He thought he knew the “real” Marilyn, and he would whisk her away from this toxic glut of glitz. Arthur was blind. This may have been the only year in Marilyn’s life when she didn’t need to be saved.
* * *
That summer, Marilyn relaxed into an oasis of sheltering friendships and relative calm. When she wasn’t with the Strasbergs, she spent weekends with the Rostens, who offered another safe, gentle space with their breezy beach house in Port Jefferson.
“As a summer weekend house guest,” wrote Norman Rosten, “she fit in well with the family.” She loved her little guest room (“Make it dark and give me air.”); she loved their enormous library and its cool mildew scent. The Rostens understood Marilyn’s need for space and left her alone for hours, content to read, stretched on a window seat nuzzling Bam-Moo the beagle. She’d sleep in, whip some eggs in hot milk, then take a late-morning stroll with Candy the cat.
At night, she helped cook: shucking clams, rinsing spaghetti, always leaping up to wash the dishes. She held clean glasses up to the light for inspection, then filled them with Dom Pérignon. “Champagne and caviar were the opposite of waifdom,” wrote Norman. “Each popping cork proclaimed: Look at me, this is no abandoned child, no orphan!” He kept the fridge stocked with pink cartons of cottage cheese—Marilyn’s favorite late-night snack.
Beach days with the Rostens were lively. The whole family would pile into the car—umbrellas, blankets, picnic baskets stuffed with crackers, cheese, and olives, and the trunk packed with champagne and beer on dry ice. They’d set up shop on the beach: striped umbrellas wedged in the sand, blankets and towels strewn with books and Dixie cups. Hedda would be wearing her pink bandeau and matching shawl, rooting through her straw bag for a lighter and pack of Chesterfields; Marilyn, a boater’s hat and one of Arthur’s shirts, rereading the Molly Bloom chapter from Ulysses. She’d stride through the sand munching green apples, tightening her halter with its white drawstring cord. Sometimes she’d climb into Norman’s little speedboat or grab the hand of his twelve-year-old daughter, Patricia, and run laughing through the surf.
By the end of the summer, Marilyn had grown extremely close to the Rostens, particularly Norman. Snapshots show them cavorting on the beach, Marilyn in white terry shorts and a harlequin halter, Norman in pinstriped swimming trunks and a rumpled gray polo shirt. She’s posed in the sand, one hand on her hip, the other perched on his shoulder as he cracks open a beer.
Marilyn rarely talked to Norman about acting or Hollywood. He’d escort her to the occasional concert or premiere, but he felt most comfortable with the stripped-down, summer Marilyn—barefoot on the beach in clam diggers and a blouse or splashing through the waves in her silly white bathing cap.
Like all good friends, they had their own language. With Milton it was renegade dress-up and glamour, with Sam Shaw it was urban high jinks and art, and with Norman it was pet names and poetry. She called him Claude-Claude; she was Noodle, Clump, Sugar Finny, Pussy, or Max. “She gave herself pretty names,” Norman wrote. “An identity name, the little funny imp. That was an appealing part of her character. She had a great sense of humor.”
Together they were Normalyn, a nickname she coined and signed on the very first letter she wrote him. They called each other daily but wrote letters even more, a practice they’d continue for the rest of her life. (For the most part, Marilyn was an erratic correspondent—she treasured her letters from friends but often left them unanswered for months, even years.) With Norman it was easy—the way they communicated in playful fragments and bolts came naturally to her. In Norman Marilyn found the empathy she so desperately sought. She knew he wasn’t judging her—not even on the worst days when she had to type her letters because her hands were shaking so much. He bucked her up, bolstered her ego. Now, in the summer of 1955, Marilyn wrote the most touching words she’d ever say to a friend, or anyone: “I’m so glad you were born and I’m living at the same time as you.”
* * *
“My wife believed I loved Marilyn,” wrote Norman, “but so did she. If love is that force or presence, we both did.” Hedda had been Mary Slattery’s roommate in Ann Arbor, but she had more in common with Marilyn. In fact, Arthur had pursued Hedda first—drawn to her doe-eyed gaze and “terrific body,” the way she dashed around campus in crispy white blouses, pausing to wave at someone or light one of her seemingly endless cigarettes. Now, at forty-one, she’d developed a rattling smoker’s cough but was still girlish in shirtwaists and the kittenish slippers she’d favored since college.
