My Week with Marilyn (29 page)

‘Oh Colin,' she said. ‘And you an old Etonian!'

How did she stay so cool? And how did she know which school I had gone to and what it meant?

When I managed to get out of the room and pull myself together, I realised that behind the fog MM could be a bit brighter than we all think. How much of the MM image is contrived? Acting dumb is a good way to make other people make fools of themselves. What fun it might have been to make a movie with MM when she felt everyone around was her friend.

Dream on, Colin.

In the afternoon we filmed Dame S putting her jewellery onto MM in preparation for her going to the Coronation, as Dame S's lady-in-waiting.

I don't know what happened at lunchtime – I hardly think it was my bursting in on her that did it – but MM had become really confused.

As Dame S and her original lady-in-waiting fuss round her, Elsie Marina has to ask ‘What's happening? Is it a game?'

All light-hearted stuff, but by now MM was so frightened of missing her cue that she got frantic.

‘What's happening?' she screamed in genuine distress. ‘Is it a game?' like someone who is afraid they are being kidnapped.

No one could calm her down, so that's how it will go into the film. I hope it works.

We saw the ‘rushes' of yesterday's footage, when her previous long scene with Dame S was broken down into three shots, and frankly I don't think that does work. When Jack lights a wide group shot he lights it quite differently from a close-up, especially MM. For the close-up he darkens the background and uses all sorts of filters to make MM look her best. That's fine, and MM does indeed look extremely beautiful, but it doesn't seem to match up with the wide shot which it will have to fit into. The wide shots look like a stage play, the close-ups are as intense as Garbo.

Yesterday MM had to look a little confused and say ‘No?' It isn't hard for MM to look confused, so that worked fine. But today, when she looked very confused, it was almost too real for a light drawing-room comedy.

That is what this film is meant to be, and indeed that is what MM can often play so well.

SLO might have been able to handle this if he was left alone. But everything has to bounce off Paula, and Paula always sees things in dramatic terms.

No wonder Jack Harris, the editor, haunts the studio like a gloomy vulture. He is going to have a tough job.

Nearly finished with Dame S – only three more shooting days. She starts in a stage play next week and is very tired. She is already in rehearsal, but she is still the only one to arrive on time (6.45) and we always have a little chat (she knows M and D of course). SLO's arrival is nearer to 7.15 these days and is always grim. Dicky Wattis and Paul Hardwick come tumbling in at the same time, but all the others use a different entrance.

Dicky and Paul have become my special chums. Paul plays the Major Domo, and has hardly any lines. This is a pity because he has a wonderful rich, dark baritone voice. I suppose this is his main asset as an actor. On this occasion it is wasted, but it certainly means that David has to ‘sssh' him more than most when we are gossiping on the set. Dicky is always impeccably dressed in his Foreign Office uniform, with its gold braid and white stockings. He has a very ‘camp' sense of humour, with lots of ‘double entendres'. He is always ready with his lines, and never flustered by whatever MM does, or doesn't do. But he is so quintessentially British that she usually gazes at him as if he was from another planet. Dicky and SLO and Dame S can go through a scene like a knife through butter, and if MM is in the scene too, but doesn't have a line to remember, she quite enjoys herself, like a schoolgirl on a train. It is extraordinary that an actress can get so far without ever really being taught. MM just relies on her native savvy. Imagine what she would be like if she'd spent a year in rep. Or would the magic disappear?

Talking of magic, I now have a real problem with my little Wdg. She is convinced that I am going to take someone else out this Saturday, and won't even let me explain. The atmosphere in the Wd department is so tense I can't even go in there. Wdg hides behind the racks of costumes, crying, while the wardrobe boss growls like a tigress. No sympathy from David when I explained the problem.

‘The first lesson on any film production is not to shit on your own doorstep. Now you're stuck with this for another three months. I'm not having you unable to go up to Wardrobe for the rest of the film, so SORT IT OUT!'

What a nightmare. The trouble is that you can't discuss things logically with a little Wdg. I'll have to find the right cliché.

