Authors: Barbara Leaming
The headlines showed that HUAC had won the publicity war. “Arthur Miller Admits Helping Communist-Front Groups in ’40’s” declared that morning’s
New York Times.
“Miller Admits Aiding Reds, Risks Contempt” proclaimed the
New York Daily News.
The
Chicago Tribune’s
headline was “Marilyn’s Fiancé Admits Aiding Reds.” The message wasn’t that Miller had bravely refused to name names; it was that he had a Communist past. Evidently, he had done himself no favors by preparing so little and talking so much.
Miller came across as long-winded and not very likable. At best he’d been boring, at worst pompous (“I would be lying to you if I said that I didn’t think the artist was, to a certain degree, in a special class”) and self-absorbed (“I tell you quite frankly this suited the mood that I was in”). All the talk about Miller’s moods and state of mind irritated people. There was consternation about his claim that he had failed to investigate many of the causes to which he lent his name. It was as if he took himself too seriously or not seriously enough. What sympathetic coverage there was concerned Miller’s plan to marry Marilyn Monroe sometime before the 13th. Hedda Hopper revealed that the ceremony might take place at the home of Spyros Skouras.
That something had gone very wrong yesterday became clear when Marilyn returned from Dr. Hohenberg’s. Photographers accosted her as she tried to slip in the service entrance.
“Leave me alone, boys, I’m a mess,” Marilyn pleaded.
Under ordinary circumstances, especially with a star as well-liked and cooperative as Marilyn, the photographers almost certainly would have backed off. But not today. Ignoring Marilyn’s protests—at one point she put a hand up in front of her face—the men snapped away. Shocked and upset, she rushed inside and went up in a service elevator.
The incident had been a frightening reminder of what could happen to Marilyn’s image if her association with Arthur caused the press to turn on her. Wasn’t that exactly what Spyros Skouras had come to warn her about? The next day’s papers were sure to run the unflattering pictures. Marilyn, always sensitive to the power of publicity, decided to give them something else to print besides. Clearly, Arthur had made a mess in Washington. Marilyn decided to put her own spin on things right away. She called a press conference to be held on the sidewalk outside her apartment building at 4:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, Francis Walter changed his mind about Miller.
“I am quite certain the committee will discuss the advisability of citing him for contempt very shortly,” Walter told reporters. “I am speaking only for myself but I don’t see how we can consistently not cite him because he very obviously is in contempt. I don’t know that there is anybody on our committee—certainly not the chairman—who would be disposed to interfere with any of the legitimate activities of Cupid, but despite June and Cupid this man will be dealt with just as everybody else who appears before this committee.”
What did that mean for Miller’s passport application? Did HUAC really plan to interfere with his honeymoon?
“I don’t suppose there are too many places in this country where he wouldn’t enjoy a honeymoon with Marilyn Monroe,” Walter declared.
“Without his passport?” asked a reporter.
“Without his passport,” the chairman pointedly replied.
That afternoon, reporters, photographers, and television and newsreel crews from around the world assembled on Sutton Place South. The heat was oppressive. Ordinarily, there would have been few people on the street at this hour other than some maids walking dogs or pushing baby carriages. Today, so many people turned up that twelve policemen were required to maintain order. A yellow ice-cream wagon at the foot of East 57th Street did a brisk business. By the time Marilyn was scheduled
to appear, neighbors were hanging out of windows on both sides of the street. She kept everybody waiting another hour and fifteen minutes.
Finally, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller emerged hand-in-hand in from the apartment-house lobby. She looked adorable, yet properly subdued for the occasion. Since being photographed that morning, she’d bathed and had her hair and makeup done. She wore a man-tailored, open-necked, cream-colored blouse. She had shiny gold cufflinks, a snug, belted black skirt, and black patent leather pumps. She clutched a pair of gloves as she had on the day she went outside with Jerry Giesler to announce that she was divorcing Joe.
“I’ve never been happier in my life,” said Marilyn, nuzzling Miller for the cameras. He looked sweaty in a dark suit and tie.
