Marilyn & Me (7 page)

Whitey Snyder moved to the pool’s edge for a few seconds to ensure that her makeup didn’t run. Agnes came over and worked on her hair, even though it was soaking wet. I was so fixed on Marilyn that I don’t even remember seeing Woodfield or Mitchell, who were also shooting. I was oblivious. I was waiting to approach Marilyn, but I wasn’t confident enough, so I went over to Whitey, who was now standing near me, and I asked, “Do you think I can go in and suggest something?” He laughed at my naïveté.

Eager, I realized I had to wait for the right moment. It came about when Marilyn returned from her dressing room a second time. “Don’t forget—you want covers all over the world,” I said as she passed by. When there was no reaction, I realized that she hadn’t heard me. My voice hadn’t risen above a whisper.

At poolside Marilyn took off her blue bathrobe, hiding her body as she slid into the water. A few moments later, when she raised herself from the water, I could see that her panties were gone. She’d done it! And she was having a lot of fun. She was enjoying it!

And for a few minutes, while the crew repositioned the cameras, instead of returning to her dressing room a third time, she stayed and posed for the still cameras. Nobody
had to ask her to turn right or turn left; she knew exactly what to do.

Marilyn was a photographer’s dream subject with her clothes on and even more stunning with them off. Her wet skin glistened. Her eyes sparkled. Her smile was provocative. She was a week away from her thirty-sixth birthday, and she looked as good as she had ever looked. She was so sure of herself in front of the camera that her confidence was infectious. There was no hint of the woman who had been in trouble for most of her life. As I shot, I was sure that the pictures I was taking were going to be beautiful and unforgettable. The curve of her spine complemented her natural curves as the water reflected the lights, and the whole scene sparkled. I wasn’t even thinking about how many of these images she would approve. How could she not approve them all? She was giving it her best, and her best was as good as it got. She was, after all, Marilyn Monroe!

In all, I shot sixteen rolls of thirty-six-exposure black-and-white and three rolls of color, constantly adjusting my cameras, checking exposure, checking the shutter speed, moving so that the key lights produced the right highlights on her body. The black-and-white film was Tri-X, and the color was high-speed Ektachrome. The scene was repeated time and time again so that the director could capture it from every conceivable angle. It wound up taking a full day, but the actual shooting was only two hours.

The director finished at around five in the afternoon, and immediately I rushed to the phone, just outside the soundstage doors, to call Tom Blau and
Paris Match
to let them know what I had. I realized it was almost three in the morning in Europe, but I didn’t care. I told Tom, “You better get on a plane. I’ve got Marilyn Monroe in the nude, and we’re gonna make a lot of money.”

Tom balked. “Can’t you put them on a plane?”

“No, Tom, I can’t,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

Then I called Roger Thérond, the picture editor at
Paris Match
. The magazine’s switchboard was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because
Match
covered the world. Not having ever called Thérond at night, I needed the magazine to put me through to his home. Just then Woodfield came through the soundstage door, carrying his camera bags. I had barely talked to him all day, but I knew I had to say something before he left.

“Billy,” I said, still holding the phone, “two sets of pictures only make the price go down. One set of pictures makes the price go up. I think we should become partners.” Woodfield kept walking and had passed through the outside doors just as I was put through to Thérond.

“Roger,” I shouted. “You won’t believe what happened. The first nudes of Marilyn Monroe in over ten years. The pictures are going to blow your mind!”

“How soon can we get them?” Thérond said in his heavy French accent. “Should we fly a writer there?”

“No, no, you don’t need to. The pictures speak for themselves, Roger.” What I didn’t tell him was that Marilyn still had to approve them. I was just hanging up with Thérond when Woodfield walked back in.

At first he didn’t say a word, but obviously he was ready to talk. “Let’s go to the commissary and talk about this,” he said in a low voice. On the way, I talked, not letting him say much. “Let’s put our pictures together, sell them all over the world—here in the U.S., in Europe, in Japan.” I didn’t even know whether Woodfield owned his pictures or Globe did. Maybe Billy didn’t even know at that point. All I knew was that I owned my photographs and he came back to listen.

“Fifty-fifty,” I said. “Both our names and copyrights on the pictures.” The public wouldn’t have to know which pictures I shot or which ones Billy took. “We’ll sell them together all over the world,” I said, concluding my pitch.

Finally, Billy spoke. “You’re saying fifty-fifty between us?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and my agent will do the selling.”

“And what about Globe?” he said.

“That’s between you and Globe,” I replied. “I’m making a deal with you, not with them. You develop your film, and you decide what you’re going to do.”

