Marilyn & Me (5 page)

Marilyn, wearing checkered capri pants, a white blouse, and very little makeup, looked almost ordinary that morning. Pat Newcomb was there, partially silhouetted against
the window, a lean athletic look about her. Marilyn was preoccupied with the tiles and jumped right into conversation with me. “Larry, let me borrow your one good eye.”

Pat looked puzzled by this remark, but I thought it was funny.

“What do you think of these?” Marilyn asked, pointing to a couple of tiles. “I’m redoing the kitchen. I’m picking them out myself.”

“Hi,” I said to her and looked down at the tiles. “Nice to see you again.”

“You too, Larry.” Then Marilyn said something like, “You get any badder since I last saw you?”

Again, I remember Pat Newcomb looking confused. One good eye? Badder? What was Marilyn talking about?

“Quite a bit,” I said. I was pleased that she remembered our joking, but I knew that this wasn’t the time to talk about myself.

“So, whaddya think? Which color tiles should I get for the kitchen?”

“I like the blue,” I said.

“Nah,” she replied. “That’s swimming pool color.”

Pat Newcomb was getting restless, and she suggested that we get started on the matter at hand. In time I would come to understand that Pat was fiercely loyal to Marilyn. Her job was to protect Marilyn from the press. But Pat was more than just a protector: she was Marilyn’s friend and
confidante. She had devoted herself to Marilyn and was a true professional in every aspect of her job.

In the living room, Marilyn got down to business. “I don’t think there should be a lot of photographers shooting me on this movie,” she said in her breathless voice. “Like the studio did on
The Misfits
.”

Then Pat continued on behalf of Marilyn. “I’m sure you and
Paris Match
can supply other foreign magazines with pictures.”

“I’ve seen Elliott Erwitt’s pictures.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Elliott’s sweet,” Marilyn replied.

“What did you think of Inge Morath?” I asked, referring to another photographer who had covered that movie. “She’s a pretty extraordinary photographer!” From Marilyn’s expression I could immediately tell that I’d made a mistake.

“Well,” Marilyn said, holding her breath for a beat, “she wound up marrying my ex-husband just a few months ago.” Then she changed the subject. “I’d like you to shoot me with Wally,” Marilyn said, meaning her co-star Wally Cox. “He’s so funny.”

“What I’d really like to shoot is—”

“Wait, let me guess,” she interrupted me. “Splish-splash.”

“The pool sequence is sure to be published everywhere,” I said. “It’ll be just like Sam Shaw’s photo of you from
The
Seven Year Itch
,” referring to the famous image of her with her white dress flying up and her underwear showing.

She thought for a while and then continued. “I’ve been thinking about this scene. I’ll have the bathing suit on when I jump in, but I’m thinking about coming out without it.”

Interrupting, Pat said to her, “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Not responding to Pat’s comment, Marilyn went on in a slightly stronger voice. She was now looking at me as she spoke. “Fox should start paying as much attention to me as they are paying to Elizabeth Taylor.” She was referring to the fact that Taylor was receiving $1 million for
Cleopatra
and she was only getting $100,000. Everyone knew the studio was generating publicity from Taylor’s affair with Richard Burton. Now it looked like Marilyn wanted to show Fox that she could get the same kind of coverage without having an affair with someone.

“Larry,” she said, looking intently at me. “If I do come out of the pool with nothing on, I want your guarantee that when your pictures appear on the covers of magazines, Elizabeth Taylor is not anywhere in the same issue.”

“You’re really thinking of doing this?” Pat asked.

“I’m not sure,” Marilyn replied.

I looked at Pat, remembering newsreel footage of her shielding Marilyn from the vulture-like photographers who gathered around when she emerged from that psychiatric hospital in New York. I was having a hard time reconciling these two images. With me, Marilyn seemed so tough and
determined, and yet she needed so much medical care. It was as if she was a wounded animal constantly looking for a way out of the darkness.

“Well, Marilyn,” I said, standing up, “you’re already famous. Now you’re gonna make
me
famous.”

“Don’t be so cocky,” she replied, wiping the smile off my face. “Photographers can be easily replaced.”

I looked over at Pat, who was finally smiling. “Larry,” Pat said as I made my way out the door, “don’t forget that Marilyn has approval of all your photographs.”

I was driving home when it occurred to me to wonder about Billy Woodfield. Had Marilyn or Pat also talked to Globe? Had they made a deal with Woodfield too? And then there was Jimmy Mitchell, the studio photographer. What would happen with his photos? Marilyn didn’t want a situation with a lot of different photographers milling around the set, but there were going to be three of us shooting there at the same time. Three sets of photos. That meant that none of us would have exclusivity. The value would increase only if there was just one set of photographs.

