The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

by Donald H. Wolfe

  While Arthur Miller was before the committee being interrogated about his leftist leanings, he made a rather left-handed proposal of marriage. Asked by an interrogator why he wanted a passport to go to England, Miller replied, “The objective is double. I have a production which is in the talking stage in England, and I will be there with the woman who will then be my wife.” Besieged by reporters as he left the hearing, he announced that he would marry Marilyn Monroe “very shortly.” Soon afterward, Norman Rosten received a hysterical call from Marilyn, “Have you heard?” she gasped. “He told the whole world he was marrying Marilyn Monroe—me! Can you believe it? You know he never really asked me! I mean really asked me to marry him! We talked about it, but it was all very vague.”

  The committee voted to give Miller ten days to present it with names of communists he had known within the front organizations he had joined. On June 25, 1956, he was cited for contempt for noncompliance. A contempt conviction meant a thousand-dollar fine and one year in jail. Almost all the similarly cited witnesses—such as Dashiell Hammett, Ring Lardner, Jr., and Howard Fast—had been convicted and went to prison. Miller’s attorney, Joseph Rauh, filed an appeal, however, and not only was Miller not jailed, but he was quickly granted a passport, while the passports for Paul Robeson and other witnesses were denied. The leniency Miller received was unprecedented.

  Many believed that the benevolence on the part of the Passport Office could be attributed to concern over the bad press it would receive as a naysayer to Miller’s romance with America’s favorite ingenue waif. However, the Passport Office had indeed decided to deny Miller’s passport. Someone within the State Department subsequently ordered its issuance. It was rumored in Washington that Senator John Kennedy and Kennedy family friend Averell Harriman had intervened.

  When Arthur introduced Marilyn to his parents in their Flatbush apartment, he stated, “This is the girl I want to marry.” Marilyn embraced her new surrogate parents, Isadore and Augusta Miller, and they all wept with happiness. Mrs. Miller said, “She opened her whole heart to me and Marilyn was like my own daughter.” Marilyn felt a particular fondness toward Arthur’s father, Isadore, a retiring man of gentle disposition. She knew he had lost everything during the Great Depression and had never recovered emotionally or economically. Marilyn was to remain close to and supportive of Isadore Miller for the remainder of her life.

  Marilyn asked Arthur’s mother, Augusta, to teach her how to cook the Jewish dishes that Arthur enjoyed. Perhaps knowing that Augusta Miller had been unhappy because Arthur’s first wife was not Jewish, Marilyn announced that she was going to enter the Jewish faith, and she studied with Rabbi Robert Goldberg, who later performed the wedding ceremony. Her conversion to Judaism took Arthur by surprise. He had long ago abandoned the tenets of Judaism when he embraced Marxism. When Susan Strasberg asked Marilyn why she wanted to become Jewish, Marilyn replied, “I believe in everything a little, and if I have kids, I think they should be Jewish. Anyway, I can identify with the Jews. Everybody’s always out to get them, no matter what they do.”

  Susan Strasberg recalled that Marilyn began injecting Jewish expressions in her conversations: “Hi, bubuleh! Oy vay! Wotta shlep!—It’s all bashert!” And she was constantly making chicken soup with matzo balls (an apocryphal joke at the time had her asking Arthur what they did with the rest of the poor matzo).

  Public interest in the couple and their betrothal received more press coverage than anything since King Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson. As stalwart reporters stood vigil outside Marilyn’s Sutton Place South apartment waiting for confirmation of the wedding plans, the door opened and the announcement came from an unexpected source: An air-conditioner repairman had overheard Marilyn talking about the wedding on the telephone. Emerging from the apartment he announced to the anxious crowd, “I heard her say she was going to marry Miller!” To escape the growing camp of reporters on their doorstep, Miller and his betrothed fled to his Connecticut farm. The press followed en masse, and Marilyn’s enraged fiancé promised to hold a press conference on June 29 if the reporters would leave them in peace until then.

