Authors: Barbara Leaming
B
y the end of the third week, Marilyn had worked only one day. Late on the afternoon of Friday, May 11, Peter Levathes called Mickey Rudin. It had come to the production chief’s attention that Marilyn planned to be in New York the following Thursday and Friday, before performing at a Democratic Party event at Madison Square Garden on Saturday the 19th. The gala, designed to raise money to pay off the deficit from the presidential campaign, was billed as a forty-fifth birthday salute to President Kennedy. Levathes indicated he couldn’t possibly let her attend. Her absences had already put
Something’s Got to Give
considerably behind schedule. Twentieth expected Marilyn to report every day during the week of May 14 to 18.
If there ever had been the slightest chance she would acquiesce, it was dashed by events in Washington. That very evening, Arthur Miller attended a black-tie dinner at the White House for André Malraux, the French Minister of Culture. Jacqueline Kennedy, in a strapless pink Dior gown, greeted some of America’s most distinguished artists, including the novelists Saul Bellow and Robert Penn Warren, the poet Archibald MacLeish, and the critic Edmund Wilson. Andrew Wyeth and Mark Rothko represented painting, Leonard Bernstein music, and George Balanchine the dance. From the theater came Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, and Lee Strasberg.
It was Arthur Miller who, to his astonishment and delight, found himself seated with Mrs. Kennedy and Malraux. The First Lady was known to have agonized over the seating charts, which she had spread out on her sitting-room floor. Placing Miller near her was a bold stroke. It
left no doubt that McCarthyism was dead. Eisenhower’s Washington had taken a dim view of Miller; Kennedy’s made him an honored guest. Miller, for his part, reveled in an administration that valued artists and intellectuals as much as “showbiz stars.”
Marilyn called the Rostens in Brooklyn to announce her impending arrival, characterizing her trip as a secret mission. She disclosed she was going to sing at the President’s birthday. She exulted that the press would be surprised by her escort. Isadore Miller had agreed to take Marilyn to Madison Square Garden. The choice of Arthur’s father as her cavalier guaranteed that, in Roxbury at least, attention would be paid.
All weekend, the white-carpeted, unfurnished rooms at Fifth Helena echoed with Marilyn’s whispery voice. She lay in the tub singing “Happy Birthday.” She sat on the living-room floor, endlessly tape recording and listening to herself. A manic energy propelled her. On Monday, she arrived at Fox twenty minutes before her 6:30 a.m. makeup call. She was eager. She was diligent. She was cooperative. She made it clear, however, that she simply had to go to New York. On Thursday, May 17, she planned to work only until noon.
Marilyn could not have picked a worse time to challenge the studio. On May 15, Spyros Skouras faced three hundred jeering stockholders at the annual meeting in New York. Contrary to plan,
Cleopatra
was not yet finished; all Skouras could do was to make promises and excuses. The standing-room-only crowd responded with skepticism and derision. There were angry remarks about the excesses of Hollywood stars (i.e. Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe) and the highly-paid studio executives who indulged them. The next day, Twentieth sternly warned that if Marilyn went to New York she’d be in violation of her contract. Mickey Rudin replied that the studio seemed to have forgotten something; as far as she was concerned, she didn’t have a contract. Marilyn, preoccupied, was still singing “Happy Birthday” on the airplane with Peter Lawford and Paula Strasberg.
She continued to practice in her New York apartment. Her interpretation grew sexier. It grew outrageous. Paula worried that it verged on self-parody. But Marilyn insisted it had to be “sexy.” Her song was the finale. Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Jack Benny, Maria Callas, Bobby Darin, Harry Belafonte, and other stars preceded her. Marilyn was convinced this was the way to top them.
Paula believed that only Lee might be capable of stopping Marilyn. But he gave the impression he had more important things to think about. His tacit comment on the proceedings was to decline to attend. Strasberg, insulted that Lincoln Center had spurned him and indignant that Elia Kazan had accepted a post there, was then planning to launch his own competing repertory company, the Actors Studio Theater. He wanted to direct Ben Gazzara and Marilyn Monroe in
Macbeth.
The absurdity of the casting was not lost on Strasberg. When he spoke of Marilyn as Lady Macbeth, he would actually laugh. “It’s a wonderful little portrait of his own ego,” said Frank Corsaro. “It wasn’t so much that she was going to do this. It was the fact that he was going to accomplish this miracle. The poor girl looked at him with amazement, surprise, and fear.”
