Marilyn Monroe (60 page)

The sixty-year-old Cukor, however, was not an easy-going person, even in the best of circumstances—and this was hardly the best. Highly-strung and nervous, he fought a lifetime battle with his weight, alternating between diets—controlling his appetite with diet pills which only sharpened his already fierce temper—and episodes of bingeing on food. At the moment, he was in a diet phase. Thus, he could not comfort himself by eating during the seemingly endless hours he had to wait for Marilyn on the set. Instead, he developed a most peculiar alternative: he would stifle his rage by tearing bits of paper off the script, stuffing them into his mouth. It was as though he could silence himself that way, keep himself from exploding at Marilyn when she arrived. Cukor, pacing back and forth, would chew pieces of the script until finally, Tony Randall said, “his mouth was white with paper.” Upon seeing Marilyn, Cukor would swallow the paper in a great gulp before greeting her with a burst of effusive delight.

It was evident to everyone that Marilyn was deeply depressed. Tony Randall, also in the picture, studied her one night in the rushes. “Her eyes would be kind of dull,” he said. “On the word ’Action!’ her face would light up and the eyes got bright and she did the scene. With the word ’Cut!’ she drooped in the most desperate depression.” Watching Marilyn, her head down on her chest, Randall was reminded of a deflated tire. “You saw the real Marilyn there,” he recalled, “how unhappy she was with herself.”

Randall observed something similar when they all left after the rushes. “She got in her car,” he remembered, “and she slumped all the way down in the back seat so that she was almost out of sight. It was just such self-loathing, such disappointment in oneself. It was pitiful.”

Arthur remained in Los Angeles with Marilyn for only a few days. After he had attended to some
Misfits-
related business, he returned to New York to try to finish his screenplay. That April of 1960, as he had done nine years before, Miller left Marilyn alone in Los Angeles with his friend. This time, Marilyn remained behind not with Kazan but with Yves Montand. In 1951, Marilyn had reacted to Arthur’s departure with a certain sadness. This time, she reacted with anger. For months, Marilyn had given Arthur every possible signal that she was distraught, yet
The Misfits
remained his priority. Nothing she did cracked his self-absorption. The man who had once written, “Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person,” should have known that Marilyn would keep trying to get his attention in whatever way she could.

Marilyn stayed home from work with a fever. At the end of the day, Montand ran into Paula. Had she been sent there to intercept him? Paula urged Montand to visit Marilyn. She said Marilyn was distressed about having called in sick. She insisted a visit would make her feel better.

Marilyn greeted him in bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress, made small talk, and stroked her hand. Then, he said, he really had to go home to prepare for tomorrow. He planted a goodnight kiss on her cheek. She moved slightly. Their lips met. He felt a pang of guilt. And matters proceeded from there. Marilyn had seduced John Proctor. The following night she came to his bungalow. When she took off her mink coat, she was naked.

That Marilyn may also have been feeling guilty is suggested by the fact that during the first week of her affair, she made prolonged lunchtime visits to Dr. Greenson. His Beverly Hills office was a few minutes from the studio. After these sessions, either she did not return to work at all or she locked herself in her dressing room for an hour before assistants were permitted to do her hair and makeup. She had a lot to think about. Greenson told Marilyn that he would not help her to spite her husband.

But was it mere spite that motivated her? Or was Marilyn testing
Arthur? By this time, she had tried almost everything to provoke him. One thinks of that night at the Strasberg apartment when Marilyn was abusive all evening, then asked why Arthur hadn’t slapped her. If sleeping with his friend didn’t do the trick, what would? Marilyn’s affair with the actor who had played John Proctor was not just an on-the-set fling; it was a calculated gesture on her part. She later told Kazan that she resented what she saw as Arthur’s tendency to cast himself as morally superior to her and others. The author of
The Crucible
may have been a master of self-justification, but Marilyn did not plan to let him get away with it this time. She was not about to let Arthur tell himself that
The Misfits
was a gift for her. If he went ahead with his film after Marilyn’s betrayal, Miller would have to face the fact that, in his wife’s eyes at least, he was a user like all the rest. In challenging Arthur to proceed with
The Misfits
, Marilyn brutally assaulted his core sense of himself. She attacked his posture of moral superiority. She cried out that he was no better than she. For Marilyn, this wasn’t about Yves Montand at all; it was about Arthur Miller.

