The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Marilyn was known to fabricate stories to gain sympathy. One of the problems in sorting through the Marilyn Monroe history is determining what is true and what may be the product of her overworked imagination. In short, as people in her life would begin to understand with the passing of time, one could not ever take everything Marilyn said at face value. At any rate, she did end up living in better conditions by the largesse of this couple. Then, one night in November 1947, something strange occurred. The Carrolls got a frantic telephone call from Marilyn.

  “There’s a kid peeping in on me,” Marilyn said, her voice vibrating with urgency.

  “What are you talking about?” Lucille said.

  “I’m being watched.”

  “But how?

  “He has a ladder and he’s on it and he’s watching me,” Marilyn continued.

  “Marilyn, a ladder would not reach the third floor. You must be dreaming,” Lucille told her.

  “But I’m awake. I’m awake.”

  This conversation continued until, finally, the Carrolls decided they had no choice but to have her join them at their own home that night. They felt they had their hands full with her and didn’t know what to do about it. “At one point, we thought about it and realized that she was running our lives, calling all the time, crying on the phone,” said Lucille. “We didn’t know what to do. A lot of crazy things were going on… it was too much. She didn’t know how to handle her life… she fell apart. We liked her but we needed her and her craziness out of our lives.”

  The Carrolls were about to get their wish, because Marilyn would be out of their lives by the beginning of 1948. In February, they took her with them to a party where she met a businessman named Pat DeCicco, a Hollywood playboy once wed to Gloria Vanderbilt. He was also a friend of Joe Schenck, the sixty-nine-year-old president of 20th Century-Fox. As it happened, Schenck asked DeCicco to find him some models to act as window dressing at a Saturday night poker party at his home. DeCicco asked Marilyn if she would be interested. All she would have to do, she was told, was look pretty and pour drinks for Schenck’s friends, perhaps also give them a few cigars, but that was it. It sounded easy enough and also like a great opportunity, so she agreed. Of course, that’s not all that was going on at the party, as Marilyn found out once she got there. Some of the ladies present—all models and aspiring actresses—were willing and able to give themselves to any of the male guests since most of them were power players in show business. Marilyn, though, stayed close to Schenck. By the time the evening was over, he was mad for her, saying she “has an electric quality… she sparkles and bubbles like a fountain.” The next day, he sent a limousine to pick her up and drive her to have dinner with him. That night, she had sex with him.

  “I can’t say that I enjoyed it,” Marilyn later told her movie stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty, of her assignation with Schenck. “But I can say that I didn’t feel as if I had any choice.” She said that she felt the whole event had been “very tawdry” and that she felt “terrible about it. It was like giving up my soul.” However, she also allowed that she was starting to understand what she called “the Hollywood game” and she knew she had no choice but to play it if she were ever to make a name for herself in show business. It was a sad realization, she said. “But it’s the truth,” she concluded. She and Schenck continued their relationship off and on for some time, and, by some accounts, eventually she grew quite fond of him.

  Schenck persuaded Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn to take a look at Marilyn’s screen test. Cohn wasn’t that interested. However, her test footage started circulating through the studio system, and eventually ended up on the desk of Columbia talent head Max Arnow. Also unimpressed by it, he asked one of the studio’s drama coaches, Natasha Lytess, to take a look. She wasn’t thrilled either—it seemed that no one was impressed. Lytess noted that Marilyn seemed to suffer from a lack self-confidence. However, there was still something interesting about her, Natasha thought. Her quality was difficult to describe, but it had to do with her beauty and vulnerability. She wanted to work with her, believing that “perhaps she has some potential.” Harry Cohn decided to offer Marilyn a six-month contract at $125 a week beginning on March 9, 1948. Suddenly, she was signed to Columbia Pictures.

