My Week with Marilyn (28 page)

The car took me on to Runnymede, still under MM's spell. But Tony and Anne brought me back to earth. After all, we have a long, complicated, expensive colour film to make somehow.

Tony will take me in to the studio tomorrow morning. If I am late, as he sometimes is, David can shout at him. No chance of MM beating me to it anyway.

Dame Sybil really is an angel. On time as usual this morning – she is now the only person who is – she handed me a bright red woolly scarf as she got out of the car.

‘I thought you looked cold, so early in the morning, so I bought you this.'

I was overwhelmed. I'll wear it every morning from now on. Typical Dame S thoughtfulness. It is exactly what I need.

MM arrived at what is now her usual time. It seems there is nothing Plod, or Hedda Rosten, can do to get her out of the house before 8 a.m. I must say I sympathise. If I was the most famous film star in the world I wouldn't get up before nine. I know films don't work like that, and that if she is late it is phenomenally expensive, but couldn't she have asked SLO to schedule all her shots for after lunch? It would prevent a lot of friction.

As it is, he seems most upset by what he sees as MM's discourtesy to Dame S. This morning, through clenched teeth, he actually told MM to apologise to her. He strode onto the set when she arrived, took her by the hand as if he was dealing with a naughty schoolgirl, and led her over to Dame S. We didn't hear what he said but he had been rehearsing it for an hour. We all held our breath. SLO was doing what we were all dying to do, at last.

But MM wasn't at all upset – just surprised. I really don't think she realised that her lateness affected anyone. Plod says she gets
called, goes back to sleep, gets called again, rushes round the house, changes clothes quite a few times, goes up and down stairs etc., without ever thinking of what the time is. Finally she bucks up her courage and dives into the car. Paula, Hedda, AM and Plod can all be flapping around her but it has no effect. Most of the time, and it is unpredictable, MM takes as much notice of other people as a cow does of rabbits in the same field.

However, Dame Sybil did get through: ‘My dear you mustn't concern yourself,' she said. ‘A great actress like you has other things on her mind, doesn't she?'

MM beamed, and behaved well all day.

We were only filming scenes with MM and Dame S, so SLO could stay behind the camera, and that makes things a lot easier. Then AM turned up to watch the ‘rushes'. MM was thrilled, and giggled and wiggled like a teenager. When we got into the viewing theatre, to everyone's embarrassment they went into the back row and started snogging as if they were on a date!

‘Love birds,' said Whitey with a grin, and we watched MM on the screen, endlessly repeating her lines, while the real-life MM heaved and panted a few rows behind us. Very un-British, but I suppose they are on their honeymoon. (MM's third, I guess.)

Saturday night was a bit of a failure. Oh, how quickly a beautiful bloom can fade. Already the little Wdg doesn't seem quite as charming as I thought, and not even as pretty. It is as if she belongs to the fringe – not really relevant, something I must leave behind.

Terry Rattigan is giving a party next Saturday night and I can
not
take the Wdg to it. Of course this is difficult to explain to her and in fact I can't even begin, so she has decided that I am going to take some other girl. The more I protested, the more she became convinced. Finally I told her, quite sharply, not to be silly. That caused a coolness which I fear may turn to ice. One problem is that
she can never understand how I feel about my work. It really is so much more than just a job. It's my whole life, and I'm afraid that she is right to feel excluded. But there is nothing I can do to change that.

Today Tony and Anne took me over to Notley for tea. Vivien was radiant. Without any doubt she is still the most beautiful woman in the world and she knows it. Terry Rattigan was there. He did not ask me to the famous party; but Vivien did, twice, in front of him, and anyway SLO had already done so on Friday. Also there were Roger Furse, Bumble and Bobby Helpmann.
⁵³

No one was there to represent the MM point of view so there were a lot of unflattering jokes about the Americans. Vivien was very funny and very catty and so was Bobby (well, he always is – even about Vivien).

Vivien, who knows I worship her, asked me confidentially how MM was working out. I dare not say anything or she might quote me, so I just rolled my eyes to heaven. Naturally she was delighted.

