“It’s my favorite place in the world,” she raved. “I haven’t traveled much, but I don’t think I’ll find a place that can ever replace Brooklyn. I just like walking around. The view is better from Brooklyn. You can look back over and see Manhattan—that’s the best view. It’s the people and the streets and the atmosphere. I just love it.”
Everything seemed poised for a magical summer. Hand in hand with Arthur, gazing at her beloved East River, Hollywood was the last thing on her mind.
* * *
On June 1—Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday—The Seven Year Itch premiered to blockbuster reviews and dazzling box office receipts. Everyone was thrilled but Marilyn, who shrank under the crush of flashing bulbs, surrounded by reporters with their thrusting pens. Her hair was stiff and overstyled, her face powdered dull, her red lipstick layered red and thick, giving her a sad-clown look. The Van Cleef earrings hung heavy, drooping down toward her shoulders. “I hope it’s the last of those kinds of parts I’ll have to play,” she moaned. “If I thought I had to keep on wiggling in crummy movies, I wouldn’t want to work in movies anymore. I could go back to working in a factory if I had to.”
DiMaggio escorted her, sparking more reconciliation rumors. “They look just like lovebirds,” Photoplay reported. Not really—Joe beamed for the pack, but Marilyn looked distracted and distant. Later that evening she stormed out of the birthday party he’d planned for her at Toot’s Shor. Perhaps she couldn’t handle one more man laying claim to her.
The morning after The Seven Year Itch premiere, Marilyn received two letters. The first from Billy Wilder, his tone urgent and pleading:
Marilyn, I’ve been reading about your desire to do Cordelia, to do The Brothers Karamazov. Stay with what you are doing now. You’ve got a feeling for film comedy which no one else has. You’re creating a very interesting character, and if you stay with it, you won’t fall by the wayside as many actors and actresses do. The older you get, the better you’ll get. There will be parts for you if you continue to create this character. You’ll have a chance to become another Mae West. And as Mae West continued over the years, you can continue your career.
The second was from Cheryl Crawford:
I want to tell you that when you and Lee feel you are ready to do a show I want very much to be your producer. I think I have a deep and sympathetic understanding of your career. I am not interested in exploiting your fame, but in helping you bring your true dream into being in the finest possible way. When you finish I’d like to tell you about my ideas, and I’m also having another play written, which could very much be for you. I would also give Lee an interest from my share for his invaluable assistance, and surround you with the kind of actors in the studio who would truly help you and protect you. There is no rush. I just want to go on record and I’d like to know how you feel about it. I don’t want to see you do any of this ‘dumb blonde’ mishmash, but really present the truth of yourself which I admire.
When would Marilyn present her personal truth? And what would it look like when she finally did?
* * *
That afternoon, Marilyn called Milton and backed out of a trip to Tuscany she’d planned to take with his family. Even amid all the chaos of the previous night, the scene with Joe and the emotional fallout, she recognized this moment as a turning point. Itch had made her the hottest star in the world, and she was becoming aware of her power on both coasts. The press, Fox, and all of Hollywood had finally snapped to attention. Soon they’d make her an offer. And as usual, she would be ready.
Eleven
Fire Island
“Marilyn changed my family’s life, and we changed hers. And nothing was ever the same again.”
SUSAN STRASBERG
By then, the Strasbergs were replacing the Greenes as Marilyn’s surrogate family. She spent weekends at their beach house on Fire Island, roaming the rickety boardwalks for funnel cakes and hot dogs, sketching in the cattails with Susie, or drenching herself in jasmine-y Ambre Solaire. No cars were allowed on the island—just a Jeep taxi cruising up and down the beach in the evenings. They’d walk to Ocean Beach in a little caravan, pulling red wagons strung with bells, packed with books and snacks. Marilyn in the short robe she wore as a cover-up, Johnny sulking in Breton stripes, Susie in a babyish one-piece she hated, Lee in his baseball cap and glasses, and Paula draped in black smocks and wide-brimmed sunhats, hovering over Susie with a parasol.
