Co-starring as his kid brother, another handsome young actor, George Grizzard, was making his Broadway debut in this play. Both Paul and George appeared as jailbreaker brothers who invade a home and terrorize its occupants, as portrayed by Karl Malden and Nancy Coleman.
Merv's reject:
George Grizzard
Invited to the cast party, Merv met Paul Newman and later told Hadley, “He was the most dazzling creature I ever feasted my eyes on. I could look into his dreamy blue eyes forever.” In reference to that night, Merv also claimed that “gay boys were clustered around this hunk like bees in a honey tree. I couldn't get near him.”
Merv turned his attention to George, a native of North Carolina. “He seemed a little frightened. Although he was only three years younger than me, he had the look of a lost kid who was definitely out of his element with this fastmoving Broadway crowd.”
Before the night was over, Merv learned that Paul Newman had seduced the young actor on several occasions before dumping him. Perhaps following Paul's example, Merv later did the same thing to George.
One night in the 1970s at Ted Hook's Backstage Bar in New York City, George told Darwin Porter, “Merv and I hooked up pretty well, at least I thought so. The sex was vanilla, and he was a bottom, but that was okay by me. I thought he was my new boyfriend. My thing with Paul had gone nowhere, especially after he told me he was straight. Merv, on the other hand, was gay as a goose. I didn't see anything wrong spreading the word he was my new BF. That was the worst mistake I ever made. Word soon got back to Merv, and he dropped me like a hot potato. I ran into him again in 1962 when I was starring in Who's Afraid of Virgini a Woolf?, and that devil pretended to his friends that we were meeting for the first time.”
***
When Merv and Hadley found an apartment on 57th Street they liked much better than Marlon's place, they decided to move out. Merv called Marlon's agent, his old friend, Jay Kanter, and asked if he could find a sublet for Marlon's apartment, which no longer smelled of raccoon piss.
Within an hour, Jay called back and said he had a prospective renter, although mysteriously he provided few details. Merv suspected that the client might be another celebrity.
That night Merv hit the bars with Hadley, forgetting all about the appointment the following morning.
Arriving drunk back at Marlon's apartment at four o'clock that morning, Hadley threw some clothes into a suitcase. He told Merv that he had to catch an early morning bus to go to Philadelphia for a family reunion.
“But I thought you said your relatives lived in Minnesota,” Merv said.
“They do,” Hadley said, “but a lot of them live in Pennsylvania.” He kissed Merv goodbye, promising to call, although he never did.
After drinking all night, Merv collapsed in bed until there was a loud pounding at the door. Marlon had long ago disconnected the doorbell. Merv had forgotten about the nine o'clock appointment he had with Jay Kanter and the prospective renter. Throwing Marlon's tattered and smelly bathrobe around himself, he stumbled to the door to find Jay and his client.
He was startled. With a kerchief tied around her hair, the client had enclosed one of the world's shapeliest bodies into a dull raincoat dyed a battleship gray. Even without her customary makeup and in this disguise, Merv knew at once that it was Marilyn Monroe. Anybody could have recognized her. She was at the time the most photographed face in America, as well as the model for the country's most famous nude calendar.
After the first thirty minutes, it became apparent that Marilyn had no intention of renting the apartment. She just wanted to see where Marlon lived. Merv knew that she and Marlon were onagain, offagain lovers.
Jay soon excused himself to rush to an appointment, leaving Marilyn in the apartment alone with Merv. Just because she insisted, Merv even unlocked the secret closet, showing her the wreckage of Marlon's electric train, which for some reason seemed to fascinate her.
“This closet is all I'll need for my wardrobe” she said. “I don't have many clothes. A few sweaters, two pairs of jeans and some tight Jax slacks. My most valuable possession is a mink coat Joe gave me for Christmas.”
“You're always photographed in glamorous clothes,” he said.
“They're not mine,” she claimed. “They're borrowed from the studio.”
Merv invited her into Marlon's kitchen for coffee. He noticed that she wore no stockings, and there was a big, ugly pimple above her left ankle. She wore a white silk blouse and matching slacks. Sipping her coffee, she surveyed the bleak kitchen. “Did I ever tell you my secret name for Marlon is Carlo?”
