* * *
Thrilled as she was to work with Olivier, preparing for Anna Christie was a bigger priority. Like Eleonora Duse, Marilyn acted straight from her core. She had a habit of throwing up on set before film takes. Sometimes she’d get migraines or embarrassingly trembly hands. “A stage role is totally different,” Lee assured her. “You’re on the stage; you have the lights; the audience is dark; nobody talks. You remember all those technicians and everybody standing around smoking and laughing back in Hollywood? You were very much aware of all that distraction.” On the stage she’d have that curtain of protective velvet that only comes up when you’re ready for it. But was Marilyn up to the intense immediacy of the stage?
On February 17, Marilyn was finally ready for her Studio debut. She woke up that morning with a pounding heart and a horrible case of laryngitis (“I could only croak and whisper”). Malin Studios was packed that night. Paula fanned herself in the front row, draped in black shawls and a long golden chain laden with good luck trinkets. “I’m going to have a heart attack,” she groaned to anyone who would listen. But if anyone was having a heart attack that night, it was Marilyn: “I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t remember one line. All I wanted to do was lie down and die. I was in these impossible circumstances and I suddenly thought to myself ‘Good God what am I doing here?’ Then I just had to go out and do it.” After blacking out backstage from anxiety, Marilyn shot all her nervy vulnerability into the scene. “So far I’m less shy on the stage than I’ve ever been in front of a camera,” she would tell Pete Martin weeks later. “I have less trouble remembering my lines.”
“Her painful nervousness lent a tension to the scene that seemed right. Everybody who saw that says that it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did,” Ellen Burstyn remembers. “It was some of the best work they’d ever seen at the Studio, and certainly the best interpretation of Anna Christie anybody ever saw. She achieved real greatness in that scene.”
Applause is traditionally a faux pas in the churchlike solemnity of Malin Studios. But this time Marilyn received a standing ovation. She immediately burst into tears.
* * *
January and February were landmark months for Marilyn. She’d won her yearlong battle with Fox. She’d soon be working with dream directors Josh Logan and Laurence Olivier. She was once again the Press Darling—only this time for her talent, not her breathy voice and bombshell curves. She’d proved to the world her merit as an actress—and with Anna Christie, she’d proved it to herself. It made sense that Cecil Beaton, photographer to Picasso, Greta Garbo, and Queen Elizabeth, was now seeking her out.
On the designated date of February 19, Cecil paced his Japanesque suite at the Ambassador. He’d been chasing Marilyn for weeks—would this elusive blonde butterfly ever show up? Assistant Ed Pfizenmaier still remembers the moment Marilyn breezed through the door: an hour late, bag flung over her shoulder with two black dresses and a pile of makeup. “She came in the door,” he said, “and the first thing she did was discard her shoes, which I couldn’t believe. So immediately Cecil and I looked at each other with big eyeballs, and we could tell for some reason this was going to be a good day. I kind of adore someone who throws her shoes off and gets right into it,” he added. “In other words, she wanted to work.”
“We started out very proper with the legs to the side and everything else,” said Ed. “And then suddenly all hell broke loose and she did her own thing. Romping and twisting and throwing her body around. She finally wound up half on the floor and half on the sofa. Cecil and Marilyn were just laughing, howling at each other.”
For the third time that year, Marilyn clicked with a photographer who really got her. Cecil delighted in Marilyn’s childlike aura, relishing the paradox of her whimsical glamour. To him she was a “Rhine maiden,” an “innocent sleepwalker,” an “abandoned sprite,” an “overexcited child asked downstairs for tea.” Cecil wrote in his diary, “I was so impressed by her sort of gaiety and variety of moods that I just wanted to catch that.… I just found myself so in sympathy, so amused and so delighted that all I could do was run around clicking in her wake.”
The hours flew by without a single break. Marilyn flounced and frolicked, puffed on a daisy like a cigarette, played with a plastic bluebird, sipped ginger ale from an old-fashioned champagne coupe. In the span of one photo shoot—with no costume changes—Marilyn demonstrated her impressive range. She could play the vampiest vamp, then shift back into soft fawn mode with the baby bird at her cheek. (“Dostoevsky knew what he was doing,” Beaton observed. “Marilyn knows what she is doing too. She would be a good Grushenka.”) Thanks to her diet of raw steak and champagne, she’d toned up and was—according to Amy—slim as a “noodle.” Winter walks in the city had brightened her eyes and perked up her skin. She’d never looked so refined, so soft-focus pretty.
