Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  “Marilyn was anything but dumb,” said Whitey Snyder, “but I never agreed with her decision to move to New York. Milton Greene lured her there by making all sorts of promises. He was a wily, manipulative, conniving man who saw Marilyn as little more than a commodity on whose shoulders he could ride in his bid to become a successful and wealthy film producer. However, I have to add that to some extent he put his own ass on the line. To raise initial capital for the venture, he mortgaged his house and took out loans. Of course, in the back of his mind, he was convinced he’d make a fortune off Marilyn. But at least he made an effort to aid the cause, which is more than I can say for the Strasbergs. If you ask me, Marilyn put the Actors Studio on the map rather than the other way ’round. The majority of Lee’s pre-Monroe students, with the notable exception of Montgomery Clift and Brando, were in the theater; the big film names, like De Niro and Pacino, became involved long after Marilyn made the place famous.”

  The worst of it, from Whitey’s perspective, concerned Paula Strasberg. “Lee’s wife was an absolute disaster,” said Snyder. “Marilyn hired her to replace Natasha Lytess as her ‘on-location’ acting coach. She was known in the trade as the ‘black witch.’ Obese and obnoxious, she perpetually wore black and knew absolutely nothing about acting. She robbed Marilyn blind. And so, for that matter, did Lee. They charged her immense sums of money for their so-called services, and Marilyn, in her naïveté, and with her insecurities, paid. Lee Strasberg took credit for creating Marlon Brando. I knew Brando, and I once asked him what he thought of Lee Strasberg. Marlon said, ‘Lee Strasberg popularized, bastardized, and misused Method acting. He’s an ambitious, selfish, untalented man who used and exploited his students. I have no respect for him. The only reason I attended the Actors Studio is that it was a good place to pick up women.’ ”

  The Strasbergs had two teenaged children, Susan and John, both of whom in time turned to acting as a profession. Describing Marilyn’s dealings with his parents, John Strasberg told author Anthony Summers, “People took advantage of Marilyn . . . even my father, in a way. They glommed on to her special sort of life—her special characteristics—when what she needed was love. My parents did give her some love, but it was inextricably linked with the acting.”

  Susan Strasberg provided an equally blunt explanation when she said, “My dad fell in love with Marilyn, while she in turn regarded him as a father figure. Despite his amorous feeling toward her, he did want to improve her acting skills. He used to tell her she lacked discipline and technique, and while he could impart the latter, she had to develop the strength to discipline herself. Regarding my mother, when she looked at Marilyn, she saw dollar signs, a means to an end. I’m certain she liked Marilyn, but it was more a question of what Marilyn could do for her. And I’m also sure she considered Marilyn a threat to her marriage, which is one reason she kept such a close eye on her. As for me, I suppose I represented a kind of kid sister to Marilyn. When I turned eighteen, she sent me to a gynecologist and paid for a diaphragm. She gave me a birthday card, which said, ‘I want you to be free, but I don’t want you to get pregnant.’ ”

  • • •

  Joe DiMaggio Jr., still in Los Angeles attending Black-Foxe Military Institute, heard from Marilyn on a regular basis even after she moved to New York. “She’d promised to keep in touch with me, and she did,” he said. “She used to write all the time. I recall her sending me a photograph of a beautiful female cat somebody had given her. The cat became pregnant, and she had to give away the kittens. She named one of them ‘Joey,’ after yours truly. Then she had to give the mother cat away because Sydney Guilaroff, the Hollywood hairdresser, gave her a couple of parakeets, Butch and Bobo. She sent me a snapshot of the birds. She sent me another photo of herself atop a pink elephant that she rode in Madison Square Garden at the 1955 opening of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. She was scantily attired in sequins and spangles, and I remember hearing that when the press ran the picture, my father called her up and excoriated her for appearing in public ‘practically in the nude.’ She shut him up by explaining that the day’s proceeds were being donated by Ringling Brothers to a charity [the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation]. She also reminded him that they were no longer married, and she didn’t have to account to him for her actions.”