She settled in a bit and showed no sign of leaving that morning. Removing her kerchief, she revealed unkempt hair to him. She looked as if she'd suddenly risen from bed without combing her famous blonde tresses.
Returning to the living room, she focused on Marlon's piano. “Please, pretty please,” she said, “play something for me.”
They ended up at the piano for more than an hour, as he played her familiar songs. They began to sing duets together before she tired of that. She plopped down on the sofa, placing her feet under her body. After bringing her some cheap red wine Hadley had left behind, he settled in with her, just knowing that it would be a gossip fest about Marlon.
Gorgeous, glam, and
gossiping about Marlon:
Marilyn Monroe
“Marlon doesn't really respect women,” she said. “He makes love to them—to men as well—but he lacks the maturity to go the long haul in a relationship, unless you call his long friendship with Wally Cox a relationship. I'm a bit of an exception in that I'm blonde. Marlon usually lies to fuck darkhaired Latina putas. Even so, we make love from time to time. He's a far better friend than a lover. As a friend, he's gentle and caring. As a lover, he thinks he has to be Stanley Kowalski.”
“You mentioned that Marlon likes to have sex with men,” Merv said, feigning innocence on the subject.
“Oh, Marlon does have sex with men just to be daring,” she said. “He probably doesn't really enjoy it. He does it because it's part of that rebel image he so carefully cultivates. Since society doesn't approve of homosexuality, Marlon thinks he has to be the sexual outlaw. Even with women he's got to flaunt convention. If men are supposed to enter women through the front door, Marlon always insists on knocking on the back door.”
Tiring of the sofa, she rose to her feet. With wine glass in hand, she moved throughout the room. “Marlon is a lost cause. I've decided that Monty Clift is the one for me.” She noticed a look of disbelief on Merv's face. “Don't believe all those stories about Monty being a homosexual. I know you two guys used to live together—and all that. But he's not gay. He just hasn't found the right woman to love him.”
“Are you absolutely sure that's the case?” he asked.
“Of course, I'm certain,” she said defensively. “For the life of me, I can't picture two men in bed together. Maybe in those bunks in the military when there are no women available. What man in his right mind would settle for another man when he could have this?” She ran her hands lovingly along the contours of her body. “Don't tell anyone, but I've always found the idea of two men seducing each other weird. I mean, if you think about, it's a bit creepy. Bumping two pricks together. How ghastly!”
“Marilyn, if millions of your gay fans could hear this talk, they'd desert you in a minute,” he said. “C'mon, you've been in Hollywood far too long to be this naïve. For God's sake, you're sounding like Mae West. She's got plenty of strange ideas about homosexuality.”
“Don't get me wrong,” she said. “I adore the gays, like Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. But, as I said, Monty is not a homosexual. He told me he loves women. He also told me that the finds sex with men dirty. I know for a fact that he's fucking Elizabeth Taylor, although what he sees in that cow I don't know. If I don't marry Monty, I'm certain that Frank Sinatra will marry me. If either of them wants to marry me, I'll divorce whoever I am married to at the time. Of course, bitc
h Taylor is also chasing after Sinatra. I wish the cow would leave my men alone.”
Marilyn's talk quickly turned from men to her own career, which she seemed to think was about to take a new and daring step forward. “I just talked to Tennessee today.” She was, of course, referring to the playwright Tennessee Williams. “It's almost set with him and Elia Kazan that I'm gonna play Baby Doll in their new movie. Elia is a little bit hesitant, but Tennessee is behind me all the way. Elia claims that I'm too old to play a teenager. Marlon has almost agreed to appear opposite me in the role of Silva. Baby Doll will give new meaning to my career. It'll show those assholes in Hollywood that I'm more than a dumb blonde.”
***
When Merv read in the papers that Elia Kazan had turned down Marilyn for Baby Doll, he called her to console her, finding that she was bitterly disappointed. She sounded like she'd been drinking. “I'm not giving up,” she vowed. “Somewhere in some dark attic in America a guy is writing a magical script for me that will change the direction of my career. I just know it.” Before she put down the phone, she invited him over. “If you'll come and sing to me, it might cheer me up.”
