Marilyn Monroe

by Barbara Leaming

  A chance for Marilyn to work with Hawks, one of Hollywood’s finest directors, was precisely the sort of thing Johnny would have welcomed. Hawks was convinced that “the girl,” as he called Marilyn, had enormous potential. He had been tremendously impressed with her in The Asphalt Jungle. More recently, Hawks had suggested to Zanuck that she’d been improperly cast in Don’t Bother to Knock. The significance of Monkey Business was not that it got Marilyn noticed, as the Huston and Mankiewicz films had done, but that it presented an opportunity for Hawks to figure out how Marilyn should be used. When he knew that, he’d have the formula that would enable Marilyn to become a star.

  Soon after Marilyn began work with Hawks on February 26, 1952, she had an appendix attack. Hospitalized, she refused surgery lest Zanuck pull her out of the film. Marilyn was not about to permit anything, not even excruciating pain, to impede the momentum of her career. Her doctors agreed to freeze the appendix so that Marilyn could finish her assignment. No sooner had she returned to the set, however, than a fresh crisis threatened to derail her. She was summoned to Zanuck’s office, where he and the studio publicity director, Harry Brand, confronted her with information they had received from a UP wire service reporter, Aline Mosby. According to Mosby, Marilyn had posed for a popular nude calendar that adorned the walls of gas stations and barber shops across America. Zanuck warned Marilyn that if the story broke, her career could be destroyed. Every Hollywood contract contained a morals clause which permitted the studio to fire an artist for offensive behavior. Zanuck personally had no objection to the calendar, but if there was a public outcry he would have to dismiss her.

  Marilyn admitted to having posed for the calendar in 1949. Unfortunately, Johnny Hyde had been in Europe to attend Rita Hayworth’s wedding to Prince Aly Khan, so when Marilyn needed cash she did what she often did in such circumstances—she hired herself out as a model. On this particular occasion, she called up a cheesecake photographer named Tom Kelley, who had previously asked her to pose in the nude. She had refused at the time, but now she changed her mind. He gave her fifty dollars for the session.

  The consensus among studio executives was that Marilyn should deny that she was the naked girl stretched out on rumpled red velvet. When she sought his advice afterward, Sidney Skolsky recommended the opposite. He urged Marilyn to be honest about what she had done and told her to give the story exclusively to Mosby, who, besides having tipped off the studio about the calendar, had written a warm account of Marilyn’s childhood a few months previously. Harry Brand, alone among Fox executives, supported Marilyn’s decision to tell the truth. As for Marilyn herself, not only was she brilliant with the press, but she knew how good she was. Better yet, she was capable of masking that confidence so that everything she said appeared to be utterly innocent and uncalculated.

  “Oh, the calendar’s hanging in garages all over town,” Marilyn told Mosby over lunch. “Why deny it? You can get one anyplace. Besides, I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve done nothing wrong. I was told I should deny I’d posed … but I’d rather be honest about it.”

  When Mosby’s story appeared in newspapers on March 13, 1952, the overwhelmingly favorable public reaction was a testament to the publicity campaign that Marilyn had launched in Collier’s magazine five months previously. People had nothing but sympathy for the heroine of “the greatest Cinderella story in Hollywood history.” To judge by the fan letters with which Twentieth was inundated, the self-styled “courageous little orphan girl” could do no wrong.

  Two days after the Mosby piece, Marilyn, taking no chances, seized an opportunity to endear herself further to the American public by going on a blind date with Joe DiMaggio. She and Skolsky agreed that there could be no better character reference than the nation’s favorite athlete-hero, and he planned to break the news in his column. DiMaggio, who had retired from baseball three months previously at the age of thirty-seven, was known as the greatest living ballplayer. He was idolized and revered. If “the last American knight” thought Marilyn Monroe a fine decent girl, what could anyone else say against her?

  The meeting took place the following Saturday night at the dimlylit Villa Nova restaurant on the Sunset Strip. DiMaggio preferred dark restaurants. The date had been arranged by David March, who hoped to be hired as Marilyn’s business manager. DiMaggio, fascinated by a publicity photograph of Marilyn in brief white shorts, a snug sweater, and open-toe high heels, posing with a baseball player named Gus Zernial, had asked his friend March for an introduction. Under other circumstances Marilyn might not have agreed, but at the moment the potential for publicity was irresistible.

