Finally, the bride and groom arrived. Marilyn, in blue jeans, was rushed to a tiny bedroom upstairs, where the matron of honor, Hedda Rosten, helped her change into a beige chiffon wedding dress. (Hedda had been enlisted to accompany Marilyn to England as her personal assistant.) Meanwhile, Rabbi Goldberg and the guests assembled near the living-room fireplace.
Milton Greene led Marilyn out of the bedroom and presented her arm to Lee Strasberg, never a man who touched or allowed himself to be touched with ease. It meant everything to Marilyn that Strasberg had agreed to act as her surrogate father today; he gave the bride away. Paula, suicidal and half-mad, was, as Miller recognized, a mother figure to Marilyn.
The ceremony took ten minutes. Marilyn lifted her gossamer veil to sip red wine. She said “I do” in a soft, tremulous voice. Miller crushed the glass underfoot and the room erupted with cries of “Mazel tov!”
If there had ever been a moment of real happiness in Marilyn’s life, this was it. Never as a child had Marilyn dared to imagine that she could feel about herself as she felt that warm June day as she danced in the sunlight with her new husband. In Arthur, Marilyn seemed at last to have found a voice strong enough to counter the lifelong echoes of Gladys telling her she was not worthy to go on living. As Marilyn snuggled in Arthur’s arms in front of the wedding guests, she appeared to accept his verdict that she deserved to be loved.
For all of her happiness, Marilyn remained sick at heart about Mara Scherbatoff’s death. She was desperately worried about Arthur’s problems with HUAC and the State Department, and she grew feverish as July 13, her departure date, approached. But with Miller and Strasberg in her corner, it seemed as if Marilyn was going to be all right.
The day after he gave the bride away, Lee Strasberg appeared unexpectedly at Milton Greene’s office. Greene, at work on last-minute production details, was scheduled to leave on the 10th. Strasberg announced that if Greene wanted the film to proceed, he had to pay Paula $2,500 a week excluding expenses. The salary was more than anyone but Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier were to receive. As an alternative, Strasberg proposed that Marilyn Monroe Productions give him a percentage of the film in exchange for Paula’s services.
From first to last, Strasberg was chillingly mercenary. For many years, he had failed to earn the kind of money that he and Paula believed he was worth. Paula never tired of haggling with Cheryl Crawford over Lee’s Actors Studio salary. She never tired of pushing Lee. “If not for her,” Clifford Odets once remarked, “Lee would be one of the little old scholars who shuffle around the streets with books under their arms.” In Marilyn Monroe, Lee and Paula saw the solution to their financial woes.
Lee insisted that unless his demands were met, he’d refuse to let Paula go to England. That, of course, may very well have been Paula speaking through him. She played the good cop to her husband’s bad cop. Pointing out that Marilyn was emotionally fragile, Lee predicted she would be unable to do the picture without Paula. That Strasberg was exploiting Marilyn’s vulnerability—that she was already under huge pressure, and that his last-minute threat might precipitate a crisis—seems not to have bothered him at all.
Strasberg also got in a few gibes at the director. He insisted that Laurence Olivier, who despised the Method and the Actors Studio, and had a particularly low opinion of Strasberg himself, was all wrong for Marilyn. Strasberg urged that George Cukor be hired instead. Cukor, it should be pointed out, was unlikely to have accepted. The Oliviers’ friendship was one of Cukor’s prized possessions, and he would never have done anything to jeopardize it. Strasberg has to have known that, at this point, there was little likelihood of Olivier’s being replaced by anyone. Rather, Strasberg’s objective seems to have been to sabotage Marilyn’s confidence in Olivier before she reached England.
Why would Strasberg want to undermine Olivier? What interest would he have in setting up Marilyn’s working relationship with Olivier to fail? Strasberg seems to have been afraid that if Marilyn gave a fine performance in The Sleeping Prince, Olivier, not Strasberg himself, would get the credit for her transformation. And from the moment Strasberg started working with Marilyn, that transformation was to have been his miracle, his brilliant achievement. Strasberg was prepared to destroy a film that meant everything to Marilyn if that would prevent Olivier from getting the credit Strasberg wanted for himself.
