Marilyn

by Lois Banner

  During their sessions, Marilyn poured out her resentments against Arthur. He was cool toward his father, she said, ineffective with his children, under the domination of his mother, attracted to other women, and insufficiently demonstrative with her. She was annoyed with him for going to Ireland. These complaints were legitimate, but they were exaggerated. Greenson didn’t automatically take her side, especially after he talked to Arthur, who seemed concerned about her but nearly fed up. Greenson decided that her demands for total devotion were overwhelming Arthur, although once she obtained it she became manipulative. She had turned Arthur into a foster parent whom she then rejected. Greenson called her paranoid, but not schizophrenic.

  During March the Writers’ Guild called a strike, and production shut down on Let’s Make Love for a number of weeks. Marilyn went to Roxbury with Arthur. Given her popularity in the community and her growing interest in politics, she was elected an alternate delegate to the state Democratic caucus, although she didn’t attend it. She also signed up as a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). Toward the end of the month, she wrote a letter to Lester Markel, urging him to include her ideas in his New York Times columns. Indicating her sharp turn toward the left, she informed Markel of her support for Fidel Castro in Cuba because he had thrown out the corrupt Batista regime. “I was brought up to believe in democracy,” she declared. She told Markel that the New York Times coverage of Castro was biased against him. She suggested that Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas would be a good Democratic presidential candidate, with John Kennedy his running mate. Indicating the strength of her convictions, she attended meetings held that spring at Peter Lawford’s house to plan a Kennedy candidacy.24

  Then in April 1960 Simone Signoret won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Room at the Top, and Shelley Winters won Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the mother in The Diary of Anne Frank. To her dismay, Marilyn wasn’t even nominated for her role in Some Like It Hot, a critical and box office success. Hollywood seemed to be shunning her. Yet the overseas film communities and critics adored her. She won awards from Italy and France for The Prince and the Showgirl, while the Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded her its Golden Globe for best comedy actress of the year for her portrayal of Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot.

  In sessions with Greenson, Arthur wasn’t the only person Marilyn perceived to be her enemy. She identified both George Cukor and his cameraman on the film as homosexuals who wanted to take her over. Cukor, in fact, was the only major homosexual director in Hollywood—and he had a reputation as a gay queen. Billy Travilla charged that Cukor made a play for Yves Montand during the filming, contending with Marilyn over him. Unlike most directors Marilyn had worked with, Cukor didn’t focus on the formal aspects of filming—lights, camera, sound. His interest was in the actors; he sometimes performed their roles along with them on the sidelines during filming. But Marilyn didn’t understand his direction. Even though Jack Cole stated that she took a lot of drugs during the filming, he agreed with her criticisms of Cukor. He talked too much during filming, Cole said, and threw off her concentration. His verbal directions were sometimes incomprehensible, while Paula Strasberg seemed unable for once to translate them into language that Marilyn understood.25

  In fact, relations between Paula and Marilyn became so frayed on this film that Marilyn began to regard Paula as akin to Gladys Eley, her disturbed mother. Paula, who had her own neuroses, decided that she had fallen into a folie à deux with Marilyn, in which she replicated Marilyn’s neurotic symptoms. They managed to finish Let’s Make Love, and they did better on The Misfits, Marilyn’s next film. After that, however, their relationship broke down to the extent that Marilyn fired Paula during the filming of Something’s Got to Give in 1961.

