The Genius and the Goddess

by Jeffrey Meyers

  None of Marilyn's family or Hollywood friends attended the Jewish ceremony, as she stood under the bridal canopy and Miller crushed the symbolic glass with his foot, nor appeared at the wedding reception – at which, though strictly prohibited by Jewish law, lobster was served. Lee Strasberg, a surrogate father, gave the bride away. Norman Rosten, originally asked to be best man, was awkwardly replaced at the last minute by Miller's brother, Kermit. The guests included Miller's parents, his two children, Jane and Robert; Kermit and his wife, Miller's sister Joan Copeland and her husband; his cousin Morton and his wife; the Rostens, Greenes and Strasbergs, the agent Kay Brown and designer John Moore. The "exclusive photos" were, as always, by Milton Greene.

  Marilyn called herself a "Jewish atheist." After her divorce from Miller, her Judaism was pretty much confined to a mezuzah on the door frame and a rather kitschy "brass-plated musical menorah for Hanukkah whose base played 'Hatikvah,' the Israeli national anthem." When Marilyn converted to Judaism, Egypt retaliated by banning all her movies. But in April 1961, right after her divorce, the United Arab Republic – hoping to catch the biggest act since Verdi's Aida celebrated the opening of the Suez Canal – sent an urgent telegram to Skouras requesting her presence "for inauguration light and sound of pyramids and sphinx. All expenses to be borne by government."

  On July 8 Miller wrote Bellow that Marilyn, trying hard to lead a normal life, had turned into a real Hausfrau – cooking, waxing floors and (for an all-too-brief moment) treating him like an oriental pasha. He added that his children, aged twelve and nine, were both in love with the exciting movie star and reluctant to go back to their mother when the weekend was over. Miller's father and children (his possessive mother was more distant) loved Marilyn till her death. Marilyn, who adored old people and children, fully returned their affection.

  Despite the fatal car accident, the beginning of their marriage seemed propitious. Marilyn had gone from Hollywood to New York to prepare for a career on stage; Miller in turn would go from New York to Hollywood to work on her film script. She had a brilliant, famous and supportive husband; loved Miller's family; belonged to the Jewish community; soon became pregnant with a child of her own; was decorating their apartment in New York and country house in Connecticut; and was planning to collaborate with him in The Misfits.

  Interviewed during her first year with Miller and emphasizing her emotions, Marilyn said that marriage had assuaged her vulnerability and relieved her sense of solitude: "I love being married to Arthur Miller. All my life I've been alone. Now for the first time, the really first time, I feel I'm not alone any more. For the first time I have a feeling of being sheltered. It's as if I have come out of the cold. . . . There's a feeling of being together – a warmth and tenderness. I don't mean a display of affection or anything like that. I mean just being together."3 Their marriage also had a powerful impact on Miller. Her intense emotions released many of his inhibitions, made him less stiff and self-conscious, and enhanced his poise and self-confidence.

  II

  At the outset, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), like Bus Stop, seemed to be a prestigious project. It would be the screen version of a successful play by an important dramatist and would have a distinguished director. It was therefore highly ironic – even absurd – that when Marilyn formed her own production company she chose mediocre plays that had exactly the kind of part she'd always been trying to avoid. She'd been playing a poor chorus girl who captures a wealthy upper-class man ever since her dreadful early movie, Ladies of the Chorus (1948).

  In March 1955 the English playwright Terence Rattigan, author of The Sleeping Prince (1953), was flying from London to Hollywood to discuss the screen adaptation of his play with the director William Wyler. When Rattigan stopped in New York, Marilyn and Greene summoned him to a conference and offered to pay a much higher price for the rights. When Wyler failed to make a definite offer, Rattigan accepted her bid of $175,000 and agreed to write the screenplay. They considered various titles – "A Night in Love," "The Purple Pillow" – before settling on The Prince and the Showgirl, which named both leading roles.

