More often than not, Marilyn appeared to be tipsy. And it did not take long to see why. No sooner did the director yell “Cut!” than Marilyn shouted “Coffee!” The choreography hardly varied. An assistant would materialize with a red thermos. Marilyn, pretending it really was coffee, sipped vermouth all day.
If Marilyn often snarled at the director, there were times when she seemed even angrier at her husband. Her behavior toward Miller was wildly contradictory. One moment she was lamenting on the phone to Norman Rosten that Arthur was no longer eager to have a baby with her. The next, she was setting Miller up to be savaged by one of his literary idols.
John Huston had praised The Misfits, and Marilyn seemed intent on knocking Arthur off his high horse. What better way to accomplish that than to press a copy of the screenplay on Clifford Odets? Odets, the author of Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy, wasn’t simply a friend like Norman Rosten. He was a playwright Miller revered. In Odets, Marilyn had managed to find someone whose opinion would conceivably outweigh Huston’s.
As it happened, Odets had no interest in Arthur’s script, his real reason for hooking up with Marilyn being—what else?—to attach her to a screenplay of his own. It was called The Story on Page One and Odets also hoped to direct. He agreed to read The Misfits while Marilyn was on location in Coronado. They made a date to have dinner after she returned to Los Angeles.
On September 11, Marilyn, hands trembling, wrote a frantic letter to the Rostens. She compared herself and the production to a sinking ship. She implored Norman and Hedda not to give up on her. At the top of the Hotel de Coronado stationery was a picture of the oceanfront resort. Marilyn drew a stick figure in the water. The figure, clearly meant to represent herself, was shouting “help.”
The following evening, Marilyn called Connecticut, pouring out her upset to Arthur. Sometime that night, she swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. Precisely as Natasha had once done, Paula found her in time. Had Marilyn expected to be discovered? She may not have known the answer herself. She spent the weekend in the hospital. Miller, putting aside After the Fall, rushed to California. Was that precisely what she had hoped to achieve? As Marilyn later told Norman Rosten, she needed something to hold onto.
That week, visitors at Coronado were treated to a curious sight. Billy Wilder had been permitted to rope off a small patch of the beach for the actors and the film crew. Marilyn, wearing a 1920s-style bathing suit, repeatedly blew her lines. Paula Strasberg, who wore a tent-sized, hooded black robe, threw a short, white terrycloth robe over Marilyn’s shoulders with one hand, with the other gripping a black umbrella to shield Marilyn from the sun. But Paula was no longer alone in comforting Marilyn between takes. Arthur Miller also danced attendance. Marilyn, the center of attention, resembled a cosseted child.
Things improved drastically once Miller was present. He did everything to lift Marilyn’s spirits. In the beginning, she appeared to respond. Once again, Marilyn gazed at him adoringly. Once again, she addressed him as Papa. Once again, she looked to him for protection. The tensions of recent months, particularly those generated by The Misfits, evaporated. Not long after Arthur joined her in California, Marilyn became pregnant.
Back in Los Angeles, Arthur moved in with Marilyn at the Bel Air Hotel. Visiting the Strasbergs in Santa Monica, she actually seemed happy. On the night she was to dine with Clifford Odets, Marilyn, insisting she was tired, sent Arthur alone. At that moment, she was in no mood to drag her husband over the coals.
Her contentment, however, was short-lived. Very soon, the old fears and suspicions beset her. Part of the problem seemed to be finding herself with Arthur in the company of so many people who, as the expression goes, knew her when. This, after all, was the first time Arthur had tarried with Marilyn on a Hollywood film set; during Bus Stop, his visits by and large had been confined to a few stolen weekends at the Chateau Marmont. At least three men connected with Some Like It Hot had been to bed with Marilyn in years past. She had spent a night with Tony Curtis in 1949 or 1950. She had had a fling with Edward G. Robinson, Jr., in the early fifties. She had had sex with the entertainment journalist James Bacon in 1949 while she was living in the guest cottage on Joe Schenck’s estate. Wherever Arthur turned, he might see one of Marilyn’s former lovers.
Arthur, having observed Marilyn at Charlie Feldman’s eight years previously, was well aware of her past on the Hollywood party circuit. But by his own account, something prevented him from acknowledging that past as hers. That was precisely what Marilyn had objected to in his screenplay-in-progress. If Arthur couldn’t accept who she really was, she feared she was being rejected.
