The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (33 page)

A tentatively arranged day of filming on Sunday 27 May failed to materialise when Monroe once again phoned in sick and was treated for an ear infection by her replacement doctor, Milton H. Uhley, a medic acting on call for Dr Hyman Engelberg. The following day, Marilyn’s run of reporting in sick continued when she informed Fox she was still suffering from her ear virus; stories suggesting that Marilyn appeared on the Fox set that day but was in bad shape and all the footage she shot had to be scrapped are erroneous. Dr Uhley was forced to pay another visit to the actress’s home late that evening.

A day later, Tuesday 29 May, Marilyn returned to Fox but regrettably her legendary tardiness had come back to haunt her. Repeating a ritual she had acted out hundreds of times before, she was driven around aimlessly for hours until she was finally able to pluck up enough courage to enter the studio’s gates. Once more, the thought of standing and acting before a cast and crew horrified her. The instant she did muster enough courage to enter the studio, Marilyn headed straight for her room where, according to a Fox make-up woman, she sat ‘nude at the dressing table, staring at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t bring herself to get dressed.’

Later that morning, in a scene intended to follow straight after her nude midnight swim, Marilyn participated in a sequence with Martin, their first alone together since shooting began, where his character implied that his wife was unfaithful during her five years away on the island. Due to Monroe’s continued exhaustion, filming wrapped at 5pm. But instead of travelling home, the actress followed her co-star back to his home at 601
Mountain Drive, Beverly Hills. Once there, wearing dark sunglasses and a headscarf, she sat and watched him and his daughter, Deanna, perform the twist to the 1960 Bobby Darin recording, ‘(Up a) Lazy River’. As Deanna recalled in her 2005 publication,
Memories Are Made Of This
, Marilyn ‘smiled shyly, applauded and thanked us. She was very sweet and polite.’

Since Wednesday 30 May was Memorial Day, there was no shooting and the movie’s cast and crew were given a day’s holiday. Marilyn spent the day at home finishing a painting she intended to give the President, a watercolour on paper featuring a symbolic red rose. Intended for Kennedy’s 45th birthday, the actress was planning to hand it to him personally during a party to be held at the White House on her own birthday. Her handwritten inscription in blue and black ink in the bottom left corner of the painting touchingly read: ‘Happy Birthday Pres. Kennedy from Marilyn Monroe. Happy Birthday June 1, 1962, My Best Wishes, Marilyn, Marilyn.’ (She had inadvertently signed her name on it twice.)

Filming on
Something’s Got To Give
reconvened a day later, when, in the much smaller Sound Stage 8, Marilyn and Wally Cox shot a sequence in a fabricated shoe store. In the scene, Monroe’s character, Ellen, tries to persuade the naïve, somewhat nerdy salesman (Cox) to pose as the man she was marooned on an island with. As the surviving footage demonstrates, the actress was in fine form and managed to deliver her lines impeccably. But unfortunately, Marilyn’s flawless acting skills were in evidence far too late. Production on the movie was now 11 days behind schedule.

On Friday 1 June, at precisely 9.37am, and following a brief hair-trim by Marilyn’s stylist, Sydney Guilaroff, shooting on
Something’s Got To Give
resumed on Sound Stage 14. Today’s humorous sequence focused on attempts by Marilyn’s character to pass off the shoe salesman as the man she had spent the previous five years with, while completely unaware that her husband (Martin) had already encountered her ‘real’ island cohabitant, played by Thomas Tryon. ‘What kind of an island was it?’ Nick asks the patsy. ‘I’d say it was an ordinary one,’ the shoe-seller unwittingly replies. ‘Small island?’ Nick enquires. ‘Not small, not large,’ Cox offers. ‘Medium,’ Marilyn’s character interjects. ‘Water?’ Nick asks. ‘Oh yes, water all around,’ the shoe-seller responds.

While the light-hearted banter unfurled, Monroe looked on, smiling and interposing where necessary. During a break in the shooting, for one brief moment, she stood sideways on to the camera, her posterior facing towards Martin’s face. Noticing this, he jokingly formed his hand into the shape of a gun, aimed it at the actress’s rear and quipped, ‘Haven’t I seen that some place before?’

