Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (87 page)

Removing an ermine jacket and revealing herself in what Adlai Stevenson called “skin and beads,” a nervous Marilyn tentatively began to sing “Happy Birthday.” It was not, as Adler had feared, tawdry or inappropriate, but breathless, with just a hint of parody—as if she would wink at a hoary cliché. Did not a handsome young president deserve a new rendition, something different from what might be heard at the party of a seven-year-old? When the audience cheered and applauded after her smoky, nightclub rendition of the first verse, she jumped with delight, waving her arms and shouting, “Everybody—sing!” A second chorus accompanied the arrival of a six-foot cake with
forty-five candles, borne aloft by two chefs. Marilyn concluded her stint with a few lines sung to the tune of “Thanks for the Memories:”

Thanks, Mr. President
,

for everything you’ve done
,

The battles that you’ve won
—

The way you deal with U.S. Steel
 . . .

Halfway into his twenty-minute address, Kennedy thanked the performers individually, commenting that “Miss Monroe left a picture to come all the way East, and I can now retire after having had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.” It was but one of many laugh lines in a typical Kennedy speech that combined political rhetoric, wit, good cheer and earnest allusions to important social issues. Backstage afterward, the actors and performers greeted the president. Marilyn, who had invited Isadore Miller to be her guest that evening, introduced him to Kennedy: “I’d like you to meet my former father-in-law,” she said proudly.

After the gala, a private reception was held at the East Side home of Arthur Krim and his wife, Mathilde, who recalled, “Marilyn came dressed in a body stocking covered with sequins, which looked as if they were just stuck to her skin because the net was a flesh color.” George Masters added that Marilyn “reveled in that Jean Louis gown. She was flamboyant but somehow elegant and subtle about her nudity, as if it were the most natural thing in the world not to wear underwear.” Her main concern that evening was to see that Isadore, amid the crushing crowd of guests, had a chair and a plate of food. She never abandoned him to strangers, nor did she wander among the crowd seeking small talk, praise or compliments.

In a way the evening was unimaginably important to Marilyn Monroe. Not only had the lost child found her momentary place in Camelot—she had also made real the recurring dream of her childhood. For there she was, all but nude before her adorers, utterly without shame, somehow as innocent as a jaybird. “There was a softness to her that was very appealing,” said Mathilde Krim. “She was—well, just extraordinarily beautiful.”

1
. The meaning of the original Greek in II Timothy 4:7, and of Jerome’s later Latin rendering
Cursum perficio
, is “I complete the course [or race].” Centuries later, the verse was commonly used as a motto in European doorways to welcome travelers and pilgrims to places of refuge; it was then taken up and used in homes, the simple equivalent of the modern mat announcing “Welcome!” Gloomy symbol-seekers have read the motto as Marilyn’s prophecy of her death (or worse, her death-wish); in fact, it had been installed by the builder thirty years before.

2
. See below, chapter 22, footnote 8.

3
. The history of this fiction is traced in the Afterword to this book, “The Great Deception.”

4
. On Monday and Tuesday, June 25 and 26, the attorney general was in Detroit, Chicago and Boulder addressing (among other groups) conferences of United States attorneys. On Tuesday afternoon, Kennedy arrived in Los Angeles, where he met with FBI and IRS agents to discuss matters of criminal intelligence. On Thursday morning, he departed Los Angeles for Oklahoma City, Nashville and Roanoke, whence he returned to Washington on June 30. On this entire week, the record is unambiguous. The National Archives; FBI Files #77-51387-274 and 260 (documenting the attorney general’s itinerary); and the Jerry Wald appointment books at the University of Southern California all confirm that the attorney general spent most of Wednesday afternoon, June 27, with Wald, discussing the possibility of a film based on Kennedy’s 1960 book,
The Enemy Within
.

5
. Sidney Skolsky and all of Peter Lawford’s closest friends, including William Asher, Milton Ebbins and Joseph Naar, insist the Monroe-Kennedy friendship was platonic. Skolsky summed up their belief: “As for Robert Kennedy, she never mentioned him” (p. 234) and said that Norman Mailer, “writing about Bobby, put together purple prose to make greenbacks” (quoted in Wilson, p. 60)—an assertion Mailer himself admitted in 1973.

