by Donald Spoto
This was a matter of concern to Cukor and Weinstein only because of the fierce attention such matters were receiving from the financiers in New York and from Levathes, their legate at the studio. “I had no idea whether it was a good picture or not,” Milton Gould said years later. “I was not a moviemaker. My job was to solve money problems.” His was an honorable task bravely assumed: but not to care “whether it was a good picture or not” was also to act with pronounced myopia. Such an attitude in fact signaled the start of a trend that has long endured: creative decisions subsequently made by attorneys and business graduates, perhaps intelligent and benevolent, but ignorant of the fundamentally crazy and unpredictable nature of movie-making and the impossibility of maintaining religious dedication to production schedules. These new men were concerned only for the so-called bottom line, with no reference to the value of the entertainment product.
The result of this short-sightedness was predictable. Anxious, Weinstein (“whose termination I had already planned,” said Gould) called Milton Ebbins, Lawford’s man in charge of West Coast preparations for the gala: “You’ve got to do something, Milt. You’re Peter’s friend. You’ve got to help me. Marilyn is set to go to New York, and this just can’t happen.”
“What do you mean, it can’t happen?” countered Ebbins.
“Milt, she can’t go. We’re in the middle of a picture. Can’t you do something?”
“Listen, Henry. Number one, I don’t represent Marilyn Monroe. And number two, what’s this sudden problem? This has been planned for weeks. It’s the president’s birthday, for God’s sake!”
“Well, there’s going to be a lot of trouble, Milt. If she goes—I don’t know—she may lose the picture.”
“ ‘Lose the picture’? What does that mean?”
“You know—”
There was a moment of silence, as Ebbins recalled, and then he replied: “Look, Henry, I can’t believe she’s going to lose anything. Marilyn’s not that dumb. And Mickey [Milton Rudin] is not that dumb. Mickey never called me, never said a word!”
As Evelyn Moriarty recalled, there had been no effort to prevent Marilyn’s trip to New York until that week—and now every weapon in the corporate arsenal appeared. “When Peter [Levathes] called to tell me Marilyn was leaving for New York on Thursday,” according to Milton Gould, “I told him to forbid it. He did, but she went anyway. That’s when I told him to fire her.” This final drastic measure took several weeks, however much Gould may have hoped the matter would be adjudicated with all dispatch; at last, however, his bidding would be executed. The reasoning was simple: the studio could save over three million dollars by scrapping a film with only a half-dozen sets and twenty actors—a project doomed from the first day of script conferences and a project in which the director and the star had no confidence. If they could find a persuasive reason—a star’s illness, for example—Fox’s insurance company might be persuaded to reimburse the monies spent. At least the picture might be temporarily shelved, rewritten, perhaps recast and recommenced later.
Had Fox not rushed to production (as Milton Rudin, for one, wisely counseled against), Something’s Got to Give would either have been turned into a good film (first on paper, where all good films are made, and at which stage David Brown urged care and caution); or it would never have got beyond a prose treatment, saving money, jobs and the health of many. Of these machinations Marilyn knew nothing as she sped to New York.
“The whole thing was ridiculous,” Henry Weinstein said years later, reassessing the way the event was mismanaged.
At Fox, the men up front were trying to prove they were bosses. Had I been more experienced, I would have gone with her to New York with some press people from Fox. We could have made an advertising event out of it, going around with our own camera crew and signs reading Something’s Got to Give—Marilyn Monroe!—instead of worrying about the schedule. But these men were concerned only about power, which of course is a Hollywood fixation. And to be concerned about power when you have Marilyn Monroe is stupidity.
At half past eleven on the morning of May 17, as previously agreed, Marilyn’s scenes were concluded—just as Peter Lawford and Milton Ebbins, who were to escort Marilyn and Pat to New York, arrived at Fox by helicopter to whisk them away to Los Angeles International Airport. “Of course a car would have done just as well,” as Ebbins later said, “but Peter loved to fly around in that helicopter. I told him I was surprised he didn’t use it to go shopping at Sears.”
