The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (24 page)

Before the start of the ceremony, American show business columnist Jonah Ruddy managed to catch a few words with the actress. ‘I’m very happy to be back in Hollywood and very eager to work again,’ she announced. When asked about her approaching 36th birthday and her imminent forties, she put her arm around Ruddy, squeezed him gently and breathlessly said, ‘I think it’s very nice being a girl. But it’s wonderful, just wonderful being a woman.’ The reporter then asked her what she intended to do when she reached that period of her life. ‘Oh, I shall travel,’ she retorted. ‘I want to travel in Europe. I’ve never been to Europe, only London and the suburbs.’ Ruddy then enquired whether she had any thoughts about remarrying. ‘I hope so,’ Marilyn optimistically replied, ‘I hope so.’

Regrettably, this piece of light-hearted banter would prove to be the
calm before the storm. Just an hour or so later, mouths dropped when the actress materialised on stage to collect her award from fellow screen legend Rock Hudson. The form-fitting, floor-length backless dress Marilyn was wearing was so tight, she could barely move. For one short moment, the Hollywood A-list sat speechless at the sight of the actress and her new figure-hugging outfit, many of them climbing onto their chairs just to get a better view of her.

The film star Zsa Zsa Gabor was clearly not impressed by Marilyn’s spotlight-grabbing appearance. Gabor, who had flown in especially for the occasion, became angry when Monroe naturally attracted the most attention from the gathered photographers. ‘I don’t wish to be catty,’ she spitefully remarked to one reporter, ‘but personally, I thought Marilyn gave an imitation of Jayne Mansfield.’

Monroe’s acceptance speech was as memorable as her dress. Running to just seven words, it became one of Hollywood’s briefest ever. ‘Thank you,’ she purred. ‘I’m grateful to you all.’ Unfortunately, for those near the actress, the evening would be remembered for other reasons. James Bacon, whose table was adjacent to Marilyn’s that night, recalled, ‘I sat near her. She gulped wine by the glassful and when her name was called, she had to be helped out of her chair onto the stage. She accepted the award almost in a caricature of herself.’ Another recollection of the night came from her actress friend, Susan Strasberg. She confirmed what everyone had suspected: Marilyn was drunk. ‘Her voice was slurred and she was out of control,’ she recalled. ‘She was in one of her armoured vapour clouds. She had arrived four sheets to the wind and proceeded to go for five.’

Charlton Heston, the winner of that night’s World’s Favourite Male Movie Star award, was standing at the podium when Marilyn arrived to receive her prize. Writing in his
Journals
, he recalled, ‘Monroe was absolutely smashed, unable to say a word (
sic
). Probably just as well.’ Her eccentric behaviour continued backstage at the after-show party. When Judy Garland’s doting manager, Freddie Fields, sauntered up to Monroe, offering to be her new manager, the actress informed him she was now not in the market for one, toasted him high with a glass of tequila and then accidentally spilt some of the drink in her own hair.

However, the reason for her outlandish behaviour was not self-induced. It was later revealed that potent injections of Nembutal, Seconal, phenobarbital and, ominously, the knockout drops chloral hydrate, had been administered to the actress over the previous three days. Marilyn’s uncontrollable behaviour had been the result of her reaction to this lethal cocktail of drugs, a state of affairs exacerbated by the fact that Dr Ralph Greenson had just increased her dosage of
sleeping pills, as arranged by the pair during their stormy meeting just two days previously on Saturday 3 March.

Something’s Got To Give
may not yet have been heading for disaster, but turmoil surrounding the film still impregnated the air. To help alleviate the problem, during the afternoon of Tuesday 6 March, Marilyn attended a meeting at Fox with the studio’s vice-president, Peter G. Levathes. In essence, the conference with the 26-year-old former lawyer was designed for one thing and one thing only: to declare her wholehearted support for the project. Amid sighs of great relief, plans to send costumiers over to the actress’s Brentwood house to take measurements for her outfits in the movie were immediately made.

In an almost hermit-like existence, Marilyn spent the remainder of the month at the house, studying her recently acquired Mexican horticulture books, recovering from a mild flu-like virus she had caught during her recent trips and negotiating a pay rise to her housekeeper, Eunice Murray.