  On Friday, June 29, scores of automobiles lined the roads leading to the intersection of Old Tophet and Goldmine Road, where the Miller farm was located. More than four hundred reporters and photographers from all over the world wandered about the property, looking through windows, knocking on doors, hoping that Monroe and Miller would appear. There was no food, no coffee, no sanitary facilities. There were rumors and gossip: They’re already married…No, they’re in the house…They’re getting married in London…They’re in New York—the wedding’s off…No, it’s tomorrow…

  Suddenly a green Oldsmobile sped into the driveway to the farm and stopped on the hill. Arthur Miller and Marilyn jumped out from the backseat and ran for the house. The man at the wheel, Miller’s cousin Morton, cried hysterically, “There’s been an accident! It’s bad! This car was following us, there’s a turn in the road. We heard a crash behind us. Oh, God, there was a photographer and a woman—their car hit a tree. She was thrown through the windshield. She’s bleeding—all cut up! We tried to do what we could. Marilyn’s all upset. Arthur’s calling the hospital now!”

  Correspondent Myra Sherbatoff of Paris-Match died before she got to the hospital. Marilyn was horrified and had to be reassured by Lee and Paula Strasberg that it hadn’t been her fault. But privately Paula said to Lee and Susan, “This is an ill omen. It’s all bashert!”

  While she was trying to comfort the dying woman, Marilyn’s sweater had become stained with blood. As she changed and tried to recover from the catastrophe, the reporters swarmed to the scene of the accident, took their grisly photos, and returned to the farm—waiting, smoking, gossiping. The heat was relentless. A photographer fell from a tree.

  Marilyn and Miller emerged from the house with his parents and Milton Greene. Greene took command—twenty minutes for newsreels, twenty minutes for stills, thirty minutes for interviews. Miller looked like a man in shock. Marilyn tried to appear serene.

  “Stand a little closer!…click…Please smile, Mr. Miller!…click…Would you put your arm around him, please?…click…Smile, Mr. Miller!…Look this way…click…Please smile, Mr. Miller—big smile now…click……This way now!…click, click, click…

  That night there was a double-ring civil ceremony in White Plains, conducted by a municipal judge. Arthur gave Marilyn a ring engraved with the ambiguous sentiment “Today Is Forever.”

  On Sunday, July 1, the nuptials were to be performed by Rabbi Goldberg at the nearby home of Arthur’s literary agent, Kay Brown, in Katonah, New York. Away from the press, twenty-five friends and relatives gathered for the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony. But while the jubilant guests arrived downstairs, Marilyn was in the upstairs guest room having second thoughts.

  According to Amy Greene, Marilyn decided she had made a mistake and didn’t want to go through with the ceremony. “Marilyn was in a terrible state,” Amy Greene recalled, and she and Milton tried to comfort her.

  “You don’t have to go through with this marriage, you know,” Milton Greene said to Marilyn.

  “No, I don’t want to go through with it,” Marilyn said, her eyes filled with tears.

  “We can put you in a car and we’ll deal with the guests,” Greene suggested, and he telephoned attorney Irving Stein, asking him “to stand by in case of immediate difficulty about Marilyn’s marriage.”

  The last-minute change of mind was dramatized in the wedding scene of Miller’s 1964 play After the Fall, in which it is apparent that the character of Maggie is based on Marilyn and Quentin is based on Miller:

  On the second platform Maggie appears in a wedding dress. Carrie, a colored maid, is just placing a veiled hat on her head…

  Quentin enters.

  QUENTIN: Oh, my darling. How perfect you are.

  MAGGIE: Like me?

  QUENTIN: Good God!—To come home every night—to you!

  (He s
tarts for her open-armed, laughing, but she touches his chest, excited, and strangely fearful.)

  MAGGIE: You still don’t have to do it, Quentin. I could just come to you whenever you want.

  QUENTIN: You just can’t believe in something good really happening. But it’s real, darling. You’re my wife!

  MAGGIE: (With a hush of fear in her voice.) I want to tell you why I went into analysis.

  QUENTIN: Darling, you’re always making new revelations, but…

  MAGGIE: But you said we have to love what happened, didn’t you? Even the bad things.

  QUENTIN: (seriously now, to match her intensity.) Yes, I did.