Arthur, in New York, clearly had no idea of what was going on. Perhaps he refused to know. He knew only that Marilyn appeared to be in excellent spirits. He did not seem suspicious about why his wife, who had barely managed to drag herself through the film, was suddenly so pleased. As though he had blinders on, he attributed the change not to Montand but to Cukor. On April 30, he wrote to thank Cukor for all he had done for Marilyn. He was effusive. He said he had never known Marilyn to be so happy in her work or so full of hope. He commended the director for his patience and for his skill. He guessed that by now Cukor understood why Marilyn was so precious to him. He explained that he still had work to do in the east but didn’t know how much longer he could bear to live as a bachelor. Miller’s letter must have made interesting reading for Cukor, who had been among the first to know about the affair.

Perhaps it was her husband’s very lack of suspiciousness that caused Marilyn to flaunt the relationship. Dr. Greenson’s departure for ten days of lectures in Detroit and Atlantic City seemed to liberate her. In Montand’s bungalow one morning, she permitted herself to be seen by a room-service waiter, and soon people were talking all over town.

A little over a week after he had written to Cukor, Arthur appeared in Los Angeles. By then he may have been the last person to
find out. Even when he did discover that his wife had been sleeping with her co-star, he proceeded with his plans. He suppressed his anger. Yet at least one old friend discerned the feeling in Miller’s voice, the hurt in his face.

Elia Kazan, at work on
Splendor in the Grass
, had heard all about Marilyn’s affair. He was struck by the flagrancy of her actions. From the first, Kazan had believed that Marilyn was not the sort of girl one married. He wondered whether Miller, in his view an innocent, would be able to handle the punishment. He contacted Miller and suggested they meet. Nothing could be more ironic than the fact that it was Kazan who felt called on to comfort Miller. Nine years before, Kazan, like Montand, had carried on an affair with Marilyn when his friend Miller returned to New York.

Kazan and Miller, at their first meeting after seven years, had refrained from talk of HUAC. This time, they avoided mention of Marilyn. Yet that painful topic formed the subtext of the encounter. Kazan regarded Miller’s restraint as manful. Much had changed in the five months since Miller’s call to Kazan on location, when Miller had looked like a winner again; five months later, he was a cuckold and many people in Hollywood knew it. Kazan reached out, and Miller appeared to welcome his sympathy and interest.

When Arthur returned to the east, Marilyn was seen everywhere with Montand. They attended a screening of Billy Wilder’s
The Apartment.
She took him to a party at Romanoff’s. When Tennessee Williams brought his mother to Cukor’s set to say hello to Marilyn and invite her to lunch, Marilyn left no doubt in his mind that she was having an affair. She appeared increasingly shrill and desperate. At times, the burly Montand actually seemed afraid of her. He, like everyone else on
Let’s Make Love
, had abundant evidence that Marilyn was unstable. He did not want to offend her, but he didn’t want matters to get out of hand either. This was his first Hollywood film, and he didn’t want to ruin his chance.

Cheryl Crawford, who hoped to cast Montand in a Broadway musical, took him and Marilyn to a party at David Selznick’s house. The evening was a disaster. Simone Signoret had endeared herself to Hollywood. Montand was winning no popularity contests for having betrayed her. Late in the evening, Marilyn overheard Greg Bautzer,
Howard Hughes’s lawyer, in conversation. Bautzer, massive and powerful, was a rough number, always prepared for a tussle. He remembered Marilyn from the days when she was on call at Uncle Joe’s. In his deep, booming voice, Bautzer announced that Joe Schenck was near death. Aged eighty-one, he had had a heart attack and later slipped into a coma. Marilyn went wild, screaming that it couldn’t be true. She knew she would have been called. She insisted she had to see Uncle Joe immediately. Bautzer responded angrily, contemptuously. He reminded her of who she was. He told her to save her tears. He berated her for having failed to visit when Schenck might actually have enjoyed seeing her.

Montand could not understand why Bautzer addressed her so disrespectfully. Marilyn knew only too well. It was her first taste of what life was going to be like now that she had discarded the protective shield of being Mrs. Arthur Miller. In the beginning, she had been drawn to Miller precisely because he was capable of absolving her of all she was ashamed of in her past. Now, as Johnny Hyde would have said, she was right back on her ass with all the other girls. And she had done it herself.