Dame S has left now and will be much missed. She had a calming, reassuring effect on MM, while SLO definitely puts the poor girl on
edge. This morning MM had to eat a late supper, on screen. She had herself chosen caviar and chicken salad, but there were problems. It requires many ‘takes' under hot lights to get a scene right, so fresh caviar and a new chicken salad were produced for each take. However there is a limit to the number of times that even the greatest actress can tuck into caviar and chicken salad at 11 in the morning.

I thought she did jolly well.

SLO kept telling her not to eat, ‘just mime', but MM is now a ‘
method
' actress. She has to know what her motivation is for each action and each word, and miming does not come naturally to her. Nor did she appreciate the substitution of apple juice for champagne. Real champagne was produced, but it quickly got warm under the lights. By this time MM was supposed to have drunk lots of vodka (which was water of course) and she began to slurp on the real champagne a bit too greedily. SLO as the Grand Duke was on the telephone in the back of the set and couldn't see what was happening. Tony began to get nervous about continuity. How drunk was she meant to be? Soon Elaine, the continuity girl, was beginning to direct the movie. MM liked this but the rest of the crew did not.

SLO sensed impending chaos and got frantic, huffing and puffing away from the far corner.

MM was enjoying herself. She also had a chance to be patriotic about America and raised her glass to toast ‘the President' (Taft), which was an action she found profoundly sympathetic to her mood. I'm sure she feels that the British treat Americans as if they were idiots every bit as much as the Carpathians did in 1911. As MM got more confident, SLO began to fade, very rare for him. It is hard to believe that even a Carpathian Grand Duke would be quite so wooden to a young lady he is hoping to go to bed with in half an hour.

In the afternoon, Jeremy Spenser
⁵⁵
appeared for his first entrance. He looks 16 but I suppose he is about 22. I recognise him from
somewhere. Did he play Sabu, the elephant boy?
⁵⁶
It's the sort of question that is hard to ask.

In this part his carefully contrived royal charm, flicked on and off as if by a switch, is more convincing than SLO's, and he is equally smooth off-screen. MM seems to like him but perhaps it is also because his character in the script is so sympathetic to hers.

It is clear that she does sometimes have difficulty separating fact from fiction, as many actresses do. Vivien, after all, has never quite escaped from Scarlett O'Hara. In the
Sleeping Prince
story, SLO plays an insensitive seducer, and MM must have come across a great many of those in her early career. In real life, he plays an insensitive director, and she has come across those before too. It is not a happy combination.

And we still have to get through the love scenes!

Terry Rattigan's party last night was as formal and artificial as his plays.

He has a typical expensive show-business house on Wentworth golf course – 1920s classical, and very nouveau riche; thick carpets, chandeliers, flowers.

I got there early, and alone, and the first person I saw was Mr P. I got a shock as it was the only time I'd ever seen him not in his brown suit. He was wearing an old-fashioned dinner jacket, and a wing collar, but at least he still had his pipe and hornrim specs. With him was Mrs P. She is just as conventional as he is, and clearly very proud of her old stick of a husband. Perfect casting!

Terry R was in a white dinner jacket beaming urbanely at everyone (though not me).

Milton was there with Amy – small and attractive, both of them.
Finally AM and MM. AM looked very dashing, also in a white dinner jacket – strong jaw, intense gaze, the perfect he-man intellectual. I fancy he is very vain indeed.

MM looked a bit straggly. She had done her hair herself and she had not been made up by Whitey. She even seemed a bit scared, not of us, but of AM. He really is unpleasant. He struts around as if MM were his property. He seems to think his superior intelligence puts him on a higher plane, and treats her as if she is just an accessory. Poor MM. Another insensitive male in her life is the last thing she needs. I can't see the romance lasting long. She is the one who could be forgiven a little vanity but, strangely enough, that's not in her make-up at all.

I hung around SLO in case I could be of help, but he was soon surrounded by people of greater assumed self-importance, mainly agents.