6
. J. Edgar Hoover, who kept a detailed dossier on Marilyn since before her marriage to Miller, would very much have appreciated confirmation of rumors about Marilyn and Robert Kennedy, but his files remained empty on the matter. “It would have been impossible for Hoover not to have known about such goings-on had they occurred,” said Edwin Guthman, “and he certainly would have used this information during Bobby’s later campaigns for office.”

7
. To Isadore Miller on February 2, 1962: “Do give my invitation some serious thought because remember, you haven’t been west of the Rockies yet. But most of all, I would love to have you spend time with me. . . . I’ll sure enjoy seeing you. I send all my love and I miss you.” To Bobby Miller, same date: “I would love it if you and Janie [his sister] wanted to come for a few days or a week—you are welcome to stay as long as you want to. I will take care of your plane tickets and meet you at the airport. You and Janie are always welcome. I guess we are all a little sloppy about writing, but I think we all know what we mean to each other, don’t we? At least I know I love you kids and I want to be your friend and stay in touch. I love you and miss you both. Give my love to Janie too.”

8
. That same year, as was subsequently documented in her divorce petition, Engelberg’s wife was maintained by him on appallingly massive doses of barbiturates and hypnotics—ostensibly to keep her calm during the trauma of the termination of their thirty-year marriage. But the result of this prodigal administration of dangerous drugs was very nearly disastrous.

9
. “Not in her worst nightmare,” according to her confidante Susan Strasberg, “would Marilyn have wanted to be with JFK on any permanent basis. It was okay for one night to sleep with a charismatic president—and she loved the secrecy and drama of it. But he certainly wasn’t the kind of man she wanted for life, and she was very clear to us about this.”

10
. Kennedy’s birthday was being celebrated ten days in advance of the date; that year he would turn forty-five.

Chapter Twenty - one

M
AY
–J
ULY
1962

O
N SUNDAY, MAY
20—the day following the great gala—Marilyn rushed back to Los Angeles, where she found Eunice Murray calmly cooking supper for her at Fifth Helena. The housekeeper had, it seems (or so she said), taken the check and dismissal as simply signifying time off for a vacation, and here she was, cheerfully back at her post. Marilyn, tired and frankly glad to have someone to awaken her next morning, to prepare the breakfast, make some calls and attend to some household details, tacitly rescinded the discharge, which was never again mentioned.

Next morning she was on the set, working eight hours after a cool reception from her producer, director and crew. They must have known of the threat against her, but the picture still had its own problems. For one thing, the script was unfinished—and they called
her
unprofessional, as Marilyn later told Paula sarcastically. She was, in fact, clear-headed in her suspicions against her team and the entire management at Fox: the latter’s incompetence during the last weeks of production and the sophomoric degrees of inefficiency on and off the set suggest that the plan was indeed simply to justify Gould’s order that Marilyn be dismissed and the picture shelved.

Despite all the commotion, all they could ask of Marilyn that Monday, May 21, was to do more retakes of her scenes with the children, for Dean Martin had come down with a cold. The production report for
Tuesday notes that Martin “reported for work, but that due to Marilyn Monroe’s susceptibility and on the advice of her doctor, she refused to work with him until his recuperation.” But that day, too, she worked all morning with the children, completing medium and close shots for their poolside conversation. Martin was still down with his cold on Wednesday and Thursday and remained at home until Friday. Marilyn worked those three full days, and one of them, as everyone hoped, made immediate international news.

On Wednesday, May 23, no other actor was required on the set but Marilyn for the scene in which, as the long lost Ellen Arden, she was to take a midnight swim after her return home. As she did so, she was to be seen by her husband from his bedroom upstairs, where he was with his new wife; this was to lead to some silent comic interplay and gesticulating between them to prevent her being discovered. From nine in the morning to four in the afternoon of the twenty-third (with only a twenty-minute break for lunch), Marilyn remained in the pool, paddling, swimming, splashing and waving, while closeup, medium and long shots were taken again and yet again. In the script, she was to be swimming naked, with the illusion of nudity easily obtained by the flesh-colored, two-piece bikini Marilyn wore all day.

