The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Natasha Continues Her Dual Purpose

  Of course, Natasha Lytess was still a permanent fixture in Marilyn Monroe’s life. Most observers felt that she was determined to keep Marilyn under her control by reinforcing the notion that she was indispensable to her. “She is not a natural actress,” Natasha said in an interview in 1953. “She has to learn to have a free voice and a free body to act. Luckily, Marilyn has a wonderful instinct for the right timing. I think she will eventually be a good actress.”

  “There wasn’t a single moment on the set of any film Marilyn made during this time that Natasha wasn’t there,” said Jane Russell, Marilyn’s costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. “I felt that Marilyn was using her too much as a crutch. After she would do a scene she would look over to one side or another to see Natasha’s reaction. Directors didn’t like it, I can tell you that much. At one point, [Natasha] was removed from the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because the director just had enough of her presence.”

  Only a select few people, however, knew that Natasha had a dual purpose in Marilyn’s life—she was her acting teacher, certainly, but she was also the one person who could calm Marilyn when “the voices” became too loud in her head.

  In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn had a scene with Charles Coburn in which his character, “Piggy,” was reciting to Monroe’s character, Lorelei, a line in Swahili. “The actor was speaking gibberish, of course, and in each take Coburn read the line a bit differently,” Natasha wrote in a letter to her former student Helena Albert. For some reason, his pattern of speech was something Marilyn could not get out of her head, Natasha wrote. Apparently, days after the shooting of this scene, Marilyn locked herself in her dressing room and refused to speak to anyone but Natasha. The director, Howard Hawks, adjusted the shooting schedule and then sent for the acting coach, who arrived quickly. According to Natasha’s memory of events, Marilyn explained to her that she couldn’t stop her mind from playing and replaying Coburn’s Swahili impression. “It was as if she had become haunted by it,” Natasha wrote. “Marilyn told me she couldn’t even bear to look at Charles Coburn. Prior to this time, she had adored him. They had appeared in Monkey Business together.”

  Somehow, after less than an hour with her star client, Natasha managed to get Marilyn back in action. It was as if nothing had ever happened. Natasha knew how to bring Marilyn out of these kinds of episodes. “Whenever Marilyn works herself into a panic about something, only I have the cure,” Natasha wrote, rather cryptically.

  Similarly, during the making of How to Marry a Millionaire, Natasha was ordered off the set. The next day, Marilyn didn’t show up for work, claiming she had bronchitis. Marilyn would often cloak her mental breakdowns with excuses of physical illnesses. When the studio sent a doctor to her home, which was the procedure at that time, she insisted on speaking to Natasha. Not surprisingly, Marilyn soon returned to work, and Natasha was brought back in—at an even higher salary. Nunnally Johnson, who worked with Marilyn on that film (in March 1953), recalled, “Natasha was really advising her badly by this time, justifying her own presence on the set by requiring take after take and simply feeding on Marilyn’s insecurity. ‘Well, that was all right, dear,’ she often said to Marilyn, ‘but maybe we should do it one more time.’

  “I’m not sure, but I think Joe felt that Natasha was more important to Marilyn than he was—and he may have been right.”

  “If it were up to me, Morticia would take a long walk off a short pier,” Joe DiMaggio told Stacy Edwards. “Maybe I could get through to Marilyn if I didn’t have this broad to deal with. This broad is gonna ruin her, I’m telling you.”

  Mrs. DiMaggio

  Marilyn Monroe knew that she would be put on suspension by Fox for not showing up for work on the set of The Girl in Pink Tights. She didn’t care. She was exhausted by the last year. It had been one drama after another. What was done was done, she decided. She had taken a firm stand against the studio and wasn’t going to now look back with regret. She knew that her Aunt Grace would have wholeheartedly approved of the way she’d handled Darryl Zanuck. Grace would not have wanted Marilyn to stand by and just allow Zanuck to walk all over her, “I don’t care who he is.”

  Marilyn would later say she felt sure that she needed a new beginning, a fresh start in the new year of 1954. Was it to be with Joe? She felt that he was all she had, now that Grace was gone. That night, at 11:45, Marilyn took a plane to San Francisco—to Joe.

