Unfortunately Miller was not bringing in a lot of money at this time—his plays weren’t being produced successfully that often—and what income he did have went to alimony and child support. His financial security mostly fell on Marilyn.
* * *
After a brief restorative “honeymoon” in Jamaica, Marilyn and Arthur did their best to settle into a normal, married life. Marilyn leased an apartment in Manhattan at 444 East Fifty-seventh Street in the prestigious Sutton Place area. Ignoring superstition, she accepted an apartment on the thirteenth floor with four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms. Marilyn set out to decorate the place, furnishing the living room in shades of white. A den was set aside exclusively for Arthur to work in. “I never intrude except to bring him a second cup of coffee,” Marilyn told reporters. The couple acquired a basset hound they named Hugo, and the doormen would note them taking him out for evening strolls.
For a while they put the movie business behind them, and their days in Manhattan fell into a routine. Marilyn would try to wake in time to fix Arthur breakfast. Afterward he would go into his den and attempt to do some writing. Marilyn might go shopping for new things for the apartment or clothes for Arthur. Later she would attend classes at the Actors Studio. At night they might see a show, entertain friends, or spend a quiet evening at home.
For a while things seemed to be on the mend. “Please, if I’ve ever made you cry or made you even more sadder, ever for a second, please forgive me, my perfect girl,” Miller wrote to her, probably after a quarrel. “I love you.”
* * *
Miller owned a house in Roxbury, Connecticut, and Marilyn had grown to love spending time there. Now she bought a house just down the road from Miller’s, where the couple could create a home. She planned to have a totally new house built on the property. She employed the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. His elaborate design was a dream house, but an unrealistic one, way out of their budget. They settled on simply modernizing the existing house—which in itself was an expensive endeavor.
In the meantime they rented a quiet cottage in Amagansett, Long Island, for weekends away from the city—taking Hugo with them. It was there that they really enjoyed some of the most idyllic times of their marriage. Marilyn wore no makeup and walked around barefoot—on wooden floors, in the garden, on the beach. She wore shorts and men’s shirts that she tied at the waist. She would go horseback riding. They swam together in the ocean and took long drives. She also discovered that she enjoyed gardening. While Marilyn worked in the garden, Miller would spend some time writing.
* * *
To free up time from the business of being Marilyn Monroe she hired May Reis to be a personal assistant/secretary and to handle many of her career dealings. May had at one time worked as a secretary for Arthur Miller. More and more, Marilyn’s personal and business lives were populated by people from Miller’s circle. May turned out to be a very devoted, efficient, and loving addition to Marilyn’s life.
One of the things in her business life that had to be taken care of immediately was dissolving her partnership with Milton Greene. Miller kept reminding her that as long as Greene was vice president of Marilyn Monroe Productions, he could be entitled to half of all her earnings. He convinced her that all Greene was after was her money; he was only out to use her.
Greene was surprised to learn (through Miller) that Marilyn did not want him to receive an executive producer credit for The Prince and the Showgirl. Lawyers took over. What had started out as Marilyn’s glorious artistic liberation from the Hollywood studio system was now in the hands of corporate lawyers. Ultimately Milton Greene settled for one hundred thousand dollars to be bought out of the company. That was basically only a reimbursement for the money he had put into financing Marilyn’s sublime year of self-discovery in New York. Even Miller was surprised at the amount Greene settled for. He called it “chicken feed.” He told Marilyn that he thought Greene would hold out for a half a million.
Greene said to the press: “It was not my intention to make money on Marilyn Monroe.”
The board of Marilyn Monroe Productions was replaced by George Kupchik, George Levine, and Robert H. Montgomery, Jr. These were Arthur Miller’s brother-in-law, his boyhood friend, and an attorney from the law firm he used in New York; Miller became vice president.
To further distance herself from Greene, Marilyn started seeing a new psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris, every day. Her office was also conveniently in the building where the Strasbergs lived.
