Marilyn Monroe (54 page)

Arthur, having observed Marilyn at Charlie Feldman’s eight years previously, was well aware of her past on the Hollywood party circuit. But by his own account, something prevented him from acknowledging that past as hers. That was precisely what Marilyn had objected to in his screenplay-in-progress. If Arthur couldn’t accept who she really was, she feared she was being rejected.

As it often did, her fear erupted in cruelty and anger. She lashed out at Arthur. She fought with him on the set. She taunted him with her sexual past. She French-kissed Tony Curtis in an effort to make her husband jealous. In despair that Arthur was ashamed of her, she pretended not to care. She seemed intent on provoking him. When Marilyn introduced him to the gregarious James Bacon, she cooed suggestively, “Jim and I used to be real close.” It was as though she and Bacon were in on a joke that the stiff, moody husband didn’t quite get.

Miller’s failure to react strongly, as Joe DiMaggio would have done, made it possible for Marilyn to suspect his motives. He had permitted Kermit Bloomgarden to announce a new stage play. The date of the premiere was fast approaching, yet
After the Fall
remained unfinished. His screenplay, on the other hand, was ready to go. John Huston would soon be in America to make plans. Was that why Arthur dutifully tagged along, carrying Marilyn’s purse and makeup case? Did he just want to be sure she was available for
The Misfits?

Late in the production, Miller approached Wilder on the set. Telling him in confidence that his wife was pregnant, he implored Wilder to go easy with her, and asked him to consider releasing Marilyn at 4:30 each day. Wilder wasn’t amused.

“Look, Arthur, it is now four o’clock,” he snapped. “I still don’t have a take. She didn’t come on the set till half past eleven. She wasn’t ready to
work until one. I tell you this, Arthur, you get her here at nine, ready to work and I’ll let her go—no, not at four-thirty—I’ll let her go at noon.”

Marilyn, for her part, seemed at once to long for and to dread motherhood. She wanted to protect her baby even as she put it in jeopardy. She worried about Billy Wilder’s pushing her too hard. She did not want to lose this child. Yet she disregarded a gynecologist’s warning that her steady intake of booze and barbiturates could kill the child. She was told in no uncertain terms that due to the build-up of barbiturates in her system, a single drink could trigger a miscarriage. Yet the red thermos remained a fixture on the set. And though Marilyn insisted that she wanted a baby more than anything, she continued to take drugs. On one occasion, she gobbled four whole Amytal sleeping tablets—the equivalent of eight regular-sized tablets—on an empty stomach, and washed the pills down with sherry. In a letter to Norman Rosten, Marilyn worried she had “killed” her child.

Marilyn finished
Some Like It Hot
on November 7. Twelve hours later, it looked as though she were about to miscarry. Weeping “I don’t want to lose my baby again,” she was rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. As it happened, there was no miscarriage. Doctors released her with a warning to stop the pills and the drinking. The baby, she was informed, was in grave danger. After a week of bed rest at the Bel Air Hotel, Marilyn was taken by ambulance to the airport for the flight home. On East 57th Street, there was a gift waiting for her. Next to the framed photograph of Gladys that adorned her night table, she discovered a miniature cradle with a toy baby. It was a present from her maid. The sight caused Marilyn to burst into tears of gratitude.

Suddenly, she appeared to wake up and attempt to control herself. She stopped drinking. She took no more drugs. Convinced that the baby would be a girl, Marilyn insisted repeatedly that she did not want to harm her daughter. Yet, as the doctors in California had warned, it might already be too late. At any time, the barbiturates in Marilyn’s system might end the baby’s life. Fearful that any exertion might cause her to miscarry, Marilyn remained in bed, nervously playing with the miniature cradle which she had placed on the pillow beside her.

Soon after the Millers returned, Kermit Bloomgarden delayed the December 18 Broadway premiere until February or March 1959, when he hoped Miller would be finished. Under intense pressure to work on his play, Arthur focused on a short story. On December 3, he completed a
first draft. “I Don’t Need You Anymore” depicted a small boy’s bitter resentment of his mother’s pregnancy.

The pregnancy theme was also very much on the minds of Twentieth Century–Fox executives, rumors of Marilyn’s condition having reached the studio. Now that Marilyn had completed
Some Like It Hot
, Twentieth had until April 14, 1959 to summon her for a film. But if the rumors were true, the studio hoped to be granted an extension. There was a lot of nervous debate about how best to approach Marilyn without triggering one of her rages.

Finally, on December 2, Frank Ferguson wrote to inquire whether she was pregnant. If so, he notified Marilyn that Twentieth wanted to extend the period during which it was obligated to use her. Unmentioned was the fact that Skouras and his colleagues did not yet have a project ready for their biggest star. The studio, having fumbled badly, would by no means be upset to delay the second of Marilyn’s four films. At the same time, Twentieth did not want to repeat past mistakes. No one wanted to pay Marilyn, as Skouras had done, for another film she failed to make. And certainly no one wanted to forfeit a Marilyn Monroe picture. Twentieth was eager to hear from her as soon as possible.

Marilyn sent the letter on to her attorneys—who also represented Miller—but they were clearly in no hurry to reply on her behalf. Miller did not yet know when Huston would be available to film
The Misfits.
The director was about to go to Los Angeles to prepare
The Unforgiven
, which was to be shot in Mexico in January. But first, he planned to meet Miller in New York.
The Misfits
would not necessarily be Huston’s next project, Sartre having recently delivered a ninety-five-page treatment for
Freud.
Huston anticipated being busy with
The Unforgiven
until about May. If Marilyn gave birth in June, he would probably go on to direct
Freud
while she did a picture for Twentieth. But the fact remained that doctors had warned Marilyn she might miscarry. After Ferguson’s letter, her attorneys were silent for two weeks.

