Marilyn first met Miller in August of 1951 on the Los Angeles set of her film As Young as You Feel, when he showed up there with Elia Kazan. Kazan hoped to direct Miller’s screenplay of The Hook, a politically charged story about waterfront workers and racketeers. The two men were in town to try to secure a movie deal for it. (The movie would never be made, however, because the work was viewed as anti-American during a time when the shipping of military men and weapons was vital to the Korean War.) Miller—who was ten years her senior—would later recall of his first meeting with Marilyn on the set, “The shock of her body’s motion sped through me, a sensation at odds with her sadness amid all this glamour and technology and the busy confusion of a new shot being set up.” *
Novelist/playwright/essayist Arthur Asher Miller was born in New York City’s Harlem in November 1915. In 1944, he won the Theater Guild’s National Award for The Man Who Had All the Luck. Despite critical acclaim in New York, the play closed after only six performances. A few years later, he published his first novel, Focus, about anti-Semitism, to little acclaim. He then adapted George Abbott and John C. Holmes’s Three Men on a Horse for television. However, his first major breakthrough came in 1947 when his All My Sons was produced in New York at the Coronet Theater. The play was directed by Elia Kazan, with whom Miller would have a long-term personal and professional relationship. All My Sons won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and two Tony Awards in 1947. The work for which he is best known, though, is Death of a Salesman, which premiered on Broadway in February 1949, also directed by Kazan. Salesman won the Tony Award for Best Play as well as a Pulitzer Prize. He was married when he met Marilyn and lived on the East Coast with his wife and their two children.
At the time that Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe began secretly dating, he was having a great deal of difficulty in his life, constantly hounded by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). It’s difficult to trace Miller’s problems with HUAC. Some reports say that he was being investigated as far as back at 1944 simply because he was viewed as a powerful and influential left-wing writer and public person. When he wrote All My Sons, the FBI called it “party line propaganda” just because it had to do with someone selling defective parts to the United States Air Force. In 1949, the FBI declared his Death of a Salesman “a negative delineation of American life.” It was felt that the FBI had something to do with his story The Hook meeting a dead end in Hollywood. J. Edgar Hoover had it in for Arthur Miller, that much was certain, and he turned the heat up after Miller’s play The Crucible.
The Crucible had been inspired by the experience of Miller’s friend Elia Kazan, who had appeared before HUAC in 1952. Under fear of being blacklisted from Hollywood, Kazan named eight people from the Group Theatre—a popular theater company in New York—who, he said, were just mildly interested in Russian history, particularly in the Russian Revolution. HUAC took Kazan’s naming of names to mean he was fingering members of the Communist Party, which he most certainly was not doing. In discussing the extent and effects of HUAC’s activities, Miller developed the idea for The Crucible, an allegorical play in which he compared HUAC’s activities to the witch hunts in Salem. The play opened on Broadway in January 1953. After its debut, Miller was, more than ever, viewed by HUAC as a Communist sympathizer, hellbent on overthrowing the government by his work on the stage and also because he had attended Communist writers’ meetings in the 1940s.
There was such paranoia at this time, Americans living in a constant state of fear about Communism. The panic was fueled by the media and certain government officials like Hoover. In fact, at that time all a public person had to do was suggest that he knew anyone who was Russian or appreciated anything of Russian culture and he was branded anti-American and a Communist sympathizer, his life then made a living hell. Miller went farther than that, though. As an intellectual and a liberal thinker, he did know some party members and was interested in learning more about Communism—and that was enough to brand him right there. When Miller ended, for a time, his friendship with Kazan because of Kazan’s testimony, it convinced certain members of the conservative press that he was sympathetic to those Kazan had named—which he was, but only in the sense that he thought they shouldn’t have been named, not because he thought they were Communists.
