The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Mable Whittington, who worked at Parkside House as a maid under the direction of the main housekeeper, Dolly Stiles, recalled of this time, “There was a great excitement about the arrival of the Millers. I remember that someone [Milton Greene] had the walls of the master bedroom painted white in Marilyn’s honor. There was an increase in all security measures. We were all on alert, so to speak. What did I think of them? I thought Mrs. Miller was a bit pampered. She was used to a certain way, let’s just say. Everything had to be just so. I remember she complained about the pillowcases being too starched, but what she required was minor. Too many pills, though. I remember being surprised by the number of bottles on her nightstand. I didn’t know what they were for, exactly—but there were a lot of them. There were always empty bottles of champagne in her room, too. Also, I have to say that she was a bit untidy. She would step out of her clothes and there they would lay on the floor until I or someone else picked up after her. The bathroom was always a sight—makeup everywhere, personal belongings everywhere. I recall that she had a way of transforming herself that was almost magical. She was lovely but not necessarily glamorous in her day-to-day. But at night, if they were to go to a show—which they did often—or if she needed to be dressed for a dinner, she would become an entirely different person. It wasn’t just the makeup and beautiful gowns and gloves and furs, though they were a big part of it. It was the attitude. When she dressed like Marilyn Monroe she acted like Marilyn Monroe. The star quality was there, I guess—in the Marilyn persona. Her personality as Marilyn Monroe was entirely different than as… I don’t know… the real her, maybe.

  “Arthur Miller? I found him to be insufferable. He didn’t want to speak to the help and, in fact, would get angry if we even looked at him. He would say, ‘Must you look at me?’ I recall that two household employees were approached to give secrets about the Millers to the press. When he found out about it, he became raving mad. ‘I demand that they be fired,’ he kept saying. Of course that was to be the case, anyway—though I don’t recall that they actually sold their stories. Marilyn wasn’t very upset about that turn of events. I recall that she said, ‘What else is new?’

  “As a couple, they seemed happy at the start but as the months wore on, less so. He was constantly nagging her about one thing or another, usually how he felt she should prepare for the day’s work. I remember that there were a lot of press conferences during their stay and that, afterward, he would tell her that she had answered this or that question in the wrong way. He picked on her a lot. She seemed to really want to know his opinion, though. However, I think that there was a point when she’d had enough of it, especially when he began to criticize her acting when she was practicing from her script. I recall her having trouble memorizing her script. I remember thinking, goodness, for an actress who has made so many movies, I can’t understand how she can’t remember her lines. She would walk around the house trying to remember a simple line, repeating it to herself over and over. I remember that he was annoyed by the way she was trying to memorize something and he kept correcting her. She snapped at him and said, ‘When you begin making pictures, we can discuss this. Until then, let me act, and you just do what you do.’ ”

  Possible evidence of marital discord at this time comes from a letter Marilyn sent to Berniece from England. In it, she never once even mentions Arthur Miller, and refers to herself only in the singular, from “I am having a wonderful time,” to “I have been sightseeing,” to “I am staying very busy.”

  Also at this time, Marilyn continued to receive letters from her mother, Gladys, even while in England. Gladys seemed somewhat better judging from one she wrote, dated July 25: “I am very unhappy, daughter. I wish there was some way to join you in England where I am sure we would have a lovely time. May God be with you and may He find a way for us to be together again very soon. Love, Mother.” However, a week later, on August 2, she seemed to be not as well: “I have decided that the sooner I am able to leave here the better. I know I am a big topic of discussion here and it’s not because of you, Marilyn. There seems to be a lot of interest in me, as well. Perhaps when I am released I will tell you about it though I doubt you would be interested in anything that has to do with me, your only Mother. Love, Gladys Baker Eley.” It’s not known if Marilyn responded to any of the mail she received from Gladys while in England. However, it is known that she was informed by the sanitarium staff that Gladys had also begun writing letters to J. Edgar Hoover at the Justice Department. This Marilyn found quite disturbing. As soon as she heard about it, she called Inez Melson long distance and asked her to look into the matter. Marilyn certainly didn’t want Gladys giving any information about her to Hoover. In fact, she didn’t like that Hoover knew where Gladys was, and how to communicate with her. Melson quickly reported back to Marilyn that when she asked Gladys what was going on, Gladys told that she was just sending Christian Science literature to Hoover, just as she had also sent some to the president of the United States. She said that she believed Marilyn to be friends of those two government officials and that she felt she could use Marilyn’s name as an entrée to them. She wondered why every time she attempted to reach out to people, her daughter was always “the first one to try to stop me.” She also demanded that Melson tell Marilyn to stop thwarting her attempts to have communication with “the people running our country.” Again, all of this was very disturbing. Gladys didn’t realize that anything she said to someone like Hoover could be used against her daughter somewhere down the line. Marilyn shot off a letter to Melson telling her that any missive sent to any government officials written by her mother should be immediately confiscated by the sanitarium officials and not mailed. She wrote that she didn’t want to censor her mother’s communication, but that she felt she had to “draw a line somewhere, and this is as good a place as any, I think.”

