To that end, Natasha told Johnny that she was worried about Marilyn and thought he was putting too much pressure on her. She claimed that the “personal attention” he expected of her also added to her stress. At first she spoke in general terms, not becoming specific about the unusual events that had unfolded at their coaching session. However, since Johnny appeared unmoved, Natasha spelled it out for him. “She’s hearing voices,” she told him.
Johnny wasn’t surprised by Natasha’s news. It was as if he already knew about Marilyn’s “voices.” Perhaps she had already confided in him about them. He certainly didn’t throw his hands in the air and surrender, as Natasha had fantasized. Instead, he was immediately concerned for Marilyn and wanted to do something to help her. “Johnny thought of doctors as magicians,” explained a coworker of his. “He was like most everybody else in the business back then. If an actor couldn’t shoot a scene, the first person to call was a doctor.”
Whether to treat the flu or an anxiety attack, Johnny knew that barbiturates had become a staple in the world of filmmaking. As it would happen, he would be the first to introduce Marilyn to a brand-new reality, one formed by barbiturates. He believed that such drugs could make his girlfriend’s world feel like a safer place to her. He also thought, as did many people at that time, that there was no downside to these pharmaceuticals. He viewed them as a portal to happiness and fulfillment and saw the fact that they were almost exclusively accessible to the rich and powerful as evidence of their effectiveness. Perhaps he was using as a measure of the effectiveness of drugs the example of the brilliant career of Judy Garland, who for the past decade had been like an ATM for Metro: deposit drugs—uppers, downers, whatever—and out comes money, and lots of it.
At Johnny’s behest, studio doctors began prescribing drugs to Marilyn on a regular basis. She happily took them. They helped, at least in the short term. Her anxieties were decreased. The voices became softer and bothered her less. Of course, there was one problem with the new reality being entered by Marilyn Monroe. It wasn’t real.
The Asphalt Jungle
In the autumn of 1949, Marilyn began work on John Huston’s gritty crime drama The Asphalt Jungle, the first so-called caper film that was told from the point of view of the criminals. Marilyn had a showy, memorable cameo—three brief appearances that comprised about five minutes—in the noir classic as Angela Phinley, the sexually arousing, libidinous mistress of an elderly, married, white-collar crook (an attorney) played by longtime MGM contract player Louis Calhern. When finally released in May 1950, the film would earn four Oscar nominations, two of which were for Huston’s writing and directing, with other nominations for black-and-white cinematography and best supporting actor (Sam Jaffe). Marilyn acquitted herself well in her work on this film, demonstrating her growing ability as an actress. Her name didn’t appear in the opening credits, however. It’s on a list at the end of the movie—eleventh out of fifteen names. However, it was a start—a very important movie that would be the catalyst of future big events in her life and career.
“She’d worked hard and, it seemed, had been working hard on herself for some time,” John Huston would later say. “I remember the audition was interesting because the scene was supposed to be on a couch and we had no couch there, so she laid on the floor for the reading. She wasn’t happy with the audition, though, and asked if she could do it again. I said, of course. Do it as many times as you like. She didn’t know it, but she had the part before she even said one word.
“I just knew she was right for it before I even saw her audition for it. She was so vulnerable, so sweet, so willing, you just melted in her presence. I remember thinking, how can anyone not cast her in any movie? She was perfect for the part in The Asphalt Jungle. She said to me, ‘I just want you to know that this will be my most important movie.’ And I told her, ‘Good luck.’ She was worried she wouldn’t be as good in it as I knew she’d be. ‘What if I let you down?’ she asked me. ‘You won’t,’ I told her. ‘Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.’ You just wanted the best for her, you know? Maybe it was a lucky break for her, I don’t know. One thing is certain, she was ready for it. She was ready for it when she got lucky.”
Of course, Marilyn would make sure Natasha was on the set with her every day. In fact, there’s a moment in the movie where Marilyn can be seen glancing off set, presumably at Natasha for direction.
