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) (113 page)

“I don’t know if I could be all that,” Marilyn said. “That’s a pretty tall order.”

“I understand,” Dietrich said. “Even when you’re playing a slut on screen, you project a virginal innocence. The actress Lola Lola, in contrast, must be an alley cat screaming for a tomcat, especially in that song, ‘Tonight, Kids, I’m Gonna Get a Man.’ Lola is jaded, lustful, naked in her emotions. A harlot who can destroy a man, especially the professor in the film. It calls for a voice singing out, late at night, in a crude German
Bierstube
, cutting through the smoke of a cabaret catering to perverts.”

Dietrich continued with her daunting pronouncements, as Marilyn’s insecurities reached a feverish pitch. “Critics have written that the screen character of Lola Lola must never be repeated, that I have immortalized it. If any actress dares, she will be weak lemonade on the screen. It could destroy an actress’s career. Audiences might get up and walk out on the wrong Lola Lola. Whereas your sensuality is wholesome and real, Lola Lola is an artificial creation of the night. She is the wrong image for you. Edith Piaf would understand that. So would Greta Garbo. When men flock to see one of your movies, they want to see the Marilyn Monroe they love—not some prostitute in a Berlin cabaret. Men want someone who will make love to their prick—not castrate them.”

Marilyn burst into tears, as Dietrich moved closer to her, taking her in her arms and comforting her. “I can’t play Lola Lola,” Marilyn sobbed. “It’s not for me.”

“A wise decision, my dear. You need to go on to greater parts, like you said in your news conference, not be a low-rent German trollop, a devouring female predator.”

Over a harmoniously flavored
coq au vin
, Dietrich intoned, “Your attempt to play Lola Lola would be as foolhardy as an attempt to star as Scarlett in a re-make of
Gone With the Wind
. You’d be laughed off the screen: Don’t do it! You are an all-American girl, not Lola Lola. European characters, especially those who worked the cabarets of 1920s Berlin, are not for you. Don’t allow yourself to be ridiculed and mocked.”

Marilyn later recalled that she fell asleep in Dietrich’s arms and in her bed, as the chanteuse sang softly in her ear.

Ich bin die fesche Lola,
Der Liebling der Saison
.

***

The next evening, at a dinner with Truman, Marilyn thrilled him by reporting all the details of her night with Marlene. “Lesbian sex with me is only an occasional thing,” Marilyn confided to Truman, who spread the word privately along his grapevine: “Marlene is very oral and very skilled. She did her own thing down there, but I didn’t reciprocate.”

“It was worth staying over for the career advice and to taste her scrambled eggs the next morning, for which she is so famous. She’s a good cook and would have made a wonderful wife for Josef Goebbels. Isn’t he the one who liked her movies so much?”

“In the late 30s, Goebbels, then in charge of propaganda films at UFA, beseeched her to leave America and to return to movie making in Berlin, but Marlene refused,” Truman said. “Hitler was a fan of Marlene’s and considered her the epitome of a German wife. But she wasn’t
Der Führer’s
favorite blonde goddess.”

“And who might that have been?” Marilyn asked.

“It was Alice Faye,” Truman answered. “He had all of Faye’s movies smuggled into Germany. It’s said that he watched
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
(1938) a total of thirty-eight times.”

[Eventually, in 1959, Fox followed through on their plans to release a reincarnated film version of
The Blue Angel
. But instead of Marilyn Monroe, it starred May Britt in the Dietrich role, with Curt Jürgens as the lovesick professor. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, it was a commercial disaster. Marlene was delighted, claiming, “I told those idiots at Fox not to remake it.”

Truman never wrote one word of the script, and, of course, Marilyn was only discussed abstractly as a potential contender for the character of Lola. Instead, also released in 1959 and directed by Billy Wilder, she made
Some Like It Hot
, in which her co-stars, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, played most of their scenes in drag.]

“In Hollywood, I’m just another movie star,” Marilyn told her mentor and manager, Milton Greene. “But in New York, I’m treated like an exotic creature descended from the planet Venus. Everybody is extending invitations.”

“To my party tonight,” he told her, “I’ve invited Truman Capote. He wants to know you better. He said he danced with you one night at El Morocco.”

