Authors: Barbara Leaming
Garrison had written a letter to Chairman Walter requesting ten days to prepare a memorandum on precedents for not citing Arthur Miller for contempt. Miller reviewed the letter. His lawyers wanted to be sure that Walter received it before HUAC met in executive session on Wednesday morning. Otherwise, the committee might very well recommend a contempt citation. If the House voted to proceed, the Justice Department would launch an investigation with an eye to indicting Miller. So there was a good deal of nervousness in Miller’s camp in anticipation of the moment when Walter read Garrison’s letter.
And there was anxiety about Miller’s four-family party line in rural Connecticut. When Walter reacted, Rauh and Garrison wanted to be able to confer with their client immediately without fear that others might be listening in. The presence of all those journalists in Roxbury meant that the details of the lawyers’ telephone conversations could find their way into the next day’s newspapers. The last thing Miller needed on Wednesday was a bunch of sharp-eared reporters hanging out at Hodge’s general store.
On Tuesday, on discovering the press still camped out at Gold Mine and Old Tophet, Miller emerged from the house to propose a deal. Doctors had ordered Marilyn to get some rest. She needed to be able to sun herself without fear of being photographed through the hedges.
Obviously the reporters hesitated to budge lest they miss the wedding. Miller promised that the ceremony would not take place before Saturday. If they all returned to the city and left Marilyn alone, he vowed to “bare all”—whatever that might mean—at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
“I have always kept my word,” the playwright declared, “and I will in this instance.”
An hour later the reporters had dispersed. Though they may have assumed that Marilyn was lazily sunning herself, in fact the household was bursting with tension as she, Miller, and his parents awaited the news from Washington. If the committee recommended a contempt citation, the State Department was most unlikely to give Miller a passport. For many months to come, he might be required to devote time, energy, and money to his defense. Marilyn would have to go to England alone.
While the committee deliberated, Arthur’s cousin Morty showed up at the house and collected two vials of blood, which would have to be tested before they could apply for a marriage license. They were to be married on Sunday, July 1 at the home of Miller’s agent, Kay Brown, in South Salem, New York, just over the state border. Rabbi Robert Goldberg of New Haven, a prominent civil libertarian, agreed to perform the ceremony.
The result of the HUAC executive session on Wednesday was not what anyone in Miller’s camp had anticipated. Initially, the news seemed to be good. HUAC had voted unanimously to wait ten days before deciding on a contempt citation, as Garrison had requested. But the reason they gave was not to allow Garrison to research precedents for not holding Miller in contempt. Instead, Miller was allowed ten days in which to change his mind about naming names. He had until July 7, six days before the scheduled departure for England.
As Arthur and Marilyn drove down to South Salem for a marriage license on Friday morning, they were under a good deal of pressure. By the time they returned, the dusty intersection of Old Tophet and Gold Mine was already clogged with parked cars. Reporters had begun to assemble in anticipation of the statement Miller had promised to make this afternoon. There were many new faces. Meanwhile, Morty and his wife, Florence, invited Marilyn, Arthur, his parents and children to lunch. In their absence, as many as four hundred journalists gathered outside Miller’s farmhouse in the rapidly escalating heat.
Mara Scherbatoff, New York bureau chief for
Paris-Match
, arrived with a photographer named Paul Slade. His eighteen-year-old brother Ira had driven them up from the city. When there was no sign of Marilyn Monroe at the house, Scherbatoff made some inquiries and decided to drive to Morty’s house. Paul Slade remained to set up his equipment on the grass with other photographers. The sunlight was punishing. The journalists’ clothes grew damp.
Morty Miller’s house was about a mile and a half away. Ira Slade and Scherbatoff parked outside and waited. Shortly before 1 p.m., Marilyn, Arthur and his cousin left in a station wagon. Morty drove quickly; he knew the winding dirt road well. The New York teenager took off after them. Gold Mine was badly rutted and the ride was a bumpy one. About three quarters of a mile from the crossroads, Slade took a sharp, difficult turn. Residents knew to slow down, but the kid proceeded at top speed. He lost control and the car flew off the shoulder into an oak tree. The reporters at Arthur’s house, including Slade’s brother, were startled by the sound of the impact.
