The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (37 page)

S
peaking to Fred Guiles on the veranda of Miller's Roxbury farm in 1983, Miller said, “This farmhouse is located in the Litchfield Hills. I have nearly four hundred acres. Right now I'm starting a tree farm on the place. When Marilyn and I were first married, I had another old house about a mile and a half down this road. I sold it in 1956 and bought this. I had my eye on it for a long time and always wanted it, but I couldn't get it until the farmer's mother died here and he gave up the place.”

Agrarian reform in the guise of death enabled Miller to purchase the farm in the summer of 1957 with Marilyn's money. As Marilyn described it, the eighteenth-century farmhouse was “a kind of old saltbox with a kitchen.” Though the house was over a hundred and fifty years old and in a decrepit state, the Millers ignored friends' advice to tear it down. The Millers' need to repair their marriage became exteriorized in the tangible hope of restoring “Arthur's farm.”

Determined to become the woman her husband needed, Marilyn helped Miller renovate the old farm building, a task that Marilyn never considered completed. The original beams and ceilings were left intact, but walls were removed and rooms enlarged. A new wing was added, which
Marilyn christened “the nursery,” in the hope that she would still have a baby. There were broad verandas that overlooked the sweeping meadow and the manmade pond. Despite his Brooklyn origins, Miller was genuinely drawn to the land. For him it was where the perspective of cultured people could be regained and where psychic renewal had its roots. Arthur said, “It's the place where we hope to live until we die.”

Marilyn discovered that the farm was a place where she could indulge her love for all living things, and she acquired an array of animals and birds. Worried about how birds feed during migration, she fixed a feeding station in a maple tree. She adopted Cindy, a half-starved mongrel who had wandered into the yard; and Hugo, the Millers' basset hound, would often wander with rain-soaked muddy feet over the living room's white carpeting. Marilyn's concern for animals was compulsive. Inez Melson, her Los Angeles business manager, was once awakened at four o'clock in the morning with an urgent call from Marilyn in Connecticut informing her that they were having a thunderstorm and that “the animals and birds were very frightened.”

In a newspaper interview at the time Marilyn said, “Marriage makes me feel more womanly, more proud of myself. It also makes me feel less frantic. For the first time I have a feeling of being sheltered. It's as if I have come in out of the cold….” She told another interviewer, “I need to be here to get my husband's breakfast and make him a cheerful mid-morning cup of coffee. Writing is such a lonely kind of work.”

Recognizing her husband's need to put some distance between his role as paternalistic lover to the “forever child” and his needs as a writer, Marilyn had a split-shingle cabin built for him on a knoll not far from the farmhouse where he could write.

On weekdays Miller was in the habit of writing from 9
A.M.
to 1
P.M.
In the year since his marriage he had only published one short story, “The Misfits,” which appeared in
Esquire
, and he was still revising his unfinished play concerning the research physicians and Lorraine, the godlike force “who moves instinctively to break the hold of respectability on the men until each in a different way meets the tragedy in which she has unwittingly entangled him.”

Miller was now himself deeply entangled in the real-life tragedy. According to him, he had written over a thousand pages of the Lorraine play, but he burned them in the summer of 1957 because he couldn't deal with the implications of what he was writing. Lorraine went up in flames, but Miller's reality remained.

It was when Marilyn was recuperating from the loss of the baby that Miller began working on a screenplay of
The Misfits
, which was based on the lives of the two rodeo cowboys and the divorcee he had met in Reno. Expanding the role of the woman, Miller made “Roslyn” the key character in the screen version and wrote the part for Marilyn. Miller stated that he hoped the film project would draw Marilyn out of her sadness, and she expressed delight that he was writing something especially for her. Yet this was a business and career project—something exterior to their private life. Marilyn became increasingly suspicious of Miller's motives and often found him disapproving, cold, and distant.

