The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “She told me that she remembered visiting Gladys at the other institution when she was a young girl, and she never forgot how horrible it had been. She told me that there were patients in the hallways in beds and that the place smelled of urine. She said that everyone was dazed and on drugs, that she heard people screaming and that she just wanted to get her mother out of there. She said that she had nightmares about it all the time, that the memory of her mother in that place haunted her. She didn’t want her to end up back in a place like that, she said. Also, she said that the whole thing brought back memories of her own time in an orphanage, memories she said she had been working to forget.

  “Apparently, she and her aunt Grace had earlier visited Rock Haven and thought the conditions were much, much better. She said that there were fresh flowers on all of the tables—very lovely. But, still, the patients were frightening and, she said, so drugged they were ‘walking around like zombies.’ She said that she spoke to one woman who recognized her and told her that she was ‘evil’ for making the kinds of movies she made.

  “ ‘I don’t know how to deal with this,’ she told me. ‘I don’t know how to do what I have to do, have my career and all it takes and have Joe and all he takes, and do this, too, with Mother.’ I actually thought, for the first time, that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was too much. She was developing a strange nervous twitch and stuttering a lot. The trouble she had with Gladys this time… it really was too much for her to handle. I don’t think Berniece was a lot of help. When I asked Marilyn about that, she said, ‘She’s got a family. I don’t. I never have had one. So, let her live her life. I’m forced to live mine, and my mother is my burden.’ ”

  Despite the awful circumstances of the day, Marilyn decided that she couldn’t disappoint all of those who were expecting to see her at the Photoplay Awards. The show had to go on, she decided, even if she would have to force herself through it.

  To accept her award that night, Marilyn decided to wear a slinky gold gown with a plunging neckline—of course—that was so formfitting its designer, Travilla, had to actually sew her into it. In fact, he suggested that she not even wear this particular dress because, in his opinion, it wasn’t flattering on her. (Incidentally, Marilyn was very briefly seen in it in a long shot in Gentlemen.)

  That very same week, Marilyn had made a deal with Joe that she would not wear gowns that were so revealing if he in turn laid off her where her career was concerned—and also about her relationship with Natasha. He said he would try if she would try, and she agreed. Apparently, she was about to break the deal. In fact, to make the dress even more provocative, she had decided on no bra and no panties. It was as if she were purposely defying Joe—and that’s exactly how he took it when he found out about her plans. He was supposed to attend the show with her, but stormed away and took a plane to San Francisco. “I have enough on my mind,” Marilyn said at the time. “Why this, too? Why do I have to do this with him?”

  How to Marry a Millionaire

  In mid-March 1953, at the same time that Marilyn moved into a new apartment on Doheny Drive in West Hollywood just outside of Beverly Hills, she began work on her next picture, How to Marry a Millionaire. The picture was shot in about six weeks (March 9–end of April 1953).

  How to Marry a Millionaire has a provenance that goes all the way back to 1932 when Sam Goldwyn purchased the movie rights to Zoe Akins’s Broadway play of the previous season, The Greeks Had a Word for It, about three beautiful young gold diggers who set out in New York City to get their hooks into three wealthy men, reel them in, and navigate them down the bridal path. When the project was announced, it was said to be based on Doris Lilly’s best seller of the same name, but the only thing the studio used was the book’s title.

  The studio powers knew they would have to dress up the familiar plot with something spectacular, and that they did: Technicolor, CinemaScope, and stereophonic sound. In fact the film marked the first use of the new widescreen process, but the studio’s prestige picture of 1953, The Robe, filmed after Millionaire, was released to theaters before it, thus its claim to being the world’s first Cinema-Scope film. Another untried tactic was used to give the picture heft, to make it feel “important”—Alfred Newman, the studio’s musical director for twenty years by this time, was filmed conducting the 20th Century-Fox Symphony Orchestra on a soundstage dressed to look like an amphitheater, replete with Greek columns and blue sky, where they performed Newman’s classic paean to Manhattan, the soaring “Street Scene.” It had been written for the film version of Elmer Rice’s Broadway play of the same name twenty years earlier, and later became a musical signature for New York. After completing the conducting of “Street Scene,” Newman turned and bowed to the camera, turned back to the orchestra, and gave the downbeat on the musical score of How to Marry a Millionaire, as the film’s credits rolled.

