by Colin Clark
‘We must do that again,’ he said. I’m not so sure.
I slept really late yesterday and then went to the Stork Club again. Yvonne was there with somebody else, but I persuaded her to join me after they left, and took her straight home. I just had to have normal sex again. I’ve grown out of all that schoolboy stuff at last. Perhaps I’ll go back to it when I’m old, but for now I prefer girls. I saw Al69 this evening but I didn’t tell him what was going on. The film world is different, I suppose. It’s more exciting, and I’ve got a hangover to prove it!
MONDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER
Back at work in the hall set, taking it apart and putting it back again so we can film it from every angle. I have been having a feud with MM’s stand-in. She and SLO’s stand-in are always in the studio, on call every day, and they are meant to arrive at the same time as the stars. After a quick visit to make-up and wardrobe, they must be on the set by 8 a.m., ready for lighting to begin. It is a thankless task. They just stand where they are told and move where they are told, while they are lit as if they were the stars and their moves are ‘plotted’ by camera and sound. They never get the chance to perform, even if the star is ill, like an understudy does in the theatre. They are generally considered to be at the very bottom of the studio pecking order, only just above the ‘extras’ who make up the crowd scenes, and from whose ranks they have been drawn. I suppose I look at them the way Terry Rattigan looks at me – (which is also the way MM looks at Terry Rattigan!). MM’s stand-in is a pretty little thing, but half MM’s size and with none of her personality. Now she has taken to arriving late in the mornings too. Not as late as MM, of course, or she would be fired instantly, but 25 minutes late is a lot for a stand-in.
I am responsible to David for getting the right people on the right set at the right time. With MM this is difficult, but with the stand-ins it should be automatic. Indeed, they are usually so anxious to please, and be hired again, that they are early. The MM girl has not taken any notice of my stern rebukes. This morning she even threatened to get me into trouble for being rude – which I expect I was. I will have to investigate this a little further. When a girl like that starts getting cheeky, it usually means she has some powerful man to protect her – I have deep suspicions.
TUESDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER
I got the 2nd Ast Dir to cover me at the Star Dressing Room entrance after SLO had arrived, taking a fairly certain gamble on MM being at least an hour late. Then I went round to the main entrance and waited out of sight. Sure enough, at 7.30, Jack Cardiff drove up, and the MM stand-in hopped out of his car. She waved goodbye before she hurried inside, and Jack went off to park. There is no law against giving stand-ins a lift to the studio, but now I knew why she could afford to be cheeky. Jack, as lighting cameraman, is the most important man in the studio after SLO. It is he who is responsible for how the film looks, after SLO has decided what it should contain. Jack is also especially important to MM. It is he who makes her look so beautiful. She also likes him and respects him. He is indeed a very charming and likeable man, although I don’t know him that well. It is not up to me to criticise him if he makes a friend. But it is my job to get stand-ins on the set on time, even if it is really Jack who will be kept waiting if they are not. David feels very strongly that just because MM is always late, the rest of the studio must not be allowed to get slack. I decided not to tell David what I had seen, but when the MM girl came on the set, late again, I gave her a pretty firm rebuke. I did it in front of Jack in the hope that he might realise that he must get her to work earlier. That was not a success. Jack was livid. He told me that, as lighting cameraman, stand-ins were his problem, and to mind my own business. David just blinked like an owl, and motioned me out of the studio. He didn’t want to have a row in front of the crew, and told me that he would have a quiet word with Jack later. For the rest of the day, there was a considerable coolness between Jack and myself. I am sure he won’t mention it to SLO, but I am only the 3rd Ast Dir; and 3rd Ast Dirs are not expected to upset lighting cameramen. Luckily Tony didn’t notice anything. He never does, bless him, unless SLO is involved.
WEDNESDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER
Dame Sybil came into the studio again today. I was wearing her red scarf as usual, and she gave me a huge hello. It was nice to see her again and MM was thrilled – a visit from Grandma! Having been warned, MM was even almost on time. Dame S is now acting in a West End play, which means she doesn’t finish until 11 p.m. at night, but there she was in her hire car at 7 a.m., beaming and smiling. We filmed her making the Grand Duke give Elsie Marina a Carpathian medal, the one which he had just given the Ambassador. (‘Such quibbles,’ when he objects!) We could not do it earlier because the hall hadn’t been built. Her character in the film is as sympathetic as she is, deaf to anything she doesn’t want to hear. When Elsie says ‘Oui’ she is quite convinced that she can speak fluent French.
