Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (54 page)

Quite the contrary: she urged him not to end his marriage on her account. For the present, she would be content to have him as occasional lover. This edge of detachment, perhaps predictably, made Arthur Miller all the more ardent a pursuer. But the truth is that he needed as much endorsement as Marilyn, for he was in the first throes of a terrible struggle with right-wing ideologues out to destroy him for being (so they thought) a Communist sympathizer who advocated overthrow of the government, a man whose life’s work, daring to be critical of certain hoary myths about American supremacy, was treasonous. “I had lots to do,” Marilyn told Amy later. “I was preparing for a new stage in my career. But Arthur didn’t have much to look forward to. In a way, I felt sorry for him.” And in a way she may have empathized with his contest for freedom, the right to criticize and the desire for artistic expression without interference from authorities: these were, after all, trademarks of her own relationship with Fox.

Political storms were gathering darkly on the horizon. Miller had a temporary break in his friendship with Kazan, who cooperated with authorities asking the names of those who had once belonged to fashionable left-wing groups interested in things Russian and particularly in the historic and cultural roots of the Russian Revolution; Miller refused to follow Kazan’s lead. Not at all interested in the tricky webs of intrigue, Marilyn was nonetheless sympathetic to his plight, although she also avoided taking sides—Kazan or Miller—and how might Strasberg, that champion of Russian-based acting theories, regard the matter?

Her admiration and support of Kazan remained firm. At the premiere of his new film
East of Eden
on March 9, an event benefiting the Actors Studio, she and Marlon Brando volunteered as ushers. Two weeks later, she and the Greenes attended the premiere of Tennessee Williams’s
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, directed by Kazan. Both works stirred considerable controversy.

Not every event did, however. Opening night of the Ringling Brothers circus at Madison Square Garden, on March 30, was a benefit for the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. Among all the stars who turned out none was more visible or roaringly approved by the eighteen thousand spectators than Marilyn: in a little scenario designed by impresario Mike Todd (with Milton Greene supervising), she made a grand entrance in a tight, sexy outfit of feathers and spangles, riding atop an elephant painted shocking pink. “It meant a lot to me because I’d never been to the circus as a kid,” she told the nation a week later.

The forum for that comment was Marilyn’s interview with Edward R. Murrow, whose television program
Person to Person
offered an apparently casual visit with celebrities. After weeks of preparing for the technical challenges of broadcasting a live show from the Greene home in Connecticut, the interview was at last scheduled for April 8. But as airtime drew near, Marilyn became distraught, believing that her light makeup and simple outfit made her look wan and dowdy alongside petite, dark-haired Amy. When a CBS cameramen tried to calm her, saying she looked fabulous and that millions of Americans would fall in love with her on the spot, Marilyn became very nearly paralyzed with fright: this was unlike a soundstage; there was no rehearsal, no possibility of a retake. But then the producer said quietly to Marilyn, “Just look at the camera, dear. It’s just you and the camera—just you two.” And with that she was reassured and made an admirably unaffected presence.

When Murrow asked the purpose of MMP, Marilyn replied directly that she wished “primarily to contribute to help making good pictures. . . . It’s not that I object to doing musicals and comedies—in fact, I rather enjoy them—but I’d like to do dramatic parts, too.” She also thanked those who had contributed so much to her career, singling out John Huston, Billy Wilder, Natasha Lytess and Michael Chekhov. Marilyn’s appearance at the time was thought unglamorous and awkward, perhaps because she was such a refreshing change from the prevalent artifice: she answered questions briefly and unselfconsciously, never taking the spotlight for herself or jockeying to be the segment’s star.

As for Milton, his time during 1955 was divided between his photographic studio, where he tried to conduct business as usual, and meetings with Irving Stein, Frank Delaney and Joe Carr, his accountant.
MMP desperately needed cash for such basic operating expenses as Marilyn’s hotel and support, as well as “seed money” for whatever project they hoped to realize. To Milton fell the responsibility of finding wealthy patrons, which was a futile endeavor. And so it became all the more necessary to recognize the white truce flag waved toward him by the men at Fox. Throughout 1955, the terms of the new contract between MMP and Fox were painstakingly negotiated.

From early April, with Marilyn’s presence in New York more widely known, she was besieged with requests for appearances. The Arthur P. Jacobs Company, headed by the man of that name, had a public relations staff in New York and Los Angeles and was signed as Marilyn’s publicity consultants. Jacobs and his colleagues on both coasts—John Springer, Lois Weber, Rupert Allan, Patricia Newcomb—constantly sorted through literally hundreds of demands each week for Marilyn’s presence at interviews, benefit appearances, charity appeals and award dinners.

But because Marilyn insisted on her regular hours with Dr. Hohenberg and her private sessions with Strasberg, she strictly limited both her meetings with reporters and the photo sessions necessary to keep her before the public. An exception was made for photographer Eve Arnold, whose images of Marlene Dietrich had so impressed Marilyn. “Imagine what you could do with me!” she told Arnold. Charming photos were taken of her as an autodidact, reading James Joyce’s
Ulysses;
conversely, Arnold presented another aspect of her—in a leopard skin, crawling through muddy marsh grass like a primal, predatory animal.

A week later, Arnold took the contact sheets for approval. Later, she recalled that Marilyn opened the door of her hotel suite wearing nothing but a diaphanous black negligée—even though she was granting an interview to a very proper British lady from a foreign magazine.