  Meanwhile, while Marilyn was dealing with her mother, preproduction negotiations for the film continued. There was one surprise in this regard that, in retrospect, maybe shouldn’t have been so surprising. Lee Strasberg—Marilyn’s new acting guru—demanded that his wife, Paula—Marilyn’s new on-set acting coach—receive what was then a huge amount of money for her work with Monroe: $25,000 a week for ten weeks’ work, plus expenses and double that amount for overtime. This was more than most of the actors were making. Donald Spoto, in his Monroe biography, published a corporate memorandum from Irving Stein, Marilyn’s lawyer, regarding the demand. It said, “Lee doesn’t care that this money would really come from Marilyn’s pocket. Joe [Carr, Marilyn Monroe Productions accountant] and Milton carefully explained the shaky finances, but Lee was adamant. He kept emphasizing Marilyn’s emotional weakness—and then he said he would be willing to settle for a percentage of the picture! He also wanted George Cukor to direct, not Larry. Paula, he said, is more than a coach—therefore he doesn’t care what other coaches get. He absolutely rejects Paula’s Bus Stop salary.”

  When Marilyn heard about the demand, she decided to allow some of the money to come from her own salary because, as far as she was concerned, Paula was absolutely necessary on the set at all times. Thus, after all was said and done, Paula Strasberg would be making more than anyone else involved in the picture besides Marilyn and Laurence Olivier! It would seem that Marilyn had replaced one Natasha Lytess with another, especially given Arthur Miller’s feelings about Paula. Like DiMaggio before him, who loathed Natasha, Miller had this to say about Paula: “She was a hoax, but so successful in making herself necessary to people like Marilyn that she created this tremendous reputation.” He also said she was “poisonous and vacuous.” *

  Moreover, to Arthur Miller’s great dismay, Marilyn’s psychiatrist—Dr. Hohenberg, who had been sanctioned by Lee Strasberg—somehow ended up involved in the negotiations for The Prince and the Showgirl, and saw to it that Paula received the money that had been demanded by her husband. One wonders how much the doctor may have received in return. Moreover, since when did acting teachers like Lee Stras
berg have a say in who directed a movie starring one of their students? Marilyn may have thought she was in charge when she started Marilyn Monroe Productions, but she continued to fall under the sway of domineering colleagues.

  Arthur Miller’s Damning Journal

  In July 1956, shortly before filming was to begin on The Prince and the Showgirl, something happened that would change the course of Marilyn’s new life with Arthur Miller. She happened to see a journal of his on a table in the living room, glanced at it—and then decided to read the pages that were opened. She was in for a terrible shock. On those pages, Arthur confessed that he had second thoughts about having married her. She wasn’t what he’d thought she was—she was just a child, not a woman. She wasn’t as intelligent as he had hoped and, in fact, she was someone he pitied. Moreover, he thought his own career might be jeopardized by his new association with her, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He had heard that Laurence Olivier thought she might be a spoiled brat, and he didn’t know how to respond to that since he basically agreed. Olivier had been hired by Marilyn—the movie was being produced by her company—but wasn’t exactly grateful. He couldn’t have been any less patient or understanding. Of course, that Miller seemed to be siding with him was devastating to Marilyn. It was the realization of her worst fear—that she would be “found out,” that she wasn’t as smart or as talented as she had made him think she was, and now he knew the truth about her.

  “It was a terrible thing for her to find, that journal,” Susan Strasberg would say many years later. “It would set her back a great deal. She lost so much confidence in herself when she read that. The question in my mind was this: What was it doing out? Everyone is entitled to their private thoughts, of course. But to leave it out and open like that? It made me wonder when I heard this… it made me wonder.”