Norman Rosten recalled a dinner party at the farm. After dinner,

The Millers divided their time between the farm and the East Fifty-Seventh Street apartment, which was only a two-hour drive in the Jaguar MK VII Saloon. But as the months progressed Marilyn spent more time in the city and less in the country. Her New York maid, Lena Pepitone, described Marilyn's life as “incredibly monotonous…. Her doctor's appointments and her acting lessons were virtually all she had to look forward to.” May Reis, who had been Elia Kazan's secretary, then Miller's before the marriage, handled the mail, appointments, and phone calls from a small office in the apartment. Neither Miller nor Marilyn was very social, and when she was in the city she spent a good deal of time in her room talking on the telephone, which according to Lena Pepitone seemed to be her greatest pleasure. “But the calls she enjoyed the most—and talked the longest on—came from two men who were very, very special to her: Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra.”

When Miller was in the city, he spent most of his time in his study working on the screenplay of
The Misfits
. Miller observed, “With
The Misfits
I was preparing to dedicate a year or more of my life to her enhancement as a performer—I would never have dreamed of writing a movie otherwise. I was sometimes apprehensive and unspontaneous with her. This she might interpret as disapproval, but it was simply that I was off balance and could no longer confidently predict her moods. It was almost as though the fracture of her original idealization of me in England had left no recognizable image at all, and if what remained was to humbly accept reality, it meant junking the ideal, a difficult thing to do when, paradoxically, her energy rose out of her idealizations of people and projects. Still hope was by no means fading; most marriages, after all, are conspiracies to deny the dark and confirm the light.”

Though many had blamed Milton Greene for involving Marilyn with drugs, it was during her marriage to Miller, and months after Miller had deposed Milton Greene, that Marilyn's slide into drug dependency became a life-threatening problem. To kill the pain of her unhappiness she had begun to prick her barbiturate capsules with a pin to make them work faster, and for the first time since the death of Johnny Hyde, Marilyn overdosed. Miller was at the apartment when the incident occurred. He stated, “There is no word to describe her breathing when she was in trouble with the pills. The diaphragm isn't working. The breathing is peaceful, great sighs. It took me an awfully long time before I knew what was coming on.”

Describing Maggie's overdose in
After the Fall
, Arthur Miller wrote:

 

She falls asleep, crumpled on the floor. Now deep, strange breathing. He quickly goes to her, throws her over onto her stomach for artificial respiration, but just as he's about to start, he stands. He calls upstage
.

Q
UENTlN
: Carrie? Carrie!
(Carrie enters as though it were a final farewell)
Quick! Call the ambulance! Stop wasting time! Call the ambulance!
(Carrie exits. He looks down at Maggie, addressing listener.)
No-no, we saved her. It was just in time. Her doctor tells me she had a few good months; he even thought for a while she was making it. Unless, God knows, he fell in love with her too.
(He almost smiles.)
Look, I'll say it. It's really all I came to say. Barbiturates kill by suffocation. And the signal is a kind of sighing—the diaphragm is paralyzed…And her precious seconds squirming in my hand, alive as bugs; and I heard those deep, unnatural breaths, like the footfalls of my coming peace—and knew…I wanted them. How is that possible? I loved that girl!

 

Describing Marilyn's overdose to Fred Guiles, Miller stated that once he realized what was happening, he wasted no time trying to revive her himself, but sought medical help. When the doctor arrived, her stomach was pumped out and she was saved. Miller stated, “After she was revived, she would be extremely warm and affectionate to me because I had saved her…. You might trace it [the overdose] to something someone said or did, but it could come out of nowhere, too.”

“Nowhere,” Marilyn later related to Dr. Greenson, was Miller's coldness and indifference.

 

Recounting the growing rift between Miller and Marilyn, Lena Pepitone said that it was as if the apartment had two wings, his and hers. When they dined together they would “sit at the table without speaking for the longest time. Marilyn looked at her husband admiringly and longingly, as if she was dying for some attention. However, he just ate quietly and did not look at her.”