  Despite problems with Paula, Marilyn still practiced Method acting, but Cukor detested it, calling it “pretentious maundering.” Many evenings after a day’s filming Marilyn attended the showing of the daily rushes, and she and Cukor often disagreed about them. Still a perfectionist, she demanded many retakes. As she had with other directors, she fought him for control. Cukor may have been gentle on the surface but he was tough underneath, even though he later claimed that Marilyn was in control during much of the filming. She did what she wanted in playing her role. All he could do was to foster a climate on the set that was agreeable for her because “every day was an agony of struggle for her, just to get to the set.” He sympathized with Marilyn, although he also said that she was “as mad as her mother.”26

  Greenson pulled Marilyn together, although he wasn’t able to do anything about her attraction to Yves Montand, who reminded her of Joe DiMaggio. Tall, dark, and handsome, Yves did resemble Joe—and Arthur. Unlike them, however, he exuded sexuality, had a Frenchman’s charm, and openly admitted that he was insecure in playing his role. Both their childhoods had been difficult, and that was a connection between them. They began rehearsing together in their hotel rooms in the evening, going over their lines. Marilyn had never acted opposite such a sympathetic man. Meantime, Arthur kept leaving town, and in early April Simone went to Europe to do a film. Yves and Marilyn were left alone together.

  The inevitable happened: they had an affair. In his autobiography, Montand defended Marilyn against charges that she was an unbalanced drug addict. She was “strong” and “full of good sense.” On the other hand, others who were there at the time thought that Yves was ambitious to succeed in Hollywood and was using her.27 Why Arthur and Simone left them alone together isn’t clear, but Marilyn had never had an affair with a leading man, so perhaps they thought it was safe.

  The final cut of Let’s Make Love was still hampered by a weak script and a miscast leading man. Yves was known for his smoldering masculinity, which sometimes had a feminine edge. But male characters in the film mock him, and he looks self-conscious throughout it. In one scene he is embarrassed as Gene Kelly teaches him how to dance, and a man enters the room to find him twirling in Kelly’s arms. Marilyn seems lost among a host of male characters, who tell jokes that aren’t funny, while she sings the song “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” which draws from the 1950s fascination with women as girls. That fascination was taken to an extreme by Vladimir Nabokov, in his novel Lolita, a best seller about an aging pedophile who abducts an adolescent girl named Lolita and gains emotional control over her.

  Marilyn repeats the name “Lolita” in the opening number of Let’s Make Love, in which she sings “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” The best aspect of the film is Marilyn’s role. Arthur wrote the real Marilyn into her character, Amanda Dell, who is charming, kooky, and wise. She is a dancer taking classes at night, isn’t interested in money, and wants a gentle man. Much of the “real” Marilyn is in this film.

  Marilyn’s lateness to the set and repeated absences added a month to the filming, and the writers’ strike in March delayed filming by another month. Thus it wasn’t completed until the end of June. Shortly before it ended, Miller returned. He didn’t seem to know about Marilyn’s affair with Montand, although gossip columnists were hinting at it. Several days after he got back, he asked Rupert Allan why Yves hadn’t gotten in touch with him, and Allan told him what was going on.

  As a result, Arthur and Marilyn discussed divorce. He had come to represent betrayal to her, Arthur stated, because he didn’t listen to her about the script of The Misfits; because he left her alone so often; because he seemed to be colluding with Hollywood rather than supporting her. Their sex life was nearly dead. The affair with Montand may have been the impetus for divorce discussions, but Arthur later said it didn’t bother him. “Anyone who could make her smile came as a blessing to me.”28 That may be true, but surely he was angry at being cuckolded by a friend. The nation’s press would soon focus on the affair, further humiliating him.

  Another scenario was unfolding that Marilyn knew nothing about, and it might explain Arthur’s seeming lack of concern about Montand. A
rthur had begun meeting with Elia Kazan in New York. Funding had been raised for a national theater, with a resident company. It would become the Repertory Theatre at Lincoln Center. Kazan was to be its director, and he wanted to open it with a new Arthur Miller play. Arthur leapt at the chance.29 The play would be After the Fall, Arthur’s diatribe against Marilyn. Miller and Kazan were moving toward reconciliation. In the end, they would reconcile over what amounted to an attack on Marilyn for her promiscuous behavior with men, an attack on her body, even though they had both earlier loved that body. Perhaps Arthur needed to symbolically “kill” Marilyn before he could break his writing block and move on to other work.

