Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (61 page)

Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller promised to meet the press at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, at four o’clock on Friday, June 29. But first they were to have a quiet lunch with Miller’s parents at the home of his cousin Morton, a few miles distant. A crew of reporters and photographers was gathering at Miller’s home on Old Tophet Road meanwhile, supervised by Milton.

But one team heard of the family lunch at Morton’s and decided to get the jump on their colleagues. Mara Scherbatoff, a Russian princess in exile who was New York bureau chief for
Paris Match
, asked her companion to drive her over to Morton’s for some advance pictures and perhaps even a preemptive statement. Just before one o’clock, Marilyn, Arthur and Morton emerged from Morton’s house, said nothing, leaped into Arthur’s car and sped along the narrow, winding route toward Tophet Road, with Scherbatoff and her driver in hot pursuit. But on a blind curve near Arthur’s house, the photographer’s car hurtled from the road and smashed into a tree. The Princess Mara was thrown through the windshield and hideously injured.

Hearing the crash, Miller stopped his car, and the three ran back to the accident; the sight was so dreadful that Arthur would not let Marilyn
come near. They then drove home to telephone for help, Marilyn trembling and pale, leaning on Arthur for support. They had seen enough to know that no one could help, and in fact the aristocrat-reporter died at New Milford Hospital less than three hours later.

But the press conference, held outdoors under a luxuriant tree, was not delayed. Extant film footage, in which Arthur mumbles banal replies to questions and Marilyn seems distracted and less than joyful, must take into account the tragic prelude. In fact, neither of them said much at all, making a hasty retreat to the house after less than ten minutes.

When the last reporter had departed, the casually dressed couple departed with Morton and his wife for the Westchester County Court House in White Plains, New York. Just before seven-thirty that evening (Friday, June 29), Judge Seymour Rabinowitz pronounced them husband and wife in a four-minute, single-ring ceremony. Not one member of the press knew, and the newlyweds were able to return to Roxbury without hearing the pop of one flashbulb.

On Sunday, July 1, a second ceremony was held at the home of Arthur’s agent, Kay Brown, near Katonah, New York. But while friends and relatives gathered for the traditional Jewish marriage rite and a buzz of happy conversation prevailed downstairs and on the lawn, the Greenes were busily attending a nervous Marilyn in an upstairs guest room. She had in fact been withdrawn since Friday, and although Milton and Amy could but privately speculate, he had already put through a call to Irving Stein, advising the lawyer to “stand by in case of immediate difficulty about Marilyn’s marriage.”

The reason for this warning was soon clear to Amy and Milton.

“Do you really want to go ahead with this marriage?” Milton asked Marilyn. “You don’t have to, you know.” Her eyes were glazed with tears, and Amy tried to comfort her: “We can put you in a car and we’ll deal with the guests.” The civil marriage, they guessed, could somehow be annulled before the religious rite solemnized the union.

“No,” Marilyn said quietly. “I don’t want to go through with it.”

But as Milton prepared to attend to this awkward task, Marilyn called him back.

“No, Milton!” she cried. “We’ve already invited all these people. We can’t disappoint them.”

According to Amy, Marilyn had considered Mara Scherbatoff’s
death a bad omen for her wedding. “But she also knew that, omens or not, she had made a terrible mistake in agreeing to this marriage.”

But the cast and crew awaited, and as Marilyn said, she felt sorry for Arthur. The show went on. Moments later, Rabbi Robert Goldberg presided, with Arthur’s brother Kermit and Hedda Rosten as attendants. That afternoon, Marilyn performed beautifully, greeting all twenty-five guests, working the party tidily, assuring that everyone had enough roast beef, sliced turkey and champagne. “Well,” said George Axelrod, congratulating the Millers and wittily reversing Shaw’s famous reply to Isadora Duncan’s proposal, “I hope your children have Arthur’s looks and Marilyn’s brains.” She laughed heartily, Axelrod recalled, but Arthur was unamused. From the bride’s gaiety, no one would have guessed her tortured hesitation.

