Marilyn charmed the Hollywood press corps. But would she do the same with Joshua Logan? Logan was the first director Marilyn had actually chosen under her new contract, so they had better get along. Before accepting the assignment, the mercurial director of such hit stage musicals as Mister Roberts, South Pacific, and Picnic had asked a number of colleagues about Marilyn. Logan had also directed the highly successful film version of Picnic. He only considered doing Bus Stop because his, and Marilyn’s, agent Lew Wasserman at MCA suggested that it might be a way for Logan to get Twentieth to back off from a lawsuit they were about to file against him.
Maureen Stapleton told Logan that Marilyn was great. But it was Lee Strasberg who made up Logan’s mind. “I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of actors and actresses, both in class and in the Studio,” Strasberg attested, “and there are only two that stand out way above the rest. Number one is Marlon Brando and the second is Marilyn Monroe.”
Tall, heavy, and rumpled, Logan had a homely, weatherbeaten face that he himself despised. His enormous hands were hyperactive; a friend compared him to a “many-armed Hindu god.” When he wasn’t twisting the skin on his face as though it were putty, he was noisily playing with the coins in his trouser pockets. He scratched himself lustily. He picked at his shirt buttons and belt loops. He fiddled with his necktie. He fingered his mustache as though searching for fleas.
He was a catalogue of nervous tics and gestures. He paced back and forth. He took off and put on his wrinkled suit coat. He struck poses and emitted peculiar sounds. He was constantly muttering into a tape recorder. He had violent mood swings, alternating between blinky-eyed enthusiasm and a lusterless, detached stare. A manic depressive, he had spent time in mental institutions and received electric shock treatment. He was self-loathing and excruciatingly conscious of how he appeared to others. At the same time, as Elia Kazan once told Tennessee Williams, Logan possessed the sort of shamelessness that all artists must have.
Logan had met Marilyn at a dinner party arranged by Milton Greene in Connecticut. As the meal came to an end without Marilyn’s having put in an appearance, Logan grew irritated and demanded to know where Marilyn was. Greene explained that she was dressing for dinner.
Finally, Marilyn came downstairs. Slightly disheveled, she seemed the image of the hillbilly singer in Bus Stop. Cherie, who sings in a nightclub until the wee hours, is never outside during the day. Thus the dead white effect, which Greene helped Marilyn to achieve with baby powder. She took a seat on the floor and talked about her concept of the role. Marilyn may have been silent during her many months at the Actors Studio, but she had picked up a frame of reference, a way of speaking about what an actor does.
Logan was enchanted. He promised himself never to grow upset about Marilyn’s chronic lateness. And he promised never to raise his voice, Milton Greene having solemnly warned Logan that if he frightened Marilyn, he’d lose her. Whether the notoriously anxious and temperamental director would be able to live up to his vow was another matter.
This was by no means the only problem Logan faced in dealing with Marilyn on Bus Stop. As Marilyn began her first film since enlisting as Lee Strasberg’s most famous disciple, there was the complication of just what Strasberg’s role would be. Strasberg had devised a plan to assure that Marilyn remained his, even a continent away. Since that first night at the Belnord, his influence had grown to monstrous proportions. Marilyn believed herself totally dependent on him, and he seemed intent on keeping things that way. Of course, there could be no question of Strasberg himself turning up on the set as Marilyn’s coach; that would be beneath his dignity. Strasberg’s name did appear on Marilyn’s list of sixteen approved directors, despite the fact that he had never actually directed a film, but in light of his inexperience no one at Twentieth had even remotely considered asking him to direct Bus Stop. Still, though Strasberg would not deign to be merely Marilyn’s coach, nor was he prepared to put her in Joshua Logan’s hands alone.
Lee sent his wife Paula to function as his “surrogate Method-ist.” It was, pure and simple, a gesture to assert his continued control. Paula had long ago retired from a failed career as an actress. She had no real credentials as a teacher. Nor did she share her husband’s considerable knowledge of theater history. But, as Frank Corsaro pointed out, she had “picked up all the asterisks of the Method.” Marilyn accepted Paula—indeed, yearned for her presence—as Lee’s surrogate. To almost everyone else, Paula was a joke, if a rather painful one. She seemed omnipresent in her enormous tortoiseshell spectacles, her hair pulled back tightly in a bun. Aching feet, too small and delicate for her heft, forced her to wear floppy velvet bedroom slippers much of the time. She carried an oversized purse loaded with snacks, pills, and smelling salts—the latter in case she fainted.
