Marilyn Monroe

by Donald Spoto

  Howard Hughes is on the mend.3 Picking up a magazine, he was attracted by the cover girl and promptly instructed an aide to sign her for pictures. She’s Norma Jean [sic] Dougherty, a model.

  Hughes was too late. On September 5, Variety printed her name for the first time, reporting under the “New Contracts” column that she was one of two young women signed by Fox.

  At the age of twenty, the new potential starlet was a year too young to sign a binding contract in the State of California. Grace was still her legal guardian, and so, despite the awkwardness and irregularities in their relationship, Norma Jeane again had to turn to her. Grace McKee Goddard had been at the center of every major moment in Norma Jeane’s life: her departure from the Bolenders to live with Gladys; Gladys’s subsequent confinement in asylums; the details of Norma Jeane’s material welfare and her sojourn at the Orphans Home; her time with cousins in Compton; her return to the Goddards and the shock of being left behind when they moved East; her marriage to Dougherty and the arrangements for her divorce. Sometimes the girl had felt like an unnecessary adjunct, a dispensable if charming object in her guardian’s life. But just as often, she had been infused with a sense that she bore within her an idealized self, a lustrous new Harlow to whom professionals now also favorably compared her. Grace had indeed been the great manager of Norma Jeane’s life, and dependence on Grace had been the pattern of that management (as it had been with Dougherty). But subordination wearies human relations, and the long history of subordination must have rankled a young woman who was quickly learning how much she could achieve on her own, with energy, a certain coy, girlish expertise—and with her body.

  However much Grace’s protection, obsessions and manipulations evoked a tangle of conflicting feelings, Norma Jeane had known more critical history with her than with anyone. Grace knew her as no one did—and in a sense Grace, trapped in a bleak and loveless marriage from which alcohol was no escape, now depended on Norma Jeane to make something come out right, to realize her own dream. When Grace, with an unsteady signature, wrote her own name on the Fox contract below Norma Jeane Dougherty’s, she was simultaneously justifying her past authority and releasing the object of it into an unpredictable but inevitable autonomy. She was in effect signing a warranty for Norma Jeane’s maturity in a way she had not with the Dougherty marriage; she was permitting herself to become nonessential, a player in the past who might not be retained in the future.

  * * *

  Just days before the contract was countersigned (on August 24, 1946), Norma Jeane was summoned to Ben Lyon’s office. Only one detail remained to be adjudicated: the matter of her name. Dougherty, Lyon said bluntly, would have to be changed, for no one was sure whether it should be pronounced “Dok-er-tee” or “Dor-rit-tee” or “Doe-rit-tee” or perhaps even “Doff-er-tee.” Did she have any preference for a surname? Norma Jeane did not hesitate: Monroe was the name of her mother’s family, the only relatives of which she could be truly certain. (Like Jean Harlow, she was also choosing her mother’s maiden name for her own.) Lyon agreed: Monroe was a short, easy name, as American as the name of the president who bore it.

  The matter of a first name was not so simple. “Norma Jeane Monroe” was awkward, and “Norma Monroe” was almost a tongue-twister. At first they decided on “Jean Monroe,” but she was unhappy with that. She wanted to change everything if they were going to change anything, and while Lyon thought, she spoke of her background. She had never known her father . . . her foster father was a demanding, abusive man . . . in high school she was called the “Mmmmm Girl.”

  Lyon leaned forward in his chair:

  “I know who you are, you’re Marilyn!” he cried, adding later, “I told her that once there was a lovely actress named Marilyn Miller and that she reminded me of her.”

  The connection was a logical one for Lyon to make as Norma Jeane sat before him recounting her history, afraid she might lose this chance over their inability to find a suitable name. Lyon had thought of Marilyn Miller not only because, like the girl before him, she too had blond hair and blue-green eyes. Lyon had been in love with Marilyn Miller many years earlier, and he had been engaged to marry her before he met Bebe Daniels. He knew that as a child Miller had been deserted by her father and then had a stepfather who was a tyrant. She had become a Broadway musical comedy star during the 1920s (in such hits as the trio Sally [1920], Sunny [1925] and Rosalie [1928]); she also had enjoyed a brief success in films. Then, after three marriages, a failing career and increasingly wretched health, she died in 1936 at the age of thirty-seven. Ben Lyon said he was gazing at the virtual reincarnation of Marilyn Miller—and, he had to agree with Shamroy, of Jean Harlow.

