Authors: Barbara Leaming
Miller threw himself into the final casting of
A View from the Bridge.
That allowed him to spend much of his time in London. Peter Brook, who had directed Olivier in
Titus Andronicus
, began rehearsals of
View
on September 17. Miller attended, he said, in order to be certain that the line for each character was clear. When the director had the play all blocked out, Miller promised to leave him alone for a few days.
Olivier was annoyed by Miller’s failure to take Marilyn in hand. The director could hardly overlook the fact that she had been well enough to publicize Miller’s play, but not to work on her own film. Marilyn had returned to work seemingly enraged at everyone but Paula and Hedda. In her dressing room that morning, Marilyn spiked her tea with gin and grew furious when Greene tried to weaken it.
The ability to supply drugs seemed to be the only power Greene still had over Marilyn. He gave her uppers to counter the barbiturates she took in large quantities at night. When sleeping pills didn’t work quickly, Marilyn took more, often forgetting how many she had already swallowed. It was a dangerous game. She tended to be groggy the next day, and needed to be jolted awake.
In England, uppers were a different color from those Marilyn was accustomed to, and she angrily accused Greene of giving her the wrong pills. Above all, Marilyn didn’t want spansules, which had a time release. She wanted the speed to kick in immediately. Greene arranged for a doctor in New York to ship Dexamyl in little packages, each containing about a dozen pills. Often the uppers made Marilyn so edgy that she required a tranquilizer during the day. Eventually the vicious circle of uppers and downers left her scarcely able to function.
By this point, Marilyn was convinced that Olivier was trying to destroy her performance. Lee Strasberg, who called collect most nights, encouraged her to believe that Olivier was jealous of her. As far as Marilyn was concerned, Olivier was competing rather than working with her. She sensed he was photographing their scenes to his advantage. Maybe he was. Olivier was known to be vain, declaring on one occasion after seeing William Wyler’s
Wuthering Heights
, “I was so beautiful, I could go down on myself!”
Paula was now openly at odds with Olivier. It wasn’t just his
directing that she criticized; she belittled his acting as well. For all to hear, Paula confidently informed Olivier that his performance was “artificial.” Olivier stifled his rage on the set. He was famous for what Peter O’Toole once called “that gray-eyed myopic stare that can turn you to stone.” It seemed to have no such effect on Paula.
When Olivier awakened at Notley Abbey on the morning of Wednesday, October 3, he knew that he faced an exceedingly long day. Due at the studio by seven, in the evening he was expected to accompany Vivien to London to see the Bolshoi Ballet at Covent Garden. Lady Olivier was in a mood to do and see everything. Binkie Beaumont had taken her to Portofino, but she returned early because she missed her husband. Even though Olivier was working, she wanted to entertain and go out until all hours. She had little sympathy for her husband’s fatigue. She didn’t care about his problems on the film. Smoking and drinking too much, staying up late, playing loud music, Vivien showed signs of having entered the manic phase.
This morning, two pieces of bad news reached Olivier in his dressing room. The first was hardly a surprise. Marilyn planned to stay home today. The second bit of information, however, was entirely unexpected. Lee Strasberg, having arrived in London one day previously, was on his way to Pinewood. From now on, he intended to be present on the set along with Paula to oversee Marilyn’s performance.
Olivier went berserk. He wanted the studio security force to prevent Strasberg from setting foot on the lot. Paula—or “the beast,” as Olivier privately called her—had been bad enough. Under no circumstances was Olivier willing to consider the idea of Lee Strasberg’s participation. Finally, it was Milton Greene who was sent to head off Strasberg at the main gate. At their previous encounter, in July, Strasberg had given a perfectly disgraceful performance. But he’d had the upper hand, and Greene had been forced to pay Paula an exorbitant salary. Strasberg had been tough and aggressive then. He hadn’t been bashful about making threats.
He seemed to be a changed man today. When Greene notified Strasberg that Olivier refused to see him, he hardly put up a fight. He could have insisted. He could have bullied. He could have threatened. He could have complained to Marilyn who, as a full partner in the production, had the authority to demand that he be permitted on the set. Yet Strasberg did none of these things. Instead, he left quietly. Why?