On Saturday night, Marilyn was high when she emerged from the shadows behind master-of-ceremonies Peter Lawford on stage at Madison Square Garden. She walked like a geisha. She threw off her white fur. She had on a flesh-toned gown encrusted with rhinestones. She flicked the mike with her finger. She shielded heavy-lidded eyes to survey the audience of fifteen thousand whooping, whistling Democrats. The arena was adorned with red, white, and blue balloons and streamers. In the presidential box, Jack Kennedy mauled a cigar, his feet up on the railing. Mrs. Kennedy had pointedly declined to attend.
Marilyn began to sing. She closed her eyes. She licked her lips. She ran her hands up her thighs and stomach, aborting the gesture at her breasts. The Broadway columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, commenting on the telecast, described Marilyn’s act as “making love to the president in the direct view of forty million Americans.” The nation was titillated. Yet the performance was also a cry for help. Marilyn believed she had been left—by Miller, by Greenson—because she was bad. Tonight she showed how bad she could be. She let them see what abandonment had done to her. She warned of what was to come.
Arthur’s father picked up Marilyn backstage. When Jack Kennedy entered the dressing room, Marilyn, flustered, introduced Isadore. A moment’s awkwardness followed. “I should have said ’Happy birthday, Mr. President,’” Marilyn added, “but I was so excited about Dad I introduced him first.”
The old man escorted her to a small party at the house of Arthur
Krim, chairman of United Artists. Jimmy Durante played the piano and sang. Marilyn found a chair for Isadore. He looked on as Bobby Kennedy and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. engaged in “mock competition” to dance with her. The historian had one advantage over the Attorney General; he could talk to Marilyn about their mutual friends Joe and Olie Rauh. The reference would have been bittersweet, recalling a moment when she had risked everything to prove she was worthy and good. Tonight, Marilyn again put her career at risk, but to a very different end. Back then she had reached out to life. Now she seemed to embrace self-destruction.
But not entirely … not yet. After the party, she took Isadore home. She kissed him good night, leaving him at the elevator in his daughter’s apartment building. Marilyn was on her way out when something caused her to turn back. She implored Isadore to come to the Coast with her the following day. He promised to come later.
Marilyn flew back to Los Angeles. After the sensation she had created in New York, she wanted to go further. After her “skin and beads” costume, there really was only one way to go. Cukor planned to shoot a skinny-dipping scene on Wednesday, May 23. Magazine photographers were alerted, presumably for shots of Marilyn in a flesh-toned bikini. Instead, when Marilyn emerged from the turquoise swimming pool, she was naked. She had removed her flimsy swimsuit underwater.
Marilyn posed in the nude. She performed a striptease with costar Dean Martin’s copious blue robe. At length, the images would appear on more than seventy magazine covers in thirty-two countries. Many people interpreted it as a masterful publicity stunt, a return to the old “carefree” Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn, having lost fifteen pounds, was said to be back to her “calendar-girl shape.” She lapped up the attention. She was gratified by the prospect of knocking Elizabeth Taylor and
Cleopatra
off magazine covers around the world.
So, on one hand, the pictures read as a triumph. On the other, they seemed like a defeat. Posing in the nude was everything Marilyn had fought to put behind her. Why had she chosen to do it now? Would no one get the message?
In recent days, Marilyn had soared emotionally. That weekend she seemed to crash, her sense of power turning to shame. She failed to come
in on the morning of Monday, May 28. Cukor had nothing to shoot without her. Again the company lost a day’s work. After that, Marilyn worked intermittently. And when she did work, Cukor thought it wasn’t any good. Worse, she knew it was no good. Marilyn had always been her own harshest critic. That was what made it all so painful now.
Also painful were her attempts to maintain a connection with Jack Kennedy. After Madison Square Garden, he had decided to pull back. On the basis of Marilyn’s over-the-top performance, everybody was talking about the President and the movie star. Kennedy assigned staff members to kill potential news stories. Ordinarily, gossip about his promiscuity did not particularly distress him. The possibility of publication—whether in
Time, Newsweek
, or some other periodical—was another matter entirely. Once a story appeared in print, it was likely to be picked up. And that, as he well knew, could be politically disastrous. So the President put out the word that rumors linking him with Marilyn were false.