In contrast to Marilyn’s fantasy of her, Paula was a bleak soul who tended to hover in her bedroom, disappointed, depressed, and suicidal. She regretted the past, and worried about the future. She claimed to be clairvoyant, reading tarot cards and drawing astrology charts. She kept a gun as protection against a former husband, and lamented her present husband’s selfishness. Lee had never directed Paula on the stage. He had not made love to her in more than a decade. She complained about her swollen feet. She fretted about her weight. She was always hot, and fanned herself incessantly. She threatened by turns to join a convent in Connecticut or to jump out the window.
Arthur Miller thought Paula a comical character out of Molière. But the $1,500 weekly salary Lee had demanded for his wife’s services was no laughing matter. Joshua Logan made clear that while Paula was free to work with Marilyn at home and in her dressing room, she was never to show her face on the set. Logan liked Paula personally, but he had no intention of permitting a situation that would enable her—or, by implication, Lee Strasberg—to challenge his own directorial authority.
The debate about Paula was reminiscent of the battles over Natasha Lytess. Natasha would often angrily claim in private that the real credit for the creation of “Marilyn Monroe” should be hers. Lee Strasberg was intent that, in due course, all credit for Marilyn’s acting would be his. The Strasbergs’ arrival on the scene meant that there was no longer any place for Natasha in Marilyn’s life.
Indeed, apart from a desire to economize, one reason Marilyn had agreed to share a rented house with the Greenes and their small son, as well as Milton’s assistant and two servants, was that she claimed to be afraid of Natasha. In Marilyn’s absence, Twentieth, confused about Natasha’s status, had kept her on the payroll. Though Marilyn never answered her pleading letters, Natasha had expected to return to her old post as soon as the contract dispute was settled. When she learned that Marilyn was due back for Bus Stop, Natasha expected to be summoned directly. Instead, she received a call from the studio firing her. A furious Natasha, who had learned that she had been replaced by Paula Strasberg, repeatedly phoned the house on North Beverly Glen Boulevard, but Marilyn either wasn’t there or refused to take her calls.
Finally, Natasha appeared in person, pounding on the door and demanding to see Marilyn. She expected better treatment, she said, since after all she had once saved Marilyn’s life. Lest that be forgotten, Natasha was wearing the antique cameo brooch which Marilyn had given her following the 1950 suicide attempt. As far as Natasha was concerned, Marilyn had only to snap her fingers and Twentieth would keep her on its payroll for years to come. It was the least Marilyn could do.
Marilyn’s MCA agent was at the house when Natasha appeared. He answered the door, and while Natasha waxed indignant about all she had done to “create” Marilyn, he remained unimpressed. He refused to let Natasha in. “Your engagement with the studio is none of Miss Monroe’s concern,” he said, turning her away. That the agent was only following orders was suggested by the fact that Marilyn watched the painful encounter from a window. Natasha spotted her there and slunk off.
Soon afterward, Natasha poured her heart out to the press. “She needed me like a dead man needs
a casket. I have letters in my drawer saying she needs me more than her life. She’ll never be a star to me. She’s Marilyn …” Natasha, consumed by bitterness, never saw Marilyn again. The star depended on others now.
A studio limousine arrived at the house at 7 a.m. to take Marilyn and Greene to the Fox lot for a meeting with Joshua Logan. Paula took a cab from the Chateau Marmont, where she preferred to stay; she would not even consider the idea of sharing a house with the others. Together, Milton and Paula made a comical sight. One was slim, the other fat. Both favored black. Both danced attendance on Marilyn. Both flitted about protectively, Greene chewing his fingernails, Paula clenching her jaw. Milton and Paula were supposed to be a team, yet they resented and largely ignored each other. At the moment, Greene had the advantage, Logan having confined Paula to Marilyn’s dressing room.