Strasberg, acutely sensitive to Marilyn’s psychology, may have calculated that she didn’t dare see his betrayal for what it was. By now, Strasberg, like Miller, was integral to Marilyn’s sense of herself. On a film set, Paula was her lifeline to him. Milton Greene regarded Strasberg as a blackmailer. Marilyn, refusing to talk about the matter, insisted on giving Strasberg his money.
Paula’s presence in England was now guaranteed. But what about Arthur? The clock was ticking. He had five days to change his mind about naming names. After that, HUAC was sure to recommend a contempt citation.
The very first line of the sixteen-page memo Garrison planned to submit on Friday, July 6, was a strong, clear statement of Miller’s unwillingness to identify others who had attended the Communist writers’ meetings in 1947. It wasn’t a negotiable issue. This time there would be no ambiguity. Whatever the risk, Miller insisted on acting according to his conscience. No matter how diplomatic Garrison might be in the pages that followed, that opening sentence was like waving a red rag in front of a bull. Some committee members might not even bother to read further.
Miller’s best hope for being permitted to accompany Marilyn to England was somehow to extract a passport before Garrison sent off the memo. At the last minute, Rauh struck a deal with the State Department. If Miller signed an affidavit promising to return in the event of a contempt trial, he would be issued a passport good for six months. That was wonderful news.
As it happened, the affidavit reached the State Department the same day Francis Walter received Garrison’s carefully worded memo. “If that’s his answer to the opportunity offered by the committee to avoid contempt,” Walter said of Miller, “then it seems to me he’s inviting it.” On Tuesday, July 10, HUAC voted to recommend that the House of Representatives cite Miller for contempt. Miller was due to leave the country on Friday the 13th. That meant the vote in Congress would take place while he and Marilyn were in London.
Miller’s lawyers had one card left. They decided to use Marilyn. At Twentieth Century–Fox, she remained a very valuable property. A debate on the floor of Congress was the sort of publicity that could hurt even a beloved star. Rauh seemed convinced that if Spyros Skouras could be persuaded it was in his interest to intervene, a contempt citation might still be averted. Skouras had boasted that the committee members were his personal friends. Miller’s camp wanted Skouras to influence Donald Jackson of California to ease up on Miller. The lawyers considered Jackson to be Miller’s chief enemy. The Old Greek wouldn’t be doing it for Miller; he’d be doing it, Rauh emphasized, to keep the tarnish off Marilyn.
Skouras, however, refused to help. Rauh, for his part, was mystified. Did that mean the studio was cutting Marilyn loose? Did it mean that Skouras regarded the destruction of her marketability as a foregone conclusion? Or was he merely waiting to see whether a box-office boycott actually materialized? Did he want to see how the fans reacted to her husband’s political problems? Skouras’s silence and the questions about Marilyn’s future that it raised was one more thing that would weigh heavily on her in the weeks and months to come.
ELEVEN
There was a pounding rain on the morning of Saturday, July 14, as the plane carrying Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller touched down outside London. They were rushed through customs, and shortly before noon Marilyn appeared in sight of a shouting mob of reporters, her right hand tightly clutched in Arthur’s. On her other hand, she wore a simple gold band inscribed, “A. to M., June 1956. Now is Forever.” A brief press conference had been scheduled in the snackbar of the airport hotel, where Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh waited.
Rumpl
ed from the long flight, Marilyn was radiant nonetheless. She looked as if this were the proudest moment of her life. Indeed, in some sense it was. Marilyn had just stepped off the plane with her heroic new husband to be greeted by the world’s finest classical actor, with whom she was about to co-star in her own film production. The moment was a reminder of how very far Marilyn had come from being the sad little orphan girl whom no one wanted.
Her pride in Arthur was evident. Unable to take her eyes off of him, she seemed to be making sure that Olivier noted exactly who her husband was. His presence beside her provided the validation she had always longed for. For his part, Miller looked every bit as proud to be with Marilyn. He obviously enjoyed being the envy of most other men. Certainly, at that moment, Marilyn must have believed that she really had finally found happiness—and that, as the inscription on her ring suggested, it would last forever.
