The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

by Donald H. Wolfe

  By the end of 1952, Marilyn had become the most publicized star in Hollywood and was receiving over five thousand fan letters a week. She shared top billing with Jane Russell in one of the major musicals of the fifties, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her option was renewed and her salary increased. But she wasn’t happy: “I was making more money a week than I had once been able to make in six months. I had clothes, fame, money, a future, all the publicity I could dream of. I even had a few friends. And there was always a romance in the air. But instead of being happy over all these fairy tale things that had happened to me, I grew depressed and finally desperate. My life suddenly seemed as wrong and unbearable to me as it had in the days of my early despairs.”

  She attended the studio’s annual Christmas party and put on a smiling face. Afterward, she left the festivities with nothing to do but return to her empty Doheny apartment. DiMaggio had said he was going to spend the holidays in San Francisco with his family, and she hoped he might call. When she entered her apartment, she was surprised to see a Christmas tree and a large cardboard sign—MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MARILYN. Joe was sitting in a chair in the corner. “It’s the first time in my life anyone ever gave me a Christmas tree,” Marilyn later remarked to Sidney Skolsky. “I was so happy, I cried.”

  How to Marry a Millionaire costarred Marilyn, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall. Nunnally Johnson, who tailored the script for Marilyn, said, “It was the first time she had a chance to act in a role that was somewhat like she really was, and the first time anybody liked Marilyn for herself in a picture. She herself diagnosed the reason for that very shrewdly. She said that this was the only picture she’d been in, in which she had a measure of modesty—not physical modesty, but modesty about her own attractiveness.”

  Director Jean Negulesco observed, “She may have been late and difficult at times, but in the end I adored her because she was a pure child who had this ‘something’ that God gave her, that we still can’t define or understand. It’s the thing that made her a star. We did not know whether she’d been good or bad, and then when we put the picture together there was one person on that screen who was a great actress—Marilyn.”

  Shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday, Marilyn and Jane Russell, her costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, placed their imprints in the cement of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre forecourt. The gala event took place not far from the spot where eight-year-old Norma Jeane had once tried to fit her shoes into the prints of the stars. DiMaggio was conspicuously absent. He hated the Hollywood hoopla and abhorred the way Marilyn flaunted her “sexual vibrations.” He refused to attend the ceremonies at Grauman’s, the Photoplay Awards when Marilyn was named “Fastest Rising Star,” and the glittering premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire. Jealous of any rivals for Marilyn’s attention, DiMaggio was often seething with anger beneath his image of the strong, silent hero of American baseball legend. Commenting on his temper, Natasha Lytess observed, “All during these months of 1952 and 1953, Marilyn would phone me day and night, sometimes in tears, complaining about the way he misused her.”

  During the filming of River of No Return, Marilyn began having conflicts with her director, Otto Preminger. Filmed in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies, the picture required scenes of a raft caught in the rapids of a raging river. Preminger insisted that Marilyn do the perilous scenes herself, and there were a series of accidents in which Marilyn hurt her leg. Perhaps exaggerating the extent of her injuries, the press painted the director as a sadist, and DiMaggio rallied to Marilyn’s defense. DiMaggio arrived at the location accompanied by a doctor, and Preminger became uncharacteristically subdued in the presence of “the slugger.” DiMaggio and Marilyn vanished for a weekend, and rumors began spreading of a secret marriage.

  When Marilyn returned to Hollywood, Joe virtually moved into what was referred to in the press as their Doheny “love nest.” Marilyn learned to cook spaghetti the way Joe’s mother did, and she tried to influence him to read the classics. Joe preferred television. There were visits to the DiMaggio family home on Beach Street in San Francisco, where Joe’s sister Marie lived. There were fogbound days when Marilyn would bundle up in a leather jacket and jeans and go surf fishing with him up the coast.

  During the years of Marilyn’s sudden fame, she had kept in touch with Aunt Grace. It was a difficult time in the Goddards’ life. Because both Doc and Grace Goddard had become confirmed alcoholics, the visits were painful. Much of Marilyn’s success was lost on Grace, who was often incoherent. In October 1953, Grace died from an overdose of barbiturates. She was buried in the Westwood Village Mortuary, not far from Aunt Ana.