  Norma Jeane Dougherty was not immediately convinced: Marilyn (originally a contraction of Mary Lynn) sounded strange, artificial. Lyon reminded her that since World War I, it had been one of the most popular first names for American girls because of Marilyn Miller.

  “Say it,” Lyon urged her quietly.

  “Mmmmmm,” Norma Jeane tried, stuttering for just a moment.

  And then they both had to laugh.

  “That’s it—the ‘Mmmmmm Girl!’ ” Lyon cried, clapping his hands. “What do you think, sweetheart?”

  She smiled. “Well, I guess I’m Marilyn Monroe.”

  1. One of these shots appeared on the cover of The Family Circle magazine for April 1946.

  2. Anticipating some kind of movie work for Norma Jeane, Snively had encouraged her to sign a contract at Ainsworth’s National Concert Artists Corporation, which she had already done on March 11, 1946.

  3. On July 7, producer and aviator Hughes had crash-landed one of his planes in Beverly Hills and sustained severe injuries.

  Chapter Seven

  SEPTEMBER 1946–FEBRUARY 1948

  THE MOVIE STUDIO claiming the professional services of a hopeful novice named Marilyn Monroe traced its origins to Wilhelm Fried, a Hungarian immigrant who had operated a penny arcade in Brooklyn at the turn of the century. By the end of World War I, he had changed his name to William Fox, and shortly thereafter founded a film corporation, moved West and was producing, leasing and exhibiting films in Hollywood. Among the stars who worked for him were Theda Bara, prototype of the enigmatic femme fatale; Annette Kellerman, the champion swimmer; cowboy Tom Mix; the sweetly vulnerable Janet Gaynor, who won the first Academy Award as best actress; and, in the early 1930s, the precocious tot Shirley Temple.

  But by 1935, the depression and a serious accident altered Fox’s fortunes. He declared bankruptcy, and his Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, a company established two years earlier by mogul Joseph M. Schenck (ex-husband of Norma Talmadge) and Darryl F. Zanuck, who had been production chief at Warner Bros.; Schenck became board chairman of the new Twentieth Century–Fox, Zanuck vice-president in charge of production. By 1943, Zanuck was the only one of the trio who had not served a prison term for tax fraud, bribery or illegal union payoffs.1

  Marilyn Monroe joined the studio during the highest-grossing time in its history, when the recent successes of Laura, The House on 92nd Street, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Keys of the Kingdom and Leave Her to Heaven had brought in over twenty-two million dollars. The company was renowned and respected for its technical brilliance, for a series of successful glossy musicals, literate thrillers, gripping dramas and an impressive roster of stars and directors.2 But the first television sets were being marketed to American households, and a sharp drop in profits was about to affect all the studios.

  The corporate fortunes depended largely on decisions made by one man who dominated the company for thirty-five years. In 1946, Nebraska-born Darryl F. Zanuck was forty-four, a short, sharp-minded, domineering, gap-toothed bundle of energy whose manner is perhaps best summarized by his habit of snapping at his staff: “Don’t agree with me until I’m finished talking!” He had been a screenwriter at Warners from 1923 to 1933, where his credits included several Rin Tin Tin adventures; indeed, Zanuck personally superv
ised the dog’s successful transition from silent to sound pictures.

  The image of Zanuck held by screenwriter Ernest Lehman is vivid and compelling: he remembered Zanuck as a loud man with a big cigar who strode around the lot with a riding crop in his hand. “Zanuck had an aide who threw paper balls in the air for him to swing at with the crop while he walked. One day the man was fired, and the story circulated was that he had struck Darryl out!” Lehman remembered also Zanuck’s lengthy script conferences and involvement in every aspect of production.

