Bombshell

by Allan, Barbara

  Nikita settled back with a self-satisfied smile, and Nina—who knew him so well—beamed at him, eyes twinkling.

  The premier of Russia didn’t need that son of a bitch Poulson to draw a crowd!

  Chapter Five

  THE WRONG ROOM

  AS MARILYN MONROE’S limousine whipped into the parking lot of the commissary at Fox Studios, the movie star’s eyes widened in shock and her mouth dropped in dismay—her mood, anxious though positive, seemed suddenly poised to plunge into despair.

  The lot—but for a handful of cars, expensive ones in personalized spaces, sunshine ricocheting off their smooth metallic surfaces—was empty. Tumbleweed might have blown through.

  “Oh, damnit,” Marilyn moaned. “After all that effort—we’re late! The party’s over.” She could just cry! When would she ever learn? Why had she taken so long to get ready?

  But her unflappable secretary, May Reis—seated next to her, like a plainclothes cop extraditing a prisoner—was, as usual, cool; cucumbers had nothing on her. The trim, brown-haired woman shook her head and patted Marilyn’s knee. “No, no my dear—we’re early.”

  Marilyn’s eyes tightened in thought, as if this word—“early”—was foreign to her.

  May continued, with a gesture to the empty lot: “The others simply haven’t arrived yet.”

  Marilyn’s eyes popped open again, as she regarded her secretary with astonishment. “Well, what do you know about that! I am on time.” She grinned and gave May a gentle elbow. “When has that ever happened before?”

  May smiled tightly. “Never, dear.”

  Marilyn’s longtime Los Angeles chauffeur, Rudy Kautzsky—looking jaunty in his black suit and cap, as perfect for his part as if Central Casting had sent him ’round—helped the glamorous star out of the back of the limousine, wishing her luck by way of a wink and “thumbs up.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and kissed the air in Rudy’s direction.

  Along with the chauffeur, May remained behind in the car. Like an overly cautious mother, she’d only ridden along to make sure that Marilyn made it safely inside the door. The secretary had learned long ago that her employer—whom she adored—was a vulnerable, distracted creature capable of losing her way across a living room. May need not have worried—not today. Marilyn Monroe might have been the current blonde bombshell, but—when she set her mind to it—that bombshell was a veritable guided missile. Today was important to her—flattered by the premier’s desire to meet her, Marilyn felt proud she could serve her country as Hollywood’s ambassador, and in some small way forge good will between two world powers who seemed on such a terrible collision course.

  The big bland room that was the studio commissary—where normally stars, studio bosses, and crew members alike gathered for lunch or coffee at dozens of scuffed round tables—had for today’s event been transformed into an elegant Parisian restaurant. No soundstage set could have rivaled the “Cafe de Paris,” with its linen tablecloths, sterling flatware, and sparkling crystal. From the ceiling hung hundreds of colorful balloons and streams of crepe paper, and in the center of each table perched a lovely floral arrangement with a French flag—the tricolor justifying the red-white-and-blue theme that pretended to salute one country while invoking another.

  A half dozen or so reporters were milling around by the entryway, in a haze of cigarette smoke, waiting for the event to start, when Marilyn approached.

  One of the newshounds was saying, “… so the one-legged jockey says, ‘That’s all right, honey—I ride sidesaddle!’” He was a tall, thin hawkish-looking man Marilyn had never seen before. She knew most of the others by name.

  His cronies howled with laughter until another of them, Bob Clemens, round-faced and beefy, a stub of a stogie tucked in the corner of his mouth, caught sight of Marilyn. The L.A. Times reporter nearly swallowed what was left of his cigar, so surprised was he to see her arriving early.

  “Hello, boys,” she said innocently. She pretended to frown and shook a reprimanding finger. “I hope you aren’t telling off-color stories again.”

  Pandemonium broke out as the men rushed her, flocking around, firing questions. For once she was prepared for the press—even glad to see them; she stood her ground and smiled radiantly, regally.

  Clemens elbowed his way to the front of the pack, growling, “Hey, I saw her first!”

  Marilyn had known Clemens since he covered her marriage to Joe DiMaggio in 1954, and the reporter had always treated her fairly—even after she’d divorced the baseball hero.

