Marilyn Monroe (48 page)

Lush music filled the immense photography studio on Lexington Avenue in the East Forties. Greene was in his element here as he had never been on a film set. As a portrait photographer, he was famous for an ability to put people in the mood. There were caviar sandwiches. The liquor flowed freely. Marilyn, on best behavior, appeared in a floor-length brown dress encrusted with glittering sequins, with a plunging halter top and no back. It was the costume she had worn on December 18 to the premiere of Elia Kazan’s
Baby Doll
, a benefit for the Actors Studio.

Not so long ago it had been Marilyn Monroe, white skirt flying up to her shoulders, whose image loomed over New York City. Now it was Carroll Baker, blonde and sensual, who hovered above Broadway. In an eye-catching billboard, Baby Doll Meighan, lying in a crib, sucked her thumb provocatively. For Marilyn, the image was a painful reminder of a missed opportunity. Baker had the hottest film role around, while Marilyn was about to open in the less-than-exciting
Prince and the Showgirl.

That day in Greene’s studio, Marilyn posed against a black backdrop. She gave the illusion of being filled with desire for Olivier. She parted her moist, crimson lips. She shut her eyes. She threw back her head to permit Larry, in a black silk dressing gown, to nuzzle her bare right shoulder. She compelled him to respond strongly. He closed his eyes, he squeezed Marilyn’s hand, he gripped her waist tightly. The stills session was a huge success, the poster generating more electricity than all of their scenes together in the film combined. Perhaps it would fool the public; but it didn’t fool Marilyn. To her, being sexy was never what
The Sleeping Prince
had been about.

On February 18, 1957, a federal grand jury indicted Arthur Miller on two counts of contempt of Congress. Each count was punishable by up to one year of prison and a $1,000 fine. Joe Rauh and Lloyd Garrison planned to argue that the questions Miller had refused to answer had nothing to do with the hearing’s stated purpose. HUAC was supposed to be investigating passport abuse. Miller, the lawyers insisted, should never have been asked to name names in the first place. Rauh and Garrison
were confident of winning the case. Still, as Garrison told the Attorney General, whatever the outcome the indictment would do Miller irreparable harm.

The Millers had returned to America intent on settling down. To Arthur that meant being able to write. In England, Marilyn’s problems had drained his energies. He was often up half the night. He had revised
A View from the Bridge
in extremely stressful circumstances. Kermit Bloomgarden, eager to have a new play for the fall, expressed the wish that Miller would be able to calm down enough to plunge into his own work.

In England, Marilyn’s belief in her own ability to become a serious actress had been badly shaken, if not destroyed.
The Sleeping Prince
seemed to have killed something in her. She was no longer confident of finding salvation through her work. She no longer felt certain that things were going to change because of her new contract. She’d pinned her hopes on the success of her first independent production, yet in the end the experience had left her feeling utterly defeated.

Marilyn, having lost one dream, was terrified of losing her marriage as well. In New York, she did everything possible to be certain that did not happen. Intent on disproving Arthur’s sense that their life together was worse than it had been before, Marilyn threw herself into creating what she thought of as the ideal life for him. She put her own needs aside. She struggled to be, as one of Miller’s lawyers fondly called her, “Mrs. Arthur.” She would create a perfect home. She would make it possible for her husband to write. She would be at his side throughout his political troubles. And above all, she would give him a baby. Marilyn began treatments at Doctors Hospital in order to allow her to carry a baby to term.

Though she certainly didn’t care to return to work right now, Marilyn owed Twentieth Century–Fox three films on her four-picture deal. In December 1956, the studio had paid the second $75,000 installment for the screen rights to
Horns of the Devil.
The money enabled Marilyn to take some time off, as Miller told Bloomgarden she very much needed to do. Still, the payment was a reminder that her second contract year commenced on December 31. Any time after that, Twentieth had the right to ask her to start a film.

