The Genius and the Goddess (34 page)

Ignoring all the difficulties, caught up in the excitement of making
the movie and seeing his words come to life on film, Miller sent
some optimistic bulletins to Saul Bellow. He said that he stood behind
Huston all day and was exhausted at night; felt as if he were in a
surrealistic state as his dreams materialized before his eyes; and praised
Marilyn's fabulous acting, which broke everyone's heart. Marilyn,
however, was filled with her usual fears, doubts and insecurities. Like
a boxer tensed up in the corner between rounds, she waited nervously
to be called for the next scene.

Marilyn's notes on the script repeated the principles of the Method.
She prodded herself to achieve her goals, described her character in
the film and explained her motivation:

Nightclub – I'm not ashamed of that / hold onto . . . that / as
Lee says of my acting / say it to myself . . . don't act results /
let it occur . . . observe / react / let it happen. . . .

The important thing – The dance [around the tree near the
unfinished house] – I can do it. How will I start it? That's all –
I've done it before so I can. . . . Do things that have not been
done on the screen. . . .

[Roslyn has a] strange lovely quality / not bitter / not
blaming / realizing / no pressure now / I hoped so much that
things would be different. . . . She kisses [Gable] because she
could say that she's lonely – then, when he doesn't seem to
respond, she's hurt, then glad for the interruption.
⁸

Paula Strasberg, now on the payroll at $3,000 a week, dressed entirely
in black in the torrid climate. Puffed up with self-importance and
secure in her position, she always rode to the set in Marilyn's limousine
so they could rehearse her lines en route. To enhance her
prestige, Paula also demanded and got her own chauffeured but
empty limousine that pointlessly followed them through the desert.
As she constantly sought direction from Paula and relied entirely
on her judgment, Marilyn's conflicts with Huston and Miller intensified.
Paula would hold up bizarre, simple-minded signs, meant to
guide her disciple, which said, "You're a branch on a tree. . . . You're
a bird in the sky." When Marilyn did something as simple as walking
down a staircase, she looked to Paula (not Huston) for approval. If
Paula didn't like the way she walked, they'd have to shoot the scene
over and over again. When the conflicts became insoluble, Lee
Strasberg was summoned from New York to sort things out. In
contrast to Paula and her funereal costume, Lee, the Jewish greenhorn
trying to fit into the Nevada desert, appeared in a ludicrous
western get-up. The guru, Miller wrote, "was dressed in a stiff brand-new
cowboy outfit – shiny boots, creased pants, ironed shirt with
braided pockets and cuffs – but with the same whitish intellectual
face and unexercised body."
⁹

When Lee failed to encourage Marilyn and solve the disputes
between Paula and Huston, Marilyn sought refuge in drugs. She asked
the young Irish doctor who worked for the film company to provide
her with pills and he had the guts to refuse. After trying to fire him
for insubordination, she eventually got her supply from a doctor in
Reno. She took Benzedrine or speed for uppers, Nembutal or tranquilizers
(a strong dose of four pills a night) for downers. Angela Allen
recalled, "She ate pills like children eating candy. She built up such a
tolerance for them, they didn't do much good, and then she would
take more. It had affected her mind. No one really resented her lateness
or her behavior . . . they all understood she had problems." Huston
confirmed, "Often she would not even know where she was. Her
eyes had a strange look. She was definitely under the influence. She
had apparently been on narcotics for a very long time. . . . It seemed
so hopeless."

Blaming Miller for Marilyn's addiction, Huston told him that it
was irresponsible, even criminal, to allow her to take any drugs. But
he soon realized that that she wouldn't listen to Miller and he couldn't
control her. One morning, Frank Taylor's wife, Nan, went to their
hotel suite "and found Arthur sleepless, his nerves raw. He was shaking
with fatigue. He'd been up all night with Marilyn. Marilyn was in
no better shape, but everyone was very protective toward her, very
considerate. . . . We watched those two tearing themselves to bits."
Marilyn was so high in one scene that Huston, after trying a few
takes, gave up.
¹⁰