  Once safely ensconced in San Francisco, Marilyn stayed with Joe and his sister, Marie DiMaggio, in Joe’s home. She fit in well with the family, eager to help out around the house—washing dishes, cleaning up with Marie after Joe and his brother Dom; whatever was necessary was what she wanted to do. Indeed, whenever a family environment presented itself to Marilyn and she was asked to join in, she was eager to do it. One morning, she prepared a big breakfast for Joe and his family members and friends—and it was good, too. Marie had given her a lot of assistance. This was the Marilyn Joe DiMaggio wanted her to be—domesticated, calm, and at peace with her household chores and wifely duties. Of course, this was just a fantasy life for Marilyn. She may have been unhappy with the way her career had been unfolding lately, but there was no possibility of giving it up. Still, this was a good time and there was no point in her reminding Joe that it was all just temporary. She enjoyed seeing him happy and noticed that when she was relaxed, he was as well. They went fishing together, washed his car, took long walks. It was a wonderful week. Then, on New Year’s Eve 1953, Joe asked her to marry him. It was easy for both of them to forget their differences in the idyllic world they had created that week. It must have felt to them that they were completely compatible. It was all an illusion, though. In the romantic moment, of course Marilyn said yes, she would marry him. They decided to keep the news of their engagement a secret from the media for the time being and just enjoy their private time with Joe’s family, all of whom were delighted by the news.

  Fox finally relented and sent Marilyn the script to The Girl in Pink Tights. This was a little victory for her. It was probably the first time she’d gotten her way with Darryl Zanuck. However, as expected, when she took a look at the script, she realized that her instincts were right. It was ridiculous and cliché-ridden and she didn’t want to do it. As soon as she informed Fox of her decision, the studio put her on suspension, meaning she would not be getting her salary. She could live with that; it wasn’t as if they were paying her a mint, anyway.

  Meanwhile, Marilyn began work on a three-part magazine article with writer Ben Hecht. Hecht went to San Francisco to interview the star over a period of four days for a piece about her life—or, really, the story of her life as she wanted to present it at the time—for Ladies’ Home Journal. Eventually, Hecht’s notes would end up in book form and be touted as Marilyn’s memoir, My Story, published many years after her death (and in fact, after Hecht’s death).

  My Story is not a terrible book, though it’s disjointed and filled with inaccuracies. The reader gets the sense, however, that Marilyn wanted to be thought of as a victim, and she framed her stories with an eye toward that goal. One anecdote that was excised from the book upon its release was that Marilyn said she had tried to commit suicide twice—both times over relationships with men. One episode may have been a reference to the incident with Johnny Hyde when she was saved by Natasha Lytess. The other remains mysterious to this day, although she told Hecht that she was very angry when she was saved the second time because she definitely wanted to die. “But now I’m glad it happened the way it did. I’m glad I’m alive. I hope to stay glad for a long time.”

  Some people in Marilyn’s life completely disavow this book—like her half-sister Berniece, who calls it “half-baked.” It’s not known where the money goes from proceeds of this book, but likely not to any family members. What must irk Marilyn’s intimates even more is that a document does exist that memorializes an agreement Marilyn made with Ben Hecht—dated March 16, 1954—which clearly
states that the material “shall not be put into book form by you and you shall have no right to the use of the material for anything except one magazine article to be published in the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine.” Like it or not, My Story is the book of record—ostensibly, Marilyn’s own words about her life. Reading it today, it does seem accurate, it just doesn’t seem complete.

  On January 14, 1954, Marilyn and Joe were wed in a quick civil ceremony before a judge in San Francisco. Much of her public, and the media, felt the marriage to be somewhat anticlimactic, that a star like Marilyn (in a dark brown suit with an ermine collar on this day) should have had a grander affair. However, there were hundreds of fans and reporters at City Hall waiting for them to arrive, because Fox had put out the word, unbeknownst to Marilyn, who had been considerate enough to inform the studio but asked for confidentiality. An affair any bigger would have been more than Marilyn could have handled at this intense time in her life. She made a strange request of Joe, though. If she died before him, would he promise to place flowers at her grave every week? He promised, giving her the same vow that William Powell had once given Jean Harlow.