“She did everything he wanted her to do,” recalled Ed, “from laying down in the bed swathed in a sheet and him standing over shooting straight down at her. In those days we had 10,000 watt bulbs shining off the ceiling … and she was just like a purring lion under those lights. I don’t know if it was one of her better days, or a good day or what, you know you hear so many bad reports, the sensationalism, but I certainly didn’t experience any of that. And I think the photographs, Beaton’s photographs, show it, that’s the proof of the pudding. When you look at them, everyone remarks she looks so happy, gay, healthy, and everything. Contrary to what everyone says that she was difficult and hard to work with, I found her just a delight to work with, not difficult at all—I don’t know where people come from—we just had a magnificent time.”
The feeling was mutual. Marilyn adored the experience, and treasured one of Beaton’s photos as her all-time favorite: She’s lying in bed on her back, eyes wide, lips parted, clutching a pink carnation in one hand. Cecil wrote an article about it months later and gave Marilyn a copy along with the carnation photo. She framed it in a triptych, and kept it bedside for the rest of her life.
* * *
All along, Marilyn’s goal had been director approval. Now that she had her pick, who would she choose for Bus Stop? “Milton and Marilyn and I made a list of the twelve directors she would work with,” remarked Amy, who was part of the decision as well. “She made it a point that she would no longer work with directors who were on the lot and had nothing better to do.”
“One of the directors we had on the list was Charles Chaplin,” explained Amy, “which of course everyone at Twentieth fell down kicking and screaming over. But I’ve got news for you: He would have been wonderful with Marilyn and vice versa. But that was also Milton—Milton saw nothing but heights for this woman—he shot much higher than she even in her wildest fantasies. His dreams for her were beyond her scope.”
Eventually they agreed on Josh Logan: one of the rare Hollywood directors who understood the Method and respected it. He’d studied at the Moscow Theater with Stanislavski and was no stranger to insomnia and hospitalizations. He even tolerated Paula, who was now part of the package and Marilyn’s on-set acting coach. Best of all, Josh had also directed on Broadway—most recently Picnic and South Pacific. “You can’t forget, at this time Marilyn was in love with New York, was in love with New York theater, and Logan was a superstar there,” explained Amy. “So again she started with ‘I don’t think I can; this man won’t see me; why would he want to work with me, etc.’ Then Milton arranged a meeting with Josh, who was a fine Southern gentlemen. Josh was thrilled with the idea that Marilyn would talk to him.”
From the moment he met Marilyn, Logan was impressed. “I had no trouble communicating with her, understanding her, or getting her to understand me,” he said. Having worked in Hollywood and New York, he immediately understood Marilyn’s frustrations. “They were making fun of her, teasing and baiting a delicate and intelligent animal. They refused to see that she wasn’t dumb, she wasn’t an animal, but a highly intuitive artist. Everyone thinks she’s stupid, and she’s not. She has a brain far above the normal person, and she has developed the powers she was born with far above most people even with formal education.”
Despite that winter’s flurry of excitement, Marilyn still had time for the Monroe Six. When Jimmy Haspiel’s birthday approached, the Six presented her with a card and envelope already stamped and addressed. “All you have to do, Mazzie,” they explained, “is sign the card and put it in a mailbox, it’s for Jimmy’s birthday next week.”
Marilyn was caring and generous, but no master of the ordinary—signing a card wouldn’t be enough. Instead of giving Jimmy an impersonal birthday greeting, she invited him to join her on a cab ride through town. “Well, the taxicab came to a halt at the curb of 58th Street, and the moment had arrived. I remember I looked into her face and said, ‘So long,’ and as I added the words ‘Norma Jean,’ I turned my face away from hers, unexpected emotions overtaking me, and I couldn’t actually look at her! I had already opened the cab door for my escape, and as I was rising out of the cab, I heard a sort of whispered ‘Jimmy’ behind me, and my body, which was in motion leaving the cab, reversed the motion. As I sat back down into the seat, Marilyn put her arms around me and hugged me very tightly, whispered into my ear, ‘Happy Birthday, Jimmy,’ and then she kissed me.”