As it often did, her fear erupted in cruelty and anger. She lashed out at Arthur. She fought with him on the set. She taunted him with her sexual past. She French-kissed Tony Curtis in an effort to make her husband jealous. In despair that Arthur was ashamed of her, she pretended not to care. She seemed intent on provoking him. When Marilyn introduced him to the gregarious James Bacon, she cooed suggestively, “Jim and I used to be real close.” It was as though she and Bacon were in on a joke that the stiff, moody husband didn’t quite get.
Miller’s failure to react strongly, as Joe DiMaggio would have done, made it possible for Marilyn to suspect his motives. He had permitted Kermit Bloomgarden to announce a new stage play. The date of the premiere was fast approaching, yet After the Fall remained unfinished. His screenplay, on the other hand, was ready to go. John Huston would soon be in America to make plans. Was that why Arthur dutifully tagged along, carrying Marilyn’s purse and makeup case? Did he just want to be sure she was available for The Misfits?
Late in the production, Miller approached Wilder on the set. Telling him in confidence that his wife was pregnant, he implored Wilder to go easy with her, and asked him to consider releasing Marilyn at 4:30 each day. Wilder wasn’t amused.
“Look, Arthur, it is now four o’clock,” he snapped. “I still don’t have a take. She didn’t come on the set till half past eleven. She wasn’t ready to work until one. I tell you this, Arthur, you get her here at nine, ready to work and I’ll let her go—no, not at four-thirty—I’ll let her go at noon.”
Marilyn, for her part, seemed at once to long for and to dread motherhood. She wanted to protect her baby even as she put it in jeopardy. She worried about Billy Wilder’s pushing her too hard. She did not want to lose this child. Yet she disregarded a gynecologist’s warning that her steady intake of booze and barbiturates could kill the child. She was told in no uncertain terms that due to the build-up of barbiturates in her system, a single drink could trigger a miscarriage. Yet the red thermos remained a fixture on the set. And though Marilyn insisted that she wanted a baby more than anything, she continued to take drugs. On one occasion, she gobbled four whole Amytal sleeping tablets—the equivalent of eight regular-sized tablets—on an empty stomach, and washed the pills down with sherry. In a letter to Norman Rosten, Marilyn worried she had “killed” her child.
Marilyn finished Some Like It Hot on November 7. Twelve hours later, it looked as though she were about to miscarry. Weeping “I don’t want to lose my baby again,” she was rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. As it happened, there was no miscarriage. Doctors released her with a warning to stop the pills and the drinking. The baby, she was informed, was in grave danger. After a week of bed rest at the Bel Air Hotel, Marilyn was taken by ambulance to the airport for the flight home. On East 57th Street, there was a gift waiting for her. Next to the framed photograph of Gladys that adorned her night table, she discovered a miniature cradle with a toy baby. It was a present from her maid. The sight caused Marilyn to burst into tears of gratitude.
Suddenly, she appeared to wake up and attempt to control herself. She stopped drinking. She took no more drugs. Convinced that the baby would be a girl, Marilyn insisted repeatedly that she did not want to harm her daughter. Yet, as the doctors in California had warned, it might already be too late. At any time, the barbiturates in Marilyn’s system might
end the baby’s life. Fearful that any exertion might cause her to miscarry, Marilyn remained in bed, nervously playing with the miniature cradle which she had placed on the pillow beside her.
Soon after the Millers returned, Kermit Bloomgarden delayed the December 18 Broadway premiere until February or March 1959, when he hoped Miller would be finished. Under intense pressure to work on his play, Arthur focused on a short story. On December 3, he completed a first draft. “I Don’t Need You Anymore” depicted a small boy’s bitter resentment of his mother’s pregnancy.
The pregnancy theme was also very much on the minds of Twentieth Century–Fox executives, rumors of Marilyn’s condition having reached the studio. Now that Marilyn had completed Some Like It Hot, Twentieth had until April 14, 1959 to summon her for a film. But if the rumors were true, the studio hoped to be granted an extension. There was a lot of nervous debate about how best to approach Marilyn without triggering one of her rages.
