Marilyn Monroe (12 page)

In June, Marilyn crossed the New York border to Canada for several weeks of location shooting. Before she even had a chance to get started, however, there was concern back at the studio that casting her in
Niagara
might have been a mistake after all. Zanuck’s upset had nothing to do with whether she could handle the role of Rose Loomis, a faithless wife who plans to kill her husband. Instead, he was puzzled by the disappointing box-office receipts of
Don’t Bother to Knock.
At Twentieth, Marilyn continued to receive an enormous volume of fan mail, but many of the people who had been drawn to Marilyn’s publicity clearly were not going to see her films. Considering her popularity, she just wasn’t drawing the audiences she should. As a businessman, Zanuck knew that something was very wrong. He decided to discuss the problem with Howard Hawks, who had previously expressed reservations about the kind of roles in which Marilyn was being cast.

“Howard, we ought to have a great big star here and we’re losing money,” said Zanuck. “What the hell is happening?”

“Darryl,” Hawks replied, “you’re making realism with a very unreal girl. She’s a completely storybook character. And you’re trying to make real movies.”

“What should she do?”

Hawks suggested that Marilyn would be much more effective in musical comedy than in gritty melodramas like
Don’t Bother to Knock
and
Niagara.
Specifically, he mentioned a property that Twentieth already owned.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, based on a novel by Anita Loos, had been a big hit on Broadway starring Carol Channing. Twentieth had originally purchased the property as a potential Betty Grable vehicle. Hawks insisted that Marilyn would be perfect as the gold-digger Lorelei Lee.

“She couldn’t do that,” said Zanuck, referring to a role that required singing and dancing.

“The hell she can’t,” Hawks replied.

Zanuck, unconvinced, asked who Hawks would use for the other girl in the story. Hawks said it wouldn’t be a problem to borrow his friend
Jane Russell from Howard Hughes. If Marilyn Monroe’s name on a marquee didn’t bring in audiences, Russell’s certainly would. Zanuck, his fears somewhat put to rest, asked Hawks to direct
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Yet he remained nervous that Marilyn wouldn’t be able to carry it off.

As it happened, by the time Marilyn received her next assignment she was already instinctively moving her performance in
Niagara
away from the “realism” that Hawks thought all wrong for her. From the moment she began her first scenes with Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters, it was obvious that Marilyn was over-playing, making her murderess anything but real. Her role in
Niagara
was bigger, flashier, and more glamorous than anything Marilyn had done before, affording her an opportunity to push her sexuality to the extreme. Again and again, Marilyn seemed to calculate just how far she could go; then she went several steps further. Her Rose Loomis is larger than life, almost a cartoon of a woman. Everything about Rose—her walk, her husky voice, the tightness of her scarlet dress—is exaggerated. She is a figure in a nightmare. Marilyn might have been demolished playing opposite the skilled, experienced Joseph Cotten; instead, her gaudy, over-the-top performance blasted him off the screen. Henry Hathaway, studying the rushes, realized that it was impossible to take one’s eyes off her.

Hathaway, notorious for shouting and cursing at actors on the set, became a teddy bear with Marilyn. He worried that she was driving herself too hard. In addition to her work on the film, she accepted a great many requests for interviews and publicity photographs. It seemed never to occur to her to say no to the studio publicity office, though the long hours she spent on these assignments devoured the very minimal time she had to rest. Hathaway was horrified by how much was being demanded of her, and by how oddly alone and unprotected she seemed.

Finally, Hathaway asked Marilyn where her agent was. Didn’t she have someone to tell these guys to lay off while she was working? Marilyn explained that since Johnny Hyde’s death, no one at William Morris, where she remained under contract, seemed to remember that she was alive. Hathaway, in a stern but fatherly way, advised Marilyn that she had better understand that after
Niagara
, all this was going to get much worse. He told her how she was coming across in the rushes. Predicting that the film was going to be a very big hit for her, Hathaway advised
Marilyn to get some help, and he urged her to do it before the roller-coaster ride began. The kind of success that awaited her was not something she was going to be able to handle on her own.

When the company moved back to Los Angeles, Marilyn took a six-month lease on a little house in the Hollywood Hills, not far from the place where Gladys had once tried to make her fantasy of creating a home for herself and her little girl come true. Now, like her mother, Marilyn seemed to find the responsibility of even a rented house an unbearable psychological burden. Insisting that she wasn’t ready for it at a moment when she had so much work to do, she moved to a suite at the Bel Air Hotel.

