Marilyn Monroe

by Donald Spoto

  All during the tour, Marilyn was “the observed of all observers,” as Ophelia said of Hamlet, and as such she artfully combined her modeling and movie experience with what she had learned from Natasha and Johnny. “Her shrewdness was evident in her knowledge of the correct thing to say at the right time,” Natasha said. “Relating to people, she had an innate sense of what was proper.” Marilyn waved, smiled and tossed kisses through the air to crowds; she signed autographs as they entered theaters for advance screenings of Love Happy; she visited a crippled children’s hospital ward.

  The point of these appearances was simply to advertise the picture. Routinely, movie stars were presented like visiting royalty: they were movie queens and princesses but, it was implied, also just plain folks and always, always concerned for the little people. But with Marilyn there was an egregious difference: she lingered with sick and handicapped children longer than with the star-struck public or joggling reporters. In Oak Park, Illinois, and Newark, New Jersey, she made schedule-bound publicists frantic when she insisted on meeting every child in a state orphanage and every man and woman in a clinic for the disabled poor. There was no false angelism in these visits; in fact she discouraged photographers from documenting these thoughtful detours.

  In her hotel rooms at night, Marilyn pored through the dense chapters of novels by Marcel Proust and Thomas Wolfe, and sections of Freud on dreams. Then, after a few hours of reading, she ran up telephone charges during nightly conversations with Natasha, to whom she put endless questions to supplement her education. Most of all, she wanted to discuss the character of Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov (accent on the first syllable of “Grushenka,” please, Natasha insisted). Johnny Hyde had first compared her to Dostoevsky’s lusty, complex character; perhaps not very seriously, he had even mentioned it as a suitable role for Marilyn in MGM’s projected film, then being written by Julius and Philip Epstein. But she took the remark with utter gravity and was soon almost obsessed by the girl’s dissolute past and her open, generous heart. Alternately crafty and empathetic, Grushenka becomes, by loving Dmitry Karamazov, purer and less selfish, and at the end of the novel she is redeemed by her own sublime sacrifice. (In this regard, it would be interesting to speculate on Johnny’s identification of himself and Marilyn with the Dostoevsky characters.) “It was the most touching thing I’d ever read or heard of,” she said later. “I asked Natasha whether it would make a good movie. She said yes, but not for me—yet.” Her calls to Johnny were not quite so literary: he humored her when she spoke of the Russian classics, wanting most of all to know if she was faithful to him.

  But Johnny had no reason to worry. By coincidence, André de Dienes was in New York on assignment that summer. He located Marilyn at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel and whisked her away to the Long Island shore one Saturday morning. “She had the presence and ease of an established star,” he recalled years later. “She was radiant.” And so his photographs document her that summer day as she cavorted on the beach in a one-piece white bathing suit, her long blond hair tangled and wet. Marilyn skipped, she danced, she jumped and waded in the waves, she sat on the sand and drew silly designs, she twirled a dotted parasol. She was Sabrina or Ondine, a water nymph bewitchingly sprung into life.

  To the photographer’s chagrin, she was also faithful to Johnny and rejected de Dienes’s attempt that evening to reignite an old romance. Marilyn added that she had an important interview scheduled for the next morning, and she wanted to prepare carefully, for she knew the reporter would ask what she was reading and what were her nonprofessional interests.

  But Marilyn’s great expectations of the press were quickly demolished when she kept that appointment. On Sunday, July 24, Earl Wilson came to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on assignment to meet “The Mmmm Girl,” as the publicity men now referred to her. Some people can’t whistle, Marilyn said, “so they just say ‘Mmmm.’ ” Wilson, who found her “a pretty dull interview,” simply consulted the publicity kit for his column and filed an unimaginative report. Marilyn Monroe, he wrote, was an unknown twenty-one-year-old from Van Nuys (she was actually twenty-three), “with a tiny waist, a 36½ bra line and long, pretty legs.” Such were Wilson’s profoundest observations: she was treated as a woman “who could make no claim to acting genius,” as Wilson snidely noted in his column, ignoring that thus far she had little chance to demonstrate much of anything. When she spoke of serious matters and motives during the interview, Wilson was indifferent, like studio moguls who saw only another sexy blonde and, unlike still photographers, took no time to see that the radiance was accompanied by a real flair for comedy.