Decades later Jimmy Haspiel reflected on the cab ride: “What had happened was that instead of being ordered to do something, like with the card from the Six, it had to actually come from her, or it wouldn’t have been real for her.” That was Marilyn—impulsive, adorable, and always authentic—like a winsome “happy birthday” hot and sweet in your ear.
* * *
By the last week of February, Marilyn was preparing to bid New York good-bye. Production for Bus Stop was scheduled for early March. Inevitable, unavoidable Hollywood was calling, with its stage sets, swimming pools, and fraught memories. This time she couldn’t resist.
She wasn’t the least bit nervous about her future projects. She wasn’t intimidated by working with Sir Laurence Olivier, or by Kim Stanley’s stellar performance in the Broadway version of Bus Stop. “It doesn’t bother me in the least,” she told Pete Martin. “It’ll be two different characterizations by two different people, and I’m looking forward to it. Maybe I feel this way because I’ve gotten older inside. Remember, I said inside, not outside. I’d like to think of my life as having started right now. Somebody asked me when I was born and I said, ‘Just recently, in New York.’”
Days before her departure, she visited dress designer John Moore. “I’ll be back,” she promised him, “when the picture is over. New York is my home now. Hollywood is just a place to work in.”
On February 22, Marilyn met Elsa Maxwell for lunch at Waldorf Towers. This was a special occasion—a sort of good-bye interview—and Elsa had set white calla lilies on the black lacquered table, ordered oysters, caviar, and several bottles of Dom Pérignon. Someone got wind that Marilyn was dropping by, so Elsa spent the morning fielding phone calls and barring the door from curious men. “One by one they had discovered they simply had to see me about something important,” she chuckled. “Not at all curiously, the only time they had free was midday. True to form, she arrived over an hour late. She wore the same improper clothes she had worn to her press conference with Olivier, the low-cut black velvet suit with the dress supported by tiny shoulder straps, dangling earrings and with her blonde hair flying … I wanted to say, ‘Oh, Marilyn, my dear, those clothes! They’re not right for noonday!’”
Self-described as “short, fat, and dumpy,” the seventy-three-year-old Elsa Maxwell had little in common with Marilyn on the surface. But her “laugh at yourself before anyone else can” motto was straight out of Marilyn’s book. Brash, luxe, and extravagantly feminine, Elsa hoarded bottles of Joy just like Marilyn. (She’d even roamed the fields of Grasse with Jean Patou himself, coining Joy “the costliest perfume in the world.”) Like Marilyn, Elsa was born poor, and like Marilyn, she felt like she was uneasy with marriage, feeling instead that she “belonged to the world.” Marilyn adored Elsa’s flamboyance, her pet skunks and pink piglets, her etiquette books with advice such as “Serve the dinner backward, do anything—but for goodness sake, do something weird.”
Elsa had been rooting for Marilyn since the very beginning. Fiercely loyal, she loathed Marilyn’s rival Jayne Mansfield almost as much as she loathed Elvis Presley and Nikita Khrushchev. She admired the way Marilyn pushed through her fear and was looking forward to crowing over her victory: “She’s exciting because in spite of having the guts (no politer word will do) to gamble on herself the way aggressive business executives do, she’s still shy and uncertain.… In a world today there are far too few exciting people. Everybody wants to play it safe, to get as much as they can for as little as possible. It’s good to meet someone who tilts at windmills—or movie titans—who risks everything rather than be swept away on a golden tide.” Two “desperately serious” court jesters, beating back the golden tide one lunch at a time.
The next day, Norma Jean Baker officially changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.
* * *
Before she left New York, Marilyn had one last interview with her old friend Earl Wilson. She wanted to work in the bedroom—he could talk to her while she packed. In her black velvet toreador pants and white tennis sweater, Marilyn was vibrant, running around barefoot showing Earl new dresses, hopping up to answer the phone or look up lines in a book. She fluttered around the chaotic room, chairs strewn with minks, scripts, and slips. With nowhere else to sit, Earl stretched himself out on her pink taffeta bedspread, shoes and all.
Underneath the bubbly playfulness was a woman who knew her worth. When Earl congratulated Marilyn on her triumph over Fox, she corrected him and called it a “compromise.”
“A compromise!” Earl was stunned. “Aren’t you underestimating and understating it? Didn’t you win a big victory?”
