In another significant gesture, Marilyn moved out of the Gladstone Hotel in April. Shortly after Brando left town, she sub-leased Suite 2728 at the Waldorf Towers from the actress Leonora Corbett. Greene paid the rent, requiring him to mortgage his house and borrow from friends. The Towers apartment, though small, boasted a city view that was especially dramatic at night. The three rooms were decorated in blue and gold, with white accents.
Marilyn, who had few possessions, added touches of her own. On a table in the tiny living room she placed a spare, elegant drawing of her by Zero Mostel, a neighbor of the Strasbergs. She often chatted with the rotund actor in the Belnord courtyard. On another table she stacked some books about acting and the theater. She rarely ended a private session with Strasberg without borrowing at least one book. On the refrigerator top she stored a great many vari-colored jars of skin ointment and other beauty preparations. She hung the print of Abraham Lincoln above the bed. “I’ve never had a home,” Marilyn said at the time. “Not a real one with all my own furniture. But if I ever get married again, and make a lot of money, I’m going to hire a couple of trucks and ride down Third Avenue buying every damn crazy kind of thing.”
Not long after Marilyn had moved into the Towers, two new friends from the Studio, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, invited her to accompany them to a party. It was there that Marilyn encountered Arthur Miller for the first time since her arrival in New York.
One did not ordinarily find Miller at parties. He was a loner, especially now that he didn’t hang out with Kazan anymore. He disliked loud, crowded rooms. When he talked, he preferred a background of silence. Marilyn, all in white, was sipping a cocktail when she spotted him. He had, William Styron once said, “a gentleman farmer’s rumpledness.” Six feet two and a half inches tall, he towered over most people in the room. Marilyn realized that he was coming toward her.
She hadn’t seen him since January 27, 1951. The day after Charlie Feldman’s party in Miller’s honor, Marilyn and Kazan had taken him to the airport. At the time, Marilyn thought Arthur was going home to work on The Hook and assumed he’d be right back. She had no idea that he’d left because he feared what was about to happen between them. She had no idea that four years would pass before they encountered one another again.
Marilyn was hardly the person she’d been four years previously. Back then, she had been an obscure starlet who barely knew whether she had the talent or the strength to go on. Today, she was a world-famous movie star, one of the most valuable properties in Hollywood. Back then, she’d been desperate for publicity of any sort. Today, Marilyn could barely go outside without the press documenting every step. And, of course, in the interim Marilyn had married for a second time and divorced.
Miller, at thirty-nine, seemed barely to have changed at all. He was still obsessed with the need to match the success he’d had with Death of a Salesman. The Crucible certainly hadn’t done that for him, and he was about to try again with a new one-act play, A View from the Bridge, which was due to open on Broadway in the fall with another one-act play he’d completed. Martin Ritt was to direct, Kermit Bloomgarden and Robert Whitehead to produce. Casting was already under way.
There was another constant in his life. Though Miller had come to the party alone, he was still very much married. For all the talk of leaving his wife, he and Mary had bought a nineteenth-century house on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights. With his own hands, he had put down a cork floor, redone the kitchen, and carried out other renovations as though he planned to stay for a long time.
Yet there could be no denying that the connection between Marilyn and Arthur remained strong. She reacted to him with the same fascination she’d felt during their strange interlude in Los Angeles. As far as she could see, he was powerfully drawn to her as well. Nonetheless, when the evening ended, he left without asking for her telephone number. Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson took her back to the Waldorf. Marilyn, terribly disappointed, had no idea whether she’d ever see Arthur again.
Days passed, and when Marilyn heard nothing from him she decided to engineer a meeting. She called Sam Shaw to suggest they spend the day taking pictures in Brooklyn Heights. The fact that the weather was rainy didn’t seem to concern Marilyn. Her real reason for going out to Brooklyn was the chance that she and Sam might run into Arthur on the street.
The downpour made it impossible for them to work outside at all, and finally Sam suggested they drop in at a friend’s apartment. It wasn’t entirely by chance that the particular friend he took Marilyn to see was Norman Rosten; Sam had figured out why Marilyn wanted to spend the day in Brooklyn in the first place. Rosten, a poet and playwright, was Miller’s best friend. They had been at the University of Michigan together, and their wives, Hedda and Mary, had been roommates there. The Millers and the Rostens, who lived around the corner from one another, were very much a foursome.
