Marilyn Monroe

by Charles Casillo

  She dashed off a polite but curt answer to Zanuck informing him she had read the script: “I am exceedingly sorry. But I do not like it.” Zanuck was beside himself with fury. On January 4 he suspended Marilyn without pay.

  * * *

  Uncertain of her future at the studio, Marilyn was secure in DiMaggio’s love for her. He was due to leave for Japan in late January. It was baseball season there, and he was scheduled to coach Japanese players. DiMaggio wanted Marilyn to be with him on the trip. He had been asking her to marry him for a long time, and now she said yes.

  They both agreed to a quiet wedding. Their names had appeared in the press enough; a simple ceremony at San Francisco City Hall sounded best. Marilyn had, however, promised Fox’s head of publicity, Harry Brand, that if she ever married she would let him know. True to her word, she informed Brand that she would be marrying DiMaggio. When Joe and Marilyn arrived at the judge’s chambers on January 14 they found the hall jammed with at least five hundred reporters, photographers, and fans.

  The couple exchanged rings. Joe slipped a platinum eternity band set with thirty-five baguette-cut diamonds onto Marilyn’s finger. After the three-minute ceremony they posed for some pictures and answered a few questions from the reporters. “Marriage is my main career from now on,” Marilyn said, caught up in the moment’s excitement and romance.

  After a quiet honeymoon in a secluded mountain lodge in Idyllwild near Palm Springs, they reentered the world as man and wife. Although they deeply loved each other, the differences in their expectations of married life would become more apparent with each passing day. He would resolve that he would accept her career—and then he’d explode in fits of rage and jealousy. When she confronted him, he’d turn his anger inward and become silent.

  To fulfill DiMaggio’s obligation to go to Japan and train Japanese baseball players, Marilyn and DiMaggio left from San Francisco and headed for their first stop in Hawaii. Marilyn was used to enthusiastic crowds—as was DiMaggio—but the mob that waited for them at the Hawaiian airport was unruly and assertive in a way that neither of them had ever experienced. They grabbed at Marilyn and kept reaching for her hair, pulling it out by the roots. This kind of physical aggression was something new to Marilyn, and she was really afraid. Shaken and manhandled, she said she wanted to go back home—but she was assured that in Japan the people would be more subdued.

  But when the famous couple landed at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo, the fans were just as fanatical. When the plane landed, Marilyn was astonished to see hundreds of policemen trying to hold back ten thousand frantic movie buffs screaming, “mon-chan! mon-chan!” which means “sweet little girl.” Marilyn was too terrified to get off the plane. They opened the door and let the other passengers out while Marilyn secretly crawled through the baggage hatchway to a waiting limousine. When they arrived at the Imperial Hotel, the staff closed the lobby doors and stood guard, but crazed fans hurled themselves at the doors, shattering the glass.

  The next day, to satisfy the legion of fans, the DiMaggios gave a press conference. For the first time Joe would experience just how much Marilyn’s fame eclipsed his own. He was used to being the center of attention—he was a sports legend, an American hero. But it was Marilyn everyone wanted to see and hear about.

  * * *

  While DiMaggio was training the Japanese baseball players, Marilyn received an invitation from the head of the U.S. Far East Command, Gen. John E. Hull, to entertain the troops in Korea. Marilyn, who gave the soldiers a great deal of credit for her success—she was their favorite pinup girl—wanted to go.

  Naturally Joe was against it. Their first argument as a married couple followed. DiMaggio had married her to whisk her away from show business, which he loathed, so she would be out of the spotlight and could devote her attention to him. Now he was starting to realize that no matter what, Marilyn would always belong to the public.

  Since Joe would be busy anyway, Marilyn decided to go to Korea to entertain the thousands of U.S. troops stationed there. “It’s your honeymoon,” DiMaggio said sullenly. It was an early indication that their marriage was doomed.

  * * *

  On February 16 she flew to Seoul, where she was greeted by a blast of frigid air. The temperatures were below zero, and Marilyn hadn’t brought casual, warm clothes. The army outfitted her with army boots, khaki pants, and a sheepskin-lined leather jacket.