  MAGGIE: I…I was with two men…the same day…I mean the same day, see…(She has turned her eyes from him. The group of wedding guests appear on first platform.) I…I don’t really sleep around with everybody, Quentin…I was with a lot of men, but I never got anything for it. It was like chanty, see. My analyst said I gave to those in need. (She almost weeps now, and looks at him, subservient and oddly chastened.) I’ll always love you, Quentin. But we could just tell them we changed our mind…

  QUENTIN: Sweetheart…The past is not important—it’s what you took from it. Whatever happened to you, this is what you made of it!

  MAGGIE: (With hope now.) Maybe…it would even make me a better wife, right?

  QUENTIN: (With hope against the pain) That’s the way to talk! You’re a victory, Maggie! You’re like a flag to me, a kind of proof, somehow, that people can win.

  WOMAN GUEST: Ready! Ready! (The guests line up on the steps, forming a carrison for Maggie and Quentin.)

  QUENTIN: Come, they’re waiting. (He puts her arm in his, they turn to go.)

  MAGGIE: Teach me, Quentin! I don’t know how to be! (Moving along the corridor of guests as the wedding march begins.) I’m going to be a good wife. I’m going to be a good wife. I’m going to be a good wife….

  “Ready! Ready!” someone yelled from downstairs, where the guests had gathered. Prepared for the awkward task of telling the guests that the marriage was off, Greene knocked on the door where Marilyn and Miller were having their discussion.

  “Five minutes!” Marilyn said. And twenty minutes later, the radiant smiling bride descended the stairs. Miller’s brother Kermit was the best man; Hedda Rosten was the bridesmaid. At the end of the traditional Jewish ceremony, the groom crushed the crystal betrothal goblet beneath his heel. It symbolized trust—once broken, impossible to mend. And later, Marilyn was to write on the back of their wedding photograph, “Hope, Hope, Hope!”

  Norman Rosten described the wedding party:

  On this day, all was serene and sunny. The day everywhere spoke of life: the long table behind the house with guests seated and drinking, bride and groom moving among friends, everyone exchanging good wishes and embraces. The bride was both beautiful and nervous. Really ecstatic. She gave off a luminosity like the Rodin marble; she was the girl in “The Hand of God.” It was the culmination of a dream and carried within it the danger of all dreams.

  Mazel tov!

  40

  Bashert!

  Double, double, toil and trouble;

  Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

  —Macbeth. Act IV, Scene 1

  Logan tried to prepare Sir Laurence Olivier. As an old friend of Olivier’s, he wrote to him shortly before Marilyn and Miller were to leave for London for The Prince and the Showgirl. “First of all,” Logan said, “be sure that you do not have Paula on the set. I’m sure she’s going to be with Marilyn on your picture, and I think it would be most disturbing for you to have anyone there in authority except you.” He described to Olivier Marilyn’s special beauty and unique talent, but added, “Please do not expect her to behave like the average actress you have worked with. For instance, don’t tell her exactly how to read a line. Let her work it out some way herself no matter how long it takes.”

  Logan remembered getting a polite response to his suggestions. Olivier assured Logan he would be patient with her. “I will not get upset if I don’t get everything my way,” he stated. “I will iron myself out every morning like a shirt, hoping to get through the day without a wrinkle.”

  THUNDER: Enter the three WITCHES.

  Yet, was thrice a wrinkle and double trouble

  Though starch like hell-broth boil and bubble.

  Round about the cauldron go;

  In the poisen’d starch do throw

  Lizard legs and Black Bart hat,

  Writer’s pen and tail of cat

  Tongue of Red and toady Greene

  Eyes of snake and words so mean

  Gall of star with strap that falls

  Peas and carrots and Matzo’s balls.

  ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

  Starch gruel thicken, boil and bubble.

  Exeunt WITCHES

  [ALARUM:]

  Enter piston plane:

  Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Miller arrived at London’s Heathrow airport on July 14, 1956. They were met by Sir Laurence Olivier and his wife, Vivien Leigh, over three hundred photographers and reporters, seventy-five policemen, and thousands of adoring fans. Giggling with disbelief, Olivier called it “the largest reception and press conference in English history.” Describing the awesome moment when they emerged from the plane, Miller wrote, “The camera flashes formed a solid wall of white light that seemed to last for almost half a minute, a veritable aureole, and the madness of it made even the photographers burst out laughing.”

