Authors: Barbara Leaming
M
arilyn studied the black-and-white contact sheets of
The Misfits
through a watchmaker’s loupe. She wore a white bathrobe and her feet were bare, the nails painted silver. As though the filming itself had not been painful enough, now she had to relive it in excruciating detail. She was particularly distressed by some of the photographs taken when Henri Cartier-Bresson and Inge Morath were on duty. Again and again, Marilyn scratched a red X over the tiny images that showed the Millers together. At the time, she had been intent on hiding the truth that the marriage was finished; now she thought the pictures dishonest. The world would probably think so too, since the Millers’ decision to divorce had been widely reported.
“MILLER WALKS OUT ON MARILYN,” the
New York Daily News
had blasted on November 12, 1960. Journalists didn’t know where to find Arthur, but they all knew Marilyn’s address. They staked out the front of her building near the East River, lining up on both sides of the awning, requiring her to run a gauntlet of flashing cameras and shouted questions when she left to see Dr. Kris. They were usually still there when she came home. Marilyn felt like a prisoner. Almost certainly, it was rage that caused her, bent over the contact sheets with grease pencil in hand, repeatedly to cross out images of Arthur alone or with others. She ignored Eve Arnold’s patient reminders that she had the right to approve only pictures in which she was present.
She had to choose quickly. United Artists had decided to move up the premiere of
The Misfits
after Clark Gable died on November 16. From then on, among the questions regularly shouted at Marilyn was whether
she felt guilty. Gable’s frustration over Marilyn’s constant lateness was rumored to have led to his heart attack. Marilyn, for her part, wondered whether it might be true. Gladys had hinted that Norma Jeane was Gable’s child. Though Marilyn certainly did not believe that now, she was tortured by the possibility that on some unconscious level she had harmed Gable in order to punish her absent father. Each time she spotted Gable in the contact sheets, Marilyn, desperate to do something for him, advised Eve Arnold at length on how the photograph ought to be retouched.
“I will not discuss my personal life,” Marilyn whispered to reporters as she rushed to a waiting black Cadillac limousine. She wore a black coat, the collar pulled up to her chin. The white-gloved doorman helped her in. The hired car carried her to 135 Central Park West.
Her analyst’s office-apartment had the air of a museum. Dr. Kris’s husband, in addition to being a psychoanalyst himself, had been a renowned art historian and curator, a collector of ancient cameos, intaglios, and cut stones. He had advised Sigmund Freud on the purchase of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Asian antiquities. Marianne Kris was motherly and deeply caring. It was said that when her husband died, her first concern, typically, was for other people. Dr. Kris, in her dealings with Marilyn, was utterly without self-interest.
Because Marianne Kris and Lee Strasberg lived in the same building, and because Strasberg focused so intensely on matters of psychology, it was easy for Marilyn’s sessions with her analyst to blur into her sessions with the acting teacher. She often saw him directly after therapy. The process of pouring out her pain, her fears, and her anger in Dr. Kris’s office would continue upstairs in Strasberg’s study. At best this was confusing. At worst it was destructive.
Strasberg’s efforts were tainted with self-interest. When Marilyn returned from
The Misfits
, she was sick, depressed, and extremely upset about the end of her marriage. She was haunted by the possibility that she had killed Gable. She needed to rest, having made two difficult films without a break. Yet Strasberg wasted no time in pushing a project of his own. As far as he was concerned, Marilyn mustn’t let the studio force her into doing another light comedy. Strasberg wanted to direct her in a television production of Somerset Maugham’s
Rain.
He lacked credits, so her participation was vital. She accompanied him to meetings with executives at NBC.
Marilyn had been notified to report to George Cukor on April 14, 196l. Suddenly, on December 13, to the apparent bewilderment of everyone but Lee Strasberg, Marilyn informed Twentieth that she would not appear in
Goodbye, Charlie.
She offered no reason. The studio replied that her contract obliged her to make this picture. As long as Twentieth had Cukor, one of her approved directors, Marilyn could not legally refuse.
She lay cloistered in her dark bedroom, refusing most calls. Lee and Paula, however, were always able to get through. When Hedda Rosten finally talked to her, Marilyn’s voice had an indistinct, faraway quality. As the holidays approached, her depression deepened. On Christmas night, the kitchen door opened and a mountain of poinsettias was brought in. Marilyn, who had resumed her desperate calls to Yves Montand, may have thought that he, or Arthur, had had a change of heart. If she did, she was disappointed. A helper had already opened the card. It said, “Best, Joe.”