Morty hit the brakes. He, Arthur, and Marilyn raced back on foot. The sight was horrifying. Both Scherbatoff and Slade were still inside the gnarled wreckage. The boy was crumpled behind the steering wheel. Scherbatoff, in the passenger’s seat, had been hurled partway through the windshield. Her face was sliced open from the middle of her lip to her forehead. Teeth were missing. Her chest was crushed, her legs broken. Blood gushed from a severed artery in her throat. She was crying softly.
Marilyn helped to dislodge Scherbatoff, placing her on the ground beside the open car door. Arthur pulled the boy out. His injuries were considerably less serious. Meanwhile, Paul Slade had rushed to the scene. He hovered over Scherbatoff, stemming the flow of blood by pressing a finger on the exposed artery.
Marilyn and the Millers sped to Arthur’s. Arthur, the first out of the car, dashed into the house. Morty, thin and bald with sunglasses and black sneakers, followed with Marilyn. She appeared to be traumatized, her white blouse flecked with blood.
“There’s been a very bad accident up there,” she was saying. “A girl has been terribly hurt. It’s awful.” Morty added that Arthur was calling the hospital right now.
The nearest hospital was in New Milford. Miller, told there wouldn’t be an ambulance for two hours, grew frenzied. He notified the operator that the girl on the road was Marilyn Monroe and that the story would be front-page news tomorrow. That sped things up.
Marilyn, on automatic pilot, went upstairs to prepare for the press conference. It seems never to have occurred to her to cancel. She changed into a mustard green blouse and a black linen skirt. Despite the heat, Miller pulled a navy V-neck sweater over his white shirt. He puffed on a cigarette. He clenched his jaw.
Thirty minutes later, Marilyn was ready. After a lifetime of playing the happy girl, she was expert at masking her emotions. But in this instance, the disjunction seemed weird and disturbing. Suddenly, she was all smiles and laughter. There was not a trace of the very real upset people had witnessed only half an hour ago. Milton Greene, who had driven over from Weston, introduced the couple. As Marilyn and Arthur took their places under a maple tree behind the house, an ambulance siren could be heard in the distance.
Greene notified the photographers that they had twenty minutes to get what they needed. Marilyn, as though in a trance, hugged and cuddled Miller for the cameras. She kissed his forehead. She held his waist. She rubbed up against his back. Miller, clearly, was barely going through the motions. During the question-and-answer period, he was testy with reporters for the first time since appearing before HUAC.
“I’m not going to tell you where and when we’re going to get married,” he said. “If the press do not leave me alone, we will leave here for parts unknown.”
After the reporters left, word came from New Milford Hospital that Scherbatoff had died on the operating table. Marilyn, distraught, had to be convinced that the woman’s death was not somehow her fault. Paula Strasberg, in New York, called the accident a bad omen.
Miller had had enough. Eager “to stop all the publicity,” he decided to get married immediately. It was a way of seizing control, the situation having gotten monstrously out of hand. Apparently in the belief that once the ceremony was over the media circus would end, he arranged for them to be married that evening at the Westchester County Court House in White Plains, New York. Judge Seymour Robinowitz promised to tell no one, not even his wife. Miller had ordered a ring from
Cartier’s but it wasn’t ready, so he borrowed Augusta’s wedding band for the ceremony. Marilyn changed into a short-sleeved sweater. Arthur wore a blue blazer over his V-neck sweater and white shirt.
Judge Robinowitz pronounced Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe man and wife at 7:21 p.m. A bottle of champagne was produced, the exhausted couple toasting each other in front of a shelf of law books in the judge’s chambers. Marilyn looked particularly wan.
“I’m glad it’s over,” said Miller. “Now the world can go back to what it was doing.”
Later, one of Marilyn’s publicists heard about Arthur’s comment and said wryly, “He doesn’t realize that this is only the beginning.”
News of the civil ceremony meant that the press were caught off guard when Arthur and Marilyn went ahead with their plans for a religious ceremony. On the afternoon of Sunday, July 1, family and friends waited on the flagstone terrace at Kay Brown’s white farmhouse while the bride and groom drove down from Roxbury. There were Arthur’s parents and children. There were his brother Kermit, sister Joan, cousin Morty and their spouses. There were the Lee Strasbergs, the Milton Greenes, and the Norman Rostens. Because of the intense heat, the men removed their jackets. Long tables with white cloths and folding chairs had been set up beneath a large picture window. As usual, Marilyn was late.