Before the Millers prepared to depart for London and the production of
The Prince and the Showgirl
(as the film of
The Sleeping Prince
was eventually rechristened by Warner Bros.), Arthur put up for sale his Roxbury house, reasoning, with Marilyn’s agreement, that later they could begin a new life together in a new home. On July 2, the
Herald Tribune
carried the notice:

Playwright and screen star’s hideout, 7 rooms, 3 baths, swimming pool, tennis court, terrace, two-car garage, small studio. 4 acres. $29,500 ($38,500 with 26 acres).

A quick sale was made for $27,500, and after a small mortgage and fees were paid, the balance was put in escrow for another property nearby.

That first week of July was full of hard negotiations, all of them Milton’s responsibility. There were many legal and commercial matters for him and Stein to settle—among them disputes with Olivier regarding the deal between MMP and Olivier’s production company; discussions involving MCA and Jack Warner, who was insisting on control of the film’s final cut; and bargaining with British employment authorities, who were balking at the unusual number of Americans to be imported for this cooperative venture. Also, the Millers asked Hedda Rosten, Arthur’s old friend and Marilyn’s new one, to join the company as Marilyn’s personal secretary, at a generous fee of two hundred dollars
weekly. Amy Greene, foreseeing trouble because of Hedda’s increasing problems with alcohol, advised Milton that here was a perfect example of Marilyn’s excessive generosity—not to say her need to surround herself with a battalion of support as she prepared for the challenge of Olivier and an English cast.

But the most outrageous and time-consuming demand of all came from none other than Lee Strasberg, who appeared at Milton’s office, asked that Irving be summoned, and announced the condition for Paula’s participation as Marilyn’s coach on
Prince
. He would accept nothing less than a guarantee of $25,000 for ten weeks’ work, plus expenses and double for overtime. This, Stein quickly figured, would come to about $38,000—again, much more than most actors were receiving in New York or Hollywood. But as Stein noted in his corporate memorandum,

Lee doesn’t care that this money would really come from Marilyn’s pocket. Joe [Carr, MMP’s accountant] and Milton carefully explained the shaky finances, but Lee was adamant. He kept emphasizing Marilyn’s emotional weakness—and then he said he would be willing to settle for a percentage of the picture! He also wanted George Cukor to direct, not Larry. Paula, he said, is more than a coach—therefore he doesn’t care what other coaches get. He absolutely rejects Paula’s
Bus Stop
salary.

Lee Strasberg might have been as good an agent as a teacher; in any case, what amounted to his Method-acting portrayal of Sammy Glick threw Milton and the company into mild panic. Marilyn simply said that she would yield some of her own weekly income, for Paula
must
be there. She was—although tricky checkbook maneuvers were necessary for the remainder of the year so that Paula Strasberg received the salary that paid her, after Monroe and Olivier, more than anyone connected with
The Prince and the Showgirl
. A curious coda to this is the fact that the ubiquitous Dr. Hohenberg, to whom Milton and Marilyn were still attached, involved herself in the negotiations on behalf of Paula, whom she did not know.

On July 9, Milton and Irving departed for London as an advance team, and on the rainy afternoon of July 13, Marilyn and Arthur followed.
The rest of the team—Paula, Hedda, Amy and Joshua—arrived ten days later. When the Millers arrived on the morning of the fourteenth, Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier were at the airport to greet them—along with over seventy policemen necessary to control a squad of two hundred shouting photographers and reporters. As Arthur recalled, England could have been towed into the ocean without anyone taking notice. Whenever Marilyn appeared in public during the next four months, she was invariably mobbed, and it was soon decided that if she went to stores, they would have to be cleared in advance. Just so, if she made a remotely interesting statement it received front-page coverage in the London papers next day. On Saturday, August 25, for example, Marilyn decided to shop on busy Regent Street, but she was so overwhelmed by adoring crowds that she fainted, police cordons were set up and she was unable to work next day due to nervous exhaustion and a transient attack of agoraphobia.

As if Milton had not enough budgetary problems, Arthur confided to him that first evening his own precarious financial situation. He was obliged to pay $16,000 a year for the support of his two children; his ex-wife was receiving forty percent of his income; he had tax problems and attorneys’ fees. Would there be any possibility of integrating his income, which was not much in any case, with Marilyn’s? Could he file a joint tax return with Marilyn and MMP? “Perhaps later on we can deal with this question of [buying rights] to his writings,” replied Irving with some exasperation when Milton took up with him the issue of Arthur’s finances. “That could help him.”

