The feud regarding the credit became an enormous, unwanted pain for Olivier. Letters went back and forth until eventually the actor demanded that they sort it out themselves and he made no further comment. When the film premiered, Greene’s name did appear in the credits, though seeing it there must surely have been a bittersweet experience for him. Their troubles rumbled on for months, until finally the two former partners came to a mutual understanding. Expecting Milton to go after a huge compensation deal, Marilyn was shocked when he left with only the money he had originally invested. According to Amy Greene, both business partners cried when saying good-bye and neither fully recovered.
The Prince and the Showgirl was not a huge box-office success, but it did receive some positive reviews and Marilyn gained critical acclaim. Viewers could clearly see that despite everything, the actress was spectacular, and she went on to win a David di Donatello—the Italian equivalent of an Academy Award—for her performance. Even Laurence Olivier had to admit that Marilyn was a charming presence on-screen, despite everything they had been through.
CHAPTER TEN
The Human Being
THROUGHOUT THE MID- TO late 1950s, Marilyn continued to take her roles as an actress and a wife extremely seriously. Together with Miller, she split her time between a Manhattan apartment and a farmhouse in Connecticut. She grew flowers and tended a vegetable patch, and often told reporters how happy she was to be a caring wife to Arthur and stepmother to his children. While she was sincere in her comments, friends wondered if she was trying to prove to the world that she too could be a “normal” housewife of the 1950s. Susan Strasberg noted that the determination to be a contented wife “sounded like an ad for a woman’s magazine—nice but not her.”
It is true that while she did appreciate being Mrs. Arthur Miller—at least at first—at the same time Marilyn still wanted to be recognized as a successful human being in her own right. She continued to enjoy the company of interesting women, and was thrilled when Danish writer Karen Blixen asked Carson McCullers to introduce them. However, the idea of female support and empowerment remained alien to many, and chauvinism was a plague that continued to be witnessed by women in all walks of life.
In 1957, actress Elizabeth Sellars had seen enough sexism in the industry and took her complaint to Theatre World magazine. They printed her feelings in a profile of the star: “Miss Sellars wonders why plays and films by British writers invariably have better parts for men than women. Maugham and Coward wrote wonderful parts for actresses in the past, but in recent years she considers most British dramatists put their best writing into the men’s parts.”
In October 1958, a reader of Modern Screen wrote in to the questions page, asking, “Does Marilyn Monroe have much money of her own, or is she dependent upon her husband for support?” “Dependent upon her husband, playwright Arthur Miller” was the reply. The fact that Marilyn had worked far more than her husband during their marriage was completely irrelevant to the magazine writer. In Marilyn’s day, so long as a woman was married, she would forever be dependent upon her husband, as far as society was concerned.
Marilyn suffered two miscarriages during the relationship with Miller. Her heartbreak, coupled with several failed operations to help her carry a child, led to added strain on the marriage and an increased reliance on prescription medication. Marilyn had long suffered from insomnia, and rumors of an addiction to barbiturates were ever present. Even during 1956, publicist Alan Arnold disclosed in a newspaper article that the star was seen receiving pills on the set of The Sleeping Prince. Unfortunately, the addiction grew only worse as the years progressed and nobody seemed able to help conquer it.
Marilyn’s body became so used to the pills that at times they wouldn’t work at all. During those occasions, she would telephone friends and often appeared at the Strasbergs’ house in the middle of the night, groggy and in need of help. In situations like that, she would sometimes take more pills than prescribed, and despite assuring friends that she was always in control, her reliance resulted in several overdoses. Friends and family became desperate for Marilyn to come off the medication completely, but night monsters and insomnia made that an idea too impossible to comprehend.
Problems with Miller’s contempt-of-Congress trial rumbled on until finally he was acquitted in summer 1958. Marilyn told reporters that she knew he would win, as she had been studying Thomas Jefferson and according to his work, the case could have no other outcome. Throughout the marriage, she tried to be a contented wife, but memories of her unhappy childhood, coupled with depression and anxiety, sometimes made it challenging. In spring 1959, Marilyn spoke to reporter David Lewin on the subject. “It is getting used to it—happiness and belonging—that is difficult. I’m not satisfied with myself—no one ever is. What I’d like… what I’d like is to have more freedom within myself. Freedom to be really happy. I’m still a little scared of it all.”