“Do you mind if I bring a friend?” Merv asked. “Hadley Morrell. He thinks you're the greatest thing since the invention of ice cream.”
“The more the merrier,” she said.
Later, he and Hadley found her occupying Rock Hudson's secret hideaway in New York. It looked like a hurricane had blown through. During her short term in residence, she'd completely wrecked the apartment. Dirty pizza boxes were found in the corner, the dishes looked like they hadn't been washed in a month, and empty champagne bottles littered the floor.
She found Hadley extraordinarily attractive. “Merv, you selfish boy,” she said, “keeping this hunk for yourself when he should be shared with the world. Don't tell me he's gay, too. I refuse to believe it. He looks like he can handle any woman and call for reinforcements.”
Hadley beamed hearing such praise of his manly charms, although Merv was growing jealous, realizing how foolish it was to take a lover to meet Marilyn Monroe. She could seduce any man, gay or not.
Once settled in, she offered them champagne, her favorite drink. “Do you know what that fucking Kazan told me? He said that I have a nigger butt. Can you imagine him saying that to me? I want both of you to judge.” In front of Hadley and Merv, she lowered her jeans and exposed her ass, revealing that she wore no underwear. “Judge for yourself, fellows.”
“That is the most beautiful ass in creation,” Hadley said. “There is no ass in the world more fuckable.”
“Hear that, Kazan,” she said, “you old meanie.” She looked at Hadley as she turned around. “I hope you're not another Marlon, always wanting to enter a woman through the back door.” In front of him, she lowered her jeans, revealing that she'd dyed her pubic hair blonde.
What happened next depends on how reliable a witness Hadley is. He later claimed in a proposed memoir that he had sex with Marilyn right on Rock Hudson's carpet and that Merv hovered over Marilyn like a voyeur but did not actually penetrate her. In Hadley's words, Merv merely felt her breast while goading him on to action.
If an actual seduction took place that afternoon, it cannot be verified. Hadley later claimed that in a taxi back to their apartment, Merv turned to him in bewilderment and said, “I didn't know you were bisexual.”
***
Upon its release, Merv and Hadley went to see Baby Doll. Instead of Marlon and Marilyn, it starred Eli Wallach and Carroll Baker. In Merv's own review, he said, “Tennessee was right in pushing for Marlon and Marilyn. Marlon would have eaten up the scenery, and Marilyn would have made it a classic. With Wallach and Baker, Tennessee has ended up with a merely mediocre film.”
Months later Marilyn called Merv. “I've found the great script I've been waiting for all my life. At least with this script I'll be taken seriously as a star. You've got to read it.”
Without telling Hadley where he was going, Merv went to Marilyn's apartment, which was no better kept than Rock Hudson's dive. Clothes were thrown about, along with remnants of long forgotten meals. When Merv excused himself to take a leak, he found a used condom on the bathroom floor.
Seated on the sofa, he read the badly written script with all its typos. She didn't leave the room for one minute as he read, and kept bouncing up and down on the sofa, her robe opening at times to reveal her vagina. Unlike that time with Hadley, he noticed that she hadn't bleached her pubic hairs.
As he put down the script, he looked at her in astonishment. “Who wrote this screenplay?”
“A gay friend of mine,” she said. “Dickie Knight. He's a chorus boy on Broadway.”
“This is a ripoff of Judy's A Star Is Born. You said earlier you wanted me to play the role of your husband. A big band singer from the 40s whose career in Hollywood is going nowhere. That's a little too close for comfort. You're a star on the rise, trying to hold our marriage together with this hasbeen, who happens to be a drunk and who happens to walk into the sea at the end of the picture and drowns himself. James Mason is a tough act to follow.”
“You don't understand,” she said. “In A Star Is Born, Judy was a singer. As Lola Velez in this new script, I'm a dramatic actress who gets nominated for an Oscar. In A Star Is Born, Mason played a hasbeen movie star. In this script, you're not a movie star but a failed singer. Don't you get the difference? Dickie has come up with a lovely flashback. You could be made up to look younger. In the flashback, you could be shown in your heyday singing ‘I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.’”