  Marilyn had almost no time off between Let’s Make Love and The Misfits, even though she was exhausted from the long months she had spent filming the former movie. The tension with Arthur and Yves was draining, especially since she kept pursuing Yves and he kept retreating. When his airplane landed at Idlewild on June 26, on a trip from Paris to Hollywood, where he was scheduled to do another film, she was there in a limousine with champagne and caviar waiting for him. She ran up to the landing ramp as he exited from the plane and embraced him, making their affair obvious to the journalists who were present. She’d reserved a room in a nearby hotel, but he turned that down. Then there was a bomb scare, and his plane was grounded from nine P.M. until one in the morning. They sat in the limousine; May Reis, Marilyn’s secretary, was with them. One wonders what they talked about. The next day journalists reported what had happened. The newspapers were filled with it.30

  How do these adventures fit in with the sightings of her with John F. Kennedy at the Democratic convention, which was held in Los Angeles from July 11 to July 15? It’s possible that she was there; Marilyn was skilled at concealing herself. She was reported to have had dinner with him and to have attended a party at Peter Lawford’s after Kennedy gave his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Marilyn seemed to travel across the continent with aplomb, although it was a long flight in those days, nearly eight hours in length. Still, Ralph Roberts claimed that he was in Marilyn’s New York apartment with her at the time of the convention, watching it on television with her. And New York journalists observed her taking an airplane to Los Angeles on July 17, after the convention had ended. They reported that she looked exhausted, with pouches under her eyes and bloodstains on her skirt. Gloria Romanoff, who was present throughout the convention, saw Jack Kennedy with a blonde woman, but she wasn’t Marilyn. Still, Marilyn, a master at deception, may have been there.31

  The end of the Miller marriage played out in the Nevada desert, during the filming of The Misfits. The filming began in early July; Marilyn arrived on the set on July 18. A stellar cast had been assembled, including Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, and Clark Gable to play the three aging cowboys. The technical personnel—cameramen, sound men, lighting experts, set decorators—were the best in the industry. Everyone involved with the film thought it would be a masterpiece. It turned out to be the most expensive black-and-white movie in the history of Hollywood films. Gable’s compensation for the film, involving a salary and a percentage of the profits, was the highest yet paid to any actor in any film.32

  The producer was Frank Taylor, an editor in New York publishing with experience in Hollywood who was a friend of the Millers. Tall and elegant, he spoke quietly and listened carefully, unlike most Hollywood producers, and he could soothe ruffled feathers. John Huston was the film’s director. He’d already required many revisions to the script, and he would continue to do so during filming. He hadn’t had a hit movie in some time and, with the script perfected, this might be the one.33

  Marilyn liked the three male leads. She called Eli Wallach Teacake and thought of him as a brother. Clark Gable had been her fantasy father when she was a child. They had met at the 1954 party at Romanoff’s restaurant celebrating her success in The Seven Year Itch. Monty Clift, who was homosexual, was her soul mate: Both were shy and sensitive, both were neurotic and hooked on drugs. Both were insomniacs who talked for hours on the phone during the night to friends. Each was the acting idol of the other. Monty had seen Marilyn in the scene from Anna Christie at the Actors Studio; he’d been offered the role of the cowboy in Bus Stop, and he now regretted having turned it down. They had formed a bond during the summer of 1958, when they were both making movies in Hollywood. After that, they saw each other frequently in New York.34

  Frank Taylor had taken precautions to keep things running smoothly during the filming. He barred all reporters from the set without express permission from him to be there. He arranged for the prestigious Magnum cooperative of photographers to take all the still photos. Its photographers came in teams of two, each team for two weeks, eliminating any crush of photographers on the set. Inge Morath and Henri Cartier-Bresson were the first team to appear, and Eve Arnold was on one of the later teams. Taylor arranged for the cast and crew (some two hundred individuals) to stay at the Mapes Hotel in Reno and to be bused to the film’s three major locations, each about fifty miles from Reno: a house near the cabin where Arthur had lived when he established residency for his 1954 divorce; a town with a rodeo stadium; and an alkaline lake bed. Limousines transported the major performers and technicians to those locations. It appeared that Taylor had thought of everything.35