MM was in top form, bouncy and jolly. Her appearance, off camera, changes with her mood. When she is happy she looks really attractive. One can see what all the fuss is about. She is only 2970 and she certainly has a wonderful figure. She doesn’t even need a bra in that amazing white dress. With Dame S she behaves like a schoolgirl, and an obedient schoolgirl at that. Jack has started to play up to MM much more too, which helps. Alas, it is too late for SLO to react. If he could only strengthen her confidence somehow, reinforce it when it is high. But Plod tells me that Lee Strasberg calls her every evening from the USA – reverse charge of course – and this undermines SLO a lot. I mentioned this to Milton. He also hates the Strasbergs but by now he seems powerless to prevent their influence. At least Milton’s son, Josh, is OK after the accident. But MM seems to be slipping from his grasp.
THURSDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER
We continue with reaction shots of MM in the hall – her first impression of the Embassy, her meeting with the Grand Duke, and the scene where Dicky reassures her that he will save her from a fate worse than death. She seemed less clear in the head today and more woozy. I hope Milton isn’t giving her too many pills again. It’s one of the ways he can still control her. Milton now has an assistant called David Maysles.71 David looks like a young American college undergraduate. He has a great deal of ambition and this makes him irreverent and mischievous. He frequently says what Milton would like to say but does not dare, and despite his appearance no one could describe him as ‘nice’. Milton calls him a ‘film maker’ and says he is very good in his own right. But he spends most of his time running errands (like me) and chasing girls. He is flippant but cheerful. He is always playing with Josh, which gives Amy a break, and he makes Amy laugh, which makes me jealous, I’m not sure why. He told me that Milton orders the pills for MM from Amy’s doctor in New York. There are ‘uppers’ for when she is down, and ‘downers’ for when she cannot relax. I gather that in America you can buy any pill you want. Don’t they realise that nature has already worked out how to keep you balanced without uppers and downers? I know they think MM is a special case, and I suppose she does have unnatural pressures and demands. But now she is like a see-saw, forever being pushed up or down and never level. In the end she will loop the loop like her mum.
FRIDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER
More hall but no Monroe. Hedda called at about ten to say she wasn’t well again. Plod had already phoned to tell me that there was no sign of life at 8.30 and I had warned SLO. Milton was caught unawares, and SLO despatched him to see if a doctor had been called, or was contemplated.
There is still plenty we can do without MM. After lunch we did the shot of the Grand Duke’s arrival at the Embassy, just as Elsie has decided to walk out. She turns to the front door to leave, which we have already shot, and then we cut to the back of her head. The big doors open, she curtseys and her head disappears downwards to reveal SLO’s grinning face.
‘Good evening,’ he says. ‘How kind of you to come at such short notice.’
He really looked most alarming with his monocle and his patent leather hair, but he did severa
l ‘takes’, until he was absolutely happy with this ghastly appearance. In MM’s absence we did the shot with MM’s stand-in bobbing up and down in one of MM’s precious wigs. She was thrilled to be ‘understudying’ MM even if one couldn’t see her face, and she has got over her anger with me.
All this made it clear that I had somehow to make it up with Jack. By pure luck I heard him talking enthusiastically about the Turner paintings in the Tate Gallery. He was sitting in a little circle of admirers – Carmen, Tony, Denys and Co – while he waited for the gaffer to do his bidding. I was standing (3rd Ast Dirs never sit, remember) on the edge of the circle, and I butted in.
‘My father owns one of those paintings,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Jack kindly, ‘these are all in the Tate Gallery, and the ones I am talking about are very big.’