As the couple stepped out onto the sidewalk, Marilyn leaned very hard on Arthur as if to emphasize that she depended on his protection, though in fact it was very much she who was going to protect him today. It wasn’t enough to give a brilliant performance; she had to be a director, too. She had to coax a sympathetic performance out of him. She had to show people an Arthur Miller they had never seen before. She had to counter the impact of yesterday’s testimony and get people actually to like the guy. It was a tall order.
“You better stop that,” Miller whispered to Marilyn. “If you lean too hard, I’m going to fall over.”
Marilyn, all smiles and giggles, responded by closing her eyes and kissing Arthur’s weathered cheek.
“Do that again, Marilyn!” the photographers cheered.
She did—numerous times.
“It’s a good thing that we’ll only be getting married once,” Miller remarked to reporters. “That’s all I can tell you.”
Marilyn whispered something in Arthur’s ear that caused him to hold her very tightly, burrowing his nose in her forehead. He was the image of a man deeply in love, a man who certainly deserved to be permitted to go on his honeymoon.
Someone mentioned Francis Walter’s statement that there weren’t too many places in America where Miller would fail to enjoy a honeymoon with Marilyn Monroe.
“It would be rather difficult to honeymoon here,” Miller declared, “since Miss Monroe is going to England.”
“I won’t be in the U.S.,” Marilyn chimed in. “I’ve got to go whether he can or not.” She paused to tilt her head back and gaze lovingly into Arthur’s eyes. “I hope he’ll go with me.”
By the time these pictures appeared in Saturday’s papers, Marilyn had adroitly shifted everyone’s attention from the particulars of Arthur’s testimony, which had not played well in the press, to the question of when and where the wedding was to take place. On Saturday morning, a rumor spread among reporters outside the apartment house that Marilyn was to be married that night. Marilyn didn’t see her psychiatrist on weekends, so she remained out of sight all day. Eager to keep the press on her side, she sent down an assistant to field questions. The assistant denied the rumors, then, at the reporters’ urging, called upstairs on the doorman’s house phone to double-check with Miller.
Around noon, Miller, alone, roared off in Marilyn’s black Thunderbird convertible. He returned two hours later. At 5:15 p.m., newsmen spotted him peeking at the crowd from an eighth-floor window. All heads looked up and Miller ducked. Clearly, he and Marilyn were going to have no privacy and no peace so long as they remained in town.
On Sunday night, Miller’s station wagon, loaded with suitcases, appeared mysteriously. Soon afterward, Miller issued from the lobby and drove off alone. He went only so far as grim, cobblestoned York Avenue in the shadow of the clattering Queensboro Bridge. He parked on the east side of the street. Moments later, Marilyn, carrying a small, striped leather train case in one hand, a straw picnic basket in the other, darted out of 2 Sutton Place South. A yellow Checker cab took her four blocks uptown, stopping on the west side of York Avenue. Marilyn, on spike heels, ducked advancing cars with blazing headlights. No sooner had she reached the station wagon than she felt a hand on her shoulder roughly spin her around. Marilyn was hurled against the vehicle with such force that she nearly fell. The photographer was about to snap her picture when Miller emerged and, without so much as a glance at the fellow, helped her in.
In those days, there were no interstate highway connections between New York and Roxbury. The trip took three hours. Litchfield County was sparsely-populated dairy country with stone walls, eighteenth-century white clapboard farmhouses, and vivid red barns and silos. Arthur called the rolling terrain “my fields.” It would have been
hard to see much in the velvety darkness, but the air was perfumed with sweet rocket and trailing arbutus. There were black, red and white oak trees for the headlights to pick out.
In the winter of 1947, Miller, then married to his first wife, had come here in a borrowed truck looking for a certain house that was for sale. The narrow, twisty dirt roads, precarious in any conditions, were snow-covered and slippery. Snow was piled high on both sides. Miller lost control, sliding into a parked car. As chance would have it, the charming, seven-room, white frame house with shuttered windows and a painted chimney was the available property. It stood at the intersection of Old Tophet and Gold Mine Roads. It had forty-four acres and a clay tennis court. When Miller moved there, he and his cousin Morty, who had a house nearby, were said to be the first Jews in Roxbury. The area around Old Tophet came to be known as “the hill where all the Jews are.”