  Yet problems arose during the filming. The first was the terrible heat during the summer months in Reno and the region around it, as much as 110 degrees. Filming was supposed to start in March, in much cooler weather, but the delays on Let’s Make Love had prevented it. In this heat, dehydraytion and sunstroke were threats. To provide some relief, the motors on the limousines were kept running, with the air-conditioning on high. Fortunate people assigned to those cars could take their breaks sitting in them. When scenes were filmed on the lake bed, there was hardly a breath of air; the only trees were those put up by the prop men. Any movement kicked up alkaline dust that got into eyes and lungs. One reporter called it “like one of Gustave Doré’s paintings of hell for Dante’s Divine Comedy.”

  Controversies arose. Miller was determined that he and Huston would be in charge of the filming. After being with Paula Strasberg on the sets of The Prince and the Showgirl, Some Like It Hot, and Let’s Make Love, Miller considered her a major problem. He met with John Huston and Frank Taylor about her before shooting began. They decided to freeze her out by not speaking to her during the filming except for pleasantries. According to Taylor, they carried out this decision, even though Marilyn became furious when she figured out what was going on.36 She felt she needed Paula’s support, and she didn’t want the men ganging up on her.

  The plan regarding Paula became the basis for two factions that emerged among the cast and crew, with Montgomery Clift on Marilyn’s side and Eli Wallach siding with Miller and Huston, although Wallach later contended that he hadn’t taken sides.37 Marilyn had many assistants with her—Paula Strasberg, Whitey Snyder, May Reis, Hazel Washington, Rupert Allan, Ralph Roberts, and others—and they supported her. Each side drove in separate limousines from Reno to the film’s locations; each had its own after-hours events. Marilyn stayed in her suite and didn’t attend them.

  Clark Gable stayed out of the dissension. He drove his own car to the set, rented his own house, and was there on time for every call. He left the set every day at five o’clock, no matter when filming had begun. That time was written into his contract. He knew about Marilyn’s childhood fixation on him as her father and about her heavy use of prescription drugs. He was kind to her on the set, continually complimenting her on her work. His wife, Kay, was expecting their first child, and his emotions were focused on her pregnancy. But he felt the tensions on the set. He chain-smoked and drank whiskey throughout the day.

  During the filming, Marilyn was alienated from Arthur. She was convinced he had betrayed her, even before her involvement with Montand. She didn’t like the script; she thought Arthur had made the male roles more important than hers; and, in line with Elia Kazan’s critici
sm, she thought her role wasn’t nuanced. From the first day of shooting, as Marilyn spoke her lines, she realized she was speaking words she had spoken in real life, taken out of context. Doing so was even more difficult than she had anticipated. She was also in Reno, where Arthur had gotten his divorce—a grim forecast of where their marriage might end up.

  Attempting to stop rumors of a breakup, she and Arthur occupied the same suite in the Mapes Hotel, which probably wasn’t a good idea. At first Arthur felt obliged to get her to the set. So he stayed up at night with her, trying to calm her down so that she would go to sleep. But he kept rewriting the script, requiring her to memorize new lines every evening. That was always hard for her, and it was even more so now, because Huston required her to be word perfect in doing her scenes. No improvisations, no changing lines.

  In his apologia for The Misfits, Arthur claims that not much rewriting was done and that Huston asked for most of it. Such claims don’t match the recollections of others who were there. Rewriting on Hollywood scripts, even during filming, isn’t unusual, although the rewriting on this script was extensive. After all, Arthur had been working on it for more than three years. Yet he could still be kind to Marilyn. To simplify doing the film, he persuaded Huston to shoot it in the sequence in the script, not broken up, which was the usual practice. As a result, however, actors interacted on the set in ways that suggested new motivations, which required additional rewriting.