Marilyn often listened to Frank Sinatra records in her bedroom. One of her favorite records was “All of Me,” and Lena recalled that when she was unhappy she would play the record and stare at a full-length picture of Joe DiMaggio that she kept on the back of her closet door. “She seemed to be looking at Joe's picture, but her eyes would have the faraway expression I had seen many times when Marilyn was unhappy,” Lena recalled. “I remember the one song she played most often on the small record player next to her bed. It was a number called ‘Every Day I Have the Blues.'”

S
cripts arrived daily for Marilyn Monroe's consideration, but Marilyn wasn't in a rush to make another movie. Arthur Miller and May Reis reviewed the various proposed productions, carefully going over the screenplays and occasionally passing on to Marilyn the few they thought had possibilities. According to Lena Pepitone, Marilyn would read a couple of pages, toss the script in a corner, and complain, “Another stupid blonde. I can't stand it!”

Arthur read a synopsis submitted by Billy Wilder called
Some Like It Hot
, a wacka-doo Roaring Twenties comedy about two musicians who accidentally witness the Chicago St. Valentine's Day massacre. To hide from the killers they dress up as women and jump on a train headed for Florida with Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters, an all-girl jazz band. Wilder wanted Marilyn to play Sugar Kane, the band's lead singer who befriends the two new “girls.”

When Marilyn read the synopsis she was incensed. “I've played dumb blondes before, but never
that
dumb. How couldn't I recognize that they were men? I won't do it!” she told Miller. “Never!”

But Miller had been idle professionally for some time. The better part
of his royalties were consumed by alimony payments and legal fees connected with his contempt citation. He had been living on his wife's income from
The Prince and the Showgirl
, which was rapidly diminishing. They needed money. She was offered $100,000 for starring in
Some Like It Hot
, plus a historic ten percent of the gross profits.

Lena Pepitone observed that Miller tried very calmly to convince Marilyn what a great opportunity the film would be, and suggested that “they could make a fortune from the project.” Despite the fact their resources were dwindling, the mere mention of money sent Marilyn into a rage. She complained, “Money! All he cares about is money. Not me! I can't take another one of these parts. This is the dumbest ever! Why doesn't
he
try to write something
he
hates? Then he'd see!”

Miller persuaded her to at least discuss the film with Wilder, who flew to New York with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis to convince her that the part would be a milestone in her career. When Marilyn read the completed screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, she appreciated the humor and saw an opportunity to do a portrayal, but ultimately it was Lee Strasberg who opened the door for Marilyn to pick up the ukulele and jump aboard the Pullman with Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters.

“I've got a real problem, Lee,” she told him. “I just can't believe in the central situation. I'm supposed to be real cozy with these two newcomers, who are really men in drag. Now how can I possibly feel a thing like that without just being too stupid?”

Strasberg considered her quandary for several moments before replying, “Well, that shouldn't be a problem. You know, Marilyn, it's very difficult for you to have a relationship with other women. They're always jealous of you. When you come into a room, all the men flock around, but women kind of keep their distance. So you've never really had a girlfriend.”

“That's almost true,” Marilyn replied.

“A lot of men have wanted to be your friend,” Strasberg continued, “But you haven't ever had friends who were girls. Now suddenly, here are two women, and they want to be your friend! They like you. For the first time in your life, you have two friends who are girls!”

Strasberg said that Marilyn's eyes glowed with appreciation. Sugar had a
need
to believe in the friendship. It was something Marilyn could use.

On July 8, 1958, Marilyn and her entourage, May Reis and Paula Strasberg, arrived in Los Angeles and checked into the Bel Air Hotel. That afternoon she appeared at a press conference with Billy Wilder and costars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. It was her first public appearance in Hol
lywood since Bus
Stop
, and the press clamored for interviews. Stunning in a diaphanous white silk dress, she announced she was back in Hollywood to star in
Some Like It Hot
.

Producer Harold Mirisch gave Marilyn a lavish dinner party to celebrate her return to Hollywood. Some eighty guests on the Hollywood A list were invited for cocktails at seven, which was to be followed by dinner at nine. The guests were beginning to leave when Marilyn arrived at eleven-twenty.