Work on the property continued. At a cost of $66, tiler Jose Paraeo was called to repair the building’s notoriously leaky roof tiles. The actress even personally undertook the planting of some citrus trees in her garden. The local gardener, Sam Tateishi, was hired to assist her, at an exorbitant $939.55 a month. It was emblematic of how her spending was still completely out of control and of how her generosity was being abused. At a cost of $1,982.75 per annum, the Bel Air Patrol Company was hired to guard her property and the Landon Pool Services company, at a cost of $496.52 a year, was employed to take care of her swimming pool (even though she never personally used it). Closing her North Doheny Drive apartment and moving her furniture out of it proved to be another huge expense. At a cost of $2,021, furniture not transferred to her new home, including her white baby-grand piano, was shipped back to New York and put into storage at the large warehouse belonging to J. Santini & Bros Inc.

It wasn’t just at Marilyn’s that large sums of money were being squandered. By mid-March, an elaborate $200,000 set replicating George Cukor’s mansion and the back yard of his Beverly Hills home was being assembled on Stage 14 at 20th Century-Fox. Overseen by the movie’s associate producer, Gene Allen, the duplication was so precise that studio painters even managed to reproduce precisely the colour of the shrubbery found in his real back garden. Towards the end of the month, following several lengthy discussions about money (‘I wanted $15, they offered $12,’ he joked), Rat Pack star and crooner Dean Martin finally agreed to star as the movie’s leading man. ‘It’s a first-rate script,’ he remarked at the time. ‘I read fifty pages and I signed.’ At his agent’s insistence, an interesting caveat was inserted into the contract,
which stipulated that, should Marilyn be replaced, Martin would need approval of the understudy, or else he would not complete the picture.

Other top Hollywood stars soon enlisted. Following Marilyn’s insistence, these included eminent Hollywood dancer Cyd Charisse and television entertainers Steve Allen and Phil Silvers. A new version of the
Something’s Got To Give
script was completed by Nunnally Johnson on Thursday 29 March and, to the relief of the cash-strapped, highly stressed Fox executives, a new starting date of Monday 16 April was set. With a budget of $3,254,000 for 47 working days, an October 1962 cinema release date for the movie was even tentatively scheduled (conveniently just in time to pay for the post-production costs of
Cleopatra
). For once, everything seemed to be going to plan on the movie. Unfortunately, the optimism would prove to be transient.

In the second week of April, and against Monroe’s sternest wishes, 42-year-old Hollywood screenwriter Walter Bernstein was drafted in as Nunnally Johnson’s replacement. Following instructions from George Cukor, which included his insistence that any interference from Marilyn should be ignored, his first task was to rewrite entirely his predecessor’s script and restore much of Bella and Sam Spewack’s 1939 screenplay, since, in Cukor’s eyes, ‘No one had yet managed to improve upon it.’ Producer Henry Weinstein was also forthcoming with suggestions. But in stark contrast to Cukor’s directive, he told Bernstein not to make many changes to the script but just do ‘a little polishing here and there’.

Naturally upset about Johnson’s dismissal, Marilyn was keen to see the writer off before he flew home. Since his flight back to England was scheduled for early the following morning, a prompt 7.45 meeting at his hotel was arranged by the pair. Completely devoid of any make-up, as planned, the actress arrived at Johnson’s hotel, but the building’s ever vigilant staff refused to grant her access to his room. Immediately, she called Johnson and explained the predicament. ‘Tell them you’re a call girl and I sent for you,’ he humorously suggested. At once, the actress laughed, took on the persona of a prostitute and proceeded to tell the desk clerk just that. As if by magic, the lift doors opened and she was free to ascend to Johnson’s room.

The two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne Marilyn had brought with her were turned down by the screenwriter. It was far too early for him to consume alcohol, but he graciously accepted them anyway for consumption later. After exchanging several pleasantries, the actress agreed to escort him to the airport, where they said their goodbyes. Johnson returned to England pleased that he had been able to work with Marilyn again, and completely unaware that it was the last time he would speak to or see her.

Marilyn’s first taste of the film’s impressive new staging occurred at 9am on Tuesday 10 April when, on the day it was officially announced that she had been added to the bill of President Kennedy’s forthcoming birthday gala show, the actress uncharacteristically arrived on time for costume and screen tests. When she pulled up at the studio in a chauffeur-driven limousine arranged by Henry Weinstein a huge sigh of relief could be heard coming from the movie’s production office. As one studio employee remarked, ‘The executives working on that movie were really living on their nerves. Marilyn had made them manic. If you banged on their door, they’d leap eight feet in the air!’

