Warmed by whiskey, Marilyn eased her way back into visibility. She loved 21’s single-malt, Old World mood. Somehow the stacks of pewter tankards in diamond-shaped lattices, glazed black leather banquettes, red Persian rugs, and oak walls hung with fox and hound prints suited Marilyn even more than the tinsel and swank of the Copa. Wrapped in black mink, neck bare, she looked fresher than she had weeks ago at Frank Delaney’s. Her milkshake skin glinted off silver wine buckets and foil-topped bottles of Dom Pérignon. Club owner Bob Kriendler showed off his rare trophies. Pulitzer playwright Sid Kingsley bought her drinks. Richard Adler immediately demanded that she star in his musical, The Pajama Game.
Her confidence growing, Marilyn was eager to mingle with the New York press, and the 21 Club was the perfect place to do it. Media tycoon Leo Lyons held court at his regular table, while the New York Post’s Earl Wilson made the rounds until 3 a.m., gathering gossip for his column, It Happened Last Night. Despite the star-studded banter that filled their columns, Leo and Earl were respected as real writers, a label that attracted Marilyn immediately. Unlike the Hollywood hacks, they genuinely loved their subjects, saw them as friends, and would never betray them for a new Cadillac or a trip to Palm Beach. Bob Kriendler was strict about press he let in—media brute Walter Winchell was banned from the club and so was the gossipy Dorothy Kilgallen.
Away from bullies, Marilyn could spar with the best of them. Leo Lyons and Earl Wilson saw past her vampy walk and sex-doll coo. They loved her easy banter, how she held her liquor, how she’d actually blush when she shook your hand and made no move to disguise it. These were her kind of men—table-hopping till three and typing past dawn for the sheer fun of it. Like her they were curious and genuinely loved people and culture. Leo talked about his interviews with George Bernard Shaw; Earl asked about her connection to Dostoyevsky’s Grushenka. Earl in particular was struck by the change in Marilyn. He’d met her years ago and found her sexy but “wooden.” This time she bewitched him with warmth and wit, not bare cleavage or the powdery mix of perfume.
Marilyn thrived in snug groups like these—crammed into banquettes, ordering round after round over late-night snacks of caviar in pastry cups. Nestled in 21’s leathery haze, she’d gab late into the night with her newfound friends. Before she braved the icy street’s blast of cold air, she’d grab Leo or Earl’s arm. “Hold a good thought for me,” she’d whisper as she slid into her mink. At this point, she still needed all the blessings she could get.
* * *
Just down the block from the posh 21 was a sports saloon ran by the lovable carouser Toots Shor. On February 26, Marilyn arrived on DiMaggio’s arm—swathed in white ermine and signing autographs. The occasion was to celebrate Jackie Gleason’s thirty-ninth birthday, but as Earl Wilson reported the next day, “at times it seemed like a party for Marilyn.”
Toots Shor was all backslapping swagger, where men literally drank each other under the table (sometimes you’d have to step over Jackie Gleason). No caviar—just chopped chicken livers, steaks, and slabs of roast beef. But Marilyn loved the boozy bonhomie, the red-checked tablecloths cluttered with ashtrays, cheap drippy candles, and tumblers of whiskey and soda. She shimmered through the thick liquor haze and smoke, stopping to perch on a chair for a chat. Pert shoulders framed her face like two downy light bulbs. Stripped of jewelry in spaghetti-strap black, Marilyn looked like some touchable bunny—just like her heroine, Jean Harlow, who resembled a soaped-up lamb no matter what strappy couture she was wearing.
“She was the ultimate Homecoming Queen,” recalled Audrey Meadows, “bathing in tidal waves of affection.” She kissed and chatted with John Huston. (He was on her “men to sleep with” list—and why not—with his three-piece suits and cigars, all Havana and cowboy leather.) Leo Lyons spent most of the night gazing up at her adoringly. Jackie Gleason kept one meaty hand clasped round her waist—the other clutching his snifter of brandy. The rowdier men made a failed attempt to hoist Marilyn onto a table, which resulted in her yelping and scampering off to the powder room: “Ladies, I wonder if you could help me. I seem to have gotten a splinter up my ass.” The crisis was averted with a straight pin sterilized by Audrey’s cigarette lighter.
“It was a drama lesson just to watch her shine,” remembered Audrey. “Despite the fact that a Monroe entrance had the effect of transforming every other woman in the place into a soft boy, we women liked her too.” “EVERYONE loved her,” Earl Wilson reported, “even the girls.”
Despite this frenzy of men—stampeding for her, begging her for interviews, photo ops, and kisses—Joe remained unruffled. The notoriously jealous DiMaggio just sat there beaming, arm flung round his ex-wife, smoking cigarettes and ashing over plates of half-eaten strawberry shortcake. He glanced up to admire Earl Wilson’s striped tie. “Marilyn bought me a tie like that,” he said, grinning. “It seemed to all who watched the couple in New York that Joe was wooing Marilyn as he did in the early days of their courtship,” TV and Movie Screen noted. “At this writing, there seems to be a good chance of reconciliation.”
