The Girl

by Michelle Morgan

  Marilyn contractually had no right to question any role the studio wanted her to do, nor did she even have to read the script. Instead, the studio would merely give her a date to show up on set and expect her to get straight to work. However, Marilyn had just finished the role of Kay in the western River of No Return (1954) and had no interest in playing another showgirl. She would be happy to read the script, she told casting director Billy Gordon, but without access to it, there was no way she would appear on set.

  Darryl F. Zanuck always saw Marilyn as something of a hindrance to production—a woman who had the nerve to ask for a dressing room when she was making Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and who wondered aloud why Jane Russell was being paid more than she was on the same film. He decided to ignore her demands, but could only do that for so long. When no amount of coaxing got her to the studio, it was decided that Marilyn would be sent the script, if only to shut her up. As soon as the actress received the document, she read it, disliked it immensely, and sent it straight back.

  Zanuck was absolutely furious. He instructed Marilyn’s drama teacher, Natasha Lytess, and a member of the Fox publicity department to tell her to get back to work. They were both prohibited from seeing Marilyn by her boyfriend, Joe DiMaggio. Her agent, Charles Feldman, then got involved, but with no clause for script approval in her contract, there was really nothing he could do to help. He told the rebellious star that she must be on set for Pink Tights on January 4, 1954, and hoped for the best.

  Marilyn traveled to San Francisco to spend the holidays with DiMaggio and his family. The New Year came and went, and the studio got everything in place to begin the new picture. Everything, that is, except the star. Marilyn stood her ground; she stayed in San Francisco and gave the studio the silent treatment. The executives responded by suspending her immediately, and announced that they would groom starlet Sheree North to take over all of Marilyn’s future parts. Marilyn retaliated by releasing her own statement, this time explaining that if she continued to play the same kind of roles over and over, the public would soon grow tired of her. She would not play in Pink Tights, she insisted. Instead, she decided to marry Joe DiMaggio.

  The marriage may have come as a surprise, but actually Marilyn and Joe had been dating since 1952, and rumors of a wedding had long since filled newspaper columns. As the couple kissed outside San Francisco City Hall on January 14, 1954, dozens of reporters were ecstatic. It was a match made in media heaven: the retired baseball player and the beautiful actress, who had met on a blind date set up by friends. “I liked his seriousness,” Marilyn said in January 1954. “I can spot a phony, and this man was real. We came separately to the date but we left together—ahead of everybody else.”

  Zanuck was left with a predicament. He still believed that Marilyn was being unnecessarily disruptive and did not wish to pander to her whims. However, at the same time he knew that the marriage to Joe DiMaggio had captured the public’s imagination, and any further prodding by the studio could be seen as bullying. After meetings with lawyer Frank Ferguson and general manager Lew Schreiber, Zanuck decided to lift the suspension and told Marilyn to report to Fox by January 25.

  The studio bosses may have thought they were doing her a favor, but they did not consider Marilyn’s strong backbone. If she did not want Pink Tights before her marriage, she most certainly did not want it now. She refused to show up on set, and the humiliated studio told her that the suspension was well and truly back on. Marilyn retorted by asking her lawyer, Lloyd Wright, to speak on her behalf. “Miss Monroe has authorized me to make this statement,” he said. “She has read the script and does not care to do the picture.”

  When reporters pounced on the actress at the San Francisco airport, she had little to say except to repeat that she had no interest in the Pink Tights script. “My only interest is Joe,” she said. “My only desire—to continue our honeymoon.”

  Instead of fretting that her rebellion might signal the possible end of her career, Marilyn and Joe traveled to Japan, where he attended baseball training and she went to Korea to entertain the troops. This not only kept her name firmly in the public eye, but also gave her a chance to give back to those soldiers who had continually supported her since the early pinup days. Marilyn adored doing the shows, and if anything, the sight of thousands of marines chanting her name only reinforced her idea that she now had the clout to take charge of her career.

