Marilyn
Page 23
Still, Jane Russell’s career was stymied when in 1941 the Production Board vetoed Howard Hughes’s emphasis on her breasts in The Outlaw. Hughes didn’t release the film until 1943. In 1949, Ingrid Bergman’s career was destroyed when she had an out-of-wedlock child with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She didn’t return to Hollywood films until 1956. Marilyn’s nude calendar photograph could raise a public outcry. As her popularity increased, so did the sales of the calendar.
By 1950, Sidney Skolsky and Marilyn, working with Fox publicists, began to construct a protective star text around her. The “star text,” standard for all prominent film actors and actresses, was the narrative of their lives that appeared in newspaper articles about them and that often was threaded through their films as another way to satisfy their fans. In the first instance, Marilyn’s text praised her beauty and sexuality. She was a “blonde bombshell,” “Miss Cheesecake,” and “Miss Flame-thrower.” Sidney and Marilyn also created a counter-text to the mythos of her titillating self. The narrative of her miserable childhood dominated that text. The counter-text also presented her as simple and shy, getting by on a small income, foregoing the luxurious life of a Hollywood star. In July 1951, an article on her in Movieland explained that she had over-spent on clothes and nonessentials because she was too young to know how to manage money. After credit agencies started dunning her, she had to learn how to budget.46
The articles by Robert Cahn in Collier’s and by Rupert Allan in Look in the fall of 1951 contain the basics of her star text. Both begin by praising her as a sex icon. Yet both writers describe her as shy off camera, with a large inferiority complex. She didn’t like nightclubs, and she spent many evenings at home reading great books. Or she went to voice, acting, or body movement classes. Cahn noted that she was taking a course at UCLA. According to her teacher, whom Cahn interviewed, she was so modest that she seemed like a girl from a convent.
Marilyn’s star text also emphasized her difference from other starlets: she was independent and sometimes eccentric. Photos in Allan’s article show her working out with weights, an activity frowned on for women. Another picture in the Allan article shows her studying with black voice coach Phil Moore, wearing capri pants and a shirt tied in a knot under her bust, exposing her midriff. In a racist age, such a photo was shocking.
In her star text, Marilyn was often compared to Greta Garbo. Like Garbo, Marilyn is described as private, even mysterious. Marilyn increasingly did avoid nightclubs and parties. She had already made her mark through her electric entrances at them. Now she spent time at home, where she studied scripts or read books. In August 1951 she was called “a bachelor girl in the crispest modern tradition and a career woman who doesn’t have the time to date.”47
Before too long, the assertion that she was a hermit who avoided Hollywood social life was expanded by publicists into the claim that she was deeply moral. She was an “unusually straight-laced and moral young lady for any community, let alone Hollywood,” according to Modern Screen. Movie Fan was more ambivalent. “Rumors started circulating around the studio that the new queen of sex was mistress to a prominent film executive [Joe Schenck]. She is certainly not one of Hollywood’s wild set, but the evil whispers and lurid tales continue. So far La Monroe has shrugged off all the gossip.” The article concluded: “Movie Fan is in her corner.” Fan magazines sometimes noted that she shaved several years off her age; by the time she made Clash by Night in 1951, for example, she was twenty-five, considered old by Hollywood standards. She got away with it because she looked much younger than her actual years.48
The claim that Marilyn was moral was bolstered by the consensus among journalists that she was honest in interviews. “Even seasoned reporters come away from her swearing by her candor and honesty,” wrote Ezra Goodman. “She can transfix with the wide eyes of a lost, very appealing little girl.” She often seemed to journalists to act like an ordinary young woman, not a star, and they liked that humility. “She looks you in the eye and gives you an honest answer,” wrote Bob Ruark. “Here is one of the few honest ones I have ever met in the studio. She is willing to play it straight and not go grand dame.” Pro-Marilyn journalists focused on how hard she worked, documented her long hours at the studio, and concluded that her apartment was messy because she had no time to clean it.49