  Back in Hollywood by early August, Marilyn was taken by Johnny to an audition at Fox, where after singing a few bars of a popular song and posing in a short skirt, she was hired (for one film only, without a continuing contract as before) to play a scene as a chorus girl in a musical western. That August she worked a few days on the uninspired trifle called A Ticket to Tomahawk, in which her single number—as one of four girls singing and dancing their way through “Oh, What a Forward Young Man!”—reveals her exuberant abilities as a high-stepping dancer and an estimable singer. Because she had been reduced to virtual invisibility in Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay!, this was effectively her first Technicolor appearance; she required, as makeup artist Allan Snyder recalled, less work than the others but was seen to greater effect—resplendent in her yellow outfit. But just as the film swung into production, Fox had a crashing failure on its hands with another color, comic western—The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, with their principal blond leading lady, Betty Grable. The timing regarding A Ticket to Tomahawk was therefore inauspicious, and neither casting nor production executives watched the picture or Monroe’s appearance with much interest.

  In fact news of the studio’s indifference to Ticket reached the cast while they were filming, and everyone, Marilyn included, seems to have become bored with the project. One afternoon she arrived a half-hour late for a simple exterior long shot, prompting the assistant director to complain, “You know, you can be replaced.”

  “You can be replaced, too,” Marilyn replied coolly, “but they wouldn’t have to [hire a replacement and] reshoot you.”

  Then, in early September 1949, the pace of life quickened as Marilyn met two men who would be among the closest and most influential people in her life. That year, Rupert Allan was a thirty-six-year-old writer and editor for Look magazine whose responsibilities included arranging interviews and photoessays featuring stars actual and potential. Born in St. Louis and educated in England, he was a tall, courtly gentleman, literate, witty, and much appreciated for his discretion and loyalty. Not long after he met Marilyn, Rupert changed professions, becoming one of the most respected personal publicists in Hollywood; his client list included Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Deborah Kerr and Grace Kelly, for whom he eventually served as consul general of Monaco when she became Princess Grace. In Hollywood’s social circles, it was considered a great coup to be invited to dinner at the home of Rupert Allan and his mate, Frank McCarthy, former aide to General Patton and later a movie producer (of the 1970 film bearing the general’s name).

  It was to the Allan-McCarthy residence on Seabright Place, high up a winding canyon in Beverly Hills, that (thanks to Johnny Hyde) Marilyn was invited one evening in early September to meet a team of New York photographers preparing a photoessay on Hollywood starlets.

  Among the cameramen was the second person Marilyn met that year who would alter the course of her life.

  In 1949, Milton Greene (born Greenholtz) was quickly acquiring a reputation as one of the country’s most talented fashion and celebrity photographers. “They showed me a portfolio with the most beautiful pictures I’d ever seen. I asked, ‘Who took these?’ ” Introduced to Greene, Marilyn said, “Why, you’re nothing but a boy!” Replied Milton, unfazed, “Well, you’re nothing but a girl!”

  Twenty-seven and divorced, he was a short, dark-haired and intense man who immed
iately impressed Marilyn with his knowledge of his craft. He spoke of “painting with the camera,” of colorful and fantastic ideas for celebrating women on film. Always fascinated by his profession and eager to know how he might benefit her, Marilyn attended Milton as if there were no one else present. “I said I had a busy schedule, but I would pose for him all night.”

  In a way, she did. Marilyn and Milton left the gathering and spent that evening and the next morning at what Milton referred to as his “West Coast house.” This, as it turned out, was a room at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, where a romance blossomed during the remaining brief time of Milton’s Hollywood visit (which conveniently coincided with Johnny Hyde’s week-long vacation alone, in Palm Springs). By September 14, 1949, Milton had returned to New York, without taking a single photo of Marilyn.1 On that date he received a telegram at his Lexington Avenue studio, boldly addressed “to Milton (Hot Shutter) Greene.”

  Milton Greene, I love you dearly

  And not for your “house” and hospitality merely.

  It’s that I think you are superb—

  And that, my dear, is not just a blurb.