Meanwhile, Huston arrived on Sunday, December 14. He and Miller met for the first time. Contrary to anything he had said previously, Huston indicated that he expected a rewrite. As far as Huston was concerned, the screenplay was by no means finished. Now there were two unfinished projects on Arthur’s desk. Now there were two men—Huston and Bloomgarden—waiting for pages.

As Arthur worked in his study, he heard Marilyn scream from the bedroom. The pain, mental and physical, was excruciating. Frenzied, she wept that she was going to lose the baby. Arthur and an assistant accompanied her in an ambulance to the Polyclinic Hospital. That night, Miller returned to the apartment alone.

In the past, when Marilyn lost a baby, she had blamed fate. She had blamed her body. She had blamed some defect within. But this time was different. This time, she held herself responsible. She embraced her own guilt. She had been warned to give up barbiturates and alcohol, she knew that her addictions could harm the baby. And she had ignored those warnings until it was too late.

For a long time, Marilyn had feared that one day she would become like her mother. Many years previously, Gladys had tried to smother Norma Jeane in her crib—or at least, Marilyn believed she had. Now, Marilyn had succeeded where Gladys had failed. She was convinced she had killed her own daughter. When Marilyn came home, she spotted the miniature cradle next to Gladys’s picture on her night table and threw it on the floor. She began to weep uncontrollably.

On December 17, the day the miscarriage was announced to the press, the Fox legal department finally heard from Marilyn’s attorneys. In reply to Frank Ferguson’s December 2 letter, Robert H. Montgomery, Jr. notified the studio that Marilyn Monroe had completed
Some Like It Hot
and was now “ready, willing, and able” to begin work on her next picture for Twentieth.

FOURTEEN

T
he ball was in Twentieth’s court. Studio executives had until April 14 to put Marilyn in a picture. By the terms of her amended contract, that was the latest possible start date. On January 20, 1959, Frank Ferguson and Lew Schreiber reviewed Marilyn’s list of approved directors. The studio attorney reminded Schreiber that they could not notify Marilyn to report to work until they had a commitment from one of the sixteen men on her list.

Billy Wilder was on the list, but after
Some Like It Hot
he never wanted to work with Marilyn again. Joshua Logan was on the list, but Marilyn had been furious with him since her big scene in
Bus Stop
was cut. John Huston was on the list, but his dance card was filled. Lee Strasberg was on the list, but he had never directed a picture.

One name, however, presented distinct possibilities. Elia Kazan remained under contract to Twentieth. In 1950, Lew Schreiber had been sent to New York by Darryl Zanuck to urge the board to approve the largest salary the corporation had ever given a director. Four years later, though Zanuck refused Kazan’s request to call off the contract, the production chief did not succeed in getting a fourth picture. Zanuck, confident that his personal relationship with Kazan would enable him to prevail, pleaded with Skouras not to intervene. Since that time, however, Zanuck had quit Twentieth. And the matter of Kazan’s contract had been left unresolved.

Twentieth, eager to come up with a picture for Marilyn, seized on a pet project of Kazan’s. It was a script about the Tennessee Valley Authority, based on the novels
Mud on the Stars
by William Bradford
Huie and
Dunbar’s Cove
by Borden Deal. In
Time and Tide
, Twentieth saw a vehicle for Marilyn. That Kazan and Miller, once close, had been at odds for seven years seemed to concern the studio not at all.

Before a deal could be put together, Kazan had to accept officially. Only then could Twentieth order Marilyn to work. On February 19, Frank Ferguson advised Lew Schreiber that in order to be certain there was time to give Marilyn thirty days’ notice, they must notify Kazan no later than the 25th.

Kazan was then in New York directing Tennessee Williams’s
Sweet Bird of Youth
, produced by Cheryl Crawford, which was set to open on Broadway on March 10. Kazan, accompanied by Abe Lastfogel, met with Skouras and officially agreed to direct
Time and Tide.
Twentieth gave him a terrific deal. When he completed the picture, he would be relieved of the obligation to direct the fifth and sixth films in his 1950 contract.

On March 4, Kazan wired production chief Buddy Adler promising to report no later than April 1 for conferences with Calder Willingham, who was being put to work on the script. Immediately Lew Schreiber directed the studio attorney to draft a letter informing Marilyn that she was officially assigned to
Time and Tide
, to be directed by Elia Kazan. Marilyn was to report on April 14. Suddenly, at a moment when Arthur was having trouble revising
The Misfits
, it looked as though Marilyn was going to appear in Kazan’s picture first. This state of affairs recalled the strange, awkward situation in 1955 when Marilyn, her love affair with Miller notwithstanding, hoped to go off with Kazan to film
Baby Doll.
This time, however, the fact that Marilyn was Arthur’s wife made things even more complicated and highly charged.

Matters were already tense in the Miller household. Marilyn was in despair after the preview of
Some Like It Hot
on February 5. Arthur, like most of the critics, thought she had been wonderfully comical in the film. “I don’t want to be funny,” Marilyn declared. “Everybody’s going to laugh at me. And not because of my acting. I looked like a fat pig. Those goddamn cocksuckers made me look like a funny fat pig.”

Billy Wilder had scrupulously used only those takes in which Marilyn—not Tony Curtis or Jack Lemmon—was particularly effective. The result was to privilege those moments when she had been at her most brilliant, to enable her to shine. Yet, in her paranoia, Marilyn sincerely believed Wilder had been determined to make her look bad. She
blamed Arthur for having made her appear in the film in the first place. Shrieking that it was his fault, she burst into his study after Wilder joked about her in an interview in the
New York Herald Tribune.