Marilyn Monroe (53 page)

By way of explanation for why he was approaching Huston through Taylor, Miller alluded to the bad feeling over Huston’s having failed to be hired to direct
The Sleeping Prince
in 1955. The implication
was that Marilyn would have liked to contact Huston herself about
The Misfits
, but that she was too nervous and frightened. Even as Miller seemed to distance himself from her girlish silliness, he made it clear that Marilyn was attached to the project.

Huston was then in Paris finishing
The Roots of Heaven.
He had recently hired Jean-Paul Sartre to write a script on the life of Sigmund Freud. Fascinated by Marilyn Monroe (had he sensed her presence in
The Crucible
when adapting it for the screen?), Sartre very much wanted her to play the female lead in
Freud.
Huston wrote to Miller that he was delighted to be offered
The Misfits.
He promised to read it and get back to him right away. Meanwhile, Huston asked him to reassure Marilyn and to give her his love. Huston, of course, was well acquainted with Marilyn, having directed her in
The Asphalt Jungle
in 1950 when she was Johnny Hyde’s protégée. Though
The Asphalt Jungle
was not her first film, Howard Hawks credited Huston with having discovered Marilyn.

As promised, Huston wasted no time in getting back to Miller. Yes, he very much wanted to do the picture. He would come to America in a few months to meet Miller. Characteristically ebullient, Huston declared the script perfect. He said he would not presume to make any suggestions. At this point, Huston gave no clue of his intention to require a complete overhaul. He would have assumed that as a working professional Miller was sincerely prepared to rewrite extensively. Huston expected film scripts to need revision.

A gifted writer himself, Huston was famous for his ability to work with screenwriters. If Miller was having trouble writing for the cinema, Huston would cheerfully tutor him. Flaws in a first draft did not bother Huston. So long as he was drawn to the material, problems could be ironed out later. Huston loved the idea of making a picture about the hunt for the last of the mustangs up in the Nevada mountains. Curiously, the subject matter seemed closer to the sort of thing Huston tended to do than Miller. And Huston loved the idea of collaborating with the author of
Death of a Salesman.
Miller, unaccustomed to Hollywood hyperbole, was mistaken if he believed Huston really thought the script was already perfect. He would discover the director’s real plans soon enough.

On August 7, the local workmen who were renovating the Roxbury farmhouse surprised Miller with a case of beer and a bottle of whisky to celebrate the news from Washington. Miller’s contempt
conviction had finally been overturned. He proceeded to get drunk in the company of the mason, the back hoe operator, the steamfitter, and the carpenters. Spyros Skouras wasted no time dictating a letter warmly congratulating Miller. Insisting he was delighted with the outcome, Skouras commended Miller on his courage and perseverance. Three years after he had implied that Marilyn’s career would be destroyed if her husband declined to name names, he conceded that his advice had been wrong. Skouras prided himself on having what he called a “jungle instinct” for survival. More than any public event, perhaps, Skouras’s gesture to Miller quietly marked the end of HUAC’s power and influence.

Marilyn, at the Bel Air Hotel, called Arthur as soon as she heard about the decision. They talked for over half an hour. Afterward, Marilyn celebrated alone with a bottle of champagne. Reporters caught up with her in her dressing room at the Samuel Goldwyn studio.

“Neither I nor my husband ever had any doubt about the outcome of the case,” said Marilyn as she shifted poses for photographers. She wore a flimsy, beige chemise dress and strummed a white ukelele. When Marilyn disclosed that she had talked to Arthur on the phone, one newsman asked whether Miller planned to join her in Hollywood.

“He said he would probably be out before the picture ends,” Marilyn replied. “I never know when to expect him. He’s always surprising me. Maybe he’ll even be coming this week.”

The Strasbergs, to be sure, had already arrived. Their rented beach house in Santa Monica was soon filled with certain indispensable books and records transported from Central Park West. Film actors and actresses who had passed through the Actors Studio at one time or another arrived to pay their respects. There was often a group of acolytes at Lee’s feet.

Eleven years previously, Strasberg had been fired as a director of screen tests at Twentieth Century–Fox. He had never actually directed a film. He had left Hollywood a beaten man. Now he returned as counselor to one of the industry’s great stars. In a town where he had once failed miserably, Strasberg’s connection with Marilyn Monroe made him a force to be reckoned with—or so he seemed to think. Paula accompanied Marilyn to Billy Wilder’s set every day. Lee, who had pasty, dark-stubbled skin, sat on the beach staring serenely at the ocean.