Marilyn, popping pills and drinking heavily, was in dreadful shape. It was one thing to have heard about all this on the phone. It was quite another to have seen for himself, as he had already done. If Strasberg remained, he would be expected to take action rather than to criticize Olivier from afar. Instead of merely pontificating, he would have to produce results. If matters did not improve while Strasberg was there, Marilyn might see how ineffectual he really was.
When Greene went back in to report to Olivier, Strasberg realized that he had no way of getting out of there. In anticipation of a lengthy session with Olivier, he’d sent his car away. Now he had to wait outside the gate for an agonizingly long time until the car returned.
But even Olivier’s insult to Strasberg could not deter Marilyn from her determination to prove her own value to Arthur, as Olivier saw the very next evening. For Arthur’s sake, Marilyn and Olivier temporarily buried the hatchet. On October 11, the Millers, the Oliviers, and the Jack Cardiffs attended the black-tie premiere of
A View from the Bridge
together. Binkie Beaumont, thrilled by the potential for publicity, had rented a Daimler to deliver them to the theater. From Olivier’s point of view, being photographed with Marilyn in public might counter rumors of dissension on the set—rumors that, in the end, could prove damaging at the box office. Whatever Marilyn may have thought, Olivier very much wanted the film to succeed.
The three couples gathered for drinks at Lowndes Cottage in Belgravia. On arriving there, Marilyn went upstairs to change. Arthur busied himself with a platter of raw oysters on the mantelpiece. Olivier and Cardiff were discussing a small Daubigny landscape displayed at the end of the huge drawing room when suddenly they heard Miller emit a resounding whoop.
“Attagirl,” Miller cheered.
Marilyn, wearing an off-the-shoulder, red satin sheath, slowly descended the staircase. Olivier was astonished. Intent on giving Arthur exactly what he needed, she had turned herself into “Marilyn Monroe”—something Olivier had been struggling to get her to do for weeks. Marilyn was doing everything she could to win Arthur’s approval again.
“Why shouldn’t she show off her God-given attributes?” Arthur declared. “Why should she have to dress like her maiden aunt?”
Husband Number Three’s reaction to her dress couldn’t have
been more different from what Joe DiMaggio’s undoubtedly would have been. But Miller had a play opening tonight and Marilyn was certain to attract a good deal of press attention. Miller did not think highly of the English audience. He told Kermit Bloomgarden that the English tended to make hits out of the worst junk. Even when a serious play opened to fine reviews, Miller complained, English theatergoers usually avoided it, preferring the likes of
South Sea Bubble.
So Marilyn’s help was very much welcome.
As the Daimler pulled up in front of the Comedy Theater, fans broke through police lines to get to Marilyn. Critics and audience in evening dress were pushed aside as the crowd fought for a better look. In the stalls, people stared unabashedly at Marilyn, who sat between her husband and Olivier.
Later, when the curtain came down, the Millers, holding hands, took a bow. Though there were a few snide remarks that the applause was more for Marilyn’s red dress than for the play, in fact the premiere was a success. The reviews were excellent and Miller had his first hit in a long time.
“Nobody familiar with
The Crucible
or with Mr. Miller’s recent political troubles could doubt his hatred of informers,” wrote Kenneth Tynan in the
Observer
, “but art, in this instance, tempers hatred with charity. Eddie dies unforgiven, but not unpitied. The curtain falls, as in tragedy it should, on a great unanswered question: for this man what other way was possible?”
When Paula insisted that Marilyn Monroe Productions pay for her to fly to New York for a week to ten days, the demand could have been construed as retaliation for Olivier’s failure to welcome Lee. Hedda Rosten had already gone home in order to be present when her daughter Patricia went back to school. In Paula’s absence, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg flew to London to be with her patient. The very substitution highlighted the peculiar role Paula played in Marilyn’s life. Suddenly, Marilyn and Olivier began to get along much better, suggesting how different things might have been without the influence of the Strasbergs. Soon, Paula called hysterically from America to report that her English work permit had expired and that someone seemed to have influenced the authorities not to allow her to return.
