Marilyn

by Lois Banner

  56. Interview, Mrs. Gittel Miller, July 9, 1956, Jewish Daily Forward, in Monroe file, NYPL. Martin Gottfried, interview with Merle Debuskey, Gottfried, Arthur Miller: His Life and Words (New York: Da Capo, 2003), 312. On Goldburg’s unpublished memoir, see Joysa Winter, “Marilyn Monroe Was a Sincere Convert to Judaism,” Philadelphia Judaism Examiner, March 6, 2010; on Marilyn’s friendship with Goldburg, see Rabbi Robert E. Goldburg to Marilyn, September 29, 1961. Letter sold at auction, Bonhams and Butterfields, December 20, 2009.

  57. Greene and Greene, eds., But That’s Another Story, 178.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. Marjorie Peabody, “The Woman Arthur Miller Walked Out On When He Married Marilyn Monroe,” Photoplay, February 1961.

  2. Miller, Timebends, 128–9.

  3. Ibid., 35, 3, 18.

  4. Robert Ajemian, interview with Arthur Miller, Time, April 1956.

  5. Miller, Timebends, 366, 381.

  6. Screenplay for After the Fall, in Miller UT.

  7. “Rejects for Second Typing of Act I, Fall,” Miller UT.

  8. Miracle, My Sister Marilyn, 138.

  9. Maury Allen, interview with Norman Rosten, in Allen, Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio: The Story of America’s Last Hero (New York: Signet, 1975), 162.

  10. Miller, Timebends, 413.

  11. Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 306–08; Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 171.

  12. Fleur Cowles, “Marilyn Monroe: How She Took London,” in Cowles, Friends & Memories, 192.

  13. Miller, Timebends, 425.

  14. On the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, I have used Mailer, interview with Milton and Amy Greene, in Mailer—UT; Colin Clark, The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me; Kotsibilis-Davis, ed. Greene, Milton’s Marilyn; Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour (London: Faber and Faber, 1996); and Fleur Cowles, “Marilyn Monroe: How She Took London,” in Cowles Friends & Memories; and relevant Monroe biographies.

  15. Miller, Timebends, 421.

  16. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 84.

  17. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour, 207. I have also relied on Stephanie Morgan, “The Prince and the Showgirl: The Role That Turned Marilyn Upside Down,” senior research paper, University of Southern California, Fall 2011. Morgan read the production files on the film in the Warner Brothers Archives at USC.

  18. Gene Sheppard, Hollywood Studio Magazine, August 1987.

  19. Cf. Bacon, Hollywood Is a Four Letter Town, 142.

  20. I follow the version of the note in Roberts, “Mimosa.”

  21. Roberts, “Mimosa.”

  22. Clark, The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me, 114.

  23. Sammy Davis Jr., Hollywood in a Suitcase, 238.

  24. Ibid., 106; Robert J. Levin, “Marilyn Monroe’s Marriage,” Redbook, February 1958.

  25. Laurence Olivier to Radie Harris, September 18, 1956, in Laurence Olivier Papers, in BL.

  26. Patricia Rosten, statement, SE.

  27. In The Genius and the Goddess, Jeffrey Meyers attacks Marilyn and glorifies Arthur. Among other problems, he is inaccurate on Marilyn’s life in New York, partly because he relies on discredited sources, especially Lena Pepitone’s memoir. Meyers, The Genius and the Goddess (London: Hutchinson, 2009). Interview with George Belmont, Marilyn Monroe and the Camera.

  28. Roger G. Taylor, Marilyn in Art (Salem, N.H.: Salem House, 1954), n.p.

  29. AP wire service story, May 28, 1958, in SE; Arthur Miller, ms. statement about Marilyn, in LB.

  30. LB, interview with Patricia Rosten, March 12, 2008.

  31. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “Remembrance of Marilyn,” in Wagenknecht, ed., Marilyn Monroe, 48; Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story, 52; Herbert Kahn, “I Dressed Marilyn Monroe,” Hollywood Screen Parade, January 1958.

  32. Telegram, Warner Brothers to MMP, May 24, 1957; typed copy of statement to Warner Brothers in reply by Marilyn Monroe, in LB.

  33. See Morgan, “The Prince and the Showgirl.”

  34. Olie and Joe Rauh, as told to Harriet Lyons, “The Time That Marilyn Monroe Hid Out at Our House,” Ms., August 1983.

  35. The story of these negotiations is contained in letters and memos in the Marilyn Monroe file in the Fox Legal Papers at UCLA. See Lew Schreiber to Frank Ferguson, December 31, 1957; Frank Ferguson to Harry McIntyre, January 14, 1958; Robert Montgomery to Frank Ferguson, January 16, 1958; and Lew Schreiber to Frank Ferguson, January 21, 1958.