Marilyn and Greene went over the sketches for her costumes with Logan and the designer. Glassy-eyed, the director seemed lost in a world of his own, so there was no gauging his response to the awful costume designs. They were clothes a glamorous Hollywood star would wear, not a sad, down-and-out showgirl like Cherie. Marilyn pretended to be delighted, and instructed the designer to put the costumes in production. But she was only testing Logan. She wanted to see whether he knew what he was doing. After the designer left, Logan, having promised to treat Marilyn with kid gloves, gently asked if she had really liked the sketches. With a wicked glint in her eye, Marilyn declared that she hated them. Logan, immensely relieved, emitted a magnificent belly laugh.
Soon, Marilyn and her director, who was built like a football player, were feverishly rummaging through the racks at the wardrobe department. They pulled out the most disintegrated and threadbare outfits they could find. The pièce de résistance was a decrepit, green-gold lamé coat, to which Marilyn proposed that they add a bit of moth-eaten rabbit fur. It was to be Cherie’s touching and pathetic idea of glamor.
From then on, Marilyn and Joshua Logan were united in their determination not to permit Twentieth to turn Bus Stop into just another star vehicle. Marilyn’s insistence on clownish, pearly white makeup and ratty, decidedly unglamorous clothes made clear that she intended to function as an actress, not just as a movie star.
Logan planned to defend Marilyn to the hilt. He went ahead to Arizona to set up the first day of filming, the massive parade in downtown Phoenix on Thursday, March 15, the day before the rodeo. There would be cowboys and Indians, scout troops and marching bands. Each year, some twenty-five thousand spectators looked on from bleachers on both sides of the avenue. Bus Stop was to be shot in CinemaScope, so colorful backgrounds were important.
Logan was said to have “a toy theater in the back of his head” where he staged the action of his plays and films. His powers of concentration were prodigious. He visualized every element, planned every detail, pictured himself in every role. He fussed and fretted about everything. Eruptions of the famous Logan temper were commonplace. Informed that Marilyn had missed her flight by twenty minutes, the director despaired. His vow to remain calm notwithstanding, Logan, much as he adored Marilyn, was temperamentally ill-equipped to cope with her own anxiety-driven behavior.
Throughout her career, the pressure to shine had often made Marilyn late. It was up to her to create a persona. It was up to her to turn on for the camera. It was up to her to create magic. It was up to her to make a film or an event a success. That had been hard enough in the past, but things were considerably more complicated now. It was no longer simply a matter of working herself up to be photographed. Coached by Paula Strasberg, Marilyn was intent on using all of the lessons she had learned from Lee in New York.
Paula extracted Cherie’s dialogue from the screenplay and had it reproduced in a little brown book so that Marilyn wouldn’t be distracted by the other characters’ lines. Before each scene, Marilyn was going to have to “take a minute.” She was going to have to search for a memory of her own that permitted her to connect with the material. If she had been nervous to the point of paralysis in the past, what must she have been going through now?
Press interest in Bus Stop was immense and Phoenix swarmed with reporters. When Marilyn arrived with her entourage, Greene forbade her to be interviewed or photographed. This caused considerable ill will when some photographers spotted Greene snapping pictures of his own. To make amends, the Fox publicity department hired a stripper named Stormy Lee Scott to entertain the disgruntled journalists. But it was Marilyn they were all there for, and she was being kept under wraps. During the next five days, when Marilyn wasn’t filming, she and Paula tended to remain incommunicado in the penthouse at the Sahara Hotel.
From the outset, there was tension between Marilyn and her leading man. Don Murray played Bo, the gauche cowboy who falls desperately in love with Cherie. Moments before the opening-day parade began, Logan discovered that it was to be led by all the contestants in the Junior Chamber of Commerce Rodeo. The procession, known as the Grand Entry, introduced the various cowboys, who rode out in pairs. Logan had been planning a very different sort of shot, but he abruptly changed course and asked Murray if he minded saddling up. The rangy actor said he didn’t, but there was one problem. He had never been on a horse before.
