by Adam Braver
She can hardly look at him. Even her smile has to be oddly forced. Lately, she’s had a sense that she’s required to subscribe too much to his way of thinking. As though her part of the bargain to be taken more seriously is to appropriate his worldview. And she’s been sensing that despite all the platitudes, he doesn’t really take her seriously as an artist or as an intellectual. All the acting classes and stacks of Russian literature have been treated more as precious or charming. A project. His Eliza Doolittle. He spends much more time diagnosing and analyzing her than exchanging ideas. Her natural instinct is to reject this relationship as if it were some transplanted organ. She’s done it twice before. But she’s trying to fight such an urge. Instead, she wants to believe in Arthur. See this film as his gift. A gesture to her. But his manner toward her hasn’t seemed to change. His condescension keeps eating away at her. She’s feeling more and more without purpose. If her own husband doesn’t see her as serious, how can Clark Gable?
Somewhere between a plea and a directive, she tells him, “Please just go.” And she realizes she’s shouted, and although she’d likely have raised her voice anyway, she tells herself it’s due to trying to be heard over the running water.
Arthur says he doesn’t like this one bit, that it’s not the way people do business. But on this morning, she can tell he’s more dedicated to getting the script changes set than arguing with his wife through the cracked door of a steaming bathroom. He’s going to let it go. Give in. “Just please don’t hold us up,” he says. “Please.”
She walks alone into Harrah’s Club two hours late. Her driver, Rudy Kautzky, moved her safely through the spectators, opened the casino’s door, and delivered her into the hands of the security team. He then rushed back into the white Cadillac, turned off the flashing red hazard lights, and steered the sedan toward the reserved parking spot. Unlike the previous day, the room is stagnant. The extras lean against the tables. Harrah’s workers cluster, conversing in low whispers. The red carpet appears even darker, like spilt wine. Members of her entourage busy themselves with their work, hardly looking at her, both relieved that she’s arrived and slightly embarrassed for her. Arthur, slumped in a director’s chair, glances over the top of his script, then returns to marking it up, licking the tip of the lead before writing. She strolls back to wardrobe, moving along the perimeter of the bar, conscious of keeping on the opposite side of the room of Gable. He’s seated by himself, at one of the tables. His chin cupped in his hand. Staring off at the windows.
She has no regrets and will not be sorry for keeping them waiting. That time was what she’d needed. And other than throwing on her dress and a minimal veneer of makeup, the past two hours were spent in the bath at the Mapes, her arm draped along the side, fingers dragging over the white floor tiles and tracing the lines in the grout. By herself and relaxed. As though in her own private game of house. Periodically she drained the tub, then refilled it with clean water. Watched the soap bubbles rise.
Nobody says anything when she appears costumed and made up, ready to go before the camera, only John Huston announcing the take.
Perfect timing. She can go right into being Roslyn.
Late August 1960: Mapes Hotel, Reno
Monty’s on fire. The word is that once that sonofabitch puts aside his bullshit and gets to acting, it’s near impossible to catch him; keep the sauce and junk out of his system, and he might just be the one who surprises you, the one who will very quietly give this movie its backbone. Gable holds steady, the planet everyone circles around; he may be the very reason Monty has been able to keep it together. Gable doesn’t talk much; he’s fine with letting his history speak for him, happy enough to drive across the desert in his tan Cadillac, film his scenes with a craftsman’s ethic, and betray any lack of composure only when it gets too unfocused on the set, or someone tries to settle for good enough, or the histrionics go on high. But for the moment, everything is sailing, on a real jag, and it seems as though the bumps were just bumps, and dramas merely reactions, and Huston has the whole crew believing that this is just where the picture’s supposed to be, and they’re all so goddamn happy, oohing and ahhing as though watching the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks display, all except for Marilyn, whom nobody seems to be saying anything about, who on set has been either tucked away in her trailer or huddled in consult with Paula Strasberg, trying to get her lines straight. She doesn’t know why nobody notices how hard she’s working for the role of her life. And she asks that of Arthur, sitting across from him in the restaurant of the Mapes Hotel in Reno, while he cuts at his steak as if the blade were dull or he’s using the wrong side, back and forth and back and forth, with nothing to say, and that alone seems impossible: this man who spills words onto the page can’t find even one word to say to her. Not even the wrong one. She says, “Why?” and he says, “Why?” and she says she doesn’t understand why. She came into this picture at the top of her game, she tells him. A Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot. Intensive training at the Actors Studio. At the top of her game, she says. At the top of her game.
He says, “I think they do respect you.”
“Ha,” she says, watching him try to cut the meat with the edge of his fork.
“What do you want from them, Marilyn?”
“What do I want?”
“Yes, what do you want?”
A dog trots down the sidewalk, passing by the window. The breed isn’t clear. His fur is mussed, sandy with spots of brown. The dog looks to be a mutt but has a poise that suggests breeding and lineage. He appears obedient. As though trained. He wears a thick brown leather collar without tags. No owner in sight.
“There are two different versions: what I actually want,” she says, “and what you want me to say.”
