Her eyes flickered open, dark blue peering through lashes. “Don’t you get tired of playing Jiminy Cricket?”
“Just be careful, Pinocchio. Chosen your co-star yet?”
She propped herself on an elbow, her breasts cushioned against the mattress, hair tousled. “Leaning toward Yves Montand. He has a one-man show coming up, later this month.”
“Out here?”
She shook her head, tousling the platinum locks even further. “No, New York. Arthur’s taking me. Arthur likes him—Montand played in The Crucible, in Paris.”
“Kind of an unknown quantity, isn’t he? In American movies, I mean.”
She smirked prettily at her confidant. “Don’t you think I can carry a picture by myself? On these little shoulders?”
Roberts gave her half a smile. “Those shoulders are already carrying one of the smartest minds in show business…. I imagine they can handle another movie.”
“Are you fishing for a tip, Ralph? Or a role maybe? Maybe you just wanna fuck me.”
He laughed, gave her an affectionate slap on her bare bottom, and went out, shaking his head.
As Roberts was heading out the door, two other members of the Monroe retinue entered: May Reis, Marilyn’s personal secretary, and Agnes Flanagan, the renowned hair colorist.
“Marilyn,” May said softly to her employer, who seemed to be slumbering again, “it’s time…. Agnes is here.”
May—fifty-five, a small, trim, oval-faced woman, businesslike in a simple navy suit, her brown hair cut no-nonsense short—had initially been Arthur Miller’s secretary (following a stint with Elia Kazan). But after the playwright and the movie star married, and had moved into their East 57th Street apartment, it quickly became evident that Marilyn was the one who needed May’s help more. Now May handled the daily onslaught of scripts and organized everything in Marilyn’s life, from correspondence to grocery lists.
The nude Marilyn didn’t budge. From his corner, Frankie was singing, “Five Minutes More.”
“Marilyn, dear,” the secretary tried again, “Agnes is here….”
Taking Sinatra’s cue, the star pleaded, “Just five more minutes,” words muffled by the pillow in which her face was buried. “All right?”
But after a few moments, when May hadn’t answered, Marilyn moaned and slowly rolled off the bed, wrapping herself mummy-like in the white top sheet, pulling its train along with her as she walked unsteadily toward the bathroom.
“I’ll bring some coffee,” May told her cheerfully, and exited the bedroom, closing the door off from the bungalow’s living room, which had become a holding area for the entourage of specialists that would attend to the movie star on this very important Saturday morning.
In the bathroom, Marilyn plopped down on a white satin chair in front of a long make-up counter and mirror, gathering the sheet around her.
“I want it white, Agnes,” she instructed the sixty-ish fireplug of a colorist, who had followed her silently in. “White as snow.”
With a tiny smile, Agnes—who had heard these instructions countless times—nodded at Marilyn’s wishes, placing her bag of bottles of peroxide and solutions on the bathroom counter, and set about her work.
“Not just… snow,” Marilyn said, thoughtfully. Then she giggled. “Siberian snow.”
Agnes smiled again. The stout woman knew all about white hair: she had her own, of course; but also she had long ago provided that famous platinum shade for Jean Harlow’s tresses.
As a child, Marilyn—that is, Norma Jeane—had adored Harlow, sometimes sitting through her movies two or three times at a stretch, dreaming of one day becoming just like her. When the dark blonde Norma Jeane decided to give birth to a much blonder Marilyn, she had tracked Agnes down, bringing the woman out of retirement, using the colorist for her own movies and special appointments.
May returned with a hot cup of coffee, just as Frank was helpfully picking up the tempo with, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
Forty minutes later, her hair freshly dyed, shampooed, and towel-turbaned, Marilyn stepped into a warm bubble bath drawn by her secretary. She slipped beneath the foamy surface, the fragrance of an entire bottle of Chanel No. 5—which had been poured into the running water—rising like a pleasant fog, and permeating her every pore.
Eyes closed, Marilyn soaked dreamily in the warm bath. Minutes, hours, days might have passed; she didn’t care. Time was a concept she had never quite mastered and, anyway, this was her favorite place, far away from the murky second-hand baths she’d had to take in foster homes… and the reason she was always late.