Billy didn’t agree right away; he wanted some time to think it over. I told him that if he liked the idea, he should come to my studio the next afternoon, after we finished on the set. After he left, I walked back to Marilyn’s dressing
room and knocked on her door, but she didn’t answer. I knew she was there, but she wasn’t there for me, so I left.

The next morning, before I went to the studio, I called Dick Pollard, the picture editor of
Life
. “When can we see them?” he asked after I told him what had taken place. I felt his eagerness on the phone. “As soon as Marilyn approves them,” I replied.

That morning I shot some more scenes on the set, but Marilyn was in a strange mood, so I kept my distance.

When she finished filming with Wally Cox, she passed me on her way back to her dressing room and asked, “When do I see the pictures?”

She wasn’t smiling or being coy, and I sensed her steely determination. What had happened between us the day before was business, and the business was self-promotion. At the same time Fox was invested in
Something’s Got to Give
, and film production was a serious business. Was the picture going to be closed down? As Marilyn was shooting this movie, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke were starring in
The Miracle Worker
; Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were making
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
; Katharine Hepburn was doing Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night
; Geraldine Page and Paul Newman were doing
Sweet Bird of Youth
; Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon were about
to pour their guts out in
Days of Wine and Roses
(a motion picture that I also photographed); Burt Lancaster was playing an unusual prisoner in
Birdman of Alcatraz
; and Gregory Peck was re-creating Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

Marilyn knew that her movie wasn’t going to get the notices that these other films would receive unless she did something to bring it to the public’s attention, and what better way to do that than to reveal herself in a manner that could not be ignored? She had done her part, and I’m sure she wanted to see if I had done mine. Why she seemed to trust me I still don’t know.

But first I needed to know if Billy would partner with me. That afternoon he came to my studio and said, “All right. I’m willing to make the deal.” We shook hands. There was no signed contract.

“Where’re your pictures?” I asked as I reviewed my black-and-whites. “Let’s look at yours and look at mine, and then let’s pick the ones we want to show Marilyn.”

“I’m not giving you any,” he said. “You go with all your pictures, and just give me half the money.”

This was unexpected, and worrisome. “Isn’t Globe going to sell your shots?” I asked.

“Not if they don’t have them,” he replied. “And they don’t.”

My visceral reaction was that I was paying him half my
income for exclusivity. Was that a good deal? I wondered. I had no idea, but I told him that we should move ahead with that understanding.

Then Billy brought up something I hadn’t thought about. “What are we going to do about Jimmy Mitchell’s pictures?”

I couldn’t believe that I had put Mitchell out of my mind so easily.

“The most important thing is to get the studio to kill Mitchell’s pictures,” Billy continued. Obviously, he had thought this through. “They’ll want the publicity that ours can generate.”

That made sense because the studio’s free handouts would be nonexclusive and wouldn’t be taken as seriously by magazine editors. Exclusivity would enhance the promotional value of our photographs. Billy said he knew Fox’s head of publicity, Harry Brand, and I knew the studio’s front man, Perry Lieber. We agreed to approach them separately and persuade them that our pictures would have more value to magazines if they had to pay for them rather than the studio giving out free images.

Remembering how Marilyn had had to squint to see the black-and-white contact sheets, and how she sometimes crossed out some images simply because she couldn’t see them well, I decided to show them to her differently this
time. I went through all the images on all the rolls and combined my favorites into groups, placing them between two pieces of optical glass. I then put them in an eight-by-ten enlarger and projected the resulting image onto a sixteen-by-twenty sheet of photographic paper. I took these large proof sheets to Marilyn the next morning, knowing she wouldn’t have to use a magnifying glass or hold anything up to the light.

I planned to leave her alone to review the images and return at the end of the day to pick them up. As usual, Marilyn was sitting in the chair in front of her makeup mirror, wearing a white robe, when I entered her dressing room. Seeing me in the mirror, she swung around in her chair, her robe slightly open, to reveal that she wasn’t wearing underwear. I didn’t lift my camera. It just didn’t feel right.

As I handed her the proof sheets, she asked, “Where’s the color?”

“Being processed,” I said. “I’ll have them tomorrow.”

“I’ll be home,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

Marilyn glanced at the black-and-whites. “Not bad,” she said, but then pointed to one image, “but not this one.” It was a shot in which the muscles in her legs were emphasized too much. As she handed the proof sheet back to me, I noticed it was the only shot she had crossed out. I could hardly believe it—only one edit!

“See you tomorrow,” Marilyn said suddenly. “I’ll give the rest back to you then.”

I could see that she had had it and was kind of ushering me out, and I didn’t mind it at all. I couldn’t wait to pick up the color from the lab the next day.