Marilyn Monroe (35 page)

“Oh, I just love it,” said Marilyn. “But gee, isn’t there any other part of a matzoh you can eat?”

From their first meeting, Marilyn and her future father-in-law adored each other. Once Arthur had disclosed his plans to his parents, Marilyn found herself on the verge of realizing every aspect of what, only months before, had seemed an almost impossible fantasy. That February of 1956, it certainly looked as if she were about to have everything she wanted.

Only one hurdle remained before Marilyn felt ready to return in triumph to Hollywood. She needed to prove herself in front of the Actors Studio. By this time, she was aware that there was considerable cynicism among Studio members about the movie star in their midst. What had Marilyn been doing there all this time, just sitting and watching? Why hadn’t she been required to audition like everybody else? Why hadn’t she done a scene and been subjected to the judgment of others? Why did Strasberg appear to coddle her? Sometimes they even arrived by cab together. It was said that, in Marilyn’s company, Strasberg resembled the foolish, besotted professor in Josef von Sternberg’s
The Blue Angel.
Not that anyone suspected Lee might be sleeping with Marilyn. Someone laughed that were Strasberg to find himself in bed with her, he would probably have a stroke.

By and large, the resentment wasn’t against Marilyn herself—she had the reputation of being “a good egg”—so much as against Strasberg. Hadn’t he warned his disciples against going Hollywood? Didn’t he often
rail against the perils of commercialism? Marilyn represented everything to which Strasberg claimed to stand in flaming opposition. So what was she doing here? Why did he insist on transforming the Studio into some kind of “circus act”? Some malcontents saw Marilyn’s presence as an indication of Strasberg’s desperate hunger for success. Was Marilyn his ticket to the recognition he had never been able to achieve on his own?

Technically, an individual who passed the Actors Studio audition had no responsibility to do a scene. Participation was strictly voluntary, and one was not required to seek or to accept Strasberg’s advice. One didn’t even have to attend the workshops. Indeed, there was no pressure to do anything at all. But Marilyn’s case was different. No matter how low in her seat she slouched, her notoriety made it impossible for her to be treated like everybody else. Before she left to film
Bus Stop
, she simply had to perform a work-in-progress. She had to prove she belonged here. She had to demonstrate that Strasberg wasn’t crazy.

Though Strasberg usually let members decide when, if ever, they were ready, finally he had little choice but to urge Marilyn to do a scene. Usually he encouraged actors to select their own material, but in this case he picked Noël Coward’s
Fallen Angels.
He assigned Marilyn to work with Maureen Stapleton, who had a reputation for being “always good.”

The women rehearsed two, sometimes three times a week. Before long, Stapleton told Marilyn she was having a terrible time with Coward and suggested they look for another play. Marilyn assumed she had failed somehow. Nothing Stapleton said convinced Marilyn it wasn’t her fault. Finally, they shifted to the bar scene in Eugene O’Neill’s
Anna Christie
, a scene famous for being the first time Greta Garbo talked in the movies. Marilyn took the role of Anna while Stapleton played Marthy, an old prostitute. The actresses clicked with the new material and Stapleton, relieved, asked Marilyn whether she noticed a difference.

“Nope,” said Marilyn. “I don’t think I was very good in either one.”

At home, Marilyn worked on the play with Arthur. They read aloud together, Miller playing the role of old Chris. At first, Marilyn’s voice was so soft that Miller could barely hear her. It struck him that Marilyn sounded as if she were praying rather than acting. She laughed and said she couldn’t believe she was doing this. Yet she persisted. The rehearsals with Stapleton continued for about eight weeks. Marilyn
worried she’d be awful. She feared she couldn’t make herself heard. She dreaded forgetting her lines. She knew she was on trial and that some people would be happy to see her fail.

Several times Marilyn had set a date for the performance. Several times she had canceled. On one occasion, Marilyn, seated on a bench in Central Park, performed her scene for Sam Shaw. That day she found the key to what she wanted to do. Marilyn imagined that she was speaking her lines in the rain. Finally, a notice appeared on the Actors Studio bulletin board. As was customary, no names were posted. But everyone knew this was to be Marilyn’s workshop debut. It was one week after she faced the press with Olivier.

Since October 1955, classes had met at the Studio’s new home, the deconsecrated white brick church on a grimy stretch of West 44th Street, off Ninth Avenue. Sandstone steps led to a double door, but members knew to enter through the basement. Inside, the walls were adorned with colorful theatrical posters and photographs of Duse and Stanislavsky. Up some steps was a high-ceilinged performance area, formerly the main area of worship.

Every seat was taken, except the canvas director’s chair in front. A number of members had to stand. Paula Strasberg, who owned a huge collection of exotic fans from around the world, fanned herself nervously. She wore a black, knee-length shawl and a long gold chain heavy with trinkets. She said she hoped people intended to give Marilyn a chance and claimed to be so anxious that she thought she might have a heart attack before the session was over.

Marilyn had arrived early. She adjusted the baby spotlights. She arranged some bottles and other props from her apartment. Wobbly on stiletto heels, she looked as though she were about to pass out. Stapleton advised her to leave a script on the table in case she forgot her lines. But Marilyn declined. An office assistant, alarmed by Marilyn’s pallor, handed her a shot of Scotch.

Finally, Lee Strasberg, looking as grave as Olivier at the press conference, took his place. In a crisp voice, he announced the scene to be performed and the room lights faded.

“Gimme a whisky,” commanded Marilyn. “Ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby.”