Olivier was friendly, but far more reserved than he had been when Marilyn saw him last. Gone entirely were the teasing, the flirtatious joking. This should not have been surprising to Marilyn. Not only did he have his wife at his side, but Marilyn and Arthur were very much the honeymoon couple; the tone Olivier had taken in New York would have been entirely out of place. Marilyn, absorbed by Arthur though she was, seemed a bit taken aback by Olivier’s crisply professional, rather distant manner.
The two couples posed for photographs, most of which caught Marilyn looking adoringly at Arthur rather than at her co-star. Vivien Leigh, for her part, seemed less than thrilled to have to pose next to a woman twelve years younger than herself. Dark-haired and petite, and considered by many to be “the most beautiful woman in the world,” she was all too aware that the camera would only magnify their age difference.
An Austin Princess limousine transported the Millers to Surrey. Milton Greene and Arthur Jacobs came along, and four policemen on roaring motorcycles provided an escort. The Oliviers followed in a chauf-feured Bentley. At Englefield Green, security guards unlocked a pair of white gates. The motorbikes led the way up a long gravel drive to Parkside House, the grand Georgian manor which had been rented for Marilyn and Arthur. Parkside was located just next to the Queen’s own Windsor Great Park, and there was even an entrance from it to the Royal Gardens. Marilyn was daunted by the house’s size and splendor, and though he did a better job of appearing unfazed, Arthur was clearly unsettled as well. Still, there was no doubt that Parkside was tangible evidence of Marilyn’s success. Although a press conference had been scheduled for the next afternoon in London, Marilyn would not let Olivier go before the photographers at the gate were permitted to come up to the house for a few more pictures.
Arthur chose the music room as his work space. It was another world from the shack where he wrote in Connecticut, with a piano, an elegant desk, and French doors overlooking an expanse of green lawn. Here he would set up a typewriter on which to revise and expand A View from the Bridge. He also took notes by hand in three or four slender, brown, spiral-bound composition books.
There were eleven bedrooms. For the master bedroom, which was to be Marilyn’s nest, Greene had insisted they find a large white bed and have the walls painted white as well. Heavy blackout curtains had been installed in order to help Marilyn sleep—always a source of anxiety, especially when she knew that she had to be up first thing in the morning looking fresh for the cameras.
That night, the Millers were both exhausted and more than a little disoriented by the unfamiliar setting in which they had been dropped. It wasn’t just the house or the staff of servants that made them uncomfortable. They were still not completely at ease with each other. This was all very different from a few stolen hours at a hotel or even a weekend in Los Angeles. They had had only the chaotic past few weeks in which to get used to actually living together for the first time.
Still, Marilyn believed she had reached a safe haven with her new husband. Nervous as she was about Olivier, she was thrilled to have Miller, the great playwright, as her protector. Going in front of the cameras had always terrified Marilyn, a fact with which Arthur was only beginning to come to terms. But at least this time she had not arrived alone. That made an immense difference. During the long battle over her studio contract, Marilyn had clung to DiMaggio for comfort and advice. But he had always refused to have anything publicly to do with her work. Arthur, by contrast, seemed ready, even eager, to be there for Marilyn when she needed him.
The following day, Arthur was at Marilyn’s side when, despite her promise to Olivier, she turned up an hour late for the press conference in the Lancaster Room at the Savoy Hotel. The press conference had been designed to placate the press, since Olivier intended to work on a closed set while filming. In Marilyn’s absence, it had fallen on him to entertain the press alone, and he was in a foul humor when she arrived. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, and her voice was scarcely audible. She seemed to be somewhat hung over. Nonetheless, Olivier was impressed by her ability to charm the audience. Any irritation about her having kept everybody waiting was quickly dispelled. They worked well together. Ostensibly so that all might hear, Olivier repeated each one of the reporters’ questions in order to give Marilyn a few extra seconds to respond. Despite this, his manner, unchanged from the previous day, made Marilyn anxious. Insecure as she was, she took Olivier’s remoteness for dislike, though in fact it was merely his way of dealing with their drastically altered circumstances.