In late August 1960, suffering from complete physical exhaustion,
Marilyn had a nervous breakdown, took an overdose of sleeping pills
and collapsed on the set. Huston sent for medical help and took
personal responsibility for getting her off the drugs. She was rushed
to Westside Hospital in Los Angeles, and while there, saw her psychiatrist
every day. She also tried unsuccessfully – by telephone and
telegram – to revive her affair with Montand, who'd returned to
France. The film shut down for ten days, with everyone on full pay,
and tensions continued to mount. The doctors managed to reduce
her dependence on barbiturates, but she was experiencing withdrawal
symptoms and still taking Demerol when she returned to Reno. Miller
later realized that "she was very badly ill a lot of the time, as she was
for most of her life. . . . More ill than I knew." But the press ignored
her tragedy. Emphasizing her happiness after her release from the
hospital, a reporter made a grotesque attempt at black humor. He
jokingly wrote that he'd phoned the film's publicity office and said,
"We're just calling to check a news flash that Marilyn Monroe has
committed suicide." They replied, "That's impossible! She has to be on
the set at 7:30! . . . Besides, Paula Strasberg would never stand for it!"
¹¹

Marilyn's marriage to DiMaggio had broken up just after
The Seven
Year Itch
and she knew that Miller would leave her at the end of
The
Misfits
. Their anxiety and conflict were palpable. Wounded, bitter and
still obsessed with Montand, Marilyn took out her anger and frustration
on Miller and often humiliated him in public. When he brought
the English journalist
W.J. Weatherby back to their suite, she coldly
exclaimed," 'Thank goodness you've brought someone home. . . .
You never bring any company. It's so dull,' and she disappeared into
the bedroom." Weatherby noted that "Miller looked as if he'd been
struck. I felt sorry for him." Marilyn also became absurdly jealous of
Angela Allen, who had to work closely with Miller. "I hear you're
Arthur's girlfriend now," she said. "Are you enjoying it?" She constantly
sent Miller on degrading errands and, if he objected, called him "Old
Grouchy Grumps." Miller admitted that he'd become "a guardian who
'slept [next to] her and counted her pills.'"
¹²

Huston, tough with women and allied with Miller in their struggle
against Paula and Marilyn, squirmed when Marilyn used her tyrannical
power to insult Miller in public:

She'd talk out against Arthur Miller right in his presence, to me,
and with others around. And say things that embarrassed me,
and certainly must have made him cringe. He would pretend
he wasn't listening. And all my sympathies were with him. . . .
I didn't like what she was doing to him. . . . I saw him humiliated
a couple of times, not only by Marilyn but by some of
her hangers-on. I think they hoped to demonstrate their loyalty
to Marilyn by being impertinent to Arthur. On these occasions
Arthur never changed expression. One evening I was about to
drive away from the location – miles out in the desert – when
I saw Arthur standing alone. Marilyn and her friends hadn't
offered him a ride back; they'd just left him. If I hadn't happened
to see him, he would have been stranded out there. My sympathies
were more and more with him.

Angela Allen called her behavior "despicable."

Even if he couldn't help Marilyn, Miller understood her better
than anyone else. Half-apologizing for her ferocious temper, he called
it "slashing, out to destroy. She didn't remember later the kind of fury
she would project, and she would be sweet to the same person, Billy
Wilder, for instance, and they [like Miller himself] would be puzzled
and surprised."
¹³
Seething within but unwilling to provoke her, self-controlled,
disciplined and determined to complete the film, Miller
swallowed the toad and remained outwardly quiet and calm. But his
very tranquility enraged her.

In
The Misfits
, dressed in the cowgirl's jeans she'd first worn in
Clash By Night
, Marilyn far surpasses the dramatic parts she'd tried
to play in
Don't Bother to Knock
and
Niagara
. But she didn't fully
realize that her complex and vulnerable character in
The Misfits
,
written for her and clearly based on her own life, was very different
from her previous parts as a comical dumb blonde and predatory
chorus girl. Like Zelda Fitzgerald, she felt she was being exposed and
exploited in her husband's work. "When I married [Miller]," she
declared, "one of the fantasies in my mind was that I could get away
from Marilyn Monroe through him, and here I find myself back doing
the same thing, and I just couldn't take it." Her greatest opportunity
and most difficult role was to play herself. The Method had taught
her to explore her deepest emotions when creating a character, but
this was the last thing she wished to do. She was afraid of revealing
her inner self and wanted, if possible, to escape from herself. Miller
had always hoped to restore Marilyn's self-confidence. In his endless
revisions, he enhanced her role and made her character more and
more appealing. He had the Gable, Clift and Wallach characters fall
in love with her, and express their admiration for her sweetness, charm
and beauty. Yet, in a terrible psychological bind, Marilyn lost all trust
in Miller, hated her role and believed she was being victimized. As
the shooting progressed, the marriage of Gay and Roslyn, which ran
counter to the heartbreaking events in real life, seemed bitterly ironic
to the actors and crew. Gable, Miller's surrogate, wins Marilyn at the
very moment that Miller loses her.

