“Originally we were going to do it in the morning,” mused Milton years later, “but as usual she kept pushing it back and back. She had a dinner date with Arthur later in the evening. So she came in, and we had a drink. First it was vodka, then after the vodka we opened a bottle of champagne, and things just started to happen.”
Five hours and twenty-eight rolls of film later, Marilyn became Cherie. She captured the character’s faded sensuality without a trace of sadness. In her black bowler hat, mesh leotard and cane, Marilyn was half Marlene Dietrich and half burlesque Chaplin. Back to the camera in nothing but fishnets, or cabaret chic in a black feather boa, a tumbler of whiskey balanced on one knee, The Black Sitting had all the glamour, humor, and dress-up-box openness of MMP’s early days.
Between her work with Lee and tension with Arthur, Marilyn hadn’t spent much time with Milton these past few months. But this was just like the old days, running around pantsless in a sweater or an unzipped ballet tutu. “Nothing that day was planned,” recalled Milton, who considered The Black Sitting his best work ever. “As things started to move and she started to get into it, she forgot about everything, where she had to be, what she had to do, she was having such a good time. The shoot went on until eleven at night—she even missed her date with Arthur. She called him from the studio—I think she was a little drunk. He was annoyed, but that didn’t bother me, naturally.”
The results were warm, alive, and cinematic. “Marilyn couldn’t believe them, she loved them so much. We gave some shots to Josh Logan, who thought they were the greatest things I’d ever done. We gave some to Arthur—even his mother and father loved them. But he didn’t see them all. We just gave him the close-ups of her face. If he saw the rest—well, who knows.”
That fall, she met with Jimmy at Whelan’s drugstore. She had the contact sheet for her Black Sitting stuffed in a manila envelope. Determined to protect him from the racier images, she made him look away, then said, “OK, you can look now, Jimmy.” He remembered, “I turned around to an unexpected vision of Marilyn sitting there with a contact sheet of perhaps ten photo-images before her, the item pinned to the counter by her elbow covering up one image, her thumb masking another, and even a paper napkin hiding another!… She was in her special way being a caring and responsible person, only allowing me to see the ‘tamer’ ones.”
Brimming with excitement and joy, The Black Sitting was a celebration of their recent success. The outside world always faded away when Milton and Marilyn got together. It was their creativity, their delight in the work, that counted, like two kittens tumbling with a ball of yarn. They’d just snagged a winning role, saved their reputations, and turned the tables on Fox, but deep down they were just two “kids playing in a playpen.”
Throughout all this, Marilyn remained wrapped in Malin Studios and grew even closer to her classmates. Kim Stanley invited her to dinner parties; Maureen Stapleton hung on her every word. “It was easy to be intimidated by Marilyn, and I was,” wrote Maureen. “She was so goddamned beautiful. Luscious. Sweet. But the intimidation disappeared fast because she was so committed and so ready to get better. I bitch about my upbringing, and my sad mother and sad aunts and no men around and nothing but dead ends all around, but I had love and food and the space and the silence to dream. Marilyn didn’t have that. She told me once that she just wanted her own bedroom, her own bed, and a door she could close. And grass. Grass to run in. Trees to hug and flowers to pick. This was a girl who had nothing but the great gem that she was, and everyone got to hold and fondle that gem, and then put it back when they were done with it.”
Marilyn tended to bond with dominant women—from the brassy, unflappable Elsa Maxwell to pert, sassy Amy Greene. With their gruff manners and husky voices, the Studio’s self-described “tough broads” attracted her right away. Marilyn liked to be mothered, and Stapleton was often referred to as the Studio’s “earth mother.” Maureen knew Marilyn deserved better than ditsy-blonde roles. The way she saw it, she was a prisoner of her own good looks. “I never had that problem,” Maureen chuckled years later. “People looked at me onstage and said, ‘Jesus, that broad better be able to act!’”
In late fall, Lee judged Marilyn ready for her “debut”—a short private performance for Studio members. She chose a scene from Anna Christie and picked Maureen as her partner. “Marilyn showed tremendous bravery by taking on Anna Christie,” Maureen marveled years later. “She could have chosen a role that wasn’t too well known, so that her performance could have been criticized only on its own merit. But to do Anna Christie, something that’s been done by a dozen wonderful people—Garbo included!” Instead of coasting by on beauty alone, Marilyn chose to challenge herself, a move that caught Maureen’s attention and won her respect.
In fact, Marilyn was petrified by what she’d taken on. In her signature mix of ambition and fear, she insisted on rehearsing with Maureen four times a week. They’d stay late after class, work past dinner, then share a cab uptown. “Turn around,” she’d tell the driver, blocks away from Maureen’s. “We’ve got to go back and do it again.” She practiced with Norman, Eli, and Arthur, with random late-night rehearsals in the park with Sam Shaw. “She worked to the point of a migraine,” remembered Maureen, “and I would tell her to lighten up, go easy on yourself, but she couldn’t: She wanted to be taken seriously; she wanted to get it right.”