Marilyn looked happy and dewy as the evening wore on. She loved these kinds of parties—parties where you could actually have fun, where you could watch some sexy little drama unfold in a corner or maybe be part of one yourself. Compared to all this, LA was “just dull.”
Happily, the feeling was mutual—Manhattan loved her back. “Marilyn is so enormously popular here,” Earl boasted triumphantly in his next-day column. “She should stay in New York—this is Her Town.”
* * *
All winter long, Marilyn bloomed in the dizzying glitz of her new social life. She dated Marlon Brando. She had pillow fights with Truman Capote. She drank gin at the Subway Inn with Sinatra, drank wine with Milton Greene at La Petite Cuvée, and danced with Prince Serge Obolensky at the Hotel Astor. She attended movie premieres and late-night revelries, where she was always, according to reports, “the hit of the party.” A far cry from the mute “wet chicken” at Gene Kelly’s.
“I didn’t realize how much she really loved people until we started going out around New York,” marveled Amy Greene, who watched Marilyn charm the most jaded Manhattanites. “She was having the best time ever. We took her to Dick and Dorothy Rodgers’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, where everyone was dressed to the nines, with all the dresses and the diamonds. Oh, honey, everybody was there—Truman Capote, John and Elaine Steinbeck, Gloria Vanderbilt, Carol Saroyan, Dorothy and Oscar Hammerstein—everyone who was in the arts at the time. Marie Harriman, who was married to Averill at the time, was there—she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face and was also very vain and didn’t want to wear her glasses with an evening dress and all her jewelry. Marilyn was approaching, and all she saw was this blonde vision coming towards her, and she said to Dick Rodgers, ‘Who is that?’ When he said Marilyn Monroe, she screamed, ‘Oh, my God, she’s gorgeous!’ It was the only person in the world who couldn’t recognize her because she literally couldn’t see. When Marilyn heard that story she loved it and went over to Marie and gave her a big kiss. Marilyn was very shy with women, but she was also very giving—the type to throw her arms around this lady who didn’t recognize her and kiss her. She loved that sort of thing. That night someone snapped a very lovely picture of Marilyn in profile with Marie Harriman, and they sort of have their arms around each other, which is charming.”
The Broadway crowd warmed up to her quickly, showering her with invites to their star-studded parties. Back in her Hollywood days, Marilyn would have fled, burying herself in blankets with Sinatra records and the telephone. In Manhattan her social confidence and lively spirit bloomed. “Between acts everyone talks to her,” marveled Amy, who accompanied Marilyn to plays and premieres. “People will call down from the balcony to say they either like her dress or that they don’t like it. Or that her hair looks lovely.” Even more astonishing was Marilyn’s response. “She answers them just as though she had known each one, personally, all her life. That magnetism, believe me, is a two-way current.” It was undeniable—Marilyn was becoming a PR expert.
Milton was the gatekeeper—at least initially. He’d pour the bourbon, apologize for Marilyn, and vet the journalists—he didn’t want them attacking her with questions about her divorce. But gradually, Marilyn relaxed with the press and even began to enjoy herself. She held interviews at bars, ordering thimblefuls of Harveys Bristol, which she’d promptly spill in her lap. “Oops,” she’d say with a giggle, dabbing her lap with a napkin and calmly moving on to the next question. Instead of shying away from the personal, Marilyn was warm, expansive, and playful. “Nobody can write dialogue for her which could possibly sound half as much like her as the dialogue she thinks up for herself,” wrote Pete Martin, a New York journalist who was charmed by Marilyn’s “Monroese.” “I’ve never been able to wear pajamas or creepy nightgowns,” she’d quip, or “I sleep with my eyes half open, dreaming of a man.” Even her simplest statements were shot through with some deeper, mysterious truth. “I think I’m a mixture,” she said to Pete Martin. “Of what I don’t know. One thing, I’m continually off balance.” On the screen or on the page, Marilyn wanted to give her fans something worthwhile: “I have a certain sort of stupid sincerity. I mean I don’t want to tell everybody who interviews me the same thing. I want them all to have something new and different and exclusive. When I worry about that, I start to get sick to my stomach.”
The Manhattan press was inclined to humor Marilyn. And why not? They reveled in her oddities, which she played up instinctively. She begged reporters to use pencils and notebooks and forbade recording machines: “It would make me nervous to see that thing going round and round.” Instead of getting angry at her inevitable delays, the press felt sorry for her. “She thinks the maid must have gone off with the top of her tapered slacks,” her secretary would report to columnists waiting in the foyer. “She’s running around without a top on.”