[An iconic photograph was taken of Truman dancing with Marilyn at the famous night club. At five feet eight inches in height, she towered over him, as he was five inches shorter. So as not to accentuate the differences in their height, she had kicked off her high heels and danced with him barefoot
.

Capote’s close friend, John Malcolm Brinnin, became infuriated when he saw the photo after it appeared in
Time
magazine. He disapproved of the increasing frequency and intensity of Truman’s involvements with glamorous jet-setters of Broadway and Hollywood. He wrote to Truman with a reprimand: “Was
this
the portrait of Artist as a Young Man? Joyce’s motto was, ‘Silence, exile, and cunning.’ What’s
yours?
”]

“Truman is very flamboyant,” Marilyn said to Milton Greene. “The press calls him an
enfant terrible
, whatever in the hell that means. When he comes, send him back here
[to a back bedroom of Milton Greene’s house, where Marilyn was living at the time]
while I get dressed. I’ve never read anything he wrote, but he seems like a more interesting character than anything he can create on a page.”

“Truman told me he found you fascinating at dinner the other night,” Greene said. “He knows more indiscreet gossip than anyone in New York. As an example, he privately tells friends that he knows the dick size of every major star in Hollywood, and what they like to do in bed. He writes it all down in some diary, which may be published one day when the world has grown more sophisticated.”

“Who did he tell you had the biggest one in Hollywood?” she asked. “I’d cast my vote for Milton Berle.”

“Would you believe John Ireland?” he answered, “at least according to the Truman Capote Bible. Ireland fucked Monty Clift when they made
Red River
, that picture with John Wayne. Joan Crawford also awards Ireland top prize, and she should know. She’s fucked every big star except Lassie.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said. “I’ll have to work Ireland into my schedule.”

“I asked Capote to show up early so the two of you can gossip over a pre-party drink. When the party is in full blast, he becomes the center of attention, with a crowd clustered around him as he tells one outrageous story after another. Much of what he says is actually true, but he does embroider things a bit. He says all good Southerners never let truth get in the way of a good story.”

“Send in my amusement for the night,” she said.

When Truman did arrive for the party, two hours early, Greene directed him to Marilyn’s quarters. He knocked on her door. She called for him to come in. Not finding her in the bedroom, he heard her voice summoning him to the bathroom, where she was taking a bubble bath.

“Hi,” he said, “Truman Capote, first in your boudoir and now in your
toilette
.” He spoke in a high-pitched voice, and had grown up shunned by other children because of his “sissyish traits.” In the way he walked and talked, he was different from most men, with that babylike, slightly artificial voice. She would remember him as a writer “trapped forever in boyhood, as if refusing to mature.”

As Truman himself later said, “The way I spoke in the fourth grade is the way I talk now. When I was growing up, everyone told my mother I should have been born a girl. She even took me to psychiatrists hoping to find a drug or therapy that would turn me into a boy. In spite of my odd behavior, I always had to be myself.”

And that is what he presented to Marilyn, who seemed mesmerized by him. He immediately established his credentials as a gossip. Gazing at her in the claw-footed tub, he said, “The last time I saw a movie star in a bubble bath, it was Errol Flynn. After I bathed him and dried him off, I discovered what ‘in like Flynn’ means.”

She giggled. “You’re my kind of guy, Truman. What a name. It sounds so presidential. Why don’t you wash my back for me so we can get better acquainted? I hope you won’t get too turned on.”

“You can rest assured that I won’t,” he said, taking off his jacket and moving toward her. “Half the men in America would want to be in my shoes right now, and I’m not even tempted.”

As he reached for the soap, he said, “You must tell me everything about Joe DiMaggio. I want all the details. Cock size. Duration in the saddle. Cut or uncut? I suspect uncut. The exact taste of his semen. What does he prefer? Fellatio? Analingus? Around the world? The missionary position?”

“My, you’re an inquisitive little demon. But I like you for some perverse reason. Joe’s biggest bat is not the one he uses on the field. If that’s all it took, we’d still be married.”

“Lucky girl!” he said. “How I envy you.” He began an expert soaping of her luscious back.

As she emerged from the bath, he helped dry her off. She put on a robe. In her bedroom, he sat on a chair beside her dressing table, sipping a glass of champagne that Greene’s cook had delivered. The cook thanked Marilyn.

