by Tony Curtis
There was another visitor that day, one whose presence was less than thrilling. Arthur Miller was sitting at the edge of the set with Paula Strasberg. They looked pretty grim. Maybe someone had told him what went on the previous day. I’d heard that Marilyn could be coquettish. Sometimes she’d flaunt her earlier affairs in a guy’s face to see how he’d react. Her second husband, Joe DiMaggio, had gotten so jealous—and violent—that the marriage ended in a year. There were rumors on this set, too. Marilyn had let Miller know in her subtle way that she’d had an affair with Edward G. Robinson Jr. years earlier. When columnist James Bacon visited the set, Marilyn told her husband that she and Bacon had been “very close” at one time. And Miller must have heard about the scene I played with Marilyn the day before. This series of revelations may have been the reason for the face of granite. Or maybe that was his usual expression. He wasn’t the most animated guy.
Marilyn didn’t begin shooting until the afternoon. Not even Arthur Miller could get her to the studio on time, so Billy shot my close-ups in the morning. When Marilyn came on the set after lunch, she looked rested and ready. We went into the master shot where we enter the salon and then did the part where I give her a glass of champagne. That’s when it started. We were two or three lines into the scene when she suddenly got a blank look in her eyes. She looked over at Paula. Then she looked at Billy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need to do it again.”
“Cut. Slate. All right. Action.”
This time she got four lines into the scene. And it happened again. And again. I kept pouring the ginger ale and handing it to her. Then the prop guy would have to come over, refill and reseal the bottle, rinse out the glass, and dry it. Whitey Snyder would check Marilyn’s makeup. Harry Ray would check me. And we’d do it again. The same thing would happen. At least I wasn’t wearing high heels this time. But it was aggravating.
“Marilyn had a kind of built-in alarm system,” said Jack Lemmon. “It would go off in the middle of a scene if it wasn’t right for her, and she would stop. It would look like she was doing exactly what she’d done in the previous take. But for her, something wasn’t clicking. She knew she was limited. She knew what was right for Marilyn. She wasn’t about to do anything else. So she’d stand there with her eyes closed, biting her lip, and wringing her hands until she had it worked out.”
And I stood there with this glass of ginger ale in my hand, wondering if she was brilliant or just selfish. “She didn’t mean to be selfish,” Jack told me later. “It was the only way she could work. Marilyn didn’t give a rip about the director, or the other actors, or anything else. She had to get that scene the way she pictured it in her head.” And he added, “I know it drove you cuckoo.” Indeed it did. I’ve rarely lost my temper on a motion picture set. But I did that day.
At take thirty-eight I was handing her the glass of “champagne.” I had done it so many times that I was numb, moving like a robot. Marilyn stopped in the middle of the scene, just as the glass was going into her hand. I snapped. I pushed the glass at her. She deflected it. It went flying. Miller jumped up and ran over to us. He pushed me. I pushed him back. He tripped and fell. Marilyn came at me. I pushed her away. Billy and John and Sam rushed over and separated everybody. Billy called a break. I went to my dressing room.
About a half hour later, I heard arguing coming from Marilyn’s dressing room. It sounded like Miller was yelling at her. “What else is there? Tell me.” Then it quieted down. Another half hour passed. There was a knock on my door. Arthur Jacobs was there. He came in and asked if I was all right. Would I be amenable to talking with Marilyn and her husband, in order to smooth things over? Of course I would. I didn’t want to be on bad terms with anyone. As I said, the big thing in my life has been that I so much want people to like me. So I said I’d talk with them. Jacobs left. A few minutes later, he came back and escorted me to Marilyn’s dressing room. Miller was there, of course, and Marilyn, but no May Reis or Paula Strasberg.
I stepped inside. Miller looked distinctly ill at ease. Marilyn was staring into space.
“Marilyn, Arthur,” I began. “I’m sorry. I’ve been . . . we’ve all been through the wringer. We’re all tired. I didn’t mean anything. Please accept my apology.” I extended my hand.
