Marilyn Monroe

by James Spada

  Logan didn’t often experience Monroe’s legendary difficulty, tardiness, or vagueness. “Marilyn was a totally satisfying professional during all the shooting in Phoenix,” Logan says. But there was one instance of her lateness—while Logan was filming a scene in which Cherie flees her ardent cowboy suitor. Logan had only minutes of sunlight left and Marilyn was nowhere to be seen. Repeated efforts to get her had failed. With three minutes left, Logan ran to her dressing room, grabbed her by the arm, and ran with her back to the set. When she got there, flustered and out of breath, Logan yelled, “Action! Roll it! Roll it!” Marilyn’s breathless fright in that scene was less a result of her Actors Studio training than her director’s anger.

  A rare glimpse of Marilyn’s imperious side, which many of her costars and directors were to experience. Although Joshua Logan has only fond memories of working with Monroe, her costar Don Murray and she did not get along.

  The release of Bus Stop resulted in high critical praise for Marilyn as “an artist, not a freak.” Clearly, what she had learned at the Actors Studio helped her plumb greater acting depths than she had ever been able to before. Bosley Crowther began his New York Times review on August 1, 1956: “Hold onto your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise. Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress in Bus Stop... she and the picture are swell!”

  Arthur Knight wrote in Saturday Review: “In Bus Stop Marilyn Monroe effectively dispels once and for all the notion that she is merely a glamour personality, a shapely body with tremulous lips and come-hither blue eyes.... For Miss Monroe has accomplished what is unquestionably the most difficult feat for any film personality. She has submerged herself so completely in the role of Inge’s Hollywood-happy ‘chantoosie’ from the Ozarks that one searches in vain for glimpses of the former calendar girl. It is far more than simply mastering and maintaining a ludicrous accent and intonation throughout the picture; the character itself is rich and complex... there is pathos, humor and a desperate pride about the girl, and Miss Monroe brings all of this to life.”

  Despite reviews like this, Hollywood refused to acknowledge that Monroe was capable of a great performance. Although many observers felt she deserved an Oscar for her work, she wasn’t even nominated—a slap in the face she would recall with hurt for years afterward.

  On June 21, 1956, back in New York, Marilyn is cornered outside her apartment by newsmen who had camped out to get the scoop on Monroe’s impending marriage to Arthur Miller, the subject of almost daily speculation in the press. “Leave me alone, fellas,” MM pleaded. “I look a mess.” The photographers didn’t leave her alone, however, and the exclusive photos of Monroe sans makeup went out over the nation’s wire services.

  Later the same day, Marilyn—this time ready for the cameras—talks to the press in the lobby of her apartment building and tells them that she and Miller plan to wed “before July 13.” What kind of wedding? “Any kind.” What is the secret of Miller’s appeal? “Everything. Haven’t you seen him?” How many children? “I’m not married yet!”

  Marilyn poses joyfully with her future husband’s parents, Isadore and Augusta Miller, at Miller’s hideaway in Roxbury, Connecticut, on June 30, 1956. She immediately called her in-laws “Mom” and “Dad.” The Miller family embraced Marilyn, and it brought her a tranquillity she had not known for years. “Until recently,” Miller said, “I took my family for granted. But Marilyn never had one, and she made me appreciate what that means. When you see how much a family matters to her and you understand the depth of that feeling, you’d have to be an ox not to respond.”

  The wedding of “the egghead and the hourglass” takes place, July 1, 1956. They had been secretly married the day before in a civil ceremony, but this time a rabbi performed the rites for the Jewish Miller and his veiled, recently converted wife. The “unlikeliest love match ever” was official.

  Marilyn took to her new life with verve. She learned to make matzo balls and her own bread and noodles. For Miller, Marilyn had “tremendous native feeling. She has more guts than a slaughterhouse. Being with her, people want not to die. She’s all woman, the most womanly woman in the world.” “We’re so congenial,” Marilyn purred. “This is the first time I think I’ve been really in love. Arthur is a serious man, but he has a wonderful sense of humor. We laugh and joke a lot. I’m mad about him.”

  Less than two weeks after their wedding, the Millers flew to London. Laurence Olivier and wife Vivien Leigh greet them at Parkside House, where they stayed during the visit. Marilyn created chaos among the normally staid British press. After photographers nearly trampled each other at a press conference to get close-ups of La Monroe, Lady Olivier asked her, “Are all your conferences like this?” “Well,” she replied, “this is a little quieter than some of them.” The London Evening News gushed, “She’s here. She walks. She talks. She really is as luscious as strawberries and cream.” But some members of the British press gave her as hard a time about her pretensions to great art as their American counterparts, asking her questions about Beethoven and intellectualism that she embarrassingly couldn’t answer. But she won the day when she responded to the query “What inspired you to study acting?” She quipped, “Seeing my own pictures!”

  To Marilyn, Arthur Miller embodied a number of things extremely important to her. Her marriage to him, she felt, brought her the respectability she craved; that such a brilliant intellectual loved her proved that she was a worthwhile, intelligent person. Physically, he reminded her of one of her heroes, Abraham Lincoln; and that he was something of a surrogate father can be surmised from the fact that her nickname for him was “Popsie.” This photo makes Marilyn’s adoration of Miller quite apparent.