The studio came up with the idea of putting Marilyn in a remake of
The Blue Angel
with Spencer Tracy as the obsessed Professor Unrat.
Marilyn would play the seductive, unscrupulous Lola Lola. Tracy agreed in principle, but there was a scheduling problem because of difficulties in completing
The Old Man and the Sea.
The need to postpone
The Blue Angel
on Tracy’s account played right into Marilyn’s hands.

Meanwhile, she decorated a new apartment at 444 East 57th Street, Arthur having sold the Roxbury farmhouse. She set up a cozy writing room off the living room, and furnished it with a desk, bookshelves, and a sofa. Jack Cardiff’s black-and-white portrait of Marilyn as a windswept Renoir girl, Arthur’s favorite picture of her, adorned the wall. Cardiff had photographed her through a Vaseline-smeared glass. Marilyn tiptoed about the white-carpeted, mirror-filled MGM film set of an apartment solemnly warning the servants not to make noise while Mr. Miller was at work. Arthur told Joe Rauh how pleased he was to be back in the business of writing.

Once he was indicted, however, inevitably the case stole the playwright’s time and sapped his brainpower. That, in part, is what Lloyd Garrison meant when he said that, win or lose, the damage would be irreparable. A good deal of preparation for the trial was required, which of course meant huge legal bills. On March 1, Miller was arraigned before Judge Charles F. McLaughlin in Washington, D.C. He pleaded not guilty and a May trial date was set. He was released in Rauh’s custody until he could post a $1,000 bond.

The waiting period was hardly a tranquil one. Marilyn, eager to turn her affairs over to Arthur and his associates, had gone to war against Milton Greene. In England, Greene had had reason to believe that his days with Marilyn Monroe Productions were numbered. Certainly he had outlived his usefulness. In New York, Marilyn announced that she was severing all ties with him. She accused him of mismanaging her company and said she had expected more of him. She declared that they had been at odds for a year and a half.

Greene, who had once engineered her break with Charlie Feldman, now found himself in Feldman’s position. Like Feldman, Greene had worked hard to advance Marilyn’s career, only to be banished before he could profit. Like Feldman, Greene had become the object of Marilyn’s anger, resentment, and derision. Ironically, at this very moment, Feldman was badgering Marilyn to be repaid the money he had advanced for
Horns of the Devil.

Asked about the breakup and about Marilyn’s unflattering remarks, Greene exercised restraint. “It seems Marilyn doesn’t want to go ahead with the program we planned,” Greene declared. “I’m getting lawyers to represent me. I don’t want to do anything now to hurt her career, but I did devote about a year and a half exclusively to her. I practically gave up photography. You can’t just make a contract with someone and then forget it.”

He wanted $100,000 to end the partnership. The sum was hardly excessive, Greene having financed Marilyn for a year before she signed her new studio contract. Marilyn returned his investment. In one fell swoop, Greene, Irving Stein, and their accountant were removed from the board of Marilyn Monroe Productions. Marilyn replaced them with George Kupchick, George Levine, and Robert H. Montgomery, Jr.—respectively Arthur’s brother-in-law, Arthur’s boyhood friend, and an attorney at the law firm Arthur used in New York.

Marilyn also broke with the psychiatrist Greene had recommended. Margaret Hohenberg was replaced by Dr. Marianne Kris. Dr. Ernst Kris, her recently deceased husband, had been the writing partner of Rudolph Loewenstein, Arthur’s former psychoanalyst. Marianne Kris was the daughter of Sigmund Freud’s great friend Oscar Ries. Freud called her his adopted daughter, and all her life she remained close to his real daughter, Anna. Conveniently, Dr. Kris’s office was in the same Central Park West building where the Strasbergs lived. An elevator carried Marilyn from her psychoanalytical sessions to private acting lessons upstairs.

She continued to take treatments at Doctors Hospital. As Arthur’s trial date approached, Marilyn learned that she was pregnant. Euphoric, she seemed to put out of her thoughts the physician’s warning that she might have an ectopic pregnancy, in which the fertilized ovum develops outside the uterus. It seemed to Olie Rauh, the attorney’s wife, that Marilyn regarded having a baby as the most important thing in her life.