Meanwhile, Marilyn had not heard Montand declare he wanted to leave. Montand liked to say that having been born poor, he always had his eye on the emergency exit. He took Marilyn’s car. When she found out he was gone, she drunkenly ran down the hill in pursuit. She disappeared into the darkness, insisting at the top of her lungs that she would catch up.

The affair had started as a way of testing Arthur, but now it became something else. Marilyn, having seen for herself what life was going to be like without Miller, looked to Montand as her new protector. She decided he must divorce Signoret and marry her. Montand intended to do no such thing. His worst fears were realized; the situation was flying out of control. A minute ago Marilyn had been livid that Miller was using her; now she was intent on proving how useful she could be to Montand.

Marilyn seized on Montand’s desire to have Frank Sinatra make an appearance in their film. Twentieth was ready to go with Bing Crosby, but Marilyn insisted she could get Sinatra. For more than ten days, making that happen became her obsession. She swore everyone to secrecy. Jerry Wald joked that there was more “hush-hush” about the operation than about the U-2 flying over the Soviet Union. But the jokes soon fell flat. Marilyn’s efforts became embarrassing.

She hounded Sinatra, calling him repeatedly in Honolulu. Obviously, he did not want to be in the film. She pleaded with him to say yes. She promised to do something for him in exchange. She would not take no for an answer. She begged Wald for more time. Finally, on a Friday afternoon, Wald told Marilyn that a decision had to be made. He gave her until next week. If she could not get a firm commitment, he planned to call Bing Crosby. Marilyn, who had a reputation as “a phone person,” spent the better part of the weekend dialing Sinatra. On Monday, she charged onto the studio lot with the news that Frank had changed his mind. Asked exactly when Sinatra planned to come in, Marilyn couldn’t say.

She demanded a telephone. In moments she had Sinatra on the line. For all to hear, she said that Jerry Wald wanted him to send a cable to George Cukor. She said Jerry was nervous he’d back out. She listened a moment, then hung up. Triumphantly she announced that Frank had agreed. He would contact Cukor immediately.

An hour and a half later, Wald and Cukor met privately. Wald doubted Sinatra would be in touch, guessing he had said yes in order to get Marilyn off the phone. At length, Wald was proven correct. There was no confirmation from Sinatra. Everybody was worried about how Marilyn would react, but in the end she watched silently as Montand did the scene with Bing Crosby. She actually seemed pleased, as though this were what she had wanted all along. But she was probably putting on an act so that Montand would not see her defeat.

Jerry Wald spoke ruefully of their all trying to inch their way to the finish of the picture. The pace was so agonizingly slow, Cukor said he felt as though he were being photographed in slow motion. He kept telling himself the production could not go on forever. Jack Cole, though hired at Marilyn’s behest, finally exploded at his old friend.

They had been filming a scene in which she was required merely to watch Montand. Marilyn demanded that Cole give her something to do.

“Do you want me to give you something to do?” he shot back.

“Yes.”

“Then stick a finger up your ass. I think that’s quite within the realm of your technical facilities.”

He walked off, leaving Marilyn in tears. Cole later apologized, but
the incident suggests the degree to which everyone’s patience had worn thin.

By now, Twentieth had almost no hope that
Let’s Make Love
would be a success. This was no
Bus Stop
or
Some Like It Hot.
Montand was hard to understand. Marilyn looked awful. The film would have to be publicity-driven. As in the early days of her career, a bad picture would have to be sold with a vivid personal story. But this time it wouldn’t be Marilyn who adroitly played the press. At the moment, she was in no condition to do that. This time it was Twentieth who tipped off Hedda Hopper and other columnists about Marilyn’s affair. Darryl Zanuck had once feared the nude calendar story would destroy Marilyn. Now the studio seemed to think only a scandal might help.

The co-stars had shot their final scene together on Thursday, June 16. Montand filmed without Marilyn on Friday. His only remaining work was a considerable amount of dubbing, which, to Cukor’s amusement, he called “dumbing.” Montand spent a last, tense weekend with Marilyn. As always, he had his eye on the emergency exit. Marilyn seemed to panic as the end grew near. Montand’s priority had ceased to be humoring her in order to complete the picture. He just wanted to return to his wife. He feared Marilyn would make a scene in the press. There was no telling what she might do.