Norman and Hedda didn’t immediately recognize Sam’s “model.” By the time they realized who she was, Marilyn had thoroughly charmed them both. The day had turned out better than she’d hoped; even if she hadn’t managed to run into Arthur, she’d found a way into his life. When Norman suggested they all go to a neighborhood party afterward, Marilyn eagerly agreed. Undoubtedly, she hoped Arthur might turn up at the gathering. Though he didn’t, Marilyn went home that night determined to cultivate a friendship with the Rostens. Sooner or later that friendship was bound to lead her back to Arthur.
As it happened, Arthur made his move first. After two weeks of silence, he called Paula Strasberg at home. If a man planned to cheat on his wife, Paula was the last person on earth he’d want to know. Paula, an inveterate gossip, had nearly broken up the Kazans’ marriage when she notified Molly of his affair with Constance Dowling. She thought wives ought to stick together, and believed in eliminating the younger woman. In choosing her to call for Marilyn’s number, Arthur was virtually ensuring that Mary would find out.
Finally, Marilyn received the call she’d almost given up waiting for. This time, Arthur did not fail to show up for their appointment, as he had done in August 1951. Soon, he and Marilyn were meeting regularly at her apartment whenever they could steal a few hours together. As far as Marilyn was concerned, her reception by Lee Strasberg had been wonderful enough, but Miller’s reappearance in her life made New York feel like paradise.
Part of the intense appeal of the Actors Studio had been the degree to which it connected with Marilyn’s long-ago fantasy of New York based on her encounters with Miller and Kazan. Arthur made all the elements of that fantasy click into place. With Strasberg, Marilyn had regained hope that she could change the way others saw her. Miller did something considerably more: If a man such as he could love her, perhaps she might actually learn to love herself. That was something she had never even dared to hope could happen. Marilyn, electric with life, was determined not to let him go again.
When Marilyn arrived, usually late, at the Actors Studio, she would take a seat beside Frank Corsaro. Marilyn’s radar told her that Corsaro was probably closer to Strasberg than anyone else in the room. She would slip off her pitch-black glasses to show a face bare of makeup. She was usually, said Corsaro, “somewhat rumpled and not quite all put together,” and called to mind “an unmade bed.” He wondered whether this wasn’t somehow deliberate, as though Marilyn wanted to distinguish herself from her glamorous Hollywood persona.
Corsaro often found himself staring at Marilyn’s hands. “For a beautiful woman, she had the dirtiest fingernails I’ve ever seen,” he recalled. Meanwhile, Marilyn, her eyes half-closed, listened to Strasberg. She almost never asked questions in class, and he wisely avoided singling her out.
Harold Clurman once remarked that “Lee could talk for three hours in one sentence.” Strasberg tended to hide behind jargon, and no doubt many people in the room had a good deal of difficulty understanding him. Inevitably, Marilyn leaned over to Corsaro.
“What’s he talking about?” she murmured.
As Strasberg tal
ked on, Corsaro provided simultaneous translation. Her education continued at various Broadway hangouts afterward. Corsaro frequently escorted her to a little Greek diner. When the others explicated Strasberg’s lectures, Marilyn, cradling a coffee cup in her hands, hung on every word.
Marilyn’s reverence for Strasberg prevented her from seeing what was evident to many others. She had arrived on the scene at a moment of enormous crisis in Strasberg’s professional life, when his authority and dominance at the Studio were very much in question. Far from being sincerely concerned with Marilyn’s needs, Strasberg had instantly perceived in the great movie star an opportunity for his own salvation.
The source of the crisis was Elia Kazan. The two men had a long and troubled history dating back to the Group Theater, where Strasberg had publicly humiliated Kazan, who was then employed as his stage manager. When some bit of stage claptrap didn’t work properly, Strasberg chastised Kazan before the entire company; the younger man was driven to tears. It was not in Kazan’s nature to forgive or forget. He appeared to take malicious pleasure when, years later, his own theater and film commitments left him little time to teach, and Strasberg was an old failure thrilled to be offered a teaching post at the Actors Studio. Kazan’s remarks about Strasberg were loaded with subtext. When Strasberg’s name first came up as a possible replacement for Bobby Lewis, Kazan snidely declared that Lee would certainly be able to put in the time. When he praised Strasberg as “one of those people that are by very nature teachers,” Kazan subtly reminded everyone that Strasberg had failed as a director.