Arthur gives up the cutting and pushes his plate away. He looks around the room, as though trying to get a waiter’s attention. “This is getting ridiculous,” he says. “This whole mess. We barely talk, and when we do talk, you bring things up that make us not want to talk again. Only you would try to clean up a mess by making it messier.”
She says, “Like I ever clean.”
“People have a limited scope, Marilyn. They can look only one place at a time. One direction. They’re just not looking in your direction at this very second. Simple.”
“Easy for you to say. Because they do respect you.” She cuts herself off. “Look,” she says, motioning with her forefinger for Arthur to turn around. “He’s just waiting.” And for a moment they both stare at the dog, now sitting before the window, in elegant posture. Statuesque. She says, “It’s like he’s there with a purpose.”
“I’ll stick with version one,” he says. “The first one.”
Her stare stays fixed on the dog. “I don’t follow.”
“Version one. What you want.”
“Yes. What I want.” She leans forward, leading with her shoulder, her attention still trained on the dog, who hasn’t moved. “What I want,” she says, “is to know why. Why I can’t get even the same breath of respect as Monty or Gable or even you. It’s not like . . . You know, the truth is I don’t even presume respect anymore. I just want to know why. That’s it.”
The dog lifts his back leg and scratches behind the ear.
Arthur says, “I once knew someone in Brooklyn who was lying in bed when she heard someone break into her apartment. She hid under the covers and dialed the telephone. But she didn’t call the police as you might expect. She called her father. All the way across the country, out on the coast. And you know what her father said? He said, Why are you calling me? Get off the phone and call the police for Christ’s sake.”
“And did she?”
“That’s not really the point. The point of the story.”
She sips at her water. The glass fogs around the ice. “You always skip the parts I want to know.”
“I guess I wonder who you would have called. That’s my point. In a situation like that.”
“Let me see . . . Probably
someone just to get me through it. Like a shrink.”
“Of course you would.”
They sit at a corner table. The sun is blocked by a cloud. A shadow starts to fall over Reno. Heat waves still ripple along the pavement. The dog sits, waiting, staring ahead, except for when he startles at the sound of a passing car, but even then he just watches it roll by, turning his head with confidence and dignity before returning his stare forward. His tongue hangs down. Ribs bellow in and out.
She says, “Someone really needs to get that dog some water.”
Arthur turns around to check, then looks back at Marilyn. “He’s fine,” he says. “He belongs to someone, and that someone will take care of him.”
“Maybe you can get the waiter’s attention. At least he could bring out a bowl of water.”
“I’m telling you, he belongs to someone. You can tell by the way he’s sitting. Responsibility has not been abdicated.”
“That makes him any less thirsty?”
“The thing is,” Arthur says, “they do respect you. You just don’t see it, is all. You aren’t able, I guess.” The side of his hand accidentally knocks his water glass. He catches it before it spills. “They respect you because your role is at the center of the movie. All the other characters find their meaning through Roslyn. She is . . . you are the key that allows everything to happen. The fulcrum.”
“Does that translate to respect?”
“I’m saying their level of respect has nothing to do with you being Marilyn Monroe. If that’s what you’re looking for, that’s the problem.”
“Always the problem.”
“You want the whole world to measure you on the various scales of Marilyn Monroe. You just want to be duly noted and commended for jumping from that Marilyn Monroe to this Marilyn Monroe . . . Applause sign, please.”
She rearranges the silverware, exchanging the knife and fork. Straightens the napkin on her lap so that it sits perfectly in the middle. Then she reaches for her purse. “Did you ever order my champagne? I thought I’d asked for one when we sat down.” She rarely blinks.
He motions for the waiter, pantomiming pouring a glass of champagne. “I suppose you’re right, somebody needs to get that dog some water. The mercury’s rising by the second. And whoever owns that dog seems to be taking his sweet time. Especially for an August afternoon.”
“I guess responsibility has been abdicated.”
He smiles, starts to say something, but then smiles again. It’s a way about her. Even at her most maddening she can be charming. The waiter arrives with a bottle of champagne and two flutes. Arthur tells him just one, please. He’s not having any today. In part it’s vigilance, not to be drawn into a drama. But mostly it’s because it’s the middle of the afternoon, and there’s still rewriting that needs to be done, specifically making the ending work symbolically, figuring out who will cut the stallions loose in the final scenes.
Although the filming of The Misfits is back on track, her instincts about wanting respect are not without merit. Because while Monty has been on fire, lately she’s been off, and she knows it, and the whole crew knows it; they’re handling her with kid gloves. It’s almost obvious beyond repair, and the very fact that the crew treads lightly only makes it worse, forcing her to try harder, which works against the very method of acting she’s been developing. When she should be in submission to her character, her conscious mind takes over. It’s mechanically guiding her as though it’s a chapter-by-chapter owner’s manual for her body. Arthur and Huston have been telling her she’s imagining it. And Paula reminds her to go inside herself. Earlier, they were filming at the rodeo grounds in Dayton. Monty’s character, Perce, was poised for a risky bull ride, as Roslyn begged him not to do it. The cameras were rolling. Marilyn took her mark, went down deep for the emotions, as Strasberg had trained her. The lines came out like an overdramatic lead from a high school melodrama. Though she had some awareness of it, she was unable to control it. Initially she figured it was all in her head, that her impression was distorted. But seeing the rush, she realized how out of joint she in fact was. At the same viewing everybody was praising Monty, talking about him as if he’d pulled the nails out of Jesus’s hands, talking like she wasn’t even in the scene, all except Huston, who told his AD Tom Shaw that maybe he ought to suggest a rehearsal before the retakes tomorrow. In the distance, she watched Monty prep for his next scene, the one in which he was to come up dazed and disoriented after being bucked. He was tossing himself up into the air, then falling smack dab onto the hard pack. Then back up. And again throwing himself into the air. Everybody was in awe. They weren’t paying attention to the rushes anymore. Just watching that sonofabitch Monty. On-fucking-fire.