  “Bob gets the first question,” Marilyn said, with a solemn nod. She was like a teacher with a bunch of unruly boys—though in the sheer black dress, she made an unlikely schoolmarm.

  “Marilyn, what’s this about Khrushchev wanting to see you?” Clemens asked.

  Publicist Rupert Allen must have called ahead, in spite of his misgivings about her attending. The dear man.

  Marilyn slowly parted her lips. “I’m deeply honored that the premier of Russia would want to talk to me.”

  “Not everybody thinks old Nikita’s worth meeting,” Bob said.

  She beamed and shrugged. “Well, I think it’s just elegant!”

  “What would Khrushchev possibly want to talk to you about?” the hawkish man asked snidely.

  Marilyn studied the man’s face for a moment, her smile turning brittle; she made a habit of remembering new enemies. “World peace, I hope,” she responded.

  The enemy snorted a laugh—several reporters around him winced, as they apparently understood what sort of special audience they were being granted—and he did not bother to write down her response.

  “And where’s your husband?” he followed up, with a smirk. “Didn’t he want to meet the top commie?”

  All eyes were on her, pen tips to pads, primed for her answer. This wasn’t just show business, after all, but politics—her husband Arthur Miller was one of America’s leading playwrights and had been a victim of what she considered a witch-hunt left over from the days of Joe McCarthy.

  “Mr. Miller,” she said pleasantly, “couldn’t accompany me from New York because he’s finishing up a screenplay….” And now she turned the wattage up on her smile. “One that I’ll be starring in.”

  In truth, Arthur could have made the trip, and had wanted to; he was as keenly interested in politics and world events as Marilyn was. But after much soul-searching and deliberation, he had decided—due to his past trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee, regarding his refusal to name other writers sympathetic to the communist party—he had best not go.

  “The press might make a meal of me,” he’d said.

  And—obviously—Arthur had been right.

  Paul Hays, from the Hollywood Reporter, asked, “Is there any truth to the rumor that you and your husband are separating?”

  “None whatsoever,” Marilyn countered with a little laugh that she hoped didn’t sound too forced. “The rumors that I’m leaving Arthur for Nikita Khrushchev are just so much borscht.”

  This made the boys laugh—even the hawkish enemy—and distracted them from digging deeper. For all intents and purposes, her marriage of three years to the brilliant playwright was over. She knew it; Arthur knew it. But the Millers had decided to keep up the pretense, through the filming of her next movie—and probably that of the following project, which he really was writing for her. Arthur believed she was ill-served by most of her scripts, and he still loved her enough to want to leave her with that gift, anyway.

  Now other movie stars were arriving in through the commissary door, and when the attention of the newshounds turned their way, Marilyn slipped inside while the press swarmed new all-star victims, following them into the “Cafe de Paris,” as well.

  Bob Hope, natty in a light gray suit, was bantering with his on-screen cohort, Bing Crosby, attired causally in a beige banlon shirt and yellow cardigan, the ever-present pipe in one hand. Several reporters cornered them, and Hope made a loud nasal remark about
maybe making The Road to Moscow with Bing.

  Several other reporters honed in on Marilyn’s nemesis, Elizabeth Taylor, those fat, bulgy bosoms of hers popping out of a low-cut emerald-green cocktail dress. Marilyn just knew that those were real emeralds around the munchkin’s throat, watching as the woman made her entrance with lapdog Eddie Fisher on her arm, Fisher looking bewildered, nervous, uncomfortable.

  Almost at once the press rushed past Taylor and the singer to another woman who had just stepped in through the door: Debbie Reynolds, looking cute as the teenage beauty queen she’d been not so long ago, petite and nicely shapely in a blue and white polka-dot dress.

  Marilyn liked—and felt sorry for—the pretty, perky Reynolds, who had just lost her husband to Liz. Debbie had always been friendly to Marilyn, and there was no rivalry between them. Reynolds was no threat.

  As the reporters converged on Reynolds, the spurned wife and mother held her head high, smiling, even laughing. If Debbie was acting, Marilyn thought, it was a damn fine job of it—Lee Strasberg would have approved. The press obviously adored Debbie, and were in her corner. And that pleased Marilyn, who hoped they would be as compassionate to her, the next time tragedy struck.