Her demeanour throughout the day was happy and, apart from a lunch
time visit to the studio canteen with Paula Strasberg, Marilyn remained on the set throughout. It was also the actress’s 36th birthday, a day that she had been dreading. At a recent party, Hollywood stars Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty both recalled how Marilyn walked up to them murmuring the words, ‘Thirty-six, thirty-six, thirty-six. It’s all over.’ For a girl whose appeal was primarily based upon her youth, beauty and sex appeal, she knew it was not a good age to be. Throughout the day, presents for the actress from stars such as Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon and Frank Sinatra, ranging from bunches of flowers to bottles of champagne, arrived in droves.

There were numerous telegrams too. The first was from Joe DiMaggio, who was currently away in Madrid, on holiday with blonde jazz singer and Monroe lookalike Choo Choo Collins. His note, sent by way of Western Union, read ‘Happy birthday. Hope today and future years bring you sunny skies and all your heart desires. As ever – Joe.’

‘I like celebrating birthdays,’ Marilyn once remarked to film and television writer Bob Thomas. ‘I enjoy knowing I’m alive.’ Due to the severity of the delays in filming, however, George Cukor was reluctant to celebrate the actress’s birthday until shooting had wrapped for the day. Aside from the supplying of free coffee to the cast and crew during breaks (which Fox miserly charged to Monroe’s account), the first official recognition of the birthday did not come until 5.30pm when the director called time on the day’s activities. A bottle of champagne was cracked open to signify the start of their small party. Thirty minutes later, following a suggestion by Dean Martin, the crew presented Marilyn with a special $7 sheet cake, purchased by the actress’s stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty, from the bakery at the Farmers Market, at Third Street and Fairfax Avenue, a day earlier. It was adorned with seven Fourth of July-type sparklers and a bikini-clad miniature doll, an obvious reference to her impressive new svelte figure.

As the actress blew out the sparklers, the cast and crew, including Cukor, huddled together and sang a rather halting version of ‘Happy Birthday’. A picture was taken of the moment, showing Marilyn wearing a false smile and with tears evident in her lifeless eyes. Naturally, she would grow to hate it. She managed to perk up when she was presented with a hand-drawn birthday card, signed by everyone in the movie’s entourage, which featured a cartoon drawing of a nude Monroe holding up a towel to cover her modesty. As a humorous nod to her legendary nude swimming pool sequence, the words ‘Happy Birthday (Suit)’ had been drawn in large letters across the front. However, according to Weinstein, due to all the troubles they’d gone through during the making of the movie, it was a ‘pretend celebration’.

Compared with Elizabeth Taylor’s recent, lavish birthday celebration, it was indeed a subdued affair. When the
Cleopatra
star celebrated her 30th birthday, in Rome back on Tuesday 27 February, she had taken a day off from shooting and spent it relaxing in her villa near Rome’s old Appian Way. Later that night, along with her husband, Eddie Fisher, and some of the film’s cast and crew, she attended a dinner party at the swanky 14th-century Roman-themed restaurant, Hostaria dell’Orso (Hostelry of the Bear), the city’s oldest eating establishment. The centrepiece of their table was an assortment of orchids provided by Fox’s president, Spyros P. Skouras. A visit to a plush night club followed. At midnight, when she and Fisher were attempting to leave the venue, the in-house orchestra promptly struck up a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. Their attempt to flee was hindered once again when, approximately ten minutes later, she was presented with a surprise cake, adorned with three candles.

And how did Marilyn celebrate her big day? She worked all day, was forced to pay for the crew’s coffee, drank champagne from paper cups and shared, with her colleagues, a simple, $7, one-layer frosted cake, which had been purchased by a friend from a local market. It was no wonder that she had tears in her eyes.

After 30 more minutes of unenthusiastic goodwill-gesturing, cake-eating, alcohol-sipping and perfunctory posing for pictures with colleagues in Martin’s dressing room, the party finally began to peter out. Marilyn gathered her belongings and prepared to leave the studio. Before doing so, she brushed off her disappointment by returning a phone call to her good friend, Hollywood movie and television writer James Bacon. During the exchange she informed him, ‘Well, I’m finally going to see the New York Yankees tonight. I don’t think I’ll see the whole game, though. I would if Joe [DiMaggio] were playing. He’s the only ball-player I care about.’ Rather than attending the White House, at the eleventh hour she had apparently agreed to make an appearance at the game between the Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels in aid of an appeal for donations for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

With the fur-trimmed mink beret she had worn during the day’s filming still attached to her head, Marilyn walked out of the studio and headed straight to her chauffeur-driven limousine. Sitting behind the wheel was the ever-reliable Rudy Kadensky. Her new best pal, Wally Cox, accompanied her. Following a gentle wave to a waiting photographer and a shout of ‘Goodbye, I will see you on Monday’ to her friends and work colleagues, she was driven out of the studio gates.