  When Marilyn agreed to entertain the troops, the army assigned the twenty-one-year-old pianist Al Guastafeste, who was called “Gus,” to do the musical arrangements for Marilyn and conduct the rehearsals with the other members of the band.

  “We went down to Osaka army hospital to meet her,” Guastafeste recalled. “I can see her today as if it were yesterday. She was wearing tan corduroy pants, a black long-sleeve sweater. Very little makeup. But her eyes were so blue and clear. She was sparkling.”

  Guastafeste discovered that Marilyn approached this performance with the same perfectionism that she did with any movie assignment. “She would ask me, ‘Gus, can you hear my lyrics? Are they clear? Are my movements correct? Am I in time with the music?’ Every time we stopped going over something, she always had another reason to go over it again.” Guastafeste kept reassuring her that he would be there for her.

  Marilyn’s costume was a skintight beaded dress with spaghetti straps, which left much of her skin exposed. “This was February; it was freezing,” Guastafeste continued. “I told Marilyn, ‘Wear your fur coat. You’re going to catch a cold!’ She said, ‘Oh no! This is how they want to see me.’ That’s why I admired her so much. All she was concerned about was entertaining the troops and making them happy.”

  Marilyn would make her entrance to cheers, whistles, and popping flashbulbs. “She had all kinds of movements in her songs, which of course aroused them in more ways than one,” Guastafeste said. One journalist quipped: “She sang a little. But nobody minded that.”

  In Korea the show traveled from location to location in ten helicopters. The temperature was usually zero degrees Fahrenheit in the frozen Korean terrain. Guastafeste goes on: “But she had to sleep the same way we slept—in tents. In freezing weather. We had sleeping bags on top of a cot.” She took icy cold showers, washing as quickly as possible. For food she went on the chow line with everybody else.

  Guastafeste remembered: “Over there in Korea—during those times—the soldiers were throwing away the food they didn’t finish, you had all the little kids hanging around taking the food out of the garbage pails. Of course when Marilyn saw this, she told the kids, ‘Here, take this.’ Then we all did that.”

  Marilyn always made time to shake a soldier’s hand, and while she was there she patiently posed for thousands of pictures—always beaming, always flashing her famous openmouthed smile—it was reported that so many pictures were snapped of Marilyn that Korea ran out of film.

  In four days Marilyn completed nine shows (and quite a few brief appearances) for more than one hundred thousand soldiers. Guastafeste sat next to Marilyn en route back to Japan. He asked her what she wanted to do with her life. Marilyn replied, “I want to be a dramatic actress.”

  By the time she returned to Japan and was reunited with DiMaggio, Marilyn was suffering from pneumonia. Still she was elated. “Joe,” she exclaimed, “you never heard such cheering!”

  “Yes I have,” he replied, reminding her of his illustrious baseball career. “Don’t let it go to your head. Just miss the ball once. You’ll see they can boo as loud as they can cheer.”

  * * *

  When DiMaggio and Marilyn returned to San Francisco, she was still recovering from pneumonia. While she convalesced in DiMaggio’s house, he was called away to New York on business. Marilyn had never been loved the way DiMaggio loved her, and that meant a lot to her. She hated to lose anyone, and even though she was starting to feel delicate cracks in the marriage, she still clung to the idea that they could work it out. She needed to believe in some kind of permanence.


  Always tugging at her was the part of Marilyn that wanted to be a good wife and mother, and when Joe returned, she did her best to live a domestic life, living quietly in his two-story house. She made it a point to become a loving friend to Joe’s twelve-year-old son, Joe Jr., and she visited him at his boarding school. She would remain close to him until the day she died.

  But after a few months she grew bored and dissatisfied. During the day DiMaggio wanted to watch television most of the time. At night he would work at his restaurant. Marilyn would sometimes sit in the back reading, in between greeting his customers. Before long she was once again itching to work.

  DiMaggio still had hopes of changing Marilyn, but he felt the best thing to do was be supportive until he could ease her into a more traditional married life. For the time being he moved to Los Angeles with her, and rented a house on N. Palm Drive in Beverly Hills, while she resumed her career. She signed with Famous Artists Agency, where Charlie Feldman was a top agent. (In fact he had been handling her career—without pay—for a long time.)