* * *
In May, Marilyn traveled to Washington with Miller, where he would be on trial for his contempt of Congress charge. After the weeklong trial, Miller was found guilty on two counts of contempt and immediately launched an appeal. Federal judge Charles F. McLaughlin withheld sentencing.
Standing by her man, Marilyn spoke to reporters, stating in barely a whisper that she was “confident that in the end my husband will win this case.” Wearing a brown-and-white knit dress and white gloves, her golden blond hair hanging to her shoulders, Marilyn looked as lovely as she ever would in her life. (Unfortunately she made no films in 1957). She and Arthur then left Washington and headed to their East Fifty-seventh Street apartment.
* * *
Miller was well aware of the magic that Marilyn Monroe’s presence could produce—and continued to use it to his benefit. In 1957, Paul Libin, a young producer, wanted to revive Miller’s play The Crucible. Searching for a space for the production, he discovered that the ballroom of the Martinique Hotel at Broadway and Thirty-second Street was available, which he felt would be ideal. However, the hotel manager, Mr. Foreman, did not want the room used for a play. “We set up a meeting, but I didn’t have much hope he’d rent me the space,” Libin recalled. At the perfunctory meeting, Miller brought Marilyn. Before the men started negotiating, Libin said to Foreman, “I want you to meet Mr. Miller’s wife.” When Foreman turned and saw Marilyn “he was so flustered he literally melted,” Libin recalled. Shortly afterward, Libin received a call from Foreman. “When do we make the deal?” Foreman asked. “Marilyn’s presence sealed the deal and made the production possible,” Libin explained.
* * *
Marilyn made very few public appearances that year. She was helicoptered into Manhattan from Amagansett for the opening of the Time-Life Building at Rockefeller Center. She and Arthur attended the April in Paris Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria.
One of Marilyn’s most spectacular appearances was for the grand premiere of The Prince and the Showgirl, accompanied by Miller. She looked radiant, even in an absurdly structured gold gown that made most of her body look as if it had been encased in metal and then fishtailed out.
The reviews, however, were not rapturous. Bosley Crowther called the two lead characters of the new film “essentially dull.” The New Yorker said: “Apart from the whimsicality of teaming up England’s leading actor with a young lady whose dramatic experience has been largely confined to wiggling about in Technicolor pastries cooked up in Hollywood, it offers little in the way of diversion.”
* * *
One of the bonus benefits of marrying Arthur was the fact that he came with a family. His family was now officially hers too, and she took it very seriously.
“She loved being in the family,” Joan Copeland, Miller’s sister, observed, “and the idea of having a family was very sacred to her.”
Marilyn felt closest to Arthur’s father, Isidore Miller. He had worked hard through the Depression and now, in his old age, had trouble with his feet. When his children grew up, some people said he felt neglected and ignored by the family.
Marilyn, forever on the lookout for father figures, immediately bonded with Isidore. “She was very fond of my dad,” Joan recalled. “She was drawn to him immediately and they just had an instant connection. She liked my mother too—my mother would teach her to cook—like borscht—but she adored my father. And he adored her. When she called the house she would say, ‘Is Dad there?’ She loved saying ‘Dad.’ She
felt it was such a privilege. That was so sweet and poignant.” Marilyn called Isidore Miller at least once a week for the rest of her life—even after she and Miller were divorced.
When Miller’s parents visited Marilyn and Arthur in Manhattan—which they often did—Marilyn doted on Isidore. She enjoyed doing little things for him like getting him a special chair or propping up his feet.
Once when Marilyn and Arthur went to visit the Miller family for Sunday dinner in Brooklyn, Marilyn wore a new suit. “Dad, what do you think of my new suit?” Marilyn asked, prancing in, turning around, showing it off.
Isidore Miller had been in the clothing business for years and knew good clothes. “That’s a beautiful suit, Marilyn,” he said. “It looks wonderful.”