  As the commissary began filling up—bobbing with more famous faces than the Hollywood wax museum, and alive with the chatter and laughter of dueling egos—Marilyn managed to catch Frank Sinatra’s eye.

  In a sharp gray suit, the singer—who had briefly been her lover, after the break-up with Joe—threw Marilyn a dazzling smile, his blue eyes twinkling, obviously happy to see her. She adored him, at least when he was in a good mood; depressed, he was no prize. But she considered him a genius in his way, and knew what kind of pressure he endured, and so cut him all the slack in the world.

  The statuesque, flat-chested redhead on his arm, however, was not happy to see her. Marilyn nodded at Juliet Prowse—who had a part in Frank’s current movie, Can-Can—and bestowed the dancer her warmest smile. No sense in starting a feud.

  Marilyn knew she could have Frankie, any time she wanted him. But even if she could have put up with his mood swings, she couldn’t handle his hypocritically old-world view of matrimony. He’d told her that he only wanted a wife who wasn’t in show-business… someone who would stay at home and take care of him and the kids.

  And she had said to him, “Hmmm… didn’t you already have that once?”

  Sinatra hadn’t talked to her for two months, after that; such a child. Nobody could pout like Frankie. But, also, nobody could sing like him….

  Anyway, for the moment at least, Sinatra served her best via her phonograph.

  Relieved to be out of the clutches of the press—she hadn’t always felt about them that way, there’d been a time when she longed for such media attention—Marilyn stopped occasionally for a chat with the likes of Judy Garland or Louis Jourdan, as she ambled her way to the front of the room, where a long banquet table was elevated on a small riser, setting itself apart from the tables on the floor.

  While she was not to be seated at the head table with Khrushchev, the other dignitaries, and studio bosses, Marilyn had been carefully positioned at the round table nearest the premier.

  As the only Hollywood star the premier had wished to meet, Marilyn had been told by Skouras that she would have the “best seat in the house.”

  “You bet I will,” she’d said.

  And Skouras had said, “No, no, not that kind of seat”; he had placed her thus, “so the Russian, he can gaze upon your beauty.” The rest of the actors and actresses were scattered around, more stars than in any nighttime sky, but out of her immediate orbit. She had insisted that no other screen personalities, particularly female ones, be seated with her; the men at her table were writers and directors, including Walter Lang, whose Can-Can set would be visited later by the guests.

  Marilyn noticed Henry Fonda, sloppily dressed, seated at a back table, facing the wall, legs spread lazily over the next chair, sullenly listening to a transistor radio, probably a ballgame. She had heard, through the studio grapevine, that Fonda had been required to come—even though he despised Khrushchev; this had surprised Marilyn, at first, since Fonda was openly left-leaning in a time when that was dangerous. She’d admired him for that, and maybe this bad behavior today came from Fonda feeling dictators like Khrushchev gave leftists a bad name.

  Even so, Marilyn felt this was short-sighted, even immature. How was America supposed to thaw the cold war with bad manners like that?

  After all, Hollywood stars were America’s royalty. She believed that; she had aspired since childhood to such a throne. And with that came responsibility… from small things like being thoughtful to your fans, to bigger things like taking meaningful political stands, and improving yourself, your mind, your craft.

  Marilyn stood quietly by her chair, feeling a tingle from the excitement in the air, drawing on it to sustain her movie-star persona. Five hundred people had been invited to the luncheon, honoring the premier of Russia. In this room were some of the most important, influential people in Hollywood—not just the royalty of stars, but the powers behind the thrones.

  Suddenly the crowd hovering about the front door stirred… and made a pathway, like God parting the Red Sea (or anyway Cecil B. DeMille) as the most influential, important person in this room trumped all of the show business bigshots.

  Nikita Khrushchev had entered.

  He was a short, rotund man, bald, except for a silver fringe of hair rimming elf-like pointed ears. Round-faced, with an upturned nose and several chins, his eyes hard black marbles, the dictator seemed peeved, as if he’d been turned down for a job as a department store Santa. He was wearing a tan suit, well-tailored, a cream-colored shirt, silk chocolate-colored tie, and brown wing-tipped shoes.