Arthur Miller shared his view with the same journalist: “What people don’t realize about Marilyn is that she is a perfectionist…. She is a complete realist about everything—she estimates any situation on the basis of the sternest realities. My wife is always the girl on the outside.”
Marilyn completed only three more films after The Prince and the Showgirl: Some Like It Hot (1959), Let’s Make Love (1960), and The Misfits (1961). In the last, Miller wrote the part of Roslyn for his wife, but the character was so close to her own personality that she found it hard to cope. “It really didn’t start out that way when I was writing the screenplay,” Miller claimed at the time. “But she has such a strong personality I just couldn’t escape it.”
When asked by reporter Erskine Johnson if she likened herself to the character of Roslyn, Marilyn gave a cryptic reply: “No one ever knows how one looks at or upon another, especially if they’re close—do we?” In the same interview, she revealed that during the four-year marriage to Miller, there were times when he had forgotten her birthday and their wedding anniversary. “I couldn’t resist reminding him,” she said.
The band of actors cast in The Misfits included childhood idol Clark Gable and friends Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift. During a break on set, Clift was asked by Johnson to talk about Marilyn’s acting skills. “You know what I think about Marilyn?” Clift asked. “I think she’s the most gifted actress on the American screen. Here’s real proof of how I feel about her. I’m jealous when I watch what she does on the screen.” Then he jokingly added, “She’s so good an actor, I hate her.”
While shooting scenes at Paramount Studios, director Henry Hathaway encountered Marilyn pacing up and down outside. The two walked together, and during the course of conversation, she cried and revealed the frustration of constantly “being” Marilyn Monroe. She told Hathaway that she had believed the marriage to Arthur might enable her to leave the character behind, but that hadn’t worked out at all. By this time, the Miller marriage was in complete turmoil, and immediately after Marilyn made The Misfits, the couple separated. “Arthur taught me a lot,” Marilyn said. “I was his pupil and he was a wonderful teacher. But that is not a sound enough basis for a successful marriage.”
Despite previously saying he had no interest in Marilyn’s business life, the playwright had been added to the board of directors of Marilyn Monroe Productions, but on November 23, 1960, he offered his resignation. Tellingly, although Marilyn was the president of the company, Miller addressed the note “Dear Sirs.” He then went on to marry a photographer he’d met on the set of The Misfits, and the two achieved what Marilyn had been unable to—the creation of a family.
Marilyn never again made a film for Marilyn Monroe Productions, though she continued her classes at the Actors Studio. While her performance in Anna Christie had taken the studio by storm in 1956, fellow student Joseph Lionetti remembers a later scene from The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. “She was absolutely wonderful,” he said. “She was prepared and had worked hard on it. Lee was very pleased with the scene and liked it very much. He gave som
e critiquing as he did with everyone but he was very pleased.”
Over time, Marilyn studied a variety of other scenes, both at the Actors Studio and in classes at Strasberg’s home. Lee harbored hopes of seeing her onstage as Natasha in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and in the meantime, the much-admired part of Grushenka from The Brothers Karamazov was performed in the Strasberg living room. Having met Anna Sten—star of the 1931 movie The Murderer Dimitri Karamazov—at the Actors Studio, Marilyn questioned her intensely about the story and what made the characters tick. Although The Murderer was filmed in German, the actress had seen it several times and thought it wonderful. Sten came away from the conversations knowing that if Marilyn ever had the opportunity to act in The Brothers Karamazov on-screen, she would be absolutely fascinating. She thought Marilyn to be a profound individual who was determined to discover everything she could about Grushenka and the story itself.