Shortly before the film was scheduled to start production, the United States Court of Appeals in Washington reversed Miller's contempt citation, and he flew to Los Angeles and joined Marilyn at her Bel Air Hotel suite. She greeted him with the news that she was pregnant. Overjoyed at the prospect that this time she might become a mother, Marilyn contemplated dropping out of Billy Wilder's production, but Miller felt she should proceed with the film, which was scheduled to wrap by the end of September. Marilyn called Norman Rosten to ask his advice:

“Should I do my next picture or stay home and try to have a baby again? That's what I want most of all, a baby, I guess, but maybe God is trying to tell me something, I mean with all my pregnancy problems. I'd probably make a kooky mother, I'd love my child to death. I want it, yet I'm scared. Arthur says he wants it, but he's losing his enthusiasm. He thinks I should do the picture.”

Rosten's response was in the form of a poem he sent in July:

The prophetic anguish began shortly after the start date of
Some Like It Hot
, August 4, 1958. The film had a relatively short schedule for a major film—forty-five days. Most of it was to be shot on the soundstages of the Samuel Goldwyn studios. Though Billy Wilder had had many problems working with Marilyn on
The Seven Year Itch
, he wasn't prepared for the three-month ordeal that faced him.

Wilder approached his films with kinetic force. Many writers wouldn't work with him because he could be ruthless, bombastic, and insulting in
the manic process he went through to perfect a screenplay. All was preparation for Wilder—putting together the right script and the right cast. By the time he got to the soundstage, the entire film was already cut in his mind. He seldom shot masters or close-ups all the way through a scene because he knew just where he wanted to cut from the long shot and just when he wanted a two shot or a close-up. He gave editors few choices in the cutting room. Buoyant and humorous when things were going his way, he could be a bit of a sadist when crossed. Wilder's mind crackled with wit, and he enjoyed firing humorous barbs at cast and crew. The rollicking wisecracks and jokes that bounced between Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Wilder on the set were as funny as anything that happened on the screen, and the production started off with a sense of great camaraderie. Marilyn's first scene in the shooting schedule was her entrance in the film as she boards the train for Florida with Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters. Wilder recalled, “She had a tremendous sense of joke, as good a delivery as Judy Holliday, and that's saying a lot. She had kind of an inner sense of what will play, what will work. She called me after the first daily rushes because she didn't like the way her introductory scene played…. We made up the new introduction with her new entrance.”

In the revised version Sugar is late for the train, which is about to pull out of the station. She rushes down the platform, wiggle-wobbling on her high heels. A blast of steam from the engine hits her in the fanny, and she's impelled forward through the vapor toward the “girl” musicians. It was an artfully amusing entrance and Wilder observed, “She was absolutely right about that.”

The problems began several days later. On the swaying Pullman headed for Florida, the jazz girls rehearse “Runnin' Wild” with Josephine (Curtis) on sax, and Daphne (Lemmon) on string bass. As Sugar finishes her lyric, a flask of booze falls out of her garter onto the floor in front of the distaff bandleader, who has a strict “no liquor” rule. Wilder wanted Marilyn to show alarm and fear over the blunder. After several takes Wilder said, “You aren't surprised or worried enough, Marilyn dear.”

They rolled again and Marilyn gave a little more surprise. “Cut!” Wilder called in the middle of the take. “Let's try it again, dear—a
big
surprise, this time. You're alarmed and worried and Daphne covers for you—that's the gag. Now, once more!
Big
surprise!”

What Marilyn had feared was happening: Wilder was painting Sugar with broad strokes. But Marilyn was determined not to be the Betty Boop
floozy foil for the drag gags. If she had to do a dumb blonde, it was going to be a portrayal. Sugar was going to be three-dimensional, with a heart and soul and motivation, beyond making a gag work.

As the camera rolled once more and the flask fell, she reacted with chagrin and an embarrassed giggle.