  The DiMaggios honeymooned in the small seaside town of Paso Robles—not much of a honeymoon. The couple then left for a vacation/business trip (for Joe) to Japan in early February. At the airport, the press noticed that Marilyn’s finger was bandaged and in a splint. It appeared to have been broken. She said that she “bumped it” and that Joe was a witness. “He heard it crack.” It seemed suspicious.

  When they got to Tokyo, they were surprised by the absolute mob that awaited them there—thousands of fans in what was the most chaotic scene Marilyn had ever seen built around her. Her international appeal was obvious, if not also a little frightening. As for Joe, he wasn’t happy about it at all. It was clear that her popularity eclipsed his, even in a foreign country. The realization just made him more surly and disagreeable. At a press conference that had been arranged in his honor to promote the exhibition games for which he had traveled there, matters got worse. Practically every question was directed to Marilyn. He sat at her side looking more than a little peeved.

  While the couple were in the Far East, an invitation came from General John E. Hull’s Far East Command headquarters for Marilyn to entertain the troops in Korea. She wanted to do it, but Joe was against it. The two had a heated discussion which ended with him saying, “It’s your honeymoon. Go if you want to go.” She did.

  The brief tour began on February 16. Of course, the servicemen went wild for Marilyn everywhere she appeared as she sang songs such as “Kiss Me Again” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Appearing before more than one hundred thousand military men in just four days, she was a smashing success. What was interesting about this brief series of concerts is that she was on her own—there was no Natasha Lytess in the wings telling her what to do, no Darryl Zanuck over her shoulder telling her how to be, and no Joe DiMaggio at her side telling her she couldn’t do it. She proved to herself that she could stand before an audience and entertain using her own instincts and judgment—and while singing, too, which she was never really comfortable doing, let alone in front of people. It was a big win for her, and she had never felt better about herself. She wasn’t the least bit nervous, either. It was as if when left to her own devices she knew she could soar, and she did. “I felt I belonged,” she would later say. “For the first time in my life, I had the feeling that the people seeing me were accepting me and liking me. This is what I’ve always wanted.”

  “And now I’m flying back to the most important thing in my life—Joe,” she told the troops at the end of her last show. “And I want to start a family. A family comes before a career.”

  When the DiMaggios returned to America on February 24, 1954, it was business as usual—meaning one problem after another. It hadn’t been going that well between them. There was still a sense that DiMaggio could not reconcile himself to Monroe’s stardom. For instance, when talking about her tour of Korea, she exclaimed, “You’ve never heard applause like that!” He responded, “Yes, I have.” He seemed to always want to remind her that she wasn’t the only star in the family. He definitely didn’t want her to become any bigger a celebrity than she already was, he said, because he didn’t believe she could handle it. So they fought about their future—about her career and how it fit into their plans as a married couple. Still, Marilyn tried to stay optimistic. “I love you till my heart could burst,” she wrote in a love note to Joe in March 1954. “I want someday for you to be proud of me as a person and as your wife and as the mother of the rest of your children. (Two at least! I’ve decided.)”

  At around this time, during a trip to Los Angeles, Joe telephoned his friend the agent Norman Brokaw who had first introduced him to Marilyn in 1950. Joe said he needed to see him. They met at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. As the two took a back booth, DiMaggio seemed very unhappy. “I don’t know what to do, Norm,” he said, according to the agent’s memory of the conversation. “I love her. But I can’t accept her career. I want her to quit, but she won’t do it.”

  Norman mulled over his friend’s problem for a moment and said, “Joe, let me explain something to you, as an agent in this town. There’s no actress in this business who is going to give up Clark Gable or Tyrone Power or Spencer Tracy for any man. In fact, I don’t know any actress who would be willing to give up her career when she’s on her way to the top any more than you would have given up your baseball career before its time.” He continued, “What if when you were shooting to break the record of fifty-seven hits, a girl came into your life and said, ‘No, you need to stop at fifty-six. You can’t go for fifty-seven because I won’t allow it.’ How would you have handled it?”

