Marilyn's Daughter

by John Rechy

  Nash and Mark met in a bar where male homosexuals and lesbians went, in camouflaged couples. Mark was defiantly alone. The two men became lovers.

  The House Committee on Un-American Activities was rampaging through lives then, exposing “communists” and “perverts.” Nash’s studio learned that the name of Mark Poe had been introduced, in secret, as a “probable subversive and known deviate closely associated with a well-known male movie star.” Encouraged by his mother, Mark “went public” about his liberal views and his sexuality. He knew Nash would stand by him.

  The studio alerted Mildred Meadows to “dangerous matters.” She initiated the slaughter of Mark Poe and announced contingent salvation for Nash McHugh.

  Accompanied by a studio executive, Nash had lunch at Perino’s—at Mildred Meadows’s table. He told her he was as shocked as she to learn about “leftish and other ugly involvements” concerning his “acquaintance” Mark Poe. He thanked her for the “timely information.” The studio executive then gave Mildred thrilling news: Reports that Nash had avoided patriotic service were unfounded, and he was about to marry the socialite daughter of a “prominent American patriot.” In her next column, Mildred granted Nash McHugh absolution.

  Nash assured Mark nothing would change between them. “You don’t know who you are,” Mark replied in disgust.

  Charlotte Poe had another stroke, fatal. Married to partners in a right-wing law firm in Seattle, Allana Wallach and Michele Feingold, who had not spoken to their “radical” mother for years, contested the will, which left everything to Mark. Meadows’s implications that Mark was “interested in boys” was introduced against him. Charlotte had foreseen the nasty battle. She had created a trust to be overseen by Mark to award scholarships to “talented students, of whatever color, religion, gender, sexual persuasion.” She included a clause: “I make this bequest with full knowledge and approval of my beloved son Mark Poe’s sexual orientation, and his dedication to and respect for young artists.” Mark won.

  He turned to writing. His first novel, After Twilight, was about the creative young drifting in Hollywood. Daring for its time because of one scene of homosexual desire, it sold well but infuriated reviewers who saw it—in the words of one irate critic—as “a disgusting guide to perversion.” Its wit and lyrical literacy were ignored. The jacket photograph of the handsome actor-turned-writer did not help the book’s critical reception.

  Floundering, drinking, Nash divorced Lorna Rehnquist. His career waned. He haunted the places where he knew Mark went. At Musso & Frank’s Restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, he finally found him. “I’m myself now!—Robert Kunitz,” he told Mark.

  Nash—Robert—abandoned films and moved in with Mark. Through a period of financial adjustments, Robert tended to matters of a prospective school, still a dream, while Mark returned to New York, where his first play was about to open. In search of a new actress for the lead, he was invited to see a young woman perform at the Actors Studio.

  There he met Marilyn Monroe and Enid Morgan.

  Powerful Hollywood studio heads considered movie stars—especially females—children, deserving “salubrious” periodical scoldings, at times by ridicule. To keep Marilyn Monroe “humble,” Zanuck, apprised of the fact that she was drawing more fan mail than any other star on the lot, initiated an investigation to make sure that she was not responsible for the staggering quantity of mail. She was not, but a smirking item about that in Meadows’s column caused laughter.

  In revolt from demeaning treatment, Marilyn Monroe announced she was moving to New York to “learn to be an actress.”

  Supposedly inspired by the teachings of Constantin Stanislavsky, Lee Strasberg taught “the method,” a mixture of confrontation and analysis. Actors drew upon their personal experiences for dramatic motivation. Strasberg had his critics. Some claimed he took actors to the brink of psychological collapse, sometimes past. Laurence Olivier called his “method” “nonsense.” Stella Adler insisted that he had misunderstood Stanislavsky. For the devoted he was a father-God figure.

  Strasberg “accepted” Marilyn as a private pupil, then allowed her to become an “observer” at the Actors Studio, which he had founded, and let her perform in class exercises reserved for members. The high priest of “method” acting and his wife, Paula, welcomed Marilyn Monroe into their “artistic family.” In return, Marilyn made the studio famous and lavished them with gifts.