“It was a compromise on both sides,” Marilyn said. “I do not have story approval, but I do have director approval. That’s important. I have certain directors I’ll work for and I have trust in them and will do about anything they say. I know they won’t let me do a bad story. Because, you know, you can have a wonderful story and a lousy director and hurt yourself.” She named John Huston and Billy Wilder, who’d expertly guided her through The Asphalt Jungle and The Seven Year Itch.
“And I love George Stevens and Kazan even before I make a picture with them!” She tossed her hair, grinning like a minx again.
And what next? She wanted to travel—London, Paris, Rome, even Russia. She quickly assured Earl that New York would be her real home—and she was hoping to buy a house “somewhere in the 60s … or 70s … or 80s … or somewhere.”
“That girl has fought tremendously,” Earl concluded, “and against frightening odds, to achieve her present eminence in pictures.… In her career she’s found an answer, though incomplete, to her fears.”
* * *
The night before she left for LA, Marilyn and Milton lounged around Sutton Place doing what they loved most—drinking, giggling, plotting, and playing with clothes. Marilyn tried on high-necked silk blouses, floppy black hats, and a fitted brown suit (it still had pins in it) for the flight the next day. Milton looked on, cocktail in hand, slumped in a chair, legs flung over the side.
They chatted about Bus Stop, the future of MMP, what going back to Hollywood might mean. Their year in New York was ending just the way it started—Marilyn and Milton, Milton and Marilyn.
That night, Jimmy Haspiel and Monroe Six member John Reilly stopped by to bid their Mazzie farewell. They brought seven glossy prints for her to autograph—that haunting picture John had taken on January 7, 1955, her first “official” night in New York. She’d been leaning against the wall of Marlene Dietrich’s elevator, lips closed, a barely visible tear gleaming in her eye. Marilyn disappeared into her bedroom with a pen, while Jimmy and John chatted with Milton.
“Thank you for being so loyal,” she signed one, and “thank you for your loyalty” on another, and “thank you for your loyalness”—offering six variations on a word that meant the world to her. But Jimmy’s was different: “To Jimmy, Thanks for your friendship and devotion, Marilyn.” Thrilled to be singled out, he slid the print in his coat pocket and walked the twenty blocks to East 30th Street, grinning all the way home.
At dawn, a limousine drove them both to the airport. Marilyn dressed in New York black with creamy costume pearls; Milton ready for Hollywood in shades and a light taupe suit. She was giddy, rolling down her window, leaning out to wave at Jimmy and the Monroe Six, who followed in a cab.
“At the airport,” remembered Jimmy, “I became something of a human prop for the crowd of press photographers. While I was taking a shot of Marilyn, and she was posing especially for me, the press photographers shot the whole thing.” It was plastered all over the New York Sunday News the next day: Marilyn beaming at her teenage fans, lit up with warmth and gratitude. Glowy and clear-eyed from the cold Eastern winter, she shone with self-possession. She’d charmed the implacable Sir Laurence Olivier. She’d landed her dream role as Bus Stop’s Cherie. She had the Strasbergs behind her and a year of Method training at the Actors Studio under her belt. And she had won victory over the Fox execs, who had insulted her and devalued her only ten months earlier. Somehow, she had found her center, found herself, after fourteen months in the city of her dreams.
Seventeen
The Return
Back in LA, the American Airlines terminal teemed with paparazzi and journalists, eager to capture Marilyn’s triumphant return. In her sleek new suit and black leather gloves, she strode past the cameramen with grace and poise. She left the press dazzled and reeling with questions: “What happened in New York?” Certainly, Marilyn returned strong, confident. But what was this strange alchemy—what had really changed, and was it all positive?
She’d be up against a lot—Miller-Monroe rumors had already begun to surface in gossip columns and Walter Winchell had just proclaimed her “darling of the left intelligentsia.” While Mainstream Hollywood acknowledged her success, it often did so begrudgingly, still sore over her supposed “art-house pretensions.” Even directors who loved her—like Billy Wilder and John Huston—were dismissive of the Method and the highbrow roles she planned to tackle. Had she alienated her fan base? Was she ready to start her first film since suspension, and how would Fox welcome her back?
Preproduction for Bus Stop would begin in two days, and there was plenty to be nervous about. After a year away, she’d be flung back into the world of production sets—page boys and runners dashing in and out with messages, scripts, and photo proofs. Hairdressers, masseuses, and ever-present publicity teams. Unmade beds at Chateau Marmont, costume blowups and last-minute script switches.
