Marilyn Monroe (22 page)

Feldman, in New York, decided that the time had come to bring DiMaggio back into the picture. He was due to return to Los Angeles on July 28, and he invited Joe and Marilyn to dine with him at home that evening, along with Loyd Wright. Marilyn refused.

On July 30, as Feldman approached dressing room M in the Star Building at Twentieth, he could smell the faint aroma of Chanel No. 5. Based on what he’d heard from various agents, lawyers, and studio executives, he hardly knew what sort of reception to expect. Lately, Marilyn had had some pretty bad things to say about her agent. But when Feldman entered the fluorescent-lit rear room, Marilyn, at her dressing table, turned and greeted him warmly. Reflections on all sides suggested a funhouse hall of mirrors. Marilyn acted as though nothing were wrong. She smiled as though she adored him. When Feldman perceived that Marilyn wasn’t going to say a word about her contract, he happily did the same. The contract could wait,
The Seven Year Itch
could not. He had to know whether he could count on her to appear in the film, which was scheduled to start in September. When Marilyn spoke excitedly about the week of location work in New York, Feldman was relieved.

As the actress and the agent had done two years previously after she failed to sign with Famous Artists, they tacitly agreed to stop talking about the issue at stake. They tacitly agreed not to mention the contract, or the money and other terms Feldman had negotiated. Marilyn would get none of those things so long as the new contract remained unsigned, and Feldman would continue to receive not a penny for all his work on her behalf. She remained at her old salary scale; the studio would simply pick up her option under the original contract. Feldman assumed Marilyn was being her usual mercurial self. He didn’t suspect that she was leaving things open because Greene was waiting in the wings. Nor did he realize that when Marilyn told him about the project she really wanted to do next, his ability to set that up for her would determine his future as her agent—as well as a great deal else of significance in her life.

Suddenly, Marilyn was desperate to be cast in
Guys and Dolls.
Marlon Brando, who’d been filming
Désirée
on the Fox lot, had visited Marilyn on the set of
There’s No Business Like Show Business.
He told her he’d agreed to star in Joe Mankiewicz’s film version of the Broadway musical.

“Maybe I’ll do it too,” Marilyn suggested. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“Be nice,” said Brando.

So Marilyn urged Feldman to persuade Samuel Goldwyn to request her on a loanout from Twentieth. Feldman perceived, and Marilyn appeared to understand, that if Goldwyn did ask for her, she’d have to sign with Twentieth before Darryl Zanuck even considered loaning her out. He promptly arranged for Marilyn to talk to Goldwyn on the phone about
Guys and Dolls.

“I’d rather do it than breathe!” she told Goldwyn.

On September 8, 1954, a loud television set could be heard throughout the cottage where Joe and Marilyn lived. Upstairs, in the master bedroom, two assistants were preparing Marilyn for a 9 p.m. flight. They’d been at it for hours. A limousine was coming in a few minutes. Hugh French was supposed to meet her at the airport.

Her bags were already packed with clothing which Twentieth had lent her for New York. Marilyn’s own closets were surprisingly bare. Her personal wardrobe consisted of little besides some snug sweaters and numerous pairs of tight, tapered Jax slacks with ankle-baring cuffs and a rear zipper—and, of course, the mink coat Joe had given her for Christmas. The other clothes Marilyn wore in public were largely borrowed from the studio.

Much of the day, a Wednesday, had been devoted to clothing. Marilyn had rushed through last-minute costume fittings for
The Seven Year Itch.
At the moment, she was being outfitted in a travel costume that was supposed to cling to her like a second skin. It consisted of a sheer wool beige dress, the top wrapped snugly around her chest and tied in a bow. It was exceedingly uncomfortable.

After hours of nips and tucks the effect was nearly perfect. No ordinary person would possibly wear such an outfit on a cross-country flight. Marilyn intended to undress as soon as she had run the gauntlet of photographers to the privacy of her sleeper. Before the plane landed, assistants would dress her and do her hair and makeup all over again.