“Marilyn, dear,” May whispered gently. “Whitey is waiting.”
The actress opened her eyes, a process that took perhaps five seconds. May was standing next to the tub, a rather shabby (though clean) white bathrobe in both hands, held out and open, as if to embrace her.
Marilyn frowned. Pouted. Put on her saddest eyes. “Just… a little bit longer…. Please, darling?”
Again, May didn’t answer—her expression, though not unkind, as frozen as a cigar store Indian’s.
Marilyn groaned, thinking, Damn! Who pays the bills around here, anyway?
But she kept this thought to herself, and—with a deep and oh-so-world-weary sigh—rose out of the tub, pale flesh pearled with water, Botticelli’s Venus dabbed with bubbles, a well-bathed, perfumed martyr, and stony May helped her into the robe—a souvenir from The Seven Year Itch, now tattered and stained—the terrycloth soaking up the frothy bubbles still clinging to her moist skin.
Soon Allan “Whitey” Snyder—attired in his usual short-sleeved white shirt—was ushered by May into the bathroom sanctuary. Middle-aged, with a long slender nose, receding chin, and the inevitable blond crew cut that had given him his nickname, Whitey had been with Marilyn since the actress’s first screen text at Fox, and together they had invented her “look,” defining and refining, and re-defining it, over the years.
Marilyn took the chair once again in front of the mirror, the white robe—a security blanket that always traveled with her—casually hanging open. The actress was not a showoff, where her beautiful body was concerned—she was comfortable with it… just as she was uncomfortable in clothes.
“Let’s make Marilyn,” she said.
As the make-up artist began his familiar routine, Marilyn was quiet and withdrawn. It was nothing personal. Her mini-conversation with Ralph and dealings with May were all she could manage this morning. She knew Whitey understood that she was conserving her energy. It wouldn’t be until the make-up artist had carefully applied the lipsticks—several different shades for contouring, because her lips were surprisingly flat—that together they would bring to life her creation, “Marilyn Monroe” emerging from Norma Jeane like a butterfly from its cocoon.
Whitey lined Marilyn’s famous mouth with dark red pencil, and even as he was skillfully coloring it in, May entered again, and announced the arrival of hair stylist Sydney Guilaroff.
Discovered by Joan Crawford in 1935, the Canadian Guilaroff—at age forty-nine—was still the most sought-after hairdresser in Hollywood. And for an event as crucial as today’s, Marilyn insisted on no one but the best.
Marilyn, now in her movie-star persona, bid goodbye to Whitey, and greeted Guilaroff—ever dapper in a gray sharkskin suit and silk black tie—with a delighted squeal and outstretched hand.
“I want something different, Sydney,” Marilyn said, wrinkling her upturned nose. “How are the women wearing their hair in Moscow these days?”
“Under a babushka,” he answered dryly.
Marilyn giggled. “Well, that won’t do.”
“I doubt today’s honored guest wants to meet Marilyn Monroe,” the hairdresser opined, “because he’s longing to meet a typical Russian woman.”
“You’re right as always, dear.” She plopped down on the satin chair, facing the mirror. Guilaroff removed the towel from her head and ran his fingers expertly, like an intelligent comb, through her thick, da
mp, naturally curly locks. Out in the bedroom, May was putting on another stack of Frank Sinatra singles.
“Let’s style it straight, with a flip on one side,” Guilaroff suggested, his narrowed eyes meeting her wide ones in the mirror.
“Okay!” she said, in the little-girl voice that belied the strong-willed woman possessing it.
While Guilaroff began setting the screen queen’s hair in large rollers instead of the usual pin curls, his client coyly asked, “And how is Liz?” She knew the hairdresser had just come from Elizabeth Taylor’s.
“Delightful as always,” he responded. “All of my clients are sheer delights… you know that.”
“I’m sure…. Any gray hairs… ?”
It was a game she played with Sydney, to get him to talk about his other clients. But no matter how much she cajoled him, or tried to trick him into candor, he never succumbed. Having coiffed screen legends from Clara Bow to Doris Day, Guilaroff was rigorous about maintaining strict client confidentiality—whether to the press or his other patrons.
