Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (41 page)

As she may well have expected, Marilyn had no competition for attention as she glided into the hotel’s Crystal Room that evening, wearing the skintight gold dress “that looked as if it had been painted on,” as columnist Florabel Muir reported next day.

With one little twist of her derriere, Marilyn Monroe stole the show. . . . The assembled guests broke into wild applause, [while] two other screen stars, Joan Crawford and Lana Turner, got only casual attention. After Marilyn every other girl appeared dull by contrast.

With that, the formidable Joan Crawford swung into action. A star since the year of Marilyn’s birth, she met her potential rival with no sporting good cheer. To the contrary, she summoned the press and publicly denounced Marilyn’s “burlesque show,” advising that “the public likes provocative feminine personalities, but it also likes to know that underneath it all the actresses are ladies.” And then, with almost religious solemnity, Crawford added: “Kids don’t like [Marilyn] . . . because they don’t like to see sex exploited. And don’t forget the women. They won’t pick [a movie] for the family that won’t be suitable for their husbands and children.”

Obviously, the forty-nine-year-old star was relying on Hollywood’s (and the country’s) short memory, for as Billie Cassin and then as the young Joan Crawford she had literally jumped to fame by dancing the Charleston nude on speakeasy tabletops, and then by appearing in a number of blue movies. Nor would she have been pleased, that February
night, to be reminded of a statement she made in her wild twenties: “One thing that makes for healthy American girls is a small quantity of clothing.”

But not for Marilyn the pithy rebuttal or the handy reference to Crawford’s past. Just as when she had been denounced because of her busty appearance next to America’s sedate servicewomen, she quietly disarmed the enemy: “The thing that hit me hardest about Miss Crawford’s remarks,” she told Louella Parsons and the nation, “is that I’ve always admired her for being such a wonderful mother—for taking four children and giving them a fine home. Who better than I knows what that means to homeless little ones?” It is unlikely that Marilyn knew of Crawford’s way of mothering—an appalling severity later detailed in a book by one of the unfortunates she adopted. But never mind: Marilyn the waif, with a canny appeal to her own benighted past, conquered once again.

In 1953, perhaps only in America could the matter of a young woman’s dress become front-page news—a sudden Southern California storm in an otherwise temperate climate. But moral support was forthcoming. “Marilyn’s the biggest thing that’s happened to Hollywood in years,” said Betty Grable, who had been Fox’s great audience draw during the previous decade. “The movies were just sort of going along, and all of a sudden—zowie!—there was Marilyn. She’s a shot in the arm for Hollywood!”

So much was true, and Grable was personally friendly toward Marilyn. But in fact the studio publicity department wrote those words just as the two blondes, with the brunette Lauren Bacall, began work on
How To Marry a Millionaire
in March. An expensive Technicolor comedy, it was designed as Fox’s attempt to make CinemaScope as effective for intimate films as for their biblical epic
The Robe
. The new wide-screen process and Marilyn Monroe: these were Fox’s two major defenses against the increasing defection of audiences to television. Just as with Technicolor, stereophonic sound, 3-D, Cinerama (and even a mercifully short-lived contraption alternately called Smell-O-Vision and AromaRama), studios tried to provide by gimmickry what was often lacking in strong adult stories with coherent narrative construction.

The result of this rush to draw audiences also meant that roles
could be specifically written (more often, simply sketched) for popular stars. The clever writer and producer Nunnally Johnson had already provided Marilyn and Fox with her episode in
We’re Not Married;
now he was ready to oblige both by presenting her, Grable and Bacall in what was essentially a fashion show. The title
How To Marry a Millionaire
summarized its plot, which was based on two plays about three gold diggers who pool their resources, rent a Manhattan penthouse and set about capturing rich husbands.

Although for her sleeping scene she caused a stir (as she had during
Niagara
) by wearing nothing underneath the sheets, she was as usual paradoxically terrified to step clothed before the camera. When she was finally able, however, an intensity occurred—“a love affair nobody around her was aware of,” according to her director, Jean Negulesco. “It was a language of looks, a forbidden intimacy. . . . The lenses were the audience.” And they responded by the hundreds of thousands. Before the summer, Marilyn was receiving more than twenty-five thousand fan letters weekly and
Redbook
, following
Photoplay
, bestowed on Marilyn yet another award—“Best Young Box Office Personality.” All this notoriety and the unimaginable fame did not, however, turn her head; she affected no airs, demanded no privileges. She remained herself; as she had said, it all seemed to be happening to someone else.