Marilyn, already tightly strung on her own account, wasn’t amused. “Well, why don’t you do it anyway?” she jeered.
He mounted a horse and did remarkably well for a beginner. Logan arranged for him to have lessons immediately. But the fact remained that the co-stars had gotten off to a rocky start. The second assistant director, alarmed, warned Logan not to allow Marilyn to get to him.
The very next day, Marilyn nearly wrecked a complicated sequence which Logan had been setting up for hours. In flight from Bo, Cherie, carrying a suitcase, was to dash through the city streets to the bus terminal. There were liver-colored mountains in the distance and neon-lit bars and pizza joints along the way. To catch the moment before the sky shaded into black, the cinematographer Milton Krasner planned to shoot at precisely 6:30 p.m., the so-called magic hour. The underexposure from the dying light would give the effect of a rich, velvety blue.
At 2:30, Marilyn went to her trailer to fix her hair and redo her makeup. Most importantly, she wanted to review the scene with Paula. Meanwhile, Logan feverishly went over the scene numerous times with the cameraman, Marilyn’s stand-in, and five extras. Three hours and thirty-five minutes passed.
“Where’s Marilyn?” Logan was heard to say.
By that time, there were fifteen minutes left. He sent an assistant to her trailer. The assistant did not return. The cameraman’s eyes were darting between his wristwatch and his light meter.
“Where’s Marilyn?” Logan repeated.
His blood pressure rose as the orange sun descended. Finally, the cameraman announced they had only four minutes. If Marilyn failed to appear, the company would have to remain in Phoenix for an additional day, driving up the budget by as much as $50,000.
Logan propelled his massive, hulking frame in the direction of Marilyn’s trailer, some five hundred yards away. He found her gazing dreamily into a mirror while Paula, madly fanning herself, hovered nearby. Logan’s temper flared. He clutched Marilyn’s wrist and dragged her outside, a man possessed. Tallulah Bankhead once said that “if there were an Oscar for best acting by a director, Josh Logan would wrap it up.”
“I was coming,” Marilyn pleaded. “I was coming.”
By the time Logan had dragged Marilyn to her starting spot and shouted “Roll ’em!”, he had just about killed her dream of being treated with dignity and respect. Would he have done that to Bette Davis? Would he have done it to Katharine Hepburn? Logan bore Marilyn no ill will, yet to her his actions were humiliating.
The real crisis was still to come. On March 17, they shot a sequence in which Cherie, attempting to escape from Bo, panics and heads in the wrong direction. Instead of running away, she darts past as he bulldogs a steer in the center of the arena, the crowd cheering on both sides. Bo’s hands are occ
upied holding down the steer, so he is unable to stop Cherie.
Logan was allowed to shoot at the rodeo as long as he was careful not to interrupt the actual events. For this sequence, he chose a ten-minute intermission. Marilyn and the others rehearsed in the morning. When it was time to shoot, Logan, on the public-address system, asked the audience to behave as though they were witnessing a real event.
“Action!” he cried.
As Murray pretended to pin down the steer, Marilyn ran past. Then something happened that was not in the script. Marilyn, running to the exit, felt her shoe fly off. Immediately, she realized that the accident had been fortunate. Instead of wrecking the shot, the lost shoe made it more dramatic. But as she prepared to turn back, she perceived that her director wasn’t so quick. To her horror, she sensed that Logan was about to yell “Cut!” Fortunately, the crowd stopped him. The sight of thousands of spectators roaring with delight persuaded Logan to let the cameras run. Marilyn returned to the center of the arena, collected her shoe and disappeared through the gate. By the time the cameras stopped, her disillusionment was complete. Marilyn had seen Logan hesitate and her faith was shattered. He was the one with the impressive list of directing credits, but he knew less about film than she. Instead of feeling better about herself, Marilyn panicked. How could she trust Logan after that? How could she put her performance in his hands?
Her initial thought was to have Lee Strasberg flown to the location immediately. But Greene wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that Marilyn Monroe Productions could not afford the ticket. Marilyn had Sunday off. For hours, she and Paula conferred with Lee by telephone and listened to tapes of his lectures.
Marilyn Monroe Page 26
