Authors: Barbara Leaming
Instead, Kazan allowed himself to become the very figure of the informer in American culture. Zero Mostel dubbed him “Looselips.” Others called Kazan a “stool pigeon.” Arthur Miller and Kermit Bloomgarden snubbed him. People would cross the street to avoid having to decide whether to acknowledge him. Wherever Kazan went, he kept his antennae up to know what sort of greeting to expect. Kazan even had to be on guard at the Studio, where he fell out of favor with the kids. Some withdrew from the workshop because of his participation. Others vowed never to work with “that sonofabitch” again. The situation became so intense that a meeting had to be called, and a number of members urged the Studio publicly to condemn Kazan’s actions. In the end, however, a decision was made to take no position.
Though Kazan maintained a gruff exterior, he was acutely sensitive to the fact that many people at the Studio had turned on him. He confessed to Cheryl Crawford that there were moments when he actually
considered withdrawing altogether. He steered clear of the Studio for a while, and in his absence Strasberg became the new father figure. Strasberg greatly relished his new status. For the first time, he didn’t have to live under Kazan’s shadow. For the first time, he wasn’t constantly reminded that Kazan, not he, had the important career. To all intents and purposes, the Actors Studio became Strasberg’s kingdom.
Strasberg’s domination was short-lived. To his fury, in 1953 Kazan made his first conscious effort to find a way back. Eager to reclaim the Studio, Kazan cast Studio actors in Tennessee Williams’s
Camino Real
when, as he recognized, others would have been more appropriate. Thus did Kazan flaunt his power. Lee Strasberg might have charisma, but he wasn’t a working director. He couldn’t offer the kids roles in Broadway shows. Kazan tempted the kids with the very success for which some accused him of having sold out.
The triumphant release of
On The Waterfront
in July 1954 consolidated Kazan’s position at the Studio; Marlon Brando’s bravura performance made Kazan a hero there once more. Strasberg’s worst nightmare had come true. After
On the Waterfront
, there could be no doubt that once again he played second fiddle to Kazan.
East of Eden
, another film that the public tended to associate with the Studio, exacerbated Strasberg’s predicament. Rather pathetically, he attempted to share in the credit for both Brando and James Dean, though Brando had actually been trained by Strasberg’s enemy Stella Adler, and Dean had fled in terror after only a brief stay at the Studio, when Strasberg sharply criticized his workshop efforts.
From Strasberg’s point of view, Marilyn could hardly have arrived at a more opportune moment. She provided him with a weapon in his struggle for authority at the Studio. Marilyn Monroe would be Strasberg’s movie star, as Brando and Dean had been Kazan’s. Her miraculous transformation would be a testament to Strasberg’s own gifts as a director. Though he led Marilyn to believe that he had confidence in her talent, in fact the only one he really had confidence in was himself. As far as Strasberg was concerned, when Marilyn finally gave a great performance, it would be his accomplishment, not hers.
From the first, though Marilyn did not suspect it, she was back in a similar situation to the one she’d been in with Darryl Zanuck. For all the work Marilyn had done to become a star, in the end Zanuck had
claimed the credit for her success. He had insisted that Twentieth Century–Fox—not Marilyn herself—had made her what she was today. Strasberg intended to do much the same thing: He planned to take credit for his protégée’s achievements. He wanted to be something more than Marilyn’s instructor; when she was ready—and there was no telling when that might occur—he hoped to direct her as well. In short, Strasberg saw Marilyn as a vehicle to the success that had long and stubbornly eluded him. Marilyn would make it possible for Strasberg to direct the great productions of his dreams.
Blind as Marilyn was to Strasberg’s self-serving motives, she failed to understand what he was really up to when he insisted that she would never win respect as a movie star. Of course, it was precisely Marilyn’s stardom that made her so useful to Strasberg. At the same time, without significant professional credits of his own, he needed to adjust the balance of power in their relationship. Strasberg had to convince Marilyn that she had not accomplished anything on her own. He had to invalidate her hard-earned achievements in Hollywood. He had to reduce her to point zero. He had to make her accept that, despite all she had done in her career to date, she had come to him with nothing.