  Olivier and Leigh were swamped in the hysterical mob of reporters and movie fans that forced the celebrities and police to retreat behind the protection of a ticket counter. One photographer who fell at Marilyn’s feet was trampled by the stampeding mob, and had to be rushed to the hospital.

  “Are all your conferences like this?” Leigh inquired.

  “Well,” Marilyn replied, “this is a little quieter than some of them.”

  At this point in her life Marilyn Monroe had evolved beyond celebrity; orphan 3,463 had become the most famous woman in the world.

  The Millers’ asylum from the madding crowd was to be Parkside House, at Englefield Green. Adjoining Windsor Park, the Georgian mansion had been rented for the duration of the filming. It was there that the Millers’ honeymoon, such as it was, would be eclipsed by rehearsals, wardrobe fittings, and press conferences, at which Miller again found it difficult to smile. One British journalist referred to him as “Cold as a refrigerated fish in his personal appearance. Not like a hot lover—more like a morgue keeper left with a royal cadaver.”

  Costarring with Sir Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl had been Marilyn’s inspiration. In 1953 Olivier had costarred with Vivien Leigh in the London production of Terence Rattigan’s play, which was entitled The Sleeping Prince. Vivien Leigh had received less than rave notices. She was obviously miscast as the ingenue American chorus girl. But the part was perfect for the younger, more voluptuous Marilyn Monroe, a requisite that prompted Leigh’s most gracious disdain.

  Terence Rattigan’s play was a stylish light comedy that floated on the buoyancy of its theatrical charm. The dated atmosphere was thick, the plot was not:

  FADE IN: The very mannered and dispassionate prince regent of Carpathia (Olivier) is in London in 1911 for the crowning of King George V. Despite his rigid reserve, he falls in love with an entrancing American chorus girl, Elsie Marina (Marilyn). Duty calls the prince regent to return to Carpathia, but he promises to come back and marry the beauteous chorus girl: FADE OUT.

  Such slight and boneless plots are fleshed out by the abracadabra of ingenious situation, artful staging, sparkling dialogue, and bravura performances. Joshua Logan believed that the combination of Sir Laurence Olivier, Earl of Notley, and La Monroe of Dickensiana would be magical: “The best combination since black and white and salt and pepper.” But it proved to be more like Earl and water. There was thrice a wrinkle.

  When Olivier first met Marilyn in New York in February he observed, “By the end
of the day one thing was clear to me: I was going to fall most shatteringly in love with Marilyn, and what was going to happen? There was no question about it, it was inescapable, or so I thought; she was so adorable, so witty, such incredible fun and more physically attractive than anyone I could have imagined. I went home like a lamb reprieved from the slaughter just for now, but next time…Wow! For the first time now it threatened to be ‘poor Vivien’!”

  But the next time it was “poor Larry”: Marilyn was on her honeymoon, and Vivien had gone “round the bend.” It was not the best of times for Olivier and Leigh. Despite appearances, their marriage was all but over. In 1953, Vivien Leigh was to have starred in Paramount’s Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. On location in Ceylon, she and Finch had an affair. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was removed from the film and replaced by Elizabeth Taylor. On returning to London, Leigh was placed in the Netherne psychiatric hospital, where she underwent electroshock therapy. Diagnosed as a manic-depressive, she made a partial recovery and returned to Notley Abbey, where Olivier tried to nurse her back to health. But the shock treatments had somehow made her a stranger to her husband, who observed to friends that she seemed a changed woman. Olivier confessed with sadness that he had difficulty understanding the woman who had come back to him. He found himself viewing her increasingly distantly and dispassionately—as an observer rather than a husband. She was no longer the same woman he had loved and married.

  Believing that going back to work together would be the best thing for Vivien and their troubled marriage, Olivier had their friend Terence Rattigan tailor the slight and undemanding Sleeping Prince for their appearance together at the Phoenix Theater. Designed as a courtier’s offering to Queen Elizabeth II in her coronation year, The Sleeping Prince opened on November 5, 1953, Leigh’s fortieth birthday.