Marilyn Monroe (33 page)

This seemed particularly important at a moment when Marilyn was being satirized nightly on Broadway. A new play,
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
, offered a painful reminder that many people saw her as a joke. On October 13, Marilyn had attended the premiere of George Axelrod’s comedy about a dumb, self-absorbed film star “whose golden curls and fantastic behind have endeared her to moviegoers the world over.” Played by Monroe-lookalike Jayne Mansfield, the character insists she’s a serious actress; she complains of being thought of as a sex symbol; she even starts her own production company.

Other characters included a suave, globetrotting agent, a foreign-born movie mogul who speaks fractured English and tends to burst into tears, the star’s inept business partner who first met her when he was on assignment for a popular magazine, and her estranged husband, a brutish, temperamental athlete. Axelrod, who had written
The Seven Year Itch
, may have given Marilyn her best script to date, but he had also had an opportunity to observe her closely on the set. He had put many of her characteristics, her hopes and dreams, and even some of her lines in the play. On opening night, Marilyn conducted herself with immense dignity. The fact that she was then hard at work to change her image seems to have given her the strength to hold her head high.

That month, in New York, Marilyn signed the papers to finalize her divorce from Joe DiMaggio. Her lawyer, Jerry Giesler, then filed the
papers at the court in California. On October 31, 1955, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elmer D. Doyle granted the final decree. Her marriage to DiMaggio was legally at an end. Marilyn was free to marry again.

Marilyn’s relationship with Arthur changed when his wife found out about the love affair. Soon after his fortieth birthday on October 17, Mary threw Arthur out of their house in Brooklyn and he moved to temporary quarters at the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street. Though his romance with Marilyn was still officially a secret, more and more they began to see each other in the presence of friends. Chief among these were Norman and Hedda Rosten.

Marilyn had strategically cultivated the Rostens’ friendship in the months since she had met them with Sam Shaw. The situation was particularly awkward and painful for Hedda, who did not wish to betray her friendship with Mary Miller. But Hedda was by nature warm, nurturing, and motherly. She and Norman tended to adopt people with problems, which was why someone once dubbed their household The Broken Wing Society. Inevitably, they soon adopted Marilyn.

Apart from his marital problems, Miller’s life had become extremely complicated on account of his political situation. The threatened HUAC summons did not materialize in November, but before the Youth Board allowed him to proceed with “Bridge to a Savage World,” he was asked to “clear” himself by disavowing Communism. He declined as a matter of principle. He believed no American should be required to pass a political means test. Much as he wanted the screenwriting assignment, he refused to compromise his conscience and his sense of himself.

The Board found itself under tremendous pressure from the American Legion and the Catholic War Veterans to have nothing to do with Miller, whose patriotism they questioned. On December 7, there was a vote, and the board officially decided not to contract with the film company that had hired Miller. The next day the newspapers were full of the decision. With all hope of the film dead, Miller focused on negotiations to take
A View from the Bridge
to London.

The nature of his future with Marilyn remained undecided. Both of their lives were changing so rapidly that it was extremely difficult to make plans. Marilyn insisted she didn’t want to put any kind of pressure on him—but as anyone could see, a permanent commitment from him was precisely what she wanted. Increasingly, marriage to the great writer
and a chance to prove herself as an actress were the two halves of Marilyn’s dream.

Hardly had she had an opportunity to become excited about
The Sleeping Prince
when she received disturbing news from London. Anatole de Grunwald, who had known nothing of Rattigan’s negotiations with Wyler or Monroe, had meanwhile made arrangements of his own with John Huston. The deal had been made in good faith, and Huston expected the producer to go through with it no matter what Rattigan might have been up to in America. Rattigan had no choice but to tell Marilyn what had happened. Avid to hold on to Monroe and Olivier for his film, he hoped to persuade Huston to accept them both.

For weeks, there was no decision on any of this as Huston resisted the idea of casting Marilyn. Angry at what he perceived to be Rattigan’s double-dealing, Huston insisted that he wanted Jean Simmons in the part. The uncertainty lingered throughout December, while Marilyn remained every bit as determined to make
The Sleeping Prince
hers as Huston was to hold onto the property for himself.

