parties at his Holmby Hills home. Because she had been briefly under contract with his studio, Marilyn knew that Joe Schenck was the sixty-nine-year-old chairman of 20th Century-Fox and one of the richest and most powerful men in the film industry.

  Schenck was dazzled by this new girl, who was so unlike other starlets who worked his parties. He was fascinated by the way she would cover up her shyness with exhibitionism, her wit with silence. Feeling socially awkward, Marilyn might retreat into an inscrutable haze, heavy-lidded and sensual—something she would do for the rest of her life.

  Soon she became a regular at Schenck’s parties, silently standing behind his chair as he played cards. After she was a star, Schenck would deny he ever had an affair with her. Marilyn, however, would candidly talk to her friend Amy Greene (wife of the photographer Milton Greene) about “servicing” him. Schenck would call her, and she would go over and “do what she had to do. Sometimes it took hours,” Marilyn confided. “I was relieved when he fell asleep.”

  Adrift in a sea of self-assured lechers and users, Marilyn craved protection. Often she would stay in the guesthouse on the property of Schenck’s Italian Renaissance mansion. But she kept her place at the Studio Club—a way for her to maintain her self-respect. Marilyn might allow people to take from her, but they would never own her. “I was never kept,” she said proudly later in her career. She held on to her soul.

  * * *

  Still, Marilyn brought enormous pleasure to Schenck’s life, and he cared very much for her. He called his friend Harry Cohn, who headed the competing studio, Columbia Pictures, and asked if, as a special favor, he would try Marilyn out with a six month contract. “I’m indebted to her,” he said. Cohn agreed, and Marilyn was signed to a Columbia contract in March 1948. As a favor to the powerful Joe Schenck, they cast her in a low-budget movie to be called Ladies of the Chorus. She was on her way.

  * * *

  Being part of the new studio, Marilyn was assigned to take acting lessons with Natasha Lytess, who was Columbia’s head drama coach. The two women would form an intense teacher-student relationship, fraught with complexities, that would last for the next seven years.

  What probably had an immense influence on how the relationship between Marilyn and Natasha progressed was the sad news in the same time period that her beloved Aunt Ana died—a great blow to Marilyn. She had been one of the few people who had shown her love and kindness as a child. Aunt Ana was also one of the last remaining threads that connected Norma Jeane to Marilyn. It was scary to let this part of her identity go.

  On the day of their first meeting, Natasha appraised her new student and was singularly unimpressed. Marilyn was wearing a clingy, red knit dress cut too low in front with heels so high she could hardly walk. A trollop’s outfit, Natasha thought.

  Marilyn shrank under Natasha’s condescending gaze. Columbia’s head acting coach was a volatile thirty-seven-year-old woman but looked older; bone thin, with a mop of graying hair, intense dark eyes, and a prematurely lined face. Her superior demeanor and thick German accent made Marilyn feel that everything about herself was wrong, while all of Natasha’s opinions must be astute and important.

  Natasha’s first critique of Marilyn was, “I can’t hear you, my dear. When you speak, your mouth closes up. You will have to work on diction. Diction, diction, diction—this right now is most important for you.” She made Marilyn read the same scene again, instructing, “Open your mouth wider, even more—that is good. That is better. Louder. Louder.”*

  “I will do whatever you tell me,” Marilyn replied

  Natasha’s scorn soon turned into fascination. It’s possible that Natasha became close to Marilyn—long after her duties for the low-budget Ladies of the Chorus were finished—because she saw potential in her. What was more likely the cause of Natasha’s fierce devotion to Marilyn was a strong sexual attraction, the typical mixture of lust and disdain she routinely aroused. “She moved [in a sensual way] so that all the men in the studio whistled at her,” Natasha observed. “But her face was childish with disheveled hair … it was an extraordinary thing to see.… It was just as if she were two different persons.”