  Love,

  Marilyn.

  Because both were firmly committed to pursuing their careers in cities three thousand miles apart, neither had any expectation of a reunion after this ten-day summer tryst.

  A young, healthy, intelligent lover like Milton Greene, no matter how transient in her life, was a welcome diversion. Some of Marilyn Monroe’s chroniclers, without evidence, have claimed there were many such lovers in 1949 and 1950; in fact, Milton Greene was the only dalliance during her relationship with Johnny. Marilyn was (as she told Rupert Allan) “sad to see Milton return to New York.”

  But there was little opportunity for romantic dejection. John Huston, who had just won two Academy Awards writing and directing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, was casting a new picture called The Asphalt Jungle, a low-keyed flim noir about spiritually lost men and women, society’s losers involved in an unsuccessful jewel theft. Still to be cast was the part of Angela Phinlay, young mistress to a middle-aged, crooked lawyer; by the end of October, MGM had signed Marilyn for it. This would be her fifth film assignment, and one that significantly altered her fortunes. W. R. Burnett, who wrote the novel on which Huston based his script, described Angela as “voluptuously made; and there was something about her walk—something lazy, careless and insolently assured—that was impossible to ignore.”

  Among the many canards commonly recited about Marilyn’s career, few have had such strong but bogus currency as the means by which she won this role. Huston’s autobiography summed up the fiction accepted everywhere: typically, he assigned to himself the credit for recognizing Marilyn’s talent and casting her immediately after Johnny Hyde brought her to the studio for a brief audition. According to Huston, “When she finished, Arthur [Hornblow, the producer] and I looked at each other and nodded. She was Angela to a ‘T.’ ” But Marilyn got the part under quite different circumstances, as both the MGM archives and their talent director, Lucille Ryman Carroll, testified.

  Hyde indeed brought Marilyn to Hornblow and Huston. “But she was just awful,” Hornblow recalled. “She had heard we were looking for someone very sexy, so she had dressed accordingly, over-emphasizing her figure at every point.” Convinced that only her body would land her the role, she seemed to Hornblow “a nervous little girl half scared to death.” She read a few lines for Hornblow and Huston and departed with Johnny.

  Huston had already decided on his choice for the role, a blond actress named Lola Albright. But Lucille told Huston that Albright (following her success with Kirk Douglas in a picture called Champion) was receiving $1,500 a week; the role of Angela, on the other hand, was a small one paying at most a fifth of that. Why not reconsider Marilyn? Huston was adamant and stalled, testing at least eight other starlets he knew MGM would reject. At the same time, Lucille agreed with Johnny that Marilyn could indeed play Angela “to a ‘T.’ ”

  At last Lucille forced the issue. Huston, a flamboyant horse fancier, had a team of Irish stallions he boarded and trained at the Carroll ranch. Accomplished writer and filmmaker though he was, Huston was also a playboy, an inveterate gambler and a notorious roustabout who rarely took his debts seriously. That year he was $18,000 in arrears for payments to the Carrolls. On a Sunday afternoon in September, they invited Huston out to the ranch, where Carroll said quite bluntly that if Huston did not allow Marilyn another test he would sell the stallions outright and collect the money due. The matter was quickly resolved in Marilyn’s favor.

  Next morning, Lucille telephoned the hair designer Sidney Guilaroff and alerted general manager Louis B. Mayer that an important test was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. “For the better part of the next three days and nights we rehearsed,” according to Natasha—and with good results, for Mayer was duly impressed with Marilyn’s reading on the set and said so to Huston and Hornblow, who reluctantly accepted what was virtually a command decision. “She impressed me more off the screen than on,” Huston said. “There was something touching and appealing about her.” Not until Marilyn’s leap to stardom a few years later did Huston express much enthusiasm for her talent as well, and then, typically, he took credit. Some of it, of course, belongs to the gifted cameraman Hal Rosson—who, Marilyn learned, had been briefly married to Jean Harlow.