Despite previously dismissing Somerset Maugham as too cynical, Marilyn planned an elaborate television performance of Rain, with Lee as her director, but illness and other issues ensured that this did not ultimately happen. However, no matter what was going on in her life, the actress continued to study. The part of Lorna in Clifford Odets’s play Golden Boy was researched over two pages in her journal, and then other notes concerned a scene from Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. She went on to act out a scene from Streetcar, playing the part of Blanche while actor (and son of Paula and Lee) John Strasberg took on the role of a young messenger. Marilyn walked into class laden down with a variety of props so that the scene would be as authentic as she could possibly make it.
“At the Actors Studio they’re letting me try more mature scenes, [like] the prostitute in Damaged Goods,” Marilyn said. “I’ve got an idea on that. I’ve never seen a prostitute played the right way—as someone scared.” This scene was eventually performed with actor Delos Smith Jr., and then another from Breakfast at Tiffany’s was acted with Michael Pollard. Both scenes were met with great admiration from her fellow students, but Marilyn always knew there was more to do. “I’ve still a lot to learn about acting,” she told Logan Gourlay in 1960. “That’s what I look forward to. That’s why I don’t worry about growing old and losing my looks. I won’t fight it. I’ll be a character actress like Marie Dressler. Wasn’t she just great?” Marilyn adored Dressler, but another actress she greatly admired was Eleonora Duse, an Italian performer known as one of the greatest actors of all time. Visitors to Marilyn’s home would be surprised to discover a framed photograph of Duse on her sideboard. Others would be even more shocked to learn that she knew absolutely everything about her life.
While her own existence was not always a positive experience, Marilyn endeavored to be warm and encouraging to the people she encountered during her day-to-day life. Supporting causes she believed in was something the actress was deeply sincere about, and during her lifetime she helped with charities such as the Milk Fund for Babies and the March of Dimes. She also gave time to the orphanage she had lived in during childhood. Although intensely private, Marilyn spoke briefly about this to columnist Louella Parsons in 1952: “I want to lead a drive to do something personal for orphans—not just the usual thing of sending dolls or food to an orphanage. I mean something intimate, actual contact with the children. It’s the most awful thing in the world to feel that you have nobody to love you.”
Another charitable endeavor happened on the set of Let’s Make Love when Marilyn discovered that the studio coffee vendor had been told his services were no longer required. Furious, the actress took her complaint to Fox executives, who eventually relented and allowed the seller to return with his refreshments cart. Marilyn showed further support by gathering costars Yves Montand and Gene Kelly to have photos taken with the vendor and his drinks. Afterward, she signed a photograph: “Sid, there is nothing like your coffee.” Marilyn’s former father-in-law, Isidore Miller, later explained that she was exceptionally charitable, but the sheer number of people she supported would never be known. Marilyn, he said, helped people because she wanted to, not because she desired glory or gratitude.
To supplement his studies at the Actors Studio, Joseph Lionetti worked with Kenneth Battelle, one of Marilyn’s hairdressers. On one particular day, the actress arrived at the salon and Joseph was given the task of washing her hair before having it styled by Battelle. The next day Marilyn returned and requested her hair be washed out, as she felt it had been “teased” a little too much. By this time, Kenneth had gone out of town, so Joseph offered to wash and style it himself. “She was shy. Very delicate and introspective,” he remembers. “She was quite lovely but hard to win over. I don’t think she would have let me do her hair if not for the fact that I’d helped with Mr. Kenneth.” Joseph was just a young man at the time and desperate to leave a good impression. Marilyn, sensing a deep pride in what he had done, whispered in his ear afterward that she thought his work was even better than the famed hairdresser’s.
“I once met her outside a restaurant,” Joseph recalls, “and she arrived with a washed face—no makeup—wore a kerchief on her head and very ordinary clothes. During lunch we discussed our work at the Studio. Acting was vitally important to her. She had a wonderful combination of joy and sadness, all at once—about where she came from and what she had achieved. She was a survivor.”