Marilyn looked up and nodded. Miller turned to Jacobs. “We’d like to speak to Mr. Curtis alone.”
Jacobs looked frightened. This was coming out of nowhere. “Very well,” he said. Then he backed out of the dressing room and closed the door.
I turned to Miller. “What? You don’t want to accept my apology?”
“If you’ll apologize for sleeping with my wife,” he said, glaring at me. Marilyn looked down at the floor.
“What?” I gulped. What the fuck was this? This was something I hadn’t expected
“She told me about the hotel,” Miller said flatly.
“Oh,” I answered. “Okay.” I suddenly felt weird. There was a heaviness in my chest and arms. I tried to breathe.
“Well?” asked Miller, lifting his chin.
I looked at Marilyn, then back at him. My mouth was dry. “Look,” I said, taking a breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. I really am. But you have to understand. Marilyn and I have a special feeling for each other. It started long before you came around. When we were together, it came back. I’m sorry.”
“Is this true?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she answered, looking down.
“This should not have happened,” he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
“Well,” I said, “it did. We didn’t want to do this to you. But it just . . . happened. And I’m sorry. Very sorry.”
“Sorry?” asked Miller. “What good does that do us? You Hollywood people are so incredibly selfish.”
“Look. Don’t blame Hollywood. Like I said. It just happened. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
“There’s something I can do about it,” said Miller. “I can beat the hell out of you.”
This guy was full of shit. He didn’t know who the fuck he was dealing with. I crossed my arms. “Yeah?”
“Stop it,” said Marilyn. She stood up and put her hand on his arm. “That won’t fix it.”
“What’s to fix?” I asked her.
“There’s something I—” She looked from me to him and back again.
“Don’t,” he cut her off. He stepped in front of her. They stood staring at each other.
Then she stepped back and looked at me. “I think the baby is yours,” said Marilyn.
“What?” I couldn’t say anything else. I was stunned. My head started buzzing. I just stood there. The room was silent. I could hear tires screeching on Santa Monica Boulevard.
“We’ve discussed that,” Miller said to her. “It’s not his.”
“Fine,” said Marilyn. “It’s not his. Fine. Whatever you say.”
“What makes you think the baby is mine?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Miller. “Nothing.”
“Are you serious, Marilyn? Is it—”
“I’ve consulted her doctor,” Miller cut in. “There’s no way it could be yours.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
“There’s nothing for you to do.” Marilyn slumped back into her chair.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked again.
“Finish the film,” said Miller. “And stay out of our lives.”
I stared at him for a minute. Then I looked at her. She was crying. “Okay,” I said. “That I can do.” I turned and walked out. I went to my dressing room. I closed the door. I locked it.
Billy sent everyone home for the day. The next day Marilyn called in sick. I knew why. Walter Winchell had finally gotten back at me for Sweet Smell of Success. He wrote a nasty item in his column about my getting into a fistfight with Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. Interesting how news travels in the jungle.
On Friday morning Marilyn was on the set early. Miller was not there at
all. We took up where we’d left off, with the champagne. She got it on the first take. Then we did the part where I’m chewing on a pheasant leg. Only it was chicken, because it would photograph better. Pheasant is too gamy to last under the lights.
Marilyn began doing it again. Starting and stopping. We went to forty-two takes. By the last take I was turning eight shades of chartreuse. I was ready to throw up. I didn’t eat chicken for a long time after that.
29
On Monday, November 3, Some Like It Hot went into its fourteenth week of shooting. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond had not completed the script. They were still grappling with it. In the meantime there were shots to be gotten. Marilyn and Jack and I spent most of the day running around hallways or talking on telephones in close-ups that had to be reshot for one reason or another. Fortunately, as we got closer to the end, Marilyn was able to get a shot in fewer takes. Some of them were just reaction shots, of course. And she was reading her lines off blackboards positioned just out of camera range. Billy tried to get her not to scan her eyes from left to right, but she did it anyway. You could tell she was reading, especially in the shot when she’s on the phone.