“There were a lot of theater people at that part of the island,” Susie wrote years later. “They were sophisticates, which meant they stared at Marilyn Monroe from a distance instead of staring up close.” In Ocean Beach Marilyn enjoyed relative anonymity. She’d throw down her towel and sink into Ulysses or wander toward the water’s edge to chat with Lee. “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” would be playing on a nearby radio. Susie would be lying on her stomach, a copy of Photoplay hidden between the pages of War and Peace or Remembrance of Things Past. Paula would be rooting through baskets laden with fans and scarves, fussing like a round owl, rubbing sunscreen on Susie’s shoulders. Susie hated this—everyone was looking at her—and besides, she wanted to get tan. “What do you care,” Paula said with a huff. “You’re an actress; this is for your part; you have to stay pale. Anne Frank didn’t go outside for two years.”
This was Marilyn’s first family vacation and her first summer on an East Coast beach. She’d frolicked on Catalina Island and skipped around on Santa Monica, but this was her first blast of salty driftwood and North Atlantic ozone. She’d play in shallow surf, wading out past her knees, maybe to her waist but never over her head. Susie would show off, running deep into the high surf, diving like a dolphin, glancing back in hopes that Marilyn was watching. “Come on in,” she’d taunt, secretly pleased to have one-upped her rival. But Marilyn would wave, kick up some sand and foam, and continue talking to Lee, who rarely went in past his ankles. He’d stand at the ocean’s edge, shirt buttoned to chin in the searing heat. Susie once asked him why he never went further. “Because, darling,” he said staring straight into the sea, “I don’t want to get involved.”
* * *
On Fire Island, Marilyn indulged in happy sunny family things, the things she never really had. She shared a bedroom with Susie, ran around barefoot, went days without makeup, and played with the neighbor’s kids. There were barbecues, picnics, radios blasting “Sugarbush, I love you so…” Lee manned the grill in his baseball hat, boxers, and farmer’s tan: “Who wants hot dogs and who wants chicken?”
That summer Marilyn and Susie lived as sisters. Their room faced east, windows flung open, overlooking the dunes. Lulled by waves and salt breeze, they’d lounge on their twin beds, whispering late into the night about Hollywood and boyfriends. Marilyn’s perfume hung heavy in the air, mixing with the ocean’s marshy, quartzy scent. They’d quote poetry from their beds, usually Whitman—he was a Gemini, just like they were. On nights like these, Marilyn seemed to shed her glamour, a school chum with wet hair and a sunburned nose.
Neither one slept much on Fire Island. Their little room steeped in a dreamy fever. For Susie, this was the happy kind of insomnia—sleepovers and secrets and dreams that come true after Labor Day. She soon realized Marilyn was dealing with a darker sort of restlessness. She’d doze off, then wake to see Marilyn whiling away the hours with beauty rituals—shaving her legs, bleaching her hair, rubbing Vaseline into her cheeks, or simply staring out the window.
Once Marilyn stood naked in the moonlight, brushing her hair in long, sensuous strokes. Susie stared, transfixed by the peachy gleam of her skin. “It had a resiliency and buoyancy, like a child’s.” Open jars of face cream, razors, vials of cuticle oil strewn on the bed, bottles of pills and perfume stacked on the nightstand—tokens of some magical world of sex and glamour.
“I wish I was like you,” Susie whispered. Marilyn, of course, protested. “Oh, no, Susie. I wish I were like you! You’re about to play a great part on Broadway—Anne Frank—and people have respect for you. No, no—I have none of those things.”
* * *
New York entertainers flocked to Ocean Beach, and the Strasbergs’ cottage was their unofficial summer headquarters. A steady stream of guests breezed through their doors that summer—including Anne Bancroft, who lived next door. Lee “hired” ex-boxer and Studio actor Marty Fried for random duties—setting up the beach umbrella, babysitting Marilyn—but mostly, he just clung to Lee all day, listening to him rhapsodize on Stanislavski or his opinions on Japanese Noh.
“Lee would barbecue steaks,” remembers Studio member Jack Garfein, “and Marilyn would be running around barefoot drinking champagne. Other stars would come out to Fire Island to kiss ass with Lee—Shelley Winters, Anne Bancroft. Lee was getting famous because of his association with Marilyn.” On Sundays Paula held her legendary brunches, and bustled about serving bagels and hot coffee before collapsing on a sofa with a battery fan. After brunch, Lee would make his famous ice cream sodas, with extra cherries for Marilyn and lashings of whipped cream. “Everybody came for Lee’s blessing,” wrote Shelley Winters. “We would tell him our problems, we would ask for his help with a script or love affair.” Lee would sit guru-like, nodding and shrugging.