When Billy Wilder had first heard that Marilyn Monroe was
studying at the Actors Studio in New York, he was horrified. Wilder would pace back and forth as he talked, slapping his thigh with a riding crop. “Here you have this poor girl and all of a sudden she becomes a famous star,” Wilder declared. “So now these people tell her she has to be a great actress.” He said it was as if the author of “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” suddenly aspired to compose a classical symphony. He predicted that if she took such talk seriously it would be the end of Monroe. Having once warned her to stick to the great character she’d created, Wilder feared that Marilyn would lose her audience, and worse, lose everything that was uniquely her own. He worried that the general public would hate her. He insisted the last thing in the world Marilyn needed was acting lessons. Why would anyone want to spoil a good thing?

Once Wilder was reunited with Marilyn for
Some Like It Hot
, he freely admitted he had been wrong. To his astonishment, Marilyn, under Strasberg’s tutelage, had indeed become a stronger actress. She was deeper. She had a better grasp of what she was doing. But in Marilyn’s new, intense self-consciousness, Wilder perceived a potential problem. “Before she was like a tightrope walker who doesn’t know there’s a pit below she can fall into,” Wilder said. “Now she knows.”

Paula, clutching a huge black silk umbrella, accompanied Marilyn to the MGM back lot on the first day of filming. It was Monday, August 4. Wilder was to shoot the train sequence in which Marilyn makes her entrance at the station.

“Relax, relax,” Paula whispered in Marilyn’s ear.

Marilyn closed her eyes. She appeared to slip into a trance. She threw her neck forward and let her arms dangle. She violently flicked her fingers up and down. She flapped her arms and rotated her head, reminding Jack Lemmon of a chicken on a block. Marilyn, in her fury, seemed almost to be trying to detach her hands from her wrists. One might have thought she was having a fit. In fact, she was performing Paula’s relaxation exercise.

During the rehearsal, Paula watched from the sidelines. She said not a word. But according to Tony Curtis, Paula somehow communicated the message, “I am King Shit here.” Not for long.

As was Marilyn’s custom, after the rehearsal she glanced over at Paula, as though the director didn’t matter or exist. For Laurence Olivier,
Paula’s presence had been psychologically loaded. Olivier went
mano a mano
with Paula, but he had been wrestling with ghosts. Billy Wilder didn’t have that problem. He seemed to regard Paula as nothing more than an annoyance. After all, he had endured Natasha Lytess on
The Seven Year Itch.

Wilder was famous for his corrosive wit. He was said to have a brain “full of Gillette blue blades.” He was known to have a cruel, nasty, sour cast of mind. He actually seemed to prefer to be hated. He waited for precisely the right moment to establish who was going to be King Shit on this set.

Wilder got what he needed in a single take.

“Cut!” cried the director.

Marilyn turned to Paula, and Wilder rose from his director’s chair. “How was that for you, Paula?” he inquired. His voice could be heard throughout the set.

The effect was devastating. Laurence Olivier, in the identical situation, had often worked himself into a lather, to no avail. With Billy Wilder, six words and a deadpan delivery were all it took. He had instantly punctured any authority Paula might have hoped to exert.

At the same time, Wilder, an artist at the peak of his powers, gave every sign of planning to treat Marilyn with dignity and respect. He made his intentions clear the following day as they all watched the rushes together. Wilder was delighted by what he saw on screen. Marilyn was not. She believed her entrance in the picture should have been sharper, funnier. Wilder listened carefully, but it wasn’t a matter of courtesy. He sincerely admired Marilyn’s comic sense. In this particular instance, he treated Marilyn as someone who knew what she was talking about. Wilder and his co-writer, Iz Diamond, rewrote in the light of Marilyn’s criticism.

One might have expected things to go well from then on. Wilder had adroitly established his authority, as Olivier had never managed to do. More importantly, he had displayed an eagerness to have Marilyn’s creative input, as Olivier had never deigned to do. Marilyn had once longed for a time when her opinions would be taken seriously by a director of Wilder’s caliber. Unfortunately, however, the moment may have come too late. She seemed not to notice that Wilder was genuinely
interested in what she had to say. Perhaps she just didn’t care anymore. In any case, she continued to regard Wilder as an adversary.

It soon became evident that she was up to her old tricks, only worse. She came to work late. Indeed, she seemed to have lost all sense of time. She hadn’t learned her lines. Her tendency to botch the simplest dialogue irritated the other actors. As Jack Lemmon noted, sometimes Marilyn required forty takes; sometimes she needed only one.