Marilyn, convinced that Laurence Olivier and Milton Greene
were responsible, went into a tailspin. She vowed to walk out if Paula didn’t get a work permit immediately. At this point, Marilyn had no compunction about abandoning the picture. Olivier vehemently denied that he was behind Paula’s problems. So did Greene. Yet no sooner did Olivier intervene than a work permit was issued.
Olivier regarded Paula’s return on October 31 as the final blow. That day he arrived at the studio after Marilyn and her dramatic coach. Informed that Marilyn was waiting, Olivier, utterly dispirited, replied, “Fuck her.” As far as he was concerned,
The Sleeping Prince
was already ruined. All the things that Olivier had hoped Marilyn would provide—money, glamor, an opportunity to feel young and to reinvent himself—were obviously not going to materialize.
Miller, too, believed that he and Marilyn had failed to transform each other’s lives as he’d once hoped. That sense of failure had come with astonishing rapidity. A mere five months had passed since he had divorced Mary. Already, Miller was telling himself that he and Marilyn were worse off than they’d been before. He was tormented by the feeling that somehow they had misled each other.
Probably it was a desire to turn back the clock to a more hopeful time that guided Miller’s thoughts back to Nevada. In the music room at Parkside House, Miller started a short story based on an experience he’d had while waiting to file for divorce and to begin a new life with Marilyn. In Nevada he had spent time with two cowboys who hunted wild horses. “The Misfits,” as the short story would be called, seems to have begun in a wish to eradicate the ghastly nightmare of Miller’s life with Marilyn in England and to start over again.
Miller was at work in the music room when a policeman summoned him to appear at the British Foreign Office immediately. There he was questioned about his plans. The film would soon be finished. Did he intend to return to the United States? As Miller knew, Assistant United States Attorney William Hitz, back on the job, was then contemplating presenting his case for contempt to a grand jury. Joe Rauh was working to avert that by arguing that the questions HUAC had asked Miller had not been relevant to the purpose of the hearing.
Miller, who had just had a success on the London stage, would hardly have been the first American artist to resettle in England during the McCarthy era. Obviously, the U.S. government was eager to know
his—and Marilyn Monroe’s—plans. And the British authorities wanted to avoid being put in an awkward position should Miller be indicted and refuse to return. Miller informed the Foreign Office that he intended to go home.
On November 20, the Oliviers saw the Millers off at the airport, it having been decided that they must all put on a good face in public. Each of their lives had changed dramatically since the last time they were here together. Vivien Leigh had lost her baby and, as it happened, a chance to save her marriage. Laurence Olivier had missed an opportunity for the personal renaissance he’d hoped to achieve before turning fifty. Arthur Miller had realized that life with Marilyn Monroe was going to be unlike anything he had imagined. He had arrived in England believing in the fantasy of “the girl.” He was going home with the knowledge that Marilyn was very different from the sweet, angelic, innocent creature he thought he had married. Marilyn, still reeling from the discovery of Arthur’s notebook, had reason to believe that both her marriage and her first independent film were already failures.
Her suspicions about
The Sleeping Prince
were confirmed several weeks later in New York. Olivier brought a cut to America to show Jack Warner and there was a good deal of nervousness that the picture was intolerably slow and not particularly funny. (The reviews later said much the same thing.) It’s a safe bet that Charlie Feldman, had he bought the rights, would have made sure that
The Sleeping Prince
was filmed as a sharp, sexy, fast-paced, modern comedy. He would have guaranteed that Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe came across as, in Joshua Logan’s words, “the most exciting combination since black and white.”
Warner Bros., with an eye on ticket sales, insisted on changing the title to
The Prince and the Showgirl.
It was the studio’s thinking that Marilyn, the box-office draw, had to be represented in the title. Milton Greene, perhaps realizing too late the sort of the film they should have made, decided to shoot a publicity poster that would show Larry and Marilyn in a steamy embrace. The image, or anything even remotely like it, might appear nowhere in the film, but it wouldn’t hurt to hint that it did. Images of a stiff, stodgy Olivier, with heavy makeup, plastered-down hair, and a monocle, were unlikely to draw people in to movie theaters. When Greene proposed a stills session, Olivier initially declined. He hoped to pass through New York without seeing Marilyn. The idea of
being in a room with her horrified him. But he did very much want the picture to make money. After a bit of prodding, he warily accepted.