Questions of propriety aside, Miller did have the material for a fascinating and disturbing play. He might have probed a man’s feelings of guilt, shame, anger, and defeat when a woman he once loved takes her own life. Miller had written about suicide with immense sensitivity in Death of a Salesman. Unfortunately, he did something entirely different in After the Fall. Instead of the sympathetic treatment he had given Willy Loman, he depicted Marilyn as a shrill, devouring harpy. He used her propensity for self-destruction to justify his own decision to leave her when she was obviously very ill. In the end, Marilyn’s suicide had made it possible for Miller to finish his play. Importantly, it allowed him to sustain his self-image as a man of conscience. It provided the absolution he had been seeking. “A suicide kills two people,” Quentin tells Maggie, the character based unmistakably on Marilyn, “that’s what it’s for! So I am removing myself, and perhaps it will lose its point.” As in The Crucible, a man’s act of betrayal is shown to be the woman’s own fault; she drove him away. But in After the Fall, Miller goes further. He asks us to believe, and seems actually to have convinced himself, that he walked out for her own good.
There was every reason to expect that After the Fall was only the start of great things for both Miller and Kazan. Following the premiere, however, it quickly became apparent that matters would not work out that way at all. Miller’s unctuous exercise in self-justification met not with praise but with disgust. The play generated a huge controversy in the press and Miller, to his bewilderment, found himself reviled by critics for his unremittingly harsh portrait of Marilyn. Ironically, in exposing Marilyn as he did, Miller, who had refused to name names, became something of an “informer” himself. He surrendered the moral authority that had sustained him through a decade of artistic disappointment. Even his friends were appalled by the play. Joe Rauh declared that he didn’t see how a man could write about his wives that way. Norman and Hedda Rosten were furious that he had depicted Marilyn as nothing more than a “slut.” Didn’t he remember how brave Marilyn had been during the HUAC crisis? Couldn’t he at least give her credit for having been ready to sacrifice everything for him? Why had he left out the powerful ideals that had been among Marilyn’s defining characteristics?
Hedda Rosten viewed After the Fall as “a betrayal of Marilyn.” She was speaking of Marilyn as an individual. But the play was also an attack on all that Marilyn symbolized as a star. In After the Fall, Miller reverted to the puritanical view of sex he had propagated in The Crucible. “It isn’t my love you want any more,” Quentin tells Maggie. “It’s my destruction!” In 1951, Miller had guessed that Marilyn Monroe posed a threat to his existence; in 1964, he knew. Once again—but this time publicly, ritualistically, and forever—Miller fled Marilyn’s embrace. Significantly, this time Miller staged his bleak cautionary tale in modern dress. This time, his preacherly warning about the perils of sex was set not in the Puritan age but in our own.
In a curious way, it is precisely American society’s Puritan roots that account for Marilyn’s enduring appeal. Despite the upheaval of the 1960s, despite the sexual revolution, feminism, and other developments, America remains at heart a puritanical culture, threatened by the power of sex and quick to point an accusing finger at anyone who may have transgressed. In the middle of all that, the vivid image of Marilyn Monroe sends out a contrary message; its power is in proportion to the depth of our own fears. As a symbol, she promises us that sex can be innocent, without danger. That, indeed, may not be the truth, but it continues to be what we wish. And that is why Marilyn remains, even now, the symbol of our secret desires.
Notes on Sources
I have tried wherever possible to base my reconstruction of events on primary sources. Where there are disparities between this biography and previously published accounts, I have followed the information given in the primary sources. In my effort to tell Marilyn Monroe’s story, a number of archives were particularly helpful.
The vast Twentieth Century–Fox collection at UCLA is essential to any attempt to trace Marilyn Monroe’s life. She spent the greater part of her career at Twentieth, and her legal files are crammed not just with contracts and notices, but huge numbers of detailed letters and memos documenting every aspect of her turbulent existence there. There are production files for all of her Fox films, as well as daily production reports. The drama of Marilyn’s perpetual conflicts with Darryl Zanuck and other studio executives explodes in these utterly fascinating pages. As one of Marilyn’s lawyers recognized late in her career, her problem with Twentieth was psychological. Her principal concern was never money or what approvals she had in her contract; it was whether the studio was treating her seriously and respectfully. For the biographer, one of the great virtues of the Fox collection is the opportunity it affords to eavesdrop on the studio executives’ private discussions, and to comprehend something of their attitude toward Marilyn. In allowing us to know quite what Marilyn was up against, the papers make it possible to see why she felt and acted as she did.