  Toward the end of 1953, Marilyn was scheduled to begin filming Pink Tights, costarring Frank Sinatra, but neither Joe nor Marilyn liked the script. Marilyn thought her role stupid and ill-motivated, and Joe thought her part risqué. Zanuck demanded that Marilyn fulfill her contractual obligation, but Marilyn and Joe disappeared. Fox suspended Marilyn on January 5, 1954, for failing to appear for work. When the press discovered that Joe and Marilyn were in San Francisco, the DiMaggio family home became the scene of media frenzy. Marilyn recalled Joe’s anger.

  “I wonder if I can take all your crazy publicity?” Joe said.

  “It’s part of my career,” I said. “Do you want me to hide in a basement?”

  “We’ll see how it works out,” he said. “You’re having all this trouble with the studio and not working, so why don’t we get married now?”

  I had never planned on or dreamed about becoming the wife of a great man. Any more than Joe had ever thought about marrying a woman who seemed eighty percent publicity. The truth is that we were very much alike. My publicity, like Joe’s greatness, was something on the outside. It had nothing to do with what we actually were.

  On January 14, 1954, the private marriage ceremony took place in the chambers of San Francisco Judge Charles Peery. The marriage would last less than nine months.

  33

  Red-Eye

  It’s no fun being married to an electric light.

  —Joe DiMaggio

  Before the marriage, DiMaggio had already agreed to accompany his friend Frank “Lefty” O’Doul to an exhibition baseball game in Japan. It was decided that the business trip would also become an extension of the DiMaggios’ honeymoon. When they arrived in Tokyo, Marilyn’s fans turned out in the thousands and stormed the airplane. Joe and his bride had to escape through the baggage hatch. Two hundred police were called in to restore order when they checked into their hotel. At a press conference arranged in DiMaggio’s honor, the Yankee Clipper was ignored, and all the questions were fielded to Marilyn.

  According to Lefty O’Doul, Joe became angry when he realized just how popular his wife had become. When Marilyn was invited by the Far East Army Command to entertain the troops in Korea, a miffed DiMaggio exclaimed, “Go ahead, if you want to. It’s your honeymoon—not mine!” Lefty O’Doul accompanied Marilyn to Korea, where she did a four-day whirlwind chopper tour, entertaining thousands of troops.

  “We took a helicopter for the front,” she recalled. “I didn’t see Korea and its battlefields and beaten-up towns. I left one landing field and came down on another. Then I was put in a truck and taken where the 45th Division was waiting. It was cold and starting to snow. I was backstage in dungarees. Out front the show was on. I could hear music playing and a roar of voices. The roar I’d been hearing was my name being yelled by the soldiers. An officer came backstage. He was excited. ‘You’ll have to go on ahead of schedule, Miss Monroe, I don’t think we can hold them any longer.’”

  Thirteen thousand men of the Forty-Fifth, waiting in the freezing cold, roared their approval as Marilyn stepped out of her makeshift dressing room onto the stage and sang “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” “Do It Again,” and “Bye Bye Baby.” It was the first time she had performed before a large audience, and it was far from Hollywood and far from Joe’s critical attitude. Feeling the love and admiration of thousands of smiling soldiers, she g
ave brilliant, spontaneous performances. But Joe wasn’t smiling. DiMaggio was enraged by the hoopla over the Korea visit and threatened to divorce her on their honeymoon.

  During the tour, Marilyn was hiding an injured hand. Her right thumb had been broken. Hidden most of the time under a mink coat Joe had given her as a wedding present, the injury drew the curiosity of a reporter. “I just bumped it,” Marilyn explained. “I have a witness. Joe was there. He heard it crack.”

  When the newlyweds returned to Hollywood, Sidney Skolsky paid Marilyn a visit and recalled that Marilyn “dropped a baffling bombshell.”

  “Sidney, do you know who I’m going to marry?” she asked.

  “Marry!” Skolsky exclaimed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to marry Arthur Miller,” Marilyn responded.

  “But you just got married! I don’t understand,” Skolsky said.

  “You will,” Marilyn commented without further explanation.

