Marilyn Monroe (39 page)

While Marilyn made plans to fly to Los Angeles to make
Some Like It Hot,
Miller stayed at home to hear if his 1957 guilty verdict would be overturned. When Marilyn left for California, he wrote her a loving letter to say how ‘entirely alive’ and at home he felt with her, and expressed the joy she gave him, describing her as his dear baby girl and comrade. Without her he felt lonely, he said, and wrote that if they ever had children together, he would know what to do and how to be with them. Many people have declared that the Miller marriage was over as soon as Marilyn discovered his notebook during
The Prince and the Showgirl,
but in actual fact, all evidence (including Miller’s letter) seems to show that the two were very much in love during this time period, and trying hard to make their marriage a success.

In early August, whilst staying at Roxbury, Miller received news that his name had been cleared on the grounds that he had not been adequately informed of the reasons why he was answering questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He celebrated with workmen at the Roxbury home, who had been keeping a case of beer and bottle of whisky for just that occasion; then jetted off to reunite with Marilyn in California. She was thrilled by the result and called for Miller’s lawyer, Joe Rauh, to run for President, while even Fox’s Spyros Skouras (or ‘The Spiral Staircase’ as Miller called him) sent a letter of congratulations and admitted he had been wrong to try and convince him to name names.

Meanwhile, shooting on
Some Like It Hot
had begun on a positive note at the Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Curtis and Lemmon had fun being coached by a German drag-queen and rehearsals were littered with jokes and laughter. The cast would often go to the Formosa restaurant for lunch, while Marilyn and ‘Josephine’ took trips to the ladies room together to see if Curtis would be recognized. The whole set had a light-hearted approach and discovering that Goldwyn Studios had banned
smoking after the set of
Porgy and Bess
burned down, Wilder pinned a sign on the door that read, ‘Come on the Billy Wilder set and smoke your little hearts out. Some Like it Hot!’

But before long, the problems began, as Marilyn was recovering from an ear infection, found it hard to adjust to working after a long absence, and missed her homes and her dog on the East Coast. ‘Will you return to New York after the picture?’ asked a reporter, to which she replied, ‘Just as fast as the airlines can take me. This is nice but it isn’t home.’ As an antidote to the loneliness for her dog, hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff presented her with two parakeets, from which she chose one – a male called Butch. Inez Melson described the bird as ‘peachy and frothy,’ and trained it for Marilyn while she worked.

The problems on set followed a familiar pattern: lateness; drama coach interference; absences; and forgotten lines. ‘The whole thing is kukie,’ said Jack Lemmon. ‘We were called for the first shoot this morning, so we arrived at 7 a.m. Here it is noon and we still haven’t been in front of the cameras. They’ve been retaking Marilyn’s scene.’

‘Marilyn is frequently late, it’s true,’ said Billy Wilder. ‘But she does beautifully once she gets under way.’ It got to the point where Marilyn’s non-appearance on the set led her to be nicknamed ‘MM: Missing Monroe’ by the press, and once again reports started to circulate that she was pregnant. This time the rumours were right; she had became pregnant during the production, which led Miller to request Wilder to excuse her from early starts. However, the demand left Wilder completely bewildered since Marilyn never arrived until at least 11.30 a.m., long after everyone else had got there.

The lateness was something that caused a great deal of tension between Marilyn and the cast and crew. ‘She doesn’t know we’re alive,’ commented one disgruntled crew member, while Lemmon later remembered that she would drive everyone crazy with her lateness, and would lock herself in the dressing room, refusing to come out until she was psychologically ready.
Anyone knocking on her door before that moment was told to ‘Fuck off’ in no uncertain terms.

But not everyone was annoyed by Marilyn’s lateness; for some it was also an advantage. Peggy McGuiggan was hired to portray a trumpet player in the ‘All Girls’ Band’, and thought Marilyn was ‘adorable; very, very charismatic. The first time I saw her, she was walking down the street, just coming from the hairdressers. She had rollers in her hair and was wearing slacks, but still all the attention was riveted on her; she looked spectacular. Marilyn was always late on the set, but that was an advantage to me because I was originally contracted for two weeks, but that went up to four months.’