The Charles K. Feldman collection at the American Film Institute offers a unique and remarkably vivid glimpse of a vanished world. Many of the major players in this story crossed Feldman’s radar screen, and their comings and goings are all copiously recorded in his social and business files. To scrutinize Feldman’s day book for 1951 is to learn exactly when Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan arrived at 2000 Coldwater Canyon Drive, how long they were there, and who was invited to lunch and dinner during their stay. Even the girls Feldman invited to the party for Miller are listed, including one described simply as Kazan’s girl, because, in that milieu, no other description was necessary. By the time Marilyn Monroe was deemed worthy of a name, Feldman’s papers document Famous Artists, Inc.’s extensive contacts with her. At the agency, any staff member who had even the most minor interaction with a client or would-be client was expected to keep a record of all that occurred. In Marilyn’s case, because there was so much frenzied back-and-forth, those voluminous records offer an extraordinary chronicle of several of the most vital years in her professional life. The collection also illuminates Marilyn’s personal life, disclosing as it does Joe DiMaggio’s hitherto unknown, off-stage role in her great battle with Twentieth Century–Fox.
The Feldman papers note the date of Miller’s departure from Hollywood after his cataclysmic first encounter with Marilyn Monroe. The Arthur Miller collection at the University of Texas at Austin shows what he did when he returned to his wife and family in Brooklyn. For the Monroe biographer, the great prize in the Miller papers are the slender, brown notebooks, in which the playwright-as-alchemist attempts to transmute private experience into art. Here are the notes for a contemporary adultery play, written out of Miller’s ethical crisis over Marilyn. Here is the moment when that play metamorphoses into The Crucible. And here are the jottings that, after Marilyn’s suicide, will finally take shape as After the Fall. The notebooks—raw, intimate, revelatory—make it possible to begin to understand the man, his work, and his tormented relationship with Marilyn Monroe.
Two other collections are invaluable to anyone trying to chronicle the Monroe–Miller marriage. The Joseph Rauh collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in addition to offering tantalizing glimpses of Marilyn and Arthur’s day-to-day existence, suggests the considerable extent to which the McCarthy era shadowed Marilyn’s life from the time she first met Miller in 1951 until her painful encounters with the Kennedys a decade later. Reading the papers, one senses for the first time how very brave Marilyn was during the HUAC crisis, and how much she risked in publicly supporting the man she loved.
Marilyn’s valiant efforts on Miller’s behalf were a high point of their relationship. The Misfits was another matter entirely. But in order to assess its impact on Marilyn, one must see it as something much more than the isolated film shoot depicted in most biographies. The preparation of the screenplay and the efforts to get the film made dominated the second part of the Monroe–Miller marriage. The corr
espondence in the John Huston collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences documents the slow, often painful evolution of a film whose completion would mark the end of the marriage.
The Anna Freud collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. is an invaluable resource for anyone hoping to make sense of the ineffably sad last period of Marilyn’s life. Here one discovers letters written by Ralph Greenson to his cherished friend and mentor, Anna Freud, before, during, and after the time when Marilyn Monroe was his patient. The letters are important not only for Greenson’s comments on Marilyn’s case, but for the personal details that provide the essential context for understanding his interaction with her, as well as the background for certain of the controversial decisions he made in the course of her treatment. Read in conjunction with Greenson’s own papers and tapes on deposit at UCLA, the materials in the Freud collection hold important clues to the events that led to Marilyn’s suicide.