  Later that year, Marilyn was approached by Gardner Cowles, the publisher of Look, who told her that Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis wanted to meet with her to discuss the possibility of her getting together with Prince Rainier of Monaco. It seemed that the fabled prince wanted to find a wife in order to produce an heir to his Mediterranean fiefdom. “Marilyn thought it highly amusing that Rainier would consider her,” said Joe DiMaggio Jr. “She began signing her letters ‘Princess Marilyn.’ In the end, he married Grace Kelly, and Marilyn’s next letter to me read, ‘One more competitor bites the dust.’ ” Marilyn sent Grace Kelly a telegram that read “I’m so happy you found a way out of this business.”

  On April 8, 1955, Edward R. Murrow interviewed Marilyn on Person to Person, the popular television program. Joe Jr. watched the show with classmates in his dormitory’s recreation room. The interview took place at the Greene residence in Connecticut. “The Greenes did far more talking than Marilyn,” said Joey, “and you could see that Edward Murrow wasn’t the least bit interested in anything they had to say. He wanted to hear what Marilyn had to say. You came away from the program with the distinct impression that the Greenes were using her to satisfy their own particular needs. Of course, my classmates were up to their usual antics, yelling and yelping whenever Marilyn appeared on camera. ‘What a pair!’ one of them shrieked. And then they all went off like a bunch of jackals.”

  Establishing herself in her new setting, Monroe received help from New York Post syndicated columnist Leonard Lyons and photographer Sam Shaw (along with his wife Anne) as well as from Milton Greene. She lunched with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sidney Kingsley, actor David Wayne, and Broadway producer and lyricist Richard Adler. She met photographers Philippe Halsman, Richard Avedon, and Bert Stern. She befriended poet Norman Rosten, his wife, Hedda, and their young daughter, Patricia. Tennessee Williams visited the Greenes one evening and offered Marilyn the female lead in the film version of his latest play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which she considered but ultimately declined. At a New York dinner party, she was introduced to Mary Leatherbee, Life magazine movie editor, and Tom Prideaux, Life entertainment chief. The prevailing feminine style when Marilyn arrived on the New York scene was tall, slim, and elegant. The top models of the day were Suzy Parker, Dorian Leigh, and Anne St. Marie. But Marilyn, as the magazine editors and photographers soon discerned, had her own style. “Curves and sex are suddenly in vogue,” said Truman Capote.

  Capote saw a good deal of Marilyn following her arrival in New York. They went dancing together at El Morocco. Marilyn would kick off her shoes to reduce their height difference. She told him she liked to dance naked in front of a mirror and watch her breasts “jump around.” They window-shopped on Madison Avenue, attended the theater, and watched movies together on television. Capote introduced her to the Southern novelist Carson McCullers, who was also staying at the Gladstone Hotel, and the three of them went to a jazz club and then to a party at the St. Regis.

  One evening, Truman and Marilyn ate dinner with a disoriented Montgomery Clift, after which Marilyn told Capote, “Monty’s the only person I know who’s worse off in life than me.” Capote concurred. Monty Clift was hopelessly addicted to amphetamines, whereas Marilyn, according to Capote, had become dependent on “downers”—sleeping pills and tranquilizers—which she washed down with booze. Capote took Marilyn to a party hosted by Hearst newspaper society columnist Igor Cassini at Le Club, the exclusive Manhattan nightspot, and by evening’s end, she had passed out. She gave an encore performance a few days later at the Stork Club. Capote referred Marilyn to a Park Avenue internist, who recommended that she cut back on her therapy sessions and attendance
at the Actors Studio. Marilyn had no intention of following the doctor’s advice.

  On April 28, 1955, Truman and Marilyn met at the Universal Funeral Home, down the block from the Gladstone Hotel, to attend the funeral of British Shakespearian actress Constance Collier. Marilyn had once taken a breathing class taught by Collier in Hollywood, and Collier had spoken to Capote about her pupil, referring to her as “a big beautiful child,” giving rise to a Capote profile of Monroe that he entitled, “A Beautiful Child.”