  Ladies of the Chorus was Marilyn’s biggest break so far, and she clung to Natasha during the making of the film. “She feared everything,” Natasha said. And Marilyn’s fear and vulnerability made her seducible. Natasha seems to have taken advantage of Marilyn’s uncertainty, luring her into a dedicated teacher-pupil relationship with the promise of turning her into a real actress. She presented herself as a mother figure, a champion, and a protector—things Marilyn found irresistible. In Marilyn the older coach saw a beautiful young woman who was an artistic blank—a mound of clay with no sense of self, no ego, that Natasha could shape into everything she herself wanted to be.

  Natasha put a lot of pressure on Marilyn sexually. Marilyn understood that her body was what people desired most. She offered it easily to people whom she appreciated. It was a way for her to say “Thank you.” It was a way to say “Help me.” Because Natasha was working hard to help her, Marilyn likely felt compelled to give herself sexually a few times in the beginning, a very casual experimentation that would later turn into fury.

  For the next seven years Natasha would become a key part of Marilyn’s life. Natasha coached her through twenty films, and after 1951 Marilyn refused to perform in a scene unless Natasha was on the set.

  But she was also able to draw a line. In many ways Marilyn became submissive to Natasha (as she would with other teachers), but she still held on to a piece of her own free will, which prohibited Natasha from having total control. Natasha said, “I took her in my arms one day and said, ‘I want to love you.’” Marilyn looked at her. “Don’t love me, Natasha,” she implored. “Teach me.”

  * * *

  In Ladies of the Chorus, Marilyn would be performing two numbers, “Anyone Can See I Love You,” a routine love song, and “Every Baby Needs a Da-Da-Daddy.” To help polish her singing, the studio introduced her to the vocal coach Fred Karger. At thirty-two Karger was talented, athletic, and as handsome as a movie star.

  Marilyn had a fine singing voice—warm and sensual, although it was too soft—and Fred was encouraged by her fantastic ambition. He tirelessly went over the songs with her. As they got to know each other, Marilyn discovered that Fred was recently divorced and had custody of his six-year-old daughter, Terry. At the time, Karger was living in a big house with his mother, Anne, and his sister, Mary—along with her two young children. Naturally Marilyn was in awe of his extended-family life. She would remain close to Karger’s mother and sister for the rest of her life.*

  Marilyn always greatly appreciated anyone who tr
ied to help her, but she developed a huge crush on Karger—which quickly developed into love. Before him, Marilyn had never felt sexual desire for anyone, nor had she reached orgasm—not even during her teenage marriage. “Sex is baffling when it doesn’t happen,” she admitted. “I used to wake up in the morning when I was married and wonder if the whole world was crazy, whooping about sex all the time.”

  Karger introduced Marilyn to a world in which love and sex existed hand in hand, a relationship of mutual give-and-take pleasure. Unfortunately Karger took more than he was willing to give. As Marilyn did with the entire world, she tried to make herself more beautiful in an attempt to make Karger want her. The world fell for it; Karger did not.

  Still hurting from his divorce, Karger harbored an underlayer of anger toward women. Marilyn’s insecurity made her a perfect scapegoat for him to unleash his hostility on. Suddenly he’d insult her intellect, the way she dressed, or her naïveté.

  “I’ve been thinking maybe we should get married,” he said. “But it’s impossible. I have to think of my daughter.” He explained that if something happened to him it wouldn’t be right for his child to “be brought up by a woman like you. I mean, it’s not that you’re not capable of being a mother, but, it’s, well, it wouldn’t be fair to her.”

  Marilyn gasped. She immediately understood what he meant by “a woman like you.” A woman good enough to laugh with, have dinner with, sleep with—but certainly not someone who was intelligent enough, or had the moral compass, to be a mother to his daughter. “You couldn’t possibly love me if that’s what you think of me,” Marilyn whispered. She painfully started to distance herself from Karger, to give him the freedom he seemed to want.

  That Christmas she bought him a gold watch that cost five hundred dollars. Natasha Lytess said scornfully that Marilyn gave expensive gifts because she couldn’t give of herself. But that wasn’t true. She had given herself completely to Karger. As usual Marilyn was broke and had to pay for it in installments. On it she had only the date inscribed: 12–25–48. She explained that someday he would love someone else. If Marilyn’s name were inscribed on the present, he would no longer be able to wear it. It took Marilyn two years to finish paying for that watch.