CHAPTER ONE
Chapter One is based on letters and memos by Kermit Bloomgarden, Charles Feldman, Frank Ferguson, Jack Gordean, Howard Hawks, Ivan Kahn, Elia Kazan, Joseph P. Kennedy, Ben Lyon, Grace McKee, Hugh Oliver, Joseph Rauh, Joseph Schenck, Lew Schreiber, George Wasson, John Wharton, Tennessee Williams, Audrey Wood, and Darryl Zanuck.
Collections include those of Kermit Bloomgarden (State Historical Society of Wisconsin), Charles Feldman (American Film Institute), William Gordon (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), John Huston (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), Arthur Miller (University of Texas), Joseph Rauh (Library of Congress), Tennessee Williams (University of Texas), Audrey Wood (University of Texas), and Maurice Zolotow (University of Texas). Oral histories include those of Nunnally Johnson, Raymond Klune, and Albert Maltz.
Miller’s notebooks, as well as a script of The Hook, are in the Arthur Miller collection at the University of Texas. Miller and Kazan’s trip to Hollywood in 1951 is traced in Charles Feldman’s day book at the American Film Institute.
Marilyn Monroe’s and Elia Kazan’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files are on deposit at UCLA. Also important are the production files and daily production reports for As Young As You Feel and Viva Zapata!.
A manuscript of Natasha Lytess’s unpublished memoir is at the University of Texas.
Previous Monroe biographies consulted include: Peter Harry Brown and Patte Barham, Marilyn: The Last Take; Fred Lawrence Guiles, Legend; Marilyn Monroe, My Story; Randall Riese and Neal Hitchens, The Unabridged Marilyn: Her Life from A to Z; Carl Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe; Sandra Shevey, The Marilyn Scandal; Donald Spoto, Marilyn Monroe; Anthony Summers, Goddess; and Maurice Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe. Also helpful were the following memoirs: David Conover, Finding Marilyn; James Dougherty, The Secret Happiness of Marilyn Monroe; Berniece Baker Miracle and Mona Rae Miracle, My Sister Marilyn.
Elia Kazan tells his own story in A Life, and Arthur Miller his in Timebends. Other significant background on the men and their milieu is provided in the interview collections Christopher Bigsby, ed., Arthur Miller and Company; and Matthew Roudane, ed., Conversations with Arthur Miller. Also useful was Robert Martin, ed., The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller.
Additional information comes from: Brooks Atkinson, Broadway; Garson Kanin, Hollywood; Andrew Sinclair, Spiegel.
CHAPTER TWO
Chapter Two is based on letters and memos by George S. Ackerman, Kermit Bloomgarden, Harry Brand, Charles Feldman, Jack Gordean, Vernon Harbin, Lillian Hellman, Elia Kazan, R. A. Klune, Jason Joy, David March, A. L. Rockett, Lew Schreiber, Spyros Skouras, Minna Wallis, Jack Warner, George Wasson, Ralph Waycott, Jr., Tennessee Williams, and Audrey Wood.
Collections include those of Charles Feldman, William Gordon, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Audrey Wood.
A transcript of Elia Kazan’s HUAC testimony is contained in “Communist Infiltration of Hollywood Motion Picture Industry—Part 7.”
Also important are Marilyn Monroe’s and Elia Kazan’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files, and the production files for Love Nest, Let’s Make It Legal, and Don’t Bother to Knock.
A number of books provide revealing glimpses of Joe DiMaggio and his world: Maury Allen, Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?; Jimmy Cannon, Nobody Asked Me, But …; Bob Considine, Toots; Joseph Durso, DiMaggio: The Last American Knight; David Halberstam, Summer of ’49; Roger Kahn, Joe and Marilyn; Robin Moore, Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio.
Additional information comes from: Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright; Mel Gussow, Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking: A Biography of Darryl F. Zanuck; Peter Manso, Brando; Berniece Baker Miracle and Mona Rae Miracle, My Sister Marilyn; Leonard Mosley, Zanuck; Victor Navasky, Naming Names; Anthony Quinn, One Man Tango; Sidney Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong, I Love Hollywood; Robert Vaughn, Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting.
CHAPTER THREE
Chapter Three is based on letters and memos by Grace Dobish, Charles Feldman, Frank Ferguson, Hugh French, Jack Gordean, Jed Harris, Vivian Leslie, David March, Ned Marin, and A. L. Rockett.
