Marilyn Monroe (59 page)

For weeks, Buddy Adler had been criticizing her appearance. He had complained about her weight. He had complained about her
makeup. He had complained about her hair. Suddenly, Twentieth sent word to Marilyn that Mr. Adler, Mr. Wald, Mr. Cukor, and Mr. Schreiber all believed she looked fine. Nobody intended to utter another peep about her looks. The studio was concerned with one thing only—getting the picture made.

Eventually, Chasin reached Arthur by phone. No sooner had he walked in the door of the bungalow than he was swept up in Marilyn’s problems again. Chasin, relating the situation to Arthur, pointed out that there was no similarity between Marilyn and the other actress. Marilyn’s own agent now was insisting that she was trying to make an issue out of a trivial matter. He warned that Cukor was ready to throw in the towel. He suggested in strong terms that Marilyn would be wise to get on with it and finish
Let’s Make Love.

Twentieth wanted Cukor to go more quickly. And he would have been happy to do so, except that he was worried about the effect of pushing Marilyn. Cukor was an old hand at working with drunks and crazies. He had directed John Barrymore, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, and Judy Garland. He very much wanted to keep Twentieth happy. After the traumatic experience of having been dismissed from
Gone with the Wind
, he had gone out of his way to please studio executives. At the same time, he certainly didn’t want to trigger a paranoid episode in his leading lady.

Cukor feared that might happen when a production executive visited the set on March 2. Marilyn had not yet arrived that morning, when Sid Rogell had a chat with Cukor. Rogell complained that Cukor was over-covering. He protested that the director was making far too many takes, and criticized him for repeatedly giving in to Marilyn. Instead of worrying about Rogell’s objections, Cukor seemed vastly more concerned that Marilyn would discover the men in conversation. She was likely to assume that Cukor and Rogell were plotting against her.

As it happened, the discussion had been pointless anyway. The Screen Actors Guild went on strike at the end of the week. On March 4, the cameras on
Let’s Make Love
recorded their last scene. Three days later, production was officially suspended for the rest of the strike. After all the delays, this latest complication left everyone concerned completely up a creek. Only recently, Wald had been hoping that he would have
Let’s Make Love
in the can by April 13. If the strike dragged on—and there were indications that it might—there was no telling when they would finish.

Yves Montand was desperate to finish in order to get to Japan in time to keep his concert commitments. Arthur needed to get Marilyn out of this film and on to
The Misfits.
Cukor was in a state. He had shot only seventy-four pages of a 150-page script. During the strike, he put in frequent appearances at the studio. He tried to get ahead on the editing. He did what he could to move things along. But his efforts were in vain; he could accomplish little without actors. Finally, he consoled himself for the shutdown by ordering a new Rolls Royce, proof that at least he was being well paid for his headaches.

It looked as if it would be a considerable time before the strike was settled, so Arthur and Marilyn decided to fly back to New York for the duration. Though she had been seeing Dr. Greenson regularly, back in New York she would be able to see Dr. Kris, and perhaps regain some sort of balance during the break from work. Arthur needed to finish the third draft of
The Misfits
, which still had to be submitted to United Artists for final approval. The Montands would remain in Los Angeles. Before Marilyn could leave, however, she had to appear the following evening, Tuesday, March 8, at the Golden Globe Awards. Though she didn’t feel it was a proper compensation for her failure to be nominated for an Oscar, the Foreign Press had nominated her for
Some Like It Hot
as Best Actress in a comedy. Marilyn had promised to attend the ceremonies.

Sam Shaw was then in Los Angeles to photograph John Wayne. He had just checked in at the Chateau Marmont that Tuesday evening when he got a call from Marilyn, asking him to come to the Beverly Hills Hotel right away. He had no idea what she wanted. Not long afterward, Shaw walked into the living room of Marilyn’s bungalow. There were three people sitting in the room—in total silence. Montand and Signoret sat in one corner as though waiting patiently for someone to arrive. On the other side of the room sat Arthur.

Since his return from Ireland on February 27, Arthur had worked ceaselessly as he tried to complete a new draft of
The Misfits
which incorporated his discussions with Huston. Even now, he was still not quite finished, and he knew that there could be additional weeks of delay on
Let’s Make Love
because of the strike. He had a look of total distraction, as if he were off in some other world with his screenplay. He was bedraggled and unshaven. On the table in front of him was a plate with a huge steak, recently delivered by room service. Arthur stared at the plate,
methodically cutting off a piece of meat. He lifted the fork to his mouth, chewed, then cut another piece. Meanwhile, no one spoke until suddenly Marilyn could be heard calling cheerily, “Sam Spade, come in here!”

Shaw entered the bedroom. There he discovered an equally silent and nearly catatonic Whitey Snyder. Marilyn’s makeup man sat on a bench in front of a table with a mirror and many little makeup jars. But there was still no sign of Marilyn.

Then she called out again: “In here!”

Shaw entered the bathroom. Marilyn, in the bath tub, was “encased in ice cubes.” There was no water in the tub, only ice.

Shaw and Marilyn had been friends for years, and he was rarely surprised by anything she did. He sat down on the edge of the tub as if there were nothing odd about his having just walked through a silent cast of characters to be greeted by a naked movie star in a bath of ice. Marilyn, by then having passed into full character in anticipation of the evening ahead, offered a deadpan and sincere explanation: “The ice cubes will keep my body up and firm!” Sam responded in kind, pointing out that Katharine Dunham used much the same technique. Before going on stage, the dancer always put her feet in a bucket of ice.

