“I think Marilyn, on some level, felt that Natasha had been largely responsible for her earlier, sillier performances,” Marilyn’s friend Rupert Allan once said. “Natasha wanted Marilyn to be some cutesy doll, and she was kind of sickened by it.”
But in Natasha’s defense, history views these performances as near perfection, and it was Natasha’s direction that made them so specifically innocent and childlike. It was as though she took Marilyn’s vulnerable, sensitive essence and magnified it to near caricature. It’s a great testament to Marilyn’s onscreen presence that we, the audience, found her so engaging. For example, her appearances before she met Natasha, such as in Ladies of the Chorus, for example, might be considered provocative, but not the least bit “childish or naïve.” Even while singing “Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy” there’s a come-hither maturity to her performance. Compare that to the first film on which Natasha coached her, Asphalt Jungle. In that one, Marilyn’s character seems wide-eyed and vapid. Though not yet the fine-tuned, baby-talk performances that followed, as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Seven Year Itch, her acting in Asphalt Jungle shows that Natasha was beginning to mold Marilyn more and more into a childish performer. Even after Marilyn’s association with Natasha ended, directors wanted “that Marilyn,” and she would grudgingly deliver—but none of those performances would be as precisely honed as the ones that Natasha had helped create.
Now, with a year away from her career and a few concurring opinions about Natasha’s influence on her, Marilyn believed that her New York colleagues were right—that, in a sense, Lytess had probably been carving Marilyn into Lytess’s own fantasy. Now Marilyn was left to reverse the image and change the way Hollywood viewed her, if she could. She certainly wanted to try.
Natasha continued to pursue contact with Marilyn. Finally, when she simply would not back off, Marilyn had her attorney, Irving Stein, telephone her. Stein told Lytess in no uncertain terms that she should not call or visit Marilyn Monroe under any circumstances. In response, according to the attorney’s notes, Natasha delivered this soliloquy to him on the telephone:
“My only protection in the world is Marilyn Monroe. I created this girl. I fought for her. I was always the heavy on the set. I was frantic when I called the house and she would not speak to me. I am her private property, she knows that. Her faith and security are mine. I’m not financially protected, but she is. I’m not a well person. I would like very much to see her even with you, if only for one half-hour.”
The answer was no.
“She’s surrounded by these people who don’t let her do anything by herself,” Natasha said—and one could argue that she would know. “They’re afraid to lose her. She never goes anywhere alone; they’re stuck to her like glue.”
In a very interesting letter to her former student Helena Albert, Natasha put it this way: “I, for years, have seen Marilyn’s ability to cut people out of her life. I have even encouraged it. Imagine my dismay in finding that I am now one of those people. I suppose it was inevitable, yet it pains me so much I can’t bear it another moment.”
In one last-ditch effort, Natasha revealed that she was dying of cancer. When Marilyn’s lawyer told her the news, Marilyn appeared to be unmoved by it. However, later, she discreetly sent Natasha a check for a thousand dollars, at least according to a correspondence from Lytess to Albert. “It is very generous of her, yet it does not take the place of a simple and courteous telephone call,” she wrote. Indeed, when she received that money, Natasha must have known it was Marilyn’s farewell gift—but she may also have seen it as suggesting that Marilyn still cared. On March 5, despite the attorney’s warning that there would be “trouble” if she continued her pursuit of Marilyn, Natasha showed up unannounced at the Beverly Glen home. MCA agency president Lew Wasserman, who represented Marilyn, happened to be there, meeting with Milton Greene. He refused to allow Natasha entry into the house, telling her that Marilyn didn’t want to see her and had no plans to intervene on her behalf with the studio.
“You don’t understand, Marilyn needs me,” Natasha told him.
“Marilyn Monroe needs no one,” Wasserman snapped, slamming the door in her face.
Dejected, Natasha walked back to her car. When she turned to open her vehicle’s door, she noticed a quick flash in an upstairs window of the house. There, next to a curtain, was Marilyn, staring down at her with a vacant expression. The two women looked at each other for a long moment. Then Marilyn closed the drapes. *
PART SIX
Voices
The Misery of Arthur Miller
One of the major components in the Arthur Miller–Marilyn Monroe relationship was that Miller loved how well Marilyn Monroe listened to him, the way she hung on his every word. One mutual friend of the couple’s put it best: “She was all about listening and receiving and he was all about talking and sending. He lectured her constantly. She was mesmerized by him. She drank him in like a sponge and let him affect her through osmosis.”
Arthur Miller could do no wrong, as far as Marilyn was concerned. He was smart and interesting. He was invested in social change and had a real conscience. He was also supportive of her ambition—unlike her last husband. However, despite all of his good qualities, she was reluctant to marry him. In fact, she didn’t want to encourage him to divorce his wife—even though his mind was made up about that. She didn’t want him to break up his family for her, because she wasn’t sure she was right for him. He could continue to dazzle her with his intelligence, but on some level she must have known that he would eventually need some input from her. How did she feel about literature, about culture… about the world? She was a smart woman, smarter than even she knew. However, she was so insecure in herself, she never thought of herself as intelligent. She always felt that she was less than… whoever she was with at any given time. She confided in friends that she didn’t think she had the tools to really meet Miller at his intellectual capacity, “and what will he do when I’m found out,” she fretted. “I’m a good actress, but I don’t know that I’m that good.” Her great fear was that he would wake up one day and believe that he was with someone who didn’t know a lot about anything that mattered to him.