Finally, on December 2, Frank Ferguson wrote to inquire whether she was pregnant. If so, he notified Marilyn that Twentieth wanted to extend the period during which it was obligated to use her. Unmentioned was the fact that Skouras and his colleagues did not yet have a project ready for their biggest star. The studio, having fumbled badly, would by no means be upset to delay the second of Marilyn’s four films. At the same time, Twentieth did not want to repeat past mistakes. No one wanted to pay Marilyn, as Skouras had done, for another film she failed to make. And certainly no one wanted to forfeit a Marilyn Monroe picture. Twentieth was eager to hear from her as soon as possible.
Marilyn sent the letter on to her attorneys—who also represented Miller—but they were clearly in no hurry to reply on her behalf. Miller did not yet know when Huston would be available to film The Misfits. The director was about to go to Los Angeles to prepare The Unforgiven, which was to be shot in Mexico in January. But first, he planned to meet Miller in New York. The Misfits would not necessarily be Huston’s next project, Sartre having recently delivered a ninety-five-page treatment for Freud. Huston anticipated being busy with The Unforgiven until about May. If Marilyn gave birth in June, he would probably go on to direct Freud while she did a picture for Twentieth. But the fact remained that doctors had warned Marilyn she might miscarry. After Ferguson’s letter, her attorneys were silent for two weeks.
Meanwhile, Huston arrived on Sunday, December 14. He and Miller met for the first time. Contrary to anything he had said previously, Huston indicated that he expected a rewrite. As far as Huston was concerned, the screenplay was by no means finished. Now there were two unfinished projects on Arthur’s desk. Now there were two men—Huston and Bloomgarden—waiting for pages.
As Arthur worked in his study, he heard Marilyn scream from the bedroom. The pain, mental and physical, was excruciating. Frenzied, she wept that she was going to lose the baby. Arthur and an assistant accompanied her in an ambulance to the Polyclinic Hospital. That night, Miller returned to the apartment alone.
In the past, when Marilyn lost a baby, she had blamed fate. She had blamed her body. She had blamed some defect within. But this time was different. This time, she held herself responsible. She embraced her own guilt. She had been warned to give up barbiturates and alcohol, she knew that her addictions could harm the baby. And she had ignored those warnings until it was too late.
For a long time, Marilyn had feared that one day she would become like her mother. Many years previously, Gladys had tried to smother Norma Jeane in her crib—or at least, Marilyn believed she had. Now, Marilyn had succeeded where Gladys had failed. She was convinced she had killed her own daughter. When Marilyn came home, she spotted the miniature cradle next to Gladys’s picture on her night table and threw it on the floor. She began to weep uncontrollably.
On December 17, the day the miscarriage was announced to the press, the Fox legal department finally heard from Marilyn’s attorneys. In reply to Frank Ferguson’s December 2 letter, Robert H. Montgomery, Jr. notified the studio that Marilyn Monroe had completed Some Like It Hot and was now “ready, willing, and able” to begin work on her next picture for Twentieth.
FOURTEEN
The ball was in Twentieth’s court. Studio executives had until April 14 to put Marilyn in a picture. By the terms of her amended contract, that was the latest possible start date. On January 20, 1959, Frank Ferguson and Lew Schreiber reviewed Marilyn’s list of approved directors. The studio attorney reminded Schreiber that they could not notify Marilyn to report to work until they had a commitment from one of the sixteen men on her list.
Billy Wilder was on the list, but after Some Like It Hot he never wanted to work with Marilyn again. Joshua Logan was on the list, but Marilyn had been furious with him since her big scene in Bus Stop was cut. John Huston was on the list, but his dance card was filled. Lee Strasberg was on the list, but he had never directed a picture.
One name, however, presented distinct possibilities. Elia Kazan remained under contract to Twentieth. In 1950, Lew Schreiber had been sent to New York by Darryl Zanuck to urge the board to approve the largest salary the corporation had ever given a director. Four years later, though Zanuck refused Kazan’s request to call off the contract, the production chief did not succeed in getting a fourth picture. Zanuck, confident that his personal relationship with Kazan would enable him to prevail, pleaded with Skouras not to intervene. Since that time, however, Zanuck had quit Twentieth. And the matter of Kazan’s contract had been left unresolved.