  After the actress he had come to see was through performing, Mark Poe was about to leave when Lee Strasberg appeared to begin his class exercises.

  “’Scuse me,” a soft voice said courteously to Mark; a woman moved past him to a seat next to him. Although most of the actors in the studio were aggressively casual in their attire—to decorate their disgust for “glamour”—this woman seemed naturally ordinary, wearing a baggy sweater, jeans, hardly any makeup. A plain scarf concealed all but wisps of blondish hair. Mark noticed that she was clenching and unclenching her hands, panic at war with control.

  Somewhat professorial in appearance, Strasberg explained that evening’s exercise in “sense memory”: “Describe only what you see, and then convey what you feel, without describing feelings. Recall an emotional experience but don’t tell us how you feel. Communicate what comes to your senses, what sounds in the room are like, what it smells like, how we are dressed.” There might be validity in the exercise if clearly explained, Mark thought, but Strasberg had been misty, lofty, inexact. But all that seemed to please his gathered acolytes, who nodded gravely.

  “Perhaps Marilyn Monroe would like to participate—” Strasberg delighted in bringing the famous into his studio, so that he could show how unimpressed he was by them.

  The unextraordinary woman next to Mark stood up, hesitantly. “’Scuse me, please,” she said again to Mark. Her hand accidentally brushed his. Her fingers were trembling, icy with fear. Mark thought, there’s no possibility she’ll be able to control her feelings on demand.

  While everyone pretended not to know who Marilyn Monroe was, she sat on the floor, where the exercises were performed. She wrapped her hands in the sweater, warming them. Mark thought she looked like a resigned supplicant.

  “Now,” Strasberg led her, “let’s hear your description of this room. And remember,” he warned, “no described feelings.”

  Marilyn closed her eyes momentarily, as if rehearsing every word before she would expose it aloud. “The—back—of—the—room—is—dark—so dark that if we were alone—we would f-f-feel—”

  “No feelings!” Strasberg reminded firmly, his back to her, facing the others. “Just locate the feelings in you!”

  Marilyn tried to revise: “—so dark that if we were alone, we would be scared—”

  “Oh, dear God, what do you think scared is, Marilyn? Scared is feeling!” He emphasized his determination to be patient by folding his arms before his chest.

  Marilyn’s hands clenched at her mouth.

  Strasberg seemed pleased by the prayerful attitude. He guided: “In this room—”

  With difficulty, terrified, Marilyn began slowly describing the room’s approximate dimensions, the colors, its walls, the darkness in the back, bunched shadows— . . .

  “Stop, stop,” Strasberg ordered. “Those are just facts.”

  The movie star looked up at him, frightened. This time her fingers locked tightly before her.

  The tolerant professor, Strasberg nodded at Marilyn and released her from his command: “Now go on and locate your feelings. Find the truth in your action—inside, not out—then reverse it. Feel the room.”

  While the other actors listened as if he were making exciting sense, Mark became alarmed. In his grand display, a performance goaded now by the reaction of his disciples, some of whom closed their eyes, hands clasped to their foreheads as if to absorb such enormous profundities, Strasberg was pushing the movie star into a battle that was only too real for her—the constant attempt to control her feelings, or hide them, in order not to be hurt. Seein
g her struggling to contain her trembling, Mark thought of a pinned butterfly making tiny fluttering moves to live out its brief life.

  “Marilyn.” Strasberg’s was the voice of a strict, kind father. “I said you may continue.”

  “I’m sorry!” she gasped. “I’m really sorry!”

  Strasberg laughed just slightly, more of a derisive cough. “Well, now wouldn’t you say that being sorry is feeling?” He faced the members of the studio. “Wouldn’t you?” There were moody responsive sounds. He addressed Marilyn quickly: “Now! Just describe! Locate a feeling first. Of course you can do that, can’t you?”