  Richard Burton, then a hot property, was originally considered for the leading role. In April Marilyn told Charles Feldman that "she would love to sleep with the Prince if his name were Richard Burton." She also considered appearing with Noël Coward and having costumes created by Cecil Beaton. She finally pulled off a coup by convincing Sir Laurence Olivier, the leading Shakespearean actor of his time, to appear in and direct the Ruritanian fantasy. Marilyn became, rather awkwardly, both his co-star and (as head of Marilyn Monroe Productions) his employer. They were an odd couple, but there seemed to be some advantages for both of them. Olivier wanted money, glamor and international recognition; Marilyn wanted respectability, prestige and recognition as a serious actress.

  In February 1956, at the press conference at the Plaza Hotel in New York that announced their surprising joint venture, Marilyn's delicate dress strap, straining under its burden, broke right on cue. The photographers went wild and she stole the show from Olivier. Though she'd captured Olivier, there was still a problem with funding. That year the Fox producer Buddy Adler, responding to rumors, wrote Skouras, "it is evident that she is in desperate need of this cash and is hoping that we will advance it" and back the film. In the end, Olivier became the producer, Milton Greene the executive producer; Warner Bros. put up the money and became the distributor.

  Olivier was then experiencing a severe personal crisis. His wife, Vivien Leigh, had played the showgirl part on the London stage, with Olivier as her co-star and director, and resented Marilyn taking over her role. She'd recently had a melodramatic and well-publicized affair with the handsome English actor Peter Finch. She announced her pregnancy (by Olivier) on July 12, a few days before Miller and Monroe arrived in England; and had a miscarriage on August 12, while Olivier was making the movie. Her miscarriage and depression led to one of her recurrent mental breakdowns. She was declared schizophrenic and subjected to electro-shock treatments. She finally divorced Olivier in 1960.

  Marilyn had flown to Tokyo just after her marriage to DiMaggio, and flown to London right after her marriage to Miller. While married to DiMaggio, she'd entertained troops in Korea and made The Seven Year Itch. While married to Miller, she had a classier act. She appeared in Showgirl with Olivier and was presented to Queen Elizabeth at the Royal Command Performance of a war movie. The young Queen, eager to meet Marilyn, had asked Rattigan about her. As Marilyn curtsied, the Queen graciously mentioned that they were now neighbors at Windsor.

  While she was making the film, Miller and Marilyn lived in Parkside House, in Surrey, a magnificent mansion rented from Lord Moore, the publisher of the Financial Times. Rosten wrote that it was "an hour from London and an hour's drive to the studios where Marilyn was to begin work. It contained a dozen rooms, a staff of six or seven, several acres of lush green lawn, inimitable English rose gardens, and its backyard was enclosed by an iron fence and a gate that opened on Windsor Park, the private property of Her Majesty the Queen." Marilyn, enthusiastic about England, found it a striking contrast to Los Angeles. She wrote to a friend that "Compared to California, England seems tiny and quaint with its little toy trains chugging through the miniature countryside. . . . I am dying to walk bareheaded in the rain. I want to eat real roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. . . . I want to buy a tweed suit. . . . I want to ride a bicycle, and I'd like someone to explain the jokes in Punch – they don't seem funny to me."4 A Hungarian couple who worked for them as domestic servants were bribed by the press to report their conversations and activities. When they were found out the Millers forgave them, but the police threatened them with deportation if they ever revealed another word.

  With no official role in the production of the movie and nothing much to do, Miller roamed nervously about the mansion, so different from his own modest home. He played the piano, wrote a bit, filled up Marilyn's scrapbooks with press cuttings and read film scripts that had been
sent to her. An unidentified London friend wrote that Miller seemed ill at ease in his new role and was having trouble living up to his romantic image: "Arthur makes a bad impression here. Cold as a refrigerated fish in his personal appearance. Not like a hot lover, more like a morgue keeper left with a royal cadaver." The tabloids called him "Mr. Monroe" and "Marilyn's Boy."