The script became the battleground between Marilyn and Miller.
She found it difficult to distinguish between Roslyn's character and
function in the screenplay and her own life and personality, and
constantly fought with Miller about the way he portrayed her. Her
publicist Rupert Allan explained that Marilyn was "desperately unhappy
at having to read lines written by Miller that were so obviously documenting
the real-life Marilyn. . . . She felt lonely, isolated, abandoned,
worthless, that she had nothing more to offer but this naked, wounded
self. And all of us who were her 'family' – well, we did what a family
tried to do." Before shooting started she'd called a crucial scene "lousy"
and told Norman Rosten (whom she tried to enlist as an ally against
Miller), "I object to the whole stupid speech. And he's going to rewrite
it!" She was rejecting Miller as she rejected his script."She was giving
him the business, making him eat the Hollywood shit even as they
made her eat it for so long. She was fighting the pain and humiliation
of another rejection, of one more failure in love."

Marilyn complained that in the scene when she tries to persuade
the cowboys not to kill the wild mustangs, "I convince them by
throwing a fit, not by explaining why it's wrong. I guess they thought
I was too dumb to explain anything. So I have a fit. A screaming,
crazy fit. . . . And to think,
Arthur
did this to me. . . . He was supposed
to be writing this for me. He could have written me
anything
and
he comes up with
this
. If that's what he thinks of me, well, then
I'm not for him and he's not for me."
¹⁴
Blinded by Paula, alienated
from Huston and hostile to Miller, she did not fully understand the
dramatic needs of the screenplay or Gay's reasons for freeing the
horses. Though Marilyn was mentally and physically ill, looked
slightly chubby in the swim scene, affectedly twitched her lips and
had great trouble remembering her lines, she gave a poignant portrayal
of a wounded woman who understands suffering. In an agonizing
blend of reality and fiction, Marilyn – herself hypersensitive, intuitive
and naïve – played a lost soul who struggles to prevent the
cruel treatment of the mustangs. Her confrontation with defeat and
despair had its own artistic energy. The more she suffered, the greater
her performance. She never understood how good she was in
The
Misfits
.

As soon as one battle was over, new hostilities would break out.
As Marilyn struggled with Huston and Miller about her interpretation,
Paula encouraged her to dig down into her own subconscious.
But the
influence of Method acting now became psychologically
damaging. She was so self-involved that she believed her emotions,
rather than Miller's words, were paramount. Each take became torture
as she tried to act out her own personal feelings instead of portraying
Roslyn's character.

Wallach described a typical emotional explosion during a crew
member's birthday party. Marilyn suddenly screamed at Miller: "'You
don't understand women! I am a film actress and I know what I'm
doing. Stop interfering. Why don't you let John direct?' Miller lowered
his head and stared at his plate as the entire room went silent. Later
that evening I ran into Marilyn in a hallway of the hotel, and she
lashed out at me. 'Oh, you Jewish men,' she said, walked down the
hall and slammed the door to her room." Her outburst was painfully
ironic. Her dependence on Paula proved that she did
not
know what
she was doing; and it was Paula, not the scapegoat Miller, who
constantly interfered with Huston's direction.

Though Miller and Huston would have done
anything
to finish the
picture, and were extraordinarily tolerant of her behavior, Marilyn
felt they were her enemies. She exclaimed, "Arthur said it's
his
movie.
I don't think he even wants me in it. It's all over. We have to stay
with each other because it would be bad for the film if we split up
now. I don't know how long I can put up with this. I think that
Arthur's been complaining to Huston about everything he thinks is
wrong with me, that I'm mental or something. And that's why Huston
treats me like an idiot."