The two friends talked for a while until finally Marilyn stood up out of the ice. Sam, scrutinizing her naked body, declared approvingly that the ice had done its work. Soon they moved into the bedroom, Sam continuing to chat with Marilyn as she was dressed and made up. Whitey painted her face. Signoret was called in to fiddle with Marilyn’s snug bodice to be certain her breasts did not unexpectedly pop out.

By this time, a publicist was waiting in the living room. As Marilyn entered, Arthur, who in all this time seemed not to have said a word, rose silently from his dinner. He picked up the long train of Marilyn’s gown, dutifully following her out to a chauffeur-driven car. It was an unforgettable image—the great playwright carrying Marilyn’s train—one that reminded Shaw of nothing so much as Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich in
The Blue Angel.

Marilyn, evidently, had worn them all down. Yet that night at the Golden Globes, no one would ever have guessed that she was anything but the delightful, enchanting character that Billy Wilder had captured on film one last time. When Marilyn won the award, it was richly
deserved—as well as a poignant reminder of what might have been, and of how truly sad this whole thing had become. By the next morning, the fairy-tale princess had become the nervous, despondent Marilyn again.

FIFTEEN

O
n March 24, 1960, Billy Wilder and his wife Audrey drove up Charlie Feldman’s driveway in Coldwater Canyon. So did the Gary Coopers and the Irving Lazars. Tony Curtis put in an appearance. Warren Beatty arrived with Joan Collins. Beatty, touted as the next James Dean, was about to be directed by Elia Kazan in
Splendor in the Grass.
Kazan, though on the guest list, was not in town yet on account of the Screen Actors Guild strike. Had he attended, there might have been some awkwardness with Simone Signoret. Disdainful of Kazan’s politics, Signoret had refused to consider being directed by him in an adaptation of Colette’s
Chéri.

Charlie Feldman would soon be fifty-six. Though he still kept a black book, he was no longer preoccupied with having a new girl every night. He was then involved with Capucine, a twenty-seven-year-old French model who had come to Hollywood with the hope of becoming a star. When the question of acting lessons arose, Feldman knew just the woman for the job. Natasha Lytess was hired to do for Capucine what she had once done for Marilyn.

These days, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret were often to be seen at Feldman’s. Twentieth paid their expenses during the strike. In the aftermath of her Academy Award nomination, this was very much Signoret’s moment. She quickly became a beloved figure in Hollywood. She was smart, witty, sexy, self-assured. She wasn’t obsessed with aging. She had no particular interest in stardom. She had a terrific marriage—or at least she seemed to.

Montand, who wore an identical wedding ring, claimed not to be
upset about playing second fiddle to his wife. Tonight, his sole disappointment was that Frank Sinatra had sent regrets. Montand was eager for Sinatra to do a guest spot in
Let’s Make Love.
He hoped to make the pitch himself, Sinatra having already said no to Jerry Wald. Montand had asked that Sinatra be invited to this evening’s party in honor of the French designer Hubert Givenchy.

On April 4, Simone Signoret was named Best Actress at the Academy Awards ceremony at the Pantages Theater, ahead of Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, and Doris Day. It was an extraordinary achievement for a French actress in a small English film. Signoret believed that her Oscar had less to do with her performance than with Hollywood’s need to prove to itself that McCarthyism was a thing of the past. Five days later, she returned to France. She left calmly, with every reason to anticipate being separated from her husband for no more than a month.
Let’s Make Love
was about to resume production, the strike having been settled on April 8. Montand’s Japanese concert tour was scheduled to begin in May.

Signoret also had every reason to expect that Marilyn would not be alone in Los Angeles. Arthur had accomplished most of what he had gone to New York to do. He had completed a fresh draft of
The Misfits
, and Frank Taylor reported to Huston that the script was substantially improved, down to a running time of two hours and twenty minutes. That was still long, but Miller hoped to cut a bit more in the final third. He continued to have problems with the end. Nonetheless, the script was almost ready to be sent over to United Artists. If all went well, Huston planned to start filming on June 13.

Marilyn returned to Los Angeles on April 11. Arthur accompanied her on the flight from New York. The couple again checked into a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Montand was still in residence as well, but this time he was alone.

The day after her return, Marilyn reported for rehearsals. Then, on April 13, she stepped before the cameras again. Immediately, the pace of filming slowed. Montand tried to postpone his Japanese tour, but the promoters declined; they also refused Spyros Skouras’s offer to buy out Montand’s contract. Jerry Wald, hoping to expedite matters, urged Cukor not to shoot so many closeups. The director explained that it was hard to get a decent closeup of Marilyn anymore. Evidently, he was
unaware that Adler and other studio executives had ceased to be particularly concerned with her appearance. Cukor, choosing his words, said Marilyn did not “look her best” in profile. She had gained a good deal of weight during the strike. He had to stage scenes in a way that permitted him to shoot her favorably. That took time.

It did not help that Marilyn almost never put in a full day. She tended to give Cukor four hours at most. Lew Schreiber summoned George Chasin, imploring the agent to explain the facts of life to her. If Marilyn didn’t hurry up, she would never get to make
The Misfits.
To the perplexity of studio executives, the argument seemed to impress her not at all. And Cukor was more aware than anyone that if he were to show the slightest impatience no matter how late Marilyn arrived or how many takes she required, she was likely to shatter into a million pieces and be completely useless to him.