Marilyn Monroe (39 page)

Marilyn didn’t want to blunder in front of Jack Warner, who had agreed to finance and distribute
The Sleeping Prince.
Ironically, it was Warner who, in 1947, had first mentioned Arthur Miller to HUAC, suggesting that he and Elia Kazan were Broadway subversives. She wanted Warner to back future projects of Marilyn Monroe Productions.

In the best of circumstances, getting married right now would have been a huge pressure. Marilyn, having failed as a wife twice, was desperate to make this marriage work. She worshipped and idealized Arthur Miller. The fact that he actually wanted to marry her was a fantasy come true. That in itself, perhaps, was a prescription for disappointment.

She and Miller had had little time together in anything approaching what one might call normal circumstances. He had been married during most of their courtship, so more often than not they had seen each other with no one else present. A few stolen weekends at the Chateau Marmont, with Paula Strasberg barging in now and then, hardly provided an idea of what a life together was going to be like.

Something that happened the morning of Arthur’s return, however, did suggest all they faced in the next few days. At 10 a.m., the actor and singer Paul Robeson appeared in the caucus room of the House Office Building in Washington, D.C. In a little more than a week, Miller would be doing the same thing. On stage Robeson had played Jim Harris, the African-American attorney who marries a white woman in Eugene O’Neill’s
All God’s Chillun Got Wings
, and Brutus Jones in a 1925 revival of O’Neill’s
The Emperor Jones.
He had triumphed as Othello in 1943. But Robeson’s passionate, angry, sarcastic, vituperative, intensely theatrical HUAC testimony now became one of his most famous performances. In the tradition of John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Lionel Stander, and other fiercely unfriendly witnesses, Robeson declined to answer whether he was a Communist Party member. His contemptuous words and demeanor would leave no doubt about his opinion of HUAC and all it represented. There followed a unanimous vote to cite Paul Robeson for contempt of the Congress.

The precedent of that vote hung over Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe during the tumultuous nine days that preceded his own testimony. There was a chance that he, too, might face a contempt citation.
Marilyn was terrified that Arthur might be sent to jail for a year. They both could be dead in that time, she exclaimed.

Miller’s case was very different from Robeson’s. He had once supported left-wing causes, and he had attended some Communist meetings. But like a great many middle-aged people, he no longer agreed with certain of the political positions he had taken in youth. He thought of himself as someone who believed in democracy and loved his country as much as any man. He certainly didn’t share Robeson’s adoration of the Soviet Union. Unlike Robeson, Miller was willing to be questioned about his political beliefs. He was willing to talk about his past association with various Communist front groups. He was willing to discuss his attendance at three or four meetings of Communist writers in 1947. Under no circumstances, however, would he identify others who had been present.

Miller’s lawyers reviewed the alternatives. He could rely on the Fifth Amendment when questioned about himself, then do the same when asked about others. Though there was a certain stigma attached, witnesses who invoked the Fifth Amendment were considered legally “safe.”

A second, if unethical, course was to testify about himself, then pretend to forget others’ names. One might also choose to identify persons already known to the committee through prior testimony. In telling the government what it already knew, one established credibility as a patriot without involving anyone who hadn’t already been named. It wasn’t the information that was important, so much as the act of self-degradation in cooperating with HUAC. Miller saw this as a “kind of mystical transference in which you gave them your soul.” It wasn’t for him.

The third course was to disclose everything about himself, then to inform the committee that as a matter of conscience he was unable to name names. Miller chose this last position, though it was by no means safe. As Joe Rauh had once pointedly warned Lillian Hellman, by telling HUAC everything about oneself and nothing about others one risked going to jail. Hellman, having talked the matter over with Dashiell Hammett, insisted she was not the type of person who could face jail and decided to take the Fifth. She hadn’t been willing to run the risk; Miller was.

Something else Rauh had told Hellman bore strongly on the
Miller case. Before Hellman testified in 1952, the lawyer had indicated that their success would be measured not in the hearing room but in the next day’s headlines. Would the headlines declare “Lillian Hellman Stands on Conscience, Won’t Name Other People”? Or would they announce “Lillian Hellman Pleads Fifth Amendment”? As it happened, the former proved to be the case, making Hellman the clear victor in the publicity war. To read the notes Joe Rauh made in anticipation of Miller’s hearing is to grasp his sense that the key moment would come when Miller was asked to name others present at the 1947 Communist writers’ meetings. In response, Miller was to emphasize his own willingness to answer all questions about himself. He was to stress that his conscience would not permit him to name names. And, significantly, he was to insert a subtle yet unambiguous reference to Marilyn Monroe.

