Marilyn Monroe (32 page)

When the first reviews came in, it was immediately evident that once again the success Miller so desperately sought to recapture had eluded him. The New York critics, though respectful, tended to be unenthusiastic. Part of the problem was that both plays were slight. There was considerable embarrassment about the rather grand treatment they had been given. “Such was the hubris of the time,” said Brooks Atkinson years afterward, that the two one-act plays “were produced solemnly like major works of art, as if Mr. Miller were already a classic author.”

Worse, Miller no longer seemed to trust his audience. In
Death of a Salesman
, Miller, as Thomas Mann once observed, didn’t tell playgoers what to think. Willy Loman had been wonderfully lifelike and full of ambiguity. The characters in
The Crucible
and the 1955 version of
A View from the Bridge
were something entirely different. They weren’t real and complex; they were good or bad, positive or negative, illustrations rather than living, breathing people.
The Crucible
and, now, the one-act
View
failed dramatically because, as Kenneth Tynan said privately of
The Crucible
, Miller refused to “give the other side its due.” There was no authentic conflict, no battle of equals.
A View from the Bridge
was a condemnation of the informer, not a dramatic analysis. It was preaching, not playwriting.

Eric Bentley wrote a trenchant joint review of
On the Waterfront
and
A View from the Bridge.
“It will surprise no one that, in Mr. Kazan’s movie, the act of informing is virtuous, whereas, in Mr. Miller’s new play, it is evil. What is surprising, or at any rate appalling, is that both stories seem to have been created in the first place largely to point up this virtue and that evil, respectively. Now it is easy enough to end by winning the
game if you begin by stacking the cards, only you then have to concede that the game loses all its interest as a game.”

Faced with another failure, Miller tried to be philosophical. He told himself that a writer who has enjoyed success early on must avoid being caught up in the struggle for continuing recognition. He insisted he wasn’t after just another cheap Broadway hit. He saw himself as a serious artist in a land of comic-book writers. He told himself that, if he cared to, he could churn out works which, however well-received, would leave him feeling ashamed. Yet the fact remained that Miller’s effort to reclaim his material from Kazan had been unsuccessful. It was Kazan who had had the huge triumph with his waterfront film, while Miller’s play had been a disappointment. But at least Miller still had Marilyn—or did he?

As October began, Marilyn took an incredible step. When the Actors Studio reopened that fall, she returned as an observer; but this year, she had a specific purpose in mind. Marilyn wanted the female lead in Kazan’s new film which, with a script by Tennessee Williams, was an especially prestigious project to an actress who had rejected Hollywood in favor of the intellectual superiority of New York. Like everyone else at the Studio, Marilyn knew that Kazan was about to cast
Baby Doll.
Marlon Brando was Kazan’s first choice for Silva—his alter ego. Though Brando had rejected an earlier version of the screenplay, Kazan hoped that Williams’s final draft would change his mind.

As for the role of Baby Doll, Kazan had decided that Marilyn would no longer be appropriate. Williams had changed the character to a child bride of nineteen, whose father married her off on the condition that Archie Lee not sleep with her until her twentieth birthday. Though Williams continued to see Marilyn as Baby Doll, Kazan insisted that, at twenty-nine, she was too old. The director had been searching for another actress since August 20. Marilyn, with the single-minded determination that had made her a star, decided to campaign actively for the role, whatever that might mean for Miller and Strasberg.

Since that fateful first night at the Belnord with Strasberg, Marilyn had been waiting for a chance to prove herself as an actress. Lee had given her a new dream. In
Baby Doll
, Marilyn saw an opportunity to realize that dream. What could be more perfect than a package that included Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, and Marlon Brando? (As it happened, the role of Silva later went to Eli Wallach.)

With the instinct for survival that had kept her going all her life, Marilyn put on blinders and focused only on what she needed. No matter that Miller and Kazan were at odds, or that Williams was Miller’s only true rival in the American theater. No matter that Strasberg was locked in a struggle of his own with Kazan, or that Marilyn herself was to have been Lee’s weapon in that struggle. Either she didn’t see any of these things, or she didn’t care. In her mind, Baby Doll was the one role that could transform her career and give it a whole new direction. Williams was right; Marilyn probably would have been brilliant in the film.

Marilyn went to Kazan. When he told her she was wrong for the part, she begged to test. She dispensed with her pride. She put aside the fact that she was a famous movie star. She would test, and test again, if that was what he needed to believe in her. But he refused.

She wouldn’t give up. When Kazan turned his attention to the young actress Carroll Baker, Marilyn persisted in campaigning for the role. And Williams persisted in wanting to cast her. In the end, Kazan had his way. Perhaps he really did think Marilyn was too old. Perhaps he didn’t think she was up to the part; though Kazan thought that Marilyn was a talented light comedienne, he did not share Miller’s and Strasberg’s estimate of her potential. Or perhaps he simply enjoyed rejecting a woman whom both Miller and Strasberg so desperately wanted and needed for their own purposes. Whatever Kazan’s reasons, he turned Marilyn down. She was bitterly disappointed.