Never had Natasha been less necessary to Marilyn’s performance than in
How To Marry a Millionaire
, but the actress seemed “under the spell of her dramatic coach,” as Nunnally Johnson recalled. “By this time,” added Marilyn’s co-star Alex D’Arcy, “Natasha was really advising her badly, justifying her own presence on the set by requiring take after take and simply feeding on Marilyn’s insecurity. ‘Well, that was all right, dear,’ she often said to Marilyn, ‘but maybe we should do it one more time.’ ”

The standard maneuver ensued during shooting that spring. First, Marilyn demanded retakes of every shot until she saw the nod of approbation from Natasha, who was at last banished by the exasperated producer and director on April 13. Then, claiming an attack of bronchitis, Marilyn failed to appear for work next day. Finally, Natasha was reinstated—and at a higher salary. “Monroe cannot do a picture without [Lytess],” agent Charles Feldman wrote in a memo to his staff after
visiting the film set. “The coach threatens to quit unless she is compensated in a substantial manner.”

But also typically, this capitulation was well rewarded. As the myopic Pola, Marilyn had the least onscreen time of the pretty trio, yet she gave a comic performance worthy of Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin, crashing hilariously into doors and walls when not wearing her eyeglasses.
¹
The camera also captured brief moments of real sweetness, for Pola (very like Marilyn herself, as Johnson doubtless intended) was an insecure young woman, fearful of rejection and dependent on the kindness of friends.

Marilyn’s droll rendering of nearsighted Pola was her first important comic role, and with it she joined a short list of women who successfully combined humor and sexual allure: Mabel Normand, Clara Bow, Marion Davies, Colleen Moore and Jean Harlow comprised nearly the entire pre-Monroe list; Carole Lombard and Lucille Ball were highly attractive women, to be sure, but their films stressed lightning comic antics rather than sexiness. On the contrary, most comediennes were defiantly plain—those like Louise Fazenda, Marie Dressler and Fanny Brice. With the success of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and
How To Marry a Millionaire
, Marilyn conjoined a carefully planned comic timing to the appealing accidents provided by nature. With these films, too, she learned how much could be communicated by adopting Jean Harlow’s trademark humming of the simple sound “Mmmmm” to suggest just about anything, and her ability to stand quite still and overwhelm the presence of every other moving actor in a scene.

Some of the nuances in her performance may well have derived from additional acting classes she attended that spring, at the Turnabout Theater: Michael Chekhov introduced her to the famous mime Lotte Goslar, who trained actors in certain aspects of subtle movement
and body language. During the production of
How To Marry a Millionaire
, Marilyn attended group sessions with Goslar. Her shyness, however, precluded her engaging in exercises with classmates or improvising with them more than once or twice, and so she attended only infrequently.

Despite Marilyn’s idiosyncrasies, even Lauren Bacall, no cheerful martyr to the tardiness of fellow players, had to admit that there was “no meanness in her—no bitchery. I liked her. She said that what she really wanted was to be in San Francisco with Joe DiMaggio in some spaghetti joint.” Marilyn also endeared herself to Betty Grable, who had been passed over for the role of Lorelei Lee. When Grable’s daughter was hurt while horseback riding, Marilyn telephoned frequently, offering help and comfort—“and she was the only person to call,” according to Grable. (“Honey,” she said warmly to Marilyn one day during production, “I’ve had mine—now go get yours.”)

Similarly, Alex D’Arcy recalled trying to calm Marilyn’s fears of inadequacy by inviting her to dine out one evening and praising her acute comic timing. “I looked into those famous liquid eyes,” he recalled, “and saw only a little scared child. I had to avert my gaze to hide the twinge of pity I felt.” Try though they might, the Hollywood press could not find tidbits concerning uncollegial hostility during the production of either
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
or
How To Marry a Millionaire
.