In the past, Marilyn had almost never failed with interviewers. She needed only to flash her “Marilyn” persona, and most press people were charmed. But something unprecedented happened on April 8. When Edward R. Murrow interviewed her at Milton Greene’s barn for the television program
Person to Person
, Marilyn was bland and colorless. Determined to be thought of as a serious actress—whatever that might mean, and at times she didn’t seem sure—Marilyn was unwilling to play the character she had always used to such great effect. In the absence of that character, Marilyn lacked a distinctive voice; evidently, she hadn’t yet found a substitute for “the girl.” Billy Wilder once remarked that when Marilyn appeared on screen, you simply couldn’t take your eyes off her. That was by no means the case on the Murrow show. The Greenes, particularly Mrs. Greene, occupied center stage, while Marilyn seemed to disappear into the woodwork.
In Los Angeles, Darryl Zanuck wondered whether she had lost her mind. He was convinced that she’d made an idiot of herself on
Person to Person.
If she kept up this sort of thing, he believed,
The Seven Year Itch
would be a hard sell by the time it was released in 1956. Zanuck
conferred with Spyros Skouras and Al Lichtman, the head of the sales department, and they agreed to release the picture immediately, before Marilyn could do any more damage. Zanuck selected June 1, 1955, Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday, for the New York premiere. He wanted her to attend; but she was on suspension and he refused to invite her officially. Instead, he had some tickets sent to her through Sam Shaw.
Obviously, Marilyn couldn’t attend the opening with Arthur Miller. She turned up at the Loew’s State Theater with Joe DiMaggio. The fifteen hundred guests included Tyrone Power, Grace Kelly, Henry Fonda, and Judy Holliday. Thousands of fans crowded Broadway in the hope of catching a glimpse of Marilyn. There was a pained smile on Joe’s face as he escorted her past a huge blow-up photograph of the skirt-blowing scene. By the time they entered, the film had started.
The excitement in the theater was palpable. Several times in the course of the evening the audience erupted in applause. They laughed at all the right moments and there was a standing ovation at the end. Hedda Hopper called
The Seven Year Itch
Marilyn’s “first great picture.” Under ordinary circumstances, Charlie Feldman and Darryl Zanuck would have fêted Marilyn afterward. As it was, DiMaggio took her to Toots Shor’s. When Joe and Marilyn came around the large, circular bar, Toots led the crowd in shouting “Happy birthday!” Joe, eager to please, had arranged a surprise party.
But Marilyn couldn’t enjoy herself. Despite Joe’s efforts, the evening seemed to tear her up inside. It was obvious that everyone had adored her in the picture, and Marilyn knew that Billy Wilder had helped her to give her best performance to date. But she could take no pleasure in her achievement. Her encounters with Strasberg had caused her to turn violently on all that she had accomplished in Hollywood—including
The Seven Year Itch.
Anyone might have expected Marilyn to be proud of herself tonight, but the premiere had very much the opposite effect. The success of the “Marilyn Monroe” character—a character the whole world seemed to have fallen in love with—brought her only self-loathing and disgust.
Before the evening was over, she had an argument with Joe, who seemed hardly to comprehend what was going on, and walked out of her own party. Sam Shaw saw her home.
On several occasions after that, DiMaggio was observed in the
shadows outside the Waldorf Towers, hiding in dark doorways. He stood apart from the fans and photographers, but he, too, watched and waited. “He loved her beyond anybody’s comprehension,” said Sam Shaw. Ann Shaw worked very hard to get Joe and Marilyn back together. Marilyn asked Ann to stop, insisting that she liked things the way they were.
Finally, DiMaggio appeared to have had enough. When Sam went to France to document circus life, Joe followed. At night, he would dine with the Shaws and a
Paris-Match
crew. He wanted to go to Italy to visit the places where his parents had been born. He gave the impression that he hoped somehow “to find himself.” He never spoke of Marilyn, or discussed what he was going through. “He felt, but he didn’t talk,” Shaw recalled.
At this point, few people knew that Marilyn was seeing Arthur Miller. Because photographers followed her everywhere, she and Arthur spent most of their time together in her apartment. Arthur, then at work on the production of
A View from the Bridge
, would stop off to see Marilyn on his way home. When Truman Capote, Miller’s neighbor in Brooklyn Heights, guessed the identity of Marilyn’s “masked marvel,” she jestingly threatened to have Capote bumped off if he told anyone. Arthur was married with two children. He had a reputation as a man of conscience. He had to be discreet.