“I tell you what, Sid….” And now Marilyn turned her head to look right at him, disrupting his work. “I’ll give you permission to reveal to anyone you like that…” She looked side to side, then leaned toward him conspiratorially. “… I dye my hair.”
He chuckled and, as she turned away, resumed his work.
She grinned cutely at him in the mirror. “Come on, Sid… just one little tidbit.”
Guilaroff sighed dramatically. “All right,” he said. “I give up. But just one.”
Marilyn straightened, eyes bright. “Just one.”
He bent and whispered into a perked ear. “After I finished with Elizabeth, working absolutely all of my magic, giving it my very best effort, and in spite of whatever extreme measures I took…” He paused.
Her eyebrows climbed the smooth forehead. “Yes?”
He shrugged. “… she looked simply fabulous.”
Marilyn slapped at him playfully. “You’re lying. She’s a fat, hideous witch and you know it.” And she slumped in the chair, half kidding, but nonetheless not pleased to hear of her competitor’s beauty.
Though she barely knew Taylor personally—just to exchange strained pleasantries with, when they’d attend the same studio function or wind up at the same party—Marilyn disliked her fellow Fox star with an unreasonable intensity. Not so much because of Taylor’s beauty—which didn’t hold a candle to her own, she thought (usually)—but because of the high salary her brunette rival commanded.
Yet who was it that had pulled Twentieth Century’s fat from the fire, time after time? Marilyn Monroe’s movies had kept the studio afloat—despite the bad scripts that were frequently foisted upon her. Even a weak vehicle was strong at the box office, when it had Marilyn in it. Could Liz Taylor have survived River of No Return? Or There’s No Business Like Show Business? Not hardly!
Anyway, that busty little munchkin couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag, and that mannered acting style of hers—well, really!
Marilyn had been crushed when she didn’t get the ripe role of Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She could have torn up the joint in a rich part like that—done a much better job than the stilted Taylor. Even Tennessee Williams himself had admitted as much, when Marilyn cornered him at a party recently.
Anyway, Marilyn oozed sex—whereas Liz Taylor just oozed.
And now La Taylor seemed about to bring the whole goddamn studio to its knees with that exorbitant barge of a picture, Cleopatra, what with her outrageous demands and film-halting illnesses… how could any actress be so unprofessional?
The only reason Twentieth Century Fox remained afloat, at present, was Marilyn’s latest box-office smash, Some Like It Hot.
Marilyn was just pondering what an interesting position this put her in when a knock drew her attention to the reflection of the bathroom doorway in the mirror, where a figure appeared unannounced.
Few men would have dared such a thing—even Arthur or Joe would have waited for May to present them….
But this was—speaking of the devil… that is, the Twentieth Century Fox variety—the president of the studio, Spyros Skouras himself, a tall, imposing, yet fatherly fellow, with thinning white hair and black glasses. The normally cool and collected president seemed quite unnerved.
“Dahling! For once in your young life, you must be on time!” Skouras delivered this lamentation to his star in his trademark Greek accent, which was no thicker than a slab of feta cheese.
“Don’t worry, S. S.,” she said slowly, drawing the words out, again mimicking Sinatra, who from his bedroom corner sang, “Don’t Worry About Me.” “Have I ever let you down?”
Skouras looked skyward, slapped his sides, though not in laughter. “Constantly!”
She gave him a million-dollar pout. “Don’t be mean.”
He shook a scolding finger. “This is big honor, today, young lady—for both of us.”
“I know.”
“World leader. Very important person.”
“Oh yes,” Marilyn nodded. “Almost as important as a movie star, don’t you think?”
Skouras tried not to smile; he was very fond of her, despite the difficulties she brought to the sets of the movies he produced, and she knew how to manipulate him.
“Please,” he said. “For once, my sweetness, my dumpling, hurry up your sweet tushie.”
Her mouth pursed into the famous kiss. “I love it when you talk dirty…. Have you looked at those clips yet?”
She meant a reel of excerpts from Yves Montand’s films she’d had sent ’round.
