Marilyn Monroe

by Michelle Morgan

  After what must surely have been one of the most depressing Christmas periods of her life, Marilyn lay low for most of 1959, confining her public appearances to publicity for Some Like It Hot, receiving several awards and meeting Nikita Khrushchev at the Twentieth Century Fox studios. The rest of the year was, for the most part, spent trying to recover from her recent tragedy, which had sent her into a spiral of depression and prescription drug use.

  Norman Rosten remembered several disturbing events during this time. In the first of his memories, he recalled a party in which Marilyn stared moodily down to the street, complaining that she had been having trouble sleeping and wondering if anyone would notice if she fell from the window. On another occasion, Rosten and his wife received a 3 a.m. phone call from Marilyn’s maid, begging them to come over to the apartment where Marilyn was recovering from an overdose of pills. When he asked Marilyn how she was, she replied, ‘Alive. Bad luck.’

  And yet, although the walls seemed to be caving in, Marilyn still had her moments of optimism and during 1959 she had several gynaecological operations designed to help her have children. On 23 June 1959 it was publicly announced that Dr Mortimer Rodgers had performed an operation of a corrective nature at Lenox Hill Hospital. Then on another occasion, Dr Steinberg discreetly performed an operation which was one of the first of its kind, attempting to unblock her fallopian tubes and remove scar tissue to enable her to have children. He later told his secretary, Kae Turner, that Marilyn had a uterus ten years older than her years; ‘She’ll never have a child because her uterus is such a mess,’ he said, adding that he believed her uterus was in such disarray because of a past history of septic abortions. ‘She had also had numerous pelvic infections that had gone untreated, which had contributed to the scar tissue and infertility problems,’ remembered his daughter, Vanessa.

  Arthur Miller was present at the hospital during the operation performed by Dr Steinberg; ‘It was a dismal failure,’ said Vanessa Steinberg. ‘My father had the unfortunate task of telling her that she would never be able to have children. Apparently he walked into her room, she looked up at him and said, “Thank you doctor, I already know.” He told her that if he ever had a daughter he would name her after her, which he did.’

  Chapter 18

  Catastrophe

  Coming to terms with the hand she had been dealt, Marilyn tried to continue her everyday life in New York: shopping for cakes and bread at the 400 Cake Shop; grocery shopping in the Gristede Brothers Superior Market, browsing for antiques on Third Avenue and picking up books from the Sutton Place Stationers. She also continued attending sessions with psychiatrist Dr Kris, taking classes with the Strasbergs and conducting the occasional interview. ‘I’m sorry to report that I’m not pregnant again,’ she told one reporter, adding, ‘I feel fine now, but it takes time to get over the feeling of loss.’

  She also spoke of the strength of her relationship with Miller, insisting that her marriage was in a wonderful state and adding – perhaps to convince herself – that she didn’t mind if her husband didn’t send her flowers or remember anniversaries: ‘I can buy my own flowers,’ she said.

  One thing that did keep her spirits up during 1959 was her relationship with the Miller children, Bobby and Jane. ‘It’s such fun for all of us to plan different things to do together. I really look forward to each visit,’ she said. She had a particularly friendly relationship with Bobby, who on at least one occasion wrote her a touching note thanking her for her ‘hostessing and hospitality’, and urging that if she needed to reach him, she could do so through the bedroom phone. Together with Jane, he bought Marilyn a subscription to Horticulture Magazine for her birthday, and when the children travelled to Europe in the summer of 1959, Bobby filmed his adventures and sent them back to New York. Marilyn was excited to receive the films: ‘I have only been to England and Korea and Japan, and through Bobby I am now seeing Paris and the rest of Europe,’ she said.