She developed a superb interview style. When she wasn’t being sincere, she entertained reporters with her Monroeisms, her sexual double entendres directed against herself. When the scandal over the nude calendar broke in March 1952, she had an effective response in place. She fixed her innocent, large eyes on reporters, playing a combination of Shirley Temple and Little Orphan Annie, and they were transfixed. Gazing wide-eyed at reporters, talking almost in a whisper, she sounded as though she were in a confessional. She told them what she wanted them to hear, about her shy self, about her past, about how hard she worked, about how moral she was, cutting them off with a sexual quip. According to historian Daniel Boorstin, she gave the best celebrity interview of the twentieth century.50
Yet as hard as she tried, she couldn’t entirely counter jokes about her that circulated coast to coast. She was the ultimate blonde in a nation both fascinated by sexuality and uneasy about it, involved both in an ongoing sexual revolution and a conservative reaction against it. Marilyn once said that she joked about herself to get the humor of her character out before someone applied it against her. The “Copacabana” acting school in All About Eve became a catch phrase used by comedians and impersonators ad nauseum; the story about “Apprentice Stars” in Life magazine in January 1951 referred to her as a “busty Bernhardt,” and that phrase inspired many jokes. The nude calendar photo became so famous that comedian Red Skelton brought down the house when he simply pointed to a calendar off stage.51 “Please don’t make me into a joke,” she pleaded with the press and the public. She walked a tightrope between sexiness and a parody of it that could be misunderstood. But she created that subtle self-parody as part of her acting style and because she was always ambivalent about her femininity, even when she praised it the most.
Working with Marilyn wasn’t easy for the directors and actors in her films. She was often late to filming, and she often flubbed her lines, requiring many takes. The lateness began slowly and wasn’t a real issue until All About Eve (1950). During the filming of the 1951 comedies she did—As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, and Let’s Make It Legal—some of her fellow actors complained about her lateness to the producers, but nothing was done. Joe Schenck, they were told, had given her permission to be late. Jack Paar, who played opposite her in Love Nest, stated that she was always late, but everyone knew that her status at the studio had little to do with her ability as an actress. He often felt sorry for her, because she was the object of constant sexual remarks. Richard Sale, who directed Let’s Make It Legal, became so angry with her that he dressed her down in front of the cast and crew. At first she was furious, threatening to have him fired by “a major Fox executive” (Joe Schenck), but she soon calmed down and apologized.52
Marilyn had no difficulty posing for the still camera. But films required speaking lines, which was a problem for her. She was probably dyslexic (she couldn’t spell). When she flubbed a single sentence twenty-two times on the set of How to Marry a Millionaire, Lee Siegel, the studio doctor, told the producer, “She has a problem with word perception, not memory.” Some writers maintain that she developed Meniere’s disease in the early 1950s, an ailment that caused dizziness and partial loss of hearing in her right ear.53 Her stuttering still challenged her speech, and that problem made her anxious. Acting with Marilyn in Love Nest, June Haver noted that she had difficulty getting her first words out. Once she got past the first line, according to Haver, she was fine.54
Movie acting wasn’t easy. Actors were supposed to know how to act before facing a movie camera and to understand the mechanics of film production: how to place their feet in their “marks”—chalk marks on the floor—to keep them in range of t
he lights and the camera, and to keep their heads in line with their “key light,” a light in the ceiling that illuminated only them. Most directors didn’t give much help with acting or with toeing the marks; they focused on the technical elements of filming, such as lighting and camera angles. Marilyn was often contemptuous of her directors; many, she felt, didn’t know as much as she did about filmmaking. As Arthur Miller pointed out, Marilyn was one of the few Hollywood stars without her own cameraman and lighting man. In her book about the film industry, Hortense Powdermaker concluded that many actors felt that directors were a hindrance to their acting, not a help. Marilyn wasn’t alone in criticizing her directors.55