Twentieth, eager to come up with a picture for Marilyn, seized on a pet project of Kazan’s. It was a script about the Tennessee Valley Authority, based on the novels Mud on the Stars by William Bradford Huie and Dunbar’s Cove by Borden Deal. In Time and Tide, Twentieth saw a vehicle for Marilyn. That Kazan and Miller, once close, had been at odds for seven years seemed to concern the studio not at all.
Before a deal could be put together, Kazan had to accept officially. Only then could Twentieth order Marilyn to work. On February 19, Frank Ferguson advised Lew Schreiber that in order to be certain there was time to give Marilyn thirty days’ notice, they must notify Kazan no later than the 25th.
Kazan was then in New York directing Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth, produced by Cheryl Crawford, which was set to open on Broadway on March 10. Kazan, accompanied by Abe Lastfogel, met with Skouras and officially agreed to direct Time and Tide. Twentieth gave him a terrific deal. When he completed the picture, he would be relieved of the obligation to direct the fifth and sixth films in his 1950 contract.
On March 4, Kazan wired production chief Buddy Adler promising to report no later than April 1 for conferences with Calder Willingham, who was being put to work on the script. Immediately Lew Schreiber directed the studio attorney to draft a letter informing Marilyn that she was officially assigned to Time and Tide, to be directed by Elia Kazan. Marilyn was to report on April 14. Suddenly, at a moment when Arthur was having trouble revising The Misfits, it looked as though Marilyn was going to appear in Kazan’s picture first. This state of affairs recalled the strange, awkward situation in 1955 when Marilyn, her love affair with Miller notwithstanding, hoped to go off with Kazan to film Baby Doll. This time, however, the fact that Marilyn was Arthur’s wife made things even more complicated and highly charged.
Matters were already tense in the Miller household. Marilyn was in despair after the preview of Some Like It Hot on February 5. Arthur, like most of the critics, thought she had been wonderfully comical in the film. “I don’t want to be funny,” Marilyn declared. “Everybody’s going to laugh at me. And not because of my acting. I looked like a fat pig. Those goddamn cocksuckers made me look like a funny fat pig.”
Billy Wilder had scrupulously used only those takes in which Marilyn—not Tony Curtis or Jack Lemmon—was particularly effective. The result was to privilege those moments when she had been at her most brilliant, to enable her to shine. Yet, in her paranoia, Marilyn sincerely believed Wilder had been determined to make her look bad. She blamed Ar
thur for having made her appear in the film in the first place. Shrieking that it was his fault, she burst into his study after Wilder joked about her in an interview in the New York Herald Tribune.
The interviewer had inquired about Wilder’s health now that he was finished working with Marilyn. “I am eating better,” said Wilder. “My back doesn’t ache anymore. I am able to sleep for the first time in months. I can look at my wife without wanting to hit her because she’s a woman.” Wilder emphasized that his physical and mental health precluded doing another picture with Marilyn.
Egged on by Marilyn, Arthur sent an angry telegram to Wilder, declaring he could not permit the attack on Marilyn to go unchallenged. He cited his wife’s ill health during the making of Some Like It Hot, and mentioned her pregnancy and miscarriage. He called the director’s comments contemptible, accusing him of being unjust and cruel. He claimed to take solace in the fact that, despite Wilder, Marilyn’s beauty and humanity shone through in the finished film.
Wilder’s reply enraged Marilyn all the more. He said he had actually protected her from the press. He noted that he had lied repeatedly to cover up her unprofessional behavior. The Herald Tribune piece, he argued, would have been twice as harsh if he had failed to cooperate. He pointed out that Marilyn’s lateness and unpreparedness had cost the studio eighteen shooting days and hundreds of thousands of dollars. He insisted that had Arthur been not Marilyn’s husband but her director, he would have “thrown her out on her can, thermos bottle and all, to avoid a nervous breakdown.”
On March 30, three weeks after Sweet Bird of Youth opened on Broadway, Kazan reported to Twentieth. Despite the fact that the play was a hit, Kazan had been badly wounded by criticism that, with an eye to commercial values, he had altered Tennessee Williams’s work and distorted his vision. Kazan’s influence on the playwright was widely deplored; the Williams–Kazan collaboration was said to have “reached the point of diminishing returns.” Though no one knew it at the time, Sweet Bird of Youth would be the last Williams play that Kazan would direct.
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