  DiMaggio, nursing a sweet vermouth on the rocks in the last booth on the left, was tall and long-boned, with wavy, precisely parted, graying hair and flaring nostrils. It was said that DiMaggio’s profile came to a point at the end of his nose. He had sad brown eyes, long eyelashes and a conspicuous overbite. He had broad shoulders and massive, strong arms, with enormous wrists. He chain-smoked Camels as he waited, wearing a gray flannel suit, a white shirt, and a blue polka-dot tie. He was graceful and subdued. There was a poignant air of remoteness about him. The sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, one of DiMaggio’s closest friends, once described him as one of the loneliest men he’d ever met, adding, “I doubt if anyone fully understands his lonely character.”

  The dinner was arranged for 6:30. David March and his girlfriend, sipping dry Martinis, were sitting with DiMaggio when Marilyn walked in, two hours late. DiMaggio bashfully told Marilyn that he was glad to meet her, his strident voice competing with the schmaltzy Italian music on the sound system. His long face was oddly expressionless, a reminder of why some people called him Dead Pan Joe. Instead of the garishly-dressed sports figure Marilyn had expected, DiMaggio reminded her of a steel magnate or a Congressman. His endearing shyness reminded her of Arthur Miller.

  “There’s a blue polka dot exactly in the middle of your tie knot,” she said, in an effort to break the ice. “Did it take you long to fix it just that way?”

  That was virtually the extent of their conversation. DiMaggio never talked much, leading a friend to remark once that when Joe said hello, it was a long conversation. March told some funny stories about his experiences in Hollywood and Mickey Rooney bounded over to display his knowledge of DiMaggio’s feats on the baseball field. Ignoring hints and signals that he ought to leave, Rooney monopolized his hero for most of the evening. After about an hour and a half, Marilyn went home. DiMaggio called the next day to ask her to dine with him alone. She refused, DiMaggio persisted, and finally Marilyn agreed to an intimate dinner with him on Wednesday the 19th.

  By March 17, when Skolsky revealed to America that Marilyn was dating Joe DiMaggio, there was no question at Twentieth that she had turned the nude calendar scandal into perhaps the greatest publicity coup in Hollywood history. Marilyn hadn’t distinguished herself on screen yet, but as each day passed she was becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. Everyone at the studio would have known exactly what it meant when Charlie Feldman arrived on the set of Monkey Business on March 18 to see Marilyn. Ordinarily he would have sent one of his staff to court a new client. That he came himself, and that he talked quietly with Marilyn for a long while on the fringe of the set, was a sure sign Feldman was concerned that every agency in town would soon be after her.

  The day Feldman went to see Marilyn, he was in an exceptionally good mood. A Streetcar Named Desire, which had opened to critical acclaim in September, was nominated for twelve Oscars. The awards ceremony was two days away, and Feldman and Jack Warner predicted that the picture would sweep the major awards. In addition, Feldman was sure this would be the first time all four acting citations went to one film.

  Since the New York critics had chosen A Streetcar Named Desire as their best picture of the year, Warner, who had backed the film with Feldman, had virtually been begging Williams and Kazan to do another project for him. The playwright and the director were both very hot at the moment. When they couldn’t come to L
os Angeles, Feldman and Jack Warner went to New York. In discussions with Audrey Wood, Warner emphasized that he didn’t just want to make a deal, he wanted to make an “important” deal. Feldman knew that Warner was prepared to pay handsomely for Baby Doll, the screenplay Williams was writing in close consultation with Kazan, based on his one-act plays 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and The Unsatisfactory Supper.

  Marilyn wasn’t surprised when, just as she was preparing to go out on her second date with Joe DiMaggio, she had a call from Kazan, who had arrived from New York and checked into the Bel Air Hotel. Tennessee Williams was staying there, too, along with his agent, Audrey Wood, and her husband. Wood had arrived in Los Angeles determined not to show Warner the screenplay-in-progress until there was a signed contract, though she brought a typed copy just in case. Fortunately, Warner seemed even more anxious than she to put a deal in place.