Cecil Tennant treats me like an office boy, which I am I suppose. He is married to a Russian ballerina
⁵⁷
and even she is not very friendly, which is a surprise. All the ballerinas I've ever met are adorable. Karsavina,
⁵⁸
who we once met in Hampstead, was as lovely as Margot, although very old.

The party just never gelled. I bet it would have been another matter if we were all queer. (Gaiety, everyone!) I left early and went up to London. I went to the Stork Club and in the end I was unfaithful to the Wdg – so she was right!

A bad start to the week. MM did not show up until 11 a.m. Frantic phone calls to Plod at Parkside were to no avail, although he did hint darkly that AM and MM were not on such friendly terms as usual. I thought so on Saturday at the party.

I reported this to SLO. He said that AM is short of funds, and has finally figured out that when MM is late at the studio, she loses money. And when MM loses money, he does not exactly get richer. Like many American intellectuals he is extremely mean – or maybe meanness goes with vanity, like Garrett Moore. In any case he has been trying to get MM out of the house earlier in the mornings.

I suspect he also wants peace and quiet. I certainly wouldn't want a frantic MM in my bedroom all morning, unless of course we were ‘playing trains' in Plod's immortal words. Now, it seems, AM has lost some of his powers of persuasion. Nobody knows, or will say, what the trouble really is.

We did all the shots of SLO and Jeremy which MM isn't in, but we couldn't work with her until after lunch. When we did it was a long scene and not all that easy. She comes in through the door of the purple room with Dicky W and says, ‘Oh, we are the first to arrive, aren't we?'

Then there is a change of thought, which is always tough for MM unless very carefully explained by one (and only one) person. She looks round the opulent room and is supposed to say: ‘Gee, this is all right too, isn't it.'

Alas, it was not carefully explained (and never by one person) until after tempers had already begun to fray (about take 5). In she came each time:

‘Oh, we are the first to arrive, aren't we?' Fine so far.

‘Gee, this is all right, isn't it?'

‘CUT.'

‘Wonderful, Marilyn darling, but the line is “Gee, this is all right TOO, isn't it?”'

Much conferring. Much ‘Oh yeah, gee, I guess so,' much leaning, flicking of fingers, whispers from Paula, powder reapplied, wig patted, dress straightened and off we go again.

David shouts: ‘Going for a take. Absolute QUIET please.'

The lights come on with a crash. Bells ring, doors lock with a clunk, red lights flash.

‘Camera running.'

‘Sound.' Beep, beep.

‘Speed.'

‘Mark it.'

‘
Prince and the Showgirl
shot 48 take 6.' SNAP.

‘Action.'

MM and Dicky come through the doors.

‘Oh, we are the first to arrive, aren't we?'

We hold our breath. MM looks round.

‘Gee, this is all right, isn't it.'

‘CUT!' etc. etc.

In the end it was Dicky who explained to her that in an earlier scene, not yet filmed, she had come in to the hall of the Embassy and said ‘Gee, this is all right.' That is why it was now so important to say ‘Gee, this is all right too!'

Finally she got it right and carried on to the end of the scene without a hitch, but what a painful hour it took.

Like a Greek tragedy, it really isn't anyone's fault. SLO would normally take his leading lady quietly to one side and explain it after the first mistake. But MM is all revved up by Paula, before each scene, to go it alone. And after she makes a mistake, which in this case Paula probably didn't even notice, it is Paula and not her director to whom she runs. When the wretched director does intervene, simply to get his film back on the rails, MM is already upset, and it is hard to talk to her on any level.

What is so frustrating is that we all know that in the end only the good take will be printed, and tomorrow evening MM will fly out of the ‘rushes' like an angel.

At this rate the film will take forever. I don't know why we are all so fed up with that purple room set but we are. It is cut in half, and sometimes in quarters, so that the camera can shoot in different directions, across the table, above the sofa, looking at the fireplace, or the windows or the door. But it always feels claustrophobic. I expect
it is the colour. The whole crew feels the same. Only Dicky's camp, unprintable comments break the tension.