Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
I’m trying to find myself now, to be a good actress and good person,” Marilyn said as 1952 came to a close. “Sometimes I feel strong inside, but I have to reach in and pull it up. It isn’t easy. Nothing’s easy, as long as you go on living.” *
Toward the end of 1952, Marilyn leased a house in Beverly Hills so that she and Joe could have some peace and quiet away from the swarm of paparazzi that gathered whenever they left their suite at the Hotel Bel Air, where they had been spending much of their time. However, it was neither peaceful nor quiet at the new home. On October 1, they had a fight—it’s not known about what—and Joe stormed out after what Marilyn later called “a lot of name calling.” They had known each other for only seven months. A major problem in Marilyn’s relationship was presented by Natasha Lytess, who disliked Joe very much. She couldn’t understand why Marilyn would be interested in him. In her view, he had no personality, was dense, and maybe even dimwitted (which was not true). Apparently, she had called Marilyn one day only to have Joe pick up and tell her that if she wanted to speak to “Miss Monroe” she should call “Miss Monroe’s” agent. In Joe’s view, she was a controlling shrew who had too much influence over his girlfriend. “She’s an acting teacher, for Christ’s sake,” he had told Marilyn. “Why do you treat her like she’s a psychiatrist?” Marilyn said that he just didn’t understand. She was right about that—he didn’t. Pretty much from the moment Joe and Natasha met, it was all-out war between them.
From November 1952 through February 1953, Marilyn Monroe would be at work on one of her most memorable movies, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Fox spared no expense in its transfer of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from stage to screen—from choreographer Jack Cole’s staging of the spectacular pre-credits opening number with Jane Russell and Monroe singing and dancing to “We’re Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock,” identically gowned head to toe in shimmery red sequins, to the reprise of the song in the final scene where the two stars are again dressed identically for a double wedding ceremony in blinding white gowns of figure-hugging lace appliqué, both by costumer Travilla, who surely must have been Bob Mackie’s inspiration in his career. Russell was billed above Monroe in all the film’s posters and publicity and in the opening credits. Russell was also first in money earned for this film, $400,000 to Monroe’s $11,250 ($1,250 per week for nine weeks). Fox wasn’t exactly kind to Marilyn. “I couldn’t even get a dressing room,” she would recall in 1962. “I said, finally—I really got to this kind of level—I said, ‘Look, after all, I am the blonde and it is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Because still they always kept saying, ‘Remember you are not a star.’ I said, ‘Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!’ ”
Throughout the shoot, Jane and Marilyn got along famously, with the five-years-older Russell protective of the insecure Monroe in the way of a big sister. Often all it took for Marilyn to be coaxed out of her trailer was a word from Jane. “She would be afraid to come out, she was so shy,” Russell said, “but it was understandable in the sense that she never had to sing so much, dance so much. Then, of course, she had the acting teacher [Natasha Lytess] on set every moment, a woman who was such an annoyance, running Marilyn’s life the way she did. I’m sure Marilyn did not need her on this movie… she would have been fine without her, if only she had more confidence in herself.”
They may be just two little girls from Little Rock who come from the wrong side of the tracks, but Lorelei Lee (Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Russell) easily change their status to the right side of the tracks after they conquer Paris in search of a couple of men of means. Veteran director Howard Hawks guides the large cast through the tune-filled story of a beautiful blonde with a weakness for diamonds, and her equally lovely enabler. Lorelei’s erstwhile fiancé Esmond (Tommy Noonan) has financed the trip to Paris to test her fidelity. Suspicious of Lorelei’s motives, Esmond the elder hires private eye Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid) to spy on the girls and report any suspicious activity back to him. And there’s plenty to report, including charges leveled at Lorelei of grand larceny of a valuable tiara. Of course, she’s guilty, and it remains for a French judge to set things right, but not before Dorothy shakes things up by posing as Lorelei. When her true identity is called into question as she testifies in court, Jane Russell mounts a perfect impersonation of Marilyn’s Lorelei, which includes a devastating, dead-on version of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”
Marilyn’s rendition of this song is the most lavish of all the production numbers in the film, again with choreography by Jack Cole, and with what seems like an army of tuxedoed chorus boys, one of whom turns out to be a teenage George Chakiris, with gray brushed into his temple hair. Though the picture was photographed with 35–millimeter film, studio head Daryl Zanuck ordered the “Diamonds” production number to be reshot later in CinemaScope for use in a demonstration of the new process, held on the Fox lot in March 1953. Zanuck told Daily Variety that the CinemaScope reshoot was done in three and a half hours, as opposed to the four days it took for the original version. That would stand to reason, considering the number had already been blocked and rehearsed.