During production of Bus Stop, she leaned on him during times of great stress. That he was there for her meant the world to her. Desperate late-night telephone calls had become a recurring theme to their relationship. She could never seem to sleep, no matter how many pills she took, so inured had she become to their effects. Sometimes she would wash them down with champagne, and then not only was she wide awake, she was also inebriated. There was no telling what she might say in such telephone calls. “I can’t do it. I can’t work this way,” she cried to him in one call during production of Bus Stop. “I’m no trained actor. I can’t pretend I’m doing something if I’m not. All I know is real. I can’t do it if it’s not real.” She was talking about her role in the movie, but it also seemed as if she were referring to her role in his life.
On weekends, the two would meet at the Château Marmont Hotel in Hollywood for a romantic rendezvous. For days afterward, she was miserable. “I don’t know what is happening to her at this time,” Berniece wrote to another relative. “She thinks too much about every little thing. She doesn’t seem to want to just jump in and live, like Norma Jeane used to. Instead of making her more courageous, all of that therapy has made her more timid. I am definitely worried about her.”
Berniece may not have been a highly educated woman, but she knew her half sister well and she had pinpointed a major problem in her. “All of that therapy” had definitely caused Marilyn to want to think and rethink every move she made—whether in real life or her reel life. Nothing seemed left to chance anymore. Everything had to be the orchestrated result of looking within in a quest to develop her inner life. That would have been fine had she not at the same time been constantly coached to conjure up bad memories. As a result, she was miserable much of the time. Ironically, from outward appearances, anyway, she
had little reason to be in pain at this time in her life. She was on top of the world. She was a success. She had money. She had an interesting and challenging role in what could become a very good movie. However, she also had a new therapist on the West Coast—and that was the problem. She would constantly ruminate over her sad childhood, her troubled relationship with Gladys, her arranged marriage to Jim Dougherty, the nightmare of Joe DiMaggio, and anything else that could be dredged up from her past. Whether drawing from it as an actress for her role in Bus Stop or as a woman for her self-improvement, she always found herself in a terribly dark place, never moving past it. Now she was also faced with the prospect of being involved with someone she knew was intellectually superior to her, and that, too, hurt. Whether looking backward or ahead, attached to it was a sense of dread. She was her pain, now—there seemed no escaping it.
Marilyn and Arthur Marry
Interest by the House Un-American Activities Committee in Arthur Miller came to a head on June 21, 1956, the day he was summoned to appear in Washington and answer questions about his alleged association with certain Communist front organizations. The committee had done everything it could to find some kind of link between Miller and the USSR, even calling upon J. Edgar Hoover in the hope that maybe some of Hoover’s rumor-filled files would hint at something that could be used against him—but to no avail. If Hoover couldn’t come up with at least some kind of innuendo, Miller was definitely clean. Still, he was compelled to appear, and he dutifully did to address all concerns. Not much came of the hearings, though. He didn’t name names—mostly because he didn’t know any “names.” For instance, he confirmed that back in the 1940s he had attended a few Communist Party writers’ meetings, but he would not provide the names of anyone he ever saw there, risking a contempt of court charge.
The testimony was a little dull—Miller wasn’t exactly charismatic—but he did say a few things of interest. He mentioned that he wanted to have his passport returned to him because “I have a production which is in the talking stage in England, and I will be there with the woman who will then be my wife.” This was a big surprise to everyone—including Marilyn, who was sitting home watching on television. (In the end, Miller did get his passport back.) During a break in the proceedings, Miller was told that a pending contempt charge against him that had been spearheaded by Congressman Francis E. Walter could very easily “go away” if Miller did one thing: Persuade Marilyn to take a picture with Walter. That this was even suggested says a lot about these hearings. Miller refused, of course. (Congress would issue a contempt citation against him in July.)
Marilyn wasn’t sure how she felt about the proposal of marriage Miller had made on national television during the very strange HUAC proceedings. On one hand, she was impressed that he felt so strongly about her he would make a point of it on national television. However, she also wished he had discussed it with her first. His audacity bothered her. He hadn’t taken her feelings into consideration at all. How could he be so presumptuous? She was Marilyn Monroe, after all, and she could have any man she desired. Was he so cocky he just assumed he was the one for her and that was the end of it? “He does have a lot of nerve,” she told Milton Greene. “I mean, I wish he had told me of his plans to marry.” No matter how conflicted she was, though, she also didn’t want to be alone any longer. She so loved being in love, she said, that she just hoped what she was feeling for Miller was the real thing. It felt like an obligation now. She’d been told what was expected of her, and—proving perhaps that Norma Jeane was still alive and well—she was going to do it. On June 22, she held a press conference in which she said that, yes, she would marry Arthur Miller. Just prior to this press conference, a car traveling behind Marilyn and Arthur had crashed into a tree, killing the New York bureau chief of Paris Match magazine, Princess Mara Scherbatoff. Marilyn was very shaken by the accident. It was everything she could do to get through the press conference.