Moreover, since movies were expected to make large profits, the studio heads regarded them as akin to factory products. To save money, scenes weren’t shot in the same sequence as in the script; they were grouped together in terms of location, the actors involved, and technical issues. Endings could be shot before beginnings, and middle scenes could be mixed up. Production schedules and budgets were established before shooting began, and assistants were on sets to keep films “within budget.” Rehearsal time was brief, and films were shot as quickly as possible. Even stars had to be ready to shoot as early as seven A.M., which meant that they had to be at the studio at five thirty to have their hair and makeup done and their costumes put on. Shooting could go into the evening and take place six days a week. According to Maurice Zolotow, Marilyn learned slowly and required a lot of rehearsing, with which directors often dispensed.56
Hollywood directors, all male, were often tyrants. Like the studio moguls, they were often hypermasculine. According to Patrick McGilligan, they “made a big show of being swaggering, cigar-chewing, and polo-playing manly men.” Many suffered from status anxiety. Because directors as well as actors signed contracts with studios, studio heads wielded control over them, and producers could overrule them. They vented their frustrations on actors. Aware of Marilyn’s work as a “party girl” and her status as a dumb blonde, many didn’t respect her. Marilyn complained about their rigidity. “They tell you to cry one tear, and if you feel two and cry two, it’s no good. If you change ‘the’ to ‘a’ in your lines, they correct you. An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like one.”57
When she posed for photographers, Marilyn had control over the poses she assumed. Connected to the feminized world of fashion, fashion photographers were gentle with their models. Film acting was different. Directors, cameramen, even producers had a say in what Marilyn did, while she often wasn’t permitted to watch the daily rushes, the raw film shot during a day’s shooting, which was usually reviewed each evening.58
Marilyn was most comfortable filming when she was friendly with the director. Henry Koster, who directed her in the “Cop and the Anthem” sequence in O. Henry’s Full House, found her wonderful to work with, kind and accommodating. Earl Moran was his father-in-law, and he and Marilyn discussed Moran’s many kindnesses to her when she had modeled for him.59 In doing a film Marilyn’s concern was with her performance, not the entire film, and she was a perfectionist. She wasn’t an ensemble player; it was hard enough for her to achieve perfection in her own performance, much less to think about the other actors.
Marilyn’s difficulties in the early 1950s were especially apparent during the filming of Clash by Night. Costars Barbara Stanwyck and Paul Douglas, old hands at doing films, intimidated her. Both were furious when reporters wanted to interview “the girl with the big tits,” not them, and when they learned that Marilyn was getting star billing because of her large fan base. For the first time since Marilyn’s screen test at Fox, her skin broke out in blotches and she vomited before going into a scene. She had problems with Fritz Lang, the film’s director, renowned for the expressionist films he had directed in Germany in the 1920s. Lang expected actors to show deference to him, and he spoke harshly to them when they didn’t. He dressed formally, and he wore a monocle, reminiscent of the elderly actor in Marilyn’s childhood.
Clash by Night was the first film since The Asphalt Jungle in which Natasha was allowed on the set to coach Marilyn. Lang tried to throw her off the set when he realized that she was standing behind him, directing Marilyn, but Marilyn got her back. When Marilyn missed her lines, Lang erupted, and she broke down in tears. She seemed unable to handle him. Reporter James Bacon had a different interpretation. After he watched her spoil twenty-seven takes in a single scene, he asked her why she did it. She replied, “I just didn’t like the way the scene was going. When I liked it I said the lines in the scene perfectly.” Then she continued, “I never intentionally meant to hurt anyone, but you can’t be too nice to people you work with, else they will trample you to death.”60
It wasn’t easy to control Marilyn. If she didn’t get her way, she might retreat into her dressing room and lock the door. She sobbed; she got headaches and spells of vomiting. According to Maurice Zolotow, “Nobody was sure whether those attacks were genuine or deliberately staged.” But she defended herself against the many public attacks on her. Often accused of narcissism because she spent so much time looking at herself in mirrors, she retorted that she wasn’t admiring herself. Instead, she was practicing facial expressions, redoing her makeup, or so anxious that she felt frozen in time. Assistants and friends of hers, like Sam Shaw and Rupert Allan, agreed with her. No one had seen such perfectionism before.61