  Miller did, by all accounts, seem to satisfy Marilyn. Colin Clark, an assistant on the set, described them watching the daily rushes: "When we got into the viewing theatre, to everyone's embarrassment, they went into the back row and started snogging as if they were on a date!" An actor in the film confirmed both Miller's awkward manner and Marilyn's adoration: "She'd just married Arthur Miller and this sort of tall weird man used to come onto the set just looking on, and she would run over and jump into his arms and wrap herself around him and they would disappear into the dressing-room for about ten minutes – and then she would reappear again 'refreshed.'" After attending the London premiere of A View from the Bridge on October 12, Miller proudly wrote Rosten that Marilyn wore a garnet-colored velvet gown, halted traffic as far north as Liverpool and conquered everyone. She was so worried about the play's success that she squeezed his hand throughout the performance whenever things went well or looked shaky.5 They enjoyed John Osborne's daring new play, Look Back in Anger, at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, the first shot in a battle that eventually drove playwrights like Rattigan off the English stage.

  Paula Strasberg, who disliked Miller, noted their physical attraction and emphasized his devotion: "I have never seen such tenderness and love as Arthur and Marilyn feel for each other. How he values her! I don't think any woman I've ever known has been so valued by a man." Even Olivier – sophisticated, emotionally remote and married to the porcelain beauty Vivien Leigh – could not resist (at first) Marilyn's overpowering allure. After meeting her in New York, he gushed (while puffing their picture) that "she was so adorable, so witty, such incredible fun and more physically attractive than anyone I could have imagined, apart from herself on the screen." In London he could scarcely contain his enthusiasm as he described her essential skill as an actress: "She has the extraordinarily cunning gift of being able to suggest one minute that she is the naughtiest little thing, and the next minute that she is beautifully dumb and innocent."

  Olivier's enthusiasm disappeared once they began shooting and he realized that Marilyn was not only adorable but also impossibly difficult. On the first day she appeared at Pinewood Studios (west of London, near Heathrow airport) with her full palace guard: hairdresser and make-up man, secretary and cook, two publicists and bodyguards, as well as the inevitable Paula who would, as always, cause a great deal of trouble. Colin Clark was shocked to discover that Marilyn, the famous beauty, "looked absolutely frightful. No make-up, just a skirt, a tight blouse, head scarf and dark glasses. Nasty complexion, a lot of facial hair, shapeless figure and, when the glasses came off, a very vague look in her eye. No wonder she is so insecure." The dazed look would trouble cameramen for the rest of her career. But when she appeared on the screen, there was "an incredible transformation. Now MM looked like an angel – smooth, glowing, eyes shining with joy . . . perfect lips slightly parted, irresistible."6

  Marilyn and Olivier were worlds apart intellectually and immediately clashed over their very different approaches to acting. The Method emphasized psychological realism. British actors, trained in more classical and impersonal speech and movement, were more oriented to the stage than to film. Olivier emphasized the contrast by stating, "My own way is an extremely external one: starting with the image of the person and working inwards. This is against the modern trend which works the other way round." Using the Method for the frivolous Showgirl seemed like taking a deep dive into a shallow pool. When Olivier, as director, urged Marilyn to "be sexy," she took this as an insult. The caviar-eating scene required no less than two whole days, thirty-four takes and twenty jars of the costly sturgeon roe.

  The cameraman, Jack Cardiff, noted that Paula's instructions confused Marilyn and interfered with her work:

  There was something unreal about it all. The great Olivier, magnificently costumed in heavy military felt, cumbersome medals, epaulettes, belts, riding boots and thick make-up, with his hair plastered down and a monocle wedged in his eye, would be all ready to shoot a scene. Having wearily rehearsed Marilyn for ages, he would be about to say "Roll the camera" when Marilyn would go over to Paula in the shadows and talk again, while Larry waited – in sweat and silent fury.

  Paula would then tell Marilyn, '"Now remember, darling, think of Frank Sinatra and Coca-Cola.' At last Marilyn entered into the scene – and forgot her lines." When Olivier inevitably contradicted Paula's instructions, Marilyn immediately sent for Greene, and he complicated matters by calling Lee Strasberg in New York.