  36. Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 197.

  37. See receipt for flowers, dated June 30, in Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 218.

  38. Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story, 73.

  39. See Chapter 11, note 39.

  40. AS, interview with Robert Josephy, in AS; AS, interview with Olive Simpson, secretary for John Diebold, in AS.

  41. Allan Seagar to Maurice Zolotow, Nov. 19, 1950, Zolotow—UT.

  42. Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 63.

  43. Carl Rollyson, interview with Rupert Allan, in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, 148; Walter Wagner, interview with Jack Lemmon, in Wagner, ed., You Must Remember This (New York: Putnam’s, 1978), 303.

  44. Jerome Delamater, interview with Jack Cole, in Delamater, Dance in the Hollywood Musical (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI, 1981), 197–200; talk delivered by Barbara Diamond to Marilyn Remembered Fan Club, February 18, 2001. Transcript contained in SLIH (Some Like It Hot) German Fan Club Newsletter, in GS.

  45. MZ, interview with anonymous press agent on Some Like It Hot, in Zolotow—UT.

  46. Copies of these letters are courtesy of Stacy Eubank.

  47. The telegrams are in Wilder—AMPAS.

  48. AS, interview with Leon Krohn, in AS; AS, interview with Henry Weinstein, in AS.

  49. Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story, 43.

  50. Arthur Miller, “My Wife Marilyn,” in “Fabled Enchantresses,” Life, December 22, 1958.

  51. Roberts, in “Mimosa.”

  52. A Lost Lady is the story of a Nebraska woman coping with the new post–Civil War era. It foreshadows central themes in Thomas Wolfe’s work.

  53. Clipping, Salisbury, North Carolina, newspaper, Ralph Roberts Papers, n.d., in possession of Hap Roberts, Salisbury, N.C. To describe Salisbury’s architecture, I have drawn on my tour of the city, conversations with Hap Roberts, and on David Ford Hood, The Architecture of Rowan County (Salisbury, N.C.: Historic Salisbury Foundation, 2000).

  CHAPTER 11

  1. For memos about Stengel’s incompetence, see Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 290–91. Lena Pepitone, Marilyn’s cook and maid in New York for several years, made similar allegations in her book, Marilyn Monroe Confidential: An Intimate Personal Account (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), but even Stengel dismissed Pepitone’s book as a fabrication. See AS, interview with Marjorie Stengel, in AS.

  2. On their attendance at Metropolitan Opera productions in 1959, see newspaper clippings, SE. Patricia Rosten Filan possesses a program for Wozzeck, signed to Norman Rosten from Marilyn.

  3. Carl Rollyson, interview with Ralph Roberts, in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, 162; Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988).

  4. Kazan, Elia Kazan, 598.

  5. Guilaroff, Crowning Glory, 154–55.

  6. Undated letter, signed Gadge, in Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 100.

  7. AS, interviews with Maureen Stapleton and Martin Ritt, in AS; Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 144; Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story, 243.

  8. Pamphlet catalog, “After the Fall: From Stage to Screen,” Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, New York. My thanks to Nikki Smith for providing me with this pamphlet.

  9. Miller, Timebends, 449.

  10. Joe Hyams, “Marilyn Monroe—Upsetting,” New York Herald Tribune, February 1959.

  11. See the clippings for 1959 and 1960 in SE for a wide sampling of the press criticism. On Parsons, see Parsons, Tell It to Louella, 233. Joe Wolhandler to Marilyn Monroe, October 6, 1959, in SE.

  12. Rosten, Marilyn: An Untold Story, 75.

  13. Ibid., 145; David Lewin, “Marilyn
Monroe,” London Daily Express, May 6, 1959; Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993) 246.

  14. Goslar, What’s So Funny?, 118.

  15. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 188; Norman Rosten, interview with Donald Wolfe, in Wolfe, Assassination of Marilyn Monroe, 419; AS, interview with Norman Rosten, in AS; Quirk, The Kennedys in Hollywood, 213; Vanessa Steinberg, interview with Michelle Morgan, in Morgan, Marilyn Monroe, 274. See also Fred Otash, interview with James Spada, in Spada—ASU.

  16. AS, interview with Grace Dobish, in AS; Joan and Clay Blair Jr., The Search for J.F.K. (N.Y.: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 549–50.