At home, she’d curl up with the script for hours—studying not just her lines but Anna’s character. There was little information in O’Neill’s description or dialogue—just a beautiful, broken woman prowling the docks. Who was Anna? Marilyn loved this kind of work. She’d talk to Arthur about it and ask him questions: Was it an end to life Anna desired? Was it death? Arthur was struck by Marilyn’s innate grasp of the character: “She had a real tragic sense of what that girl was like.” For the first time he saw her ambition in action. Underneath that angel-cake face was an artist of infinite discipline, laser-focused on the work in her lap. At night she’d sit by the window while he helped with her lines. Arthur read the part of old Chris, though he claimed he sounded like “a Southern cracker with a Scandinavian accent.”
While preparing for the role of Anna Christie, Marilyn still managed to keep a public profile. She did publicity shots for the soon-to-premiere film of The Rose Tattoo, posing sexily with Marlon Brando in a black sheath and cape. Along with boosting sales for the upcoming show, the photos proved to the public that smart and sexy weren’t mutually exclusive—that despite her work at the Studio, she wasn’t schlepping around in sloppy sweaters and stringy hair.
On December 12, The Rose Tattoo premiered at the Astor Theatre. Marilyn stepped out of her limo in skintight black and clouds of Chanel, glowing in the arms of Marlon Brando. Tossing around her white ermine, she flirted with the pack of cameras, blowing kisses from a mouth coated in Vaseline rimmed in toffee-colored lip liner. A pair of clip-ons dangled from her ears, five swishing lines of baguette-cut rhinestones that brushed her shoulders and clavicle whenever she smiled at Marlon, her glamorous-lamb look set off by his slightly thuggish beauty. Coupled up in their finery, they riveted the paps, who bombarded them with dazzles of flashes and clicks.
At Sardi’s she lit up the after-party, flitting her way through chatter and smoke, making butterfly landings at red-checked tables. She bantered with reporters and whispered with the Rostens, all the while dancing with Marlon Brando. Their affair had ended months ago, but their potent chemistry shone, helpfully diverting attention from Arthur Miller.
Lurking in the background was Jayne Mansfield—the “poor man’s Marilyn Monroe” and the lead in George Axelrod’s current Broadway hit Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Mansfield starred as Rita Marlowe, a simpering blonde with “golden curls, a fantastic behind, and delusions of grandeur.” Despite having written The Seven Year Itch, Axelrod made no effort to conceal his real subject—Marilyn. Itch had launched him into fame—thanks largely to Marilyn—and now he was mocking her on Broadway. But that didn’t matter. She’d just won the role of her dreams. On opening night Marilyn kept her cool, even when she ran into Axelrod. “I saw your play,” she said, with a stone fox look that chilled him to the bone.
Already losing faith in Sheree North, Fox scooped up Jayne to be their next replacement Marilyn. Toward Jayne, however, Marilyn showed no anger or ill will. In fact she barely noticed her at the party, though Jayne clearly noticed Marilyn. Stuffed in a sheath of silver brocade, hair bouffant blonde and lacquered with Elnett, Jayne hovered over Marilyn’s chair looking every bit the fangirl.
At midnight, Marilyn joined Brando for a radio interview with NBC. They sat round a table crammed with microphones, ashtrays, and demitasses of black coffee, answering questions about Lee Strasberg and the madness behind the Method. When asked about her status at Malin Studios, Marilyn hesitated and said she was observing as a student. That’s when Brando stepped in. “She’s an actress,” he corrected her in his soft-spoken way. “She’s an actress.”
* * *
As 1955 drew to a close, Milton began looking ahead: they’d fly to Hollywood, settle business for a few days, then start filming Bus Stop in Phoenix. He’d rent a bungalow with Amy and the baby, Marilyn would hop between their place and Chateau Marmont. But Marilyn was in no hurry to leave New York. Preparing for Anna Christie was far more important to her than any film role. With so much of her life up in the air, she could barely think about uprooting again or what would come next. Arthur—whose divorce proceedings had just begun—was still living at the Chelsea. Where would he be during filming? What about her friends, Norman and Hedda, Eli, and Sam Shaw? And she was still settling into her beloved flat on Sutton Place, preparing for her second Christmas in New York.
Jimmy Haspiel took her holiday shopping at Saks, where she lingered over the tie counter for hours. She chose a dozen ties for Arthur, in stripes and solids, silks and cottons. As usual, Jimmy carried her bags. On their way out the door, he stuck a sprig of mistletoe in her hair and kissed her.