Even as the President was distancing himself, Marilyn was looking for ways to penetrate his inner circle. She summoned Kennedy’s hair stylist, Mickey Song, who had done her hair at Madison Square Garden. Excitedly he assumed she wanted to hire him. But when Song arrived at Fifth Helena, he discovered that Marilyn was interested in a very different sort of arrangement. After a few minutes of small talk, she got to the point.
“I’m really trying to find out some information about what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t know whether there’s other people coming in or not. And I thought maybe you and I could team up.”
Marilyn wanted to know whether there were other women in Jack’s life. Song prided himself on his discretion, but the pressure he felt from Marilyn was extremely intense. “I don’t know anything,” Song insisted. “I don’t know anything.”
Marilyn called the President at the White House. She wanted to see him. She wanted to come to Washington. She would not take no for an answer. She phoned again and again. “He wanted to stop it,” said Senator George Smathers, “because it got to be to a point where it was somewhat embarrassing.” According to Smathers, Kennedy sent their friend Bill Thompson, a railroad executive, to try to control Marilyn. He may also have asked Peter Lawford to intercede. The President, for his
part, refused all further calls. That seemed to work. “She stopped bothering him,” said Smathers, “because he quit talking to her.”
On Friday, June 1, Marilyn turned thirty-six. After work, a birthday cake, with crackling Independence Day sparklers, was wheeled out, the cast and crew singing “Happy Birthday.” Two days later, Marilyn summoned her psychoanalyst’s son and daughter. She was lying naked beneath a sheet, her night table cluttered with pill bottles. She wept that her life wasn’t worth living. She said she was ugly. She said she was unloved. She complained of being used. She agonized about never having had a baby. The visitors, alarmed, called their father’s associate, who confiscated Marilyn’s pills, dumping the bottles in his black leather bag. Another physician was brought in to sedate her.
Ralph Greenson had already been to Greece, Israel, and Italy. He was about to spend some time with his Swiss in-laws when Eunice Murray called. Unable to talk on the phone, Marilyn had given her housekeeper a list of “urgent” personal questions for the doctor. But the individual questions were less significant than the subtext: Aren’t you coming home?
On Monday morning, Twentieth received word that Marilyn would not be coming in. Cukor found some material to shoot with Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse, who played his new wife. Afterward, Cukor dismissed the company, letting it be known that if Marilyn failed to report the next day, he had nothing left to film. A call was issued for Tuesday. If she didn’t show up then, the studio had two options: hire a replacement or shut down the picture. Kim Novak, Shirley MacLaine, Doris Day, and Lee Remick were among the actresses being discussed. Late on Monday afternoon, Phil Feldman, the executive vice-president for studio operations, conferred with Mickey Rudin, who described her as exhausted. His efforts to persuade her to work had been fruitless.
Rudin was unable to do anything with her in the morning either. In a fit of paranoia, she accused her own lawyer of being “with them.” At Marilyn’s request, Rudin summoned Dr. Greenson. He promised to return by Wednesday evening, leaving Hildi with her family for ten days.
While Marilyn waited for the doctor, her publicist Pat Newcomb cared for her in her room, spending the night at the foot of her bed. Eunice Murray provided meals. Meanwhile, Rudin agonized about whether to send a strong letter advising Marilyn of the possible consequences of her actions. He believed that professionally he probably
should do it. At the same time, deeply concerned about her as he was, he hesitated to do anything to upset her further.
Cukor evidently felt no such compassion. He didn’t want to be blamed for the trouble on the film. He was convinced that even if he managed to finish
Something’s Got to Give
, it wouldn’t be much good. After the trauma of
Gone with the Wind
, he certainly didn’t want to be fired. His fears were not entirely baseless; Nunnally Johnson later urged Cukor’s dismissal as an alternative to replacing Marilyn. Still, in light of the fact that Marilyn was obviously very ill, it’s hard to excuse Cukor’s decision to leak a story about her to Hedda Hopper on Wednesday, June 6. Indeed, he must have sensed how bad it would look. Before Cukor vented his spleen, he was careful to stipulate, “Please, Hedda, this is not from me.”