  The Millers, desirous of privacy to the point of antagonizing the cream of British society, go out for a bike ride in a park near their cottage, August 13. When someone commented that Marilyn looked “wobbly” on a bike, Miller said, “She’s a lot better than I am.”

  Marilyn—and her gown—stole the spotlight from her husband’s play as they attended the opening of A View from the Bridge at London’s Comedy Theatre, October 12. Miller responded to criticism that suggested Monroe should be more circumspect in her attire. “Why should someone like Marilyn pretend to be dressing like somebody’s old aunt?”

  Marilyn waves to the crowd as she enters the Empire Theatre, London, for a Royal Command Film Performance...

  ...after which she is presented to Queen Elizabeth, October 29. The two Queens of their respective domains exchanged the usual pleasantries, but film clips of the meeting show Her Majesty running her eyes quite interestedly up and down the length of Marilyn’s tight, revealing gown before extending her hand in greeting. Flanking Monroe are Victor Mature and Anthony Quayle.

  Monroe is attended to during filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, the new title for The Sleeping Prince. The filming was not a pleasant experience for anyone involved. Marilyn was extremely insecure about working with someone of Laurence Olivier’s stature—and her insecurity always manifested itself in illness, tardiness, inability to remember her lines, and temperament. Things weren’t helped by Olivier’s direction; he was said to want Marilyn to play the role the way Vivien Leigh had on the London stage, and he was completely unsympathetic to her rather unique methods of “getting into a character.” At one point he told his star, “Okay, Marilyn—be sexy.” She was so upset she didn’t come out of her dressing room the rest of the day. She took to calling him sarcastically “Mr. Sir.”

  As tensions increased on the set, Marilyn became ill, holding up production and making the situation worse. The only thing that kept everyone from total despair was viewing the daily rushes, in which Marilyn was more incandescent than ever. As so often in the past, Marilyn’s magic was enough to make one forgive her anything.

  Her beauty in The Prince and the Showgirl was extraordinary, even by Monroe standards. Her makeup was relatively natural, as were her hair color and speaking voice. Costar Dame Sybil Thorndike m
arveled, “She has an innocence which is so extraordinary; whatever she plays, however brazen a hussy, it always comes out as an innocent girl. I remember Sir Laurence saying one day during the filming: ‘Look at that face—she could be five years old!’”

  The adversaries play a love scene. At the end of filming, Marilyn apologized in front of the entire company for being “so beastly”: “I hope you will all forgive me. It wasn’t my fault. I’ve been very, very sick all through the picture. Please—please don’t hold it against me.”

  Marilyn meets reporters in Washington, D.C., on May 23, 1957, as Arthur Miller’s contempt of Congress trial comes to an end. Questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Miller had refused to name other writers with whom he had attended a 1947 Communist Party meeting. Miller stated that it was a harmless flirtation—“I supported causes that I would not support now.” He had also agreed the year before to sign an anti-Communist oath in order to obtain a passport to accompany Marilyn to England. But he would not implicate anyone else in what many Americans considered a “witch-hunt”: “I could not use the name of another person. I wouldn’t make it tougher on the life of any other writer.”

  Marilyn told newsmen that she was “confident” her husband would be acquitted and that she had come to Washington “because I feel a woman’s place is with her husband.” A week later, Miller was convicted on two counts of contempt, each with a maximum sentence of $1,000 and one year in jail. Miller received a thirty-day suspended sentence and a $500 fine. He vowed to appeal the conviction.

  La Monroe looks demure—and healthy—back in New York as she does a rare radio broadcast from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, December 18, 1956. Fans of trivia take note: this is the only time MM would wear her hair wave on the left side of her forehead.

  February 1957: Marilyn tries to dodge pursuing photographers as she walks her dog, Hugo, outside her New York apartment. Shortly afterward she bought out Milton Greene’s share of Marilyn Monroe Productions, saying, “My company was not set up merely to parcel out 49.6 percent of all my earnings to Mr. Greene for seven years.” A strain had developed between Marilyn and Greene when she married Arthur Miller, who took over many of the protective functions Greene once performed for Monroe. Greene accepted a relative pittance for his share of the company. “My interest in Marilyn’s career,” he said, “was not for gain. She needed me at the time, and I put at her complete disposal whatever abilities I possessed.”

  Marilyn sips along with William, a 3½-year-old beneficiary of the free Milk Fund for babies. The premiere of The Prince and the Showgirl, scheduled for later that day, was for the benefit of the Milk Fund. Questioned about the truth of rumors that she was pregnant, Marilyn would only say, “No comment.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Miller attend the opening of The Prince and the Showgirl at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, June 13, 1957. Many critics criticized Laurence Olivier’s acting and directing, but most praised Marilyn. Archer Winsten of the New York Post wrote: “As for Marilyn Monroe, she has never seemed more in command of herself as person and as comedienne. She manages to make her laughs without sacrificing the real Marilyn to play acting. This, of course, is something one can expect from great, talented, practiced performers. It comes as a pleasant surprise from Marilyn Monroe, who has been half-actress, half-sensation.” The performance would garner her great praise and several acting awards from outside the United States, but once again she would be denied an Oscar nomination.