Finally, Marilyn slipped into a matching beige coat with a beige fur
collar and trim. Then she rushed downstairs in high heels, having neglected to put on stockings, telling herself that since she’d probably remove her stockings on the plane anyway, there was no reason to wear them in the first place. She approached the dark, noisy room where Joe and a friend were staring into the dull gray glow of a TV set. The sight was painfully familiar to her by now. Next to Joe’s chair was the small, wooden folding tray on which he liked to eat dinner.

After eight months, this is what her marriage had come to. Joe watched TV. He played golf. He went to the track. He played poker. He complained to Jimmy Cannon that life in Los Angeles was dull. Soon after they were married, he’d asked Marilyn to abandon her career and move with him to San Francisco. She promised to think about it. Meanwhile, he was unhappy that she had turned their home into a sort of Grand Central Station. The phone and doorbell rang at all hours. His ulcer acted up. Filled with resentment, he’d retreat behind a wall of silence. Sometimes he didn’t utter a word to Marilyn for days at a time. He grew particularly upset when studio personnel invaded the house.

Marilyn lingered in the doorway. When Joe didn’t say anything, she asked how she looked.

“Nice,” Joe snapped.

Tension hovered in the smoky air. Marilyn’s assistants had just gone home in anticipation of joining her at the airport, and Joe often made a scene after her visitors left. This evening, to make matters worse, Marilyn had asked Joe to accompany her in the limousine. Marilyn wanted him to put in an appearance at the airport to counter rumors that her marriage was disintegrating.

Joe and Marilyn were almost never seen in public together. Joe, who despised Hollywood publicity, refused to attend industry events. Off the baseball field, he didn’t like to be photographed; he preferred not to be observed. On the rare occasions when the couple dined out, they ate in grim silence. Marilyn might as well have been George Solotaire.

Several days previously, an attempt to permit photographers to get an affectionate shot of Joe and Marilyn together had backfired. As it had been noted in the press that Joe never visited the set of
There’s No Business Like Show Business
, Marilyn invited him to watch her shoot the big musical number “Heat Wave.” A sullen, sweaty DiMaggio, in a dark blue suit, watched from the shadows as his wife strutted about in a
plumed headdress and a tight, skimpy two-piece outfit that left her midriff exposed. As she sang and danced, Marilyn’s eyes darted nervously in Joe’s direction. Sensing his disapproval and disgust, Marilyn stumbled and fell. Afterward, photographers asked Joe to pose with his wife. He refused, insisting he wasn’t dressed properly. Marilyn tried to conceal her hurt when Joe later agreed to be photographed with Ethel Merman.

Marilyn was relieved that Joe had agreed to ride with her to the airport, though she worried how he’d react to the news that they were to stop at Hedda Hopper’s house. The gossip columnist was so powerful that Twentieth could hardly refuse her an interview with Marilyn before she left for New York. Joe declined to go inside. “I’ll knock on the door when it’s time to go,” he said, obviously brooding about the fact that he was to be the principal topic of conversation.

Indeed, hardly was Marilyn through the door when Hedda Hopper asked, “What’s this about you and Joe not getting on?”

At the airport, Joe, eager to put the question to rest, was photographed giving Marilyn a farewell kiss. As Hugh French escorted Marilyn onto the plane, much in her life remained unsettled. Marilyn was playing Feldman and Greene against one another. She was waiting to see what each could do for her. One man had to lose, but either way Marilyn won.

In the past few days, she’d talked a lot to Feldman about
Guys and Dolls.
Marilyn had even mentioned it to Hedda Hopper, at the risk of being embarrassed later if she didn’t get the part. At Marilyn’s behest, Feldman had dined with Goldwyn. He’d called six times to reiterate Marilyn’s interest. Finally, he’d arranged for her to meet Goldwyn after work one evening. Just before she went to New York, Feldman had reported that Goldwyn was one hundred per cent enthusiastic. But she also needed the director’s approval. While Marilyn was in the east, she hoped to plead her case to Mankiewicz. She had not seen him since
All About Eve
and she wanted to show him how much she had changed in four years. If, as Feldman anticipated, Goldwyn made an offer, Marilyn would have no choice but to sign her new contract at Twentieth immediately. That would put Greene out of the running before he’d even started.