By this time, as Jimmy Cannon wrote, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio had become the “whole country’s pets,” endlessly photographed and written about. But as Marilyn was beginning to recognize, the truth of their relationship was considerably more complex than the idealized version in the press. While it was wonderful finally to have a strong, dependable figure like Joe in her corner, the fact remained that he resented her work. And while in the beginning Marilyn had brought Joe into her life as the man who was going to tell the world that she was a good girl, lately he’d also been sending out a very different message. Much as Joe loved Marilyn and wanted to marry her, part of him remained very critical and disapproving. At times, he seemed to disparage almost everything she did. He was determined to change her. He complained that her clothes were immodest. He complained that the parts she played were vulgar. When Marilyn flew to Atlantic City for the premiere of
Monkey Business
, Joe exploded over a particularly revealing publicity photograph of her in a low-cut dress. Unwittingly, Joe activated Marilyn’s most deeply-rooted fears and insecurities. Since childhood she’d been intent on proving that she wasn’t bad, yet here was Joe, apparently with the best will in the world, constantly suggesting the very opposite.

Marilyn began to pull back from the relationship, but Joe wasn’t about to give up. He was in California with her every chance he had. His ten-year-old son, Joe, Jr., whom he adored, attended the Black Rock Military Academy in Los Angeles, and he wanted Marilyn to get to know the boy. That made Marilyn think that perhaps she’d been wrong; if a man wants you to spend time with his children, he must respect you. So
Marilyn happily spent several hours at the hotel pool with Joe, Jr., who found her irresistible. Children always loved Marilyn, because she spoke to them as equals. But the day had an unhappy ending. When Joe, Jr.’s mother read a newspaper account of the visit, she went wild.

Dorothy’s second marriage, to a stockbroker, had ended in divorce two years previously, and after that there had been talk of a reconciliation with DiMaggio. Joe, apparently, had never gotten over Dorothy and welcomed a second chance. The couple spent a snowbound weekend together in Nevada, and Dorothy announced in the press that she was considering a second marriage to Joe. But just when she decided that, yes, she very much wanted to be Mrs. Joe D. again, Marilyn appeared on the scene and the choice was no longer hers. Humiliation, no doubt, accounted for the angry charges she hurled at her former husband. “I must think of my son’s emotional security,” Dorothy declared when she went to court to limit DiMaggio’s visitation rights because he had exposed the boy to an improper environment. “Although good heavens, I’m not a jealous woman, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he took him to the Bel Air Hotel pool with Marilyn Monroe.”

Dorothy’s attack had been aimed at Joe, but the real victim was Marilyn, who was devastated by her remarks. Marilyn was already being pulled in two directions about Joe, but this incident seemed to make up her mind. There could be no question of marriage right now. She would keep Joe in her life, certainly, but her focus, whether he liked it or not, must be on work.

By October, as people at the studio began to have a first look at
Niagara
, everyone seemed sure that this was going to be Marilyn’s breakthrough. Yet she still had not done anything about a new agent. Hathaway persistently reminded her that she needed someone to look out for her interests. Finally, with the Hawks film about to start in November, she decided to act, and instructed her lawyer to write the long-postponed letter firing William Morris. She planned to sign with Charlie Feldman. In the last months, the regular visits from Feldman’s minions had made it obvious that Famous Artists was eager to have her as a client. She remained far from sure that she trusted Feldman, but at least she’d made a decision. Feldman himself was in New York at the moment, so she told Jack Gordean, one of his agents, that the letter had gone out and asked him to come by the studio for a drink. Gordean
called to tell Feldman what had happened. Feldman, delighted, was determined to sign Marilyn before Hawks started filming.

When Gordean arrived, Marilyn said she preferred to wait a few days. She quoted Feldman; she said he had told her that for appearance’s sake she ought to wait five or six days after leaving one agency before signing with another. When her remark reached Feldman, he had little choice but to wait, though he had no memory of saying any such thing. Still, Marilyn had made her move and they would have her signed before every agent in town started chasing her.