  Feldman finally convinced Fox that Pink Tights was not a suitable project for Marilyn. The studio threw up its hands; after all the headlines and fuss made about the picture, Fox quietly dropped any plans for making the movie at all. Apparently Zanuck felt that, without Marilyn, the screenplay wasn’t good enough to be carried by any other actress.*

  ELEVEN

  “ELEGANT VULGARITY”

  Marilyn Monroe was unlike any movie star Hollywood had ever dealt with—and if 20th Century-Fox wanted her in their movies, they were going to have to give a little. Her tough stance didn’t make them respect her, or even like her any more than they had before, but they had to acknowledge her phenomenal appeal—and to them that translated into dollars.

  Fox approved a new contract for her to go into effect the coming August, and they would give her a one-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus if she agreed to costar in a musical extravaganza called There’s No Business Like Show Business. In spite of it being a big splashy musical, Marilyn was not thrilled with the project. The script used a threadbare plot as an excuse to string together a bunch of spectacular Irving Berlin musical numbers.

  But for her next film, Charlie Feldman had managed to persuade Darryl Zanuck to buy the film rights to The Seven Year Itch, a Broadway smash that offered her a deftly written comic role—and she would be directed by Billy Wilder, one of the best in the business. Although hers would be another dumb-blonde character, The Seven Year Itch would offer her quality comedy. Feldman himself would produce. With the promise of that superior project, Marilyn agreed to sing and wiggle her way through There’s No Business Like Show Business.

  The plot, if it can be called that, follows the rise from obscurity to fame of a show-business family known as “the Five Donahues.” The matriarch of the family would be played by the big, brassy, belting theater star Ethel Merman; the patriarch would be the veteran song-and-dance man Dan Dailey. Donald O’Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, and Ray Anthony were cast as their adult children. They would provide the razzle-dazzle showmanship for Irving Berlin’s classic songs. Fox cast Marilyn to add the sex appeal.

  Although she could appear happy at times on the set, at home Marilyn was having difficulties with DiMaggio. Their brief marriage was in trouble. DiMaggio continued spending days watching television, chain-smoking, and waiting for Marilyn to come home from the studio. Marilyn, exhausted from a grueling day of work, would arrive late, only to have a long argument with DiMaggio. Some would say that, in his anger and obsessive passion for Marilyn, DiMaggio would become physically abusive. Upset and riled from an evening arguing with DiMaggio, Marilyn would need pills in order to get to sleep.

  Marilyn would show up at the studio groggy and half doped from the previous night’s sedatives. “When I come to work in the morning, my hair looks as if Joe has combed it with a baseball bat,” she joked.

  Marilyn collapsed three times on the set, causing the movie to be shut down each time. “She’s been overworked and is ill a lot,” the publicity department announced. The public had no idea of her growing dependency on sleeping pills. Instead it was reported that she had the flu, which lingered. She really was run down and sick. On each occasion she was ordered home to rest by the studio doctor. Each time the press would speculate that Marilyn was pregnant.

  * * *

  Freed from the stilted dialogue and let loose to interpret Irving Berlin’s wonderful lyrics, Marilyn actually does her best work in the movie’s musical numbers. Hearing her perform “After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want it,” Irving Berlin gushed, “Marilyn’s interpretation gives it a sexiness I didn’t know it had.” Berlin also went “dizzy with delight” when he heard her rendition of “Lazy.” Earl Wilson reported: “When Marilyn sings, you can’t take your eyes off her voice.”

  In There’s No Business Like Show Business, Marilyn completely transforms another, much-better-known song with her sensual interpretation. When the movie was released, her performance of the “Heat Wave” number would become the most-talked-about scene of the film. Marilyn’s costume—a Carmen Miranda–like headdress, bra top, and flared skirt slit up the middle—is part of the seduction: “Hot and humid nights can be expected,” she promises.

  Released in time for the Christmas holidays, There’s No Business Like Show Business was the kind of flashy but mindless musical entertainment that audiences of the day ate up, and they came in respectable numbers to feast on this lavish spectacle.