“Well, there’s only one Joe,” Marilyn declared.
Unlike Montand, DiMaggio was waiting for her call. She asked why he had sent the poinsettias.
“First of all, because I thought you would call me to thank me,” Joe replied. “Besides, who in the hell else do you have in the world?”
What could she possibly say to that? Joe asked what Marilyn was doing tonight. When she admitted she was free on Christmas, he asked if he could stop by. Marilyn later told Dr. Greenson that, though she had been tired and depressed, she was happy to see Joe.
From then on, Joe appeared regularly. Sometimes he was accompanied by George Solotaire. In order to avoid the press, he would arrive late. He used the service elevator, entered by the kitchen door and left at dawn. Yet her staff knew that he had come back into her life. The milk in the refrigerator was for Joe; his ulcer prevented him from drinking coffee. His visits persisted until he was required to go out of town on business.
On her publicists’ advice, Marilyn chose January 20, 1961, to file for divorce, hoping that the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as president would overshadow the news. She flew to El Paso, Texas, where a car was waiting to take her to Mexico. Arthur had signed a waiver, so he did not have to appear in person.
As it happened, that day Miller was in Washington, D.C.,
attending the inauguration with Joe and Olie Rauh. Joe Rauh, a prominent backer of Hubert Humphrey, had played a pivotal role at the Democratic convention, helping to persuade Humphrey to withdraw when it became clear he could not win. Rauh’s only regret, expressed privately to Miller, was that Kennedy had double-crossed the liberals by choosing a conservative vice-presidential candidate, Lyndon Johnson. Olie, when she saw Arthur in Washington, told him how sorry she and Joe were about the divorce.
“I am, too,” Arthur replied, “and I know Marilyn is. But if I hadn’t done this, I would be dead.”
A question lingered. What did a man who had been married to Marilyn Monroe do next? Watching Miller with the Kennedys gave Joe Rauh an idea. After the inaugural festivities, he and Olie agreed that Arthur was going to make a play for Jacqueline Kennedy. The Rauhs were jesting, of course. But the idea bears thinking about. The First Lady was one of the few women alive capable of topping Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn returned from Mexico in a state of utter despair. This was more than just the end of a marriage. For Marilyn, it was the end of all hope that she would ever be able to see herself as worthy of being loved. For a short time, Arthur had given her that hope. For a short time, Marilyn had believed that she might actually find happiness. Now, Arthur was gone from her life forever, and his departure felt like a verdict.
On January 31, 1961, she attended a preview of
The Misfits
at the Capitol Theater on Broadway. Escorted by Montgomery Clift, Marilyn looked completely ravaged, aged beyond her years. Miller was there with his two children. He and Marilyn conspicuously avoided one another. This was the first time Marilyn saw the film that had once been intended to prove Arthur’s love for her. For three years, this project had been the force that simultaneously held their marriage together and tore it apart. Watching
The Misfits
was a painful experience for Marilyn. The moment the film was over, she fled the theater. The next day,
The Misfits
opened to mixed reviews. Arthur had not brought off the Great American Film after all.
Marilyn blamed herself for the failure of the marriage. She blamed herself for having come so close to realizing her dream, then losing it. Finally, in her anguish, she came up with an excuse to call Arthur. She
asked if she could drive to Roxbury to collect some of her possessions. The Connecticut property, the home where Marilyn had dreamed of a family and a future, had gone to him, while she kept the apartment in Manhattan. He told her to come up any time, adding that if he was not there when she arrived, she knew where the key was. If that was a warning, Marilyn did not register it as such. She told herself Arthur would be there. Maybe he would ask her to have coffee with him. When she arrived, the house was empty. Obviously, he did not want to see her. He had fled the cul de sac he had written about in his notebook, and now he was all too clearly wary of being drawn back in.