After weeks of ducking reporters’ questions, Miller would use his HUAC testimony as the context in which to tell the world he planned to marry. That was what everybody had been waiting to hear. If Miller had wanted to separate the personal from the political, he could have made his announcement at any time before the congressional hearing. The story would have run separately; and by the time Miller testified, his connection to Marilyn would have been yesterday’s news. Instead, for better or worse, a good deal of the coverage of Miller’s testimony would focus on his wedding plans.

Miller was uncomfortable that his refusal to name names linked him to the artistic failures who, in his view, constituted the literary left. According to popular wisdom, these were the people who, having nothing to lose, refused to name names. They could afford to stand on principle. There were exceptions, certainly. But by and large it was thought that life’s winners, figures like Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets, tended to cooperate with HUAC rather than give up the spoils of success. Though Miller planned to be an unfriendly witness, perhaps his connection with Marilyn would make him look like a winner, too.

Miller worked in the New York theater, where the blacklist had virtually no power. Besides, as an artist Miller was then very much in decline. Conceivably, a courageous moral stand in Washington would bolster Miller’s reputation with the predominantly liberal Broadway audience. It would make his life as important as his work. Strange to say, his testimony might actually help, rather than hinder, his faltering stage
career. For Marilyn, on the contrary, even to be associated with Miller at this point was to risk serious professional harm. He knew that. There was the possibility of picket lines, box-office boycotts, and other retaliation from patriotic groups, “Yahoos” as Miller called them. The film audience, whom Miller liked to call “the great unwashed,” might turn on her.

Paula Strasberg, for her part, urged caution. Paula knew first-hand the power of the blacklist. She knew what it was to be unable to work. She told Marilyn about friends and associates whose lives HUAC had wantonly destroyed. Marilyn was on the brink of what looked to be the best years of her life as an actress. Paula asked her to consider whether she really wanted to risk all that, pointing out that Miller’s troubles really had nothing to do with her. Perhaps she ought to let him take care of things on his own.

Twentieth Century–Fox representatives who phoned that week warned Marilyn against committing professional suicide. Another urgent call announced Spyros Skouras’s imminent arrival from the Coast. He wanted to see Marilyn as soon as he reached New York. But Marilyn was determined to stand by Arthur. She vowed not to let the bastards hurt him. She wanted Miller to tell HUAC to go fuck itself, though of course—she said—the playwright would use better language.

The night before Miller was to go to Washington, Spyros Skouras turned up at Sutton Place South. Marilyn asked Arthur not to decline to see him. Charlie Feldman had once told Marilyn that she had a real friend in Skouras. Miller, who had met Skouras several years previously with Kazan, had contempt for the Fox president, laughing at his English in private and calling him “the Spiral Staircase.” Skouras, though lampooned in
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
, was by no means entirely comical. Elia Kazan’s HUAC testimony in 1952 had been a vivid, and overt, testament to Skouras’s power.

When Miller opened the door of Marilyn’s apartment to let Skouras in, he saw a sleepy, scarcely threatening old man. Skouras seemed as though he might have had a bit too much to drink. His greeting and handshake were listless. But his innocuous appearance was deceptive. Those accustomed to dealing with Skouras, as Miller was not, knew that he often pretended to be weary. Seated on a sofa in Marilyn’s living room, Skouras repeatedly slipped off the cushion.

After some small talk, Skouras got to the point. Not by accident
had he arrived on the eve of Miller’s departure. He urged the playwright to avoid making a mistake in Washington. Suddenly the sandpaper-voiced Skouras didn’t look tired anymore. He pointed out that the committee members were his personal friends, and reasonable men. He offered to arrange for Miller to testify privately. If only Miller would agree to name names, HUAC’s “usher” (as Miller later called Skouras) would arrange for the ritual humiliation to occur behind closed doors in executive session.