After the cook left, Truman asked Marilyn, “Why is she thanking you?”

“This afternoon, I peeled potatoes for her and snapped beans for dinner tonight.”

One of Marilyn’s biographers, Fred Lawrence Guiles, in his book,
Legend
, wrote: “
[Marilyn]
was never very serious with Capote. They spoke a secret language liberally sprinkled with sex and gossip.”

Marilyn heard Greene’s party guests arriving, but she wanted to extend her private time with Truman. He noticed that she was reading a book about Napoléon Bonaparte and Josephine. “I didn’t know you were interested in history,” he said.

I’m not, but when I visited Marlon Brando on the set of
Désirée
(1954), where he played Napoléon, I became interested in playing Josephine in a movie focused on her. Perhaps you’ll write the script for me.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But unlike Josephine, I wouldn’t have gone to bed with Napoléon. His cock was too small. I’ve seen it.”

She looked astonished. “How in hell could you have seen Napoléon’s cock? I didn’t know you were that old.”

“Before he was buried, someone cut off the emperor’s little penis, and preserved it in alcohol. Today, it’s owned by this old queen in Connecticut. He exhibits it on occasion. It looks pretty withered these days. Perhaps it was an inch or two longer in the days of the French Empire.”

“That is such a ghoulish story. It’s delectable,”

“Speaking of small cocks, can Senator Kennedy satisfy you?”

“We manage,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve been to bed with him too.”

“Not at all,” he said. “What I don’t understand is why everybody thinks the Kennedys are so sexy. I know a lot about cocks—I’ve seen an awful lot of them—and if you put all the Kennedys together, you wouldn’t have a good one. I used to see Jack when I was staying with Loel and Gloria Guinness in Palm Beach. I had a little guest cottage with its own private beach, and he would come down so he could swim in the nude. He had absolutely nuthin’.”

“Unlike you, I haven’t seen all the cocks I want to see,” she said. “But I’m not on the East Coast to chase after them—at least that’s not my first goal. As you know, I want to be a serious actress.”

“If you mean that, I’ve got the right acting coach for you, since you seem to have left Natasha Lytess back in California,” he said. “She’s a British actress, rather old at this point: Constance Collier.”

“I’ve heard of her,” she said.

“Constance is the best acting teacher in New York. If you’d like to meet her, I can take you to a luncheon this week. I’ve been invited to her apartment. Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn will be there.”

“Garbo?” she asked in astonishment. “And Hepburn? Are they still taking acting lessons?”

“No, they’re admirers. Will you accept?”

“Are you kidding? I’d be honored. But I don’t know what to wear.”

“A single string of pearls and Chanel’s little black dress.”

“Can’t wait,” she said. “But I fear I’ll be speechless.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “All three of them are dykes, and each of them will be salivating when you walk into the room. You don’t have any skin blemishes, do you?”

“No, but why do you ask?”

“Hepburn won’t go to bed with any gal with blemishes on her skin,” he said. “But Garbo doesn’t mind all that much, considering that she slept with Marie Dressler.”

There was a sudden knock on the door, and Milton Greene’s voice announcing, “Marilyn, the guests are here, and you’re the guest of honor. Shake your ass, girl. Norman Mailer’s here. So is Gene Kelly. He’s with a real cute trick. I bet if you work it right, you can take the hunk from Gene.”

Truman rose to his feet. “I don’t care who they are. Kelly always manages to get them first before anyone else in Hollywood, even beating out Joan Crawford.”

Marilyn called that she’d be right out after putting on her high heels. “I’m anxious to meet this Adonis,” she whispered to Truman, “With Amy hanging on to Milton all the time, I haven’t been getting much.”

“In that case, after Constance’s luncheon, I can arrange a date for you with Porfirio Rubirosa. After all, the two richest women in the world, Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton, spent millions on that eleven-inch octoroon dick. But I can get it for you for free.”

“Is that why in a restaurant when some men request a peppermill, they ask for a Rubirosa?”

“You learn quick, gal. Now it’s showtime. There are a lot of important people out there tonight. It’s time for you to become Marilyn Monroe.”

On the way out the door, he took her by the arm. “By the way, I forgot to ask. Why in hell do you have a picture of Abraham Lincoln by your bedside? That’s weird.”