The search for identity could be a surprisingly ambiguous adventure, and in a way the closer Marilyn got the harder it was to grasp. Sometimes, she had to dress formally for business and social engagements, and Amy Greene often assisted her in selecting the proper additions to her frugal wardrobe. Shopping with Amy or with Hedda Rosten, Marilyn
wore dark glasses, a scarf or a hat, no makeup—but disguised though she was, she wanted desperately to be recognized. She had, therefore, to take certain measures. As Norman Rosten recalled, Marilyn hired a limousine to take her shopping, drawing the shades to ensure that when she stopped, passersby would know that someone who mattered was about to alight.

Just so, Amy Greene recalled a day of shopping in Fifth Avenue’s department stores. Marilyn began as usual in her incognito mode, completely unrecognized by customers and clerks. But as they went through stores and aisles, Marilyn gradually put aside—piece by piece—the outfit she wore, until finally she tore off her wig and dark glasses, rushed into a dressing room and emerged as Marilyn Monroe, to the astonishment and excitement of everyone at Saks Fifth Avenue. Discarding the camouflage was a twofold gesture: Marilyn wished to remove the disguise, the mask that hid her from her public, and to emerge as herself. But what she then revealed was in fact the manufactured Marilyn about whom she had such ambivalent feelings. Without that, she feared she had no real identity; trying to escape her false persona, she was simultaneously afraid of losing it. Similarly, Susan Strasberg and a friend recalled Marilyn angry and withdrawn when a taxicab driver did not recognize her.

That same season, Stanley Kauffmann was editing a book of Sam Shaw’s photographs of Marilyn during
The Seven Year Itch
. “She wore a sweatshirt and slacks. There was a bit of a belly. The knees were slightly knocked. Her hair looked tired.” But when Kauffmann showed her a photo he wished included, of her looking tired after a long day on the set, Marilyn was adamant in her refusal. “When people look at me, they want to see a star.”
¹

*    *    *

Around this time, Marilyn began to refer to herself in the third person. Susan Strasberg recalled walking with her when she noticed a group of fans awaiting her return at the Waldorf. “Do you want to see me be her?” she asked Susan. Momentarily confused, Susan then saw something remarkable:

She seemed to make some inner adjustment, something “turned on” inside her, and suddenly—there she was—not the simple girl I’d been strolling with, but “Marilyn Monroe,” resplendent, ready for her public. Now heads turned. People crowded around us. She smiled like a kid.

Similarly, Sam Shaw could never forget Marilyn repeatedly speaking of herself in the third person. Referring to a scene in
Itch
or to a photo of herself, she said time and again, “She wouldn’t do this. . . . Marilyn would say that. . . . She was good in this scene.” Truman Capote wrote of finding Marilyn sitting for a long while before a dimly lit mirror. Asked what she was doing, Marilyn replied, “Looking at her.” Eli Wallach, walking with her one evening on Broadway, recalled Marilyn without makeup or distinctive clothes, suddenly stopping traffic and attracting attention. “I just felt like being Marilyn for a minute,” she said, and there was the magnetism. It was as if an image flashed through her mind—a daydream of someone glamorous, remote and almost half-forgotten named Marilyn Monroe—and for a moment she reassumed that image. But she knew that Marilyn Monroe was only a part of herself; thus she could associate with “Marilyn Monroe,” but she rarely identified with her. She had cooperated in the creation of the image and was willing to present what agents, producers, directors and the public wished. Danger, emotional confusion, a crack in relationships: these occurred only when she tried to steer her life’s course entirely by the chart of fame mapped out for Marilyn Monroe, with no reference to the deeper, private self within.

In therapy, she was urged to keep a notebook of random thoughts, or a diary, but this she never did, as she confided to friends. Twice Marilyn purchased marble notebooks but they remained blank, for she did not have the necessary, elementary discipline and she was ashamed of what she considered her atrocious spelling and punctuation. But
occasonally she scrawled notes on scraps of paper. That year, with the evocations suggested by her analysis and then her drama classes, Marilyn’s jottings show the concerns of her inner work:

• “My problem of desperation in my work and life—I must begin to face it continually, making my work routine more continuous and of more importance than my desperation.”

• “Doing a scene is like opening a bottle. If it doesn’t open one way, try another—perhaps even give it up for another bottle? Lee wouldn’t like that. . . .”

• “How or why I can act—and I’m not sure I can—is the thing for me to understand. The torture, let alone the day to day happenings—the pain one cannot explain to another.”

• “How can I sleep? How does this girl fall asleep? What does she think about?”

• “What is there I’m afraid of? Hiding in case of punishment? Libido? Ask Dr. H.”

• “How can I speak naturally onstage? Don’t let the actress worry, let the character worry.”

• “Learn to believe in contradictory impulses.”

More frequently, Marilyn transformed some of her feelings into poems—
rhythms
might be a better word, images of what she felt and feared in her twenty-ninth year.

Night of the Nile
—
soothing
—
darkness
—
refreshes—Air
Seems different—Night has
No eyes nor no one
—
silence
—
except to the Night itself
.

Life—
I am of both your directions
Somehow remaining,
Hanging downward the most
,
Strong as a cobweb in the wind
,
Existing more with the cold frost

than those beaded rays
I’ve seen in paintings
.

“TO THE WEEPING WILLOW”

I stood beneath your limbs
And you flowered and finally
clung to me
,

and when the wind struck with the earth
and sand—you clung to me
.

Thinner than a cobweb I
,

sheerer than any—

but it did attach itself

and held fast in strong winds

life—of which at singular times

I am both of your directions
—

somehow I remain hanging downward the most
,