Nor, as Joe Rauh had presumed, was he inclined to try to top Marilyn. Like Olivier after Vivien Leigh, Miller entered a relationship with a sane, sensible, self-sufficient woman, who was the antithesis of the mad, devouring second wife. It was said that Joan Plowright had not broken up Olivier’s marriage; she had simply been present “at the crucial turning point” in his life. The same could be said of Inge Morath with Miller. The Magnum photographer had been in Nevada as Miller’s marriage was coming apart. He had run into her again in New York after it was over. The contrast between Inge and Marilyn could hardly have been stronger. One had saved a man’s life; the other needed to be saved. At Inge’s suggestion, Arthur moved downtown to the Chelsea Hotel, where she preferred to stay.
He had his typewriter. He had his notebooks. He had his autobiographical work-in-progress. But he was blocked. After
The Misfits
, he could not seem to shake his own embarrassment. Only recently he had crowed about his new work to Brooks Atkinson, so he was uneasy when Atkinson paid a call in Roxbury. Miller felt he had disappointed the critic. But Atkinson was there to show support for an artist he valued. He was there to convey the hope that Miller, having had his fill of Hollywood, would soon emerge with a new Broadway play.
After Marilyn’s visit to Roxbury, it seemed to Norman Rosten that he’d never seen her so depressed. Her marriage having ended, she appeared to stop fighting her mother’s judgment; she accepted that she was unworthy to go on living. And so it was that a maid walked into the living room to discover Marilyn preparing to jump out the window to her death. Following this latest suicide attempt, as far as Dr. Kris was concerned there could be no question of Marilyn’s being left alone in her apartment in this condition.
On February 7, 1961, some three weeks after her divorce, Marilyn acceded to Dr. Kris’s pleas that she sign herself into the Payne–Whitney Psychiatric Clinic. Dazed and confused by the drugs she had been taking in such alarming quantities, Marilyn probably was not entirely clear on what she was agreeing to do. She registered under the name Faye Miller. When Arthur, at the Chelsea Hotel, learned about Marilyn’s hospitalization, he was extremely upset. Her greatest fear, after all, had always been that she would go insane like her mother and find herself committed to a mental hospital. John Huston, apprised of Miller’s state of mind by Frank Taylor, called from Ireland to comfort him.
Arthur, debating whether to go to Marilyn, called Nan Taylor.
“Nan, should I go to see her?” he asked. “I care for her so terribly. Should I go to see her? What do you think?” In the end, he followed Nan’s advice to stay away.
Marilyn later insisted that she had not known Payne–Whitney was a psychiatric hospital. When she realized where she was, she hurled a chair against a glass door and retrieved a shard of glass, threatening to cut herself if she was not released. Four attendants carried her face down to the elevator. Marilyn, transferred to the violent ward, was sedated and restrained. She contacted Lee and Paula. She contacted Joe. She needed someone to get her out.
On February 10, DiMaggio came through the door. He had rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard. The doctors insisted that Marilyn was in no condition to leave, but Joe warned that if Payne–Whitney did not let her go right now, he was prepared to take the building apart brick by brick.
“Thank God for Joe,” Marilyn said.
In consultation with Marianne Kris, he arranged for Marilyn to be transferred to Columbia–Presbyterian Medical Center in upper Manhattan. It was a hospital, but at least it was not a mental hospital, and that was important to her. Joe promised to remain until she felt safe. Meanwhile, Dr. Kris planned to fly to Los Angeles in mid-March to confer with Ralph Greenson.
Marilyn was at Columbia–Presbyterian for three weeks. When the Rostens visited, a nurse was sponging Marilyn’s pale forehead. Marilyn listlessly raised her arm to greet them. She smiled, yet the sparkle had vanished from her eyes. It seemed to Norman that Marilyn’s illness had spread from her body and her mind to her very soul.
Some nights she did not sleep at all. She lay awake reading Freud’s published correspondence. His photograph, opposite the title page, made her cry. She thought he looked depressed, disappointed with life. She guessed he was near death. Even when Dr. Kris pointed out that at the time the photograph was taken Freud had been in acute physical pain, Marilyn insisted it was disappointment she saw in his gentle face.
In a letter from Columbia–Presbyterian, Marilyn informed Dr. Greenson that she knew she would never be happy. She reminded the analyst of something she had once told him about Elia Kazan. Kazan had called her the gayest girl he had ever known. According to Marilyn, he had loved her for a year. Now, in her despair, she contemplated playing the happy girl again. That’s what men wanted. She would not really be happy, of course, but at least she could pretend.