She digs a prescription bottle from out of her satchel. In a single, fluid motion she opens it with just her thumb. “To get me through someone breaking into the apartment,” she says. She pops a pill into her mouth, chasing it down with champagne. Swallowing, she looks over Arthur’s shoulder, and then to the waiter. “Please get that dog some water,” she calls. “He’s going to drop otherwise.”
With the second sip she empties the glass. Marilyn leans close, drawing Arthur in. She doesn’t want to say what she’s about to say too loudly. She confesses that while they were filming the scene with Monty yesterday, she forgot his name, his character’s name. She says, “I mean I know his name. I knew it. But I just couldn’t remember it. Couldn’t remember his name was Perce.”
“It was a long day. Hot as hell out there.”
“No. I don’t know how to . . . I knew his name. I know all my lines. All of them. I know everybody’s lines. I just can’t remember them. It all goes funny, and then blank. A mean streak of white.”
“The picture’s been rough, is all. A tough shoot.”
She pours another glass for herself. Puts the bottle in the middle of the table. It blocks off part of his face. “No. That’s too easy. It’s got to be something more.”
“Such as?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“Look. There are only about two pages of the script where you don’t have a line. There’s a lot going on. It’s understandable to confuse things. Not to mention, as I just mentioned, that the heat is unforgiving. It’s a wonder any of us still know our own names by the end of the day.”
She nods. “You don’t think I thought all about that?”
“Of course you’ve thought about that.”
“And I don’t buy it. You know how you always want to tell me what the thing about me is? The thing about you, Marilyn . . .”
“I guess this is the part where you tell me the thing about me?”
And she tells him no, that that thing belongs to her. She looks him square in the eye, and she wills all her focus on him, careful not to break the eye contact, because she needs all the strength that can possibly be summoned to say what she needs to say. The thing about her is him. Look at his script. He’s written her to be the version he romanticizes. Her knees tremble. It’s no longer his intentions at stake—it’s his writing. She wills the pill to dissolve and expand into her veins faster. It’s about the script, she says again. She’s memorized the lines, held them like something you grip, but she hasn’t been able to take them inside. She’s afraid she’ll never be able to be Roslyn until Arthur allows her not to be his re-creation.
“So what are you saying?” he says.
“I don’t know how to say it any other way.”
She finishes her champagne, letting her stare fall away, as though loosing a giant exhalation. Outside, the waiter crouches down with a bowl of water for the dog. He taps the edge, in order to draw the dog’s attention. He just looks at the waiter, cocking his head, and then trots off without sipping, neck slightly bowed. She thinks of how natural gas really has no odor, that the companies add the sulfur smell purely as a warning. For one’s own safety.
Arthur pushes his plate away. “Now what?” he asks. “I’ve got a lot of revising to do. I’ll be up al
l night. Again.”
The next morning she complains of fatigue and a general sense of malaise. Phone calls are made back and forth. Between Arthur and Huston. Huston and the producers. The producers and her doctors. By that point she isn’t involved. She can’t make sense of anything. They discuss her as though she’s someone else.
Finally, Marilyn is driven to the airport. In record-breaking temperature, she crosses the tarmac wrapped in a wet sheet and then is flown to Westside Hospital in Los Angeles. Thoughts swirl through her head, none of which are comprehensible, bombarding her like random lines from the script. And she can hear the rest of the crew holding her responsible for further setbacks, and saying how they had figured it would’ve been Monty who’d screw them up. Such thoughts make her more worn. She just hopes Gable doesn’t think any less of her. That would really get to her. Even before she arrives in LA, her doctor, Hyman Engleberg, indicates she’ll likely need to stay at least ten days in order to recuperate. Even from afar he can tell she’s that wrecked, both physically and emotionally. Dr. Engleberg insists that he isn’t saying whether or not filming needs to be suspended, only that Marilyn likely will not be available during her recovery. She can already hear the producers and crew milling around the Mapes. Already giving up on her, and demanding that Huston send Arthur back to salvage the script so they can continue shooting in her absence.
Once at the hospital, safely dressed in a johnny and a robe, she sees in the mirror how terrible she looks. What has been eating away at the inside now shows itself on her face. It isn’t really ugliness, as she’s first prone to believe. It’s resignation. As if the muscles have given up and the bones have gone flaccid. Everything collapsed.