‘That does it,’ assistant director Buck Hall remarked as he caught sight of Monroe’s car leaving the studio. He was convinced that this was the end
of the movie. Executives had even begged the actress not to go to the baseball game and told her that if she
really
wanted to do something for charity she should stay at home and do it for Fox. Threats from Cukor and Weinstein that the notoriously damp and cold Californian nights might be bad for her health had failed to dissuade her from going.

Regrettably, Hall’s remarks would be prophetic. As Marilyn’s car drove out of the Fox lot that night, however, no one could possibly have known that the actress had just completed her final day of work on
Something’s Got To Give
(out of the 33 shooting days, she had showed just 12 times) and finished the last sequence of filming in her career. The actress would not appear on a motion picture set again.

After picking up Dean Martin’s son, Dino, at the Martins’ family home, the actress journeyed on to Chavez Ravine Stadium, the home of the Los Angeles Angels baseball team. Marilyn’s hastily arranged address was set to take place in front of a record-breaking 51,584 crowd. ‘You’ll make the speech from home plate,’ an Angels executive whispered to her upon her arrival at the park. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ she enthusiastically remarked, before asking, ‘Where’s that?’

With the beret still sitting delicately on her head, Marilyn took to the field on the arm of the Angels’ smallest player, outfielder Albie Gregory Pearson. To even things up, she was then joined by the opposing side’s star player, Roger Maris. Her pre-game talk was brief. Aside from the appeal, she also playfully attempted to distance herself from any favouritism towards the New York Yankees by announcing, ‘I’m for
both
teams.’ Marilyn concluded her appearance by blowing kisses to the crowd, signing autographs, speaking with young children in wheelchairs, watching a school choir perform and throwing out the opening ball of the game. Throughout the evening, with the wind blowing hard through the stadium, the actress fought hard to keep her hat attached to her head.

With Joe DiMaggio Jr acting as her escort, Marilyn clearly enjoyed herself and was to some extent successful in her attempts to put the problems surrounding her new movie behind her. Nor, contrary to previous reports, was she the only star in attendance that night. Sitting alongside her in addition to Wally Cox, were Hollywood film and TV celebrities Bob Hope, Sid Cesar, Doris Day, Ann Blythe, Lucille Ball, and director Stanley Kramer.

After her appearance, Monroe, DiMaggio Jr, Dino and Cox were driven to the world-famous celebrity restaurant, Chasen’s, at 9039 Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where she tucked into her regular dish of sliced artichokes placed in a shape of a star with soba noodles in the middle and topped off with three succulent shrimps. After the meal,
the actress asked Rudy Kadensky to drop her guests off. But Marilyn was in no mood to end her day yet.

The actress was escorted back to her home on Fifth Helena where she called her favourite eatery, the Italian gourmet restaurant La Scala, located nearby at 9455 Santa Monica Boulevard. She wanted to know whether her regular cubicle was available. When told it was, she walked back to her limo and promptly instructed Kadensky to drive her there. Once inside, and after exchanging low-key pleasantries with the manager and staff, she lackadaisically tucked into her second meal of the day, her favoured choice at the restaurant, a small portion of fettuccine leon and veal piccata. After eating, she was escorted back home – although, contrary to the claims of previous Marilyn biographers that she returned early that evening, the surviving limousine-hire receipts show that she actually enjoyed a rather full day and did not return home until 12.30am.

Even though it was Monroe’s birthday, this did not prevent her tactless doctor’s family from hand-delivering Ralph Greenson’s latest invoice. Marilyn found it waiting for her on a table when she re-entered her home. (The sum of $350, for his ‘professional services’, was dutifully paid by the actress, by way of a cheque – no. 1647 – one week later, on Friday 8 June.)

At this point, the first major confusion in the actress’s final months begins. It is still not entirely certain how, precisely, Marilyn spent that weekend. For producer Henry Weinstein, though, whatever
did
happen was a defining moment in Monroe’s life. Speaking to Fox in 1990, he remarked, ‘What happened that weekend? I don’t know. To me, that’s more interesting than what happened the day Marilyn died. To me [that weekend] was the turning point.’