The great stage productions Strasberg dreamed of directing had never materialized. He had failed in Hollywood as well. For three years a director of screen tests at Twentieth Century–Fox, he was fired by the studio on May 26, 1947. Strasberg remained bitter that the world had not properly recognized or rewarded his gifts. In private, he was known to grow so angry about his circumstances that blood poured from his nostrils. Clifford Odets predicted that Lee’s arteries would “crack” prematurely. Cheryl Crawford observed that her colleague appeared to suffer some “ulcerating pain.” Frank Corsaro noted that “Strasberg’s fury and anger never abated.”
Strasberg was appointed Artistic Director in 1951, but the Actors Studio was then still very much Kazan’s domain. If the Studio was known outside theatrical circles, it was for Kazan’s plays and films. A Streetcar Named Desire had opened on Broadway two months after the Studio was founded. Kazan’s direction and Brando’s acting quickly came to represent the Studio’s bold new performance style. Kazan was a hero to the kids, as he fondly called the young actors and actresses at the Studio. Many desperately hoped that he would cast them in his next production. Though casting directors were barred from the workshop, it was no secret that Kazan used the Studio as, in Corsaro’s words, a “pool of talent for his own enterprises.”
In an unexpected twist of fate, Strasberg’s life had changed dramatically after Kazan’s HUAC testimony. Kazan’s position at the Studio, as elsewhere in the arts, was suddenly very different. As Irene Selznick pointed out, of all those who named names Kazan was the one who was least forgiven, “because he had been the epitome of courage and strength.” Quite simply, people expected better of Kazan. They thought he was tougher, and resented his efforts to justify what he had done. They accused him of having succumbed to “the rat race of success.”
There was a perception that Kazan, of all people, had been in a position to break the blacklist—or at least to try. There was a feeling that he was “too important to be ignored.” He would have inspired many others by doing the right thing himself. And no matter what his fate in Hollywood, he would have been able to work on Broadway where the blacklist had virtually no power. Had he refused to name names, Kazan, unlike those who could work only in Hollywood, would have continued to enjoy a good income in New York as well as the opportunity for artistic expression.
Instead, Kazan allowed himself to become the very figure of the informer in American culture. Zero Mostel dubbed him “Looselips.” Others called Kazan a “stool pigeon.” Arthur Miller and Kermit Bloomgarden snubbed him. People would cross the street to avoid having to decide whether to acknowledge him. Wherever Kazan went, he kept his antennae up to know what sort of greeting to expect. Kazan even had to be on guard at the Studio, where he fell out of favor with the kids. Some withdrew from the workshop because of his participation. Others vowed never to work with “that sonofabitch” again. The situation became so intense that a meeting had to be called, and a number of members urged the Studio publicly to condemn Kazan’s actions. In the end, however, a decision was made to take no position.
Though Kazan maintained a gruff exterior, he was acutely sensitive to the fact that many people at the Studio had turned on him. He confessed to Cheryl Crawford that there were moments when he actually considered withdrawing altogether. He steered clear of the Studio for a while, and in his absence Strasberg became the new father figure. Strasberg greatly relished his new status. For the first time, he didn’t have to live under Kazan’s shadow. For the first time, he wasn’t constantly reminded that Kazan, not he, had the important career. To all intents and purposes, the Actors Studio became Strasberg’s kingdom.
Strasberg’s domination was short-lived. To his fury, in 1953 Kazan made his first conscious effort to find a way back. Eager to reclaim the Studio, Kazan cast Studio actors in Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real when, as he recognized, others would have been more appropriate. Thus did Kazan flaunt his power. Lee Strasberg might have charisma, but he wasn’t a working director. He couldn’t offer the kids roles in Broadway shows. Kazan tempted the kids with the very success for which some accused him of having sold out.