  The film was produced and cowritten by Fox mainstay and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Grapes of Wrath, Nunnally Johnson, and directed by Jean Negulesco, also Oscar-nominated, as director of Johnny Belinda. Costumes were by Travilla under the direction of wardrobe supervisor Charles LeMaire, with both eventually receiving Oscar nominations.

  When this movie was announced, the Hollywood press rubbed its collective hands together, practically salivating for a dustup between the queen of the Fox lot, Betty Grable, and the pretender to the throne—Marilyn Monroe. But they would be disappointed. They had not calculated the genuine unselfishness of Grable toward her ten-years-younger costar. In fact, she told the press that Marilyn “was a shot in the arm for Hollywood.”

  Later, on the set during the shoot of Millionaire in front of witnesses, Betty reportedly told Marilyn, “Honey, I’ve had it. Go get yours. It’s your turn now.” If Betty now felt she was playing second fiddle to the upstart Marilyn, it was something she apparently felt no need to articulate.

  The situation with Lauren Bacall was different. Only two years older than Marilyn, Bacall was a disciplined actress; she had been a star since she was nineteen and was said to be put off by Marilyn’s constant tardiness on the set, but she remained quiet and did not make an issue of it. But in her autobiography, By Myself, Bacall wrote about how irritating it was with Marilyn, prompted by Natasha Lytess sitting just off camera, calling for take after take, “often as many as 15 or more.” She wrote that she didn’t dislike Marilyn; that she had no meanness in her, no bitchery. “There was something sad about her,” Bacall wrote.

  Still, Marilyn’s comic genius was on full display in How to Marry a Millionaire, as she achieved a level of physical comedy so subtle as to be almost invisible. Playing her nearsightedness for all it was worth, her sexy vulnerability raised the humor to new heights as she tripped over stairs and bumped into walls, her dignity intact. How to Marry a Millionaire would premiere in New York on October 29, and open nationally on November 5. It would wind up as the second highest grossing movie of 1953, after Columbia’s From Here to Eternity. The picture was a success with both the public and the critics, with Marilyn being singled out in the reviews for her beauty and comic timing. Over the years, Marilyn’s biographers and industry insiders have maintained that her true calling was comedy, and when one reassesses the Monroe filmography, it is hard to argue against that point.

  River of No Return

  Also at about this time, Marilyn made another film, River of No Return, with Robert Mitchum, directed by Otto Preminger.

  Earlier, in 1949, the movie’s producer, Stanley Rubin, had been coaxed by film editor Danny Cahn to audition Marilyn for a TV show he was manning called Your Show Time. It was a series of short stories dramatized for television. After her reading, he thought Marilyn was beautiful, of course, but extremely nervous and inexperienced, thus he didn’t give her a job. However, he remembered her when it came time to cast this film. In fact, he says that he realized how much she’d improved after seeing some of her recent movies, and had the part in River written with her in mind. When he contacted h
er, Stanley says that she didn’t want to do the movie, “because she didn’t want to do what she thought was a western. I told her I thought of it as a piece of Americana, but she still figured it to be a western. However, when I sent her a tape of the songs she would be singing in the film, she said, yes, she would do it. So, really, she did it so that she could sing those songs more than for any other reason.”

  Those who predicted the oil-and-water lack of chemistry between the autocratic Austrian-born director Otto Preminger and the sensitive, shy, insecure Marilyn would be right—to a point. Curiously, the director began the film seemingly quite pleased with Monroe as a person and artist, treating her on the set with truly European courtliness. However, by this time, Natasha Lytess had Marilyn reading her lines with exaggerated facial gymnastics, enunciating every syllable like a robot—and while no one liked it, no one could change it, either, not even Preminger. Again, the big problem on this set was the same as always—Natasha telling Marilyn how to act and usurping the director’s influence over her. It caused major problems between Marilyn and Preminger.