“But what do you think of the cut, Dad? Do you think it’s a well-cut suit?”
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Dad, do you like the material? Do you think it’s a high-grade fabric?”
“Yes, Marilyn. It’s real quality.”
“But Dad what do you really think—” And the family watched a little bemused and slightly shocked as Marilyn took her elderly father-in-law’s hand and ran it up and down her waist and thigh to get a good feel of the fabric of her new suit.
“To an observer it looked sexual,” Joan Copeland said. “But Marilyn didn’t mean it in an erotic way. She was acting naturally and completely unaware of it. I mean, I saw her do provocative things deliberately, but this time it was all in innocence. Although it did raise my mother’s eyebrows.” Copeland feels that some of the happiest moments of Marilyn’s life were spent with Miller’s family. “But that didn’t last too long,” she said. “A lot of good things in her life didn’t last very long. I think that’s another side of her character. She was always searching for something that she never did find. I don’t know if anyone or anything could have filled the voids that she had. She would find something temporarily—career, marriage, family—but she would ultimately become disappointed. It was just an unfulfilled hole in her that she was constantly trying to fill.”
* * *
All through this time Marilyn continued to be analyzed, but whether talking to a therapist every day was doing her any good is debatable. Certainly opening up almost daily about her past experiences seemed to be holding her back—she couldn’t move on from her childhood hurts and her starlet degradations. The manic-depressive episodes made her unpredictable and even volatile. “She was such a vital, unusual person,” Copeland’s husband, Dr. George Kupchik, said. “Life left its imprint on her. She had such exuberance. And then sometimes she’d disappear for hours. She was subject to periods of deep depression. She’d snap into these moods very quickly, almost right in front of you. One moment she’d be talking normally and the next she’d be extremely agitated and upset. She was subject to great periods of despondence, probably more intense than most people’s. You couldn’t predict her moods. There were times we called that she refused to speak to us because she was so depressed. You got the feeling she was on the borderline and she could topple either way.”
* * *
As she did with Joe DiMaggio’s son, Joe Jr., Marilyn took her role as a stepmother to Miller’s children very seriously. As Marilyn saw it, they were good kids, traumatized by their parents’ divorce and Marilyn desperately wanted to befriend them. Marilyn’s press agent, Rupert Allan, claimed that Marilyn confided to him that she was concerned because the eight-year-old boy was dressing up in his sister’s clothes. “And the girl, Jane, was dressing as a boy in her father’s clothes,” Rupert said. Marilyn told Allan, “This isn’t normal.” Marilyn took both the children, individually, clothes shopping “in the right gender.” Although the son went back to dressing in “girls’ clothing,” Rupert claimed that Miller didn’t care. Apparently this was a period of acting out. There is no evidence that Miller’s children continued the behavior Allan described.
Marilyn said to the boy, “You have a birthday coming up soon, don’t you? Well, I’m going to give you a party.”
He said, “A birthday party? I never had one!”
She told him to make a list of all the people he wanted to invite. She called all his friends and invited them. Marilyn was wonderful working the party—giving each child personal attention. She also bought the boy a lot of gifts—including one from Arthur.
* * *
“When my son went to the hospital with cerebral palsy,” Joan Copeland recalled, “Marilyn went to the hospital and she brought him an enormous television set for the children’s ward. And it was a big, big thing. She said, ‘This is for Eric and the other children.’ And it was so sweet. My son was about ten years old or something like that. She stayed there and she played with them until they had to close up the children’s ward. She kissed them all. It was hard for her to leave them. She was such a sweet person. And she loved children. She wanted to have them.”
* * *
In June, Marilyn learned she was pregnant. As everyone close to her knew, she desperately wanted a baby, and she surely felt that being parents would solidify the Miller marriage.