Gone was the insecure Hollywood waif, plotting early escapes from pool parties in the Canyons. Her candor with journalists paid off—public opinion began to turn back her way. “Never underestimate this gal,” warned Earl in his cover story “In Defense of Marilyn.” He wrote, “What other actress—during a suspension—has gone about making a million or so new friends?”
* * *
On February 22, Marilyn attended a Navy gala at the Hotel Astor and was crowned Ship’s Sweetheart for the USS Bennington. “True to her reputation,” recalled sailor Paul Lazzaro, “she showed up at our party at almost 11 p.m. After chugalugging a whiskey sour that appeared out of nowhere backstage, Marilyn took the stage. By then 3,000 sailors had been drinking for three hours and Marilyn Monroe shows up! It was total chaos.”
A nervous Jay Kanter ushered her through the street exit to a thronged Times Square. There was no clawing or pawing—the sailors treated her far more respectfully than the press hounds ever did. Coat-free in black spaghetti straps, Marilyn lingered in the cold with the men, bumming their cigarettes, kissing their cheeks, clutching a USS Bennington sweatshirt to her bare neck and chest.
“I asked if we could get a picture of her kissing a sailor goodnight,” explained Lazzaro. “She said in her whispery voice ‘Why certainly!’ A band of sailors stood in awe in a respectful circle around her, but no one was close enough for a picture. I called for a sailor to step in. However, my only response was from one of the ship’s Marines who stepped up to Marilyn’s right arm and said ‘How about a Marine?’ ‘Well OK, I said, but I want a sailor too.’ ‘How about you,’ Marilyn whispered to me. She reached up, grabbed both our cheeks and drew us in, blonde hair, black satin dress—you get the picture. Flashbulbs popped along with a couple of sailors.”
The most famous woman on earth was no haughty Hitchcock blonde. Marilyn chatted up her leg waxer, gossiped with shopgirls, and waved hello to the garbage men on 57th Street. If you met her in the powder room of the Copa she’d probably lend you her lipstick. And she remembered faces—a stewardess who was nice to her on a plane, a war widow on crutches from a skiing accident. After all, her fans had made her a star, “no studio, no person, the people did.”
“The people” were the mechanics, nuns, cabbies, and busboys who hung on her fluttery strut and glittering hips. “The working men” she described in a touching interview. “I’ll go by and they’ll whistle, and then they’ll say, ‘Gosh, it’s Marilyn Monroe!’ You know, those are the times it’s nice, people knowing who you are and all that, and feeling like you meant something to them.”
Paparazzi, literati, directors, and designers were fleeting. She shared Capote and Sinatra with Liz Taylor and Ava Gardner. But the fans—the waiters, teenagers, and factory workers; the “popcorn and huzzah crowd”—belonged to her.
* * *
March 9, 1955. Gladstone Hotel, 7 p.m. East of Eden premiere. Fishtail sheath in biscuit brocade. Exposed shoulders, fox fur wrap, white opera gloves. By now she’s learned the magic of fabrics. Taupes and creams near the face to set off her pneumatic skin. Silk fawn collars, sanded satin. Dozens of buff kid gloves. She keeps the dusting of fuzz that covers her face—side effect from Laszlo’s hormone cream—for its soft focus glow. (Elizabeth Taylor shaves hers off.) She daubs her cheekbones with Vaseline. Not that she needs it—the temperature has spiked into the mid-60s. Will she sweat through her heavy brocade? Does she even need her fur wrap? She peeks out the window—wooden police horses flank the exit. Milton and Amy wait in the limousine parked curbside. (Amy like a dainty Lara in her black fur hood, Milton adorably childish in his dinner suit, a boy playing dress-up.) John Steinbeck will be there—what will she say to this gruff imposing man?—she loves Tortilla Flat. Director Elia Kazan will be there with his wife. Milton Berle will be there with his wife. And has anyone guessed about her and Brando? She’s already late—she’s supposed to usher with Marlon—will he be annoyed? (He will be annoyed, and he will forgive her.)
This is the Actors Studio’s first major benefit, and even Margaret Truman is a guest usherette. Thousands have gathered round the Astor Theatre, a mounting frenzy in the balmy air. Martin Block is perched on high with his microphone, interviewing celebrities as they arrive. Milton Berle approaches Block with his wife, Ruth, in tow. Everyone knows he has a thing for blondes, and everyone knows he has slept with Marilyn. He’s extra-solicitous of Ruth that night—“Doesn’t she look great, Martin?”—one hand at her back while nervously scanning the crowd and flashing bulbs for signs of Marilyn. (By the end of the night he’ll be wrapped in complicit little chats with Marilyn—pulling her onto his lap, kissing her cheek, prancing for the camera.)