As Marilyn’s star status increased, her punctuality declined. She always had an excuse for being late: she was ill; she had lost her keys; her car had broken down. People hesitated to criticize her for it, because she might start crying. She told several individuals that deep inside she was punishing her antagonists in the studios for the bad treatment she had experienced in childhood—and later at the hands of producers. Louella Parsons stated that Marilyn never forgave Fox executives for having laid her off in 1947 and not hired her back until 1951. By 1951, Marilyn also said, she had finally broken through the shell she put up as a child. She had been passive for many years, ignoring her own nature. That statement was true, but the “nature” that was surfacing was filled with resentment and anger.62
Marilyn was unprofessional, but she wasn’t entirely to blame for the problems on her films. Many of her directors were tyrants. Roy Ward Baker, the director of Don’t Bother to Knock, filmed in December 1961, was a curt Englishman who terrified her. Howard Hawks, her director in Monkey Business in February and March 1952, was “a formidable and imperious man,” tall and craggy, an American bald eagle, with penetrating ice-blue eyes. He could be ferocious. At their first meeting, he treated her as a “goddamn dumb blonde,” terrifying her. Henry Hathaway, who directed her in Niagara in the summer of 1952, was called “screaming Henry” because of his bullying behavior on sets, especially toward actresses.63
While filming The Prince and the Showgirl in the summer of 1956, Laurence Olivier acted like an aristocrat and treated Marilyn like a commoner. According to Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder, who directed her in The Seven Year Itch (October 1954) and Some Like It Hot (summer 1958), was a taskmaster. “He permits no ad-libbing. It sounds spontaneous on his films but it isn’t.” He had a sardonic personality, was always blowing up, and made nasty, cutting remarks about Marilyn to the press that he usually retracted later. Fritz Lang, who directed her in Clash by Night, and Otto Preminger, her director for River of No Return, were émigrés from Germany who acted like Prussian autocrats.64
On the other hand, Henry Hathaway came to respect Marilyn. Once he closed the Niagara set to reporters, she calmed down. He realized that Fox executives treated her badly. She had no clothes to speak of and when he asked her why she didn’t have an extensive wardrobe, as most stars did, she said that she spent all her money on acting and singing lessons because the studio wouldn’t pay for them. He exploded at Zanuck: “This girl’s got great talent, why the hell don’t you treat her like a human being? Not somebody you put under the desk to suck your cock while you’re having story conferences.” He found her to be �
��a very smart girl, but she liked playing dumb. Her dumbness was all acting.” He wanted to cast Marilyn opposite James Dean or Montgomery Clift in Of Human Bondage, but Zanuck wouldn’t allow it. Hathaway spent weeks arguing that Marilyn should be cast as Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov, but the studio executives laughed at him. None of them had read the novel, Hawathay said; they didn’t realize that Marilyn was a double of the Russian girl.65
Hathaway and Marilyn became friends. He saw that her schedule was extremely demanding, and he worried about her. That perception was confirmed by a journalist who covered her in 1952 and concluded that she did the work of ten women. Up at five thirty, she was on the set by six. Finishing at seven thirty at night, she then studied her lines for the next day with Natasha. Everyone pulled her in different directions. Whenever she had a break, she did interviews. One day she gave an interview to a Tokyo reporter on the transcontinental telephone during a morning break, then tape-recorded an interview with Sheilah Graham during an afternoon break, and then rushed after filming was finished that day for another interview with another reporter.66
Joseph Cotten, who played her husband in Niagara, defended her. “There’s hardly a director alive who doesn’t consider any lapse in discipline on his ship a direct insult to the bridge.” Cotten didn’t think she was seriously rebellious, although she enjoyed challenging authority. But the reasons for her behavior went deeper than that, he thought, into realms of her psyche that Cotten couldn’t fathom. At times she glowed with the joy of discovery and then, suddenly, her focus moved into outer space, thrusting her into a cloud of blankness. It could happen to her in the middle of a scene, and recovery wasn’t easy for her. On the other hand, she had a healthy sense of humor about herself, and she used it to rescue herself from her fogs.67