Impatiently, shaking his head, the studio chief said, “Yes, yes… he looks like charming man. But we can’t use him.”
“Why not?”
“He has accent! Turrible foreign accent.”
“I think foreign accents are sexy.”
He coughed. “We talk of this later. You must hurry!”
Guilaroff was putting the finishing touches on her stylish pageboy coiffure. “I won’t be late,” she said. “I’ll be early.”
Skouras groaned. “This I believe when pigs grow wings and fly.”
“The longer you stay here,” she responded sweetly, “the longer I’ll be.”
The head of the studio sighed deeply, and—dismissed like a child—turned on his heels and marched out.
Next came the dress—a little black-net number that had been whipped up by Marilyn’s favorite designer, Norman Norell. It was rather transparent in the bosom, leaving little to the imagination, and perhaps too revealing for the occasion… but so what? She had a reputation to live up to, didn’t she? And, besides, how often did a girl from the orphanage get to meet the premier of Russia?
A very cute man from the State Department had contacted her in New York several weeks ago—what was his name… Frank, Jack?—and told her that Nikita Khrushchev wanted to meet her on his first visit to the United States.
Her!
Little Norma Jeane Mortenson, who nobody had ever paid any attention to, shuttled from this foster home to that one. The State Department man… really cute, she wouldn’t mind seeing him again… said Khrushchev had been taken with photographs of her—movie stills from Some Like It Hot—displayed at the American National Exhibition, which had opened in Moscow in July.
The premier, on a history-making cross-country tour of America, was scheduled to make a stop in Los Angeles. Studio chief Skouras—who had been Marilyn’s champion since her first contract at Fox, recognizing her special genius (even staying in her corner after she’d fled Hollywood for New York)—had cooked up the idea of throwing a luncheon at the studio for Khrushchev… Russia’s biggest V.I.P. meeting Hollywood royalty. And while Marilyn wouldn’t be the only star in attendance, both she and Skouras damn well knew which star would shine the brightest….
Particularly since Marilyn was the only movie star Nikita Khrushchev had indicated an interest in meeting.
A few minutes later, in the bedroom, May stoo
d by the door at attention, as if waiting for the changing of the guard.
“Time to go,” the secretary said crisply.
They were alone in the white chamber; everyone else had gone… except for Frank, of course, who was singing, “You Are So Beautiful,” the last record on the turntable.
Marilyn raised a champagne glass to her perfectly lip-rouged lips and took a final gulp of Dom Perignon. Then she adjusted her ample breasts in the low-cut dress, snugged the material around her considerable though always admirable posterior, and looked toward May for approval.
“You are lovely,” May said, sounding sincere, even bestowing a small smile. They were words Marilyn never tired of hearing. She felt like a little girl who’d managed to do something right… something good….
On the way through the living room, where stale smoke hung in the air like an acrid curtain and cigarette butts overflowed a coffee table ashtray, Marilyn was startled by another knock at the door—yet another visitor.
May, in charge of every detail of the morning’s appointments, raised both eyebrows; she was, after all, the portal through which all must pass.
“Now who could that be?” the secretary wondered aloud.
Marilyn shrugged and shook her head, the pageboy flouncing in tribute to Guilaroff’s artistry.
May crossed the thick white carpet and cracked open the bungalow door, enough to reveal a tall, slender man in a tailored brown suit and blue striped tie.
“Might I have a word with Marilyn?” he asked politely, his eyes darting past May to the movie star.
“Rupert,” Marilyn exclaimed, surprised and pleased, moving to the doorway to greet the man. “How the hell are you?” To her secretary, she said, “It’s all right, May. This is Rupert Allen…. Rupert is… was… my Hollywood publicist.”
Suddenly, the awkwardness of it was unavoidable, and her surprise and pleasure turned to embarrassment. Since the move to New York, she’d had no contact with Rupert; their relationship had never been officially severed, but…
And now here he was, big as life, the man responsible for her first Look magazine cover, the real start of her rise to stardom. At age forty-six Rupert was, in the opinion of many, still the best press agent in Hollywood, and certainly among the most respected, with clients of such Tinseltown renown as Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Natalie Wood… and until recently, Marilyn Monroe.
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