Her joy was short lived. On August 1, while spending the weekend in Amagansett, Arthur Miller heard Marilyn scream out in pain from the garden. An ambulance was called. It was more than a two-hour ride to Manhattan to Doctors Hospital. Once there, doctors discovered that Marilyn’s pregnancy was ectopic, meaning that the fetus was developing in a Fallopian tube instead of in the uterus. The fetus had to be removed in order to save the life of the mother.
Miller and Marilyn sat in the darkened hospital room for many days while she recovered. While they were there she called their mutual friend, the photographer Sam Shaw, to come and visit them in the hospital. He discovered Marilyn in bed, and although she was absolutely tortured—no makeup, hair in disarray—he found her remarkably beautiful. Arthur was bearded by now. He hadn’t left her side. Marilyn asked Shaw, “Would you take Arthur out for a walk? He’s been in here for days.”
Shaw and Miller went out into the Manhattan summer. Miller started explaining that he wanted to write something for Marilyn. A movie that would prove what an instinctive and exceptional actress she was. Shaw said, “You wrote a marvelous story in Esquire called ‘The Misfits.’ I think you should work on that as a vehicle for Marilyn.”
That gave Miller the idea to turn his short story into a screenplay for his wife. The narrative, about three drifter cowboys, had no female character in the story, but one of the men had a girlfriend named Roslyn, who is talked about. Miller would bring that character front and center for Marilyn for the screen adaptation. He started working on it right away.
Marilyn was released from the hospital ten days later, giving the waiting throngs her beautiful facade, smiling and waving, and vowing that she would eventually have a large family.
The miscarriage sent Marilyn into an extreme depression. She felt somehow that the failure to carry a child was her failure as a woman. Her despair soon led to another suicide attempt, and her stomach was pumped. Her early struggles, goals, disappointments, had battered her down. Marilyn really struggled with day-to-day life. Often, she felt as if the struggle wasn’t worth it—better to go to sleep and not wake up. Death often seemed like a more comfortable and viable alternative to all the trouble of existing.
SEVENTEEN
MARILYN GETS HOT
Partly because they needed the money and partly because she needed the spotlight, Marilyn was ready to get back to work and started looking around for a suitable vehicle to return to the movies.
At the time Billy Wilder was collaborating on a new, risqué screenplay with his writing partner, I. A. L. Diamond. The script—which would eventually come to be called Some Like It Hot—was a madcap farce that uses classic comedy techniques of disguise and masquerade. In the 1920s musicians Joe and Jerry accidentally witness a mob hit. In order to escape the gangsters, who want to rub them out, they dress in drag, call themselves Josephine and Daphne, and, in their new identities, join
an all-girl band heading to Florida by train. Enroute, they both fall for the band’s lead singer, the luscious, whiskey-swilling Sugar Kane, who mistakes them for amiable new gal pals.
Since working with her on The Seven Year Itch, Billy Wilder had many complex feelings about Marilyn Monroe. “She was a … I don’t know. A puzzle without any solution,” he would say.
Marilyn frustrated the masterful filmmaker: Her constant lateness, no-shows, and delaying tactics, and her insistence on allowing her coach to interfere with his direction, wore down his patience. All that aside, however, he was enthralled by Marilyn and drawn to the idea of another creative collaboration. Before the screenplay was complete, he sent Marilyn a synopsis of the story and waited for her reaction.
It has been written that Marilyn didn’t like her role in Some Like It Hot and accepted it only for the money. But by this point in her career, Marilyn had developed exceptionally sharp instincts for the art of moviemaking, and with this project she smelled a hit. “Billy Wilder just sent me a brief outline,” she explained, when asked why she accepted the project. “If I liked it, he said, he’d finish it—because he was writing it with me in mind. So I read it—and loved it! I told Billy to go ahead—I’d do it without even reading the rest.”*
Yes, she would be playing yet another dumb blonde, but she realized that Wilder was one of the best filmmakers in the business and that Some Like It Hot was an outrageously funny idea. First-rate material and a superb director were on the top of her list of priorities. Some Like It Hot offered both.
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