Like Marilyn, Hedda was neurotic, giggly, brainy, and a touch naive. They bonded deeply that summer, cooking together or driving to Sag Harbor to check out the sales racks at Saks. Sometimes they’d pick out clothes for Norman: well-tailored shirts and black cashmere pullovers. One afternoon Marilyn realized she needed more sundresses—she’d been wearing the same eyelet blue for weeks. She grabbed six dresses (same style, different colors) and dashed into the fitting room, the starstruck assistant hot at her heels. The salesgirl unzipped Marilyn, who stood naked and calm as “Venus rising from that famous half shell.” Marilyn proceeded to try on each dress, all the while happily chatting with the shocked shopgirl about the weather and the season’s styles. Was it against Saks policy to try on dresses naked? It didn’t matter. Marilyn bought all six.
They took early evening walks—Marilyn clutching Hedda’s hand, hair pushed under a red patterned kerchief, in white terry slippers and sleeveless blouse of black Irish linen, buttoned up the front in mother-of-pearl. Hedda was a curvy little bird in cat-eye glasses and ballet flats, Patricia sandy and barefoot.
At night, they played badminton, Marilyn giggling over the birdie. The children loved her. “She was fun to be with,” recalled Patricia Rosten, “because she broke the rules, and children love being around grown-ups who can get away with that. When Marilyn touched me or hugged me I felt a warmth and softness (dare I use the word maternal in relation to her?) that was very reassuring. It was not unlike falling into that champagne-colored quilt that graced her bed.”
Marilyn traveled light, wearing the same knit halter for weeks, pairing it with shorts for the beach and capris for jaunts in town. She lugged around her entire makeup kit—a huge metal tackle box stuffed with hundreds of tiny bottles—but left most of the makeup untouched, sticking to sun cream and a few drops of Chanel.
“Once when she was visiting us,” wrote Patricia years later, “I became bored with the adult conversation and found myself wandering through the other empty rooms. As I passed Marilyn’s bedroom a large box on a table by the window caught my eye. It looked like a huge metal tackle box. In a moment of curiosity and bad manners I lifted the lid and peered inside. It was filled with cosmetics—lipstick, eyeliners, mascara, brushes, sticks of stage pancake makeup. I was so fascinated by hundreds of little jars bottles and compacts that I didn’t hear the sound of footsteps coming down the carpeted hallway. Marilyn discovered me deep in her makeup box. She acted like it was the most natural thing in the world to find me there. Before I could even feel embarrassed, she said that since I was so intrigued by the art of makeup she would show me how to do the job right. The next twenty minutes or so I was in a kind of dream as I watched her skillful hands transform my child’s face into something that even I might have called glamorous. My eyelids glimmered, my cheekbones were highlighted, my mouth was rosy with color. I thought I could pass for seventeen. Not content with doing a partial makeover she also did my hair, which I usually wore stringy around my shoulders. She put it in an elegant French twist. She’d been so proud of her handiwork that she happily took me by the hand into the living room and showed me off to the grownups.”
Blighted by poverty and neglect, Marilyn’s childhood offered little chances for merriment or play. Yet she treasured moments she did have, whether romping outside in her foster neighborhoods, playing make-believe games with girls at the orphanage, or simply dreaming and doodling in a room by herself. She never shook that feeling of childlike otherness, adrift and unheard in the world of adults. “When you grow up,” she’d say with a sigh to Patricia, “they make playing very difficult for you.”
* * *
That summer, Marilyn met the photojournalist Eve Arnold. They met by chance, while walking the beach in Port Jefferson. “I saw Norman Rosten approaching with a blond girl in the dusk with the light behind her,” Eve wrote years later. She barely recognized Marilyn, who looked “small and remote” stripped bare of her satin and makeup, her hair a mess of salt and candy-floss quartz. To Eve’s surprise, Marilyn suggested they all meet the next day for a swim. “There seemed to be an understanding that this was going to be a social gathering,” Eve remembered.
Eve was right. She arrived to find the Rostens unloading crates of champagne from their car. A small group of friends were spreading out blankets. As usual, Marilyn was nowhere to be seen.
“I felt a stir all along the crowded beach,” Eve wrote. “People were turning to look at Marilyn moving slowly down a cliff side from the meadow above our heads. She was wearing a bikini—tight shorts of white balloon cloth and a bifurcated bra, each section barely covered a breast and supported by a narrow band at the base. There were string shoulder straps to hold it up, and on her head she wore a huge hat of straw. For shoes she was wearing a pair of government issue army boots.”
