In the beginning, Marilyn was skittish as a hunted rabbit. Those first few weeks she stuck close to Delos, even pinching him when someone got too close or brushed up against her. (He didn’t mind.)
Her first scene was from Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy (Marilyn’s choice) which she was scheduled to perform with dark-haired actor Phil Roth. Along with her initials, MM, Marilyn had penciled in PL10757, Phil’s name and number, on the script. She went over her lines alone for days in her suite, wrapped in a bathrobe drinking coffee. Finally she worked up her courage to call Phil and picked up the telephone.
“Hi!” she said, in a soft, baby voice. “This is Marilyn.”
“Marilyn who?” he joked.
“You know,” she hesitated, worried that she’d dialed the wrong number. “Marilyn, that actress from class.”
“Ohhhh, that Marilyn.” Phil invited her over to practice. This would be the first time she’d met with any of them outside class.
By the time she’d climbed the stairs to his fifth-floor walk-up, Marilyn was out of breath. Looking around at his paper-strewn apartment, she said, “You need some woman to clean up this place.” Before they started, she insisted on emptying ashtrays, sweeping the floor, and arranging Phil’s papers in neat little stacks. (She never cleaned her own place, let alone a man’s—housework was acceptable only as a novelty or game.) Perhaps she wanted to endear herself to him, or perhaps she needed to declutter before she could focus. Either way, Roth was charmed.
Despite Malin Studios’ casual atmosphere, Marilyn prepared for her scenes as if they were MGM screen tests, carefully selecting her props and makeup. She once picked a scene to do with Delos from French playwright Eugène Brieux’s Damaged Goods. (Marilyn was playing a 1920s prostitute with syphilis.) She wore a sheer silk sheath with no bra underneath—just “nipples, smiles and dimples…” She twirled a string of long costume pearls, causing Delos to swing instinctively around his stethoscope. The students laughed; Lee loved it—though Paula Strasberg, his wife, later claimed they looked like “two goddamn pinwheels.” “Gone were the strained efforts of artificial behavior and clichés,” remembered classmate Ed Easty. “She held nothing back. After the scene, Lee whirled around in his seat and demanded from the class, ‘Well, was that scene excellent or not?’ The crowd, not easy with praise, answered yes, yes it was.”
As Marilyn tried new scenes in class, she discovered that she’d been preparing for the Studio all her life. Her work with Michael Chekhov had already familiarized her with Stanislavski’s technique—drawing on personal experiences to channel dramatic emotions. She felt a kinship with these actors, her fellow classmates who suffered through sleep deprivation, bread-and-water diets, and psychoanalysis just to get into character. These were her people—people who followed instinct instead of rules, intuition instead of doctrine. She began to see that there was some crazy magic happening here in Malin Studios and was willing to do anything to belong—even break through her crippling shyness.
“Marilyn came to the Actors Studio with her hat in her hand,” wrote Shelley Winters. “She wanted so badly to connect to the theatre people, serious writers and performers.” But they could be an impenetrable crew. The members themselves could be boisterous and frank, yet as a whole they remained strangely sphinxlike. They socialized and worked and partied in their own magical world. She’d always been a bit of an outcast on the Hollywood circuit, and she didn’t care—but these were people she admired. For her, the doors of the Elmo and Stork Club were flung wide open, but she needed to earn her right to bars like Jim Downey’s, with whiskey shots for five cents apiece.
It’s hard to imagine the world’s most famous woman intimidated by cheap liquor and scrappy kids in undershirts. With their degrees from the New School and Bolshie camaraderie, they had everything Marilyn didn’t—sophistication, formal training, and respect. Most were years younger with far more professional confidence. Those nights taking classes at UCLA would never make up for her dismal education. How could she compete with these sharp ingenues when she felt like last year’s washed-up starlet? Perhaps she should have stayed married, stayed in Hollywood, and faded into her thirties with dignity.