  Although Marilyn was eager to return to work, she was not sure what to work on next. She wondered whether to play Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; she was interested in playing opposite Marlon Brando in Paris Blues; and she also hoped to act in a film written by Miller, entitled The Misfits. It was with this in mind that Arthur invited producer Frank Taylor, his wife Nan and their three boys to visit the Miller home in Roxbury. Son Curtice remembered the meeting with great affection: ‘I was fairly young – maybe 9 or 11, when I first met Marilyn. The whole family were taken to the Roxbury farm for a reading of Arthur Miller’s play, The Misfits, which he was hoping my father would produce. Marilyn didn’t come down right away – she was upstairs vacuuming, which is what she did when she was nervous. She eventually came down and she was very sweet. She liked children and she was very drawn to my brother Mark, who had had the most problems out of all the children. She immediately recognized that and made an extra effort to reach out to him – she recognized people in trouble and would reach out to them in some way.

  ‘My mother helped her make lunch; unfortunately the script reading went on forever and the lunch was burnt and had to be made again. There were no seats left after all the family had sat down, and Marilyn told me to come and swing on the hammock with her. I lay down on the hammock with Marilyn and all my brothers were jealous, although they all eventually got a turn.’

  On another occasion, Curtice saw the soft side of Marilyn’s personality, during a trip to the 57th Street apartment: ‘Marilyn decided she had to go out to get some shopping, so she took me with her. She wore a crazy disguise – dark wig and dark glasses, and people were looking because of it. She walked like Marilyn but didn’t look like her. There was a homeless man and Marilyn walked right up to him, not at all afraid. “Things are not going well at the moment, are they?” she said. “No they’re not,” he said. She opened her purse and gave him $5 before walking on.’

  In an interview in 1959, Marilyn spoke freely about the Roxbury home and explained that there was a working farm on the land. She admitted not knowing much about what went on there, but she did know that the farmer kept cows. Unfortunately, it became apparent exactly what happened to the animals, during an incident witnessed by Curtice Taylor: ‘We [Curtice and his brother] were out in the field which belonged to Arthur but was managed by a farmer. While we were walking we saw a cow that had just given birth, and said, “Wow look at that”; we knew we had to go and get Marilyn because she would be thrilled. We got her and she was thrilled and amazed. The farmer came, checked the sex and discovered it was male. This was not good because he bred milking cows and wasn’t interested in males. He went to the van and came back with a bag to put the calf in. Marilyn went completely hysterical and shouted, “You can’t do that! You can’t take it away from its mother!” She went absolutely crazy. She rushed back to the house and brought back money to try and buy the cow from the farmer. He wouldn’t take the money and instead told her that he was the farmer, he had to do his job and the calf was going to be veal. She just didn’t understand.’

  Adding to Marilyn’s distress that day was the discovery of a hawk trying to get some swallow chicks, which were nesting above her front porch. Upset by recent events, she spent a long time throwing rocks up at the hawk to chase it away, and spent the rest of the day feeling low and upset.

  Towards the end of 1959, the events of recent years were beginning to take their toll, and although rumours still persisted that Marilyn was pregnant, her marriage was beginning to unravel and she was miserable. One friend described the East 57th Street apartment as the home of an industry, not a love-nest, while Susan Strasberg remembered that Marilyn would sometimes stay at their family home, just to get away from her husband.

  Whilst still working on the script of Marilyn’s next film, The Misfits, Miller accompanied his wife to Los Angeles, where she was to star in the Fox movie, Let’s Make Love, with Gregory Peck. The script revolved around the relationship between an incognito billionaire and an actress employed in a musical show that ridic
uled him. It was a lightweight role and even before shooting started, the problems began, with Miller rewriting the script, and Peck deciding in the middle of dance rehearsals that he no longer wanted the part.

  With Marilyn ready and willing to shoot, the departure of Peck was a hindrance they did not need, and a replacement was immediately sought. Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson and newcomer Steve Boyd were all named but in the end, the male lead went to French actor, Yves Montand, with whom Marilyn was hoping to make a television play in autumn 1960. (The play was going to be produced by Litchfield Productions, a company set up by Marilyn, Arthur Miller and Frank Taylor. The company was designed to produce Miller’s plays, Marilyn’s films and the occasional television show, although in the end, personal events would prevent anything being produced by the company at all.) Montand had appeared with his wife, Simone Signoret, in Miller’s play The Crucible, and Marilyn had attended a performance of his one-man show in September 1959. Although his English was limited (so much so that he had a French version of the script), he saw the part as his big break, and eagerly accepted.