  One might have expected Kazan to be on top of the world. In private, however, he was in turmoil. HUAC was again holding hearings about the entertainment world. The trio of Kazan, Clifford Odets, and Lillian Hellman, all former Communist Party members, came from Broadway’s upper echelon. They were precisely the sort of successful, prosperous people who tended to be friendly witnesses, if only because they had so much to lose. All three of them would be called in this round of hearings. Indeed, Kazan had already been interrogated. On January 14, 1952, in secret testimony in Washington, D.C., Kazan admitted to having briefly been a Communist but refused to identify other Party members. Afterward, he had chest pains. His hands trembled. He had difficulty sleeping. He worried that if Jack Warner learned about his refusal to name names, the deal would be off. Back in New York, Kazan had been summoned by Spyros Skouras, who urged Kazan to change his HUAC testimony. He offered personally to accompany Kazan to Washington, and made it clear that if Kazan failed to name names, he would never direct another Hollywood film.

  Kazan had a great deal on his mind as he arrived in Los Angeles on March 19. When he picked up a copy of that day’s Hollywood Reporter, his worst fears were realized: “Elia Kazan, subpoenaed for the Un-American Activities Committee session, confessed Commie membership but refused to supply any new evidence on his old pals from the Group Theater days.” Aware of the impact the item was likely to have, he telephoned Marilyn as a way of forgetting his troubles. She seemed to occupy another plane of existence, one that had nothing to do with HUAC. She was on her way out to a dinner date, she explained, but she would come to the Bel Air Hotel afterward. He left the door unlocked and fell asleep.

  Marilyn spent the evening with Joe. Finally, she entered Kazan’s room at 3:30 a.m. and crept into bed. At this point, she knew nothing of the film he was supposed to be setting up with Warner. She was unaware that he had in his hands the project she longed for, with a lead role that would have been perfect for her. Excitedly Marilyn told him that after tonight she didn’t plan to see him again. She had found the man she wanted to marry. Naturally, Kazan assumed she meant Arthur Miller.

  “He comes all the way down from San Francisco just to have dinner with me,” Marilyn added, “and we haven’t even done it yet!”

  Kazan, puzzled, asked who she was talking about.

  “Joe,” said Marilyn. “He wants to marry me, and I really like him. He’s not like these movie people. He’s dignified.”

  Kazan listened to Marilyn chatter on about Joe DiMaggio; then he made love to her.

  The next day, instead of the sweep Charlie Feldman and Jack Warner had predicted, A Streetcar Named Desire won four awards: Vivien Leigh for Best Actress, Karl Malden for Best Supporting Actor, Kim Hunter for Best Supporting Actress, and Richard Day and George James Hopkins for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration. An American in Paris was named Best Picture, and A Place in the Sun picked up the prizes for direction and writing. Humphrey Bogart, in The African Queen, won for Best Actor. Feldman was convinced they had been robbed. Worse, Hollywood’s attitude to Kazan appeared to have changed overnight. The item in the Hollywood Reporter had been devastating. Overnight, Jack Warner lost interest in Baby Doll. Overnight, the director everyone wanted to work with became a pariah.

  Marilyn’s resolve not to see Kazan again proved short-lived. That evening she was his date at what was to have been a post-Academy Awards celebration at Charlie Feldman’s house. He needed comforting, so once again Marilyn played the role of Kazan’s girl. Her willingness to accompany him suggested that she might have a harder time than she had anticipated keeping her vow to break off with him. Had he been given the green light on Baby Doll, one wonders whether she would have been able to stay away at all.

  When Kazan left Hollywood, Tennessee Williams had the impression that he was going to continue to refuse to disclose the identities of fellow Communist Party members, whatever the cost. Williams admired Kazan’s courage and sense of honor. At home with Molly and the children, however, Kazan began to waver. One afternoon, Kermit Bloomgarden heard pebbles clattering against the window of his second-floor office overlooking Broadway. He glanced out and saw Kazan, who had an office in the same building, standing on the sidewalk, waving to him to come down. Over coffee at Dinty Moore’s nearby, Kazan indicated that he might be about to do as Spyros Skouras demanded. Kazan’s hair had started to go gray. Heavy lines had formed around his mouth.