Lee recognized Marilyn’s insecurity and fretted over his new protégée. He urged reluctant Studio members to welcome her into the fold. Like the parent of a shy child, he was always pushing other actors to include her. “We’re her family now,” Lee once said privately to Shelley Winters. “You can be a true-blue sister to Marilyn.” Back in LA Marilyn really had looked up to the older Shelley as a big sister. In 1951, they shared men, minks, swimsuits, Sinatra records, and a rent-controlled apartment in West Hollywood. Marilyn had to borrow a bed from Twentieth’s prop department; the only furniture she’d owned was a white piano. Both were obsessively ambitious, hypersensitive, and preferred work to holidays. To stave off Sunday hangovers they played classical records on Shelley’s Capehart while reading aloud from the album notes. At 12:01 sharp, they’d switch to Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra—enough art for one day.
Shelley had the same sensual, animal intelligence that beguiled and infuriated Hollywood’s directors. Over pastrami on rye at Greenblatt’s Deli, they’d practiced the parted lip smile that became Marilyn’s trademark. Fragile and prone to hysterics, Shelley wept in bathrooms over married men, cried on Marlon Brando’s shoulder, and lost a bottle of placebo Seconals in Elizabeth Taylor’s camel coat. Shelley was sympathetic to Marilyn—she, too, had filled her prescriptions at Schwab’s, walked across Sunset Boulevard to Victor’s and chased benzos with triple gin martinis while terrified bartenders plied her with hors d’oeuvres. Now they were both in New York to perfect their craft.
Marlon Brando was the type to stick a bottle of Chianti in his back pocket, whisk you away on his motorcycle, and carry you up to his lair lit with pyramids of orange incense and candles stuck in Coca-Cola bottles. But underneath the swagger and brass was a man who loved kittens and cried while reading The Little Engine That Could to his nephew. He had a gentle, protective streak—especially with women. Back in Hollywood, he had come to the rescue of a wildly drunk Shelley Winters and sobered her up with onion soup and crackers. (She refused to eat anything unless he allowed her more drinks, so they compromised on wine spritzers.)
Marlon and Marilyn were an obvious match: Both shared an electrifying intensity and a compulsively perfectionist streak. Like Marilyn, he infuriated as often as he bewitched. Much to directors’ chagrin, he was always chewing gum—he’d only pretend to take it out when it came time to film a scene—even a makeout scene. Like Marilyn, Marlon was a compulsive reader—Kant, Rousseau, Locke, Nietzsche, Melville, Faulkner, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and his favorite, Wuthering Heights. They even shared the same breakfast drink: raw eggs whisked in a glass of hot milk.
More important, Marlon had what most celebrities lack: perspective. To prepare for his role as a wounded soldier, he ditched his suite at the Chateau Marmont to stay in a thirty-two-bed ward at a veterans’ hospital in the San Fernando Valley. His refusal to accept special treatment won over the veterans, who included him in their pranks (pillow fights and hypodermic syringes as makeshift water pistols). Marilyn committed to her roles just as obsessively—you’d ask her what time it was and she’d answer in character.
She admired the way Marlon barreled around class pretending to be a chicken, or directing Hedda Gabler as if it were a futuristic Russian dystopia. “While he’s playing a scene, he’s always searching,” Marilyn told Pageant Magazine. “You feel he’s trying to find out about himself. He searches under everything … while he’s talking to you.” She’d call him in the middle of the night (he was usually awake) to discuss scenes from class. What did he think? What did he think Lee thought? Friends like Marlon encouraged her to trust her inner gifts. She knew he was on a similar quest, and his friendship gave her courage. Amy observed, “If Marlon turned up at the Actors Studio and said, ‘Do you want to go to dinner,’ fine. Now what they did after dinner … I don’t think it was planned. If it happened it happened.”
Tentatively, Marilyn started joining her classmates for lunch at Howard Johnson’s, drinks at Jim Downey’s, and of course, the Studio’s notorious parties. Shelley Winters might be running around in Laurette Taylor’s old nightgown or a wrinkled checked shirt thrown over a cocktail dress. Grand theater dame Cheryl Crawford would be there; so would Ben Gazzara, Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach, Julie Harris, and Maureen Stapleton. Even notorious recluse William Inge would be poking shyly around. At 2 a.m., they’d pile into Checker cabs—heaps of fur coats “ranging from squirrel to sable”—and taxi to Lee’s apartment on Central Park West. Lee would bring out his records, and they’d sit on the floor listening to opera while his wife served up plates of borscht and pot roast.