Arthur was touched by the box of beautiful ties, Marilyn loved the handmade card he gave her. It read, “Don’t worry, I’m more depressed than you.”
It had been eight months since she’d started her work at the Studio, eleven since the launching of MMP, and over a year since she’d fled California with two suitcases and a cheap black wig. Her dream life was about to become her reality.
* * *
Snow fell over Manhattan on December 23, blanketing the city in white. The next day, Marilyn gave her first and only Christmas Eve party. In typical Marilyn fashion, she decorated her living room, hired a guitarist, and completely forgot about the food. When she called the Greenes the day of the party to ask for extra plates, she realized she still hadn’t thought of a menu. So Kitty cooked up a vat of beef stew and drove it to Sutton Place with her husband, Clyde. “You and Kitty go right in there and sit down,” Marilyn told Clyde, who was struggling at the door with pots and stacks of china. “Fix yourself a drink and join the party.”
Twenty guests crowded round Marilyn’s table that night, including Arthur Miller, whom Kitty immediately disliked. “I had a sixth sense about him that he wasn’t a hundred percent sincere.… And maybe I should have said it.”
“I hope she doesn’t marry him, Clyde,” Kitty told her husband on the drive home. “He thinks he’s too wise. If he marries her I think he’s gonna destroy her.”
“That’s their business,” said Clyde, with typical masculine reticence. “As long as they’re happy.…”
On December 31, 1955, Marilyn’s dream finally came true. Thanks to Milton’s negotiations, Fox was ready to meet her on her own terms. The new contract included story approval, director approval, and cinematographer approval. She was allowed to make films with independent producers, and her salary was boosted to $100,000 per film. At twenty-nine she was now the highest paid actress in the world.
The sun shone brightly on December 31, and the fallen snow began to melt. Milton, Amy, and Jay and Judy Kanter met Marilyn at Sutton Place to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They toasted their victory with Dom Pérignon, leaping in the air, giggling, falling into each other with peals of laughter: “We beat them! We beat them! We beat them!”
Sixteen
Stars
“In contrast to the old Marilyn, in her present incarnation she is a liberated soul—happy, cooperative, friendly, relaxed. Actually, it is as if she had undergone a psychoanalysis so successful that the analyst himself was flabbergasted.”
PETE MARTIN
On January 4, 1956, Jimmy Haspiel dropped the Morning Telegraph at Marilyn’s doorstep—the first public announcement of her triumph over Fox: BATTLE WITH STUDIO WON BY MARILYN. ACTRESS WINS ALL DEMANDS. “The bitter battle is over: Marilyn Monroe, a five foot five and a half inch blonde weighing 118 alluringly distributed pounds, has brought 20th Century Fox to its knees.”
Marilyn’s career was no longer at odds with her personal growth. By insisting on creative control, she could avoid the hack jobs that embarrassed and cheapened her. At a time when studio executives wielded absolute power, this was revolutionary. The Los Angeles Mirror News celebrated Marilyn’s victory as “one of the greatest single triumphs won by an actress.” By the end of January, she’d be on the cover of Time, which praised her as a “shrewd businesswoman.” Not only had Marilyn won her autonomy—she was making history.
Milton held down the fort at 480 Lex, handling calls, planning photo shoots, and scheduling appearances. “Director approval is very important,” he explained in a post-victory interview. “A great deal is in a director’s hands. For example, creative ability. The right director can put a lot more into a picture than the words on the script he’s given to shoot.” In the midst of the media storm, they acquired the film rights to Terence Rattigan’s play The Sleeping Prince—with Laurence Olivier as director and costar, produced by MMP.
This was their biggest coup yet—and Marilyn was behind it. She’d heard that Rattigan had been shopping his script around. She’d also heard that he was languishing in New York on a layover to LA. Springing into action, she had a message delivered to LaGuardia: “Have Mr. Rattigan meet me for cocktails. Barberry Room, 4:30 p.m.”
Only one hour late, she strode in wearing dark sunglasses flanked by Jay Kanter, Milton Greene, and Irving Stein. But she barely needed them—in her own quiet way, Marilyn did all the negotiating herself. She had a bad cold, and Rattigan told her she sounded like Tallulah Bankhead. (Marilyn beamed and recounted the incident proudly to reporters.) Once she had Rattigan in her thrall, she lowered her sunglasses, batted her wide eyes, and baby-whispered: “Do you think there’s a chance Sir Larry would do it with me?”
Laurence Olivier—“Sir Larry”—flew straight to New York and scheduled a meeting with Marilyn for February 7, a cold, wet Sunday. They’d planned to meet in his hotel suite—but he hated to force Marilyn out in the freezing rain: “It’s such a bad day; we can’t make her come here. We’ll go see her.”