It was a blistering weekend, and the public beach teemed with people. For a while, all seemed calm. They sunned themselves and drank champagne. Marilyn played softball with Eve’s five-year-old son. Norman’s friends stood knee-deep in water, smoking cigarettes. A photographer from the Port Jefferson Times wandered by, a speed graphic camera flung over his shoulder. He paused, squinted, and shuffled away muttering, “That ain’t Marilyn Monroe.”
Two teenage boys paddled by, spotted Marilyn and sped away with the news. Within minutes teens swarmed by the dozen, the girls screeching, the boys crazed, the babies waving rocks and bits of charcoal for Marilyn’s signature.
“Marilyn, you look terrific!”
“Marilyn, how about a kiss?”
“Marilyn, you’re my favorite!”
“Marilyn, I see all your movies!”
She laughed with the crowd, and signed rocks for the little ones. They touched her arms and waist, screamed and pleaded, circled her tighter as she backed toward the water. She gave a fearful little wave and broke into a swim, with dozens of young fans wading in behind her.
Norman swam after Marilyn as the teens closed in on her like sharks. “Several of our group swam after her,” he wrote later, “trying to cut them off. They kept clamoring for Marilyn; she was surrounded.” He seized her by the arm with one hand, batted away boys with another: “Beat it!” Gradually they drifted into colder, deeper, water, and Marilyn stopped moving.
“You go back and let me die,” she said weakly.
A motorboat swooped in, with a kid in a crew cut at the wheel. Norman climbed in first, then hauled Marilyn—who was deadweight at this point—over the side. “I looked at her as she lay exhausted, her legs curled up, her pink toes gleaming in the sun,” Norman remembered. “The boy-pilot also regarded her with an adolescent’s transfixed stare, forgetting the wheel and executing two tight circles before I realized what was happening.” Norman began to shout at the boy, but Marilyn stopped him: “Don’t be nervous; it’s a wonderful weekend!”
* * *
The day’s chaos cemented Marilyn’s trust in Eve, who had stood back rather than insisting on pictures. She agreed to a photo shoot and scheduled it for Labor Day weekend. Once again she’d be at the Rostens, and Eve was worried about finding a sliver of pure beach. Shooting at dawn would work, but she knew better than to force wake-up calls on Marilyn. Eventually, Eve decided on an abandoned playground in the marshland town of Mount Sinai.
All weekend, Marilyn was impossible to pin down. Every time Eve called she brushed her off with a vague “tomorrow,” and it was Labor Day before Marilyn agreed to work. Eve arrived at the Rostens to find Marilyn still at lunch, toying with a plate of cottage cheese, deep in conversation with Hedda. Then came the panic over hair, makeup, which accessories she’d need, and which bathing suits to take. Clutching her copy of Ulysses, Marilyn jumped into Eve’s car.
It was five by the time they reached Mount Sinai—just in time for the magic hour. They worked quickly, seizing the slippery golden light. Playground; swing set; pink, pearly toenails. Just the slightest, shell-pink sunburn on her nose. Perched on the monkey bars absorbed in Ulysses, or chin propped on the book gazing straight at the camera, Marilyn looked a bit like Molly Bloom herself. In the same diamond halter she’d lived in all summer, she sat cross-legged with the book in her lap, black flats tossed aside, hair cropped shorter than ever before. She flipped the book open to the last lines of the last page, mouthing the words to herself in a low whisper: “… and his heart beating and I said yes yes I will Yes.”
Crouched in Eve’s car, Marilyn stripped off her swimsuit and slipped into a leopard-print maillot. She loved the idea of a leopard in the bulrushes. The marshes were sludgy and swampy, but she splashed through the mud, playing like a tawny baby. She giggled, creeping through the reeds, beckoning to the camera as Eve clicked away, struggling to keep her Nikon dry.
“It was amusing to watch and follow where she led,” recalled Eve, bewitched by her subject’s irreverent humor and sexy sense of play. As usual, Marilyn directed herself. “She was in control, setting the style and pace, and I would follow, just praying my reflexes would be fast enough to accommodate her antics.” She crawled through the swamp as if she were stalking her prey, while the sun sank lower, casting hemlock shadows on the murky reeds. By sunset she was coated in mud, giggling and exhilarated.
They returned to the Rostens’ for one final summer feast, though Marilyn claimed she was dieting and stuck to cottage cheese. That night everyone skinny-dipped in the moonlight. Marilyn was the only one who kept her bathing suit on.
* * *