  Flanking Khrushchev, an entourage of perhaps twenty-five formed a protective, moving barrier: bureaucrats, agents from the FBI, CIA, and Russia’s own uniformed KGB, and what appeared to Marilyn to be some of the premier’s family members.

  Finally, trailing behind the entourage came the mayor of Los Angeles—she couldn’t recall his name, only that she hadn’t voted for him—his lips a thin tight line, like a cut in his face that was refusing to heal. Frowning, Marilyn wondered if perhaps something had gone wrong at the airport, because Khrushchev was scowling back at His Honor, eyebrows knitted together, thick bottom lip protruding like a pouting child’s.

  Then—across the glittering panorama of jewels, furs, and suntans—Khrushchev spotted something; he froze, and his face exploded into a grin.

  And at once she knew that she was the cause of his change of disposition. Standing in front of the dais, shoulders back, breasts out, Marilyn smiled at him with a fondness one might reserve for a favorite uncle. Still grinning, a strangely infectious grin at that, Nikita Khrushchev rolled toward her like a friendly tank.

  With chest heaving, lips in her open smile aquiver, Marilyn extended one hand—not like a queen expecting a kiss and a bow, but one person ready to shake hands with another person. He grasped that small smooth hand with both of his, which were rough and callused and big.

  A hush fell—no one breathed… even Hank Fonda had craned around to look.

  In perfect Russian, Marilyn welcomed Nikita Khrushchev to the United States and to Hollywood, saying, “Even a cat and dog can live together in harmony, and our two nations must strive to do so, as well.” He had nodded appreciatively when she paused; then she went on: “Meeting you is an honor I will never forget, Premier Khrushchev.”

  The premier beamed—in part, she would bet, because she had correctly pronounced his last name, Crew-shove—and two gold teeth winked at her as that infectious grin again split his face, which to Marilyn was a glorious face, at once homely and beautiful.

  Then Khrushchev spoke to her in his native tongue, and Marilyn nodded at what he was saying. But she really didn’t know what he was talking about, not exactly.

  Oh, she knew some of the words; she and her former speech coac
h had often spoken the language—Natasha Lytess was famously Russian (even though really a German Jew), and they had been together for many years.

  But they had since parted ways, and it was a current friend of Marilyn’s, the great director and teacher Michael Chekhov—a student at the Stanislavski Moscow Art Theatre prior to his defection—who had helped her write, and then translated and taught her the little speech she’d just given, which she had practiced for hours on end.

  Impulsively—for this part had not been planned—Marilyn leaned forward and kissed Khrushchev on one of his chubby cheeks.

  The crowd hooted, and laughed, and burst into applause that rang through the commissary like gunfire.

  The premier blushed, his smile disappearing…

  … but Marilyn knew Nikita Khrushchev was pleased by her affectionate gesture. His eyes had twinkled at her, even when the grin was gone. And, anyway, he was a man, wasn’t he?

  Chair legs screeched as everyone began to take their seats at the tables. Khrushchev was escorted to the center of the long banquet table, placed between Eric Johnston, President of the Motion Pictures Association, and the head of Fox Studios, Marilyn’s champion Spyros Skouras.

  A quietly affable, heavy-set woman, two attractive girls, and a boy (the spitting image of Khrushchev) had trailed in after the premier; now they were shown seats at the end of the long table.

  Marilyn overheard them being introduced as the premier’s wife and family to those around them at the head table; from her catbird’s seat, Marilyn could hear much of what was said there, even conversationally.

  Mrs. Khrushchev, the pleasant-looking peasant-ish woman, reminded the star of her adored, now long gone, Aunt Ana Lower, who had saved Marilyn from the orphan’s home and practically raised her.

  Marilyn smiled at Mrs. Khrushchev—hoping that kiss she’d bestowed the woman’s husband hadn’t been a breach of etiquette—and, thankfully, the woman smiled shyly back. After a brief welcome by the mayor of Los Angeles—Khrushchev again scowling… the enmity between the two men obvious—the luncheon was served: chicken Kiev, corn, and red roasted potatoes. Hardly Parisian cuisine—so much for the “Cafe de Paris.” But when Marilyn looked up at Khrushchev, he seemed to be heartily enjoying the meal.