Marilyn Monroe (24 page)

Sidney arrived fearing the worst. Following Joe’s instructions, he sat on the edge of the bed. Joe pulled up a chair. The two men were so physically dissimilar that they might have come from different planets.
One was small and flabby, the other huge and muscular. Sidney had no idea why he was here.

DiMaggio’s voice, usually so sharp and strident, was gentle: “You know everything. There’s one thing I must know. Is there another man? Why did Marilyn divorce me?”

One can only imagine what it cost DiMaggio, intensely proud and reserved as he was, to ask another man that question. That he did so proved, if proof were needed, how much he loved Marilyn, and how devastated he had been by the divorce.

SIX

O
n the evening of Saturday, November 6, 1954, Marilyn pulled into a Hollywood gas station. She had completed principal photography on
The Seven Year Itch
two days previously. She wore long, glittering rhinestone earrings and a rhinestone bracelet on her left wrist. She had borrowed a strapless red chiffon gown with a low-cut back from the studio wardrobe department. Her neck and shoulders were bare. She appeared to be high. Marilyn’s escort, Sam Shaw, had a mustache and a mop of dark hair. He wore a hired tuxedo with sewn pockets and oversized patent leather shoes from Western Costume.

At that moment, Sam and Marilyn were out of gas, broke, and an hour late. She cajoled the attendant to fill the tank for free. They proceeded to Romanoff’s, the glamorous Beverly Hills restaurant where the doorman always greeted you with a sunny “Welcome home!”

Down three steps from the bar was the dining room. Within, about eighty members of the Hollywood aristocracy attended a candlelit, private dinner party. A dance band played. The men wore black tie. Many faces in the room were instantly recognizable. Marilyn later said that it had been like stepping into a dream. Among those who feasted on steak and champagne she saw Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Humphrey Bogart, Susan Hayward, Gary Cooper, Loretta Young, James Stewart, and George Burns. On each round table, the centerpiece was a cardboard cutout of Marilyn in the skirt-blowing scene from
The Seven Year Itch.

Sidney Skolsky rushed up to greet The Monroe. Tonight seemed like the culmination of all they had worked for. There could be no doubt
that
The Seven Year Itch
marked a watershed in her career.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and
How to Marry a Millionaire
had introduced audiences to an enchanting creature known as “the girl,” who did much to dispel America’s fears about sex. But in those two films, there had still been one false note in her character: She had played a gold-digger, so unavoidably there had been a lingering sense of threat.
The Seven Year Itch
took “the girl” to a new level. She isn’t a gold-digger. Indeed, she doesn’t seem to want anything from the man at all, except a chance to cool off in his air-conditioned apartment. As played by Tom Ewell, the male character embodies the particular pressures of 1950s’ puritanism. He’s terrified of sex, yet thinks of little else. “The girl,” humorous and carefree, shows him there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. She takes the peril out of sex, but leaves in the pleasure. The emblem of her innocent sexuality is the skirt-blowing scene, in which Ewell peeks under Marilyn’s skirt—but without consequence to either of them. The image, provided by Sam Shaw, was so powerful because it perfectly articulated the fantasies of a buttoned-up era, and the immense relief when those fantasies, far from destroying us, prove to be utterly harmless. In
The Seven Year Itch
, Marilyn had finally embodied precisely the right character to appeal to the American psyche. With this film, she became a vivid cultural symbol.

Charlie Feldman saw
The Seven Year Itch
as only the start of a long and mutually profitable association. Tonight, he and Billy Wilder were hosting a dinner in Marilyn’s honor. Feldman had assembled the film industry elite to salute her on the eve of a brilliant new beginning. “I feel like Cinderella,” Marilyn whispered in Sidney’s ear. “I didn’t think they’d all show up. Honest.”

George Axelrod came over to tell Marilyn he’d loved the seven reels he’d seen so far. “It’s because of Billy,” said Marilyn. “He’s a wonderful director. I want him to direct me again. But he’s doing
The Lindbergh Story
next, and he won’t let me play Lindbergh.”

Wilder did offer one important piece of advice. He was appalled by an item in the
Hollywood Reporter
about Marilyn’s desire to portray Grushenka in
The Brothers Karamazov.
“Marilyn, don’t play that part,” he warned. “Everybody’s making jokes about it. You have created a great character. Stay with the character you’ve created. You’ll be an actress and a star like Mae West. Eighty years old, you’ll be playing lead parts with the character you created.”

Wilder asked her to dance. Impressed by the director’s swoops and glides, Marilyn inquired where he had learned to dance, and he told her that he had been a gigolo in Berlin. She danced with Clark Gable. She danced with Darryl Zanuck. She danced with Charlie Feldman. It was, said Sam Shaw, “the night of her life.”

How different this all was from the isolation Marilyn had known with Joe. As far as most people were concerned, he was out of the picture. She had moved to an apartment on De Longpre Avenue in West Hollywood. As well as a celebration of present and future success, tonight was also supposed to be a kind of coming-out party for Marilyn.

Nevertheless, as would soon be apparent, Joe, for better or worse, remained a powerful presence in Marilyn’s life. Determined to find out if she was involved with another man, DiMaggio had hired a private detective to follow her. For all she knew, Barney Ruditsky or one of his assistants might be lurking outside Romanoff’s. For all she knew, Joe, the veins and muscles in his neck bulging, might suddenly storm in and embarrass her as he done the previous Friday night as she dined with friends.