  Back home, the DiMaggios moved from San Francisco and eventually settled into a house at 508 North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills. The home was just yards away from actress Jean Harlow’s last residence at 512, and just down the road from number 718, the house Marilyn had once shared with Hollywood agent and former lover Johnny Hyde. Returning to the street where she had lived during the early days of her career must surely have affected Marilyn. It would not be far-fetched to imagine that she thought about her former mentor when passing number 718. Neighbors revealed that they often observed the actress walking up and down the street at dusk. Was she remembering those heady days when her dreams for her career seemed so bright and within her grasp?

  Whatever Marilyn’s thoughts about North Palm, Joe DiMaggio disliked the location intensely. “Too many kids know where we live, because the picture of the house we’re renting was published in a magazine,” he said. “They ride up and down the street and even ring the front door bell.” He vowed to find another property as soon as the lease expired.

  While Marilyn stuck fast to her aversion to Pink Tights, Twentieth Century Fox finally realized she was actually needed on the lot. Not being a fan himself, Zanuck could not understand the public’s fascination with the blonde star, but the fan mail continued to roll in to the studio regardless. By April 1954, it was clear that something had to be done. Agent Charles Feldman had meetings with Fox president Spyros Skouras to try to sort the problems out. Luckily, the mogul seemed sympathetic to Marilyn and advised Feldman on the best way to handle the stubborn Zanuck.

  Many urgent meetings were held because Zanuck, Schreiber, and lawyer Frank Ferguson were all painfully aware that after the release of River of No Return, they would have no more Monroe vehicles to present. Marilyn was demanding more creative control over her projects, and while a new contract negotiation began, no one could come to any kind of agreement as to what clauses should be included. Even Feldman told Marilyn to scale down her list of demands, which only resulted in the actress becoming angrier and more determined.

  Eventually, after Marilyn threatened to strike until her contract ran out, it finally occurred to the studio chiefs that she had won this particular battle. Zanuck reluctantly took her off suspension, told her that she would not be required to make Pink Tights after all, and instead offered her a part in There’s No Business Like Show Business, with Ethel Merman and Donald O’Connor. In the meantime, the new contract negotiation was conveniently forgotten.

  In addition to being an agent, Feldman produced movies, his most notable being A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), which won four Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Vivien Leigh. His latest plan was to make the Broadway smash hit The Seven Year Itch into a movie, and he was convinced that Billy Wilder would direct the film for release by Twentieth Century Fox. Feldman believed that the role of The Girl was perfect for Marilyn and could totally change her career. After immersing herself in the story and sitting through a successful meeting with Wilder, the actress felt the same way. Feldman told Monroe that Zanuck was sure to give her the part in The Seven Year Itch as a reward if she accepted There’s No Business Like Show Business, so she decided to take Feldman’s advice. Show Business was once again a lightweight musical, but if taking it meant there was a chance of claiming her coveted role in The Seven Year Itch, she was willing to stay quiet about her concerns.

  It was a gamble that almost didn’t pay off, however. Soon after Marilyn agreed to do Show Business, Feldman told her he had been unable to strike a deal with Fox’s Skouras to have Itch released by the studio. He would have to forget about
Marilyn playing the role and instead take the film to another studio. The actress was justifiably furious and reminded her agent that the only reason she had agreed to return to work was because of his promises regarding Itch. Her strong reaction sent Feldman running back to Skouras once again, and eventually it was settled that Itch would be a Fox movie after all. Marilyn was then cast as The Girl. She was pleased with the outcome, but her relationship with Feldman eventually soured. No longer did she trust that he was completely on her side, and it was only a matter of time before she would move on.

  For anyone who believes that Marilyn was a dumb blonde or victim, the Pink Tights episode confirms that she was, in fact, the complete opposite. Bob Cornthwaite, who acted with her in Monkey Business (1952), saw firsthand just how brave she could be: “Marilyn was very likeable and also stubborn, which is what saw her through. She was persistent and that stood her in good stead. Marilyn was ambitious and didn’t want to spoil her chances of success but knew if she stuck to her guns and made demands, she might get away with it.”