It is tempting to speculate about what would have happened to Marilyn had Kazan cast her in
Baby Doll.
Almost certainly, her life would have been different in a number of significant ways. Had she been directed by Kazan at that stage in her career, she probably would not have become as dependent on the Strasbergs as she later did. What need would there have been for Lee if it had been Kazan who enabled Marilyn to do her first important dramatic role? What need would there have been for Paula? Had Marilyn done well in a film written by Tennessee Williams, quite possibly she would have been treated differently by the public, and even by the industry. And who can say what would have happened to Marilyn’s relationship with Arthur Miller had she gone to Mississippi in November to shoot
Baby Doll
with Kazan?

All that can be known for sure is that after Marilyn lost
Baby Doll
, she was determined to find another great role that would allow her to
show the world that she had become a serious actress. She was convinced that somewhere out there was a magical script that would change everything for her. From that point on, she would not rest until she found it.

EIGHT

B
y the time Marilyn lost
Baby Doll
in October 1955, Twentieth and MCA had almost come to terms on her new contract. When she signed, she would be paid an additional $142,500 for
There’s No Business Like Show Business
and
The Seven Year Itch.
Marilyn, it will be recalled, had started
There’s No Business Like Show Business
at Charlie Feldman’s urging with the understanding that once she had a signed contract, she would collect the difference between her new per-picture fee and her old salary. Furthermore, she was to receive $225,000 in four installments for the screen rights to
Horns of the Devil
, the novel Joe DiMaggio had advised Marilyn to buy as an investment. She had done so with Feldman’s money and had yet to repay him.

That October, Marilyn borrowed something else from Feldman: the idea for her first independent production. One other important matter to be settled in Marilyn’s new contract was the right to make outside pictures. With the money from Twentieth, she intended to buy Terence Rattigan’s
The Sleeping Prince
, the play Feldman had offered to acquire for her in 1954 and again the previous spring. Since Laurence Olivier’s stage production in 1953, no one had bought the film rights. Before Feldman had even considered
The Sleeping Prince
, Rattigan had written to Darryl Zanuck about the possibility of casting Marilyn. He sang her praises, comparing her to Vivien Leigh and professing bafflement at the critics’ refusal to give her her due. Zanuck didn’t rule out buying
The Sleeping Prince
for Marilyn, but he didn’t make an offer either.

In the fall of 1955, though no papers were signed, Rattigan gave permission to the producers Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont and Anatole de
Grunwald to try to put together a film. Hardly had Rattigan’s agent given his approval when he thought of another possibility: Why not try William Wyler, Olivier’s close friend and favorite Hollywood director? Wyler immediately expressed interest, especially if Olivier were to play the prince. In an ill-considered move, Rattigan approached Wyler without a word to Beaumont or de Grunwald, who thought they were the only ones offering the play around. In early November 1955, Rattigan flew to the United States to confer with Wyler in California. To keep the producers from guessing the real reason for his trip, Rattigan made up a story about a sudden urge to attend the Ryder Cup golf tournament in Palm Springs.

Through Wyler’s friend Jean Negulesco, Marilyn heard that Rattigan was en route to California. By this time, in her mind
The Sleeping Prince
had replaced
Baby Doll
as the film that would change the direction of her career. As far as Marilyn was concerned, this was the magical property that would allow her to prove herself as an actress. She had decided that
The Sleeping Prince
must be hers, and she took immediate action to get it before Wyler did. Rattigan’s plane touched down in New York, where he was to have a ten-hour layover before boarding a flight to California. At the airport, a message from Marilyn awaited, asking Rattigan to meet her that afternoon at 4:30 at the Barberry Room in Manhattan.

The Barberry Room was empty when Rattigan arrived. He ordered a martini. Then he had a second and a third. By the time Marilyn arrived, an hour had passed. She bought him another drink. She mentioned lots of money, and said she wanted to come to terms right away. She was prepared to draw up a contract on a cocktail napkin. She took off her smoked glasses and cooed, “Do you think there’s any chance that Sir Larry would do it with me?”

Marilyn knew that Wyler had been offered the rights. Rattigan couldn’t use the story about the golf tournament on her. But he could—and did—fail to mention that the property was being shopped around in Europe by Beaumont and de Grunwald. It was obvious that Rattigan desperately wanted to accept Marilyn’s offer on the spot. Still, he had no choice but to go forward with Wyler. He promised to let her know what happened.

Not long after Rattigan returned to London, Wyler decided against doing the film after all. Rattigan, delighted, sent a message to Marilyn. The rights were hers if she still wanted them. Marilyn was
ecstatic. She believed that she finally had in her hands the important role she longed for.
The Sleeping Prince
was certainly the sort of thing Marilyn did well. Yet from the first, she seems to have had a basic misperception of the nature of the material. Perhaps it was the aura of Laurence Olivier, or that Vivien Leigh—whom Marilyn associated with Kazan—had preceded her in the role. Perhaps it was simply the fact that
The Sleeping Prince
would be a costume picture that led Marilyn to mistake the property for something it was not. In any case, her expectations were a prescription for disappointment.

In contrast to
Baby Doll, The Sleeping Prince
did not contain the transforming role Marilyn had set out to find. A piece of fluff, it was not qualitatively different from other light comedies she had done. But Marilyn did not realize that until much later. For the moment, she remained utterly convinced that once she had appeared with Olivier, people would never be able to treat her the same way again.