Between HUAC and the FBI’s constant surveillance of and investigations of public figures such as Arthur Miller, it’s a wonder there was time for any official business to be conducted in this country. Even Lucille Ball was investigated at one point. As pernicious as HUAC and the FBI were during the early 1950s in the pursuit of those alleged to have Communist leanings, the hunt for “pinkos” and Communist sympathizers reached its zenith with the rise of McCarthyism as practiced by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who used his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Government Operations as his personal stage to launch attacks on citizens, in places both high and low, as being “soft on Communism.” His fall from grace was as ignominious as his rise had been spectacular, with his censure by the U.S. Senate in 1957.
After The Crucible opened, Miller was denied a passport to go to its opening in London, and that was just the beginning of his trouble. When he defended his actions through the play A View from the Bridge—the plot of which has a dockworker informing on two illegal immigrants—the response from HUAC was more surveillance and harassment. Walter Winchell, who was Joe DiMaggio’s friend and the man who made it possible for Joe to see the scene in The Seven Year Itch that was the catalyst for his beating of Marilyn, couldn’t wait to weigh in when Arthur Miller announced in February 1956 that he and his wife were divorcing: “America’s best known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia.”
Why Marilyn Was Investigated by the FBI
Many have wondered over the years how Marilyn Monroe ever ended up being the subject of so many years of FBI investigations. It seems preposterous, especially given her dumb-blonde persona, that she was viewed as a serious threat to this country’s security. So how did it start?
Actually, there are reams of documents filed with the FBI concerning Marilyn. In October 2006, ninety-seven more were released under the Freedom of Information Act, most of which are marked “Internal Security.” As research for this book, all of these voluminous documents were carefully reviewed, and, based on them, it’s clear that surveillance of Marilyn by the FBI began in 1955 because of her growing relationship with Arthur Miller.
Judging from his files, it seems clear that J. Edgar Hoover had pretty much lost his mind by the 1950s, at least when it came to his obsession with celebrities and what they may have had to do with Communism. Of course, it wasn’t just Marilyn whom Hoover was interested in—it was just about all of Hollywood, including Abbott and Costello (who knew that Bud Abbott had fifteen hundred porn movies in his possession?). And of Marilyn, consider this, from file marked 100–422103 and dated June 1, 1956: “Miss Monroe is expected to move to New York sometime during the later part of 1956.… Marilyn Monroe will according to present plans complete her present assignment in the motion picture entitled Bus Stop on or about May 25, 1956. Further, that on or about July 6, 1956, she will proceed to England where she tentatively plans to make a motion picture starring Laurence Olivier.” Hedda Hopper couldn’t have done a better job!
Later, when she would begin her association with John F. Kennedy, her files would increase tenfold, not only in pointless paperwork but also in foolishness. Most of the files have names and places redacted, as if the country would surely be taken over by Commies should it be revealed that she had dinner with Mr. X and Mr. Y.
Here’s the truth: None of it means a thing. Much of the FBI activities back then had more to do with rumormongering than truth-gathering. Any wacky “informant” could say anything about a celebrity and it would end up in the FBI’s files as fact. This is one of the reasons why these files are so tantalizing to some historians. They are rife with seeming scandal, if one can read beyond the redacted segmen
ts. However, how much of it was just J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoia being passed down to his agents, all of them out there in their trench coats with flashlights following Marilyn Monroe to the set of “Bus Stop on or about May 25, 1956.” The less one relies on the FBI’s accounts of anything having to do with Marilyn Monroe, the better.
Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller—both hounded by government agencies—became very close quickly. So close, in fact, that in Marilyn’s will, which she signed on February 18, she bequeathed to him $100,000. That was a lot of money for someone she was just dating, so it at least suggests that she felt she had some kind of a future with him. *
Bus Stop
In February 1956, Marilyn Monroe returned to Los Angeles to begin work on her next film, Bus Stop. This would be the first co-production of her newly formed Marilyn Monroe Productions in partnership with 20th Century-Fox. Marilyn and MMP vice president Milton Greene and his wife, Amy, and their baby son, Joshua, rented a house in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. The next month, in March (the twelfth), she made it legal—her name, that is. Norma Jeane Mortensen officially became Marilyn Monroe. “I am an actress and I found my name a handicap,” she said in the hearing to finalize the name change. “I have been using the name I wish to assume, Marilyn Monroe, for many years and I am now known professionally by that name.”