This was a dramatic shift from the fizzy, urbane sort of socializing she’d been up to for the past three months with Milton Greene and the Rat Pack. Instead of the Elmo’s red velvet ropes, there was Paul Newman taping up streamers and tossing confetti. Instead of late-night mambos with Capote to the sounds of Count Basie, there were tramp banjo bands (friends of a friend’s) playing “loudly and badly.” Instead of caviar cups and Dom Pérignon, they drank punch-bowl concoctions of cheap wine, vodka, and fruit juice—and all were expected to chip in.
These sorts of parties were new to Marilyn, but she loved them. She loved how all that passion at class spilled into parties. Hollywood parties were all about sex or, even worse, networking. She’d rather stay home with a bottle of wine than brave the glaring emptiness of Doheny Drive. Despite her modeling background and high-octane flash, Marilyn had more in common with these ramshackle bohemians than anyone in LA. But did her colleagues think so, too?
Months into her work at the Studio, Marilyn was still occasionally met with frosty reserve. This skepticism always sprang from her movie star glamour. Despite the black polo coat and newsboy cap, her beauty was undeniable. “Even with no makeup Marilyn looked terrific,” said Ben Gazzara. “I’ll never forget, Marilyn was sitting next to me, you know, during a class, and there was a scene being played called The Cat by Colette, and it’s about a young couple waking up after their wedding night and rolling in bed naked and Marilyn turns to me and says, ‘Ben, would you like to do that scene with me?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so, Marilyn.’ I did refuse; I was a gentleman. You see, she scared me.”
Her overwhelming sensuality intimidated many of the younger actors, men and women alike. Carroll Baker admitted to having been jealous and insecure in her presence. Baker wrote of their first meeting: “I was already hating her for flaunting her availability at Jack [Baker’s husband] when she turned to say hello to me—and presented me with that same seductive quality of ‘Come on’! I suddenly felt drawn to her and leaned in a bit closer than necessary to accept her outstretched hand. Her hand was lusciously warm and plump, and I found myself clinging to it that added moment. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I smelled the fruity aroma of sex.”
No wonder she never stopped worrying about being seen as the dumb blonde. She saw her classmates as colleagues—they saw her as a vampy pinup girl. Marilyn could have been the valedictorian of Vassar, and she’d still be ditzy until proven deep, bimbo until proven bookish. Had she fled the slick sexism of Hollywood only to be mired in a subtler sort of misogyny?
The sexism wasn’t always subtle. Carroll Baker recalls playwright Paddy Chayefsky stomping around the Studio with a smirk: “Oh, boy, would I like to fuck that!” When he was formally introduced to Marilyn at a Fire Island party he stared mutely at her chest: “Gee, I thought you’d be much fuller.”
Even benign rejection tended to crush the hypersensitive Marilyn. She once phoned Louis Gossett Jr. and asked him if he wanted to do a love scene with her from The Rose Tattoo. Gossett turned down the opportunity, so starstruck by his classmate that he knew he’d be unable to utter a single line.
“She would walk into class with a man’s shirt tied at her waist, her feet in flip-flops, the clean musky smell of Lifebuoy soap wafting after her,” he remembered. “Her hair, pulled back with a rubber band, was always a little wet, as if she’d just stepped out of a shower. She took a liking to me. I’d come in the room and she’d be going, ‘Where’s Lou?’ I couldn’t do any scenes with her, she was just one of the sexiest, most wonderful women I’ve ever met. I almost had to quit class because of her. With that Lifebuoy soap and that woman sitting there in the flip-flops—I swear, I’ve never been affected so much by a woman in all my life.”