“Billy, how many fuckin’ takes are we gonna do?” Tony Curtis inquired on one occasion.

“When Marilyn gets it right, that’s the take I’m going to use,” Wilder replied.

More often than not, Marilyn appeared to be tipsy. And it did not take long to see why. No sooner did the director yell “Cut!” than Marilyn shouted “Coffee!” The choreography hardly varied. An assistant would materialize with a red thermos. Marilyn, pretending it really was coffee, sipped vermouth all day.

If Marilyn often snarled at the director, there were times when she seemed even angrier at her husband. Her behavior toward Miller was wildly contradictory. One moment she was lamenting on the phone to Norman Rosten that Arthur was no longer eager to have a baby with her. The next, she was setting Miller up to be savaged by one of his literary idols.

John Huston had praised
The Misfits
, and Marilyn seemed intent on knocking Arthur off his high horse. What better way to accomplish that than to press a copy of the screenplay on Clifford Odets? Odets, the author of
Waiting for Lefty
and
Golden Boy
, wasn’t simply a friend like Norman Rosten. He was a playwright Miller revered. In Odets, Marilyn had managed to find someone whose opinion would conceivably outweigh Huston’s.

As it happened, Odets had no interest in Arthur’s script, his real reason for hooking up with Marilyn being—what else?—to attach her to a screenplay of his own. It was called
The Story on Page One
and Odets also hoped to direct. He agreed to read
The Misfits
while Marilyn was on location in Coronado. They made a date to have dinner after she returned to Los Angeles.

On September 11, Marilyn, hands trembling, wrote a frantic letter to the Rostens. She compared herself and the production to a sinking
ship. She implored Norman and Hedda not to give up on her. At the top of the Hotel de Coronado stationery was a picture of the oceanfront resort. Marilyn drew a stick figure in the water. The figure, clearly meant to represent herself, was shouting “help.”

The following evening, Marilyn called Connecticut, pouring out her upset to Arthur. Sometime that night, she swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. Precisely as Natasha had once done, Paula found her in time. Had Marilyn expected to be discovered? She may not have known the answer herself. She spent the weekend in the hospital. Miller, putting aside
After the Fall
, rushed to California. Was that precisely what she had hoped to achieve? As Marilyn later told Norman Rosten, she needed something to hold onto.

That week, visitors at Coronado were treated to a curious sight. Billy Wilder had been permitted to rope off a small patch of the beach for the actors and the film crew. Marilyn, wearing a 1920s-style bathing suit, repeatedly blew her lines. Paula Strasberg, who wore a tent-sized, hooded black robe, threw a short, white terrycloth robe over Marilyn’s shoulders with one hand, with the other gripping a black umbrella to shield Marilyn from the sun. But Paula was no longer alone in comforting Marilyn between takes. Arthur Miller also danced attendance. Marilyn, the center of attention, resembled a cosseted child.

Things improved drastically once Miller was present. He did everything to lift Marilyn’s spirits. In the beginning, she appeared to respond. Once again, Marilyn gazed at him adoringly. Once again, she addressed him as Papa. Once again, she looked to him for protection. The tensions of recent months, particularly those generated by
The Misfits
, evaporated. Not long after Arthur joined her in California, Marilyn became pregnant.

Back in Los Angeles, Arthur moved in with Marilyn at the Bel Air Hotel. Visiting the Strasbergs in Santa Monica, she actually seemed happy. On the night she was to dine with Clifford Odets, Marilyn, insisting she was tired, sent Arthur alone. At that moment, she was in no mood to drag her husband over the coals.

Her contentment, however, was short-lived. Very soon, the old fears and suspicions beset her. Part of the problem seemed to be finding herself with Arthur in the company of so many people who, as the expression goes, knew her when. This, after all, was the first time Arthur
had tarried with Marilyn on a Hollywood film set; during
Bus Stop
, his visits by and large had been confined to a few stolen weekends at the Chateau Marmont. At least three men connected with
Some Like It Hot
had been to bed with Marilyn in years past. She had spent a night with Tony Curtis in 1949 or 1950. She had had a fling with Edward G. Robinson, Jr., in the early fifties. She had had sex with the entertainment journalist James Bacon in 1949 while she was living in the guest cottage on Joe Schenck’s estate. Wherever Arthur turned, he might see one of Marilyn’s former lovers.