  Miller felt that Olivier's dual roles as co-star and director had put the actor in an impossible position, and that the picture would have been much better with a different English director. Marilyn felt Olivier had become a fallen idol, and she never recovered her faith in him: "She was terribly disappointed in Olivier. Olivier turns out to be an actor instead of a great person – in Marilyn's mind – the collapse of the great God image. To her, they didn't use creativity but seemed to work by the numbers, by the book. It was a big letdown. This collapse of her respect for Olivier was the most direct reason for her inability to sleep at night."7 Marilyn's support group – Miller, Greene, Paula and Hedda Rosten (who'd been a psychiatric social worker and had been brought to England as a secretary and companion) – attempted to encourage her performance and control her conflict with Olivier. But they all made the mistake of trying to provide what she wanted instead of giving her the discipline she needed.

  Olivier despised Marilyn's pretentiousness and lack of professionalism, her "lateness, her stupidity, her aggravating behaviour, her lack of respect for him and her complete unconcern for studio-time and studio money." Maliciously condemning her performance, he said, "teaching her to act was like teaching Urdu to a marmoset." Clark added that she "doesn't really forget her lines. It is more as if she had never quite learnt them." She, in turn, loathed Olivier's hypocrisy and disdain. She angrily told her maid that "he gave me the dirtiest looks, even when he was smiling. I was sick half the time, but he didn't believe me, or else he didn't care. . . . He looked at me as if he had just smelled a pile of dead fish. Like I was a leper, or something awful. He'd say something like, 'Oh, how simply ravishing, my dear.' But he really wanted to throw up."8

  Marilyn could not tolerate any disagreement with her own point of view. Speaking of Hedda Rosten, but also alluding to his own difficulty in dealing with Marilyn, Miller said, "by declining to support everything Marilyn believed, she risked the charge of unfaithfulness, and yet she could not in principle reinforce her friend's unhealthy illusions." Speaking of his own problems with Marilyn, Miller (like Jack Cardiff) again emphasized the illusory aspect of her already unreal life as an actress. He suggested that she'd lost confidence in him, as well as in Olivier, when they were forced to oppose Paula and Greene: "in order to keep reality from slipping away, I occasionally had to defend Olivier or else reinforce the naïveté of her illusions; the result was that she began to question the absoluteness of my partisanship on her side of the deepening struggle." When Olivier disappointed her and Miller tried to present a more realistic view of the situation, Miller became another god that failed.

  Marilyn, a limited actress, came under intense pressure when acting with the high-powered Olivier. The more controlled and icy his behavior, the more upset she became. Despite Miller's love and emotional support, she gave in to her addiction to alcohol and drugs, and established a destructive pattern that would plague her for the rest of her life. She started to drink in the morning and, Miller explained, the barbiturates intensified her distortion of reality, her insecurity and her guilt:

  [She was] bedeviled by feelings she couldn't name. Just a generalized feeling of threat
. She was trying to immunize herself against feeling too much by taking pills during the day. She was like a smashed vase. It is a beautiful thing when it is intact, but the broken pieces are murderous and they can cut you. . . .

  The management on the film called me and the pressure was on me to help her get [to the studio]. She couldn't sleep and began taking the pills and when she got up, she was very depressed and, of course, it was difficult to get her on her feet. She began to identify me with the management.

  My regret was enormous. I had the illusion that I could help her, could work something out. I made her feel guilty that she had made me feel this way. She wanted to be of help to me really, to be a "good wife."

  Though Miller tried to keep the production from collapsing, she resented his paternal interference. As they fought fiercely on the set, he was caught in the crossfire between Marilyn and Olivier, and felt that she was "devouring" him.

  The crisis deepened, whether by accident or by intent, when Marilyn found her husband's private diary and read what he had written about her (an episode Miller omitted from Timebends). Despite his awareness of her years of failure and guilt, her frail ego and fears of being abandoned, her extreme sensitivity to criticism, Miller probably left his diary out on purpose. It was a way of telling her how he felt, of confessing that he couldn't take much more emotional punishment. In any case, she read the fatal entry which, Miller said, "had to do with Olivier and her. She was aware of a grinding frustration in me and in that note there was an allusion to the fact that I was unable to help her and I was not of any use to her or myself." Miller must have wondered how he had ceased to be a playwright and become the diva's servant.