An hour later, Fox’s attorneys filed a breach-of-contract notice (dated the previous day, May 16), mailed to both MCA and to Milton Rudin, charging Marilyn with failure to work and a stern warning of dire consequences to follow. Had the studio’s legal department collected every saber from the prop rooms, the sound of rattling could not have been louder; to follow, one might have expected the muted clanking of chains.
Marilyn arrived that evening at her New York apartment, where early next morning Fox’s New York office delivered a copy of the breach-of-contract letter to her door: now she knew clearly that she was in danger of being fired. Her reaction (as Pat Newcomb and Ralph Roberts recalled) was undisguised, justifiable outrage: how could Greenson have blithely left her for Europe? Surely his connection to the production, to Weinstein and to Rudin put him in a unique position to know this action would be taken against her. How could her “team,” as the men at Fox called Weinstein, Greenson and Rudin, not protect her at such a time? Why, indeed, ought she to be receiving this letter at all? Why did she have advocates if they could not be trusted to defend her against such ridiculous charges? Only her friends and her insistence on acquitting herself in the present task enabled her to prepare with a residual equanimity.
On Friday evening, the composer and producer Richard Adler, who was staging the birthday salute for the president, came to Marilyn’s apartment to rehearse with her at the white piano. Over and over, for perhaps three hours, she sang “Happy Birthday to you . . .” Adler, recalled Ralph Roberts, “became more and more perturbed, because he was afraid she was going to sound too sexy. He even called Peter Lawford to ask Marilyn to tone down her manner. But of course she just smiled and went right on preparing it the way she thought it would be best.”
Madison Square Garden, on Saturday evening, May 19, was packed with more than fifteen thousand people who paid from one hundred to one thousand dollars for a ticket to a vast birthday party that served to pay off the Democratic National Committee’s deficit from the 1960 presidential campaign.10 Jack Benny, the elegant and witty master of ceremonies, introduced the performers—among them Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Durante, Peggy Lee, Henry Fonda, Maria Callas, Harry Belafonte, Mike Nichols and Elaine May—but there had to be a musical interlude when Marilyn’s turn came, for she was as usual late. At last she arrived at the Garden, and was ready to go onstage after a last minute touch-up by Mickey Song, who styled the Kennedy brothers’ hair. “We kept working around her lateness,” remembered William Asher, the producer of the event, “and the comedian Bill Dana suggested that Peter introduce her as ‘the late Marilyn Monroe.’ ” Which is exactly what Peter did. In one of the most awkward and jarring moments in the history of events recorded by television, Marilyn—barely able to walk in her skintight body stocking—inched her way to the podium and Lawford announced, “Mr. President: the late Marilyn Monroe.”
Removing an ermine jacket and revealing herself in what Adlai Stevenson called “skin and beads,” a nervous Marilyn tentatively began to sing “Happy Birthday.” It was not, as Adler had feared, tawdry or inappropriate, but breathless, with just a hint of parody—as if she would wink at a hoary cliché. Did not a handsome young president deserve a new rendition, something different from what might be heard at the party of a seven-year-old? When the audience cheered and applauded after her smoky, nightclub rendition of the first verse, she jumped with delight, waving her arms and shouting, “Everybody—sing!” A second chorus accompanied the arrival of a six-foot cake with forty-five candle
s, borne aloft by two chefs. Marilyn concluded her stint with a few lines sung to the tune of “Thanks for the Memories:”
Thanks, Mr. President,
for everything you’ve done,
The battles that you’ve won—
The way you deal with U.S. Steel . . .
Halfway into his twenty-minute address, Kennedy thanked the performers individually, commenting that “Miss Monroe left a picture to come all the way East, and I can now retire after having had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.” It was but one of many laugh lines in a typical Kennedy speech that combined political rhetoric, wit, good cheer and earnest allusions to important social issues. Backstage afterward, the actors and performers greeted the president. Marilyn, who had invited Isadore Miller to be her guest that evening, introduced him to Kennedy: “I’d like you to meet my former father-in-law,” she said proudly.