  When it came to Marilyn, the focus was on her sexuality. The New York Times dismissed her performance, scolding that the “wriggling and squirming” in her musical numbers were “embarrassing to behold.” Variety did advise that “Miss Monroe’s treatment of her vocals must be seen to be appreciated.”

  * * *

  Immediately after completing There’s No Business Like Show Business, Marilyn started filming her next movie—which was considered a quality production with a substantially higher level of sophistication. After seven years of monogamy the sexual spark begins to go out of a marriage, leaving one (or both) partners to start desiring some action outside the relationship. That is the intriguing premise of George Axelrod’s farce The Seven Year Itch.

  Marilyn was excited to be working with a director for whom she had a lot of admiration, Billy Wilder, responsible for such classics as Sunset Blvd. and Sabrina. George Axelrod, a master of the witty double entendre, was adapting his Broadway play for the screen.

  The plot of The Seven Year Itch revolves around a man, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell), who is left alone in Manhattan while his wife and young son have gone to the country for the summer. After seven years of marriage, Sherman’s head is filled with heated sexual fantasies that have him pacing nervously around his apartment and talking to himself. On his first night alone a delectable “Girl,” played by Marilyn, rings his doorbell to let her into the building because she has forgotten her key. The beautiful blonde has sublet the apartment upstairs for the summer. Marilyn is not given a name in the movie because she is everyman’s fantasy figure—a “living doll” with a voluptuous body and a baby face who keeps her panties in the icebox in an effort to stay cool during the scorching summer.

  Wilder was intrigued by the idea of directing Monroe, who, as far as he was concerned, embodied irresistible contrasting qualities that always seemed to be compellingly at odds with one another. “She had a kind of elegant vulgarity about her. That, I think, was very important,” he observed.

  Marilyn left for location work in New York on September 8, 1954. Her presence in Manhattan dominated the newspapers for her entire stay—usually with the kind of coverage that announced her arrival: “Marilyn Wiggles In.”

  During her stay Marilyn was seen around town socializing with Milton and Amy Greene. It was as if she were a rare exotic bird and the press were avid watchers waiting for any sighting of her. It was reported that, while at El Morocco, Marilyn ordered a glass of milk before leaving for her hotel. The reporter also noted tha
t “on the sidewalk outside the club she removed her shoes,” going on to say she still was not wearing stockings, considered quite unseemly in the day.

  The Greenes seemed protective of her. In the previous months Marilyn had secretly kept in touch with Milton. During several meetings with Greene, she talked intensely, compulsively, about the possibility of breaking away from the studio and forming her own company so she could pick and choose her own properties, directors, and costars. It was a radical plan for a twenty-eight-year-old female star—but there had never been a star quite like Marilyn Monroe. Greene had his lawyer look over her Fox contract to see if there was any loophole to get her out of it.

  * * *

  It would have been easy to film the brief outdoor scenes on a soundstage at the Fox lot. But both the studio and Billy Wilder saw millions of dollars in free publicity by bringing Marilyn to Manhattan and having her perform a couple of scenes in front of the press and the public. Describing it as “A Marilyn Invasion,” Earl Wilson reported that “Miss Monroe’s widely seen physique will be glimpsed right out in the public streets.”

  The columnist Walter Winchell called DiMaggio and told him he should come to town and watch Marilyn film the upcoming segment. DiMaggio argued that he had no interest in filmmaking, but Winchell convinced him that something extraordinary would be taking place. Joe changed his mind and decided to join Marilyn in Manhattan, just in time to catch the filming of one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history. Although he couldn’t know it at the time, it would be the last straw in their marriage.

  The publicity bonanza was scheduled to be filmed at 1:00 a.m. on September 14 in front of the Trans-Lux Theater on Lexington and Fifty-second Street. Wilder chose to shoot the scene in the middle of the night because the city streets would be less hectic, but still a police barricade held back thousands of onlookers. In the segment, “the Girl” and Sherman are coming out of the movie theater after seeing The Creature from the Black Lagoon.