“Cut! You still haven't got it, dear. The flask drops. Sue sees that it's booze. And you're alarmed. You're afraid of what might happen. It's a very simple reaction, dear.” And Wilder did a demonstration—showing her the broad reaction he wanted. Marilyn began trembling and walked out of the Pullman set to where Black Bart was waiting in the dark. It was one of those moments on a set when crew people pretend not to notice what's happening and make themselves busy doing nothing. Marilyn and Strasberg walked off to a corner of the stage and whispered and nodded for over twenty minutes, while Wilder, the script clerk, and the assistant director, Sam Nelson, exchanged nervous glances.

It was the beginning of the behind-the-scenes battle of
Some Like It Hot
—a cold war waged between star and director. It was to be a
guerre à mort
. The public heard battle reports from the director's camp and those that preferred to play the Wilder card, but they never got a briefing from Marilyn. She was too discreet. The true story of Marilyn Monroe's battle for a character never became public knowledge.

Marilyn's technique was quite different from Curtis's and Lemmon's. They could be joking on the set one moment and step before the cameras the next, giving Wilder Cary Grant or Donald Duck on take one or two. But Marilyn needed total concentration. She knew her limitations and was determined to rise above them. She relied on Paula Strasberg to help her with the character. Commenting to Hedda Hopper on Strasberg's presence on the Wilder set, she said, “Paula gives me confidence and is very helpful. You see, I'm not a quick study, but I'm very serious about my work and am not experienced enough as an actress to chat with friends and workers on the set and then go into a dramatic scene. I like to go directly from a scene into my dressing room and concentrate on the next one and keep my mind in one channel. I envy these people who can meet all comers and go from a bright quip and gay laugh into a scene before the camera. All I'm thinking of is my performance, and I try to make it as good as I know how.”

When Wilder realized that Marilyn was toning down Sugar Kane, he kept trying to punch up her performance. Calling “cut” when she wasn't playing a scene the way he envisioned it, he pushed for the exaggerated
gesture, the broader reaction, and the underlined dialogue. He was asking her to do things she didn't feel were right for the character, and it broke her concentration.

“I never heard such brilliant direction as Billy gave her,” Jack Lemmon stated, “but nothing worked until she felt right about it. She simply said over and over, ‘Sorry, I have to do it again.' And if Billy said, ‘Well, I tell you, Marilyn, just possibly if you were to…'—then she'd reply, ‘Just a moment now, Billy, don't talk to me, I'll forget how I want to play it.' That took me over the edge more than once. Nobody could remind her she had a professional commitment.”

But Marilyn's commitment was to Sugar Kane. Her instincts told her that Wilder's broader approach was wrong, not only for her, but for the picture. She fought for the character with the only weapon at her disposal—attrition. If Wilder was going to call “cut” on what she brought to the character, she was going to wear him down. If he was going to break her concentration, he'd have to pay for it. When Wilder tried to change her portrayal, she'd flub the scene and never give him enough to use. The constant flubbing, and drying up, and forgetting lines was the exhaustive process Marilyn went through until Wilder gave up. By take twenty-nine, Marilyn's way began looking good to the frustrated director.

Wilder publicly complained, “Marilyn was constantly late, and she demanded take after take—the Strasbergs, after all, had taught her to do things again and again and again until she felt she got them right. Well, now she had us doing things again and again and again. Our nice sane budget was going up like a rocket, our cast relations were a shambles, and I was on the verge of a breakdown. To tell the truth she was impossible—not just difficult.”

Another thorn in his side was Paula Strasberg. Black Bart stood in the dark behind the camera making gestures and signals to Marilyn, and after each take Marilyn would look to her rather than Wilder for approval. The stress of the battle led to muscle spasms in Wilder's neck and back, and he was often forced to direct from a reclining board next to the camera. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis were among the casualties. Walking around in high-heeled shoes in take after take gave them blisters along with battle fatigue. They grew resentful. In their scenes with Marilyn they were worn out and dry by take twelve, and Marilyn was just getting started. In a moment of pique, Tony Curtis made the widely publicized statement, “Kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler.”