Marilyn had never spent time at close quarters with Arthur’s family before. Tonight, Isadore and Augusta had come up from Brooklyn. His children, Jane, eleven, and Robert, nine, were also present in anticipation of going off to summer camp in Massachusetts the following week. His ex-wife was nowhere in sight, of course, but this was still very much Mary’s house. In back was the ten-by-twelve-foot shack where Arthur had written “the great American play” in six weeks. He liked to say that
Death of a Salesman
, originally titled “The Inside of His Head,” had taken shape in his thoughts as he built the studio.
Roxbury was the sort of place where you awakened to discover cows studying you from the other side of a stone wall. You could walk for hours without seeing more than one or two cars. Few outsiders found their way into the tangle of gritty back roads which had long, hilly views. But when Marilyn awakened on the morning of Monday, June 25, she could hear the clamor outside. Voices in several languages drifted through the open windows. The grinding of newsreel cameras drowned out the small, tremulous sounds of barn swallows. She and Arthur had not eluded the press after all. It was Sutton Place South all over again. Only the yellow ice-cream wagon was missing.
Here, Marilyn couldn’t hide on the eighth floor with the air-conditioner blasting and a doorman and other apartment-house staff to run interference. A great many reporters loomed on the other side of the fragrant green hedge that partly obscured the property. A helicopter could
be heard just overhead as a news photographer shot an aerial view. In these conditions, how was Miller possibly going to get any work done on the expanded version of
A View from the Bridge
he had promised to deliver to Binkie Beaumont? He had never been the sort of writer to tolerate distractions.
This morning, he had to drive to Manhattan to confer with Lloyd Garrison. Before he left, however, he and Marilyn had little choice but to give reporters a photo opportunity. Marilyn knew that the press, always fickle, must be kept on their side. America’s sympathy was every bit as important to getting that passport as anything Arthur’s lawyers could say or do. Whatever serious matters he had to attend to later in the day, right now it was essential that Miller play the cuddly, nervous bridegroom.
Marilyn put on a pair of blue jeans, a sleeveless, button-front, white blouse, and moccasins. Miller wore dark trousers and a white shirt open at the collar. As they emerged into the bright sunlight, Marilyn, wearing dark glasses, threw her arms around Arthur’s waist. Without high heels, Marilyn stood five feet five and a half inches; the top of her head reached Miller’s shoulder. He had to crane his long, leathery neck to nuzzle her tousled hair.
“It won’t be for several days at least,” Marilyn told the adoring crowd before she went back inside.
“There’ll be no wedding this week,” Miller added as he prepared to drive off. “I can’t say yet when.”
Rather than face more questions, Marilyn remained in an upstairs bedroom. While the children played outside, Augusta Miller announced that Marilyn was “badly run down” and needed rest. Meanwhile, several reporters found their way to Hodge’s general store in Roxbury center. Residents picked up their mail there, sipped coffee, and chewed the fat. They were said to be the kind of people who looked at an outsider twice before saying hello. The strangers didn’t exactly get a warm welcome. There was a good deal of upset about the invasion.
One Hodge’s regular who failed to show up on Monday was old Ed Dillingham. The crusty ninety-four-year-old asked a neighbor to pick up his mail, declaring, “I’m saving all my strength for Marilyn!”
Miller had a great deal to do that afternoon at the Madison Avenue office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison. Joe Rauh, in Washington, had been greatly disturbed by false press reports that
Miller was withholding an affidavit stating that he was not then and never had been a Communist Party member. The State Department would not consider issuing a passport without the affidavit.
Rauh had prepared a draft over the weekend and gotten it off to Lloyd Garrison for Miller to review and sign. He asked Miller to draft a supplementary affidavit consisting of passages from his literary work and interviews that indicated a belief in democracy. Rauh was especially eager for the State Department to see a 1954 interview with the Icelandic newspaper
Morgungladid
, in which Miller protested against “the tyrannical suppressions of liberty in Russia.” In the light of Francis Walter’s alarming statements on Friday, Rauh also wanted to move quickly to avert the possibility of Miller’s being cited for contempt of Congress. HUAC had shied away from recommending a contempt citation against Paul Robeson; the committee feared he’d use contempt proceedings as a platform for more spotlight-grabbing histrionics. But the polite, soft-spoken, intellectual Arthur Miller was another story.