After the gala, a private reception was held at the East Side home of Arthur Krim and his wife, Mathilde, who recalled, “Marilyn came dressed in a body stocking covered with sequins, which looked as if they were just stuck to her skin because the net was a flesh color.” George Masters added that Marilyn “reveled in that Jean Louis gown. She was flamboyant but somehow elegant and subtle about her nudity, as if it were the most natural thing in the world not to wear underwear.” Her main concern that evening was to see that Isadore, amid the crushing crowd of guests, had a chair and a plate of food. She never abandoned him to strangers, nor did she wander among the crowd seeking small talk, praise or compliments.
In a way the evening was unimaginably important to Marilyn Monroe. Not only had the lost child found her momentary place in Camelot—she had also made real the recurring dream of her childhood. For there she was, all but nude before her adorers, utterly without shame, somehow as innocent as a jaybird. “There was a softness to her that was very appealing,” said Mathilde Krim. “She was—well, just extraordinarily beautiful.”
1. The meaning of the original Greek in II Timothy 4:7, and of Jerome’s later Latin rendering Cursum perficio, is “I complete the course [or race].” Centuries later, the verse was commonly used as a motto in European doorways to welcome travelers and pilgrims to places of refuge; it was then taken up and used in homes, the simple equivalent of the modern mat announcing “Welcome!” Gloomy symbol-seekers have read the motto as Marilyn’s prophecy of her death (or worse, her death-wish); in fact, it had been installed by the builder thirty years before.
2. See below, chapter 22, footnote 8.
3. The history of this fiction is traced in the Afterword to this book, “The Great Deception.”
4. On Monday and Tuesday, June 25 and 26, the attorney general was in Detroit, Chicago and Boulder addressing (among other groups) conferences of United States attorneys. On Tuesday afternoon, Kennedy arrived in Los Angeles, where he met with FBI and IRS agents to discuss matters of criminal intelligence. On Thursday morning, he departed Los Angeles for Oklahoma City, Nashville and Roanoke, whence he returned to Washington on June 30. On this entire week, the record is unambiguous. The National Archives; FBI Files #77-51387-274 and 260 (documenting the attorney general’s itinerary); and the Jerry Wald appointment books at the University of Southern California all confirm that the attorney general spent most of Wednesday afternoon, June 27, with Wald, discussing the possibility of a film based on Kennedy’s 1960 book, The Enemy Within.
5. Sidney Skolsky and all of Peter Lawford’s closest friends, including William Asher, Milton Ebbins and Joseph Naar, insist the Monroe-Kennedy friendship was platonic. Skolsky summed up their belief: “As for Robert Kennedy, she never mentioned him” (p. 234) and said that Norman Mailer, “writing about Bobby, put together purple prose to make greenbacks” (quoted in Wilson, p. 60)—an assertion Mailer himself admitted in 1973.
6. J. Edgar Hoover, who kept a detailed dossier on Marilyn since before her marriage to Miller, would very much have appreciated confirmation of rumors about Marilyn and Robert Kennedy, but his files remained empty on the matter. “It would have been impossible for Hoover not to have known about such goings-on had they occurred,” said Edwin Guthman, “and he certainly would have used this information during Bobby’s later campaigns for office.”
7. To Isadore Miller on February 2, 1962: “Do give my invitation some serious thought because remember, you haven’t been west of the Rockies yet. But most of all, I would love to have you spend time with me. . . . I’ll sure enjoy seeing you. I send all my love and I miss you.” To Bobby Miller, same date: “I would love it if you and Janie [his sister] wanted to come for a few days or a week—you are welcome to stay as long as you want to. I will take care of your plane tickets and meet you at the airport. You and Janie are always welcome. I guess we are all a little sloppy about writing, but I think we all know what we mean to each other, don’t we? At least I know I love you kids and I want to be your friend and stay in touch. I love you and miss you both. Give my love to Janie too.”
8. That same year, as was subsequently documented in her divorce petition, Engelberg’s wife was maintained by him on appallingly massive doses of barbiturates and hypnotics—ostensibly to keep her calm during the trauma of the termination of their thirty-year marriage. But the result of this prodigal administration of dangerous drugs was very nearly disastrous.