  Her eyes unable to pull away from them, Marilyn went on to describe the room’s shadows. “So d-d-dark, so dark—”

  “You’re about to introduce feelings again, aren’t you?” The director hinted he might become impatient. “Sights, sounds, sights, sensations. When you locate the feeling, follow it. Guide yourself inward, inside, probe, feel but don’t tell what you feel; describe, describe, inside, Marilyn, inside yourself. Guide yourself into the darkness of the room if you want to!”

  “The darkness— . . .” Marilyn whispered, as if now she understood.

  “Good!” Strasberg finally approved. “Now go into it!”

  While demanding she not describe feelings, he was pushing her into the secret core of them! Mark knew that method actors were used to emotional carnage—and dramatic displays—forced epiphanies, quiverings at the edge of “sudden truths,” controlled or actual “breakdowns.” Marilyn Monroe was not acting. In the glare not of adoring cameras but of judging eyes—and pushed by Strasberg’s harsh commands—she was rushing into dark depths. Mark would have left, appalled by the foolish exercise—feel, don’t feel—but it was also cruel, and he wanted to lend support if it became possible.

  Inspired by his effect, Strasberg leaned over Marilyn and whispered loudly to her bowed head: “Inside, inside yourself, your own darkness, that’s where you’ll find your motivations, your truths!”

  Marilyn’s words spilled: “My darkness, yes, and it’s theirs, too—my grandmother’s, my mother’s. The room’s all shadows and in the darkest part I see . . . her! I have to run away from her!”

  Click!

  A woman in the back of the room had just snapped a silver cigarette lighter, flameless. She stood half in shadow, half in light, split in two.

  Strasberg squinted to locate the origin of the intrusion. The dark-haired woman, a haughty beauty, advanced boldly. She was dressed in subtle elegance, a pearl-gray dress. Even the determinedly indifferent actors gasped. The woman said to Strasberg, “You’re a fool!” With an intensity of caring that Mark would always remember, she guided Marilyn up from the floor, restoring her, and said gently to the movie star, “You can’t run away from her. You must never be unkind to her.”

  Charged with strength, Marilyn removed her scarf, loosing her hair, and she abandoned the sacrificial platform.

  When Mark saw the two women outside, he offered to call them a cab. Enid looked at him as if in welcome recognition. “Instead, would you please walk her home?” she asked Mark. He understood they needed to separate after the strange interlude. The sounds of Enid’s footsteps faded, with her, into the night.

  Marilyn walked along the streets with Mark—as if she had not yet seen him. Mark felt as if he were with someone else, not Marilyn Monroe—as if another presence had overwhelmed the great movie star. No one recognized her along the well-lit streets.

  Suddenly!

  She tossed her head back, her fingers shaped her hair. With no need of a mirror she painted her lips. She bunched the loose sweater. It embraced lush breasts. Her movements molded the jeans to her curves. And there was Marilyn Monroe!

  People gaped in recognition.

  That is great acting, Mark knew, as he watched this masterpiece of artificial creation on display.

  “I just felt like being Marilyn Monroe again!” she said.

  They walked along the East River. The sound of their slowed footsteps seemed an intrusion on the nervous noises of the city. As if to shed the earlier experience, Marilyn Monroe said, “I should have done my kitten improvisation for Strasberg.” Her laughter released tension. “Want to see it?” She became soft, a furry kitten. She formed her hands into tiny paws. She meowed, she purred. Suddenly she made the sound of an attacking cat. Her hands became claws ripping at the darkness ahead.

  When they resumed walking, her body relaxed against his and she was warmly aware of him. He told her he was gay. “So what?” She cuddled closer. “I’ve had lots of affairs, just like gay men do. Sometimes that’s all I want to do, is fuck. What the hell difference does it make who you fuck as long as it feels good?” The bravado was gone, she sighed. “As long as it takes away loneliness.”

  * * *

  The movie star on the set of the musical, on the beach saving rejected fish—Normalyn welcomed Robert Kunitz’s tender memories. He had been harsh only about himself, when he told of his betrayal of Mark, and then Troja had listened in understanding of love that endures betrayal. . . . Normalyn knew now that Mark had deliberately invited Robert’s gentler memories before he provided his own darker recollections. . . . Normalyn was beginning to see two women at the center of her life, and now, emerging, retreating, re-emerging, a third presence, evoked at the end of the cruel acting exercise, the same figure in the angry overheard “game.”