  Since he had taken over Fox’s operations (at 10201 Pico Boulevard, a ten-minute ride from where Marilyn lived and attended school), the volatile Zanuck was known to treat human colleagues with the same condescension he leveled on canines. Like many movie executives whose power could easily make and unmake careers, he exercised austerity in business dealings but indulged himself personally; this was especially so during early-evening conferences with hopeful starlets—meetings that sometimes included very personal business indeed. Zanuck was, according to his good friend, screenwriter Philip Dunne, “an energetic and promiscuous lover [but also] a genius in judging character. Like all great executives, he knew when to coddle, when to bully and when to exhort.”

  Zanuck’s achievements as producer were indisputably impressive and won the studio more than thirty-two Oscars.3 In 1946, he was producing the award-winning film about anti-Semitism, Gentleman’s Agreement, directed by Elia Kazan. But Zanuck was also supervising other scripts, budgets, casting, editing and the final cut of almost fifty pictures annually, as well as authorizing every new studio contract; he approved more films for Technicolor production than any studio in town; and he attracted new directors while retaining veterans. Zanuck worked with remarkable independence of the company president, his former colleague Spyros Skouras, whom he had known at Warners and Twentieth Century; conversely, Skouras, chief financial officer of Fox, relied heavily on Zanuck’s creative instincts.

  As for Marilyn Monroe, Zanuck scarcely noticed her: she was merely one of many contract players on the lot, and when casting for pictures he turned over her photograph quickly and without interest. Still, Marilyn now had a regular income, and in September she opened a checking account. But the year ended without a single assignment—not even a bit part in a crowd scene. “She was very serious about wanting to work,” according to her agent Harry Lipton, who added that she did not agree with those who thought it was a fine job that paid without performance. Although not required to report to the studio every day, she did so, as Allan Snyder recalled. Still living with Ana Lower, Marilyn took a bus or rode a bicycle, visiting the Fox wardrobe department to learn about period and contemporary costumes, fabrics and foundation garments. She asked questions of everyone with knowledge she coveted, anyone experienced who would give her a five-minute presentation on lighting, the moving camera, speech and diction.

  “Desperate to absorb all she could” (thus Snyder), Marilyn also wanted to know the proper makeup techniques for black-and-white and for color cinematography. Known throughout the film industry (and later in television) for his technical brilliance in preparing actors’ makeup for a wide variety of roles, Snyder quickly became a mentor to the young apprentice. She trusted him, relied on his professional guidance and was grateful for his patience in demonstrating the secrets of movie cosmetology—although she had no assignment and he had a busy schedule.

  “I could see at once that she was terribly insecure, that despite her modeling she didn’t think she was pretty. It took a lot of convincing for her to see the natural freshness and beauty she had, and how well she could be used in [moving] pictures.” Snyder was touched by Marilyn’s conspicuous lack of self-confidence, her childlike wonder at the enchantments and transformations possible through movie crafts. He also saw a determination and an ability to meet the weekly disappointment of “no call”—even as she persisted in learning all she could about something of which she knew nothing. Like Shamroy and Lyon, Snyder saw a rare, luminous quality in her, something vague and indefinable, a woman’s experience and a child’s needs. He and Marilyn Monroe had for sixteen years a deep and abiding friendship uncomplicated by romance from the first day of her career to the end of her life.4

  Others at Fox during late 1946 and early 1947 saw her fervor for a job and her eagerness to be included in the studio activity; for Marilyn, an assignment signaled acceptance within a circle from which she felt excluded. John Campbell, a staff publicist, recalled that she haunted the press offices daily, wearing a tight sweater and asking about publicity procedures. Campbell found her friendly and did not wish to be rude, but there was no mandate from the front office about her, and so she was, to the publicists, a bit of a nuisance.

  But she was not so to the Fox still photographers, who were often asked to provide magazines, newspapers and advertising agencies with glossies of attractive contract players. For them, Marilyn happily posed in the tiniest bathing suits or a negligée almost as transparent as cellophane. Predictably, the most daring shots could not be used, but meantime both the photographers and their subject had no complaint on the tasks. With typical cunning, the Fox publicists created copy that was charmingly variant: one photo of Marilyn in a two-piece swimsuit graced the Los Angeles Times on January 30, 1947—with the hilarious headline, “Baby Sitter Lands in Films.” The accompanying blurb, excising two years from her age, explained that this “18-year-old blond baby sitter walked into a studio talent scout’s home” and was at once on the road to stardom. But to this there would be no short route.