Day and night, all I could think about was how I could get better shots of Marilyn than Woodfield or Mitchell. As a photojournalist, I was there to tell a story as much as to capture an image, and once we started shooting, I knew my competitive instincts would kick in and I’d get my shots.
But the business side of me knew that Marilyn Monroe had not appeared nude since some calendar shots of her were published in 1952, and that if she was willing to show the world her body at age thirty-five, then those pictures would be worth a fortune—if only one person could control the market, that is.

Knowing that I needed time to ingratiate myself, I got to the set a few days before the shooting of the pool sequence. Each motion picture was like a new love affair. A friend of mine once described them as “short sweet love stories.” I started my assignment by shooting Marilyn with her entourage and Dean Martin. They were decent shots and a good warm-up for me to get known around the set and, little by little, zero in on Marilyn. In the afternoon Pat Newcomb arrived and began clowning around with Martin. In between setups I had an opportunity to be in Marilyn’s dressing room, even though I was not part of her entourage of Agnes, Whitey, and Paula Strasberg, the wife of Marilyn’s drama coach, Lee Strasberg.

Marilyn had two dressing rooms on the lot, one on the set and one in a bungalow next to the studio commissary. In the bungalow, where Paula practiced lines of dialogue with
Marilyn, I captured their relationship. Marilyn would often sprawl out on the couch wearing a white robe, her bare legs tucked up under her. One day, she sat there as Paula walked into my frame to put something on the coffee table. It was already covered with food and a cake. The composition was perfect, and I pressed the shutter release. The picture said it all: Paula was there to serve Marilyn.

Paula Strasberg was an enigma to me. She was there, but she was always in the background. Marilyn needed her advice and had insisted that the studio hire her as a personal acting coach. Since Marilyn couldn’t have Lee Strasberg on set, because he was working with needy actors in New York, his wife, Paula, would do as an extension of him. Paula was like a Svengali to Marilyn. At work, her mother hen, her shadow. She never left Marilyn’s side. She seemed to be able to anticipate her moods and desires. Paula believed in Marilyn, and that allowed Marilyn to believe that she could become a great actress. Directors feared Paula because Marilyn didn’t listen to them and listened to Strasberg instead. Every time I saw Paula, she was wearing a black cape and a black hat. She wore black so that she would be less noticeable. I adopted that habit from her. In the coming years, whenever I would shoot on a movie set, I’d wear a dark shirt and black pants.

As confident as Marilyn was in front of a still camera, she was completely unnerved by a motion picture camera.
There was no mirror she could look into once the director called, “Action!”

One day, as we were sitting around in the bungalow dressing room, another photographer stopped by. It was George Barris, who would be photographing Marilyn at home and on the beach in Santa Monica for
Cosmopolitan
. Barris had come by for a short interview and wanted to shoot her on the set.

“This is Larry, he’s on set,” she said as she introduced me. We shook hands. George did his interview and then told Marilyn he’d see her at her home later as he left. I was relieved. That was one less photographer I might have to deal with, and I thanked her.

“What for?” Marilyn asked.

“For your vote of confidence,” I said.

“This is
your
job, Larry,” she said. “George has me at home.”

I went back to taking pictures, patting my chin to indicate she should look up a bit, tilting my head slightly to get her to do the same. She followed my lead faultlessly, knowing now that I knew how to use the ambient light. Then unexpectedly she asked, “How’s the marriage working out?”

“Judi’s terrific,” I said. “She’s a great mother. We’re looking to buy a house somewhere in the Valley.”

“Did you always want to get married?”

“Being a nice Jewish boy, for me, it just seemed the right
thing to do,” I replied. “Judi is the first person I thought about having a family with.”

“You’re lucky you found her,” Marilyn said, her eyes drifting. Then she added, coyly, “You know, I’m Jewish too.”

I remember having read that she converted just before marrying Arthur Miller. “You don’t look it,” I joked.

Almost as if on cue, a knock on the door broke our conversation. “Time, Marilyn.” She ignored the knock but got up to prepare to walk back to her dressing room on the shooting stage, where Whitey and Agnes could get to work. Agnes found her hair was very thin and applied some products to it to give it body. Waiting for the assistant director to escort Marilyn to the set, Paula started to read lines aloud with her. I could see that this would be a long day, and I asked Marilyn what time she thought we might be through.