  Natasha

  Natasha Lytess, who was thirty-five in 1948, once said that when Marilyn Monroe showed up in her office on March 10, 1948, she was wearing a red wool top and a very short dress that was cut too low. Lytess referred to it as “a trollop’s outfit.” When she met Marilyn, her suspicions about her lack of confidence were confirmed. In fact, she said, she was “unable to take refuge in her own insignificance.” Natasha was a character herself, though. Her pencil-thin figure and pale complexion suggested that something was very wrong with her health. She had dark, menacing eyes. She rarely smiled. She was a serious actress and drama coach—everything she ever said about the acting field was, in her view, of great urgency. She was self-important and judgmental of everyone in her life. That said, she was also thought of as a brilliant teacher. Marilyn needed someone strong in her life at this time—a Grace Goddard who could actually do more than just dream about what it might be like if Norma Jeane could be a star. Natasha had an impressive library of show business books in her cottage office, which Marilyn began to devour. The two women spent endless hours talking about the art of acting and how Marilyn might become better at it. Natasha worked on Marilyn’s diction, her delivery—her style. Actually, some of what Marilyn would learn from Natasha would work against her in the future. The exaggerated way she would enunciate every syllable as well as the way she moved her lips before speaking were unfortunate consequences of her work with Natasha. Marilyn would have to break these habits in years to come. Fine for comedy, this style was not appropriate for dramatic roles.

  At the beginning of her work with Natasha, Marilyn was pretty much a clean slate upon which could be painted any artistic vision. “As a person, she was almost totally without fortitude,” Natasha would say of her. “You could say she was someone afraid of her own shadow, so terribly insecure, so socially uncomfortable and shy, and never knowing what to say. She would ask me, ‘What should I say?’

  “I tried to get her to draw upon herself, to go into her own experiences, but I don’t believe she ever did. Marilyn denied who she really was, except for her sex appeal which she had confidence in. She knew it worked—and she was as graceful with her appeal as a swimmer or a ballerina.”

  “I want to recreate you,” Natasha told Marilyn. “I shall mold you into the great actress I suspect—though I must say I do not know—you can be. But to do so,” she told her, “you must submit to me. Do you understand?” Her Sapphic intentions were clear.

  Marilyn understood. However, she was not going to comply. She had submitted to Joe Schenck and regretted it, even if it did serve a valuable purpose in her career. She quickly determined that she was not going to do the same for Natasha Lytess. Still, she didn’t want to say no—not yet.

  In the environment between an acting teacher and student, many emotions come into play. Student and teacher access feelings and transfer them into characters, into roles—and, sometimes, into each other. One day, according to Natasha’s unpublished memoir, she embraced Marilyn and told her, “I want to love you.” Marilyn’s response was, “You don’t have to love me, Natasha—just as long as you work with me.” For years, Marilyn was used to giving women what they wanted—Ida, Gladys, Grace. It was as if she had now drawn a line.

  Helena Albert was a student of Natasha’s at this time, and also a confidante. “Natasha often blurred the lines,” she recalled. “She did with me, as well. But when Marilyn came into the picture, everyone else paled in comparison. I felt that Marilyn should have backed away when she knew how much Natasha cared for her, but instead I think she used it to her advantage. It was torture for Natasha—but not so bad for Marilyn. She had a good teacher, a smart woman in her life—someone to emulate, to learn from. You can’t blame her for want
ing it to last. I actually cornered her about it.”

  According to Helena, she went to Natasha’s office one day for a meeting. Just as she got to the cottage, Natasha was leaving it in tears. “I can’t see you now,” she said as she brushed by. Helena went into the cottage and found Marilyn sitting in a chair, staring into space with a faraway expression.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked Marilyn.

  Marilyn just continued to look straight ahead.

  “Marilyn? Is everything all right?”

  “No, it’s not,” Marilyn finally said, as if coming to her senses. “I’m afraid Natasha doesn’t know what the word ‘no’ means. And I’m tired of having to say it to her over and over again. Why can’t we just do what we do best—act?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Helena allowed. “And you know it, Marilyn.”