  It felt to many people at the time that Miller had left the journal open and available to his wife on purpose. As a playwright, he certainly recognized the power of the written word. He had to have known how much his thoughts, once committed to paper, would hurt Marilyn. Some thought he was acting like a coward who was afraid to divorce her and just hoped she would leave him instead. One does have to wonder about Miller’s character. After all, he married Marilyn after having convinced himself that he and she were a good match, and mere weeks later he made the decision that she was not for him. It suggests an enormous immaturity on his part and lack of judgment. Whatever the case, it seems safe to say he left the diary out on purpose. Why he did so would be a question only he could have answered—and he didn’t. Marilyn would later tell her half sister, Berniece, that the marriage was never the same from the moment she read the journal. When she told her that Miller had written that she was “a bitch,” Berniece was shocked. She couldn’t believe, she said, that Arthur would be so cruel. However, Marilyn then clarified that what he wrote was that he agreed with Olivier that she could be a bitch. Somehow that didn’t seem much better to Berniece—nor to Marilyn. Marilyn told her that she wished she could get past it, but she was certain she would never be able to do so. She wanted to tell Arthur that he should try acting with the capricious Olivier and see how that worked out for him, and she would sit on the sidelines and write about it, but “I don’t have the nerve.”

  As upsetting as the discovery was, it still would not be the catalyst for Marilyn to actually leave Arthur. “She had decided that no matter what happens, I’m staying married to this person,” said her friend Rupert Allan. “I don’t think she realized it was going to have to kick in so soon. If something like this had happened after her first marriage, she would have divorced him. But I think she felt she had something to prove with this third marriage. But I also think she decided, [Miller] will never again get all of me. He will only get the part of me I will allow him to get. Now, I will be careful around him and that shall be his punishment. He will now be getting a percentage of who I am. The rest that he would never again see would be the part of her that was vulnerable.”

  Mable Whittington recalled an incident that occurred at around the time Marilyn found Miller’s journal. “I knew about the incident with her finding the diary, or whatever it was. Everyone in the household knew about it. We didn’t know what had been in it, only that Mrs. Miller saw it and read it and was very, very upset about it. That same week, I heard a sound in the kitchen and went down to investigate. There was Mrs. Miller, sitting alone at the kitchen table, having a cup of tea and a good cry. I just peeked into the kitchen and stood there watching for a long while. I thought many things. First of all, I was struck by just how beautiful she was. She had on a pink robe with marabou feathers at the neck and sleeves. Her hair, so blonde… just so pretty, I thought. I decided not to go into the room, to just leave her to her privacy. Then, I thought, my, how sad she is. There was a deep sense of sadness about her, and that’s what I remember most. The sadness. I distinctly recall that, one day, her psychiatrist showed up from New York. I went into the living room and there was a strange woman in there reading. I asked someone who it was and was told, ‘That’s Mrs. Miller’s analyst.’ She did seem somewhat better when the doctor arrived, that was certain.

  “I can also say that she was nicer to people when she first arrived. With the passing of time, she became more brittle and snappish. She seemed to never have a nice expression on her face around the house… she was always deep in thought, frowning. Also, I recall that she was late to the set almost every day. Hours late, in fact. The reason I know is that this was a never-ending source of annoyance to Mr. Miller. There were many arguments about her being late. Also, she didn’t get along with Laurence Olivier and, I have to say, from my vantage point—which was, admittedly, on the outside looking in—it seemed that she disliked him a lot. I also remember that Mr. Miller felt that she didn’t understand Olivier and wasn’t trying hard enough to fit in with him. So, there was a lot of turmoil.”

  Just three weeks into the marriage and, as far as Marilyn Monroe was concerned, it was over. How could she remain with this man now? She would have to focus her energy on making the movie and do what she could to put in a good performance. However, with her heart broken, it would be very difficult. “It seemed to be raining the whole time,” she would later say of her experience in England. “Or maybe it was me.”