One wasn’t supposed to applaud a workshop presentation, but
when Marilyn finished, the audience violated tradition. Maureen Stapleton said she had done beautifully. Susan Strasberg, Lee and Paula’s daughter, found her real and poignant. Cheryl Crawford called the performance “luminous with exciting gradations of feeling.” Not everyone thought Marilyn brilliant, however. Some applauded her talent, others merely her bravery. Kim Stanley was one of several actresses who rushed up to apologize for having harbored doubts. “I really admire you so much because that’s so hard to do,” she told Marilyn. “It’s hard for all of us to work in front of each other.”

Paula Strasberg just thanked God the ordeal was over. Lee, immensely relieved, insisted he hadn’t been nervous. Of course, just because Marilyn had done a single scene didn’t prove she could handle an entire play. Nor did it necessarily mean she would be able to repeat her success outside of class. Marilyn, for her part, was certain she had failed. She lamented that she had let her teacher down. At Strasberg’s new ten-room apartment on Central Park West afterward, she was tearful.

“The whole thing was bad. I could feel it.”

Paula disagreed. “Darling, you were good up there on that stage. And you were not just good. You were very good. You have taken the beginning steps as an actress and you did us all proud.”

NINE

O
n the morning of February 25, 1956, a limousine pulled away from 2 Sutton Place South. Marilyn, a dark mink coat slung over her shoulders, was on her way to the airport. She was due in Hollywood in two days for pre-production on her first film for Twentieth under her new contract. Joshua Logan planned to start filming
Bus Stop
on location in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 15; he wanted to take advantage of the yearly rodeo there, using the thousands of spectators as extras.

While Marilyn shot
Bus Stop
, Arthur would go to Nevada for six weeks to establish residency in order to file for divorce. The plan was for Miller to be free to marry before they went to England in July. He was to stay in one of two isolated cabins near the Paiute Indian reservation at Pyramid Lake, forty miles from Reno; the other cabin was occupied by Saul Bellow, then at work on
Henderson the Rain King.
Bellow, too, was there to divorce. Though Miller was legally required to remain in Nevada for forty-two consecutive days, he intended to sneak out at intervals to meet Marilyn in Los Angeles. In addition to his divorce, before Arthur could leave for England with Marilyn he would have to get a passport, something which might prove difficult. In 1954, Miller’s request for a passport to travel to Brussels for a production of
The Crucible
had been denied. There was every chance that he might have trouble again.

Marilyn was delighted to be doing
Bus Stop.
It had been a hit play in New York. Its author, William Inge, was widely considered to be one of the period’s finest playwrights, though a notch or two below Williams and Miller. It was a prestigious project, and her appearance in it would give Marilyn stature in the New York society she now held in such respect:
Kim Stanley, a leading light at the Actors Studio, who had starred in
Bus Stop
on Broadway, had lost out to Marilyn for the film version.

So now it was finally happening. Everything Marilyn had done for many months had led to this moment. This is what all the fighting had been about. This is what all the preparation had been for. She was returning to Los Angeles in triumph. She had taken on the Hollywood studio system and she had won. She was eager to collaborate with an important director who would treat her with dignity and respect.

Marilyn’s hard-won victory also brought immense new pressures. She had forced the studio to accept her right to make career decisions. She had insisted that she must be listened to in the future. In the weeks that followed, Marilyn would have to prove that she was worthy of all she had won. If she failed in her first film back at Twentieth, she would look like precisely the dumb blonde Darryl Zanuck insisted she was. Marilyn was intensely aware of how much was at stake as she prepared to step in front of a movie camera for the first time since the retakes for
The Seven Year Itch
in 1955.

It wasn’t just her new contract that Marilyn had to live up to. In Hollywood, there had been countless jokes about her decision to study at the Actors Studio. On
Bus Stop
, she would have to demonstrate that she had actually learned something in New York. It would not be enough for her to be good. She had to show that she was better. She had to convince people that she was somehow different.
Bus Stop
was the first project Marilyn had approved, so it had to be a success. She had always gone in front of the camera as if it were a matter of life and death. From the first, so much had been at stake in Marilyn’s film work that it had taken an almost unbearable toll on her. But there had never been more at stake than there was right now.

“Will acting spoil Marilyn Monroe?” many people were asking in Los Angeles, where newspaper, magazine, and newsreel cameramen packed the American Airlines terminal in anticipation of her return. She was the last passenger off the plane. Marilyn may have had difficulty remembering script lines, but she greeted a number of photographers by name, instantly endearing herself to the crowd. After hugging Roy Craft of the studio publicity department, she took questions in an airport waiting room. Marilyn’s quicksilver laughter mingled with grinding newsreel cameras and the pop-pop of flashbulbs.

Yes, she was “a bit tired.” No, she wasn’t in love at the moment, “but I haven’t given up yet.” No, Milton H. Greene, looming nearby, was not making all of her decisions as rumored. She was the president of Marilyn Monroe Productions, Greene the vice-president.

No, the Greenes were not running the show. No, she wouldn’t tell reporters what Greene’s middle initial stood for; they’d have to ask him. Marilyn was not going to be drawn back into the ridicule she had endured one year previously when she arrived with Greene for retakes on
The Seven Year Itch.
She was smart enough to know—especially with
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
on Broadway making a nightly joke of their partnership—that her business dealings with him made her an easy target. She had been burned once, at the time of the “new Marilyn.” She was not about to let it happen again.