On May 13, the day before the trial, Marilyn accompanied Arthur to Washington, D.C. She insisted on going with him this time. In order to avoid a circus, it was agreed that Marilyn would steer clear of the courthouse. Miller, fearful that Marilyn would be mobbed at a hotel, asked to stay at the Rauhs’ Appleton Street home. Marilyn remained with Olie
during the day while Arthur and Joe were in court. They hoped to keep Marilyn’s presence there a secret for as long as possible.

The Rauhs hadn’t met Marilyn before, but Joe Rauh had talked briefly to her on the phone when Arthur was out. From first to last she had taken an active interest in the case. When the lawyers prepared a public statement about the indictment, Marilyn as well as Arthur had reviewed the text. In Washington, she barraged the Rauhs with questions. At night, she studied transcripts of the proceedings, which were delivered to the house every evening around dinnertime.

During the day, Marilyn would not leave the house in case Arthur called or showed up suddenly. Marilyn was there to support Arthur, and she craved an intense emotional connection. His tendency to close himself off when in crisis made her feel like a rejected wife.

By Miller’s own account, he had difficulty showing weakness to women. Perhaps he inherited that from Isadore Miller, who had always preferred to keep his troubles bottled up inside. As a boy, Arthur had regarded his father’s stoic refusal to disclose bad news as a sign of strength. But Marilyn was frightened by Arthur’s inability to share his troubles with her. Sensing her fear, Arthur found himself apologizing to her for the first time.

On the first day of the trial, Federal District Court overflowed with reporters; it had been rumored that Marilyn Monroe was to appear. During a break, Miller explained her absence to the disappointed press corps. “I think we should keep the issue where it is.” Many fewer journalists attended in the days that followed.

The trial lasted six days. There was no jury, since Judge McLaughlin had determined that the case hinged on a point of law which was strictly for the courts to decide. Rauh argued that the identity of those present at the 1947 Communist writers’ meetings was not pertinent to the topic of passport abuse. Assistant United States Attorney William Hitz contended that it had been necessary to ask Miller for those names in order to assess his credibility. Miller did not testify. He sat silently in a green leather swivel chair at the defense table. But his demeanor differed from what it had been at HUAC. Then Miller had been low-key and respectful. Now he let his anger show. During the testimony, he bent over a legal pad to draw caricatures of the government witnesses. When Richard Arens took the stand, Miller’s dancing pencil
depicted the committee counsel as a scowling vaudeville villain. Sketched in full view of reporters, this appeared to be Miller’s comment on the proceedings.

It was only a matter of time before the press discovered that Marilyn was in town. Soon, the phone at Appleton Street was ringing incessantly. But Marilyn refused to take calls until she had a chance to confer with Arthur. On May 23, the last day of the trial, she talked to reporters on the phone in the morning and met four journalists in the Rauh living room at 2 p.m. Wearing a brown and white knit dress and white gloves, Marilyn, having steadied herself with a glass of sherry, announced that she had come to Washington in the belief that “a wife’s place is with her husband.” Asked what she had been doing for the past few days, Marilyn replied, “Mostly reading all of the time. Just odds and ends from Mr. Rauh’s library. And I’ve been poring over the court records, learning a little about law.” Marilyn’s appearance was most effective. Lillian Hellman later jestingly told Joe Rauh that perhaps during her own troubles with the government, she would have done well to marry Clark Gable.

Nonetheless, Miller was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress. Rauh implored the judge not to send him to jail. Soon afterward, a Supreme Court decision on a related case compelled Judge McLaughlin to reconsider his verdict. He reduced the conviction to one count, fined Miller $500 and gave him a suspended one-month jail sentence. Miller promptly appealed. The case was passed on to the Court of Appeals.

In an intensely hopeful mood, the Millers spent the summer on Long Island. They rented a weatherworn, brown-shingled house overlooking potato fields and horse trails in Amagansett. Norman and Hedda Rosten had a summer retreat in Springs, and the Bloomgardens were also nearby.