For the rest of the year, MMP tried to find a way that would (thus Irving) “result in capital gain to [Arthur] and defer income. . . . We can also try to get financing and distribution for an Arthur Miller picture, although it will be very difficult. . . . He is willing to write a screenplay for
The Brothers Karamazov
for Marilyn, [because] of late he has been extremely conscious of expenses and how they can be charged against MMP as business expenses.” Miller wanted the financial help of MMP, but as Irving concluded, “he might not agree that he needs help in bringing his
name
before the public.” These discussions proceeded despite the repeated counsel of Miller’s friend and agent Kay Brown that “he ought to stay out of [Marilyn’s] career, as she ought to stay out of his.” A complicated scenario was therefore in process concerning control
of Marilyn’s money, career and corporation. The various players—none of them friendly toward one another—included Arthur, Milton and Lee.

The Greenes were installed at Tibbs Farm, Ascot; the Millers had grander quarters at Parkside House at Englefield Green, Egham, near Windsor Park. An hour’s drive from London and a bit less to Pinewood Studios, Parkside House was a Georgian mansion owned by Lord North (publisher of the
Financial Times
) and his wife, pianist and actress Joan Carr. Situated on ten lush acres with gardens and convenient bicycle paths, the house featured an oak-beamed living room, five bedrooms, two baths and quarters for the resident servants. Marilyn was delighted that Milton had arranged for the master suite to be repainted white in her honor.

But during four months, there was not much time for Marilyn to enjoy the house, London or the English countryside. The day after their arrival, she was hauled off to a press conference at the Savoy Hotel, where two inspectors, a sergeant, six constables and four teams of police had to restrain four thousand fans along the Strand. Marilyn arrived an hour late, wearing a tight, two-piece black dress joined at the midriff with a diaphanous inset. The usual tiresome question-and-answer session followed. Yes, she said, she was delighted to be working with Sir Laurence; and yes, she would like to do classical roles. Lady Macbeth, perhaps? asked a reporter from the provinces. “Yes, but at present that is just a dream for me. I know how much work I have to do before I could undertake a role like that.” With such grace and modesty, she won over the British press in a single afternoon. According to Jack Cardiff, the cinematographer for her film, Marilyn was everywhere surrounded by such a blaze of publicity that to everyone working at Pinewood a special pass was issued for admittance to the lot.

Cardiff, who photographed such color films as
The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus
and
The African Queen
, came to know and befriend Marilyn during the difficult production of
Prince
. He found her alternately terrified and strong, afraid of facing the public and her fellow actors but eager to make a hit in this picture.

Unlike many other leading ladies I’d known and worked with, Marilyn was never bitchy, never used foul language even when the going was rough. Of course there was a kind of psychological dichotomy about her that everyone found somewhat difficult: on the one hand her stated desire to be a serious actress, on the other her lack of discipline, her lateness. I think all this arose from her fear of being rejected, of failing. But behind this vulnerability there was a lot of iron and steel.

On July 18, 19 and 20, Marilyn submitted to the usual wardrobe and makeup tests for Technicolor, every aspect supervised by Milton, to whose keen eye Olivier begrudgingly deferred. The major reason he arranged this deal, Milton told Olivier, was “to take her out of the sexpot category—to put her in something that required her greatest comedic gifts.” Marilyn’s appearance in the film was to him an important factor in her success as a sophisticated comedienne.

But Olivier had his doubts. When he introduced Marilyn to the English cast, he said he was delighted to be working with his old friends Sybil Thorndike and Esmond Knight, whom he had known for decades. Then, in his most charmingly condescending manner, he took Marilyn’s hand and said that everyone would be patient with her, that their methods (nothing like
The
Method, it was implied) would perhaps require some time for her to learn, but they were pleased to have “such a delightful little thing” among them.
²
“He tried to be friendly, but he came on like someone slumming,” Marilyn said later, and in this she was stating only the obvious truth.