Everyone is there. Kazan is jittery. John Steinbeck looks like he needs a drink. Margaret Truman is looking for Marilyn. Martin Block is looking for Marilyn. Marlon Brando is looking for Marilyn. Everyone is looking for Marilyn: “I heard a rumor Marilyn Monroe was ushering.” “Has Marilyn arrived yet?” “We expect Marilyn to walk in with Joe any minute.” The crowd swells up with a roar. “Okay, I guess Marilyn’s arrived.”
The streets jammed, mad fans lurching forward, tears streaming down their cheeks: “I touched her! I touched her!”
Marilyn emerges—not on Joe’s arm but on Milton Greene’s.
James Dean is a no-show at his own premiere. Somehow, everyone forgets to notice.
* * *
Milton takes her to the Friars Club on March 17, where her pals Dean and Jerry are being honored with a roast. The only woman in a group of fifty bawdy men, Marilyn sits sandwiched at a banquet between Bobby Clark and Eddie Fisher. She’s Belle of the Boys Club Ball, miles away from Hollywood’s slick leers and chintzy grins. Dean and Jerry clown for the crowd; Marilyn giggles in the background, a glistening bubble at Eddie’s shoulder (“I’ve always had a thing for Eddie Fisher”). He’s lapping up her synthetic-kitten look, but years later—broken and embittered by Liz Taylor—he will declare her beauty spoiled, ravaged by pills and booze. Sammy Davis Jr. leans on Marilyn’s chair, smelling of Aramis and Marlboro Reds. Tonight they look like a puckish couple, batting around inside jokes. She’s looking up at him, one jaunty brow cocked, her fuzzy blonde halo diffusing the vamp. Milton Berle whispers in Marilyn’s ear, his gold wedding band conspicuous and benign. He’s close enough to catch the scent of her neck—hard sparkle of aldehydes and skin-warmed styrax. They both love this sort of thing and are good at it, too—carving out chunks of schoolgirl intimacy no matter how grand the gala. Berle’s barely drinking, just plowing through Havana cigars, and Marilyn loves the vanilla aroma. (He’ll soon give her a box of his favorite Cubans—they’re so much better for her than the cigarettes she smokes.) Dean and Jerry are waving her over, and she poses, arms flung round their shoulders as if she’s tamed them, as if they’re hers. Dean grasps her fingertips. He’s quick to claim her, too. Jerry’s eyes are wide and sooty as a puppy’s. (Marilyn on Jerry: “I just think he’s sexy. You know, I can’t quite analyze it but it’s there.”) The poses get crazier: Even in black ties and Chanel No 5 there’s this pajama party vibe. Dean chews on her pearly palm and Jerry bites into her arm like a lamb chop. Someday Jerry will blame the press for her death (“She was kind, she was good, she was beautiful”). And seven years from now—three days after “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” and eight weeks before she finally passes out in her Brentwood bed, phone in hand, when Fox has their final revenge and punishes her for her success and fires her for the last time, Dean will risk his career and walk out in protest. This will be the last act of respect, the last act of kindness, the last acknowledgment of her talent and her genius. The last to happen while she’s still alive.
* * *
The Broadway crowd found themselves protecting—her. At the Friars Roast, comedian Joey Adams had planned to crack a joke about DiMaggio, then thought the better of it, stopping himself for Marilyn’s sake. Carol Channing, who’d been urged to trap Marilyn into singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” at a post-premiere party, wisely talked herself out of it. “I decided it wouldn’t be fair. I just know that I’d kill anybody who’d do it to me, so why should I do it to her?”
“Marilyn discovered that New York show people—supposedly hard and tough—have real respect for her,” wrote Earl Wilson. “She hasn’t had one bad experience with them.” The whole town seemed to fall in love with her collectively. They loved everything about Marilyn—her firm handshake (no matter how weak she was at the end of the night), the warm way she remembered everyone’s name. “We’re going to be good friends,” she’d say, with a squeeze of the hand by the elevator door. And she’d mean it.
Manhattan continued to offer fresh pleasures. She delighted in the highbrow as well as the low, responding to Tolstoy and hot dogs with the same innocent rapture. “She’s so hungry—greedy almost, but not quite—for all the wonderful things in the world,” wrote Elsa Maxwell of Marilyn’s disarming curiosity. “Things like association with stimulating people, fascinating books, a chance to see the planet she lives on, a knowledge of music and art and food and wine. Like a child with a big box of candy, she can’t quite decide which treat to sample first.”
She’d sleep past noon, order grapefruit juice, soak in an ice bath spiked with Chanel. Then the flurry of calls—cocktails and jazz on Swing Street, or a midnight feast of cold borscht and steak at Manny Wolf’s Chop House. She loved the El Morocco: the limousines lined up on 54th Street, the strong martinis, the Cuban band. She’d kick off her shoes and samba for hours. Marilyn was beginning to enjoy herself, and it showed.