Skouras addressed his comments to Miller, but it was really Marilyn he came to see. Except for Miller’s connection to Marilyn, Skouras couldn’t have cared less about him. As was often the case, Skouras’s meaning went beyond anything he actually said. The visit could only be interpreted as an implicit threat about the devastating impact Miller’s testimony might have on Marilyn’s film career. The Old Greek clearly hoped she would see things his way and convince Miller to cooperate with the committee. If Miller insisted on being an unfriendly witness, Marilyn’s name must never be linked with his.

Marilyn had a great deal to lose, indeed every bit as much as Kazan when he backed down four years previously. She finally had her own production company. She finally had the studio contract she wanted. She finally had delivered the calibre of performance she’d worked for years to achieve. Presumably, Cherie in
Bus Stop
was to be only the first of many such roles. Yet Marilyn was willing to risk all that for Arthur. Elia Kazan, the tough guy, had crumbled, but Marilyn Monroe was determined to remain strong. She wanted to accompany Arthur to the hearing.

“Why shouldn’t I go?” Marilyn said. “I mean, I’m not going to be influencing anybody. I just think I have such contempt for these people and I want to be there.”

But when Arthur left with Lloyd Garrison, he told Marilyn he’d rather she stay in New York. “She’s worried,” he told Garrison on the plane. “She hopes I don’t get slaughtered.”

No sooner had Miller gone than Marilyn summoned her own lawyer to the apartment. Arthur was worried about his finances.
The Crucible
and
A View from the Bridge
had failed at the box office. He paid alimony and child support. Now all of a sudden, massive legal bills were about to be added to his burden. If he was cited for contempt and an
appeal had to be mounted, he could find himself deeply in debt. Marilyn ordered Irving Stein to prepare a new will. With the exception of some money to be put aside for her mother’s care, she left everything to Arthur. She refused to consider having a prenuptial agreement drawn up, and asked Stein to look into the possibility that Marilyn Monroe Productions might acquire the film rights to Arthur Miller’s works. Clearly, she wanted to do everything in her power to put his mind at rest.

In the House Office Building, a circular marble staircase with a brass handrail led to the caucus room. Shortly before ten on the first day of summer, Miller was greeted by photographers’ popping flashbulbs. Deeply tanned after several weeks in Nevada, he wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt, and a patterned silk tie. His dark, thinning hair was brushed straight back. There were shadows under his high cheekbones. He gnawed at an unlit pipe.

The strapping, crinkly-faced man at Miller’s side was Joe Rauh. Rauh was in awe of Arthur Miller as he had not been of Lillian Hellman. He admired Miller’s willingness to go to jail for his convictions. He admired Miller as a playwright and a liberal-intellectual. And he admired him as the lover of Marilyn Monroe. Rauh had yet to meet Marilyn. Ironically, Rauh’s high regard may have worked against Miller’s interests. Rauh had repeatedly sent Lillian Hellman back to rewrite, to refine points, to make certain that she used the national spotlight of a HUAC hearing to put her message across. With Miller, Rauh went over some general talking points, but he hesitated to push, prod, edit, criticize, and correct—all the things he had felt quite comfortable doing with his female client.

Thus, where Lillian Hellman had been pithy and to the point—the result of painstaking preparation—Miller entered the caucus room woefully ill-prepared and ill-rehearsed. Time, though in short supply, had not been the only problem. There was Miller’s characteristic prolixity and Rauh’s reluctance to tamper with Miller’s language. And, perhaps, there was also Miller’s arrogance. Where Lillian Hellman and Elia Kazan had controlled the proceedings by reading aloud a carefully crafted letter, Miller preferred to wing it.

Lawyer and client were tall, but both instantly seemed tiny as they entered the caucus room. With soaring ceilings, huge classical columns,
and sparkling chandeliers, the room appeared to be the size of an athletic field. The setting was stark, theatrical, Kafkaesque. There were three levels. Chairman Francis E. Walter and a subcommittee consisting of Representatives Edwin Willis, Bernard Kearney, and Gordon Scherer sat under a furled American flag on an elevated platform, Miller at a table below. Miller may have privately looked down on his interrogators, but he would be required to look up as he testified. At the lowest level, behind the witness table, were tables and chairs for more than one hundred reporters who, as in a dream, scribbled incessantly on butter-colored pads.