  Set in the American Northwest during the gold rush, River of No Return depicts Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum), his young son Mark (eleven-year-old Tommy Rettig), and saloon gal Kay Weston (Marilyn) as they follow her ex, a handsome horse thief and gambler, Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun), who needs to get upriver to Council City to register a claim on a gold mine he has cheated another gambler out of. With no transportation and time running out, Kay and Harry make the trip via raft. The trip is fraught with gripping, heart-stopping action, including a swamping of the raft in the treacherous river rapids. Wringing wet, out of sorts and out of breath, Marilyn is still a vision.

  Shot on location in two national parks in the Canadian Rockies—Banff Springs and Jasper in Alberta—in Technicolor, CinemaScope, and released initially in 3–D, River of No Return gives Marilyn, sexier and more sensuous than ever, a chance not only to flex her dramatic acting muscles, but to prove her real muscles are up to the physicality the script demands of her character, as she raft-rides the swirling, potentially deadly whitewater of the river of the movie’s title. Marilyn also sings four songs in the film and performs them admirably. She’s more than admirable in her acting. She’s forceful and vulnerable by turn as she comes to realize what a no-good rat Harry is and what a good man and father Matt is.

  The ninety-minute film began shooting on July 28, returning to Hollywood on September 29 to complete the shoot. River of No Return would open toward the end of April 1954, to generally favorable reviews. *

  PART FIVE

  Difficult Times

  Grace’s Upsetting Secret

  One day in May 1953, Marilyn Monroe returned home from a day of shopping to find Grace Goddard’s car parked in front of her house. Grace was not in the habit of dropping by without calling first, so Marilyn must have suspected that something was wrong. “They were pretty inseparable during this time, after Gladys went back into the institution,” Grace’s stepdaughter, BeBe Goddard, confirmed. “I think Marilyn called her every single day. She still depended on her. Grace was doing office work for her, arranging her schedule, keeping things organized. Marilyn was always filling her in on what was going on at the studio or in her personal life with Joe. Grace loved hearing her stories, especially the show business stories. Everything that the two of them had dreamt about so long ago had come true. It almost seemed unfathomable that Norma Jeane had become this … sensation.”

  After inviting Grace inside, Marilyn listened in stunned silence while her aunt shared a secret that she had been hiding from everyone in her life—she had cancer.

  The concept of a life-threatening illness and its treatment was quite complex for Grace. She had been a Christian Scientist for a long time, and in recent years passionate about it. One of the core beliefs of the faith is that doctors are unnecessary. The body, as devout believers claim, has within it everything it needs to remain healthy. However, Grace had been feeling under the weather for many months and, despite her long-standing opposition to the medical profession, had secretly sought help at a Los Angeles clinic. That’s how she learned the devastating news that she had uterine cancer. Sadly, she was embarrassed by her condition and not sure how to cope with it. In the 1950s, many women felt uneasy about openly discussing so-called “feminine issues,” especially with the men in their lives. Marilyn had recently been diagnosed with endometriosis and practically no one knew about it. In Grace’s case, her husband, Doc, wasn’t aware that anything was wrong with her.

  Marilyn was concerned, of course, but more than that, she was determined—determined to fight. She had become a firm believer in the medical profession, as doctors were an important part of the studio system at that time. Actors needed insurance, which required physicals, and they often needed (or believed they needed) treatment for conditions that were by-products of their stressful lives. There’s little doubt that Marilyn was dependent on sleeping pills by this time—doled out to her without concern by the studio physicians—and had also become used to the idea of taking other drugs to calm herself during times of stress. Marilyn convinced Grace that she needed to put her metaphysical beliefs aside for the time being and allow Western medicine the chance to heal her.

  “I believe that Marilyn loved Grace more than anybody in the world,” BeBe Goddard would observe. “Grace had been a second mother from the time she was born and had been such a fair person, and as much a mother, or more so, than Gladys. Grace was the single most consistent factor throughout Marilyn’s life.”