  Quiet Before the Storm

  After returning to the United States following production of The Prince and the Showgirl, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller took a lease on a spacious thirteenth-floor apartment in New York on 57th Street. They’d recently purchased a large farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, but it was being refurbished. Meanwhile, they would live in the city and spend the next few months trying to get their marriage back on track. In her spare time, during the first part of 1957 Marilyn fancied herself a housewife, preparing meals for her husband—breakfast every morning had become a specialty of hers—as well as grocery shopping and running errands that made her feel, as she put it in an interview at the time, “as if I have a real purpose in this world. I don’t mind it at all. In fact, lately, I think I prefer this kind of more simple life.” (One wonders what Joe DiMaggio might have thought if he’d read that comment from his ex-wife.) Often the couple would retire to a summer cottage they rented on Long Island where Marilyn would go horseback riding or spend her time painting with watercolors. It was actually a very pleasant year, 1957, perhaps the quietest she’d ever had in her life. Her career wasn’t that far from her mind, though. She was still studying with the ever-present Strasbergs, but she did have a new psychiatrist, Marianne Kris, recommended to her by Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund and also the founder of child psychoanalysis.

  Marilyn saw Dr. Kris as many as five days a week, which at this time most people believed was too much. “Every single day she would sit in that office and lament her childhood or her marriage,” said one person who was close to Marilyn at the time. “Afterward, she would be upset for hours. Then, just as she was regaining her equilibrium, she would be back on that damn cou
ch. Some thought she was on a quest to learn more about herself, to set right the past. I didn’t. It was, I thought, a form of self-abuse. She simply would not allow there to be any peace in her life. If there was a lull in the drama, she would create something new upon which to fixate, and most of those creations at this time came from her sessions with Marianne Kris. That, along with Strasberg’s constant nagging of her to draw upon her childhood for her acting… well, it’s no wonder she was not an emotionally well woman. As Berniece used to put it, ‘Why can’t she just leave well enough alone?’ ”

  Why? Because Marilyn Monroe wanted nothing more than to, once and for all, come to terms with the sadness of her childhood. She knew she had significant emotional problems stemming from her youth, from not being wanted, not feeling loved—and she felt it necessary to explore those areas and see what she could learn from them, or at the very least find a better way to confront her demons. The constant stream of letters from Gladys—at least one a week—probably didn’t help matters. It was as if Marilyn always had one foot firmly planted in the distant past, the other in the uncertain present. The problem was that there were never any new revelations. There was never a sense of closure. Rather, the same questions were asked time after time, with the same answers being given and no progress ever made. Perhaps it was, as many people believed, a case of too much therapy. Perhaps she needed to live the present rather than constantly analyze the past.

  Also at this time, Marilyn and Milton Greene—partners in Marilyn Monroe Productions—ended their relationship. The two had been having problems for many months with Greene attempting to control, at least in Marilyn’s view (shared by many observers), too much of her business affairs. Money was always an issue with Greene—he never seemed to have enough and always seemed to be looking to MMP to bail him out. Also, there were any number of creative issues between them over The Prince and the Showgirl. When he suggested that he be recognized as executive producer of the film, Marilyn balked. That she took issue with it suggested she was really finished with Milton Greene by this time, because he, by rights and by contract, had every right to be recognized as an executive producer. In the end, Greene blamed Arthur Miller for any problems, not Marilyn. The two men didn’t like or trust each other. Greene felt that since Miller had Marilyn’s pillow-talk ear, there was nothing he could do to redeem himself from whatever Miller had accused him of at any given time. Moreover, Greene couldn’t stop himself from criticizing Miller in Marilyn’s presence, which made her uncomfortable and left her feeling that she had to take sides. Once she decided that she had to choose her husband, there was nothing Greene could have done to rectify the situation. After some wrangling, Marilyn made a decision to eject him from the company on April 11. She issued a very unkind statement saying that he had mismanaged MMP and had even entered into secret agreements about which she knew nothing. When Greene acted as if he didn’t know what had happened to cause such a schism, Marilyn issued another statement that sounded suspiciously not like her—but a lot like Arthur Miller: “As president of the corporation and its only source of income, I was never informed that he had elected himself to the position of executive producer of The Prince and the Showgirl. My company was not formed to provide false credits for its officers and I will not become a party to this. My company was not formed merely to parcel 49.6% of all my earnings to Mr. Greene, but to make better pictures, improve my work and secure my income.” After much legal wrangling, Marilyn settled with Greene for $100,000, which was just the return of his original investment in MMP. She never spoke to Milton about what had happened, simply refusing his telephone calls much as she had with Natasha Lytess. These decisions were not like Marilyn. It was as if she were doing anything she could do to impress Arthur Miller, who had made his loathing of both Lytess and Greene quite clear.