What’s clear with this movie is not only Marilyn’s sense of humor about herself but also her ability as a comedic actress. Monroe biographer Donald Spoto put it this way: “She put a twist on sexiness. It was not something wicked and shameful and shocking and dirty and embarrassing. It was something which was terribly funny. And Marilyn enjoyed it.”
Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, added, “In retrospect, although the fifties is clearly a time of very real political repression and social sexual repression, you can see those early signs of changing values, and Monroe was clearly a part of that.”
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes premiered on July 15, 1953, with both Jane’s and Marilyn’s hand- and footprints enshrined in the fore-court of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. It opened nationwide three days later to great reviews and big box-office returns, earning more than $12 million in its initial run.
Gladys Threatens Grace
In November 1953 Gladys Baker received a ticket, arranged and paid by Marilyn, for transportation from Florida back to Los Angeles. Grace Goddard had followed Marilyn’s direction to book the arrangements, but it was her own decision to have Gladys travel by rail, not air. She may have been attempting to delay her friend’s arrival in California since she would need to have her home prepared for it. Grace also needed to emotionally steel herself and her family for the possibility that Gladys might be bringing with her a trunkload of paranoia and confusion. She had heard from Berniece that Gladys had been having some “episodes.” The long train ride turned out to be a torment for Gladys. As soon as the cab pulled up in front of Grace’s house, she and Doc heard Gladys’s screams. They ran to the front window and saw the poor cabdriver take her bags from the trunk of his vehicle, drop them on the front lawn, get back into his cab, and speed off as quickly as he could. It appeared that he didn’t even wait to be paid! Gladys then marched toward the Goddards’ front door, shouting nonsensically about her awful train trip. “Torture!” she exclaimed. “Grace Goddard, you wanted to torture me, and you succeeded! Now it’s my turn.”
Grace told Doc to get away from the window so that they could pretend they weren’t home. Then she drew the curtains in a flash and ran for the telephone, dialing Marilyn’s number as quickly as she could. Marilyn happened to be home and having a meeting with an accountant named Wesley Miller who worked for Wright, Wright, Green & Wright, the law firm that represented Marilyn at the time. When Marilyn answered, Grace quickly explained what was going on, that Gladys had just pulled up and was frantic. She said that she had never seen her in such bad shape. Then she held the phone up to the front window so that Marilyn could hear her mother’s shouting: “I’ll show you torture, Grace! Open up this door!”
“I recall that Marilyn and Grace stayed on the phone for a time,” said Wesley Miller, “with Grace reporting Gladys’s every mo
ve. Marilyn said she hoped her mother would eventually calm down, and I think she did. However, from what I later gathered, when Grace walked toward the front porch, she could clearly hear Gladys speaking, as if in a one-sided conversation. She was mumbling something about being ‘put on a train like a child,’ with all of the other passengers staring at her for the entire trip. ‘Eyes everywhere, for days on end…’ is what Marilyn later told me she was repeating, nonstop.”