The “little scared child” was lonely when Joe traveled on business for much of that spring. DiMaggio’s paternalistic criticisms had become as familiar as his slightly condescending protectiveness, and his absence seemed to summon the abandonment she had felt earlier—in her childhood and when Jim Dougherty shipped out during the war. Typically, Marilyn turned to her surrogate papa, Sidney Skolsky, for comfort and companionship. She chauffeured him to his appointments when she had no shooting call and accompanied him to the occasional Hollywood wedding (Sheilah Graham’s), to a nightclub opening and to a party for visiting royalty (the King and Queen of Greece, who turned up in Hollywood that autumn).

But Marilyn felt forsaken if separated from Sidney for ten minutes, as happened at a party given by actor Clifton Webb. Desperately, she followed Judy Garland from room to room. “I don’t want to get too far away from you—I’m scared,” Marilyn said—to which the equally
insecure Garland replied, “We’re all scared. I’m scared too.” Marilyn was also tense and selfconscious when Sidney squired her to a sneak preview of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
early that June; displeased with her own image on the screen, she seemed to enjoy only scenes without her.

No such anxiety was evident on June 26, when Monroe and Russell signed their names and placed their hands and feet in wet cement on the forecourt of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard—the same place Gladys and Grace had pointed out the marks of other stars almost two decades earlier. Dressed in matching polka-dotted white summer dresses, the blonde and the brunette joined a long list of movie stars who for thirty years had accepted Sid Grauman’s invitation to this awkward act of movieland exaltation.
²
That evening, Skolsky took the two stars to dinner at Chasen’s restaurant, an autograph hound’s delight where even the normally blasé kitchen staff slipped into the dining room to watch the blonde and the brunette tuck into their steaks and fried potatoes. For an entire week, the day’s events were detailed in word and picture on the pages of every major American newspaper and magazine, which gave them as much coverage as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II that same month and even more than the highly publicized engagement of that glamorous couple, Senator John F. Kennedy and Miss Jacqueline Bouvier.

By early summer, Fox had given Marilyn her next assignment. Following the unjust rejection of her touching, subdued performance in the unpretentious and underrated
Don’t Bother to Knock
, the studio had put her in leading roles against a mighty waterfall (in
Niagara
), on a luxury liner and in a pasteboard Paris (in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
) and in a Manhattan penthouse (in
How To Marry a Millionaire
). It was perhaps inevitable that eventually she would be cast as a saloon singer in a western.

Like the previous Technicolor extravaganzas,
River of No Return
was
full of impressive scenery and special effects; it was also, alas, a bundle of clichés, and neither the splendor of the Canadian Rockies nor Marilyn’s maturing beauty could redeem ninety minutes of celluloid ennui.

The first problem (about which she complained to Fox at once) was the tiresome story of an ex-prisoner cowboy who finds his lost little boy in the care of a mining-camp singer. Deceived by her greedy boyfriend, the trio—Marilyn, beefy Robert Mitchum and winsome little Tommy Rettig—are left amid the glories of nature to battle the perilous rapids of the eponymous river; Indians who are out for any white scalp they can find; a hungry bobcat; and fortune hunters who appear out of nowhere with rifles and threats. After negotiating their route on a flimsy raft along the final stretch of water, they come to town and to a final shootout that will make of them a happy little family.

This was Marilyn Monroe’s twenty-second film and her fifth leading part, but Twentieth Century–Fox still had no idea what to do with her. The truth is that, whatever special qualities she brought to them, any actress could have played her roles: they required little more of her than to pose picturesquely, walk seductively, gaze blankly and sing a few songs that fed male fantasies and confirmed the cherished belief that pretty blondes are both dumb and venal. Object though she did, Marilyn was constrained to abide by her contract, and she fervently devoted herself to music rehearsals. As the performer Kay in
River of No Return
she was required to deliver four songs, which she did with admirable panache—a torch song (“One Silver Dollar”); a bawdy, backroom ballad (“I’m Gonna File My Claim”); a tune to amuse the boy (“Down in the Meadow”); and the title number. Thirty years after her death, this quartet was at last commercially released as part of Marilyn’s complete recordings, too late to have rightly celebrated her as a first-rate vocalist independent of an arid movie but permanent confirmation that she was capable of far more than was asked. As so often, her moments onscreen provide the picture’s only interest.