Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (112 page)

Truman Capote liked to ingratiate himself
with iconic women, including the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was the hottest property in Hollywood, and he wanted to become more intimately involved with her.

He’d heard that 20
^th
Century Fox was considering remaking Marlene Dietrich’s
The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel;
released in 1930
)
, which had made the German actress an international star. Truman informed Fox that he’d like to write the screenplay. On that pretense, he called Marilyn in New York and invited her out to dinner.

Dietrich had a lot of spies, and someone tipped her off that Truman was negotiating with Fox to rewrite
The Blue Angel
as a screen vehicle for Marilyn. Dietrich was horrified, perhaps fearing that Marilyn might interpret the role of Lola Lola better than she had in the late 1920s.

As Dietrich told her friend, critic Leo Lerman, “I decided to sabotage the project before Miss Monroe and Miss Capote got their hands on a property that belonged to me and my legend.”

Shortly before Marilyn was scheduled for her dinner with Truman, Dietrich sought her out, knowing that whatever happened between them would be directly transmitted to the gossipy author.

On January 5, 1955, Marilyn announced she had organized a press conference to launch her newly formed Marilyn Monroe Productions, with herself as president. At the time, “Marilyn’s Svengali,” photographer Milton Greene, was micro-managing her career. He was luring her into classic film properties, perhaps Dostoevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov
, where she’d be cast as Grushenka.

Greene was also a friend of Dietrich’s, and consequently, it was he who arranged a meeting between the
femme fatale
of the 30s and early 40s with the
femme fatale
of the 1950s. “The world’s most glamorous grandmother” allowed herself to be caught on camera standing next to the protruding breasts of the more youthful and more immediately desirable Marilyn.

At the last minute, Truman slipped into the press conference, claiming that he was covering the event for
The New York Times
, which he was not. Surrounded by reporters, he remained inconspicuously in the back of the room as a means of not being spotted by either Dietrich or Marilyn.

La Dietrich
and Truman had never been friends, but they’d become involved in each others’ lives during the Broadway run of
House of Flowers
, when Dietrich was having an affair with the star of his musical, Pearl Bailey.

Dietrich had already informed Greene, “I’d like to take a bite out of Marilyn.”

Dietrich, of course, was part of an expanding group of Hollywood lesbians and bisexuals widely identified by insiders as members of “the Sewing Circle.” They included Greta Garbo and her close friend Salka Viertel, Barbara Stan-wyck, Janet Gaynor, Mary Martin, Kay Francis, Jean Arthur, Agnes Moorehead, and Katharine Hepburn. Author John Baxter once “outed” these women in an article that included a surprising name among the group’s members: the silent screen vamp Gloria Swanson, a very closeted bisexual.

At the time, Truman was clearly aware of Marilyn’s own bisexuality, although such a revelation would have deeply shocked movie-goers during the repressed 1950s. Since then, however, dozens of Marilyn biographies have described her bisexual impulses and involvement, including a sexual tryst with Hollywood’s most notorious bisexual, Joan Crawford.

Marilyn had told Truman that she had long been fascinated with Dietrich’s lore, legend, and image. She’d been particularly impressed with photographer Eve Arnold’s photographs of Dietrich that had run in
Esquire
.

The Berliner had been positioned against a bare soundstage, without her usual outrageous frills and with very little makeup. Based on that example, Marilyn convinced Arnold to photograph her in the same way she’d shot Dietrich.

Consequently, in the autumn of 1955, Arnold photographed Marilyn in ways markedly different from those which had previously catered to her image as a “dumb blonde.” One photograph showed her simply dressed, in a park reading James Joyce’s famously opaque novel,
Ulysses
, even though she didn’t understand it. One of Arnold’s photos depicted Marilyn as Eve “at the dawn of time,” slithering through tall marsh grass.

Marilyn immediately rushed prints of Arnold’s photos to Truman, as she trusted his “bitchy judgment.” He told her, “It’s about time you showed the world there’s more to you than that Lorelei Lee character you portrayed in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
.

[In 1958, Richard Avedon would photograph Marilyn impersonating the great sirens of Hollywood, including Clara Bow, Theda Bara, Lillian Russell, and Marilyn’s favorite, Marlene Dietrich.]

After Marilyn’s press conference, Dietrich invited her back to her apartment. When they were alone, Dietrich got immediately to the point:

“I hear the stupid swine boys at Fox are preparing to film
The Blue Angel
again, the movie that made me a star. I must talk to you about this.”

Marilyn seemed somewhat embarrassed that Dietrich was aware of Fox’s vision for a modern adaptation of
The Blue Angel
. Originally released 1930, Dietrich’s iconic version had been directed by von Sternberg and starred Emil Jannings, who was an immensely popular star in Germany at the time. Dietrich had famously interpreted the role of Lola Lola, a petty bourgeois Berlin tart with dazzling legs and a come-hither manner. One German critic wrote that she played the role with a “callous egotism and cool insolence.”

Although nervous about being alone with Dietrich—she’d heard tales—Marilyn was eager to be in the company of one of her early role models. She’d already seen most of her American movies from the 1930s.

In a memoir,
My Story
, published more than a decade after Marilyn’s death, Marilyn is alleged to have written: “I was young, blonde, and curvaceous, and I had learned to talk huskily like Marlene Dietrich and to walk a little wantonly and to bring emotion into my eyes when I wanted to. And though these achievements landed me no job, they brought a lot of wolves whistling at my heels.”

Marilyn’s evening with Dietrich would later be penned as the first entry she would make in the leather-bound diary Greene had given her as a Christmas present. En route with Dietrich to her apartment, they discussed not
The Blue Angel
, but author Truman Capote.

“Milton told me you’re having dinner with Capote tomorrow night,” Dietrich said to Marilyn. “Keep your guard up. He pretends to be your friend, and then spreads the most vicious gossip about you. His latest claim was that when he was visiting me, he witnessed Eleanor Roosevelt emerging nude from my bedroom. He claimed that Eleanor had long had a crush on me. That may be true, of course, and, if so, I don’t blame her.
BUT CAPOTE, OF COURSE, DID NOT SEE ELEANOR EMERGE NAKED FROM MY BEDROOM!”

Later, inside Dietrich’s apartment, as the women sat drinking champagne on a champagne-colored sofa, Marilyn decided to bring up
The Blue Angel
: “I want you to know I’m thrilled at the idea of playing Lola Lola. Of course, I could never create the performance that you did.”

“Of course not, darling, and I understand that,” Dietrich said. “Zanuck is out of his mind to think of redoing
The Blue Angel
. Every actress in Germany wanted to play Lola Lola, even Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s filmmaker and mistress. The search for an actress to play Lola Lola was not equaled until David O. Selznick began his search for Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Do you have any advice on how I should play the part?” Marilyn asked, appearing more innocent than she was, as she later confessed to her diary.

“Von Sternberg said the part called for an actress to represent a new incarnation of sex. At first, he didn’t want me. He said my bottom was all right, but that Lola Lola must have a face.”

“What an odd thing to say,” Marilyn said. “You have one of the most fabulous faces ever seen on the silver screen.”

“That’s true,” Dietrich agreed, “but Josef and I had to invent that face the way you invented your Marilyn Monroe character. Lola Lola must be an irresistible presence, singing on a barrel and showing off her
derrière
. She must have electricity and charm, her songs crackling with sex. She must be corrupt, decadent—actually vile—and evil.”