Of course, Marilyn felt alienated after events like these. She had reached out—she who was new to the Studio, still a bit of an outsider. How was she to know that on her, flip-flops, rubber bands, and the scent of cheap soap were more potent than a cocktail of stilettos, red lipstick, and Chanel No 5?
But Marilyn was determined to stick it out. She’d spent years working with jaded directors who screamed “Cut!,” stubbed out their cigarettes, then ran home to their air-conditioned penthouses and B-list models. The Actors Studio was her chance to cast off all that cheap sequined drudgery.
As she threw herself into her work, Marilyn found herself remarkably suited to Method acting. It matched her nature, exploratory and inward-focused. Years earlier, photographer Philippe Halsman would get her into character by inventing situations: terrorized by a monster, or kissed by a lover, or drinking the most delicious mai tai. Lee dug even deeper, pushing her to excavate her own heavy past. She had plenty of dark matter to draw upon—foster mothers muttering doomsday prayers over breakfast, the orphanage with its cardboard birthday cakes full of dust. A born student, Marilyn took this very seriously, fearlessly conjuring bolts of memory, electric and terrifying.
She stuck to a grueling schedule—private classes with Lee on Wednesdays and Fridays, more classes Wednesdays and Thursdays, Malin Studios Tuesdays and Fridays, and psychoanalysis five days a week. She started arriving to class on time, relying less and less on Delos. The one time she was late (Dr. Hohenberg’s session ran overtime), she ran into her classmate Fred Stewart on 44th Street near Fifth Avenue. The doors were locked, and Marilyn was distressed. “Can’t we sneak in some way? I don’t want to miss anything.” Fred led her up an iron spiral staircase to a tiny little alcove above the stage. They huddled, hidden in shadows, Marilyn rapt and reverent.
Gradually, her dedication became obvious even to the most skeptical. Word quickly spread through New York’s theater circles that Marilyn was “working like a Trojan,” staying late at the Actors Studio, and skipping her rounds on the social circuit. “Must make much much more more more effort,” she wrote in her journal. “Remember you can sit on top of the world … Remember there is nothing you lack—nothing to be self-conscious about—you have everything but the discipline and technique which you are learning and seeking on your own—after all nothing was or is being given to you—you have had none of this work thrown your way—you sought it—it didn’t seek you.”
Around this time, Marilyn revealed to Shelley Winters that all of this—New York, the Studio, the psychoanalysis, and MMP—was a crusade. “That’s how she put it,” Shelley remembered, “a crusade to find the meaning of her own life that would give her the strength to succeed in being a ‘true actress.’ She said that—‘true actress.’ It was like she wanted to trade in who she had been and become something else.”
For the first time, Marilyn began to believe in her own talent. She had dared to provoke the studio system; now all eyes were on her. “She wanted what she deserved,” recalled her friend Ralph Roberts. “She was smart to refuse to do any more of their bidding. And if they fired her, she said they’d want her back but she’d only agree under her own terms.”
Marilyn was right: In ten months, Fox would be begging for her. She was about to bring Hollywood to its knees.
Eight
The Strasbergs
“Being a most serious actress is not something God has removed from my destiny.… It’s therefore my prerogative to make the dream of creative fulfillment come true for me. That is what I believe God is saying to me and is the answer to my prayers.”
MARILYN MONROE
Lee Strasberg became Marilyn’s guru and god—prowling the classroom in horn-rimmed glasses and rumpled-up garments that vaguely resembled hospital scrubs. “Speak up!” he’d bellow. “Try harder!” She’d watch, lips parted, smoke curling up from her cigarette, light streaming on her face like a da Vinci Madonna. Very quickly, it became obvious that she was Lee’s favorite.
This student-teacher bond extended far beyond class. Marilyn began dining at his home, often staying late into the evening. Lee and Paula took in actors as if they were stray kittens. Marilyn would soon become their favorite kitten.