That night, during a very quick and perfunctory private service—four minutes long!—Marilyn and Arthur were married before a judge at the Westchester County Court House in White Plains, New York. Then, on July 1, a second ceremony was planned, this one a Jewish ceremony performed before friends. Unbeknownst to most people, Marilyn took a quickie course in Judaism, which allowed her to marry in the faith (though she would never really practice it.)
In the two days that passed after the first ceremony, Marilyn began to have serious reservations about the wisdom of her decision. “She wasn’t sure that she loved him,” said one of her relatives, “but she wasn’t sure that she didn’t. At the core of her confusion, though, was her sense that she was in over her head with this man. Her insecurities were running wild by this time. She couldn’t help but wonder what this intellectual wanted with her, and it was driving her crazy. Was he just looking for a trophy wife, as Joe [DiMaggio] had? What was really going on here?”
Before the second ceremony, which was to be held at the home of Arthur’s agent, Kay Brown, Marilyn was in bad shape. Tears sprang to her eyes whenever anyone would offer her congratulations. She was not at all the happy bride. Milton Greene told her that she didn’t have to go through with it if she didn’t want to. The guests would be told to go home, he said, and everyone would just have to deal with it. The embarrassment was better, he suggested, than another bad marriage. Marilyn agreed. The second ceremony would not take place, and the first one would be annulled. For about a minute, she felt better. Then she realized she couldn’t do it—she couldn’t let Arthur Miller down and also humiliate him that way. So the second ceremony went forward. Afterward, Marilyn was all smiles at the wedding reception. Indeed, she was a good actress.
The Prince and the Showgirl
Most of the summer of 1956 would be devoted to filming Marilyn’s next movie, The Prince and the Showgirl, which would star her with Laurence Olivier and be set in London. Marilyn and her new husband, Arthur, would be ensconced in Parkside House, a large manse in Englefield Green. Rehearsals for the movie began on July 18 and continued until August 3. Filming would commence on August 7 and continue through November.
Laurence Olivier’s original connection to the movie was when he appeared on the London stage in the Terence Rattigan play The Sleeping Prince, on which the film was based. Sir Larry starred with his wife, Vivien Leigh, forever remembered as Margaret Mitchell’s beautiful, resourceful heroine Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Set in London in 1911 during the coronation of King George V, the plot has us spend an evening with Grandduke Charles (Olivier), the prince regent of Carpathia, who’s come to town for the royal proceedings to take place the following day. Taking advantage of his one evening off, the grandduke, a notorious womanizer infamous as a seducer of chorus girls for one-night stands, attends a musical at the Coconut Girl theatre and is immediately charmed by a beautiful American understudy, Elsie Mariner (Monroe). He orders his British attaché to invite her to the embassy for a private supper. It plays like a French farce disguised as a Victor Herbert operetta, with neither the sex of the former nor the music of the latter. Elsie is led to believe she’s being invited to a party, not a one-on-one, intimate late-night repast. Foreplay consists of the grand-duke’s attempts to get Elsie sloshed and then in bed. He succeeds in the first and fails in the last. The sub rosa political shenanigans going on behind closed doors, involving the competition between the grandduke’s seventeen-year-old son, Nicolas, the king-in-waiting, and the grandduke, are too complicated to go into. What is important to know is that despite all odds, Elsie and Charles manage to fall in love, but their future plans must be put on hold while Carpathia fights for its survival in the Balkan Wars.
Marilyn’s longtime friend Milton Greene executive produced the film, along with Marilyn. It would be the second project for Marilyn Monroe Productions, following Bus Stop, and would be filmed at Britain’s Pinewood Studios. There was widespread speculation as to how Marilyn’s well-known neurotic behavior—tardiness, absenteeism, ill-preparedne
ss, insecurities—would play against the professionalism and discipline of the classically trained Olivier. Those who predicted the worst got it right. Olivier, as director and leading man, bore the brunt. He reveals in his 1983 autobiography, Confessions of an Actor, that preparatory to beginning production on the movie, he was convinced he was going to fall in love with Marilyn. During the shooting of the picture, he must have wondered where he ever got such a notion. However, he was very enthusiastic about her, admitting she was “wonderful in the film, the best thing in it,” her performance overshadowing his own and the final result worth the aggravation. (This is essentially what Billy Wilder said after his experience with Marilyn in Some Like It Hot.) Olivier goes on to say, “There are two entirely different sides [to Marilyn]. You would not be far out if you described her as a schizoid, the two people that she was could hardly have been more different. 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.” Of her acting, Olivier called her “a professional amateur.”
Also interestingly, regarding this film, James Haspiel observes, “[In this film] Marilyn is as close to being her off-screen self as she ever was. That is her real voice. It’s the way she spoke in person. Her hair is the real color of her hair. I think that’s what’s most fascinating about this one movie.”
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe Page 30