Meanwhile, a far longer-running battle seemed about to end that month as Twentieth prepared a preliminary draft of Marilyn’s new contract. The moment of decision was finally at hand. The battle had begun two and a half years ago, following the release of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
A full year had passed since Marilyn left the studio with the claim that she was no longer legally under contract. The battle had heated up considerably in the last six months, after Zanuck decided to bring forward the release of
The Seven Year Itch.
That left Twentieth with no Marilyn Monroe films stockpiled for future release, and, as DiMaggio had long ago predicted, the moment that occurred the studio had to make a deal. The huge box-office and critical success of
The Seven Year Itch
put even more pressure on Zanuck to get Marilyn back in front of the cameras. As matters stood, it would be months before Twentieth had another Monroe film ready for release.

For tax reasons, both Twentieth and MCA wanted to make sure the deal was in place before the end of the year. Yet down to the very last day, Zanuck and a number of his closest associates remained profoundly uncomfortable with Marilyn’s requirements. To Zanuck’s irritation, Marilyn had increased her demands considerably since 1954, when she’d reluctantly accepted that the issue of director approval wasn’t even on
the table. On this latest round, Marilyn, aware of her power, insisted on the right to approve directors and cameramen on all her films. Zanuck regarded that demand as a fundamental challenge to the way he made pictures. He took Marilyn’s rebellion personally. Were Marilyn to win, her victory would be a public humiliation for him. To the very end, the Zanuck faction argued that the studio should call Marilyn’s “bluff” and refuse her demands. Frank Ferguson insisted that Marilyn’s old contract was still in effect and that Twentieth’s “unconditional surrender” would be a tactical error.

Skouras did not see things the same way. Once again, the conflict between Skouras and Zanuck worked to Marilyn’s advantage. Skouras was first and last a businessman. His ego was not caught up in the studio’s dealings with Marilyn. As far as he was concerned, nothing mattered besides the fact that Marilyn was an extremely valuable property. That she demanded a degree of creative control concerned him not at all. As the year drew to a close, Skouras did everything in his power to push Marilyn’s deal through.

Finally, there was nothing Zanuck could do to stop the new contract. Marilyn’s representatives made clear that she would give not an inch on the matter of director approval. At last, in an effort to save face, Zanuck insisted that Marilyn could have cameraman approval only on the first and fourth pictures she did at the studio, not on the second and third. This petty, even pathetic gesture suggested the massive blow to Zanuck’s ego that Marilyn’s victory represented.

“We made the stars, but they’ve forgotten that,” Zanuck complained on another occasion. “Now they think they’re entitled to run the business. Faces, that’s all they are, just faces. But in today’s market it’s only faces that count, not brains. I’ll tell you one thing: they’ll never run my business, because I won’t be here.” The following year, Zanuck stepped down as production chief, signing a deal with Fox under which the studio would release the films he produced independently. Skouras, needless to say, was not sorry to see his old adversary go.

On December 29, 1955, at 4 p.m., the Board of Directors of Twentieth Century–Fox held their regularly scheduled meeting in New York. On the table in front of each board member was a typed agenda. The third order of business was consideration of a new agreement with Marilyn Monroe Productions. Skouras, who presided over the meeting,
urged the board to approve the contract. There was some dissent, but Skouras pushed the deal through. His support of Marilyn was not a sentimental act of friendship, as some people seemed to think. It was just good business sense. For the studio’s sake, Skouras wanted Marilyn back at work as soon as possible. Indeed, Twentieth already had a new film lined up for her—William Inge’s
Bus Stop.
The sooner the contract was signed, the sooner production could begin.

The terms Marilyn had won were considerable. MCA had held onto the $100,000 per picture fee Feldman negotiated. Under the new contract, however, instead of owing the studio fourteen films in seven years, Marilyn would be required to do only four. In addition, Marilyn had the right to make outside pictures. When the board approved that, Marilyn Monroe Productions finally became possible. But the most important part of the contract, as far as Marilyn was concerned, was not even mentioned in Skouras’s presentation. Marilyn had the right to approve the director on all of her films at Twentieth, and the right to select her cameraman on two. That was precisely the sign of respect she believed she had earned, and that Zanuck had persisted in denying her.