  In his profile, Capote recalled that Marilyn had arrived late for the Collier funeral, so they’d sat in the back row of the funeral home. After the service they went to a nearby bistro and shared a bottle of “bubbly.” As they sat and drank, Marilyn said, “I hate funerals. I’m glad I won’t have to go to my own. Only, I don’t want a funeral—just my ashes cast on the waves by one of my kids, if I ever have any.” Marilyn spoke about how much she loved New York and loathed Los Angeles. “Even though I was born there, I can’t think of one good thing to say about it,” she remarked. “If I close my eyes and picture LA, all I see is one big varicose vein.” They discussed actors and acting. Marilyn wanted to know what Elizabeth Taylor was really like. “Well,” responded Capote, “she’s a little like you. She wears her heart on her sleeve and talks salty.” To which Marilyn said, “Fuck you, Truman.”

  They finished their bottle of champagne and wandered down Third Avenue, past P. J. Clarke’s saloon. Capote wanted to drop in, but Monroe didn’t. “It’s full of those advertising creeps,” she said. “And that bitch Dorothy Kilgallen—she’s always in there getting bombed. Capote, an acquaintance of the columnist’s, defended her. Marilyn disagreed. “Kilgallen has written some bitch stuff about me,” she said. “All those cunts hate me. Hedda. Louella. I know you’re supposed to get used to it, but I just can’t. It hurts. What did I ever do to those hags?”

  They continued down Third and looked in shop windows, one of which displayed a handsome grandfather clock. “I’ve never had a home,” said Marilyn. “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 kind of crazy thing. I’m going to get a dozen grandfather clocks and line them all up in one room and have them all ticking away at the same time.”

  They went to a second bistro, and over a second bottle of champagne, Marilyn talked about Prince Philip (“He looks like he might have a nice prick”), Babe Paley (“She makes me look like pig slop”), and Joe DiMaggio (“I still love him—he’s genuine”). Capote brought up Arthur Miller. He’d heard that Marilyn and Miller were lovers. Marilyn admitted only that they were in communication and had been for quite some time.

  They ended the day by taking a taxi to the South Street Pier, past the Bowery with its pawnshops, blood-donor stations, bars, and fleabag hotels advertising 50-cent cots and $1 beds. Looking out the cab window at the ancient bums squatted curbside amidst broken glass and heaps of debris, Marilyn became upset. She began to cry when a purple-nosed “scarecrow” leaped out of the shadows and started swabbing the taxi windshield with a wet rag clutched in a shaking hand. The cab took off and finally reached South Street, where they were greeted by the sight of the Brooklyn skyline across the water and cavorting seagulls white against a marine horizon streaked with thin fleecy clouds. They stepped out of the cab and saw a man with a chow on a leash. Marilyn paused to pat the dog’s head. As she reached out, the chow’s owner said, “You should never touch strange dogs. They might bite.” “Dogs never bite me,” responded Marilyn. “Just humans.” The man recognized Marilyn and asked for her autograph. She gave it to him, and then she and Capote walked to the end of the pier. Leaning against a mooring stanchion, the breeze fluffing her hair, Marilyn looked soothed and at peace. In the course of his profile, Capote wrote of Marilyn, “I hope, I really pray, that she survives long enough to free the strange lovely talent that’s wandering through her like a jailed spirit.”

  • • •

  In April Milton Greene decided Marilyn needed a more prestigious address than the Gladstone Hotel and signed a sublet lease in her behalf for actress Leonora Corbett’s twenty-seventh-floor, three-room suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Towers on Park Avenue—the same hotel where Dorothy Arnold had stayed following her divorce from Joe DiMaggio. The cost of the sublet was $1,000 per week. Other tenants at the Waldorf included General Douglas MacArthur, performer Tallulah Bankhead, and former president of the United States Herbert Hoover.

  Although he hadn’t seen Marilyn since just after Jackie Gleason’s birthday party, Joe DiMaggio helped her move in. Their reunion was short lived. Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday on June 1 coincided with the New York premiere of The Seven Year Itch at Loew’s State Theater, in Times Square.