Perhaps the absences would not have been such a problem if Marilyn was able to work once she was on set, but often she found it impossible. During one famous incident, she had to walk into the room and ask, ‘Where’s that bourbon?’ but she stumbled on the lines so much that it required approximately seventy takes and, in the end, the lines had to be pasted into a drawer so she could read them. Added to that, Marilyn was so cut off from others on the set that rumours began to circulate that attempting friendship with her was a guaranteed way of losing your job. Despite that, Marilyn claimed she had never been happier and declared herself to be more thoughtful than ever.

Reporter Peer J. Oppenheimer visited the set on one occasion, and discovered a rule in place that demanded female co-stars had to have their hair darker than Marilyn’s. When some of the girls rebelled against this rule and had their hair bleached, they were immediately sent back to the hairdresser. Remembered Oppenheimer: “I interviewed her several times [over the years], and gradually noticed a pronounced change in her. On the set of
Some Like It Hot,
I witnessed Billy Wilder and her co-stars becoming very agitated because Marilyn could never remember her lines. Billy always had to use her best take. But in the long run, no one held it against her.’

Off the set Marilyn took some time to visit Aunt Enid and Uncle Sam Knebelkamp, whom she hadn’t seen for many years.
As James Glaeg, friend of neighbour Catherine Larson, later recalled: ‘When Marilyn first became an international celebrity, she began very deliberately to ignore the Knebelkamps. This hurt their feelings and they confided to Catherine their misgivings that perhaps Marilyn had not completely forgiven them for not having provided her with a home at some certain time [when the Goddard family were moving to West Virginia in 1942]. Marilyn didn’t call for a long time, and Enid was very sad about it.’

This was sad and completely misguided, of course, since she had been very close to the family for many years after 1942. The truth is that since Aunt Grace’s death, Marilyn had cut ties with most if not all of her foster family, although she was always unwilling to discuss her reasons why.

Shortly after she had renewed her friendship with Aunt Enid, James Glaeg and his friend Robert Larson visited the Knebelkamp family and heard first-hand about the feelings they still held for their foster-niece: ‘Bob [Larson] asked if she had been hearing from Marilyn lately. Enid answered that she had called recently. “She’s pregnant now, you know,” Enid said. I mentioned then that I was a fan of Marilyn, and Sam, who had so far said little, now said, “She’s a good girl,” almost painfully. As though conscious of falling away from that male pose which isn’t supposed to think of Marilyn Monroe in terms of goodness. They said nothing more about her, but later Sam remarked that show business was a good business to stay out of. No doubt Marilyn’s experiences had given him this conviction.’

‘They were glad [she had visited],’ recalled Sam and Enid’s granddaughter, Jo Olmstead. ‘They really did care about her and the main reason they never wanted to talk to anyone in the media about her was that they did not want Norma Jeane to feel hurt or betrayed.’

After her family ties were renewed, the
Some Like It Hot
production moved to the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, where Marilyn seemed happier than she had in Los Angeles: her husband was on set; she believed the sea air would be good
for the baby; and her fans cheered her on whilst she was filming on the beach. But her continued happiness was not to be; she became frustrated with the number of photographers, and once screamed, ‘No pictures, no pictures,’ at a bemused onlooker.

Frequently scenes were disturbed by the sound of jets from a nearby Navy base and fans were disturbed to see Marilyn being carried from the set in the arms of her husband on several occasions. More drama occurred when, after filming a love scene on 14 September, she was driven by Miller to the Cedars of Lebanon hospital, where she was treated for exhaustion, although some believe the episode was the result of another drug overdose.

The film had originally been slated to shoot in three months, but at this point in time it was clear to everyone that this would not be the case: on 18 October it was reported that once again Marilyn was absent from the set, and although she persistently claimed to be ‘just tired’, everyone knew she was pregnant.