  After years of focusing on her own career, her own happiness, her own life, Marilyn decided it was time to change. A debt needed to be repaid. This wonderful woman, who had always worked so tirelessly to solve the problems of others, needed her—and Marilyn wanted to make certain she was going to receive the best care money could buy. It was to be a delicate dance, however, because Grace did not want Doc or the rest of her family to know precisely what was going on. As much as possible, they would hide Grace’s condition and the fact that she was seeking help from doctors. While she eventually would admit to receiving treatment, she would never explain just how intensive her medical quest had been. In some respects, there would be a covert aspect to the journey the two women would take—but this was something with which Marilyn had become quite familiar. Marilyn had come to believe that the “truth” was something abstract, malleable—and she easily enrolled Grace in that belief. After all, they were simply trying to save her loved ones from anguish and worry.

  While Marilyn had nothing but the best of intentions, Grace Goddard’s experience in the following months would prove to be ghastly. Marilyn arranged for Grace to see numerous physicians, all of whom needed to examine her, of course. For a woman not familiar with any kind of medical examination to now have doctors studying the most intimate parts of her body was torturous. The experience was so draining, in fact, that after one day of tests, Grace told Marilyn that she could not go home to face her husband, Doc. Marilyn suggested that she stay with her for much of the summer. “We’ll have fun, just you and I,” Marilyn suggested. “It’ll be like the old days.” *

  Grace Learns About Marilyn’s Troubles

  Because Grace Goddard was now spending so much time at Marilyn Monroe’s home, Marilyn felt more freedom to share with her some of the problems she was having in her career. She was unhappy with Fox, she told her, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Grace, according to a later recollection, was clear in her advice. “You have to stand up for yourself, Norma Jeane,” she told her. “Don’t let them push you around.” Marilyn didn’t know if she could do it, she said, because Darryl Zanuck disliked her so much. He’d always believed that he was dealing with a stupid, very foolish actress, and she’d never been able to disabuse him of that opinion, no matter how hard she tried. She said that she’d hated every movie she’d made for him thus far because each one was “shit”—an exaggeration, obviously, but one made in the emotion of the moment. No m
atter the scope of her complaint, though, Grace was firm. She told Marilyn that she had come too far to let Zanuck push her around. “Don’t forget who you are,” she said. “Don’t forget where you came from.” Marilyn told her that there were times when she definitely wished she could forget, some of the past had been so bad, so painful. “But it brought you here,” Grace reminded her with a gentle smile. “And that’s not so bad now, is it?” Marilyn had to agree with her. It wasn’t so bad… most of the time. Grace was adamant, as always, that Marilyn was more powerful than she even realized. She’d already demonstrated such courage and spirit in her life—certainly now was not the time to stop. “You already have everything in you that you need,” she told Marilyn, echoing an integral aspect of Christian Science. “As you see yourself, so will others. Believe in yourself,” she concluded, “and others will follow.”

  On June 1, Marilyn spent her twenty-seventh birthday with Grace, BeBe, and Bebe’s brother Fritz. That night, they called Gladys at Rock Haven. She didn’t realize it was Marilyn’s birthday. “I don’t remember giving birth to you,” she told her daughter. Then, unfortunately, she began to rant once again that she wanted her release from the sanitarium. If Marilyn and Grace really cared about her, they would see to it that she had her immediate freedom. The phone call ended badly, as most did with Gladys. Marilyn vowed never again to call her mother on her birthday, saying that she never wanted to have another birthday ruined such as her twenty-seventh.

  At this time, Grace wrote to Berniece to tell her that all was as well as could be expected and that she had been organizing a filing system for Marilyn in order that she might keep track of her appointments (and, perhaps, not be late for them—though that wasn’t likely). “I really mean it when I say that next to President Eisenhower, she is next in line as far as the demands of her time are concerned,” Grace wrote of Marilyn. (And it’s interesting that she often referred to her as Marilyn. If even Grace sometimes was calling Norma Jeane by her new name, then the transformation had to be complete.) She also said that she and Marilyn spent a great deal of time trying to catch up on her fan mail, but to no avail. Regarding her health, Marilyn had earlier suggested that Grace open up to Berniece about her cancer. She had done that, and was happy about it. Now she told Berniece that she’d been to a doctor who told her the cancer was under control but that she would soon have to have a hysterectomy. She predicted that after she had it she would “feel human again.”