“I don’t know what I did,” Marilyn said when she finished her work on The Asphalt Jungle, “but I do know it felt wonderful!”
Years later, Marilyn Monroe noted that she first saw the finished movie with Johnny at her side, holding her hand. They didn’t speak on the way home, both lost in thought about the magnitude of her achievement. “His heart was happy for me,” she recalled. “I could feel his unselfishness and deep kindness. No man had ever looked on me with such kindness. He not only knew me, he knew Norma Jeane. He knew all the pain and all the desperate things in me. When he put his arms around me and said he loved me, I knew it was true. Nobody had ever loved me like that,” she concluded. “I wished with all my heart that I could love him back.”
All About Eve
Even though Marilyn knew she’d done a good job on The Asphalt Jungle, it wasn’t to be released for some time. Therefore, 1950 would be a year of great anticipation for her—and a certain amount of frustration as well.
In January, Marilyn filmed another awful movie that Johnny Hyde had secured for her, another bit part, this one in a roller-derby film, The Fireball, starring Mickey Rooney. Marilyn’s role was purely decorative, with only a few scenes and lines of dialogue. Another film that received little play at this time was a fluff movie Marilyn made that same season called Right Cross. This one was a boxing film from MGM starring the studio’s popular, peach-cheeked girl next door June Allyson and her husband Dick Powell. Marilyn was uncredited and mainly unnoticed in the tiny role of Dusky Ledoux, a bar girl who has a brief encounter with Powell’s character. Then, in the spring of 1950, Marilyn was jettisoned into yet another mediocre movie called Home Town Story. The less said about this one the better—though it did resurface abroad as a curiosity after her death. In it, Marilyn has a two-minute scene as a receptionist in a newspaper office.
Johnny Hyde’s rationale for having Marilyn make brief appearances in such terrible movies was that he hoped if she were seen enough onscreen, MGM might actually offer her a contract. That didn’t happen, though. In the meantime, Marilyn would end up spending most of her free time posing for ads, pinups, and photo essays—anything to make a living while she waited to break into what she was finding to be a very tough business.
Meanwhile, Johnny continued to squire Marilyn around town. Ironically, the power had shifted in their relationship. She had gone into it feeling that she needed him. Now, a year later, he was acting as if he needed her, and he seemed to want to do whatever he could think of to keep her happy lest she walk out on him. True, The Asphalt Jungle was important in retrospect because it showed what Marilyn was capable of, but it was such a brief role it went unnoticed by critics. (Later in the year, Johnny would book her in a TV commercial—her first and only—for a motor oil!)
In April of 1950, Johnny Hyde took Marilyn to meet writer and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was getting ready to mount a new film for Darryl Zanuck at Fox. It was All About Eve, and Mankiewicz cast Marilyn in a small but pivotal part based on the job she had done in The Asphalt Jungle. “I thought she was right for the role, which was of an aspiring theater actress,” he recalled many years later, “and Marilyn was nothing if not aspiring at the time. It was suggested that the character would do whatever she had to do to get ahead, and I sensed that in Marilyn there was a certain amount of cunning as well as the innocence. I found her a fascinating mix. On one hand, she was vulnerable. But, on the other, calculating. She knew what she was doing, that one. There was never a false move with her.”
The story of Eve, adapted from a Cosmopolitan short story, is well known—a ruthless,
conniving ingénue, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), insinuates herself into the life and career of a legendary, aging Broadway star, Margo Channing (Bette Davis), wrecking the lives of all those she touches, as she claws her way to the very pinnacle of theatrical stardom. In two of three set pieces upon which the movie is based, Marilyn shone brilliantly and displayed the early promise she would later fulfill as a dominant screen personality for the next decade and a half. In a scene on the staircase at a birthday party in Margo’s apartment, she is seated in the center with most of the film’s stars seated or standing around her—Baxter, Gary Merrill, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Gregory Ratoff—and it is impossible to take your eyes off her, even when other characters are delivering their lines. As has been said a thousand times, the camera loves her, and so do we. In her other scene, in the lobby of a theater, she has just fallen victim to her nerves over an audition and has gotten sick in the ladies’ room. Her queasiness is unmistakable and we feel like pressing a cold towel to her forehead, her emotions spent, raw.