In the end we stayed much too late. Vivien hates to let good guests leave. It is already 11 p.m. and I have to be up at 5.45 as usual. Groan.

We have now settled into a routine in that damn purple set. MM is late every morning and every morning it is treated with the same shock/horror/gloom by SLO and the entire crew.

SLO gets fully made up and costumed and the stand-ins are lit for the main scene. The equipment is checked and rechecked. We all eat bread and dripping and drink mugs of tea. Then we cast around for something to shoot – SLO speaks MM's lines to Dame S who has to pretend that MM is sitting opposite her. Finally MM appears, breathless and beautiful, and hope rises, only to be dashed as she disappears into her dressing room Mk II.

Fifteen minutes later – after goodness knows what little ritual  — MM appears again and we all stand by. MM shakes her hands vigorously, one ear bent down to Paula (who is 10 inches shorter than her) for final encouragement.

If she gets panicky now it can mean another half hour in that portable Nissen hut, so Paula really is essential. MM might easily ruffle ‘her' hair with one hand, and that means a 20-minute delay, or rub her eyes, half an hour. And SLO has yet to give her direction. Only he, after all, really knows what all the scenes are about, and he feels he must pass this on. Whether in fact he can say anything which has any effect whatsoever, I very much doubt. But he tries.

Then there is another hazard. Completely innocently, he may contradict something that Paula has just said. If she notices this, MM will summon Paula and Milton. Together they will go back through the corridor to the main dressing room and put through a long-distance call to Lee Strasberg in New York, usually waking him up. Advice from the great oracle.

Quite apart from the tremendous cost, in phone bills and Strasberg bills, this is hardly a vote of confidence for SLO. He is the director of the damn film, for heaven's sake, as he often points out angrily – to me and to Milton, but not to MM. And it doesn't help the action much, since Lee Strasberg is normally sleepy, and has absolutely no idea of what is going on over here (I don't think he even has a script).

When we do re-start, if SLO lets so much as a glimmer of his rage appear, a bright red flush suffuses MM's famous chest and neck which even Whitey cannot make disappear. Then filming has to stop for an hour while MM calms down and prepares to try again.

It's true that MM doesn't notice much of what is going on around her, but the knowledge that 60 actors and technicians are waiting for you, and at enormous cost to you personally, is hardly one to induce calm in anyone, let alone someone with such a fragile grip on stability as MM. So there is a lot of handshaking and conferring, and finally she goes back to the main dressing room again to lie down. This in
turn means that the dress must come off, and the wig must come off, so at least one and a half hours' delay is inevitable.

When we finally do get the shot, it is hardly as fresh as a daisy. SLO gets so tense that he can hardly act at all. Dame S stays as sweet as ever, but she loses that imperious edge that Martita Hunt
⁵⁴
gave to the original role. Dame S is just too nice to be really royal. She has become like MM's dear old granny and this spills over into the part.

And yet, after all that grief, when we see the ‘rushes' it is
MM
who lights up the screen.

It is very bad luck on SLO. After ‘rushes,' he goes into his dressing room with Tony and Milton for yet more ‘urgent discussions'. I see MM into her car and then go to the bar for a well-earned snort (brandy and water).

But this evening I had a hunch, and after half an hour I went back and started walking up and down outside the dressing rooms, while trying to look busy. Suddenly SLO stuck his head out, just as I guessed he might.

‘Ah, Colin dear boy, could you pop over to the bar and get me some more cigarettes and a bottle of whisky?'

Well ‘Colin' is determined to be the best damned ‘gofer' in the movie world, so I opened the door of the empty dressing room next door, picked up the 100 Oliviers and the bottle of whisky I had left there, and marched straight in.

‘Ah, thank you, dear boy,' said SLO, not bothering to question how I had got to the bar and back in 15 seconds. But Milton jolly well noticed and he gave me a very quizzical look.

From now on I must stay within range, and prepared, until SLO has left the studio altogether.