  For respite from the engulfing past, Normalyn sought out Michael Farrell. He answered her smile and nodded.

  “Then Enid telephoned me,” Mark Poe resumed. “She knew no one else would hire me in Los Angeles, and Marilyn needed someone to be with her, because, Enid told me bluntly, Marilyn had just been through a frightening experience and must be protected. Marilyn—”

  Eighteen

  —Monroe committed herself to Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic at New York Hospital. A few days earlier, “in a waking dream,” she had opened the window of her high-story apartment, and, eyes closed, fists tightened,, she prepared to fling herself into the peaceful unconsciousness—“a warm blackness,” she described it—that she was sure occurs before a body smashes on the ground and dies.

  “I heard footsteps on the street outside; I had to go to the window to see who it was.” That was the only explanation she could provide for finding herself there.

  “But you know you were too high up to hear footsteps,” her psychiatrist told her.

  “But I did, dammit, and I did see her. She was wearing a kind of flowery dress—pretty, I guess.”

  “Perhaps you were somewhat groggy, Marilyn, and just thought you saw her.” But the “dream” alarmed the psychiatrist, and she urged self-commitment: “Only for a rest.”

  There were other reasons for suggesting this “rest.” Marilyn’s third marriage had just ended, her finances were again tenuous, she was acutely aware of being about to turn thirty-five. And:

  Leaving the Actors Studio a few nights earlier, she had read a headline on a tabloid in a shabby newsstand:

  WIFE BLAMES GABLE DEATH ON MARILYN!

  With chilled fingers she bought the paper and in the sullied light of the newsstand read that Clark Gable’s widow was suggesting that “pressures created by Monroe’s erratic behavior” on her latest film, The Misfits, had contributed to the actor’s fatal heart attack. For Marilyn, Gable was an adored hero, “who looks,” she told everyone, “just like my real father.” She had flung the newspaper at the New York wind. Its sheets flapped like angry birds.

  The ugly headline on the tabloid—black on gray—continued to loom in her mind like a tombstone. Before the “waking dream” that led her to the window, she had been experiencing nights she described as “feeling like dark ice.”

  On a cold day—the East River was icy—she took a cab to the skyscraper that houses the clinic. Against a darkening sky, the white building promised surcease. She wrapped her fur coat about her body. She liked to blow softly on the fur to test its luscious texture. When she did so today, sh
e saw only cold mist from her mouth. She stopped. In a window dulled by misting fog that rejected reflections, she had glimpsed the gauzy outline of a woman, a silver ghost.

  She rushed away, in. She registered herself under an assumed name—Faye Miller. Reason for admittance to clinic? She wrote on the form she filled out slowly, lingering over the prospect of surcease: “study and treatment of illness of undetermined origin.”

  The attendant who registered her at the psychiatric clinic recognized the new patient despite her attempt at concealment. As soon as the movie star was led to her room, the nurse told everyone she could find:

  “Marilyn Monroe is here!”

  Stripped of her own clothes and her fur coat—she blew once more on the gray fur, which looked like frozen snow now—the star was given a loose, drab hospital gown. Immediately desperate—feeling they were going to make her disappear! —she tightened it to assert her curves. She attempted to moisten her lips, but her mouth was dry. She entered her new room.

  It was almost bare—no door to the toilet, no telephone, no windows, only a thick glass pane on the door, which locked behind her with metallic finality. Her body wrenched as if to escape and leave only a shell of herself in here. She whispered through the glass pane, “Please open the door. I’ve changed my mind.” She waited for salvation, even a substitute. She shouted: “If you let me out, I won’t make trouble.”

  Along the hollow tunnels of corridors, they were moving toward her in starched white uniforms that made scratchy sounds—orderlies, nurses, doctors, surgeons.