by Adam Braver
Four things the stand-in should know:
1. If someone’s needed to run up to the farmers market for the cake, say you’ll go. Just because you are a near-exact match to the principal (in terms of size, shape, and facial structure), you are not the star. You are not her peer. Not her friend. You are her stand-in.
2. To get from the back lot at Twentieth Century-Fox to the farmers market, head down Pico for about two miles and then take a left on La Cienega for another mile and a half, when you’ll turn onto West Third. You’ll find the market up the road about a mile, right at the corner of Fairfax. By public transportation it could take as much as half an hour. By car, if the traffic is light, there’s no reason you can’t be there in ten to fifteen minutes.
3. Walk all the way down through the center stalls, then bear right just before reaching the back. Buy the sheet cake there, at Humphrey Bakery. It really is the best option for a birthday party that will be celebrated in the workplace. Make sure it can serve at least a dozen or so people. And don’t get tempted to change the order. It’s easy to second-guess the order when you see the layer cakes and their fanciful decorations. The sheet cake really is best for the occasion. Seven dollars ought to cover it. Stick with the sheet cake.
4. At the Humphrey Bakery counter, you’re not to assume any connection to the star, even though people might confuse you with her because of your hair, wardrobe, and dark sunglasses. You should just approach the counter with polite discretion and say softly, “I called ahead from the studio. For the sheet cake.”
On the way to her dressing room, Marilyn passes her stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty, heading to the set, dressed in a replica costume of what Marilyn will soon be wearing for the rest of the day—a bronze suit, fur-lined along the collar, the cuffs, and the hem. Evelyn stops and kicks out her hip: “So what do you think of the suit?”
“That we look beautiful today.”
Crewmembers move by, clipboards pressed against their chests, in conversation. They nod at Marilyn but don’t acknowledge Evelyn. She tugs on the material at her hip, working it between her thumb and forefinger. Marilyn sneers at their backs on Evelyn’s behalf.
Seeing the suit on Evelyn makes Marilyn think she should borrow it for the evening. She mentions that to Evelyn, asking what she thinks, explaining it would be for a muscular dystrophy charity event taking place at Dodger Stadium. Even though the fund-raiser is at a baseball park before a game, it seems like a serious event, one for which she should dress maturely. Joe will be escorting her. With Arthur gone, and now that she’s back in California, he’s been trying to reassume what he believes is his rightful place. She lets him have it, when it suits her; those times when she just needs to be around someone who believes she deserves better.
Evelyn says, “I’m sure you’d be stunning in it.”
“But should I wear it tonight? What do you think?”
“I don’t think you’ll look like a phony, if that’s what you mean.” Evelyn glances up at the clock. “But I do think I’d better get out to the set. There’s going to be a fit from Cukor if we get behind schedule today. And it’ll probably come right at me, as long as I’m the one in this suit.”
“Perhaps we’ll talk later? Catch up.”
“If the shoot ever finishes.”
“Evelyn?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe you want to leave the costume on? And then you can just go tonight as me?”
By the end of the day, once Cukor determines he has the perfect take, Marilyn changes into her capris and her black-and-white leopard-print shirt. Walking back out to the set, she feigns surprise at the birthday celebration (although she is surprised to see Henry Weinstein). The sheet cake is at the center of the table, with flashing sparklers running down the center. A birthday card is displayed behind it, hastily drawn on a 14x16 sheet by one of the studio artists. It depicts a caricature of her, turned to the side, wearing only high heels and a towel, glancing out with a look of caught surprise, wide-eyed, with a lipsticked mouth open in a baby-faced O. At the top of the page, in a bold red cartoon script, it reads, Happy Birthday (Suit). The cast and crew have signed it along the margins.
Evelyn leads the crew in “Happy Birthday” and then cuts the sheet cake into even squares. People stand while eating their pieces, never really settling. Once Weinstein leaves, the rest quickly follow suit, apologizing for needing to get home for dinner. Soon, it’s just her and Evelyn. Each stands at an opposite end of the cake. Marilyn chases a pill down with a Dixie cup of water. She looks at Evelyn and shrugs. “Doctor’s orders,” she says.