  A press party was arranged, during which Marilyn was photographed with Miller, Montand and Simone Signoret, and declared happily that, next to her husband, Yves was the most handsome man she had ever met. It was a bad sign; with the Miller marriage crumbling, his wife’s attraction to another man was probably the last thing Arthur needed to think about. But despite any personal problems she had, Marilyn threw herself into arranging Christmas treats for her stepchildren, organizing a variety of events, including a trip to the MGM studio to see a Western being made.

  When the holidays were over, the delayed shooting of Let’s Make Love finally began, and Marilyn proved to be popular with other members of the cast and crew. Bob Banas was a dancer in the film, and he remembered her fondly: ‘She was very nice and comfortable but very childlike. She was not like some other big stars, with closed doors etc. She was very happy to talk and when I brought people on to the set to get autographs, Marilyn was very nice about it and spent time with them. All the dancers asked her for an autographed picture at the end of the shoot and they all got one.’

  There were also some relaxed moments on the set, particularly during the filming of ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ when she had to pull two dancers (including Bob Banas) by the hair, before swinging round a pole. ‘I had so much grease on my hair,’ remembered Banas, ‘that when Marilyn went round the pole, she really flew round fast and was very alarmed. She went up to the director and jokingly said, “I don’t want to say but someone has too much grease on their hair!” after which I was sent to have my hair shampooed. Later, when we filmed the part of the song where Marilyn had to kiss me, she had lots of lip gloss on, and I slid off her face! I went to the director and jokingly told him that she had too much grease on, and Marilyn laughed.’

  But it wasn’t all light-hearted. Marilyn was late once again, leading Yves Montand to leave a note under her door, chastising her for keeping him waiting. Tony Randall, who played Montand’s sidekick, remembered, ‘Marilyn would report to work around 5 in the evening. You’ve been in make-up since 8.30 in the morning waiting for her. That ceases to be amusing after about a week.’

  Another problem was caused by the requirement of countless rewrites, undertaken by Arthur Miller. This didn’t do anything to lighten relations between Marilyn and her husband, and on 8 March, when she received a Golden Globe award for her performance in Some Like It Hot, her publicist acted as her escort, while Arthur Miller stayed behind at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  After the rewrites came an actors’ strike, which, coupled with Marilyn’s illnesses and lateness, led to extreme time delays on set. Yves Montand was scheduled to leave the United States for a thirty-day tour of Japan on 15 May 1960, but with all the disruption this was deemed impossible. As a result, Fox sent representatives to Tokyo to try and stall the tour, but despite the promise of a cash remuneration, the tour’s producers refused to postpone. When the Japanese producers threatened legal and even government action, the Let’s Make Love set went on a twenty-four-hour grind to complete the movie by mid-May, but it was a losing battle. Marilyn’s habit of phoning in sick pushed them even further behind, and, finally admitting defeat, Montand ended up paying the Japanese producers $120,000 to be released from his contract, a sum that was reimbursed by Fox.

  Another person feeling the stress of day-to-day life on set was costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, who was not only working on costumes for Let’s Make Love but for The Misfits too. Initially, the relationship between the two women had run smoothly, and everything had begun with a fair amount of hope. By early February they had had meetings on the kind of clothes Marilyn would wear in The Misfits, and Jeakins was very pleased with the way it was working out. But even at this early stage, Jeakins noticed that Marilyn had a marked personality change whenever Paula Strasberg was in the room.

  This was a sign of things to come and before long Marilyn was refusing to wear Jeakins’ costumes in Let’s Make Love, substituting them for items of her own. Added to that, there were problems with The Misfits costumes too when Marilyn refused to attend a ten-minute meeting to see the designs Jeakins had drawn. Strangely, Marilyn then began to insult Jeakins not only in private, but also in front of other cast and crew members, which the costume designer felt quite astonishing. Not knowing how to react to these outbursts, Jeakins would stare into space without saying a word, but the failure she felt soon mounted up.