Paula’s summertime feasts were as much of a lure as Lee’s blessing. Bloody Marys at brunch, champagne at night, salads, buttered corn on the cob, caviar blini, and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives. She kept her famous “Jewish icebox” stocked with Zabar’s salamis, triple-cream Brie, honey cakes from fancy Midtown bakeries, and even the occasional Sacher torte.
Marilyn’s orphanage days were long over, but this kind of opulence was new to her. Alone she ate simply, starkly—breakfasts of black coffee and broiled grapefruit, dinners of Roto-Broiled liver with a raw carrot on the side. Thanks to her surrogate families, Marilyn relished home-cooked meals for the first time—new potatoes and peas with the Greenes, pot roasts and pies with the Strasbergs. She shucked clams with the Rostens, grilled hot dogs with Lee. At night she’d pad around the Strasbergs’ kitchen in one of Arthur’s shirts, poking around the refrigerator for leftover chicken or vanilla ice cream.
The only person who didn’t appreciate Paula’s cooking was Johnny. “I’m trying to lose weight,” he’d screech, pushing away a stack of Danish. “It’s just baby fat” was Paula’s humiliating consolation. “I don’t think you’re fat, Johnny,” Marilyn offered. Johnny flushed red and fled.
One evening, Marilyn decided to cook everyone dinner—chicken au champagne. Beach-salty and glowing, she tied an apron over her swimsuit and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the Strasbergs to read the paper and sip tea on the porch. They heard a bottle pop, some fizzy murmuring, and a bit of rustling cutlery. Then came the scream. Everyone raced to the kitchen. Marilyn wasn’t known for her cooking—what if she’d cut herself? Instead, they found her screaming at the chicken. It was a whole chicken—it still had eyes, black beady eyes peering up in reproach. Marilyn trembled, crying that the chicken looked like a bird, and she couldn’t cook it while it still looked like a bird because the poor bird was once alive and now it’s dead and think of the bird’s parents.
Lee praised her sensitivity and took over, leaving Marilyn to collapse on the porch with the leftover bottle. Meanwhile, Lee “chopped the hell out of that chicken till it looked like nothing that had a mother.”
* * *
On rainy days, Susie would spread the porch with newspapers and drag out her brushes and paints. Within minutes she felt two wistful eyes boring into her back. Marilyn wanted to paint, too. This was the classic Strasberg dynamic—preteen Susie acting as the older sibling, forced to share toys with baby Marilyn. Susie dutifully set her up with a brush and offered the use of her rainbow palette. (Marilyn: “I like black and white.”)
Holding her brush as if it were a pen, Marilyn quickly sketched two figures. The first was a child with one sock falling down. One eye black, one clear. Solar and pale. A bleached-out negative of herself. Ragged frock bored into her memory like a sunspot. Sad little halogen bonnet. She titled it Lonely. The other was a feline woman in bold, sexy strokes. “That one should say, ‘Life is wonderful, so what the hell,’” Marilyn said with a laugh. She wondered aloud if they were self-portraits, a Rorschach test in reverse.
By now the parents were hovering over Marilyn. Paula was hugging her; Lee was beaming and nodding and saying “Yes, darling” like he always did. “We must buy Marilyn her own set of paints!” When Susie asked if she’d like to keep her work, Marilyn demurred. “Oh, no, Susie, they’re yours; you’re the artist. Thanks for helping me,” she added sweetly. Jealousy spiked with a pang of guilt.
“Whatever I’d experienced so far in my life,” Susie wrote years later, “she’d experienced more intensely. There was a song in Annie Get Your Gun that went, ‘Anything you can do, I can do better.…’ She liked painting, we both wrote poetry, we read a lot of the same books, both skipping the parts that bored us, we bought our clothes at the same store.”
Their jealousy cut both ways. Marilyn adored Susie but envied her perfect childhood. Pink birthday frocks from Tallulah Bankhead. Midnight dance lessons from Charlie Chaplin. Swan Lake on the record player, the beautiful Oona O’Neill passed out on the couch, smiling in her sleep. A Jewish mother, a genius father, and an adorable baby brother you could play jacks with and teach to spell. What did Susie know about loneliness?