Evelyn begins cleaning. “I’m afraid I have to go myself,” she says. “It’s an early call tomorrow. But I know you’ll be lovely tonight at the stadium. Beautiful on your birthday.” She walks around the table, stacking up the dirty paper plates, smashing down the unfinished slices of cake.
Marilyn props up a sparkler, one that wasn’t lit. “It’s not too late, you know,” she says.
“Too late?”
“For you to go. Tonight.”
“You make me laugh.”
“Really. No one will know the difference.”
“You know that isn’t so,” Evelyn says, dropping the pile of dirty plates into the garbage can. “You tell Joe I said hello. And I’ll see you tomorrow.” On her way out, she gathers up the spent plastic forks and throws them out as well, and one more time says, “You know that isn’t so.”
Marilyn lights the sparkler, its sparks reflecting in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says to herself, lifting her arm to wave good-bye, but not looking back. In the shimmering glitter, she begins to see herself refracted, as though looking at another person altogether.
Four things Marilyn knows:
1. In February of 1962, Elizabeth Taylor was thrown a gigantic birthday bash on the set of Cleopatra in Rome.
2. Six thousand dollars’ worth of decoration and pomp was showered on her, mostly footed by her husband, Eddie Fisher, who was desperately trying to keep his wife from fully falling for Richard Burton. He even gave her a $10,000 diamond ring and an emerald-studded mirror.
3. Reportedly, it was a party worthy of the Egyptian queen she was portraying.
4. Elizabeth Taylor had turned thirty. Marilyn Monroe thirty-six. Decades apart, in Hollywood years.
June 1, 1962: Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles
Marilyn doesn’t want to be alone with the woman in the wheelchair to the left of the microphone. They’ve gathered in the infield, between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. Behind them, a multiracial boys’ choir in dark sweaters with gold crests is neatly lined up and kicking in place; a coterie of officials and notables take their places, along with the other special guest, LA Angels outfielder Albie Pearson. Joe’s there also, but trying to keep a low profile, drawn more to the visiting Yankees than to the festivities surrounding the pregame appeal to raise funds for muscular dystrophy.
Wearing a white cardigan and a checkered shirt, the wheelchair woman sits where the organizers parked her. An attendant waits behind the chair, reflexively caressing the grooved rubber grips, ready to move her at a moment’s notice. When the woman stares straight ahead, toward the backstop, she looks poised and confident, dark hair pushed up above the brow, her lips smartly made up and bright. But when she turns her head she reveals her rag-doll limbs. Her whole body appears to collapse, and her facial features turn malleable, forming expressions based on the position of her neck. She keeps trying to look at Marilyn, tilting her head back in a way that will keep a smile.
Marilyn notices this from the corner of her eye and turns her attention elsewhere quickly. It scares her that much. Makes her feel a little queasy. But it isn’t about the physical disability or the disfigured form. It’s the reminder that even at his most benevolent there still are clear limits to God’s compassion.
Despite the cool and damp Friday evening, 51,000 people fill the stadium, greatly anticipating the Yankees’ first visit of the season. Mickey Mantle’s inj
ury has lessened the enthusiasm somewhat. However, he will be suited up and sitting in the dugout—a worthy consolation. At least that’s how Joe put it on the car ride over. A worthy consolation. Since they’ve arrived, Joe has been working the field, making his way from player to player. More than ten years past retirement, and it still lights him up. But it isn’t the notice he gets from the fans for being on the diamond that compels him to attend events held in baseball stadiums. It’s the familiarity and sense of belonging that come from feeling the way the infield grass gives under his feet. She once asked him what he meant by that, but he couldn’t explain it in a better way.
The stadium lights shine down, leaving a slight halo of moisture above Chavez Ravine. Being away from the Something’s Got to Give set allows Marilyn to move through that glow with a relaxed grace. Her suit, accented by a silver star-shaped brooch pinned just over her left breast, no longer feels like something from wardrobe, but instead like an outfit designed to showcase the best of her. The fur-lined hat sits in perfect complement to her platinum hair, fashionable and unexpectedly practical, keeping her warm on this moist and unusually chilly evening. She even passed Wally Cox, with whom she had just spent the whole day on set, and gave him a warm, surprised smile, as if she hadn’t seen him in ages.