Collections include those of Charles Feldman and Arthur Miller. Also important are Marilyn Monroe’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files, and the production files for Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Monkey Business.
Additional information comes from: James Bacon, Hollywood is a Four Letter Town; Jane Russell, Jane Russell: An Autobiography. Eric Bentley’s reviews are collected in What Is Theater?
CHAPTER FOUR
Chapter Four is based on letters and memos by Charles Feldman, Frank Ferguson, Hugh French, Jack Gordean, Ned Marin, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Quinn, A. L. Rockett, Lew Schreiber, Harry Sokolov, Ray Stark, Loyd Wright, Loyd Wright, Jr., and Darryl Zanuck.
Collections include those of Charles Feldman, Ralph Greenson (UCLA), and Jean Negulesco (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Also important are Marilyn Monroe’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files, and the production files for How to Marry a Millionaire and River of No Return.
Additional information comes from: Marlon Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me; Jean Negulesco, Things I Did and Things I Think I Did; Otto Preminger, Preminger: An Autobiography.
CHAPTER FIVE
Chapter Five is based on letters and memos by Charles Feldman, Frank Ferguson, Hugh French, Jack Gordean, Milton Greene, Hedda Hopper, Lew Schreiber, Sam Shaw, Spyros Skouras, Harry Sokolov, Ray Stark, Loyd Wright, Loyd Wright, Jr., and Darryl Zanuck.
Collections include those of Charles Feldman and Hedda Hopper (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Also important are Marilyn Monroe’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files, as well as the production file for There’s No Business Like Show Business.
Additional information comes from: George Barris, Marilyn; Kenneth Geist, Pictures Will Talk; Ezra Goodman, The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood; Joshua Greene, Milton’s Marilyn; James Haspiel, Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend; Sidney Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong, I Love Hollywood; Maurice Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood.
CHAPTER SIX
Chapter Six is based on letters and memos by Frank Delaney, Charles Feldman, Frank Ferguson, William Gordon, Milton Greene, Elia Kazan, Lew Schreiber, Sam Shaw, Harry Sokolov, Tennessee Williams, Audrey Wood, Loyd Wright, and Darryl Zanuck.
Collections include those of Charles Feldman, William Gordon, and Sidney Skolsky (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Also important are Marilyn Monroe’s and Elia Kazan’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files.
Additional information comes from: Virginia Spencer Carr, The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers; Cheryl Crawford, My Fifty Years in the Theater; Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends; Sam Shaw and Norman Rosten, Marilyn Among Friends.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chapter Seven is based on letters and memos by Kermit Bloomgarden, Harold Collins, Charles Feldman, Frank Ferguson, Jack Gordean, Elia Kazan, Rudolph Loewenstein, Arthur Miller, Lew Schreiber, Sam Shaw, Spyros Skouras, Ray Stark, Geo
rge Wasson, John Wharton, Tennessee Williams, Audrey Wood, and Darryl Zanuck.
Collections include those of Kermit Bloomgarden, Charles Feldman, Arthur Miller, Joseph Rauh, Martin Ritt (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), Sidney Skolsky, Tennessee Williams, and Audrey Wood. Also important are Marilyn Monroe’s and Lee Strasberg’s Twentieth Century–Fox legal files. A copy of the original script for A View from the Bridge is on deposit in the Martin Ritt collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
A number of books provide revealing glimpses of Lee Strasberg and his world: Cindy Adams, Lee Strasberg: The Imperfect Genius of the Actors Studio; Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright; Cheryl Crawford, My Fifty Years in the Theater; Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years; Frank Corsaro, Maverick; David Garfield, A Player’s Place; Robert Hethmon, ed., Strasberg at the Actors Studio; Foster Hirsch, A Method to their Madness; Robert Lewis, Slings and Arrows; Maureen Stapleton, A Hell of a Life; John Strasberg, Accidentally on Purpose; Susan Strasberg, Bittersweet; Susan Strasberg, Marilyn and Me.
Marilyn Monroe Page 53