We spent quite a bit of time on the process stage. That’s where they film you in front of a translucent rear projection screen and you pretend you’re somewhere else. We had a number of those shots to do, where I was riding a bicycle, for example. We closed down fairly early. There was a good reason. Billy needed to sit down with Izzy and write the ending of our movie. Before they adjourned to the office, though, they screened rushes from the previous week’s shooting.
I was curious to see how my love scene with Marilyn looked. When I got to the screening room, I was surprised. There were people there who shouldn’t have been: publicists and crew members from other productions. I wanted to ask Billy if he could send them away, but I didn’t see him. The lights dimmed. The projector started rolling. Various takes were projected onto the screen. They looked good at first. But then I realized that the takes Billy had printed were the ones where Marilyn was warming up—and I was wearing down. This I did not like.
What I also didn’t like was the undercurrent of crudeness in the screening room, as if this was a smoker, not a private screening of a work in progress—a very important work. There were remarks of a vulgar nature about Marilyn’s breasts and about the way she was on top of me. I was getting hot under the collar. But Billy didn’t come in until after the screening had started. I couldn’t very well tell him to turn off the projector and throw the punks out.
The lights came up. I had to leave. On my way out, some guy whom I didn’t recognize called out to me.
“Tony,” he said. “That was terrific. Hey. Tell me. What was it like kissing Marilyn?”
I didn’t stop to acknowledge him. I kept walking.
“What do you think it was like, buddy?” I got to the door. “Like kissing Hitler?”
I went through the door and slammed it after me.
30
Billy Wilder didn’t care what I’d said about Marilyn in the screening room. He had more pressing concerns, like his health. His back had gotten better, but now his stomach was bothering him. He’d been vomiting from sheer stress. Marilyn wasn’t the only reason. The ending for the film had yet to be written. This was standard procedure for Billy and Izzy. They always wrote their scripts as shooting progressed. The actors informed the characters, and the characters informed the plot. Billy didn’t usually cut it so close. On Monday after screening the rushes, he joined Izzy in the office and tried to thrash out the last scene.
They’d gotten our heroes (or were they heroines?) safely away from the gangsters and into that motor launch: Joe is in the back seat with Sugar, and Jerry is in the front seat with Osgood. It was a given that Sugar would accept Joe, even though he was a no-good saxophone player. But how the hell was Osgood going to react when he found out Daphne was really Jerry? Billy and Izzy had painted themselves into a corner. Or had they?
In the earlier scene where I climb through the window into the hotel room and Jack uses the maracas to punctuate his pronouncements, I had the line, “How can you marry Osgood? You’re not a girl. You’re a guy!” Jack’s next line was originally, “Nobody’s perfect.” Billy thought that it broke the continuity and called attention to itself. He and Izzy acted out the scene so they could hear the rhythm. As funny as this line was, it didn’t belong in that rapid-fire scene. So they cut it.
Weeks later, on Monday, November 3, Billy was playing the very last scene with Izzy.
“And Jerry takes off his wig and says, ‘But you don’t understand. I’m a man!’ ”
“Well . . . nobody’s perfect,” Izzy said, almost devoid of emotion.
“What’s that?” asked Billy. “A throwaway?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t we use it?”
Billy wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t think of anything better. Still, there might be something.
“It’s getting late,” said Izzy. “If we play with this much longer, we won’t be able to get it typed and mimeographed tonight.” The production office closed at nine.
“Well . . . all right,” Billy said. “Let’s put it in. But just for the time being. We’ve got ’til Friday to think of something else.” Izzy walked the pages to the office. It had closed. He took the scene home with him and typed it there.
This picture was taken on the last day I worked with Marilyn Monroe. It was on the process stage at Goldwyn. I thought I’d see her the next day, but she didn’t return.