  Monroe invited DiMaggio to the film, and he accepted. He then took the opportunity to arrange a late-night surprise birthday celebration for her at Toots Shor’s. As he subsequently told George Solotaire, he’d expected to return to her Waldorf suite with her after the party. It turned out that she’d arranged a postparty rendezvous with Marlon Brando, whom she’d been dating on and off for several months.

  Robert Solotaire attended the surprise birthday party with his father and recalled the argument: “Joe was already in a miserable mood because of The Seven Year Itch premiere. To gain entrance to the theater, he’d been forced to walk under a fifty-foot sign of Marilyn on the subway grating, her private parts practically exposed. It brought back painful memories. So, when Marilyn informed him she wouldn’t be spending the night with him, it was like pouring gasoline on a hot fire. Joe loved Marilyn beyond anybody’s imagination.”

  In his 1994 autobiography, Marlon Brando revealed that he’d first met Monroe on the Twentieth Century–Fox lot and then again at the Actors Studio. He saw her next at a New York cocktail party, where she sat alone, unnoticed in a corner, softly playing the piano. While holding a drink, Marlon spun around and hit her head. “I’m so sorry, it was an accident,” he said. “There are no accidents,” she replied.

  He joined her at the piano, and they spent the evening talking and laughing. He called her several nights later, but she was busy. Then one night she called him. “I want to come over and see you right now,” she said. Their love affair began that evening. The morning after going to bed with Brando, Marilyn reportedly said to Milton Greene, “I don’t know if I do it the right way.”

  Referring to Marlon by the code name “Carlo,” she described him to Amy Greene as “sweet and tender.” On another occasion, she was quoted as saying, “Personally I react to Marlon Brando. He’s a favorite of mine. He’s one of the most attractive men I’ve ever known.”

  In his autobiography, Brando reflects on Marilyn, finding her extremely sensitive and misunderstood, much more perceptive than most people assumed. She’d been “beaten down in her life,” but she had survived “because of her strong emotional intelligence.” She had, he wrote, “a keen intuition for others’ feelings and a most refined intelligence.”

  By midsummer 1955, Brando and Monroe’s affair had evolved into an intimate friendship. “Despite their very different backgrounds,” said Susan Strasberg, “they were like brother and sister. They both loved pranks and practical jokes. Marilyn once placed a life-size cutout of herself from The Seven Year Itch on the front lawn of actress Jane Wyman’s Los Angeles residence. She resented Wyman because Fred Karger had married her instead of Marilyn, and she wanted to taunt Wyman, who was older and not as beautiful as Marilyn. Not to be outdone, Brando played a trick of his own on Marilyn. She’d told him she had a strong attraction to Albert Einstein, that she’d even sent him a fan letter requesting his autograph. So Brando went out and bought a glossy photograph of the mathematician and mailed it to Marilyn. He inscribed on it, “To Marilyn, with respect and love and thanks. Albert Einstein.” Marilyn was thrilled at first, until she realized that Einstein had been dead for about six months. It didn’t take her long to figur
e out who’d sent it.

  Chapter 11

  IN JUNE 1955, SEVERAL WEEKS after their public spat at Toots Shor’s, Joe DiMaggio wrote Marilyn Monroe a letter inviting her to join him at Cooperstown, New York, in July for his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His letter went on to say, “There’s no reason that two people who love each other can’t live together in marital bliss. It happens all the time.” Joe’s timing was unfortunate. Not only was Marilyn still dating Marlon Brando, she had also at long last reunited with Arthur Miller. It seemed as if, having been wed to one of America’s greatest athletes, she now wanted to experience one of its most renowned intellectuals. The switch from DiMaggio to Miller could be viewed as symbolic of her desire to transform herself from a glamourous Hollywood star into a respected artist endowed with integrity and earnest commitment.

  Still married and living with his wife and children on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights, Miller succumbed to temptation by indulging in an affair he felt he should probably have initiated when he first encountered Marilyn in Hollywood four years earlier. Making up for lost time, Arthur and Marilyn quickly became involved. Miller followed her wherever she went: the Greene residence in Connecticut, Norman Rosten’s summer cottage in Port Jefferson, Long Island, the Strasberg vacation retreat on Fire Island, and Marilyn’s posh suite at the Waldorf.