  In February 1947, Fox exercised the right to renew her contract for six months, and several days later she finally received a casting call. Marilyn Monroe’s first film role was as a high-school girl in a minor picture called Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! Wisely retitled Summer Lightning by British distributors, the Technicolor picture concerns a farming family with half-brothers battling over how best to raise mules.5 For several days in March, Marilyn reported to the studio, where she was directed by F. Hugh Herbert in two scenes that contributed nothing to a fatally tedious narrative. In one sequence, she was photographed with another starlet in a rowboat: this bit was entirely removed from the final cut of the film. The second scene survived, in which she can be glimpsed and heard for only a second—walking swiftly behind leading lady June Haver and eight-year-old Natalie Wood and calling to Haver, “Hi, Rad!” Only the most alert viewer could have noticed the uncredited Marilyn Monroe, who is offscreen before Haver can reply, “Hi, Peggy!”6

  Her career was not abetted by her second film for Fox. In May 1947, Marilyn breezed through three short scenes in Dangerous Years, a drearily earnest melodrama about juvenile delinquency. As a waitress named Eve at a teenage hangout called The Gopher Hole, she takes no nonsense from the boys. When one invites her for a date after work, she replies that he cannot afford it; moments later, the same cocky lad orders soda for himself and another girl, boasting to Eve/Marilyn, “I said I had money!” She looks him over with cool scorn, tosses her long, blond hair and with a baritonic sassiness worthy of another Eve (the actress named Arden) cuts him down to size: “Yeah, and now you blow it on two Cokes!” Her confident acerbity provides the only laugh in an otherwise turgid, verbose film that was soon forgotten. Dangerous Years (in which “Marilyn Monroe” was the fourteenth name in the opening credits) was released in December 1947, four months before Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay!

  Neither picture helped her or the producers, and in August 1947 the studio did not renew Marilyn’s contract. “When I told her that Fox had not taken up the option,” recalled Harry Lipton, “her immediate reaction was that the world had crashed around her. But typical of Marilyn, she shook her head, set her jaw and said, ‘Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter—it’s a case of supply and demand.’ ” However whole-hearted her energies and fervent her desire for success, she was a realist who recognized that she was part of an underbooked team of contract players. When the studio’s fiscal revaluation called for the dismissa
l of a certain number of unprofitable employees, she was among them. Her last paycheck, one hundred four dollars and thirteen cents after deductions, was dated August 31, 1947.

  Her unemployment did not leave her idle, however. Since January, the studio had been sending some of its young actors over to the modest quarters of the Actors Laboratory (on Crescent Heights Boulevard, just south of Sunset), where playwrights, actors and directors from Broadway had a California showcase for their work. In January, Marilyn had seen at the Actors Lab a one-act play by Tennessee Williams called Portrait of a Madonna, in which Hume Cronyn directed his wife, Jessica Tandy; much revised and expanded, the play opened in New York the following December as A Streetcar Named Desire.

  Throughout 1947, Marilyn attended informal classes, read plays and studied scenes with an impressive group of experienced actors from New York. This contact was crucial not only for her exposure to the theater and some of its most controversial and intelligent exponents: her time at the Actors Lab also introduced her to social and political issues that later determined several important choices in both her career and her personal life. “It was as far from Scudda-Hoo as you could get,” she said later. “It was my first taste of what real acting in real drama could be, and I was hooked.”

  Most important, these months evoked new aspects of her maturing character that would constantly be threatened throughout her life. In Marilyn Monroe there was a deep conflict, for she was torn between the performer’s desire for approval and acceptance and a craving for learning and serious artistic achievement. Ashamed of her aborted schooling, she was always attracted to educated men and women from whom she might learn about literature, the theater, history and social issues. In addition, there was in her nature a deeply felt concern for the poor, the weak, the abandoned and disenfranchised—people with whom she always identified both in life and in stories. All these longings and concerns came together in 1947 through the actors she met at the Lab and the kind of drama they championed.