The triumphant release of On The Waterfront in July 1954 consolidated Kazan’s position at the Studio; Marlon Brando’s bravura performance made Kazan a hero there once more. Strasberg’s worst nightmare had come true. After On the Waterfront, there could be no doubt that once again he played second fiddle to Kazan. East of Eden, another film that the public tended to associate with the Studio, exacerbated Strasberg’s predicament. Rather pathetically, he attempted to share in the credit for both Brando and James Dean, though Brando had actually been trained by Strasberg’s enemy Stella Adler, and Dean had fled in terror after only a brief stay at the Studio, when Strasberg sharply criticized his workshop efforts.
From Strasberg’s point of view, Marilyn could hardly have arrived at a more opportune moment. She provided him with a weapon in his struggle for authority at the Studio. Marilyn Monroe would be Strasberg’s movie star, as Brando and Dean had been Kazan’s. Her miraculous transformation would be a testament to Strasberg’s own gifts as a director. Though he led Marilyn to believe that he had confidence in her talent, in fact the only one he really had confidence in was himself. As far as Strasberg was concerned, when Marilyn finally gave a great performance, it would be his accomplishment, not hers.
From the first, though Marilyn did not suspect it, she was back in a similar situation to the one she’d been in with Darryl Zanuck. For all the work Marilyn had done to become a star, in the end Zanuck had claimed the credit for her success. He had insisted that Twentieth Century–Fox—not Marilyn herself—had made her what she was today. Strasberg intended to do much the same thing: He planned to take credit for his protégée’s achievements. He wanted to be something more than Marilyn’s instructor; when she was ready—and there was no telling when that might occur—he hoped to direct her as well. In short, Strasberg saw Marilyn as a vehicle to the success that had long and stubbornly eluded him. Marilyn would make it possible for Strasberg to direct the great productions of his dreams.
Blind as Marilyn was to Strasberg’s self-serving motives, she failed to understand what he was really up to when he insisted that she would never win respect as a movie star. Of course, it was precisely Marilyn’s stardom that made her so useful to Strasberg. At the same time, without significant professional credits of his own, he needed to adjust the ba
lance of power in their relationship. Strasberg had to convince Marilyn that she had not accomplished anything on her own. He had to invalidate her hard-earned achievements in Hollywood. He had to reduce her to point zero. He had to make her accept that, despite all she had done in her career to date, she had come to him with nothing.
In the past, Marilyn had almost never failed with interviewers. She needed only to flash her “Marilyn” persona, and most press people were charmed. But something unprecedented happened on April 8. When Edward R. Murrow interviewed her at Milton Greene’s barn for the television program Person to Person, Marilyn was bland and colorless. Determined to be thought of as a serious actress—whatever that might mean, and at times she didn’t seem sure—Marilyn was unwilling to play the character she had always used to such great effect. In the absence of that character, Marilyn lacked a distinctive voice; evidently, she hadn’t yet found a substitute for “the girl.” Billy Wilder once remarked that when Marilyn appeared on screen, you simply couldn’t take your eyes off her. That was by no means the case on the Murrow show. The Greenes, particularly Mrs. Greene, occupied center stage, while Marilyn seemed to disappear into the woodwork.
In Los Angeles, Darryl Zanuck wondered whether she had lost her mind. He was convinced that she’d made an idiot of herself on Person to Person. If she kept up this sort of thing, he believed, The Seven Year Itch would be a hard sell by the time it was released in 1956. Zanuck conferred with Spyros Skouras and Al Lichtman, the head of the sales department, and they agreed to release the picture immediately, before Marilyn could do any more damage. Zanuck selected June 1, 1955, Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday, for the New York premiere. He wanted her to attend; but she was on suspension and he refused to invite her officially. Instead, he had some tickets sent to her through Sam Shaw.
Obviously, Marilyn couldn’t attend the opening with Arthur Miller. She turned up at the Loew’s State Theater with Joe DiMaggio. The fifteen hundred guests included Tyrone Power, Grace Kelly, Henry Fonda, and Judy Holliday. Thousands of fans crowded Broadway in the hope of catching a glimpse of Marilyn. There was a pained smile on Joe’s face as he escorted her past a huge blow-up photograph of the skirt-blowing scene. By the time they entered, the film had started.
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