Meanwhile, the wheelchair woman keeps looking. She’s trying to say something to Marilyn. Working hard to catch her eye. Make her mouth work while she has the chance. Marilyn, alone for the moment, smiles and takes a step back, looking for a distraction. As if on cue, Joe walks by in conversation with a Yankees player. She reaches out and grabs Joe’s sleeve, stops him, and turns him around until he blocks off the wheelchair. “Well, here she is,” Joe says, turning around in place. “She’s right here.”
“Yes,” she says, shifting slightly to the side. “Yes. Here I am.”
She’s introduced to Johnny Sain. He joined the Yankees during Joe’s final year, at the end of the 1951 season, when they beat the Giants in six to take the World Series. “He put in a heck of an effort on that final run,” Joe explains.
“Barely,” Sain says, speaking in a slow Southern drawl. “Couldn’t close out the ninth in game six. Three straight hits, and I almost lost it.”
“But he got us there, and then some, in the following years. And now he’s our pitching coach. Made everybody forget he’d ever been a Brave, much less a National Leaguer.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Sain looks over his shoulder to the dugout, and then down to the bullpen, where the pitchers are stretching. “But it’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Monroe. A real honor.” She leans in to hear him over the stadium noise. “A real pleasure,” he repeats, louder. “To meet you.”
From the corner of her eye she catches the attendant backing up the wheelchair, as if it might be changing position for a better view of her. “Yes,” she says, straining her voice. “Likewise.”
“Johnny says to expect a good one from Terry tonight. That his arm is all gold. He’s going to take it to Belinsky and those Angels.”
She sidesteps to the right, trying to keep the wheelchair out of her sight line. “I’ll certainly be rooting for him,” she says. “Rooting Belinsky on.”
“No,” Joe says. “Terry. Bo Belinsky’s on the Angels.” He winks at Sain with a crooked grin. “We root for Ralph Terry.”
“Ralph Terry it is, then. I’ll be rooting him on.”
“Miss Monroe, I will tell him you said that. Knowing that ought to give him a little extra gas.”
“Yes,” she says. “You tell him.”
Sain heads down to the bullpen, with Joe falling behind him. The woman again sits in plain view. And for once Marilyn wishes Joe would stick around, tell her more about baseball or why the Angels played at Dodger Stadium or other things that don’t really matter.
She’s placed beside Albie Pearson, waiting to be announced. The boys’ choir forms a break wall behind them, and the wheelchair is positioned in front of them, just ahead of Pearson. The woman cranes her neck, still trying to catch Marilyn’s eye. Sooner or later, Marilyn knows, she’ll have to say something to her.
When she’s announced, Marilyn looks up into the seats behind home plate. Each level blurs into the next. The crowd cheers, and for just a moment she has to remember this event isn’t about her. But after all the threats from the studio, and their insinuations about the demise of her career, it’s hard to let the moment go. She extends her arms and claps toward the woman. The crowd rises to its feet. She walks up to the microphone, briskly passing the wheelchair as though she could catch something, and makes her appeal for the charity fund.
The boys’ choir breaks into “Happy Birthday”; the imperfection of their nervous voices, high and sweet and lightly off-key, is too real for her. Like a million-watt bulb exposing every hidden frailty and weakening her. When they finish, she hugs two boys in the front row, almost collapsing into them.
Someone takes her hand. She turns around and sees it’s the woman in the wheelchair. Summoning what strength she has, the woman reels Marilyn in. The woman’s mouth forms slowly, lips finding shapes. Her raspy voice is barely audible above the stadium cheers. Carefully enunciating, she says, “I’ve only wanted to say happy birthday.”
On the way home, Marilyn sits with her back to Joe, staring out the window and pinching the bridge of her nose. The cool, damp Chavez Ravine wind got to her. It rattled her sinuses. They didn’t stay for the game, which leaves Joe a little quiet on the ride. She told him he should stay, but he escorted her out with the resentment of duty. And it never seemed to occur to him that she actually wanted him to stay. Sometimes she doesn’t know what’s harder to bear: inviting Joe into her life, or turning him away.