  Marilyn had won an important battle, not only for herself, but for other actresses coming up behind her. Refusing a role she was contracted to play was an astonishingly brave position for an actress of the studio era to take. However, the media downplayed the move in spectacular fashion, and some were downright patronizing, such as reporter Mike Connolly: “Marilyn Monroe told me, in all seriousness, that she’s sick of playing empty-headed blonde chorus girls and musical comedy dolls. That’s why she turned down the first script of Pink Tights and walked out of Twentieth Century Fox. ‘My ambition,’ said Marilyn, ‘is to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.’ Very serious. Hey, how about that gal!”

  Whether they liked it or not, that “gal” was indeed extremely serious. However, that still didn’t stop some from claiming that Marilyn’s strength came from the knowledge that she now had a husband behind her. “This was her first triumph in studio negotiations,” wrote reporter Jack Wade, “and Marilyn realizes that she won largely because she had a husband to back her up.”

  It is true that, in private, Joe tried to help Marilyn by reading through terms for a new contract. However, the fight itself was definitely made via the actress’s own thoughts and representation. The notion that a woman must surely need a husband to make strong decisions would be proven wrong just eight months later. For now, though, Marilyn got on with making There’s No Business Like Show Business so that she could then prepare for the most iconic film of her life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Girl

  THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH was a George Axelrod–penned play, exploring the idea of how, after seven years of marriage, partners can develop an “itch” to experience sex with a person other than their betrothed. It told the story of Richard Sherman—a middle-aged, married man who is left alone for the summer while his wife and son go to the country. He works in publishing by day, and by night wiles away the hours in the company of his own far-fetched but relatively innocent imagination. However, all this comes to a climax when one evening he is almost killed on his terrace by a falling plant pot, innocently knocked off the balcony above by the beautiful single woman living upstairs.

  She is The Girl—a woman with no name, not for reasons of mysteriousness but simply because George Axelrod could never decide on a perfect name for her. For the purposes of the story, the character is never referred to by name, though Axelrod later mused that in retrospect, perhaps he should have called her Marilyn. As soon as Richard sees The Girl, he becomes obsessed with imagining who she is and what kind of personality she may have. He invites her downstairs for a cocktail, and before she arrives, he goes through all manner of adventures in his head, including an exploration of his own masterful (but vastly overstated) prowess. When The Girl actually enters his apartment, Richard is shocked to discover that although young and seemingly naïve, she is actually quite experienced in the ways of the world and has posed nude in U.S. Camera magazine.

  Suddenly, Richard’s imaginative thoughts turn to reality when events move on and the two spend the night together. By morning, however, he is almost paralyzed by the fear that his wife is going to find out and murder him in cold blood. He decides that the dalliance must never happen again, and heads out of New York to see his wife and deliver a yellow skirt she has forgotten to take on her trip.

  When the play opened at New York’s Fulton Theatre on November 20, 1952, it did so to tremendous applause. Stars Tom Ewell and Vanessa Brown delighted critics and audiences alike, and the Axelrod script was shown to be a mix of lively entertainment and clever dialogue. J. Fletcher Smith, writing for The Stage, described it as a “riotously funny comedy” and made mention that despite the fact that the play was in three acts, Tom Ewell was onstage the entire time. “[He] has vaulted to the front rack of contemporary light comedians,” he wrote, before announcing that the play was clearly the smash hit of the season.

  Writing for the New York Times, critic Brooks Atkinson concurred, recognizing that every part of Ewell’s performance was polished and fresh. The same amount of success came when The Seven Year Itch opened at London’s Aldwych Theatre on May 14, 1953. Starring Brian Reece as Richard and Rosemary Harris as The Girl, the Tatler declared it to be an “ingeniously amusing comedy.”