For Marilyn, the battle had never been about money. It had been about dignity. It had been about being taken seriously. It had been about getting credit for her own achievements. In the end, Marilyn had accomplished something that few people in Hollywood had expected her to do. She had brought Darryl Zanuck to his knees.

On December 31, 1955, the new contract was signed. That night, as Marilyn sipped champagne, she had something truly remarkable to celebrate. She had won revenge for the terrible insult a year and a half previously, when Twentieth refused the contract terms she knew she had earned. Had the studio given Marilyn what she wanted then, all they would have had to concede were a few tokens of creative control. As it turned out, Zanuck’s stubbornness had resulted in a contract that gave Marilyn much, much more than she had originally asked for.

On January 4, 1956, the
New York Morning Telegraph
made the first public announcement of Marilyn’s breathtaking victory—and Twentieth’s humiliation. The next day, other newspapers chimed in. “BATTLE WITH STUDIO WON BY MARILYN” and “ACTRESS WINS ALL DEMANDS,” the headlines declared. Exactly one year before, these same newspapers had called Marilyn “stupid” and “foolish”
for insisting on contract provisions far less advantageous than those she had just negotiated.

In the middle of all this, Marilyn received a cable from Rattigan. Huston, blaming Rattigan for a “double-cross,” had withdrawn from the project in disgust. The rights to
The Sleeping Prince
were Marilyn’s. Better yet, Olivier wanted to do the picture with her. A private screening of
The Seven Year Itch
had only made him more eager to come to New York to meet her personally.

On February 5, Olivier, Rattigan, and Olivier’s manager, Cecil Tennant, flew into New York. Not long afterward, in a heavy rain, the trio arrived at the building on Sutton Place South where Milton Greene had an apartment. Greene had run short of cash and when Marilyn’s Waldorf Towers sublet ended, he had installed her in his own riverside apartment until some money began to come in from Twentieth. When Greene needed to stay in town, he slept at his photography studio.

By this time, Marilyn not only wanted Olivier to co-star in her first independent production; she hoped he would direct as well. Olivier’s most recent film,
Richard III
, acclaimed in England, was about to be released in America. Kenneth Tynan had recently called Olivier “the greatest actor alive.” So Marilyn had set her sights as high as possible. Yet now that Olivier had finally arrived for their first meeting, she was terror-stricken. As Milton Greene served the guests drinks and entertained them in the living room, Marilyn hid in the bedroom. For more than two hours, Olivier’s commanding tenor filled the three small rooms of the apartment. The guests were becoming tipsy, yet there was still no sign of Marilyn. Finally, Olivier took matters in hand. He went to the bedroom door and called to her, begging her to come out and end the suspense. The door inched open and Olivier and Monroe—the Knight and the Garter, as they came to be known—glimpsed each other for the first time in six years.

Did Olivier remember their previous encounter? Marilyn certainly did. It was August 1950, and Johnny Hyde had taken her to Danny Kaye’s party to welcome Vivien Leigh to Hollywood for
A Streetcar Named Desire.
Vivien, radiant in an olive-green dress, had been Kazan’s dinner partner; they had come out on the train together from New York. Olivier had arrived soon afterward to film
Carrie
with William Wyler, and the couple were borrowing Charlie Feldman’s house for three months. At
the dinner, Larry and Vivien charmed everyone with a joint speech in verse. But there was trouble below the surface.

Olivier, for his part, was ambivalent about Kazan. When Olivier directed his wife in
A Streetcar Named Desire
in London in 1949, he had been overwhelmed by the precedent of Kazan’s sensational staging on Broadway. Again and again he found himself peeking at Kazan’s prompt book. He had written to Tennessee Williams that he didn’t like finding himself in the position of merely reheating someone else’s dish. He told the American producer Irene Selznick, in London to look out for the playwright’s interests, that he felt “like just a stage manager.” Determined not to echo Kazan, Olivier ignored stage directions and cut the text mercilessly. He blamed his own pride, and justified himself to Williams by warning him that without new readings a play cannot live. He was intent on reshaping
A Streetcar Named Desire
in his own image, and was determined to control his wife’s interpretation of Blanche Dubois.