Finally, the bride and groom arrived. Marilyn, in blue jeans, was rushed to a tiny bedroom upstairs, where the matron of honor, Hedda Rosten, helped her change into a beige chiffon wedding dress. (Hedda had been enlisted to accompany Marilyn to England as her personal assistant.) Meanwhile, Rabbi Goldberg and the guests assembled near the living-room fireplace.
Milton Greene led Marilyn out of the bedroom and presented her arm to Lee Strasberg, never a man who touched or allowed himself to be touched with ease. It meant everything to Marilyn that Strasberg had agreed to act as her surrogate father today; he gave the bride away. Paula, suicidal and half-mad, was, as Miller recognized, a mother figure to Marilyn.
The ceremony took ten minutes. Marilyn lifted her gossamer veil to sip red wine. She said “I do” in a soft, tremulous voice. Miller crushed the glass underfoot and the room erupted with cries of “Mazel tov!”
If there had ever been a moment of real happiness in Marilyn’s life, this was it. Never as a child had Marilyn dared to imagine that she could feel about herself as she felt that warm June day as she danced in the sunlight with her new husband. In Arthur, Marilyn seemed at last to have found a voice strong enough to counter the lifelong echoes of Gladys telling her she was not worthy to go on living. As Marilyn snuggled in Arthur’s arms in front of the wedding guests, she appeared to accept his verdict that she deserved to be loved.
For all of her happiness, Marilyn remained sick at heart about Mara Scherbatoff’s death. She was desperately worried about Arthur’s problems with HUAC and the State Department, and she grew feverish as July 13, her departure date, approached. But with Miller and Strasberg in her corner, it seemed as if Marilyn was going to be all right.
The day after he gave the bride away, Lee Strasberg appeared unexpectedly at Milton Greene’s office. Greene, at work on last-minute production details, was scheduled to leave on the 10th. Strasberg announced that if Greene wanted the film to proceed, he had to pay Paula $2,500 a week excluding expenses. The salary was more than anyone but Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier were to receive. As an alternative, Strasberg proposed that Marilyn Monroe Productions give him a percentage of the film in exchange for Paula’s services.
From first to last, Strasberg was chillingly mercenary. For many years, he had failed to earn the kind of money that he and Paula believed he was worth. Paula never tired of haggling with Cheryl Crawford over Lee’s Actors Studio salary. She never tired of pushing Lee. “If not for her,” Clifford Odets once remarked, “Lee would be one of the little old scholars who shuffle around the streets with books under their arms.” In Marilyn Monroe, Lee and Paula saw the solution to their financial woes.
Lee insisted that unless his demands were met, he’d refuse to let Paula go to England. That, of course, may very well have been Paula speaking through him. She played the good cop to her husband’s bad cop. Pointing out that Marilyn was emotionally fragile, Lee predicted she would be unable to do the picture without Paula. That Strasberg was exploiting Marilyn’s vulnerability—that she was already under huge pressure, and that his last-minute threat might precipitate a crisis—seems not to have bothered him at all.
Strasberg also got in a few gibes at the director. He insisted that
Laurence Olivier, who despised the Method and the Actors Studio, and had a particularly low opinion of Strasberg himself, was all wrong for Marilyn. Strasberg urged that George Cukor be hired instead. Cukor, it should be pointed out, was unlikely to have accepted. The Oliviers’ friendship was one of Cukor’s prized possessions, and he would never have done anything to jeopardize it. Strasberg has to have known that, at this point, there was little likelihood of Olivier’s being replaced by anyone. Rather, Strasberg’s objective seems to have been to sabotage Marilyn’s confidence in Olivier before she reached England.
Why would Strasberg want to undermine Olivier? What interest would he have in setting up Marilyn’s working relationship with Olivier to fail? Strasberg seems to have been afraid that if Marilyn gave a fine performance in
The Sleeping Prince
, Olivier, not Strasberg himself, would get the credit for her transformation. And from the moment Strasberg started working with Marilyn, that transformation was to have been his miracle, his brilliant achievement. Strasberg was prepared to destroy a film that meant everything to Marilyn if that would prevent Olivier from getting the credit Strasberg wanted for himself.