  DiMaggio thought about it for a second. “I never looked at it that way,” he said. “That makes sense to me.”

  “Well, that’s the way it is, Joe,” Norman concluded. “That’s the field you’re playing on, my friend. She’s not going to give up her career any more than you would have before you were ready to do it. So you have to get used to it, Joe. Or, honest to God, you’re going to lose her.”

  Joe thanked Norman for his advice. He would try to follow it… but it wouldn’t be easy. Not long after this meeting with Norman, Joe wrote in his personal journal about Marilyn, “No jealousy.… Don’t forget how lonesome and unhappy you are—especially without her.”

  There’s No Business Like Show Business

  In March 1954, Marilyn Monroe’s victory against Fox seemed complete when the studio decided that she didn’t have to appear in Pink Tights. Instead, they offered her a supporting role in There’s No Business Like Show Business. She was also scheduled to appear in a more major role in The Seven Year Itch. Plus, the studio promised to give her a new contract in August and a huge $100,000 bonus. It definitely seemed as if Darryl Zanuck had blinked—or, at the very least, realized that he had a good thing in Marilyn Monroe and didn’t want to lose her.

  Marilyn began work on There’s No Business like Show Business in May. This big, splashy musical all dressed up in CinemaScope, stereophonic sound, and color by Technicolor, with its star-heavy cast, classic tunes from the Irving Berlin songbook, and Oscar-nominated costumes, had “blockbuster” written all over it. After all, it would star Ethel Merman, Donald O’Connor, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, and pop singer Johnnie Ray. In these waning days of the big studio musical, Fox’s decision makers knew it lacked the one ingredient that would send moviegoers stampeding through the nation’s theater turnstiles: Marilyn Monroe. And though the part was not even yet written into the script, it was added with Marilyn specifically in mind after the Pink Tights debacle.

  To lift a line from the film’s title song in describing the movie, “Everything about it is appealing.” It clocks in at 117 minutes and with sixteen musical numbers, at least half of them so elaborately staged, it’s hard to imagine that anything comparable would be possible today—even with CGI (computer graphics and imagin
g). The film chronicles the saga of the Donahue family, both on and off the stage, from 1919 to 1942. As evidenced by a whole slew of successful movie musicals, from Hollywood’s Golden Age up to the mid-sixties, stories about showbiz families were audience favorites—from the Cohans and the Foys to Gypsy Rose Lee and the von Trapps—and it didn’t seem to matter if the stories were true or not.

  Terry and Molly Donahue (Dailey and Merman), vaudeville headliners, incorporate their three kids, one by one, into their act from toddlerhood to teenager. The first time we see all five Donahues performing together is at the New York Hippodrome in an overwrought and overlong production of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” We are soon treated to the sight of Marilyn in an abbreviated French maid’s costume as she makes her first appearance—as Victoria Hoffman, a nightclub hat checker. Two minutes later, she is auditioning for producer Lew Harris, singing and dancing to “After You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It).” Dressed in a white, see-through, skin-revealing gossamer gown, with embroidered, jewel-studded appliqués strategically placed on the slit-to-the-hip, formfitting costume, and wearing a crown of snowy egret hackle feathers, Marilyn is breathtakingly beautiful.

  The film unfolds as complex relationships evolve between Victoria and the Donahues. Tears and heartbreak give way to reconciliation and apologies all around—and then a big number for the Five Donahues, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” That number segues into “There’s No Business like Show Business,” with the Five Donahues and Vicky descending an imposing staircase, marching in unison and singing in harmony. Merman is in a draped, strapless white evening gown. Gaynor is gorgeous in a slinky red floor-length gown. And Monroe is elegant in a silver-sequin-spangled, powder blue number with a modest décolletage. Of course, she is—as always on film—dazzling. There is much to admire in this film, with Marilyn more than holding her own with old pros Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, and Donald O’Connor.