  By 3 May the situation was hopeless and Jeakins wrote a heartfelt letter to Marilyn, apologizing if she had displeased her, declaring that she felt defeated and should be replaced. She then wrote to C.O. Erickson, production manager on The Misfits, asking to be omitted from the credits and proclaiming that she would expect no remuneration for work already done. Then, on 4 May, she wrote to Frank Taylor, giving her side of the entire story. There remains no trace of Marilyn’s response (if any) to all of this, but Jeakins was not credited on The Misfits, and Jean Louis was later hired as Marilyn’s official costume designer.

  She may not have made a friend out of Dorothy Jeakins, but Marilyn found several other confidants during the making of Let’s Make Love. The first was psychiatrist Dr Ralph Greenson, whom she met at the Beverly Hills Hotel on the recommendation of her New York analyst, Marianne Kris; the second was Ralph Roberts, a massage therapist and actor who became her masseur and friend; and the third was Evelyn Moriarty, a young woman hired to be Marilyn’s stand-in on Let’s Make Love.

  Moriarty worked with Marilyn for six weeks, without a single word being said between them: ‘I didn’t talk to her and she didn’t talk to me,’ she told the ‘Marilyn: Then and Now’ club; ‘I had heard that she was difficult and I wasn’t going to go up to someone that I didn’t know.’ This was a big problem for Marilyn on the Let’s Make Love set, and Jack ‘Waukeen’ Cochran, who was hired to play an Elvis impersonator in the film, remembered that everyone was frightened to talk to her, which just added to her frustration and insecurity. He took matters into his own hands one day when she appeared on set, and he greeted her with a huge hug. She was surprised but delighted, and so he continued this practice for the remainder of his time on the film.

  Moriarty was less sure how to approach her, and was pleased when Marilyn eventually took the initiative and came up to introduce the stunned stand-in to her pet cat, Serafina. ‘It was a sweet, funny sort of thing to do,’ remembered Moriarty, and after that the two became good friends. In later years she would always describe Marilyn in the most positive of ways, as demonstrated in the ‘Marilyn Then and Now’ interview: ‘She was the most wonderful person that lived. I think that when she got up in the morning she used to wonder who she could help. You couldn’t tell her that she had something nice on, because you got it the next day. She was very giving. She was fantastic.’

  When Marilyn appeared on set looking slightly heavier than normal, her wardrobe lady could be seen leaning in before takes, telling her to hold her tummy in. Th
is led to whispers of a pregnancy, but these stories were quickly forgotten when yet another, more explosive rumour began.

  Before leaving for a trip to Europe, Simone Signoret had declared, ‘I love Marilyn very much. She’s clever. She loves her husband, which is a quality I like in women.’ It was a heartfelt but ironic comment as, shortly after her departure, an affair began between Yves Montand and Marilyn.

  Miller was out of town, working on The Misfits, and although the affair was conducted in private, it did not take long to filter not only on to the set, but into the media too. Adding fuel to the fire were Marilyn’s comments that as well as being a brilliant actor, singer and dancer, Yves Montand was ‘very, very romantic’. How she intended this comment to be interpreted was not clear, but Yves added his own fuel when he later made the mistake of declaring that he’d have no objection to marrying her if they were not already married to other people. For his part, Miller kept quiet about the subject, while Simone Signoret kept a stiff upper lip. When later questioned she declared, ‘If Marilyn is in love with my husband, it proves she has good taste, for I am in love with him too,’ before adding poignantly, ‘She is a warm, delightful person . . . but this business could spoil our friendship.’

  Marilyn felt an intense attraction to Montand but the affair had run its course by the end of filming, and although she made a much ballyhooed trip to the airport to say goodbye, she never publicly announced any romantic tendencies towards her co-star. In fact, when Louella Parsons later asked if her marriage was breaking up because of Yves Montand, Marilyn retorted: ‘Of course not! Just because Yves is a gentleman and treated me like a lady is no reason to say we are in love.’ To Hedda Hopper she declared, ‘I think anyone would find he’s an attractive man. Didn’t you find him so?’