  Bloomgarden, who had known Kazan since the Group Theater and had produced Death of a Salesman, which Kazan had directed, was horrified by what he heard. He said little until the end, and then stated his position.

  “We bring our children up not to tattle.”

  Kazan made the rounds of the friends and associates he would be required to name. These included Paula Strasberg, who had nearly broken up Kazan’s marriage by telling Molly about his affair with Constance Dowling, so there can have been little love lost there. But there was also his great friend Clifford Odets. Powerful feelings flowed between the two men. They were always very physically affectionate with one another, leading a good many people to mistake them for lovers. Since 1939, Odets had lived in daily terror of being exposed as a Communist, but now he and Kazan agreed to name each other. Odets would testify privately on April 24, and publicly in May.

  On a dark, rainy morning in early April, Arthur Miller drove from Roxbury to Kazan’s farmhouse at Newtown, Connecticut. Having already talked to Bloomgarden, he guessed what he was about to hear.

  The rain stopped and the sun came out. As they walked together in the fragrant woods, Kazan told Miller of his decision to name names. Miller put his arm around Gadg and awkwardly pressed the side of his body against his friend. The gesture was familiar. It was the same tense, guilty gesture Miller performed when, called on to embrace a young woman, he did so while turning his body to the side.

  Miller had been thinking a lot about guilt lately. His encounter with Marilyn Monroe continued to preoccupy him. In a thin, brown, wire-bound composition book, he had been taking notes on a contemporary play about adultery he hoped to write. The notebook contained ideas and snippets of dialogue. Possible titles included “The Men’s Conversation” and “Conversation of Men.” The protagonist, Quentin, has recently had an adventure that causes him to confront how much he despises married life, which he compares to a trap. His wife, refusing to forgive, declares that the man she knew could never transgress as Quentin has done. She insists that he crush his daimon—that is, his desire for sex outside the marriage. Quentin longs to free himself of the need for his wife’s acceptance and the respectability she represents. Only when it is possible to leave will his decision to stay have any meaning. Quentin seeks a way to remain in the marriage not simply because that is what his wife demands but because that is what he chooses. At the same time, he wonders whether he really wants to abandon the possibility of ever experiencing ecstasy again.

  Miller did not progress beyond these notes. Though he customarily found his material in his own life, perhaps he was just too close to it here. He was still in the marriage he was trying to write about. In his notebook, he was w
orking out his own problems rather than those of a fictional character. The wife was transparently Mary. Quentin’s dilemma was transparently Miller’s.

  After hearing what Kazan had to tell him, Miller drove directly to Salem, Massachusetts, to research a new play. Since 1950, Miller had wanted to write something about the Red hysteria. He studied Marion Starkey’s The Devil in Massachusetts and saw a parallel between the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and the hunt for Communists in America. At one point he had given a copy of the book to Kazan, with an eye to their doing a play together. Not until Miller actually went to Salem, however, did he see a way to personalize the material, to make it his.

  Poring over old court records, he imagined there might have been an affair between John Proctor and a young servant girl named Abigail Williams, who went on to accuse Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, of witchcraft. In this story, Miller discovered an armature for the adultery play he wanted to write. The historical characters and setting provided the distance that his earlier effort lacked, and the adultery theme invigorated the political, witch-hunt material with a deeply-felt conflict of his own. In his notebook, the playwright skipped three pages and started to take notes on a scene in which Abigail attempts to seduce John Proctor. Those lines were the germ of The Crucible.

  On April 10, Kazan went to Washington, D.C. to reopen his HUAC hearing. Kazan, who took pride in his ability to conceal his feelings, made it clear that he had returned not because anyone had forced or threatened him, but because he wanted to—he was fully in control. He insisted on testifying in writing. That way he would say precisely what he chose to say and no more. The committee didn’t object, so long as he did as they asked and named names.