Marilyn Monroe (63 page)

Marilyn flew into a rage. “That goddam sonofabitch of a husband of yours!” she screamed. “That Frank Taylor! I never want to talk to him again! And you … you idiot! Why don’t you leave him? What’s the matter with you?”

“Marilyn, stop it!” Nan said firmly. “I don’t want one more word out of you about my husband. Not one more word. That’s it.”

On the morning of Saturday, August 27, Huston arranged for Marilyn to enter a small Hollywood hospital under the name Mrs. Miller. She was flown out in a private plane. Her secretary May Reis and Paula Strasberg accompanied her, Miller staying in Reno for now. Huston had not made the decision lightly. He was aware that if Marilyn failed to complete
The Misfits
she would be virtually uninsurable on future pictures. That could mean the end of her career.

At Westside Hospital, Marilyn was in the care of Ralph Greenson and his associate Hyman Engelberg, a Beverly Hills internist. On the telephone, Greenson assured Huston that he would have Marilyn working in one week. It was the same thing he had said seven years previously, when the production of
Elephant Walk
halted on account of Vivien Leigh. On Monday morning, Huston’s cast and crew learned that the film was being closed down temporarily. Huston indicated that he hoped to resume in a week or so. Privately, however, he believed the chances of finishing were slim.

News of the star’s hospitalization could not be kept out of the press. “Miss Monroe is suffering from acute exhaustion and needs rest and more rest,” Dr. Engelberg announced. And Frank Taylor told reporters, “Miss Monroe has been working continuously under a heavy six-day-a-week
schedule and under trying physical conditions. The heat has been 95 to 105 degrees throughout and almost all the shooting has been out-of-doors and physically demanding.” The producer also pointed out that Marilyn had gone directly from
Let’s Make Love
to
The Misfits
without a break.

Meanwhile, Dr. Greenson cut off Marilyn’s barbiturate supply. She was given mild doses of chloral hydrate, Librium and Placidyl. Dr. Engelberg injected her with vitamins. She was given a good deal of vitamin B-12 and liver.

When Marilyn entered the hospital, Montand had been winding up
Sanctuary.
He was to fly to Paris on September 2 to join Signoret. Would he visit Marilyn at the hospital? He adamantly declared he would not. “If I do, it will be talk, talk, talk,” Montand told Hedda Hopper when she visited his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel on August 30. Montand’s English had improved considerably since his walks with Arthur Miller.

Montand knew perfectly well that anything he said would be printed at once. That he talked to Hedda Hopper at all was surprising, since the columnist was no friend to the Montands, whose politics she abhorred. That he talked to her when Marilyn was in the hospital being detoxified was crass and unconscionable.

“Perhaps she had a schoolgirl crush,” Montand said of Marilyn. “If she did, I’m sorry. But nothing will break up my marriage.”

The phone rang. The switchboard operator announced that Marilyn Monroe was on the line.

“I won’t talk to her,” Montand informed the operator.

“You deliberately made love to this girl,” said Hopper. “You knew she wasn’t sophisticated. Was that right?”

“Had Marilyn been sophisticated, none of this ever would have happened,” Montand replied. “I did everything I could for her when I realized that mine was a very small part. The only thing that could stand out in my performance were my love scenes. So, naturally, I did everything I could to make them good.”

After Hedda Hopper’s column of September 1, Marilyn could harbor no illusions about Montand. He had been a user like all the rest. Now that the lover had publicly humiliated her, the husband stepped back up to the plate. Arthur had arrived on Monday. His hope that theirs might be a happy ending after all was reflected in the conclusion he wrote for
his film. It was no secret that Arthur identified with Gay. It was no secret that he thought of Roslyn as Marilyn. Perhaps if, in spite of everything, Gay and Roslyn got together at the end of the story, Arthur and Marilyn would too. Aside from being a cliché, the love-conquers-all ending did not follow from the rest of the film. Yet, over Huston’s objections, Miller insisted on it.

Huston flew to Los Angeles to check on Marilyn’s condition. First, he talked to Dr. Greenson. The encounter provided Greenson with an opportunity to size up the enemy. As chance would have it, the analyst had been working since 1958 to make it impossible for a film about Sigmund Freud to be shot in Hollywood. He knew all about the screenplay Huston had hired Sartre to write. And he knew that a respected director’s involvement was particularly distressing to Anna Freud, as that would lend credibility to the project. But Huston was not here to discuss
Freud.
He wanted to know about Marilyn. Greenson declared her ready for work, a week without barbiturates having made all the difference. Though she resembled an addict in some respects, she did not exhibit withdrawal symptoms. Marilyn’s appearance seemed to confirm the doctor’s remarks. She was vibrant. She was wide awake. She indicated that she knew what the barbiturates had done. She was embarrassed by her behavior. She was grateful Huston had intervened. She was eager to come back, if he would have her.

Marilyn returned to Reno on September 5. At midnight, when she and Arthur stepped off the plane, she heard a marching band, with cheers and applause. She saw signs proclaiming “WELCOME MARILYN.” The warm reception was not really for her benefit, however. United Artists had staged the event to give reporters something to write about other than the rumors of a drug overdose. She went before the cameras the following day.

Marilyn’s hopes of pleasing Huston were quickly dashed. Three days after she returned, she faced her most technically demanding scene. It took place in the litter-strewn rear of the bar where Roslyn and Perce have been dancing. It consisted of five minutes of dialogue between Marilyn and Montgomery Clift. Huston viewed it as a directorial challenge; he had never shot a scene that long.