Today, All About Eve is recognized as one of the classic films of all time and certainly the best picture about the Broadway theater ever made. Entire books have been written about the movie, the best of these being More About All About Eve, by Sam Staggs. Anecdotes abound about this production, one of the best being that production was constantly held up due to Marilyn’s lateness. She simply could never be on time.
At any rate, when released, All About Eve would generate fourteen Oscar nominations. It would also hold the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ record for most nominations for a single picture until 1997, when James Cameron’s disaster epic Titanic received the same number of nods—with Titanic winning a total of eleven Oscars, while Eve earned six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Also, interestingly, the first and only appearance Marilyn would make at the Oscars—on March 29, 1951—was to present the award to Thomas Moulton for All About Eve for Best Sound Recording.
Considering her small part in All About Eve, one would think Marilyn would have done anything in her power to not be tardy, but that just wasn’t her way. One day, actor Gregory Ratoff declared of her, “That girl will be a big star!” Celeste Holm rolled her eyes and said, “Why, because she keeps everyone waiting?” Indeed, much has been made over the years about Marilyn’s penchant for being late. She was tardy for just about every appointment she made, whether it was work-related or just a coffee date with a friend. It didn’t matter the occasion, everyone in her life knew she would be late for it. It was a maddening habit, but because she was who she was, most people just put up with it. To be fair, she usually made it worth their while. One thing was certain: She did light up the room with her presence. “It’s not so much that I’m always late,” she once quipped, “it’s just that everybody else is in such a hurry!”
Dumb as a Blonde Fox
In the autumn of 1950, Marilyn—now twenty-four—went back to school. She enrolled in a ten-week program at the University of California at Los Angeles to study world literature. Fellow classmates don’t have remarkable memories of her because she did what she could to fit in as a student and not call much attention to herself. “I want to expand my horizons,” she explained to Grace Goddard, who wholeheartedly approved. In the last few years, as she lived her life on her own terms and met a wide range of fascinating people, she had become much more thoughtful and introspective. Anyone who thought she was a brainless blonde had been fooled by her carefully constructed image. It’s true that she was still a vulnerable and scared child at heart. Norma Jeane was alive and well in everything Marilyn did—or was afraid to do—in her life and career. However, she was, at the very least, manageable. Marilyn wasn’t as helpless as Norma Jeane had been, that much was clear by the time she was twenty-four. But, she also knew that her weak routine could work to her advantage. There’s probably nothing more attractive to a powerful man, she decided, than a beautiful and hopelessly vulnerable young woman.
“When she would go to cocktail parties, she would put on the act for all to see,” said Jerry Eidelman, an aspiring actor who knew Marilyn. “She was living in a duplex on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood at the time with a scary acting teacher. [Marilyn had moved in with Natasha—but platonically, just to save money.] She and the teacher had a cocktail party one night and invited me because I lived in the neighborhood. When I would see Marilyn here and there, I found her to be bright… and interested. But when I went to this cocktail party, I was amazed by what I saw of her. She came off like she didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. She was very flirtatious with anyone she thought might help her, any of the acting teacher’s guests who, I took it, were casting agents. She had on a dress that was so tight there was no way she could sit down while wearing it. I noticed that she just sort of propped herself up in a corner with a martini in her hand and received admirers as if she was royalty—a princess who was just a bit drunk. She had this little girl’s kind of voice, which was not very much like what I knew her to sound like in her day-to-day life. I knew she put some of that on for most of her movies, I just didn’t know she did it in real life.” *
Her costar in the movie The Fireball, James Brown, concurred. “She’d sit there batting her eyes and give you the feeling she was a pretty dumb girl, but then there was this intense, almost secret-like sincerity behind what she’d say, and that left me with the idea that this girl is a mystery. She was truly a mystery.”