I can't even gossip with Gilman outside in the car. One quick drink and then back on duty. I want SLO to think of me as
indispensable
, and take me on to his next production, as he does so many of his loyal crew.

I'm afraid this all made me late for Anne's delicious supper, but Tony understands without me telling him and he is big-hearted enough to be happy about it.

From now on dinner will be at eight and not 7.30.

To forget one's lines in midstream is evidently something no professional actor ever does. In a long play in the theatre it might just be forgiven once or twice. But in a film . . . ?!

Speeches in a film are usually very short. Four or five sentences must be the longest scene MM has to remember in the whole movie. Anyone watching a well-edited film won't notice the cuts and will think they have just seen one continuously acted scene.

MM doesn't really forget her lines. It is more as if she had never quite learnt them – as if they are pinned to her mental noticeboard so loosely that the slightest puff of wind will send them floating to the floor.

This is very disconcerting to the other actors. Like going down a familiar staircase and missing a step, MM is suddenly not there. She can be in mid-speech, and then she gives a little frown, her lips part, her eyes look puzzled, and she stops. She doesn't say ‘Oh drat, what is the next line?' or anything. She just stops.

Sickening pauses are not permissible on film. SLO says ‘Cut' quietly (and grimly), or sometimes ‘Keep rolling' to camera and ‘Would you like to try again?' to Marilyn. This has not yet been a success. Even if MM does have another try before the camera stops running, she is too flustered and her eyes are glazed.

Most actresses would take a quick peek at the script – which Elaine has, ready to hold out – say ‘Oh yes. I'm so sorry. I know it now,' and have another try. They would only need a brief reminder to get it right. Not our MM. She walks off the set, leans on her recliner and waits to be powdered by Make-up and pandered to by Paula.

She's almost like an athlete taking a little rest before having
another try at the high jump. And it may be that she feels that that
is
exactly what she is doing.

Dame S had a long line about Eleanora Duse being a much greater actress than Sarah Bernhardt. MM simply could not remember when to reply. Dame S is babbling on and ends with a rhetorical question: ‘You agree. No?'

All MM had to say was ‘No' at the right moment, but today even this proved too complicated. In the end we broke the shot down. We filmed the whole Dame S sequence, with MM missing out the ‘No' altogether, and then filmed MM in close-up saying ‘No?' which the editor will cut in later.

Halfway through, SLO tried a controlled explosion. MM was stunned, as usual, but SLO had reckoned without Dame S who promptly gave him a good ticking off.

‘Don't you realise what a strain this poor girl is under? She hasn't had your years of experience. She is far from home in a strange country, trying to act in a strange part. Are you helping or bullying?' Poor SLO, who naturally thinks he is the injured party, was stunned.

MM was radiant.

‘Oh thank you so much, Dame Sybil. But I mustn't forget my lines. I promise I'll try to remember them from now on.'

And she was good as gold for the rest of the afternoon.

Tony B thought this vastly amusing – ‘Laurence got a scolding from Grandma,' he told Anne at dinner.

But SLO did not. ‘It's high time someone gave that silly girl a real telling off,' he said to me, after Milton had left.

I worship SLO but I am afraid he is wrong.

I suppose you could say that today was a red-letter day. This morning I definitely saw more of MM than I ever expected to, and she went up in my estimation in more ways than one. She arrived really early, for her, and nearly caught us on the hop at 7.30 a.m. She was
still in a jolly mood – I expect she and AM had had a good laugh over SLO's discomfiture.

As lunchtime drew near David caught me in the corridor, and told me to look for MM's marked script which was missing. I assumed this meant MM was on the set so I just barged into her dressing room and straight into the inner sanctum. What David had not told me was that filming had already ended.

There stood MM, completely nude, with only a white towel round her head.

I stopped dead. All I could see were beautiful white and pink curves. I must have gone as red as a beetroot. I couldn't even turn and rush out, so I just stood there and stared and stammered.

MM gave me her most innocent smile.