A great deal had changed in the five months since Olivier returned from his business meetings with Marilyn. Back then, anyone might have guessed that his marriage was coming apart. Some people guessed that Olivier tolerated his wife’s passionate love affair with Peter Finch in order to prevent the mad, sleepless Vivien from undermining his ability to work; indeed, Finch had lived for a time at Notley Abbey, Olivier’s home. Disenchanted with his marriage, Olivier had planned to fall “most shatteringly in love” with Marilyn Monroe. But Vivien, confronted with a very real threat to her marriage, acted quickly. Apparently at her instigation, Olivier confronted Finch, who withdrew from South Sea Bubble. And, at the age of forty-two, Vivien became pregnant. Indeed, only the day before Marilyn’s arrival, news of the pregnancy had appeared in the press.
On the one hand, the pregnancy seemed like an attempt to repair the marriage. Olivier traced the origin of Vivien’s manic depression to her miscarriage in 1944. The illness, said Olivier, caused Vivien to hate the person she loved most—namely, her husband. Twelve years later, the fact that she was pregnant again suggested the possibility of a whole new start. Olivier appeared to be elated. “Proves there’s life in the old boy yet!” he told friends.
On the other hand, there could be no escaping the couple’s personal history. Olivier’s first wife, Jill Esmond, had been pregnant when he left her. However unconsciously, was Olivier setting himself up to repeat the past? Far from marking the rebirth of his second marriage, did the pregnancy put Vivien Leigh in the position that Jill Esmond had once occupied? Delighted as Vivien undoubtedly was, the pregnancy was no guarantee that Larry would stay. When he had left the pregnant Jill, he had run off with an actress who, it was generally agreed, had revivified his image on screen. Now, approaching fifty, did he hope that Marilyn Monroe would have something of the same effect on his image that Vivien Leigh had once had?
It’s possible that Olivier himself might not have been able to answer some or any of these questions. All one can know for certain is that he had been very taken with Marilyn and that someone (Vivien perhaps) tipped off the press about the pregnancy shortly before Marilyn arrived. Vivien was in good mental and physical health, and the marriage was better than it had been in a long time. She didn’t want anything or anyone to jeopardize that.
Something else had changed dramatically since January. Olivier certainly hadn’t planned on Marilyn’s being married to Arthur Miller. He had to wonder how a husband’s presence would affect the production. Would Miller help or hinder? Milton Greene, on whom Olivier had been counting to handle Marilyn, seem
ed not to like Miller—a bad sign. Olivier, for his part, did not hold Miller in high regard. In conversation with Colin Clark, a young assistant on the film, Olivier dismissed the playwright as a “pseudo-intellectual.” He found Miller smug and overly combative. Miller’s passport troubles had caused Olivier to worry that Marilyn might not show up at all.
The changes on both sides made the outlook for Monroe’s collaboration with Olivier considerably different from what it had been in January. But if Marilyn seemed oblivious to all this, Olivier was determined to find a way to cope.
Before the Millers headed back to Parkside after the press conference, Olivier politely asked Miller what plays he wanted to see. Miller selected John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court. The play had generated enormous excitement when it opened in May. “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger,” declared Kenneth Tynan in his review. “It’s the best young play of its decade.” Dismayed by the number of English plays concerned with upper-and upper-middle-class life, Tynan saw Look Back in Anger as something new and vital, which gave voice to a “sophisticated, articulate lower class.” Olivier had disliked the play, and urged Miller to choose something else. When Miller insisted, Olivier promised to have tickets for him at the next performance. Marilyn wanted to rest, so Miller went alone.
Miller was surprised to find Olivier at the theater. Despite his initial dislike of the play, Olivier would not permit himself to take the risk that Miller might be on to something that he himself had failed to perceive. This fiercely competitive streak, which drove him to keep growing as an artist, was part of what made Olivier great; he was intent on remaining open to new things. Olivier’s determination never to seem old-fashioned or set in his theatrical ways makes understandable his immense frustration at the time of A Streetcar Named Desire, when he failed to connect with Tennessee Williams’s work as Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando had done.
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