While Marilyn waited to be cast in
Guys and Dolls
, she was secretly talking to Greene to see what he came up with. In New York, she expected to hear from him about his progress.
Guys and Dolls
was
Marilyn’s priority; but if Goldwyn failed to make an offer, as soon as Marilyn completed
The Seven Year Itch
she hoped to jump ship—both from Twentieth and from Famous Artists. In other words, though no one but Marilyn knew it yet, everybody’s fate depended on whether Feldman could get her
Guys and Dolls.

In New York, more than sixty photographers and cameramen, tipped off by the studio, were waiting at Idlewild Airport when Marilyn emerged from the plane. She posed on the ramp for nearly forty-five minutes as airport employees whistled and cheered. When fans broke through the gray wooden barricades, police ushered Marilyn into the terminal building.

Her arrival made headlines. “MARILYN WIGGLES IN,” declared the front page of the
New York World Telegram.
Crowds gathered outside the St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue, where more police barricades had been set up. In an eleventh-floor suite, Marilyn sipped tea laced with vodka. Excited by her reception, she pressed Hugh French to set up a meeting with Mankiewicz. When she discovered that the director had flown to Los Angeles for a few days, Marilyn insisted on calling him there.

“You see, I’ve become a star,” Marilyn proudly told Mankiewicz.

The director was unimpressed. He talked to her, she thought, as though she were a piece of trash. “Put on some more clothes, Marilyn, and stop moving your ass so much,” he replied.

Despite the insult, Marilyn struggled to win him over. Finally, Mankiewicz cut off the conversation with the news that the part of Miss Adelaide had already been cast. Refusing to give up, Marilyn instructed Feldman to keep after Goldwyn and get her the role.

Mankiewicz’s unkind words were a brutal reminder of why Marilyn hated Hollywood. By contrast, Milton Greene saw Marilyn as she wished to be seen. On Friday, September 10, at his cavernous studio on Lexington Avenue, he photographed her as a ballerina. Sensing Marilyn’s discomfort, he loosened her up with Dom Perignon. When her snowy white Anne Klein costume didn’t fit, he refused to panic, telling her simply to hold it up against herself. In a series of images that brilliantly captured the conflict in Marilyn’s personality between the innocent and the lurid, she posed on a wicker chair before a vast black backdrop, a partly-naked ballerina with incongruous red lipstick and toe-nail polish.

On Sunday morning, the day before Marilyn was to begin
The Seven Year Itch
, the phone rang in Greene’s converted barn in Weston, Connecticut. It was DiMaggio. He had flown to New York and wanted the photographer and his wife to have dinner with him. Marilyn, after all, was considering turning over the responsibility for her business and professional dealings to a man she hardly knew. Any husband, not least one as innately distrustful as Joe, would want to check the guy out.

That night, as many as a thousand fans waited on East 55th Street. When Marilyn left the hotel, she was wearing a fitted, black wool suit with a large fabric rose stuffed into the plunging neckline, presumably in deference to her husband. The crowd on the sidewalk was huge, and Joe seemed to be wondering how he was going to get from the top of the steps to the car. A great many people wanted something from Marilyn—an autograph, a photo, whatever. That’s why Joe felt compelled to protect her. And that’s why he and Greene spent an ostensibly innocuous social evening together in the back room at El Morocco. Joe needed to see exactly what he was dealing with.

When Joe married Marilyn, a bookie at Toots Shor’s laid eight-to-five odds that they’d separate before their first anniversary. No one dared mention that to Joe, yet the crowd at Shor’s seemed to be watching and waiting. The marriage simply did not seem meant to last. One evening, the DiMaggios were to have to dinner at Shor’s with Sam Shaw and his wife. But when Marilyn arrived from the set, Joe became enraged at the very sight of her. It was obvious that she wasn’t wearing panties beneath her form-fitting skirt. Joe was fiercely determined to put a stop to this habit of hers, so Marilyn was sent off to the ladies room with Ann Shaw. At length, a pair of panties was delivered and Marilyn dutifully put them on before rejoining Joe and Sam at the table.