There was, however, a problem. When cinematographer William Daniels gazed through his viewfinder at the long shot of Marilyn with her back to the camera, sitting at the edge of the pool towel-drying her hair, he noticed that the back strap of the bikini’s top was clearly visible to the Technicolor camera. This he reported to Cukor, who approached Marilyn—who in turn readily tossed aside her bikini top for this simple, quick, rearview image. In a few moments the shot was easily made.

But then Marilyn had an idea, one entirely natural for the woman who had posed nude for Tom Kelley on red silk in 1949; who had her skirt blown high for Billy Wilder over a subway grating in 1954; and who most recently had appeared at a presidential party with the merest covering. The shots she suggested were not in the script (and, she knew, would never be approved by the Motion Picture Production Code in 1962). But for publicity—to advertise
Something’s Got to Give
all over the world—why not take several shots of her nude as she wrapped round herself the blue terry-cloth robe for the next sequence? She had been so many icons, after all: why not Venus Rising from the
Waves? This would cost the picture not a cent, and it might bring in millions: Marilyn Monroe, soon to appear in
Something’s Got to Give
—and, it was (wrongly) implied, naked, just the way you see her now in a magazine.

Weinstein and Cukor thought this was inspired, and things happened quickly. Two free-lance photographers (William Woodfield and Lawrence Schiller) were hastily summoned to join the Fox studio photographer (James Mitchell). For just under an hour, many stills were made of Marilyn from various angles—but with nothing like total nudity, front or rear.

By the end of the day she was exhausted, but there was a burst of applause from the crew and even an embrace from Cukor. “Do you think this was in bad taste?” Marilyn asked Agnes Flanagan as she headed for her dressing room. “I told her,” said Agnes, a dignified Irish grandmother, “that there was nothing suggestive about it at all.”

On Thursday, May 24, Marilyn was back on the set for solo closeups and over-the-shoulder two-shots with Cyd Charisse—despite an earache from her watery scenes. Martin was in his fourth sick day and there were last-minute rearrangements, but no one seemed much concerned; the picture was only nine days behind schedule, and these could easily be justified (especially with this surprise new publicity campaign). The production required only a conclusion to the messy, tangled script. On Friday, May 25, ignoring a low-grade fever and a slight discharge from her right ear, Marilyn worked without complaint, joining Martin and Charisse for eight complicated shots. In these, she spoke with a brilliantly phony Swedish accent, Marilyn’s character trying to pass herself off as a foreign maid in her own home. The outtakes remain among the indisputable examples of her greatly underestimated talent: she wanted, Marilyn said, to do a sendup of every Garbo mimic in history, and that is just what she gave Cukor. Now he and Weinstein began to worry even more—that despite the rumblings from executive offices here and in New York, something might not have to give at all: they could be getting a film worth saving.

Marilyn spent the weekend mostly alone, but she and Pat shopped for food on Saturday; the atmosphere, they agreed, was far pleasanter without Eunice lurking on weekends. Marilyn had placed a cotton wad in her ear and was taking antibiotics she had left over from her bout of
sinusitis, but by Sunday there was a frank infection and her temperature had risen to one hundred two. A massive injection of penicillin cured her in record time, but she could not report for work on Monday.

On Tuesday, May 29, she and Dean Martin worked six hours on dialogue, doing forty-six takes of five shots and completing one and a quarter pages of script. As the outtakes reveal, Marilyn worked the scene carefully, executing a brief but gradually building anger, her voice always controlled, her eyes slowly blazing with resentment at an accusation of infidelity. Each time Cukor cut in, asking for a retake or giving direction, Marilyn listened patiently, sometimes asking a question, always nodding her agreement and eager to give what was best for the scene.