  During the filming of The Asphalt Jungle that autumn, Marilyn asked that Natasha be present on the set to coach her. “It was the first evidence I’d seen of her courage,” Natasha said, “for no director takes kindly to the idea of a drama teacher who might interfere with his work. But Huston agreed, and so for the first time I worked exclusively with Marilyn.” The results were impressive not because of, but despite Natasha’s presence. As Huston and Hornblow recalled, Marilyn glanced over toward her coach after each take: a nod or shake of Natasha’s head indicated her approval or dissatisfaction. Had the role been larger, Huston surely would not have endured the intervention, for Natasha made Marilyn self-conscious and exacerbated her anxiety. (In the finished film, at the end of her first scene she may be glimpsed glancing toward her coach as she walks off-camera.) Yet despite her dependence on Natasha, Marilyn’s performance in The Asphalt Jungle is remarkable and delineates an important moment of growth in her abilities.

  The first of her three brief appearances occurs twenty-three minutes into the story, when, like a napping kitten on a sofa, she glances up to see her Sugar Daddy. Half smiling, half fearful, she asks softly, “What’s the big idea, standing there and staring at me, Uncle Lon?” As he embraces her before sending her off to bed with a good-night kiss, there is a rueful look on her face, the weariness of a kept woman who has stayed with an older man only for the material benefits. In seventy-five seconds of screen time, Marilyn etched a character both pitiable and frightening.

  In her second scene, she played Angela even more naïve and carnal. Wearing a black strapless gown, she is at one moment morose at the thought of being abandoned, then exuberant when she learns she may be sent on a luxurious cruise: “Imagine me on this beach with my green bathing suit,” she says breathlessly to her lover. “Yipes! I almost bought a white one, but it wasn’t quite extreme enough. Don’t get me wrong! If I’d gone in for the extreme extreme, I’d have bought a French one! Run for your life, girls, the fleet’s in!” In a single take after one rehearsal, Marilyn assumed the right balance between gold-digging insistence and girlish high spirits.

  Moments later, in her final scene, she has her greatest range in the picture. First angry at a policeman’s intrusion, she is then a frightened child, caught in her lies to the police for the alibi she gave her crooked paramour. In two and a half minutes and after only two takes, Marilyn created Angela not as a cartoonlike simpleton but a voluptuary torn between fear, childlike loyalty, brassy self-interest and weary self-loathing.

  In The Asphalt Jungle, she moved effectively from movie model to serious actress in a brief bu
t crucial role. But perhaps because her character was seen for a total of only five minutes in the picture’s two hours, the name “Marilyn Monroe” appeared onscreen not at the opening but at the end of the picture, eleventh among fifteen. “There’s a beautiful blonde, name of Marilyn Monroe,” wrote Liza Wilson in Photoplay, almost alone among reviewers. “She makes the most of her footage.” Otherwise, there was silence over a role Marilyn forever after considered one of her best. “I don’t know what I did,” she told Natasha after completing her last scene, “but I do know it felt wonderful.” Her coach, the sort of mentor who considered explicit praise dangerous for the student’s ego, indicated only that Marilyn had performed competently.

  * * *

  The new year 1950 began with an unsettling admixture of anticipation, pride and disappointment.

  Natasha now emphasized gestures. “Body control, body control, body control!” she intoned liturgically, as if she were addressing herself and her own suppressed desires. Meantime, Johnny badgered production supervisors to employ Marilyn wherever possible. In January, she was rushed into a tedious little Mickey Rooney picture at Fox called The Fireball, in which she appeared for a few seconds as (of all things) a roller derby groupie.

  The assignment was memorable only because she met a Fox studio hairdresser named Agnes Flanagan, a kindly, mothering soul who would many times in the years to come groom Marilyn’s hair. Whereas Johnny Hyde was (at least partly) a father figure, Agnes was more maternal than stern Natasha, and Marilyn often visited the Flanagans and their two children, intermittently attaching herself to them as a family member. As Agnes recalled just before her death in 1985, she had to be careful when telling Marilyn about a piece of clothing or something she admired, for usually the item would appear at her home next day. This prodigality continued right up to 1962, when Marilyn sent Agnes a duplicate of the garden swing she had so admired. Such spontaneous acts of generosity were typical, even when Marilyn’s finances were limited; throughout her life, in fact, she regarded money as something to spend on people she liked.