In April, Bus Stop would begin shooting in Phoenix. Marilyn felt it would be her most important role—a big stretch for her as an actress—and she sought to do her best to make sure the powers that be at Fox were not sorry they had acquiesced to her contractual wishes. After scoring big with The Seven Year Itch, the studio honchos had wisely acquired the Tony Award–winning comedy of 1955, William Inge’s Bus Stop, for their new box-office queen. The Harold Clurman–directed play opened at the Music Box on March 2, 1956, and starred the redoubtable Kim Stanley as Cherie, the haunting, vocally challenged saloon singer. It ran for 478 performances and closed at the Winter Garden on April 21, 1957.
After Fox acquired the movie rights, it assigned George Axel-rod, author of The Seven Year Itch, to write the screenplay, which he adapted from Inge’s play. Broadway director Joshua Logan was then selected to guide the cast through its paces. For reasons unknown, the play’s setting was moved from Kansas City to Phoenix and Sun Valley–Ketchum, Idaho, for the movie’s exteriors, perhaps due to financial considerations. Joining Marilyn in the cast was Don Murray, making his film debut as the obnoxious, hunky cowboy Bo, a role for which he received an Oscar nomination. Besides theater vets George Axelrod and Josh Logan, the film’s casting director went to the Broadway talent pool for the supporting parts—Arthur O’Connell (Virgil), Betty Field (Grace), and Eileen Heckart (Vera).
The plot of Bus Stop can be summed up in just a few sentences: A macho, twenty-one-year-old cowboy, naïve to the ways of the world, travels from Montana to Arizona for a rodeo event and while there finds his “angel,” tarnished though she may be. She is turned off by his crude, clumsy attempts to woo her, her rejection making him only more determined. He kidnaps her and takes her on a bus ride back to his ranch, pulling into a bus stop along the way. She is horrified, but weakens when he reasons that with her (carnal) experiences with so many men and his lack of experience with even one woman, doesn’t that kind of average things out? “That’s the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me,” she sobs to him, as she accepts his marriage proposal.
Marilyn’s “look” was significantly altered for this role, though her beauty and sex appeal are not affected in the least. Cherie is a saloon singer who works at night and sleeps in the day, hence her pale complexion, which her personal makeup artist, Allan Snyder, achieved by a dusting of white, cornstarchy face powder and pale pink rouge. A touch of mascara and light brown eyebrow pencil complete the transformation, which is in sharp contrast to the tanned-by-the-sun-and-wind skin of Bo (Murray), the bronco-riding, lovesick braggart. Hairstylist Helen Turpin transferred Marilyn’s platinum-colored hair to Cherie’s more subdued honey blonde. The role also required that Marilyn forgo her studio-trained, how-now-brown-cow dulcet tones and deliver her lines in Cherie’s corn-pone Arkansas drawl. She also had to learn to become a bad singer, which she cannily demonstrates as she stands center stage, her soul laid bare, skimpily clad, singing “That Old Black Magic.”
Marilyn fully realizes the role of the desperate, lonely, abused, and confused Cherie, whose pain is often in sharp contrast to the good humor and laughter displayed by some of the other characters. In the words of one critic, “[Monroe] creates a complete and deeply moving character.” Another hailed it as Marilyn’s breakthrough role. It’s true. She had never been better on film and some film historians maintain that it’s her best work. It’s worth seeing—repeatedly.
Natasha Non Grata
Marilyn’s return to the West Coast marked the first time she’d set foot in California in more than a year. There was at least one person more than a little anxious to see her: Natasha Lytess.
It had been just a few weeks into Marilyn’s stay in New York that Lytess had a strained telephone conversation with her. “Marilyn told her she needed a ‘new beginning,’ ” recalls an actress friend from New York. “She had been feeling constricted by Natasha, and Lee was trying to loosen her up.”