  The original play even managed to name-check one of Marilyn’s friends in a scene where Richard shows an author the cover of the writer’s book. The picture depicts a man chasing a beautiful woman, which the writer—a humorless doctor—dislikes immensely, mentioning that the cover was supposed to depict a would-be attacker chasing a middle-aged woman. Instead, he complains, the victim looks more like actress Jane Russell, Marilyn’s costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

  With the runaway success of the play, it wasn’t long before Axelrod’s script was touted as a film. Director Billy Wilder and producer Charles Feldman took up the challenge of turning it into a movie, but from the beginning it was going to be problematic. At its core, The Seven Year Itch is a sex comedy that pushes boundaries and shows that even a plain, middle-aged man can get into intimate scrapes if he puts his mind to it. This theme was fine for the liberal theater crowd, but the ferociousness of the movie censors was something else entirely. Wilder and Axelrod tried to push the dialogue as much as they could, but the censors decided that the story would need to be watered down considerably. So it was that by the time it went into production in the summer of 1954, the story no longer involved actual infidelity. Instead, Richard Sherman merely let The Girl stay in his apartment because she had no air-conditioning to beat the blistering summer heat. He then worried what would happen if his wife found out and thought they had slept together.

  Of course, with the changing of this vital point in the story, the explanation of the Seven Year Itch theory changed too, and some wondered if the film could work at all. One of these was George Axelrod, who complained that his original story was supposed to show the hilarious reactions of Sherman when he felt guilty for cheating. Now that the actual cheating had gone, he was concerned that the entire story would make absolutely no sense.

  Fortunately for all involved, the reworked script was actually hilarious, and showed the paranoid Sherman still feeling guilt, but mainly because of his active imagination. Added to the mix is a janitor who spots The Girl lounging in the apartment one evening and makes his own mind up as to what is going on there. His ability to arrive at the most inappropriate moments creates a real reason for Sherman to feel despair.

  Even the character of The Girl was watered down for the movie. Whereas in the play, critics described her as being a potential schemer who didn’t worry about sleeping with married men, in the film that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Girl is shown as a sensitive, funny young woman, who only kisses Sherman in an attempt to show him how attractive he is to other women. She then sends him off to his wife, and innocently waves good-bye from the window.

  A running theme throughout is Sherman’s preoccupation with a boat paddle that his wife ha
s left behind by mistake. He knows his young son will need the item to have fun on his holiday so goes through numerous ways of trying to wrap it, including bandages and a brown paper bag. This prop proved to be far funnier than the yellow skirt mentioned in the play, and is a centerpiece of several humorous scenes.

  While Marilyn was safely cast as The Girl, there were still numerous roles to fill. One of them came as quite a surprise when actress Roxanne (aka Dolores Rosedale) was given the part of Elaine, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Sherman. Some months before, the outspoken woman apparently talked to columnist Earl Wilson about Marilyn. “She should take about fifteen pounds off her fanny,” she was quoted as saying, before adding that a girdle and bra were essential accessories too. When Wilson asked Marilyn if she had anything to say, she replied, “No comment,” but the statement had upset Joe DiMaggio quite considerably. While the two women would never be seen on-screen together, they did run into each other at a Seven Year Itch party in Manhattan. Marilyn remained calm and dignified, but when the opportunity arose, she evidently asked Roxanne about the statements. The actress was shocked that Marilyn was brave enough to bring the charges up and denied ever saying them.

  The casting of the male lead in The Seven Year Itch caused a stir when executives could not decide who would be best to play Richard Sherman. The man should not be too good-looking, as the emphasis was always on the fact that he could pass for the man next door, not a movie star. At first, Billy Wilder was keen on actor Walter Matthau, whose lived-in looks made him a perfect choice. He was screen-tested and looked ideal for the part, but Fox was unwilling to invest in the actor due to his being a relative newcomer. Years later, he was asked about his feelings toward Marilyn. “I never worked with her, but if she’d lived, I think she would have been all right. She would have been President of the United States.”