  17. George Smathers described the Portomac boat trips to many authors. See, for example, Lawrence Leamer, The Kennedy Men, 1901–1963: The Laws of the Father (New York: William Morrow, 2001), 605; and Seymour Hersh, interview with Charles Spalding, in Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997), 103. Peter Lawford told Patricia Lawford Stewart that Marilyn was bothered by Jack’s affair with Joan Lunberg, a former stewardess he met in a bar in Malibu, from the fall of 1956 to 1959, LB, interview with Patricia Lawford Stewart, May 10, 2011.

  18. Norman Rosten stated that she was a friend of Jack and Bobby Kennedy in New York Herald Examiner, December 15, 1973.

  19. Arthur Miller, interview with Guiles, in Guiles, Legend, 377; William J. Mann, Behind the Scenes: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910–1969 (New York: Viking, 2001), 168–69.

  20. Signoret, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, 286.

  21. Brandon, Conversations with Henry Brandon, 184–85.

  22. Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong, 227–28.

  23. Descriptions of his sessions with Marilyn are contained in letters to Marianne Kris, in Greenson—UCLA.

  24. Marilyn to Lester Dear, March 29, 1960, in Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 182–83; Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong; 227–28: “Lawford was hosting, as he frequently did, a little group composed of his brothers-in-law President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra.” Congressman Thomas Rees, a California Democrat, was at a series of meetings in 1959 and 1960 at the Lawford beach house with Frank Sinatra and a lot of studio people. Thomas Rees, oral transcript, John F. Kennedy Library, in James Spada Papers, ASU.

  25. Billy Travilla, interview with Peter Harry Brown and Patte B. Barham, in Brown and Barham, Marilyn: The Last Take, 76; Patrick McGilligan, George Cukor: A Double Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 119; Tom Stempel, Screenwriter, 172–5.

  26. JK, interview with Jack Cole, in Kobal, People Will Talk; Delamater, interview with Jack Cole, in Delamater, Dance in the Hollywood Musical, 198; McGilligan, George Cukor, 273; “Notes from Cukor’s Press Agent,” in Zolotow—UT; Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 174–75.

  27. Yves Montand, with Herve Hamon and Patrick Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 324.

  28. Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong, 227; Guiles, Legend, 375; Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller, 1915–1962 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009), 613.

  29. Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 329–31.

  30. Michael Selsman, who was there, reports on what happened in All Is Vanity: Memoirs of a Hollywood Operative (Los Angeles, Calif.: New World, 2009), 6–7.

  31. James Haspiel, Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), 175; LB, interview with Gloria Romanoff, September 19, 2008. For newspaper articles about Marilyn’s activities in New York when the convention was taking place, see SE. See also Ralph Roberts, “Mimosa.”

  32. On the filming of The Misfits, I have used, in particular, Goode, The Story of The Misfits, and Arthur Miller and Serge Toubiana, The Misfits: Story of a Shoot (New York: Phaidon, 2000.)

  33. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 33.

  34. Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978); Robert LaGuardia, A Biography of Montgomery Clift (New York: Arbor House, 1977).

  35. See Russell Miller, Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History (New York: Grove, 1997), 178–83.

  36. Guiles, Legend, 383.

  37. Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad, and Me (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 205), 220–24.

  38. “Marilyn Monroe’s Secret Tragedy,” Screen Stories, February 1961.

  39. John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Ballantine, 1961), 321ff.

  40. Clark Gable thought that Arthur was eyeing other women on the set. Talk by Johnny Grant to Marilyn Remembered Fan Club, August 5, 2005. Both Jean Louis and Sidney Guilaroff were suspicious of Arthur’s behavior on the set.

  41. Roberts, “Mimosa”; Radie Harris, Radie’s World (New York: W.H. Allen, 1975), 195.

  42. See Stacy Eubank Collection.

  43. AV, interview with Rupert Allan, in Villani, “Hold a Good Thought for Me.”

  44. Roberts, “Mimosa.”

  45. My analysis of The Misfits has been influenced by David Savran, Communists, Cowboys, and Queers: The Politics of Masculinity in the Work of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).

  46. Ibid., 50.

  47. DS, interview with Rupert Allan, in Spoto—AMPAS.

  48. Henry Lee, “An Ex-Husband Can Be a Girl’s Best Friend,” January 21, 1961, in Bannon, McKinney, and Wright, eds., Joe DiMaggio: An American Icon, 198.

  49. Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997), 106; Summers, Goddess, 236.

  50. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 129.

  51. “An Open Letter from Hedda Hopper to Marilyn Monroe: Don’t Drink: It Won’t Bring Back the Baby!” Motion Picture, July 1960.