  On July 2, 1957, a pregnant Marilyn arrives two hours late to help break ground for the Time-Life Building near Rockefeller Center—fifteen hundred fans, twenty policemen, forty photographers, and Laurance Rockefeller waited patiently.

  August 1, 1957: Marilyn suffers the first of three tragic miscarriages. After a high-speed four-hour ambulance ride from Amagansett, Long Island, she is wheeled into New York’s Doctors Hospital, her face covered to protect her from the constantly popping flashbulbs. The baby was lost because of a rare complication: the fetus developed in her Fallopian tube rather than descending into the womb. Marilyn’s inability to have children would haunt her the rest of her life.

  Bravely facing the cameras again upon her release from the hospital on August 8, Marilyn gives the photographer a big smile. The Millers went back to their Amagansett home so that Marilyn could rest and recuperate; she would make no further public appearances for the rest of the year.

  PART SIX

  Acclaim

  1958-1959

  January 28, 1958: Marilyn is kissed by the March of Dimes poster twins, Lindy and Sandy Sue Solomon, at a March of Dimes Fashion Show at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Marilyn donated considerable time to charities involving children.

  In her Fifty-seventh Street apartment, MM models the new “sack” fashion, all the rage that season. “A sack allows you to move,” Marilyn said. “And it moves with you. And movement is—well, movement is good.”

  April 25: producer Walter Mirisch and Marilyn discuss the script of Some Like It Hot, her next film, to be directed by Billy Wilder, the first director to agree to work with Marilyn a second time since she became a major star.

  Marilyn and costar Tony Curtis at a cocktail party celebrating the impending start of Some Like It Hot filming. Later, the two would be considerably less cordial.

  Looking gorgeous, Marilyn attends the Hollywood premiere of the film version of Lerner and Loewe’s Gigi at the Paramount Theater.

  August 8: Marilyn reacts joyfully to a phone call from Arthur Miller informing her that a U. S. Court of Appeals has reversed his contempt of Congress conviction. Miller said he hoped the court’s decision would help “eliminate the excesses of Congressional Committees, particularly toward stopping the inhuman practice of making witnesses inform on long-past friends and acquaintances.” Marilyn told the press, “I am very happy for my husband, but I am even happier for truth and justice that does exist in our country.”

  As Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot.

  SUGAR: “My seams straight?” DAPHNE: “I’ll say!” Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as musicians on the lam who join an all-girl band, only to run into Miss Kane, nee Kowalcyck. DAPHNE: “Boy, would I like to borrow a cup of that sugar!”

  After a relatively pleasant experience with Marilyn during The Seven Year Itch, Billy Wilder was shocked to discover her extraordinarily vague, tardy, and temperamental. She would sometimes be ready for work at 4 P.M. after a 9 A.M. call. When she did show up, she would often forget or flub her lines. For one scene, she had to enter a room and say, “Where’s the bourbon?” while looking through dresser drawers. She couldn’t do it. Even when Wilder taped the words inside the drawers, for take after take she was unable to get the line right. Wilder was forced to overdub the scene.

  Monroe’s need for retakes sent Tony Curtis into a fury. She would get better and brighter as she worked and warmed up, while Curtis would get tired and begin to sag. Curtis knew that Wilder had to choose Marilyn’s best takes over his, and it galled him. Watching him make love to Marilyn on film during a screening, someone said to Curtis, “You look like you enjoyed kissing her, Tony.” Curtis, a Jew, snorted and said, “Kissing her is like kissing Hitler!”

  When Monroe first learned that Some Like It Hot would be filmed in black and white, she balked. All her contracts stated that her films must be made in color. But Wilder showed her color tests of Lemmon and Curtis, and their heavy makeup had a sickly green tint on film. Marilyn relented.

  Arthur Miller visits his wife on location at Corona del Mar, California, September 10, 1958. Marilyn was pregnant, which made it all the more difficult for her to face the cameras each day. Miller’s visits cheered her, but he was unable to help Billy Wilder get her to the set on time or help her remember her lines.

  Between takes, Marilyn rests in the contraption designed to prevent her dress from wrinkling. With her is Paula Strasberg. Designer Orry-Kelly won an Oscar for this and Marilyn’s other costumes in the film.

  Monroe films a scene of So
me Like It Hot which required her to run again and again until Wilder was happy with the take. The strenuous activity caused her once again to lose a baby.

  Marilyn and Arthur return to New York in December 1958, after her hospitalization. Miller soon found himself embroiled in a telegram war with Wilder over disparaging remarks the director had made about Monroe’s unprofessionalism. Miller fired off a salvo reminding Wilder that he had been informed that, because of Marilyn’s pregnancy, she could not work a full day, and stating that her efforts to do as much as possible caused her miscarriage. “Now that the hit for which she is so largely responsible is in your hands and its income to you assured, this attack upon her is contemptible. You are an unjust man and a cruel one. My only solace is that, despite you, her beauty and her humanity shine through as they always have.”