“I'd do anything to play opposite you on the screen,” he said. “But you've got to come up with a better—read that original—script than this piece of shit.”
“You won't be so nasty when I walk away with an Oscar for this script,” she said. “And if you don't want the part I can always offer it to Frank Sinatra.”
“I'm sure Frank would love to play the role of a failed singer from the 40s,” he said.
“Frank will do what I ask him to do,” she said. “He's madly in love with me and still fucking me—and doing a better job of it than you did. So there!”
When Merv encountered Marilyn months later, she made no mention of the script that would have costarred them. He didn't bring it up either.
At the time, Marilyn was being considered as the lead in a new movie called Some Like It Hot. But, at least in Merv's opinion, she still had bizarre casting ambitions associated with Frank Sinatra. She'd been delighted to hear that the director, Billy Wilder, hoped to cast Frank Sinatra in the movie. It seemed that Billy wanted Frank for the cameo role of the gangster “Spats,” but had to settle for George Raft. Marilyn had misunderstood, thinking Billy wanted to cast Frank as the male lead, with the understanding that he'd have to appear in drag for some of the pivotal scenes. The role eventually went to Marilyn's former lover, Tony Curtis.
Later, when Merv read a copy of the script, he told Hadley, “Frank Sinatra doing a movie in drag? Fat chance. At times I think Marilyn is out of her mind. There's about as much of a chance of Frank playing the part in drag as there is of Eisenhower getting caught in a love nest with Tab Hunter.”
***
Merv had long ago forgiven Monty Clift for the beef stew attack, and the two old friends spoke occasionally on the phone. Monty revealed to Merv that he had been spending many of his nights with either Roddy McDowall or Libby Holman, who had been accused of murdering her twentyyearold gay husband, Zachary Smith Reynolds, the tobacco heir.
“In many ways, Roddy is the only person I've found worthy of being my mate,” Monty told Merv. “We spend a lot of time in bed together, but, as hard as we try, we can't work up a lot of passion for each other.”
A few weeks later, Monty mailed Merv a script for a film adaptation of William Inge's hit Broadway play, Bus Stop. It was being readied as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe. At one point Elvis Presley was suggested as the cowboy lead, but Col. Tom Parker, his manager, turned down the offer,
which promptly went to Monty. After reading the script, Merv called Monty, telling him, “this could be a classic.” He urged him to sign to do the movie with Marilyn. After mulling it over, Monty turned down the role as “not worthy of me. How dare Hollywood cast me as a dumb cowboy playing opposite a dumb blonde.”
One afternoon in New York, Monty showed up at Merv's apartment unannounced, which is the way he often preferred to call on his friends. “I want to catch people like they really are—not gussied up for company,” he said. He asked Merv to accompany him to a five o'clock showing of Guys and Dolls. “Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando singing in a picture together,” Monty said in amazement. “What a riot!”
On the way to the theater, Monty confided to Merv that a few days before, he'd gone with a friend to see the first screening of Guys and Dolls at Loews 86th St. Theater. He'd been drinking heavily and had screamed at the screen: “Brando's vomitable! Sinatra's a pansy in this shit-stinker!”
An usher asked Monty to leave. Escorted to the lobby, Monty was furious. With his bare fists he smashed a display case, advertising the movie. Shattered glass littered the lobby, and he'd badly lacerated his hand. Blood was dripping onto the shards of broken glass. When the manager rushed out and saw that the damage had been caused by one of Hollywood's biggest stars, he called an ambulance to rush Monty to the hospital.
This time around, at the same theater, Monty sat through the entire movie without saying a word. Later, in a nearby bar, he reviewed the movie for Merv. “Brando used to have something on Broadway back in 1947,” Monty claimed. “Whatever talent he once had has been ruined by Hollywood. What a dirty, corrupt town that is. Marlon Brando is a horse's ass in this stinker. As for Sinatra, Eternity showed he could be an actor, but he's made all the wrong career choices since then. Like Brando, he's throwing everything away. Incidentally, Sinatra and I aren't asshole buddies any more. He kicked me out of his party in Hollywood. I got a little drunk and came on to Dean Martin. I'd heard that he has a big one, and I wanted to try it out for myself.”
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 42