The story continued, as per the recollections of the principal players:
After whispering her report of the unfolding events, Grace stopped and listened. “Wait,” she said, “someone else is out there. Hold on.” Grace and Doc each peeked through a curtain and watched as a nearby resident, who had obviously heard the commotion, approached. Gladys greeted him angrily. The neighbor explained that he had grown concerned when he heard all the shouting. At that, Gladys became even more irate, asking if the man “owned” Los Angeles and demanding to know “is this your air I’m breathing, too?” Grace listened as Gladys’s voice trailed off. She then followed the man off the property. Doc ran to the kitchen and out the back door saying he would try to keep on eye on Gladys.
“Meanwhile, Marilyn asked Grace not to call the authorities, saying she would be right over,” recalled Wesley Miller. “ ‘Just don’t let her leave,’ she said of her mother before clicking off. I said, ‘You are not going there alone, Marilyn. I’m coming with you.’ And she said, ‘No. This has to do with me and my mother. I can handle it on my own.’ She then ran out of the house. I sat in her living room thinking, ‘Oh, I should definitely have insisted. I should have insisted…’ ”
Marilyn jumped into her car. After speeding through stoplights and weaving in and out of traffic, she finally reached her destination: a Los Angeles police precinct. She screeched onto a lot that was meant only for official vehicles.
“It’s not every day people came in that way,” explained a retired Los Angeles police officer. “When she got out, I actually drew my gun—but as soon as you saw her you knew who she was.”
Marilyn asked the patrolman to direct her to “whoever the man in charge is,” and despite her illegal and alarming arrival, the awestruck officer brought her inside the building and to a police captain.
“She was crying when she walked in the office,” explained the officer. “She said her mother was sick and that she’d been sent to a mental hospital before, so I knew where this was headed.”
Marilyn further explained that Gladys was easily frightened. She asked if the captain could simply call an ambulance to quietly approach Grace’s home and collect her mother without too much angst. “He felt bad for her, but there were procedures,” the officer recalled of the captain. “He had to send a [patrol] car first… try and talk to her first—and that was me.” The captain also explained to Marilyn that a specific officer was trained to respond to what he called “psych calls,” and then he directed the officer to contact that specialist. “I called Teddy [the ‘specialist’], who was supposed to be going to a kid’s ball game that day, and told him that Marilyn Monroe was sitting across from me,” said the officer. “He said he’d have his uniform on before he hung up the phone.”
While waiting for the responding officer to arrive at the precinct, Marilyn called Grace. Gladys was still in front of the house, she reported, and neighbors had been calling, asking if she was all right. Marilyn explained that there would be two patrol cars arriving, with no sirens. “She just wanted it quiet,” the officer recalls. “I told her she could see for herself that everything would be okay. We’ll follow Teddy and his partner, I told her, and she could see how good he was. He had a talent, that guy.”
In a matter of minutes, two police cars were rolling toward Grace Goddard’s home. In the first was Teddy and his partner, and in the second a police officer and a movie star. “When we turned onto the block we slowed the cars,” the officer explained, “Marilyn just kind of slid down in her seat.” The two vehicles parked one house away from Grace’s, from which vantage point they could see Gladys sitting on the front steps, arms crossed and appearing calm. The officer from the first car—Teddy—then approached her. The captain and Marilyn couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was quickly evident from Gladys’s expression and tone that she was now agitated at the sight of the uniformed patrolman. “I picked up the radio right away and called [for an ambulance], and I told Marilyn it was gonna be quick,” recalled the officer who had been sitting with her.
Marilyn sat quietly watching as the other officer successfully calmed Gladys.
“I got out of my car to give Teddy a quick signal that the ambulance was on the way,” the first policeman remembered, “and by the time I got back, the street was filling up.”
Indeed, neighborhood residents who had witnessed Gladys’s antics of the past hour from behind pulled curtains were now brave enough to get a closer look. As the first officer returned to his vehicle, he saw an odd sight: Marilyn had taken the jacket of an extra police uniform in the car and pulled it up over her head.