  When the DiMaggios returned from their honeymoon, the twosome rode on such a high crest of international adulation that Fox was quick to forgive its million-dollar baby. She was cast in There’s No Business Like Show Business, and one Fox executive jubilantly exclaimed, “We haven’t lost a star—we’ve gained a center fielder.” The studio hoped DiMaggio would be present at Marilyn’s publicity events, but Joe was quick to disappoint them.

  Though Joe preferred living in San Francisco, they rented a house at 508 North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills. The house was across the street from Marilyn’s agent, Charlie Feldman, who was Jack Kennedy’s host on his frequent forays to Hollywood. Feldman’s secretary, Grace Dobish, remembered Marilyn and Jack Kennedy being together at the Feldmans’ house in 1951. Alain Bernheim, who worked with Feldman, recalled that Marilyn was at a dinner party Feldman gave for JFK in the early fifties.

  In the summer of 1954, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy were invited to Charlie Feldman’s home for a dinner party, and among the guests were Peter and Pat Lawford and Feldman’s neighbors the DiMaggios. Marilyn told Slatzer that she felt uncomfortable at the party because Jack kept staring at her and Jackie had noticed. When DiMaggio saw what was happening, he became angry, grabbed his wife by the arm, and said, “Let’s go! I’ve had enough of this!” Marilyn didn’t want to leave, and Feldman recalled, “They had words about it!”

  A good friend of Marilyn’s, Arthur James, a prominent real estate agent in Malibu, stated that he was aware of an ongoing affair between Marilyn and Jack Kennedy during the fifties. “He was unknown here, relatively speaking. He and Marilyn could get away with a great deal. They sometimes drank at the Malibu cottage, which was the raunchiest place you’ve ever seen in your life.” James stated he saw Jack and Marilyn walking near the Malibu pier sometime in the mid-fifties, and that he was aware she stayed with Jack at the Holiday House, a romantic hideaway on the Malibu coast.

  When Jack Kennedy was hospitalized for back surgery several months after the Feldman dinner party, visitors to his room were amused to see a poster of Marilyn Monroe hanging on the wall next to his bed. Marilyn was wearing blue shorts and stood on the beach with her legs spread wide apart. Jack had hung the poster upside down.

  There’s No Business Like Show Business and Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch were filmed back to back. Anxious to have their box-office bombshell keep the cash registers ringing, Fox gave Marilyn no respite between pictures. In August 1954, without one day off, Marilyn stepped out of the role of Vicky on the Show Business stage and walked to the Itch stage, where she became “the girl” who lived above Tom Ewell. On September 9 she flew alone to New York for the Itch location sequences, and there were rumors that the DiMaggios’ marriage was breaking up. “Everything’s fine with us,” Marilyn told the press. “A happy marriage comes before anything.” But the marriage was anything but happy.

  Five days later, Wilder was preparing to film the sequence in which a draft from a subway grate blows Marilyn’s skirt into the air. Joe arrived in New York that day and was drinking with Walter Winchell and George Solotaire at Toots Shor’s, which was just around the corner. The scene was filmed after midnight to avoid crowds of onlookers, but thousands of people were ogling Marilyn when DiMaggio arrived at two in the morning. The mob whistled and hooted every time Marilyn’s skirt went up, and DiMaggio got madder and madder. Turning to Winchell, he angrily exclaimed, “What the hell’s going on here! I don’t go for this. Let’s get the hell outta here!”

  Later that morning, Marilyn’s neighbors at the St. Regis heard DiMaggio and Marilyn having a violent argument. There were screams and the sound of a scuffle. The next day on the set Marilyn’s bruises had to be covered by heavy makeup before she could go before the cameras. Whitey Snyder stated, “They loved one another, but they just couldn’t be married to one another…. Sometimes he’d hit her up a bit.”