Jerry Eidelman continued, “The next day, I saw her walking a little dog she had, a Chihuahua, I think. I remember she had on black-and-white checked pedal pushers with a little white peasant blouse, buttoned all the way to the top. And she had on what looked like ballerina shoes—flats of some kind, made of a satin material. One thing about running into her, if you liked her as much as I did you instantly memorized whatever she had on—at least I always did. Anyway, I stopped her and said, ‘You know, Marilyn, you were very different last night at the party.’ She looked at me with wide eyes and said, ‘Why, whatever do you mean, Jerry?’ I just smiled at her and said, ‘You know what I mean.’ She gave me a little look. ‘Marilyn, you’re no dumb blonde, and you know it,’ I told her. ‘If anything, you’re as dumb as a blonde fox.’ She loved that. ‘I don’t even know what that means,’ she said, ‘but that’s pretty funny, Jerry.’ Then she winked at me and continued on her way with her dog.”
By this time Johnny Hyde’s health had begun to fail and he was for the most part restricted to his bed. For a man who had tried to stay so vital despite his heart disease, this was a heavy cross to bear. He was still devoted to Marilyn, though she seemed less interested in him—especially when he became ill. “I don’t know how to deal with it,” she told one relative. “It makes me so sad to see him. I think he believes I’m heartless because I don’t want to see him that way. I just don’t know what to do.”
At the end of the year, Marilyn finally signed a three-year contract with the William Morris Agency for representation. She’d just had a handshake deal with Johnny the entire time they’d been working together. Now it was time to make it official. At this same time, Johnny arranged for her to have an important screen test at Fox. “She was excited about that, I remember,” said Jerry Eidelman. “She told me that she wanted nothing more than to do a good job, sign with Fox, and, as she put it, ‘become the biggest star there is, Jerry—the biggest star there is!’ I told her, ‘You know, Marilyn, there’s more to show business than stardom. There’s acting.’ And she looked at me squarely and said, ‘Yes, Jerry, but sadly you don’t get to do much unless you’re a big star.’ She had me there.
“The day after the screen test, she was on cloud nine. She said it had gone very well. A couple days later, she looked a little crushed when I saw her. She said she didn’t get a big contract with the studio, but she did get a movie. ‘It’s a comedy,’ she said glumly. ‘I play a secretary.’ I asked her what it was called. She said, ‘Who cares, Jerry? I play a dumb secretary. That’s not
going to take me anywhere I haven’t already been.’ I suggested that maybe she needed a new agent. ‘Great,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘I just signed with William Morris for three years.’ Then she tossed her head back and laughed. ‘I think my goose is cooked,’ she said. ‘If you see me still out here walking my own dog next month, you’ll know it was a bit part, like all my other pictures.’ She was disappointed but, still, there was something about her that made you know she was not going to give up. I thought to myself, you know, she’s really something, that Marilyn Monroe.”
The movie Marilyn referred to was to be called As Young as You Feel. The deal was put together for her by Johnny Hyde, of course, with an eye toward securing a contract with Fox. He was really working for her, he loved her so much. “You know, maybe you should marry him,” Joseph Schenck told Marilyn. “What do you have to lose?” She usually respected Schenck’s opinion, but not this time. “I’m not going to marry someone I’m not in love with,” she told him. “But Marilyn, which would you rather have—a poor boy you loved with all your heart, or a rich man who loved you with all his?” She said she’d rather have the poor boy. “I thought you were smarter than that,” Schenck told her, joking with her now. “I’m disappointed in you, Marilyn.”
In mid-December, Marilyn and Natasha went to Tijuana to do some Christmas shopping. Johnny and his secretary went to Palm Springs for the weekend. It was there that he had a heart attack. He was rushed back to Los Angeles by ambulance. Marilyn sped back to the city as quickly as she could. Johnny’s nephew, Norman Brokaw—also representing her at William Morris—accompanied Marilyn to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (now Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), but by the time they got there, Johnny was dead. She was told that before he passed away, he cried out, “Marilyn! Marilyn!”
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe Page 17