  “No, it’s not,” Marilyn said. She rose and faced her. “You don’t always get what you want in this life, Helena,” she said. “I have wanted many things and have not gotten most of them. Do you know what I think? I think Natasha is spoiled. I think she has always gotten what she’s wanted, and doesn’t know how to handle it when she can’t.”

  It was clear not only that Marilyn had lost her patience with Natasha, but also that she was cold to her and not very empathetic about her feelings. After spending so many years suppressing her emotions and trying to be what others wanted her to be, perhaps she didn’t understand why Natasha couldn’t do the same thing. She gathered her things and, before leaving, turned to face Helena. “If you see her, tell her I’m sorry,” she said, “but there’s nothing I can do about it. Tell her I hope she’ll continue with me, but if not, I will try to understand.” With that, she took her leave.

  “The truth is, my life, my feelings were very much in her hands,” Natasha Lytess said many years later. “I was the older woman, the teacher, but she knew the depth of my attachment to her, and she exploited those feelings as only a beautiful, younger person can. She said she was the needy one. Alas, it was the reverse. My life with her was a constant denial of myself.”

  And thus it would remain—for six more long years.

  Disappointment

  On March 14, 1948—just a week after Marilyn signed with Columbia—her beloved Aunt Ana passed away from heart disease. She was sixty-eight. Oddly, she was buried in an unmarked grave at Westwood Memorial Park, though a small plaque was put on it a few years later. It’s been published in the past that Marilyn did not attend the services, that she was too busy with her budding career. This is not true, according to her half sister Berniece’s memory. Marilyn would never have missed Ana’s funeral. Actually, she and Grace and Doc Goddard had a private viewing of Ana’s body, and then a tearful Marilyn slipped away before the other mourners arrived. She later said of Ana, “She was the one human being who let me know what love is.” Ana left a book for Marilyn called The Potter, along with a note: “Marilyn, dear, read this book. I don’t leave you much except my love. But not even death can diminish that, nor will death ever take me far away from you.”

  Marilyn Monroe would say that she was “miserable” after the death of Ana because, as she put it, “I was left without anyone to take my hopes and my troubles to.” It was probably fortunate that she had her career to turn to at this time, as she began working on a low-budget musical, her first film for Columbia, Ladies of the Chorus. In it she had a leading role in which she sang two solo numbers—“Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy” and “Anyone Can See I Love You”—as well as two duets with Adele Jergens. There was also a certain amount of dancing involved in her work in this film, a real challenge for Marilyn. This was a strange little movie, just an hour long, and it took only ten days to film, but Marilyn was surprisingly good. Her singing voice was a revelation. However, when released later in the year, the film did nothing for Marilyn’s career. She would be dropped from Columbia soon after its release, much to her disappointment. “I went to my room and lay down on my bed and cried,” she recalled. “I cried for a week. I didn’t eat or talk or comb my hair. I kept crying as if I were at a funeral burying Marilyn Monroe. I hated myself for having been such a fool and having had illusions about how attractive I was. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. Something horrible had happened. I wasn’t attractive. I saw a coarse, crude-looking blonde.”

  Marilyn moved into a double room at the Hollywood Studio Club in June 1948, where she paid twelve dollars a day for room and board. She needed to save money—things weren’t going as well as she had hoped—and this seemed like the best way to do it. She didn’t like the place, though, because it reminded her of the orphanage. She was dating a man named Fred Karger, who was the musical supervisor of Ladies of the Chorus, and it wasn’t going well.

  Though these were dark days, Marilyn tried to keep a stiff upper lip. She had been relegated to doing TV commercials by the end of the year and felt that perhaps her movie career was over. Short-lived and over. “But there was something that wouldn’t let me go back to the world of Norma Jeane,” she recalled. “It wasn’t ambition or a wish to be rich and famous. I didn’t feel any pent-up talent in me. I didn’t even feel that I had looks or any sort of attractiveness. But there was a thing in me, like a craziness that wouldn’t let up. It kept speaking to me.”