  When the Itch company returned to Hollywood, Marilyn called Billy Wilder and said she wouldn’t be coming to work because “J-Joe and I are going to get a d-divorce.” Harry Brand and the 20th Century-Fox publicity office carefully orchestrated the announcement. Accompanied by attorney Jerry Geisler, Marilyn emerged from her house, where a horde of newsmen had gathered. There was an obvious bruise on her forehead. Marilyn tried to speak to the press before driving off, but, racked with sobs, she was unable to say more than “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

  The day after her separation from DiMaggio, Marilyn went back to work with a vengeance. She drove through the Pico Boulevard studio gates at 7 A.M. and was ready for the first take by 9:40 A.M. She had her lines down cold; her voice was clear; her concentration was good. Quickly grasping Wilder’s suggestions, she followed them precisely, and each scene was printed by the second or third take.

  Natasha Lytess had never liked DiMaggio, and she believed that Marilyn’s difficulties on the set were related to her marital problems. “Now she does everything better,” Lytess exclaimed. “She concentrates better. She remembers lines better. She’s much easier to work with. Sometimes now with one word I will make her know what Mr. Wilder wants from her.”

  The Seven Year Itch finished filming on Friday, November 4, 1954. The production ran three weeks over schedule and $150,000 over budget, but Billy Wilder knew he had delivered a superb comedy, and Charlie Feldman and Zanuck knew they had a box-office bonanza. Marilyn’s performance projected delightful nuances of humor that perfectly underscored her unique blend of naïveté and sexuality. Fox assured Marilyn that she would receive a $100,000 bonus for Itch and that her next vehicle for Fox, How to Be Very, Very Popular, was going to be a “high-class screenplay” written especially for her by Nunnally Johnson.

  To celebrate, Feldman hosted a party in Marilyn’s honor at Romanoff’s. It was a significant event for Marilyn—Hollywood’s A list had finally accepted her. Those lining up to sign a huge souvenir portrait of Marilyn included Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Claudette Colbert, William Holden, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Doris Day, and Clark Gable. Zanuck was there, as were Jack Warner and Sam Goldwyn. Marilyn showed up an hour late. Tastefully dressed in a subtle black tulle gown, she looked every bit the ravishing star she had become. She danced with Gable.

  “I’ve always admired you and wanted to be in a picture with you, Mr. Gable.”

  “Call me Clark.”

  “Well, I would, really, I would, Clark.”

  There was a late supper, chateaubriand, champagne, more champagne, after-dinner dancing. She dazzled them all. She had arrived. But she was about to say good-bye.

  Marilyn was unhappy with the scripts Fox was giving her. She was tired of playing the dumb blonde, and wanted to appear in more challenging roles. When Marilyn received the “high-class screenplay” of How to Be Very, Very Popular, she discovered it was about a very, very dumb blonde, this time a burlesque dancer. Marilyn wouldn’t do it. Zanuck insisted. Marilyn refused. Fox threatened to put her on suspension and reneged on her $100,000 bonus for Itch.

  She had been discussing her problem
s with her friend Milton Greene, the Look magazine photographer. He advised her to leave Fox and set up her own production company in New York. Greene suggested a partnership, and he put together potential investors for their independent film ventures. While the lawyers drew up the papers, Marilyn was trying to make up her mind to break with Fox. The New York lawyers Frank Delaney and Irving Stein were growing increasingly skeptical that the corporate papers for Marilyn Monroe Productions would ever be signed. Greene flew to Los Angeles on November 16 and reiterated the advantages of establishing her own corporation—the power to choose her own scripts, directors, and costars.

  “But, Milton,” Marilyn said, “suppose those New York lawyers are wrong. Suppose we can’t break my contract?”

  “We’re not breaking it, Marilyn,” Greene recalled telling her. “They broke it. They can’t hold you to a slave contract!”

  While the lawyers and the agents argued, Marilyn disappeared. MARILYN VANISHES! WHERE’S MARILYN? the trade papers headlined. She had, in fact, moved into the apartment of Nana Karger on Harper until she could decide what to do. It was the reviews of There’s No Business Like Show Business that helped her in making a decision. Mild by today’s standards, There’s No Business Like Show Business went into national release over the Christmas holidays, and it was roundly criticized for its bad taste. Both Hedda Hopper and Ed Sullivan were among those that lashed out at Marilyn for appearing in a “cheap and tawdry film.” Sullivan wrote, “The ‘Heat Wave’ number is frankly dirty—easily one of the most flagrant violations of good taste this observer has ever witnessed….”