A retired stage actress and Tallulah Bankhead’s best friend, Paula Strasberg was steeped in old theater lore—stage makeup, hot lights, and heavy red curtains. In her youth she’d played the sloe-eyed coquette. Paula loved anything trimmed, beribboned, feathered, or sequined, and in those days she looked like she’d stepped straight out of the Moulin Rouge. She’d given that up to be den mother of the theater tribe, and while black snoods and kerchiefs replaced modish little veils, there was still something lushly sensual about her. She was easy to picture as an overripe Colette, with her rich throaty laughs, lace handkerchiefs, and Japanese fans scattered round the floor along with smelling salts, tarot cards, and Bally dance slippers.
By the time she met Marilyn, Paula had become the official Jewish Mother of New York’s theater crowd. Her kitchen was legendary—the tiled floor in black and white checks, the fridge stocked with champagne, ice cream, and apple pies. Actors flocked to the kitchen every Sunday for brunch, piling their plates with bialys, lox, and cream cheese. Clifford Odets would be looming over the counter, drunkenly reciting poetry. Franchot Tone would barrel in bloodied up from a bar fight or howling over his latest girlfriend. At the Strasbergs’ you were permitted—even encouraged—to be different. You didn’t need to censor yourself, and “normal” was a four-letter word. EVERY EMOTION IS VALID said a sign Paula had pasted onto the kitchen wall. No wonder Marilyn felt so at home.
Paula was the perfect surrogate mother—always ready to coddle you with hugs or horoscopes or ice cream from Serendipity. Marilyn loved being mothered, especially by Paula, but she had much more in common with the prickly, cerebral Lee. She worshipped Lee’s passion, his focus, even his bristly intellectualism. True, he could be pedantic (he loved both Bach and Beethoven, but Bach was better—no matter what). This could grate on people—especially his family—but Marilyn loved rigid, uncompromising men. She could listen to Lee for hours, kneeling by his feet in the library as he smoked his pipe and rhapsodized on German philosophy or Kabuki theater.
The Strasbergs ensconced Marilyn as one of their own—even more than did the charming, affable Greenes, with their gorgeous family and white Christmases in Connecticut. For a changeling like Marilyn, even the warmest nuclear families could feel chilly and insular. The Strasbergs were expansive, sprawling, and delightfully imperfect. Their sense of family expanded to include anyone like-minded—the only prerequisite was talent. For Lee and Paula, art ran thicker than blood. They weren’t the kind of parents who’d blow you off for their daughter Susie’s ballet recital or their son Johnny’s rugby match.
This was fabulous for Marilyn, but Susie and Johnny found their father cold. Family closeness was entirely wrapped up in theater—the work. If Susie cried over a boy or a mishap at school, Lee would brush her off: “Darling, I’m really only concerned as this pertains to the work.” Johnny had it even worse: He wanted to drive a convertible, hammer houses for the summer, and eventually study medicine. He had little interest in theater, and at the Strasbergs’, theater was everything.
“Our door was open to many artists, but Marilyn was special,” remembered Susie, who at sixteen was preparing to appear on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank. It was obvious to Susie that Marilyn and Lee shared some strange affinity. Lee had always been surrounded by striking, talented women—Carroll Baker, Julie Newmar, Anne Bancroft—but Marilyn was different. What was it about this strange, floaty woman that had her flinty father so enthralled?
Susie remembers the first day she met Marilyn—both chilly and warm, it was just barely spring. The scent of pot roast and onions mixed with smoke from Lee’s pipe while Mozart’s concertos played softly in the background. Paula flailed her arms to signal “Quiet upon entry—Daddy’s coaching someone!” Lee never coached one on one—that was Paula’s job. Even more surprising was the sound of gentle laughter. Suddenly, Lee flung open the doors of his study and stepped into the dining room with Marilyn Monroe.
This was Susie’s vision of Marilyn—a sunbeam on her father’s arm, cottony hair, eyes huge and blue and skin as bare and vaporous as a Fragonard milkmaid’s. The hall was narrow and poky, and at dusk the light flickered against the red-flocked wallpaper, creating the chiaroscuro effect of smoky oil paintings. Marilyn stood out in powder pastels surrounded by a halo of light.
Susie watched, shocked. Her father—who never could stand being touched—cradled Marilyn’s arm in his own.