9. “Not in her worst nightmare,” according to her confidante Susan Strasberg, “would Marilyn have wanted to be with JFK on any permanent basis. It was okay for one night to sleep with a charismatic president—and she loved the secrecy and drama of it. But he certainly wasn’t the kind of man she wanted for life, and she was very clear to us about this.”
10. Kennedy’s birthday was being celebrated ten days in advance of the date; that year he would turn forty-five.
Chapter Twenty - one
MAY–JULY 1962
ON SUNDAY, MAY 20—the day following the great gala—Marilyn rushed back to Los Angeles, where she found Eunice Murray calmly cooking supper for her at Fifth Helena. The housekeeper had, it seems (or so she said), taken the check and dismissal as simply signifying time off for a vacation, and here she was, cheerfully back at her post. Marilyn, tired and frankly glad to have someone to awaken her next morning, to prepare the breakfast, make some calls and attend to some household details, tacitly rescinded the discharge, which was never again mentioned.
Next morning she was on the set, working eight hours after a cool reception from her producer, director and crew. They must have known of the threat against her, but the picture still had its own problems. For one thing, the script was unfinished—and they called her unprofessional, as Marilyn later told Paula sarcastically. She was, in fact, clear-headed in her suspicions against her team and the entire management at Fox: the latter’s incompetence during the last weeks of production and the sophomoric degrees of inefficiency on and off the set suggest that the plan was indeed simply to justify Gould’s order that Marilyn be dismissed and the picture shelved.
Despite all the commotion, all they could ask of Marilyn that Monday, May 21, was to do more retakes of her scenes with the children, for Dean Martin had come down with a cold. The production report for Tuesday notes that Martin “reported for work, but that due to Marilyn Monroe’s susceptibility and on the advice of her doctor, she refused to work with him until his recuperation.” But that day, too, she worked all morning with the children, completing medium and close shots for their poolside conversation. Martin was still down with his cold on Wednesday and Thursday and remained at home until Friday. Marilyn worked those three full days, and one of them, as everyone hoped, made immediate international news.
On Wednesday, May 23, no other actor was required on the set but Marilyn for the scene in which, as the long lost Ellen Arden, she was to take a midnight swim after her return home. As she did so, she was to be seen by her husband from his bedroom upstairs, where he was with his new wife; this was to lead to some silent comic interplay and gesticulating between them to prevent her
being discovered. From nine in the morning to four in the afternoon of the twenty-third (with only a twenty-minute break for lunch), Marilyn remained in the pool, paddling, swimming, splashing and waving, while closeup, medium and long shots were taken again and yet again. In the script, she was to be swimming naked, with the illusion of nudity easily obtained by the flesh-colored, two-piece bikini Marilyn wore all day.
There was, however, a problem. When cinematographer William Daniels gazed through his viewfinder at the long shot of Marilyn with her back to the camera, sitting at the edge of the pool towel-drying her hair, he noticed that the back strap of the bikini’s top was clearly visible to the Technicolor camera. This he reported to Cukor, who approached Marilyn—who in turn readily tossed aside her bikini top for this simple, quick, rearview image. In a few moments the shot was easily made.
But then Marilyn had an idea, one entirely natural for the woman who had posed nude for Tom Kelley on red silk in 1949; who had her skirt blown high for Billy Wilder over a subway grating in 1954; and who most recently had appeared at a presidential party with the merest covering. The shots she suggested were not in the script (and, she knew, would never be approved by the Motion Picture Production Code in 1962). But for publicity—to advertise Something’s Got to Give all over the world—why not take several shots of her nude as she wrapped round herself the blue terry-cloth robe for the next sequence? She had been so many icons, after all: why not Venus Rising from the Waves? This would cost the picture not a cent, and it might bring in millions: Marilyn Monroe, soon to appear in Something’s Got to Give—and, it was (wrongly) implied, naked, just the way you see her now in a magazine.