UNFORTUNATELY, DURING 1961 MARILYN disclosed to her therapist, Marianne Kris, that she had gone through a period of great depression after the death of Misfits costar Clark Gable. Offered a chance to recuperate in the hospital, Marilyn unexpectedly found herself in a secure ward for mentally deranged patients—a place she would never have willingly agreed to go. Always anxious that she would end up in the same kind of institution as her mother, Marilyn cried out for her friends to help. After Marilyn wrote letters to the Strasbergs and ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, the latter arrived at the hospital and demanded her release immediately.
After the pain of her last divorce, coupled with the stay in the psychiatric unit, Marilyn decided that a break from Manhattan was necessary. She went home to Los Angeles, but she did not give up her East Coast dreams. “All I know is that I’ll be back in New York soon,” she told reporter Jonah Ruddy, “and I’ll go on with study at the Actors Studio and private classes with Lee Strasberg. The classes have been terribly helpful to me and I enjoy them.”
By 1962, Marilyn had hired a Los Angeles–based psychiatrist, bought a small Spanish-style house, and returned to work at Twentieth Century Fox, on a comedy called Something’s Got to Give. It didn’t look to be a fabulous role, but Marilyn went along with it, if only because it led her one step closer to finishing her contract. However, frequent illness and absence from the set caused a great many problems, and circumstances were made no better when Marilyn took time off to return to New York to sing “Happy Birthday” on the occasion of President John F. Kennedy’s forty-fifth birthday. When she became sick shortly afterward, the actress was fired, and lawyers for Fox announced their intention to sue for $500,000, claiming breach of contract.
Marilyn was devastated but also incensed. She gave a forthright statement to her press representatives. In it, she admitted being ill but said there were still scenes to be written that did not require her attendance on set. Furthermore, Marilyn felt that Fox executives had fired her because they were panicking after overextending themselves financially on Elizabeth Taylor’s movie Cleopatra. In the following days, Marilyn’s statement was not reported in the press. Instead, it was claimed that she had made no comment at all.
Hollywood tried to silence Marilyn, but the defiant actress wrote to each of her costars, begging them to believe that the shutdown of production was not her fault. Marilyn then let the lawyers deal with Fox, and despite feeling fragile, she undertook photo sessions, berated the studio system in interviews, and began making plans for the future. These exciting proposals would have involved finally breaking free from her old studio, making another movie with Billy Wilder (likely Kiss M
e, Stupid), working on a musical with Gene Kelly, going back to Manhattan in the fall, and setting up a second production company. Of course, there was always time for reading too. During the summer of 1962, Marilyn became engrossed in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Captain Newman, M.D. by Leo Rosten. The latter was loosely based on the military experiences of her new therapist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.
East Coast friends continued to play an important part in Marilyn’s life. She entertained Norman Rosten during a trip to California, continued to share a close bond with her former father-in-law (Isidore Miller was even her date for the president’s birthday party), and thanks to the involvement of Amy Greene, she was once again speaking to Milton. The two looked forward to seeing each other in the months ahead. Joe DiMaggio was firmly back in Marilyn’s life, and they enjoyed frequent and enjoyable times together when she wasn’t busy gardening at her new home or traveling to buy Mexican furnishings.
Sadly, while Marilyn did try desperately to regain control of her life during the summer of 1962, a combination of her pill intake and the constant going-over of her early life through therapy sessions was more than her body and mind could bear. Marilyn never had the chance to fully move away from the traumas that had haunted her, and while she did have a fairly optimistic approach to her future, in the end it proved not to be enough. All her projects, adventures, and escapades came to a tragic end on the evening of August 4 into the early morning of August 5, 1962, when Marilyn passed away at the age of just thirty-six.
After investigating the matter, officials decided that because of previous overdoses and bouts of depression, her death was the result of a probable suicide.
IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING Marilyn’s death, various friends and colleagues paid tribute to her. Billy Wilder—who had directed The Seven Year Itch, the film that was the catalyst for Marilyn’s New York adventure—headed the remembrances: “Maybe she was tough to work with. Maybe she wasn’t even an actress. But it was worth a week’s torment to get those three luminous minutes on the screen.”
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