When Olivier, Rattigan, and Jay Kanter arrived at Sutton Place it was Milton Greene who answered the door. Marilyn was hiding in the bedroom, terrorized. It took Milton two hours to coax her out while the men waited in the parlor. Laurence, a stickler for punctuality, let it slide.
He hadn’t met her, but he was already beguiled by her—in screen tests she’d been so adorable, so witty and attractive. Not only did he desire Marilyn, he needed her. They were both bewitched by the idea of each other. At fifty, Olivier feared sliding into a rut and hoped to refresh his career and image. He wanted her sexy glamour; she wanted his gravitas. “One thing was clear to me,” he recalled years later. “I was going to fall most shatteringly in love with Marilyn. She was adorable, so witty, and more physically attractive than anyone I could imagine. Look at that face—she could be five years old!”
After a quiet summer and even quieter fall, Marilyn was seen about town again. She attended an Anne Frank performance with Laurence Olivier and brought him backstage to a starstruck Susie Strasberg. She made a sparkly splash at The Middle of the Night premiere in white ermine coat, long black dress, and dangling diamond earrings. Kim Novak was particularly impressed, turning around at intermission and craning her neck to stare. Milton wined and dined Olivier, taking him out for fancy nights on the town with Amy and Marilyn. “It was a happy time,” recalls Amy. “Larry adored Milton; Larry adored me; and he and Marilyn were totally flirtatious with each other. She giggled a lot—she’d always be leaning towards him like teeheeheeeheeeeheee. They were openly flirting. He’d pay her crazy compliments, or tease her, like ‘The tip of your nose is funny,’ and she’d slap him and giggle. She loved it. She would light a cigarette and he’d be up lighting the cigarette for her. Or she’d be drinking champagne, and he’d say, ‘Oh, my dear, your glass is empty’ and get up very gallantly. I mean, honey—it’s Olivier.”
On February 9, Marilyn, Rattigan, and Olivier held a press conference at the Plaza Hotel to announce MMP’s hottest new project. It was official: Marilyn had earned the respect of “the greatest actor in the English-speaking world.” She had taken control of her career, and was about to make the two most important films of her life.
Over 200 reporters swarmed their table. They immediately started with the same tired themes. “One question put to Marilyn was did she still want to play The Brothers Karamazov,” recalled one journalist. “She said, ‘I never intended to play The Brothers Karamazov. I want to play Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov.’ Another reporter asked her nastily, ‘How do you spell Grushenka?’ Thinking he had trapped her and that she was too stupid to know. And she, with a very superior smile and a twinkle in her eyes, said, ‘You can look it up in the book.’ At that the reporters laughed and their questions were less sarcastic, less loaded, less angled to make a patsy—a fall girl—of her.”
Olivier praised Marilyn as a “brilliant comedienne,” lighting her cigarettes in his courtly manner, affably taking a backseat to let her shine. They made a handsome, elegant couple: he in his Savile Row suit and pocket square, Marilyn in black, her hair swept up at the sides with bobby pins, accentuating the cameo curves of her neck. Sometimes she’d drape a tuxedo coat over her shoulders, or lean intimately close to the reporters, chin cupped in her velvet-gloved hand. Elsa Maxwell noted with approval that Marilyn didn’t imitate Olivier’s “clipped British tones,” speaking instead with her own “quiet naturalness.”
But Elsa thought she got the clothes “all wrong” for the occasion. Marilyn had chosen a skintight slip, which looked especially vampy in the clear light of day. In the middle of the press conference, one spaghetti strap broke, causing a gasp in the crowd then uproar. “I need a safety pin,” Marilyn yelped. After a few minutes of mass scrambling, a reporter procured a pin and handed it to Marilyn, who spent the rest of the conference holding her dress up with both hands “just so the press won’t be disturbed.”
Amy insists that it wasn’t a publicity stunt: “I saw the strap, and it sure as hell wasn’t loose when she left the dressing room. She was mincing and posing as she always did, with one shoulder always perched higher than the other—then the strap just popped. It wasn’t that she cut the strap, but she was secretly pleased.”
Accident or not, Marilyn had upstaged Olivier. He seemed to take it in stride, but Amy saw it as a turning point: “At that point in time, I think Larry realized he may have made a mistake. Because it was going to be a circus.”
Broken dress straps were nothing. Working with Marilyn meant weeks of skipped alarms, wardrobe fiascos, line edits, late-night tears, and frantic phone calls. How would his British, by-the-book stoicism clash with her voluptuous lawlessness? But with Marilyn, it was always the unexpected that worked like a charm. “I’ve lived long enough to know that life doesn’t always stick to the rules,” wrote Elsa, who’d been watching from the rafters with glee. “The perfectly impossible and absolutely ridiculous keep happening all the time.”