Two days later, Marilyn arrived at Fox to find an astonishing sight. A plump-cheeked, kinky-haired Lilliputian, wearing a dark business suit and a large, crimson bow tie, handed her a massive bouquet of flowers. Abe Lastfogel, president of William Morris, focused his bright blue eyes on her. He behaved as if it were every day that he came to the studio personally to gush over Marilyn. After Johnny Hyde’s death, Lastfogel had ducked Marilyn’s calls, refusing to do anything for her. Now, he pretended to be shocked when Marilyn mentioned her lawyer’s letter. Insisting that he hadn’t received it, he vowed that his being here had nothing to do with anything but her marvellous self.

Marilyn firmly stated that she really did plan to change agencies. And that, she assumed, was that.

That afternoon, Joe Schenck summoned her to his office. The agent had been in to see him, of course. After all the lies Lastfogel had just told her, Uncle Joe insisted he was “an honorable man” and criticized Marilyn’s treatment of him. Reminding Marilyn that he always looked out for her interests, he declared that she was crazy to fire Lastfogel. She should stay with William Morris.

Marilyn left Schenck’s office badly shaken—not so much because she believed him about Lastfogel, but because he had been adamant that she should not go to Famous Artists. Suddenly, she was completely unsure again. Marilyn was well aware that Schenck and Feldman were close friends; maybe she’d be a fool to trust Feldman if even his friend warned her not to. But if she couldn’t yet bring herself to sign with Feldman, Marilyn still did have other, very immediate needs. And nervous as she was, she had at least figured out a way to satisfy them.

Marilyn placed another call to Gordean. Would he come to the studio again? Over cocktails, Marilyn described Lastfogel’s visit,
including the bouquet and the talk that followed. She told of being summoned by Joe Schenck and repeated all he said. Then, having conveyed the message that Lastfogel did not plan to give up easily, Marilyn reassured Gordean that she had every intention of signing—just not tonight. She sent him to a sneak preview
of Niagara
in Pasadena.

If Marilyn had intended to remind Gordean that it would be worth fighting to represent her, here was proof. The audience went wild when Marilyn, in a skin-tight red silk dress, sang “Kiss” in a low sultry voice, and when she lay naked, arms outstretched, beneath a white sheet. The theater erupted in cheers and wolf whistles in response to a prolonged shot of her walking in high heels, the camera focused lovingly on her rear.

Marilyn had told Gordean that they should talk when he got back to the studio. As promised, she was waiting for him. Aware that the audience’s reaction to
Niagara
would be fresh in his mind, she proceeded to tell Gordean about her financial troubles. She only earned $750 a week, and half of that went to acting lessons with Natasha Lytess and Michael Chekhov, as well as dancing and singing lessons in preparation for
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Barely enough was left to cover the rent on the suite she’d moved into at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She indicated that she had no idea how she could possibly survive.

When Gordean reported the whole saga to his boss, Feldman wasted no time in offering to lend Marilyn $3,500. Gordean delivered a check to Marilyn’s hotel. She promised to come to his office later that day to sign the contracts, but she never showed up.

Feldman realized that he would have to try a new tack if he hoped to get Marilyn to make the move to Famous Artists. The loan hadn’t done the trick, and he knew that time was of the essence. He would try a more personal gesture, something to show Marilyn how well he planned to treat her as his client. Charles Chaplin was due in Los Angeles for his first visit since being sent into political exile some years before. Feldman, who was giving a black-tie dinner in Chaplin’s honor, decided to invite Marilyn. This would be the first time that she had been invited to a Feldman A-list dinner as a person in her own right. A great many people in town would have given almost anything for an invitation to the Chaplin evening. Marilyn, however, declined.

She was clearing the decks for
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Being
directed by Hawks in the role of Lorelei Lee was the sort of opportunity Johnny Hyde had longed to get for her. Now that she had acquired that opportunity entirely on her own, Marilyn did not want anything to go wrong. The challenges were enormous. She was always uneasy about her acting abilities, but
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
would also require her to sing and dance in elaborate production numbers. Hawks, recognizing that she needed to concentrate, asked Zanuck to relieve her of all publicity assignments. There had once been a time when Marilyn had to beg the publicity department to send her out, but now it was they who constantly made demands on her. Zanuck, with much fanfare, suspended all of her publicity work for the duration of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
He notified the press that Marilyn would be unavailable for interviews, personal appearances, or photographic sessions. The announcement, of course, was itself a publicity gesture; it signaled how important Twentieth believed this picture was going to be for Marilyn’s career.