When he got back into the car, Marilyn asked urgently, “Did they see me?”
“No, they’re here to watch me,” he said, “they’re rubberneckers.” He then asked Marilyn if she’d like to get out of the vehicle and speak to her mother. She decided against it, saying that Gladys was clearly not herself at that moment, “and what good will it do?”
The two then waited as an ambulance drove up quietly. “Did you ask them not to use their sirens?” Marilyn asked. He said that he had. She then placed her hand on his knee. “You’re a kind man,” she told him. They watched as Gladys Baker—still very upset—was strapped onto a gurney and lifted into the ambulance. As the ambulance slowly passed their car, for just a moment they could hear the shouts of an insane woman coming from inside it. Marilyn winced and pulled the coat still on her head tightly down over her ears.
As the police officer and Marilyn followed the ambulance, not a word was said between them. Finally, Marilyn took the jacket off, studied it carefully, and softly brushed away some locks of hair left on its lining. “I asked her if she was okay,” recalled the policeman, “and she just kind of laughed for a moment.” They watched while the ambulance made a right turn, toward its destination.
As they drove back to the police precinct, the policeman and the actress continued to maintain their silence. Finally, Marilyn sighed deeply. “No one understands,” she said, her voice softening, “some people just can’t help who they turn out to be.”
Gladys’s New Home
On February 9, 1953, Marilyn Monroe was scheduled to attend the Photoplay Awards, where she was being honored as “Fastest Rising Star.” A relative recalls that she didn’t want to go: “She didn’t think she could pull it off, be what was expected of her—become Marilyn Monroe—under the circumstances of what else was going on that day.”
Indeed, it was a difficult day.
That very same morning, Gladys was moved to Rock Haven Sanitarium at 2713 Honolulu Avenue in La Crescenta, California. It was a sprawling, Mexican-style complex on three and a half lush acres behind two gigantic iron gates with the metal words “Rock Haven” on top of the impressive entryway. Marvina Williams was eighteen at the time and had just been hired as an aide there. “It was a wonderful place,” she recalled. “Actually it was also called the Screen Actor’s Sanitarium, even though not a lot of movie stars stayed there. The only ones we all knew of were Frances Farmer and Florenz Ziegfeld. We got fan mail for them for years after they were gone. [Note: Actress Billie Burke, who had been married to Ziegfeld and was known for her role as Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz—was also a patient in the 1960s.] When I worked there, we had forty-two guests—we called them guests, by the way. We had forty-two beds, too, so it was full. Just before Gladys came in, someone had died—virtually the day before, actually. Gladys had been on the bottom of a very long waiting list, but when they found out she was Marilyn Monroe’s mother, they moved her to the
top—not fair, but the truth.”
Though it was many years ago, Williams has distinct memories about Gladys because, as she put it, “There was something about her—you just felt so badly for her, I guess because you knew she was Marilyn Monroe’s mother. When I heard that she had been out of a sanitarium for seven years, I simply couldn’t believe it. I don’t think she was being properly medicated when she was on her own. On the day she showed up, I remember her saying that she had called her daughters—one, I think, was in Florida [Berniece], and she said the other was Marilyn Monroe. She said she had talked to Marilyn that day and that Marilyn said she was coming to get her. ‘I won’t be here long because Marilyn Monroe is coming for me,’ she kept saying. It seemed so tragic, the way she kept referring to her daughter as ‘Marilyn Monroe.’ I remember that there were some people who didn’t believe it was true that Marilyn was her daughter. Then someone came in with a newspaper article and we passed it around. There was a lot of astonishment about it.”
“Marilyn had, that same morning, agreed to pay for Gladys’s care in the new facility,” recalled accountant Wesley Miller. “However, she didn’t want to see her mother in a mental hospital any more than Gladys wanted to be there, but there was no alternative. It was this second stay—the one that happened in 1953—that really tore at Marilyn.
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe Page 22