Traffic slows on the Pasadena Freeway, near downtown. The city lights stab at her, bringing on a wave of nausea. Closing her eyes, she squeezes harder on her sinuses. She asks the driver to turn up the radio. She doesn’t want to hear her thoughts. They only swell her head. Joe reaches over to rub her neck. His hand is too big. Awkward, without tenderness. She scoots closer to the door, shrugging him away with her shoulders. She doesn’t want to be touched.
She wakes the next morning barely able to breathe. The thermometer reads 100. Her face feels like a pressure cooker, the swelling brought on by a relapse of sinusitis. There’s no way she can get to the studio. It hurts to move. She stares at the phone. Unwilling even to dial it. When she worked at the Radioplane Company all those years back, she was always afraid to call in sick, fearful of losing her income. There were days when she was so under the weather she hardly was able to see or to think, and yet she still had to stand at the assembly line constructing drones. Measuring the balsa. Cutting. Gluing and assembling. Never again, she would say to herself all the way through her shift. Then she’d say it again driving out of the old Metropolitan Airport, through the farmlands of Van Nuys. Never again.
Drawing in a breath, she phones Henry Weinstein. (The idea of explaining to Cukor makes her feel even sicker.) When he hears her voice, Weinstein’s reply sounds wary with anticipation. She starts off with an apology, and then tells him about the charity event, and then the sinusitis that she just can’t shake. The bottom line, she says, is that she can’t make today’s shoot. The fever has thrown her a real knockout punch. It’s bad. So bad that when she hangs up she’s going to have her maid call Dr. Greenson.
Weinstein is silent.
“Henry,” she asks, “did you hear me?”
“No,” he says.
“You can’t hear me?”
“No. Please.”
“I’m so sorry, Henry. I don’t want to stop, you know that . . . But this is for real. I don’t want this. For real.”
“No. No. No.”
They both understand this will only lead to trouble for her and the picture. What more can she do but apologize again?
But he isn’t even listening. “No. No. No,” he repeats.
“I’m going to go now, Henry. I’m just going to rest up goo
d, and get ready to shoot again soon. For a day or so. Whatever the doctor says. But please don’t worry, Henry. I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’s just the rest I need. You see? I can barely move. Barely talk. You can hear it, I’m sure. So, I’m going to go now. Go get that rest.”
She hangs up and takes one of the headache pills, and then leans back against a mound of pillows, holding a compress soaked in warm water and apple cider vinegar across her nose. It lies over her cheekbones, loosening the mucus.
Mid-June 1962: Twentieth Century-Fox Executive Offices, Los Angeles
The brass at Twentieth Century-Fox gathers in a hastily arranged meeting. The windows closed. Shades drawn. The overhead lights are on, but the room is dim. Almost washed out. Calling in from New York, Twentieth’s vice president, Peter Levathes, starts off: “We’ve let the inmates run the asylum.” There’s tentative laughter, no one quite sure what to make of that statement. But Levathes isn’t laughing. Couldn’t begin to tell you why anybody would find that statement funny. And for the moment he leaves it at that. Lets the idea sink in.
No one responds. They know where this heading.
Levathes speaks again, saying that, simply put, Marilyn has to be fired. Something’s Got to Give was supposed to make up for the Cleopatra debacle, not add to its deficit. He’s not running a charity. The film was supposed to be easy. A remake. Just update an old script and throw some stars into it. But the son of a bitch has been hijacked. How many revisions has the script gone through? How many writers? How this has gotten out of hand is obvious. Levathes says he’s holding a memo. The stationery wrinkles in his fingers. “Marilyn Monroe,” he recites into the telephone, “has only managed to be on set for twelve out of thirty-seven shooting days.” The whole production is in a constant state of regeneration, having to readjust itself on the fly nearly every morning. And someone in the room says, “What is it with actors these days?” Levathes agrees, saying that part of it is the agents trying to muscle the contracts away from the studios. They inflate the stars into thinking they’re more than they are. Pumping them up for negotiations, trying to jimmy the salaries up higher above the expense line. And Marilyn is queen of the swelled heads. The role model. At thirty-six years old in this business, she’s lucky to get any leading roles, yet she acts as though she runs the motherfucking studio, shifting schedules based on her moods, and her real and imagined illnesses. It’s threatening the whole system. Barely any room for a studio head anymore. She has to go. Not just for the movie, but for the sake and health of the industry.