‘Well, my father has the only one in the world outside the Tate,’ I replied. ‘Somehow it escaped and my father bought it nine years ago. It’s hanging in the drawing room.’ Jack had to look at me again. ‘The drawing room’ probably wasn’t a concept he associated with 3rd Ast Dirs. They are meant to talk about the lounge. I’m sure that in his nice, easy-going way it has never occurred to him that I was of any particular significance (i.e. the son of friends of SLO and Vivien etc.). Why should it? I’ve never looked at the stand-ins like that, and I see them every day just as Jack sees me. But now he was curious. (Snobbishness, too, is a sympathetic human failing.)
‘Is your father a collector, then?’ he asked, prepared to be dealing with a lunatic.
‘Yes, he is. He’s an art historian actually.’
Jack’s mind did a rapid search of his memory. Colin Clark?? ‘Your father isn’t Sir Kenneth Clark, is he?’
‘Yes, he is.’ No reaction from the crew. Carmen already knew this but none of the others had ever heard of art historians, let alone Sir Kenneth Clark. Jack is an artist with light who also aspires to be an artist with paint. Jack nearly jumped out of Jack’s skin with excitement.
‘Oh, how wonderful. I admire your father very much. I’d love to meet him and discuss painting with him. In fact he owns the picture I admire most in the world – the nude portrait Renoir did of his wife on their honeymoon.’
I was just warming up. ‘Perhaps you and Mrs Cardiff would like to come down to the country one weekend. You could meet my parents and see the Renoir and the other pictures.’ All this was out of the MM stand-in’s earshot. (When you wield such flagrant power, you must be merciful!)
‘Oh, that would be fantastic. I’ll tell Julie’ – for thus Mrs C is called – ‘She will be thrilled. Perhaps we could drive down. It is in Kent isn’t it?’ Yes, and it’s a castle as I’m sure you know, but I didn’t say that.
‘I’m going down this weekend and I’ll arrange it,’ I said. ‘I’m sure my parents would be flattered to meet you both.’
Victory over stand-in complete. Indeed Jack went round telling everyone, whether they had heard of Sir Kenneth Clark or not. SLO took it calmly. ‘You’ll love K and Jane. Gorgeous house, too,’ he said without taking much notice. Poor man has other problems right now. But I’m very happy. Jack is a nice, interesting and enthusiastic man and I’m sure my parents will like him and his wife.
Mr P came into the studio at the end of the day, delightfully gloomy as ever. He has already had to put his Number 2 cross-plot into effect, but for some reason he blames AM and not MM. The demand for a Jaguar was seen as a last straw. He also has suspicions that Paula Strasberg is fleecing us and that Milton is fleecing MM.
‘So who do you trust?’ I asked.
‘No one, Colin – including you.’ Grin, grin.
MONDAY, 1 OCTOBER
MM had been told she need not come in today or tomorrow. It’s very doubtful if she would have turned up anyway. Once the word ‘doctor’ has been mentioned, it usually takes three days for her to recover her stamina and her will power.
We have two days in the Foreign Office set, which has been built in Studio A. It needs its own studio because film we shot on location two weeks ago is projected onto a screen outside the windows, to look as if the carriages are going trotting by in the background. We filmed the coaches from the actual Foreign Secretary’s office, looking down on the road round St James’s Park. The carriages were so far away that we used the stand-ins, dressed in the stars’ costumes. We will film the stars themselves in close-up later, in the studio.
The BP72 needs a long throw and powerful arc lamps. These are noisy. They hiss away and get extremely hot. If you even glimpse one straight on you are blind for half an hour. So they have to be quite far from the camera and the microphone. Setting them up is a complicated business, and so is the art of balancing the light between the actors in the room and the light projected on the screen behind them. There were considerable delays while adjustments were made. Two totally competent actors (Dicky Wattis and David Horne) went through their lines again and again. Sounds familiar? Of course this is what happens every day, but for once it was not MM’s fault. It was a piece of antiquated lighting equipment, which makes a pretty unconvincing picture at the end of the day. Does anyone complain? Not a soul. Just because the antiquated lighting equipment didn’t flounce off to a mobile dressing room, shaking its fingers? Technical matters, and especially lighting matters, are above criticism – out of bounds. If you dare question what is going on you get dark looks, scowls and murmurs of union displeasure. It is as if we were ruled by some secret society, with its own rules into which we must never enquire. And indeed that is true. The Electricians’ Union is above any question or criticism, yet it can bring the whole studio to a halt at a moment’s notice. Everyone behaves as if technical mysteries are so mysterious that only technicians can understand them. Absolute nonsense! It is all simple and basic. All this mystery is just to hide laziness and incompetence, to make sure that three men are hired to do the job of one. The art of acting is far more mysterious, yet every technician feels free to criticise MM. They damn her every time she has an attack of nerves, as if it was she who was lazy and incompetent. It is MM who really lights up the screen, and not some engineers fiddling with switches. But of course I could never say this in public, not even to David.
TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER
More Foreign Office. The scene seems dry as dust. This is partly intentional – the stuffy old Foreign Office having to cope with exotic Balkan Grand Dukes. But the main problem is that the scene does not contain MM. SLO playing Oedipus and Hamlet simultaneously wouldn’t generate as much excitement as MM on screen. Drugged, confused, frightened, late, vague, maddening as she can be, she changes any scene from night to day. Without her, we are all just technicians arguing about our unimportant little problems. Even dear Dicky W can only add to a scene, not create one.
There is no denying that MM has problems. She is herself one gigantic problem. But she is also the solution! As long as she can get to the studio and walk onto the set, it is worth everything to film her. This plump, blonde(?) young lady with the big eyes is certainly very hard to control. Right now she is almost too much for a young, smart producer (Milton), a top playwright and intellectual (AM), America’s foremost dramatic coaching couple (the Strasbergs) and England’s best actor/director (SLO). MM is just a force of nature. That is sort of wonderful for us, to watch and be associated with, but it must be very uncomfortable for her. I wonder if Garbo was like this, or Chaplin. Vivien is a force of nature too, but she is so formidably intelligent that, to some extent, she can control it. MM does not have that power – and even Vivien can lose it sometimes, come to think of it.
WEDNESDAY, 3 OCTOBER
Plod called first thing. Lee Strasberg had arrived yesterday from New York, to take personal charge of MM’s performance in the film. MM wasn’t coming in today, but Lee Strasberg was!
‘Well done, Plod.’ Spies are useful. Even half an hour’s warning is better than total surprise. I ran to SLO’s dressing room with the news.
Predictably SLO exploded. ‘Paula’s b
ad enough. I’m the f — ing director of this f — ing film. Call Milton. I’m the f — ing producer too. I won’t allow Lee Strasberg on the set. Call the studio police, and have him stopped at the gate. F — him.’
I had already squeezed in a call to Tibbs, and Milton was on his way.
‘Send him in here as soon as he arrives. He can go to the main gate and explain. Why is Lee here, for Christ’s sake?’
Me: ‘Perhaps MM has asked him to come.’
‘Well she can’t have him, at least not in my studio.’
This was not the moment to remind him that MM was an equal partner.
‘We are only halfway through this f — ing movie. This will make it impossible to finish. I can’t direct with so many people interfering’ etc., until Milton arrived.
‘Milton, dear boy, this is a very expensive film we are making. We aren’t a bunch of psychoanalysts trying to sort out Marilyn’s mental health. WE ARE MAKING A FILM. I can’t work with Lee Strasberg on the set. I can’t even work with Paula Strasberg on the set. We agreed she would stay in Marilyn’s dressing room, if you remember. I am the only director allowed on the set. Understood?’ Milton shrugged gloomily. ‘Well, dear boy, run along and explain that to Lee. He’ll be arriving at the main gate any minute – COLIN!’
‘Yes, Sir Laurence.’
‘Oh, there you are.’ I’d been making myself as small as possible about three feet away in the same room. ‘Go and get Jack and Tony and David. We’ll plan the day without Marilyn. It’s just as well she isn’t coming in. Then Lee can’t interfere.’
I rushed off. I have to be very careful with these messages. It is not a good idea to arrive on the set, out of breath and clearly in possession of important news no one else has. I have to sidle up to each recipient in turn, tell them the message as if it was specially sent to them alone by SLO. Each one says: ‘Have you told Jack? or David? or Tony?’ and I indicate that they will be next on the list, even if I’ve already told them. Only when all of them know can I dash over to Dicky and Paul and burst out with the latest gossip.