  52. Roberts, “Mimosa.”

  53. LB, interview with Gloria Romanoff, September 18, 2008.

  54. The 1961 letter to Ralph Greenson is reprinted in Buchthal and Comment, eds., Fragments, 207–12.

  CHAPTER 12

  1. Cardiff, Magic Hour, 212–13.

  2. Greenson to Marianne Kris, May 15, 1951, in Greenson—UCLA.

  3. Roberts, “Mimosa”; Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 342.

  4. Dr. Richard Cottrell, as told to C. Gervain Hayden, “I Was Marilyn Monroe’s Doctor,” Ladies’ Home Companion, January 1965; Miracle, My Sister Marilyn, 153.

  5. Roberts, “Mimosa.”

  6. Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra: My Father (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 29.

  7. LB, interview with Jeanne Martin, May 28, 2009.

  8. Louella Parsons, “Marilyn’s Life as a Divorcee,” Modern Screen, October 1961.

  9. On Sinatra, see Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, Sinatra: The Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), and Kitty Kelley, His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra (1986; New York: Bantam, 2010).

  10. Arnold Shaw, Sinatra: Twentieth-Century Romantic (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968), 272. On the Rat Pack, see Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell, The Rat Pack: Neon Nights and the Kings of Cool (New York: HarperCollins, 1999); Shawn Levy, Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey, and the Last Great Showbiz Party (New York: Doubleday, 1988); and Max Rudin, “Fly Me to the Moon: Reflections on the Rat Pack,” American Heritage, December 1998.

  11. Mia Farrow, What Falls Away: A Memoir (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997), 102.

  12. James Spada, interview with Milton Ebbins, in Spada—ASU.

  13. LB, interview with Jeanne Martin, May 20, 2009.

  14. Dominick Dunne, The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a WellKnown Name Dropper (New York: Crown, 1999), 50. On Marilyn’s trip to New York, see SE, clippings for September 2001.

  15. George Jacobs and William Stadiem, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (New York: HarperEntertainment, 2003), 154–55.

  16. LB, interview with Patricia Newcomb, September 25, 2007.

  17. LB, interview with Gloria Romanoff, George Masters and Norma Lee Browning, The Masters Way to Bea
uty (New York: Signet, 1979), 75.

  18. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 169.

  19. LB, interview with Cami Sebring, July 3, 2009.

  20. Greenson, “Drugs in the Psychotherapeutic Situation,” presented at a conference on “Psychotherapeutic Drugs: Indications and Complications,” January 12, 1964, USLC Center for the Health Sciences.

  21. Quirk, The Kennedys in Hollywood, 210; LB, interview with Jeanne Martin, May 28, 2009.

  22. “Doug Kirkland,” in Wagenknecht, ed., Marilyn Monroe, 71–75.

  23. The auction of the letter and the letter itself were reported in the London Sunday Times, October 22, 2006, in AS, clippings.

  24. Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker Reader, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Viking, 1973), 613.

  25. Christopher Lawford, Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 22.

  26. LB, interview with Patricia Cox, June 17, 2010.

  27. Ronald Davis, interview with Mary Anita Loos, in Davis—AMPAS.

  28. See, for example, Laurinda S. Dixon, “Some Penetrating Insights: The Imagery of Enemas in Art,” Art Journal 52 (Autumn 1983); Jacobs, My Life with Frank Sinatra, 162; LB, interview with Daniel Stewart. In Marilyn’s Men: The Private Life of Marilyn Monroe (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), 293, Jane Ellen Wayne interviewed a prostitute who went to the parties.

  29. LB, interview with Patricia Lawford Stewart, November 19, 2007. AS, interview with Jeanne Martin, in AS. Jerry Oppenheimer, interview with Jeanne Martin, in Oppenheimer, The Other Mrs. Kennedy: Ethel Skakel Kennedy: An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 241.

  30. Taraborrelli, Secret Life, 179; Stewart, Peter Lawford Story, 157. LB, interview with Patricia Seaton Lawford Stewart, November 19, 2007.

  31. Ralph Roberts discusses the invitation to Marilyn from Joe DiMaggio, asking her to come to New York, in “Mimosa.”

  32. I follow Stacy Eubank in dating the Fiffi Fell party.

  33. On Greenson I have used the material in his papers at UCLA, including an obituary by Steve Zuckerman in the Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1979.

  34. Stephen Farber and Marc Green, Hollywood on the Couch (New York: William Morrow, 1993), 85; Lloyd Shearer, “Marilyn Monroe—Why Won’t They Leave Her in Peace,” Parade, August 5, 1973; Ralph R. Greenson, Explorations in Psychoanalysis (New York: International Libraries, 1978).