Monroe’s first appearance on a film set in 17 months was accompanied by the obligatory wolf-whistles and wild applause from the assembled studio technicians. But to the astonishment of all Fox employees, the movie’s director, George Cukor, was not present to welcome the actress to the set or supervise her tests. Citing ‘production business’, he had chosen to stay away on the day of her great movie comeback. It was apparent that his deep-rooted two-year-old anger towards the actress still flowed in his blood. His no-show was a serious breach of studio etiquette. Other major stars would have stormed off the set at such an occurrence. But not Marilyn. She just shrugged and laughed off Cukor’s petulance. However, inside she was wounded. She secretly regarded his unprofessional, ill-considered action as an almighty slap in the face. It was a great shame, as Marilyn’s appearance that day was simply unmissable.

In an attempt to be visually perfect for her celebrated return to movie making, besides the low-cholesterol diet she was now on, the actress had drafted in two of Tinseltown’s finest exponents of beauty: Elizabeth Arden (who regularly administered soothing, top-to-toe ‘hot wax’ treatments to the actress at her home) and the late Jean Harlow’s elderly hair-colourist, Pearl Porterfield (who, to make a woman’s hair truly platinum blonde, still utilised the old and harmful method of covering her tresses with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, liquid Clorox bleach and the special household detergent, laundry bluing).

Marilyn also travelled for her care, paying several visits at $100 a time to the Sunset Strip branch of the well-known New York dermatologist, Rena’s. The beautifying did not end there. Her good friend Ralph Roberts was also on hand to regularly administer his therapy, a soothing massage following a relaxing ice bath, into which Chanel No. 5, the actress’s favourite fragrance, had been poured. The excessive pampering worked. Marilyn looked simply sensational in her Fox tests.

For six straight hours, and with producer Weinstein at the helm, she posed, paraded, smiled and laughed in front of the Deluxe colour CinemaScope cameras wearing seven different hairstyles (including a
thigh-length blonde wig intended for the start of the film) and 15 costumes designed by William Travilla, ranging from a glamorous black and white silk dress and a figure-hugging lime-green bikini to a skimpy ‘castaway-on-a-desert-isle’ garment and a pair of sailor’s trousers, which had to be held up with safety pins.

This was a newborn Monroe. Aided by her new svelte 22-inch waist and eight stone four body weight, she was considerably more sophisticated and stylish than she had ever been before. Her stunning appearance was abetted by a range of 50 brightly coloured spotlights, which had been placed at various points and heights around the studio by Academy Award-nominated Fox cinematographer Franz Planer. Pink-tinted lights to help make Marilyn appear more youthful and amber ones to make her seem softer were also used. Specifically to highlight the key features on her face, shoulders, arms and hands, he strategically placed several beam-lights on the set. It came as no surprise when Henry Weinstein described Monroe’s appearance that day as ‘her best’ and ‘extraordinary’. Others in attendance were in agreement, admitting that she looked ‘better than she had done in years’.

That evening, the 35mm colour footage of Marilyn’s tests was hastily processed and dispatched post-haste to one of the studio’s screening rooms where Philip Feldman, Fox’s executive vice-president for studio operations, excitedly viewed it. So too did Peter Levathes, who enthusiastically gushed to the press, ‘This will be the
best
Monroe picture ever. Marilyn is at the
peak
of her beauty and ability.’ Freshly printed copies of the screen test were shipped off to New York where Fox supremo Spyros P. Skouras was scheduled to scrutinise them early the following morning. Everyone who witnessed Marilyn’s latest, utterly flawless, supremely joyous celluloid performance was united in the opinion that the actress was back to her most glamorous, beautiful and exceedingly photogenic best. Unfortunately, looks would prove deceiving.

That same evening, Henry Weinstein was summoned to Marilyn’s home in Brentwood, where he discovered her sprawled across her bed, unconscious from an apparent overdose of barbiturates. ‘I called Rommy [Dr Ralph Greenson] and he came running over,’ Weinstein recalled in a documentary for Fox. ‘I knew then that we were in trouble.’ He immediately pleaded with studio executives to delay shooting. But with the company teetering on the brink of financial collapse, they badly needed their most bankable star to help bail them out. ‘I went to studio bosses and was told, “Don’t worry. You’re being melodramatic. She’ll be OK.” But I was insistent and told them I didn’t believe she was up for doing the movie yet. I said to them, “If I came and told you that Marilyn had had a heart attack, what would you do then?” They replied, “Well,
we’d wait.” So I asked them, “What’s the difference?” They said, “Well, if she’d had a heart attack, we couldn’t get insurance. But with this, we can.”’ A decision to press ahead with shooting resulted. Weinstein later admitted that he felt their actions were cold and heartless. He was right.