Marilyn had spent much of November 5 at the studio recording a song for
There’s No Business Like Show Business
with her singing coach, Hal Schaefer. The twenty-nine-year-old Schaefer, an associate of Jack Cole, had attempted suicide during the shooting period, by swallowing typewriter cleaning fluid and about one hundred pills. While he was in the hospital, Marilyn secured permission to delay one last bit of recording until after she completed
The Seven Year Itch
, in order to give Schaefer time to recuperate. That evening, Marilyn and Schaefer dined with another of his pupils in her apartment on Waring Avenue in West Hollywood. DiMaggio, tipped off by Ruditsky, rushed to the building, accompanied by his friend Frank Sinatra. There could be no mistaking Marilyn’s messy black Cadillac convertible parked outside, but Ruditsky and another detective burst into the wrong apartment. Alerted by the noise, Marilyn and Schaefer slipped out without running into DiMaggio or Sinatra.

For all that, Marilyn remained ambivalent. Joe may have been volatile and possessive, but he was also loving. He had caused a scene the night before her party at Romanoff’s, but the day after the party he drove Marilyn to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital where she was to undergo surgery
for endometriosis. He waited until Marilyn was admitted and put to bed. Then he stayed for half an hour talking to her until a nurse ordered him to go.

On Monday morning, a “No Visitors” sign was posted outside Marilyn’s fifth-floor room. But when nurses brought her upstairs following surgery, Joe was waiting. He spent the rest of the day with her. He ate dinner with her. He talked to her and held her hand until late at night. Finally, a nurse came in to say there was a crowd of reporters in the lobby. Marilyn, still groggy, asked Joe to talk to them. “She’s looking wonderful, but I guess she’s having kind of a rough time,” DiMaggio told them.

Did his presence mean that Joe and Marilyn were reconciling, everybody wanted to know.

“I’d rather you didn’t ask me about that.”

Joe’s kindness did not change Marilyn’s mind about the divorce. Nor did a party at Romanoff’s weaken her resolve to leave Famous Artists and Twentieth Century–Fox. Marilyn had known that she would fire Feldman since September 16, when he failed to get her the role of Miss Adelaide in
Guys and Dolls.

Why was Marilyn so angry at Feldman? What had he done to become the focus of her resentment? He had, after all, offered her the opportunity to appear in
The Seven Year Itch.
He had made it possible for her to give the best performance of her career so far. Marilyn did not doubt that he had other strong projects in mind for her. If she wanted to continue to make good films, Feldman was uniquely equipped to make that happen. But more importantly, Marilyn understood that Feldman didn’t respect her as she wanted to be respected. He had never connected with her dreams. His attitude toward her had never really been different from Zanuck’s. When Marilyn realized that he wanted her to sign a studio contract that offered her no creative control, Feldman’s fate was sealed.

Feldman, for his part, had no idea that anything was wrong. When she visited his office on the afternoon of November 22, Marilyn behaved as if she had every intention of staying with him. It might seem odd that she put on a performance for Feldman at this point, but she admired his literary taste. She eagerly listened to his ideas for new projects; she shamelessly picked his brain.

Feldman gave Marilyn a copy of Terence Rattigan’s light comedy
The Sleeping Prince.
Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier had performed it on the London stage when Vivien was recovering from her nervous breakdown. Feldman had been putting out feelers about buying the property for Marilyn since February, when she was in Japan; his idea was for Marilyn to portray the chorus girl opposite Richard Burton as the prince. But there was no rush. Feldman, thrilled with her performance in
The Seven Year Itch
, was eager to protect his investment. He wanted Marilyn to have a long rest.

A week later, Marilyn appeared without warning in Frank Ferguson’s office at Fox, requesting copies of all her old contracts. She said that her papers had been placed in storage following the divorce, and asked many oddly detailed questions about the contracts. When Ferguson inquired why she didn’t talk to her own lawyer or her agent, Marilyn replied cryptically that Wright and Feldman didn’t know much about what was going on.

Suspicious, Ferguson contacted Loyd Wright. Wright waited to see if Marilyn would call to say what this was all about. When she didn’t, he alerted Feldman. By that time, however, Marilyn had already sent the copies to New York. Milton Greene wanted to show them to his lawyer, Frank Delaney.

Delaney pored over the documents, and concluded that several months previously Twentieth had failed to pick up Marilyn’s option in time. Following a suspension, it was customary for film studios to add the missed time onto a performer’s contract. According to Delaney, Twentieth had miscalculated the number of days they could wait before renewing her contract. The technicality, he argued, rendered her 1951 contract null and void. Thus, Marilyn had begun
The Seven Year Itch
without a valid contract. Now that it was finished, she was free to do as she wished.

The lawyer drew up papers establishing Marilyn Monroe Productions, and Milton Greene flew to Los Angeles to deliver them. There was also an undated letter for Marilyn to sign, informing Feldman that Famous Artists was no longer authorized to act for her. Greene’s people would fill in the date later when they agreed precisely when it ought to be sent. Marilyn and Greene decided to go full steam ahead with
Harlow.

Like Marilyn, Sidney Skolsky had spent the past few months playing Feldman and Greene against each other. Encouraged by her, Sidney
had conferred with both men about the film he hoped to produce. Strictly to please Marilyn, Feldman had agreed to talk up
Harlow
to Zanuck, and promised to represent Sidney if a deal was made. Though Greene seemed more enthusiastic, Sidney was happier with Feldman. There was no question that a powerful agent and producer was more likely to be able to put a deal together. Still,
Harlow
was Greene’s only project, while Feldman of course had much else on his plate. But what did Sidney’s preferences matter anyway? He knew that whether they went with Feldman or Greene was for Marilyn to choose.