At a moment when Miller was preparing to stage a public indictment of the betrayer, he secretly betrayed his wife. His meditations on the topic of infidelity in his notebooks and in
The Crucible
suggest that it cannot have been easy. His joy with Marilyn, combined with fears for his marriage, left him unable to focus on casting and other production matters. For the moment, he seemed to live most intensely on the twenty-seventh floor at the Waldorf Towers.
Miller was confused, conflicted. He told himself he didn’t want his union with Mary to end. He valued stability and routine. The anchor of a home life permitted him to write. He adored his children. Yet he couldn’t bear to give up Marilyn. Eventually, Arthur’s older brother sensed that he was weighing something. Kermit Miller, concerned but by no means judgmental, finally reached out. But Arthur didn’t want to talk about his affair. At the same time, Arthur did appear to want Kermit and other family members to know. Why else would he drive out to Kermit’s house in Marilyn’s car?
There was no question that Arthur seemed different. He had a face that might have been chiseled on Mount Rushmore. Marilyn loosened him up. She made him grin. He seemed suddenly more tender-eyed and accessible. He seemed never to have been more in love with anyone. Arthur, it would be said in the Miller family, had had his train wreck rather late in life.
Miller did not think much of Lee Strasberg, but he shared and sometimes out did the latter’s high hopes for Marilyn. He gushed (uncharacteristically) about her talent as much as DiMaggio had minimized it. He told Kermit Bloomgarden that when Marilyn finally appeared on stage she would devastate audiences. He predicted she would be one of the theater’s great stars. Marilyn, to her immense delight, found herself with two saviors: Strasberg and Miller, the great teacher and the great author. She called them the smartest men on earth. She spoke of each as though he were the Wizard of Oz, capable of making her wish come true. In both cases, she failed to perceive the needy, imperfect human being behind the curtain.
Miller had one other thing in common with Strasberg. At the moment, both men were strongly affected by Kazan. Miller, like Strasberg, had been propelled into a state of crisis by
On the Waterfront.
Indeed, Kazan’s triumph may have been even harder for Miller to swallow than it was for Strasberg. In 1951, Miller had gone to Hollywood with Kazan in search of the success that
On the Waterfront
eventually brought; the film was received as precisely the kind of major breakthrough in the art of cinema that Miller had aimed to achieve in
The Hook.
To make matters worse,
On the Waterfront
, in both theme and atmosphere, bore an unmistakable resemblance to Arthur Miller’s waterfront screenplay. It was as though Kazan had extracted the essence of that earlier, unrealized work and made it his own.
On the Waterfront
was linked to Miller in another significant way. On the day Kazan had told Miller of his intention to name names, Miller, in turn, had disclosed his own plan to research the Salem witch trials. Kazan and his wife had instantly perceived that Miller planned to write a parable of the HUAC hearings.
On the Waterfront
, with a script by Budd Schulberg, was Kazan’s answer to
The Crucible.
It was the story of an ex-prizefighter who finds the courage to testify in court against the mob. The world may call him a stool pigeon, but in his heart he knows he’s
done the right thing. “I’m glad what I done—you hear me—glad what I done!” he shouts at the end, echoing what Kazan claimed were his own feelings about having testified.
While Kazan was preparing
On the Waterfront
, he had been warned by Miller’s lawyer John Wharton that if he went forward, he’d never direct another Miller play again. At length, when Kazan collected his Oscar as Best Director for
On the Waterfront
, he found himself thinking of that lawyer, and of Miller himself. Kazan had never forgiven Miller for snubbing him with Kermit Bloomgarden. The night
On the Waterfront
received eight Oscars, including the awards for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, was Kazan’s revenge.
As chance would have it, Marilyn had turned up in New York at a moment when
The Hook
—the screenplay Miller had been trying to sell when he met her—was again very much on Arthur’s mind. Thrown back to that time four years previously when he had abandoned both his script and Marilyn, Miller proceeded to rewrite history in two important ways. In February, he wrote a stage play that reclaimed the waterfront atmosphere of
The Hook
as his own. Soon after, Miller picked up where he had left off with Marilyn—except that this time he was not about to walk away.