  “You never know when you’ll get that big break,” Natasha always told Marilyn. “And when it happens, you’ll know it.” Indeed, “it” would happen for Marilyn at the end of the year when she attended a New Year’s Eve party at the home of movie producer Sam Spiegel. During the course of the evening, she was introduced to a William Morris agent named Johnny Hyde. In the instant she extended her hand to shake his, a major shift took place in her world… and things would never again be the same.

  Johnny Hyde

  Marilyn Monroe had met a wide assortment of characters in her last couple of years in show business circles, but nobody like Johnny Hyde. At fifty-three, he was barely five feet tall, of slight build with a receding hairline, not especially handsome. His head was set too close to his shoulders and he had a thin nose and not enough space between his eyes. There was something about his physical presence that seemed frail and sickly—and indeed he had a heart condition that was serious enough to require weekly visits to a cardiologist. The Russian son of a circus acrobat, he was a study in contradictions, not the least of which was that despite his unimpressive appearance and unwell demeanor, he was an extremely powerful person. Well-respected in the industry, he was manic when it came to his show business pursuits. The entertainment business was always foremost in his mind. “Everyone knew that Johnny lived and breathed show biz,” one of his friends once said. Quite a few actresses owed their careers to this man, women like Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, and Betty Hutton. He also represented Bob Hope.

  When Johnny met Marilyn, it was as if his world suddenly stopped spinning. He’d never laid eyes on anyone so beautiful, and he knew he had to have her. “He was an interesting guy,” said Bill Davis, who, as a young man of seventeen, worked for the William Morris Agency and often directly under Hyde. “Smart as a whip. Aggressive. Passionate. A ladies’ man, even if he wasn’t a looker. He fell hard for Marilyn from the very beginning, sending gifts and love letters to where she was living and really coming on strong. I imagine it would have been tough for her to ignore him or rebuff him because, after all, he was a powerful man. She was in trouble. She needed help with her career.”

  “I have it in my power to make you a star,” Johnny told her shortly after meeting her. “And I don’t mean a contract player, either. A star!”

  “When I first mentioned my acting hopes to Johnny Hyde, he didn’t smile,” Marilyn would recall. “He listened raptly and said, ‘Of course you can become an actress!’ He was the first person who ever took my acting seriously and my gratitude for this alone is endless.” This was hyperbole on her part, but she made her point with it.

  “From my understanding, it was a straight out deal between them,” said
Bill Davis. “She said she wanted to be in movies. He said he could make it happen. He was influential in the business. Meeting him was, I think, probably the best thing that had happened to her up to that time. There were dozens of starlets who wanted to sleep with him just for the chance to have him in their corners. Of course, she had to have sex with the guy. I mean, he had to get something out of it, too.… That’s the way it worked.”

  In January 1949, Marilyn found herself in Palm Springs with Johnny. It was there that they consummated their relationship, despite the fact that he was married. Power being the greatest aphrodisiac, Marilyn was actually attracted to him and didn’t just sleep with him to get ahead in her career—though it didn’t hurt. A month after she had sex with him, she found herself doing a cameo appearance in a silly Marx Brothers movie called Love Happy. It was a United Artists low-budget, stolen-diamond backstage romp that is significant only as the final film appearance of the legendary Marx Brothers.

  The promotional tour Marilyn would embark on to promote Love Happy (when the movie would finally be released during the summer) was more noteworthy than the film itself. She had an opportunity to visit major cities and generate a great deal of press for herself. “I was on screen less than sixty seconds,” she recalled, with typical Marilyn hyperbole, “but I got five weeks work… going on the tour which promoted the film in eight major cities. I felt guilty about appearing on the stage when I had such an insignificant role in the film, but the audiences didn’t seem to care.” During this time, she became known as “The Mmmmm Girl.” The PR line had to do with the notion that some people can’t whistle, so when they see Marilyn all they can do is say “Mmmmm.” No such utterance would be forthcoming, however, for Love Happy. Certainly, with his many resources, Johnny Hyde could do better for his best girl than “sixty seconds” in a Groucho Marx movie.