In the morning Izzy showed the new scene to his wife, Barbara, who had written novels under the name Barbara Bentley. She read the typescript. She thought the last line was weak. Where was the payoff for the outrageous revelation? She didn’t like it.
“That’s what Billy thinks, too,” said Izzy. “You’re both wrong.”
“No.”
“Yes,” said Izzy. “Audiences think they’re smart enough to see a punch line coming. They love to anticipate a joke. In this case, everybody—even the dumbest member of the audience—knows that Jerry has to take off his wig and admit he’s a man. They’re holding onto their seats because Osgood’s going to explode. So. What if there’s no explosion? What if there’s an understated reaction? Look. We’ve set up the laugh. It’s in the structure of the scene. That work’s done. The actual line doesn’t matter, as long as it’s flat. In fact, the flatter, the better.”
The scene went to the studio, where it was mimeographed and distributed. Billy thought about the last line all week. He wasn’t the only one.
Marilyn looked at the scene and saw one thing. The last shot was of two men. It wasn’t of her. That did it. After her work with me on the process stage Thursday, she walked to her dressing room. There was one more shot to do, but she was not going to act in it if the movie didn’t end with a close-up of her. She packed up, gathered her entourage around her, and drove through the Goldwyn gates.
When Billy heard the news, he called Marilyn’s stand-in. Then he and Izzy modified the scene. On Friday morning he shot it. The stand-in was sitting with me in the backseat of the motor launch. Billy had me lean over her, obscuring her face. Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon were in the front seat. Billy had Joe E. say, “Nobody’s perfect.”
“Cut.” Billy still wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t think of anything better. “Print it.”
Part VI
The Previews
31
On Saturday, November 8, I went with Janet to see Sammy Davis Jr. in a play called The Desperate Hours. Janet was eight months along, but she was willing to go to this theater-in-the-round presentation. I’d seen a lot of Sammy at the Goldwyn Studio, since he was playing Sportin’ Life in Porgy and Bess.
That same night, Marilyn was rushed from the Bel Air Hotel to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. She thought she was having a miscarriage, but she wasn’t. She was kept there for about a week. She was worried that the sleeping pills were going to kill her baby, so she tried to wean
herself from them.
On Monday, November 10, Jack and I reported to Stage 4 at Goldwyn for the final scenes of Some Like It Hot. We worked for two days, mostly in the lobby and in the third-floor hallway set. Our last setups were in George Raft’s hotel room on the afternoon of November 11. The very last lines we said had to do with changing out of drag and getting out of there alive. No kidding! That was exactly how we felt. We’d been in drag since August 4—seventy-three days of shooting. And now no more wigs. No more falsies. No more fucking high heels. Elation. And then—a drop.
I always have a curious feeling when I finish shooting a film. A drop in energy. A lull. A “postpartum” depression. I’ve been seeing the same faces, hearing the same voices, sharing the same experiences. Suddenly I’m cut off from these people. I turn to make a comment to Jack Lemmon because I know he’ll get a kick out of it. He’s not there. Where is he? He’s gone on to the next thing. Where’s Billy Wilder? He’s in the editing room with Doane Harrison and Arthur Schmidt. What about Harold Mirisch, whose greeting on Beverly Drive started the whole thing?
Harold was in the field with Arthur Jacobs, trying to put on a brave face. Lloyd Shearer was back, asking pointed questions. “Is Marilyn really worth all the time and trouble she caused you?” How do you answer an impertinent question like that? Harold was honest.
“This is a funny, a riotous picture,” said Harold. “Marilyn is marvelous in it. But, yes, her illnesses may have cost us two weeks. Three months is a long shooting schedule for a comedy. It was budgeted at $2.3 million. We’ve gone about $500,000 over. Which means that we’ll need to gross $7 million to break even. I hope we’ll make a great deal more. But, to answer your question. Just how much Marilyn is worth in time, trouble and money? We’ll have to wait until the picture is released to find that out.”