Miller had begun
The Misfits
in an effort to provide Marilyn with her first truly serious and important role. The film, intended to make her feel
good about herself, was to have been Marilyn’s chance to show the world what she was capable of as a dramatic actress. Her inability to memorize was notorious; yet somehow she had always believed that only a long dialogue scene would test her worth. So this was to have been her big opportunity.

They shot intensively beneath a black tarpaulin and ten-thousand-watt lights, the torrid air thick with flies. But Huston remained dissatisfied. The pace needed to be faster. The actors persisted in blowing their lines. At the end of two days, Marilyn sensed that she had failed.

Huston, having lost a good deal of money in the casinos, went to San Francisco, where he collected an advance of $25,000 to direct
Freud
for Universal. That enabled him to pay off his gambling debts. Upon his return, they reshot a bedroom scene in which Clark Gable awakens Marilyn. He is fully clothed, she is naked beneath a sheet. Gay kisses Roslyn and she sits up. Magnum photographer Eve Arnold could see that Marilyn was eager to please Huston.

In the seventh take, she did something not in the script. She had failed to impress Huston in her five-minute dialogue scene, so now she gave him the one thing that always seemed to work for her. It was as though she could hear Olivier urging, “All right, Marilyn. Be sexy.” As she sat up, she dropped the sheet, exposing her right breast. The moment was a sad one, suggesting as it did Marilyn’s sense that, despite her dreams of being an actress, this was all she really had to offer. If she thought Huston would be pleased, she miscalculated badly. After the take, Marilyn cast a hopeful glance in his direction.

“I’ve seen ’em before,” said Huston, unimpressed. He later grumbled that he had always known girls have breasts. Huston demanded two more takes, with the breast covered.

Four days later, Huston insisted on reshooting the big dialogue scene with Monroe and Clift. It was Friday, September 23. In the retakes, Marilyn surprised herself. By an act of will, she finally gave Huston the performance he wanted. She and Clift were brilliant together. Huston exulted that it was Marilyn’s best work in the film. In spite of everything, he offered her the female lead in
Freud.
She was to play Cecily, a patient. Clift would play Freud. Marilyn was delighted.

Still, she could not stay away from drugs. She moved in with Paula at the Holiday Inn. When Huston visited Marilyn there, he was appalled
to find her in the worst shape yet. Her hair was matted, her nightgown and body filthy. She veered between euphoria and trance. It was as though she had never been detoxified. On another occasion, Miller arrived to discover a doctor probing for a vein in the back of Marilyn’s hand, preparing to inject her with Amytal. When Marilyn spotted him, she angrily ordered her husband to leave.

The hunt for the wild mustangs remained to be shot. Gay takes Roslyn along because he senses he’s losing her, but the adventure does not have the hoped-for effect. Instead of Gay’s power, Roslyn sees what he’s become. He’s so much less than she thought. Gay, once a heroic cowboy, has been reduced to selling wild horses for dog food. Something similar happened when Marilyn observed Arthur at work on
The Misfits.
He talked of
Death of a Salesman.
He mentioned
Hamlet, King Lear
, and
Oedipus Rex.
In fact, the playwright had devoted the better part of three years to a mediocre screenplay.

Never was that more evident than during the calamitous final days of filming. By then, Miller should have been able to connect the story’s two dominant lines, that of Roslyn and that of the wild horses. He should have shown that Roslyn seeks to stop Gay from hunting the mustangs because of the pain she’s experienced in being hunted herself. Instead, Miller has Roslyn protest at the hunt because she cannot bear to see anything killed. Miller gives her a heart of gold. In sentimentalizing Roslyn, he fails to provide a convincing explanation for her behavior. That explanation had been under his nose all along. It lay in the conflict between Gay and Guido, a conflict that Miller mysteriously never develops. We never see the men struggle over Roslyn. At a moment when, in life, Miller was moving back in Kazan’s direction, perhaps that was a conflict he preferred not to probe. In the end, Roslyn’s emotions during the hunt are not as moving as they ought to be, because they seem disconnected from the story.

Location shooting concluded on Tuesday, October 18. The company moved to Los Angeles. Process shots were to be done the following week. The Millers took up residence at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Marilyn, in atrocious condition, was treated by Dr. Greenson. As the end drew near, she had reason to believe that her questions were finally about to be answered. Had Arthur been using her? Had he endured betrayal and humiliation in order to get his film made? Would he abandon her once
The Misfits
was finished? As though Marilyn could not bear to learn the truth, she threw him out first. His things were carted away in a station wagon. He moved to another hotel.

On Friday, November 4, Huston shot a retake of the happy ending that showed Gay and Roslyn starting a life together. Forty days behind schedule,
The Misfits
was finished. Before Marilyn left, she approached the director. She had waited until the very last minute to say this. She was in awe of Huston, so it cannot have been easy to announce that she had decided to turn down a role in
Freud.
Anna Freud, she declared, did not want the picture made. Clearly, Dr. Greenson had gotten to Marilyn. Perhaps because Marilyn herself wanted to do the film so very badly, she disappeared quickly, giving Huston no chance to reply.

That weekend, she and Arthur flew back to New York separately. Marilyn returned to their apartment. Arthur moved to the Adams Hotel on East 86th Street. Despite everything, she called him there to ask gently, “Aren’t you coming home?”

He did. But it was only to collect his possessions. Their marriage was over.

SIXTEEN