Finally,
Some Like It Hot
wrapped towards the middle of November, but Marilyn’s problems were far from over. On 10 November she had collapsed on set, and cast members remembered her expressing concern that she was losing her baby. She was taken to her hotel room and there she remained for several days before finally being allowed to fly back to New York for medical tests. On doctors’ orders she was forced to rest and cancel any publicity appearances, but it was all in vain; on 17 December it was confirmed that Marilyn had lost the baby and was truly devastated. (It has been widely reported since that Marilyn miscarried on 17 December, but actually this was the date it was confirmed, not when it happened. Indeed, Marilyn’s press representative told reporters that doctors determined earlier that week that she had miscarried, but they did not say exactly when.)

During this time, one of the gynaecologists responsible for Marilyn was Dr Oscar Steinberg, who adored her on sight and did everything he could to comfort her. His daughter, Vanessa Steinberg, remembered him talking about Marilyn with great
respect, but the same cannot be said of his feelings for Arthur Miller, who he felt was rude and dismissive of Marilyn’s problems. ‘He treated her like an inferior,’ he was later to tell his daughter.

On 22 December
Life
magazine published an article with text by Arthur Miller and photos by Richard Avedon, which depicted Marilyn in the guise of various film stars including Jean Harlow, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich and Lillian Russell. Marilyn and Avedon took a great deal of care and attention to recreate the sets and make-up, and the result was that she became completely absorbed in the roles she was playing. Perhaps inspired by this project, Marilyn later made plans to play Jean Harlow in a movie, but as with many of her proposed projects, it unfortunately did not come to fruition.

After what must surely have been one of the most depressing Christmas periods of her life, Marilyn lay low for most of 1959, confining her public appearances to publicity for
Some Like It Hot,
receiving several awards and meeting Nikita Khrushchev at the Twentieth Century Fox studios. The rest of the year was, for the most part, spent trying to recover from her recent tragedy, which had sent her into a spiral of depression and prescription drug use.

Norman Rosten remembered several disturbing events during this time. In the first of his memories, he recalled a party in which Marilyn stared moodily down to the street, complaining that she had been having trouble sleeping and wondering if anyone would notice if she fell from the window. On another occasion, Rosten and his wife received a 3 a.m. phone call from Marilyn’s maid, begging them to come over to the apartment where Marilyn was recovering from an overdose of pills. When he asked Marilyn how she was, she replied, ‘Alive. Bad luck.’

And yet, although the walls seemed to be caving in, Marilyn still had her moments of optimism and during 1959 she had several gynaecological operations designed to help her have children. On 23 June 1959 it was publicly announced that Dr Mortimer Rodgers had performed an operation of a corrective
nature at Lenox Hill Hospital. Then on another occasion, Dr Steinberg discreetly performed an operation which was one of the first of its kind, attempting to unblock her fallopian tubes and remove scar tissue to enable her to have children. He later told his secretary, Kae Turner, that Marilyn had a uterus ten years older than her years; ‘She’ll never have a child because her uterus is such a mess,’ he said, adding that he believed her uterus was in such disarray because of a past history of septic abortions. ‘She had also had numerous pelvic infections that had gone untreated, which had contributed to the scar tissue and infertility problems,’ remembered his daughter, Vanessa.

Arthur Miller was present at the hospital during the operation performed by Dr Steinberg; ‘It was a dismal failure,’ said Vanessa Steinberg. ‘My father had the unfortunate task of telling her that she would never be able to have children. Apparently he walked into her room, she looked up at him and said, “Thank you doctor, I already know.” He told her that if he ever had a daughter he would name her after her, which he did.’

Coming to terms with the hand she had been dealt, Marilyn tried to continue her everyday life in New York: shopping for cakes and bread at the 400 Cake Shop; grocery shopping in the Gristede Brothers Superior Market, browsing for antiques on Third Avenue and picking up books from the Sutton Place Stationers. She also continued attending sessions with psychiatrist Dr Kris, taking classes with the Strasbergs and conducting the occasional interview. ‘I’m sorry to report that I’m not pregnant again,’ she told one reporter, adding, ‘I feel fine now, but it takes time to get over the feeling of loss.’

She also spoke of the strength of her relationship with Miller, insisting that her marriage was in a wonderful state and adding – perhaps to convince herself – that she didn’t mind if her husband didn’t send her flowers or remember anniversaries: ‘I can buy my own flowers,’ she said.