Marilyn made no secret of the fact that Natasha had unrequited feelings for her, and most everyone in Marilyn’s New York world saw that as a roadblock to growth. “If your goal as an actress is to be as authentic as possible, imagine how difficult it would be to rehearse scenes with someone who’s told you she’s in love with you,” actress Maureen Stapleton once observed. “Every role Marilyn played was sexy. I can’t imagine how she could have felt comfortable exploring her own ‘sexiness’ with a woman who actually had a sexual attraction to her. Any actor would agree that would be a recipe for a superficial performance.”
Whatever Marilyn’s reasoning, over time it became clear that Natasha Lytess’s usefulness in her life, and at 20th Century-Fox, was drawing to a close. The time Marilyn had spent in New York was humiliating for Natasha. The few friends that Lytess had at Fox had begun to drift away, and her regular paychecks from the studio were suspiciously late. On one occasion, she went to the studio to have the bookkeeping division issue her a check that was overdue, and she saw for herself that word had been spreading about her—not just word of her difficulty with Marilyn, but much more. From the giggles Lytess heard while on the lot, it wasn’t difficult for her to recognize that people at the studio knew more than she would have liked.
Natasha, a woman who had been well-respected as a dramatic scholar, was now feeling the chill of her disappearing welcome at the studio. It wasn’t long before it was made official. She would no longer be on the payroll of 20th Century-Fox. Since her calls and letters to Marilyn were not being answered, if she wanted an immediate response from Marilyn, she would have to go to New York and confront her. However, Natasha must have known that her sudden appearance in New York would only solidify people’s image of her as a pathetic woman obsessed with a movie star. Therefore, she chose to wait in Los Angeles and began to tutor clients privately, if through clenched teeth. To a woman who had once wielded the power to halt production of a multimillion-dollar film, it must have felt humiliating to now be handed cash as hopeful actors left her apartment, maybe with dreams of being the next Marilyn Monroe.
Despite the awful circumstances in which Natasha found herself, she loved Marilyn dearly and was concerned for her former friend’s well-being. She had been a stabilizing factor for Marilyn, even if some may have viewed their dynamic as somewhat bizarre. She worried that whoever Marilyn would find to replace her wouldn’t have the ability to navigate her out of her complex emotional disturbances. Her career hopes and income aside, Natasha couldn’t help but view Marilyn as a helpless soul. Without her, Natasha believed, Marilyn would spiral downward.
Now back in Hollywood, Marilyn appeared to be a changed woman in many ways. She had gone to New York with every intention of leav
ing the past behind. Grace Goddard’s death, the divorce from Joe DiMaggio, and a seemingly endless string of misery as far back as she could remember made that “new beginning” a requirement. Her time in New York was well spent, she believed. She had aligned herself with Lee Strasberg, which she viewed as a positive move, even if it may have led her down the dangerous road of self-exploration. She now had her own production company with Milton Greene—and she owned 51 percent, incidentally, a controlling interest. She’d been in intensive therapy. Strasberg’s wife, Paula, had become one of her best friends, and also her new personal acting coach. Paula and Marilyn would go over the script to Bus Stop line by line, working on it day and night—much the way Natasha and Marilyn had worked on Don’t Bother to Knock. Indeed, the last year had been one of sweeping changes for Marilyn Monroe—out with the old and in with the new. Unfortunately for Natasha Lytess, she had fallen into the former category. “She was a great help to me,” Marilyn concluded during a cocktail party at her new home, possibly understating Natasha’s importance in her life. “Whatever road leads to growth, you take.”
When Natasha became aware that Marilyn had returned to Los Angeles, she wanted desperately to see her. She drove to the studio and convinced an employee from the press office that she had misplaced Marilyn’s new phone number, and she left the studio with what she needed. She then called the new Westwood residence dozens of times—to the point where it could have been viewed as, if not outright stalking, then certainly harassment. Marilyn had made a firm decision, however—she wanted nothing to do with Natasha Lytess. In the last year, she had done very well without Natasha, and even managed to get Fox to do for her what, arguably, Natasha had never really done: take her seriously as an actress.
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe Page 29