As a director, Olivier was the stark opposite of the warm, receptive Josh Logan, who let Marilyn’s imagination run wild, allowing for retake after expensive retake. Best of all, Josh listened to Marilyn and continued to champion her after Bus Stop wrapped. For months he’d been writing to Olivier, warning him that Marilyn marched to the beat of her own drummer: “She’s not a domesticated animal. She’s a wild, untamed animal.” But Olivier wouldn’t accept feral behavior, no matter how talented. He expected Marilyn to adapt to his brisk, no-nonsense, and very English production set.
“From the first,” remembers set photographer Jack Cardiff, “it was evident that Marilyn was going to be a problem for Larry on the film.… Marilyn had this ghastly obsession with Method acting and was always searching for some inner meaning with everything, but Larry would only explain the simple facts of the scene.”
Marilyn liked to connect with a character, inching toward it then walking away like a lioness circling her prey. But Oliver didn’t believe in digging deep, in finding the inner motivations and secrets of a character. He could be witheringly dismissive, patting her on the head like a child one day or sneering, “Just be sexy, Marilyn” the next.
“She went through so many agonizing times with Larry because he was, to her, a pain in the arse,” said Jack Cardiff. “She never forgave him for saying to her, ‘Try and be sexy.’ I think she resented him. She used to call him ‘Mr. Sir,’ because he had been knighted.”
As she shrank from Olivier, Marilyn hid more and more behind her buffer, Paula. Olivier was baffled by the cryptic prompts from Paula (“Think of Frank Sinatra and Coca-Cola!”) or “More like a bird, Marilyn, more like bird!” Paula would spend hours getting Marilyn ready, only to find she’d prepared her for the wrong scene. When she wasn’t monopolizing Marilyn, Paula was harassing Olivier, helpfully informing him that his performance was “artificial.” Eventually, he had two security guards pick up Paula and carry her off the set.
Oddly enough, Milton began to admire the Strasbergs in their own strange way: “Paula had a way out, like Lee had a way out: ‘It’s not an oil painting; it’s a watercolor.’ There are ten different ways you could take that.”
Like the Strasbergs, Milton had his own way of working with Marilyn, such as cranking up the music to coax genuine tears. “She wouldn’t take any glycerin in her eyes; it was always real tears. It’s the vibrations of the music that made her tears stronger. So I walked over to Larry and said, ‘Make the Bach louder.’ Larry was ready to kill me. ‘There’s only one director,’ he said.”
By the end of filming, director and actress were in full-fledged war. Olivier was fed up with it all, fed up with the crazy hand-shaking warm-up moves, the tranquilizers and the meltdowns, the blank stares when she missed her lines, the trembling lips whenever he criticized her. He was exasperated that Marilyn demanded real caviar and champagne during the dinner-party scene, rather than making do with the apple juice and dyed-black bread balls they always used. After two days of retakes she ended up costing him several bottles of champagne and masses of Fortnum and Mason beluga at $12 a jar. He refused to attribute this to her commitment to authenticity, concluding instead that Marilyn was simply trying to torture him. Even her stomach troubles, he claimed, were “psychological warfare.”
Equally troubling was Arthur. He and Marilyn had never really lived together, and now they were thrown into a chaotic pressure cooker, causing the cracks in their marriage to become painfully visible. From the very beginning, he isolated Marilyn from the rest of the set, urging her to refuse invitations, and was quoted in the Daily Mail as having said, “Thanks, England, thanks for leaving us alone.”
“Arthur began to show up every day in the dressing room and he was disruptive,” fumed Amy Greene. “No matter what Larry told Marilyn to do, Arthur had an opinion about it. Finally one day Larry told him to get the fuck off the set or he’d have him thrown off.… I mean, what was he doing there? I went antiquing, I went to museums, anything to stay out of Milton’s hair. He went back to her dressing room, closed the door, and sulked for the rest of the day.”
Not only was Arthur making it impossible for Marilyn to bond with cast and crew, he was quite deliberately driving a wedge between her and Milton. He’d always been jealous of Milton, and this jealousy only increased as the distance between himself and Marilyn seemed to widen. So he lashed out with petty insults, insinuating that Milton was spending MMP funds on antiques or frittering away valuable set time.
“So Arthur was stirring the pot,” Amy complained, “because he knew it was a disaster between the two of them and he was hanging on for dear life. He knew that whatever idea he had in marrying her, it never materialized, and she felt the same. She was deeply unhappy, because it was another failure in her life.”
Meanwhile, Marilyn was taking more pills than ever before. She’d increased her nightly dose of sleeping pills to the point where she needed a stimulant to wake up. She’d never taken amphetamines before, so Milton tried to start her on the less addictive extended-release variety. But Marilyn demanded the heady kick of instant release Dexamyls, which often made her so jittery she’d have to dose herself with barbiturates. She’d started slipping gin in her morning tea and asked Milton to keep her Thermos spiked on set. Milton said, “I was always worried she’d drink too much. Olivier and I had a rule where we would never drink until six o’clock. So I’d pour a little less than she asked. I don’t even think Miller knew about it. It didn’t hurt her.
“When she had a problem,” remembered Milton, “I solved it. She’d have a weekend with Arthur,” said Milton, “and everything would get screwed up, and she’d be disorganized. She’d come in on Monday exhausted, bloated, and out of it. I’d give her a shot in the ass of vitamin B when she was tired. I secretly had two costumes made, because when you come in Monday you’re bloated, then by Wednesday you’re skinny again. She never knew the difference. That’s how well I knew her.” But despite all efforts, he was losing MMP and, even worse, his best friend.
In a foggy state, medicating her medication, Marilyn clung to Miller more desperately than ever. “This is none of your business; it’s personal,” she snapped when Milton gently questioned her outbursts or tears. Paranoid that Milton was “siding with” Olivier, Marilyn worried that Arthur was the only one protecting her. The stress of production left her bond with Milton vulnerable, and Arthur took advantage of that.
By the middle of production, Milton sensed that his hold over Marilyn was slipping, and that everything they had worked toward was spectacularly unraveling in a period of weeks. So he threw himself into salvaging the only thing he could: the film. For her sake he was affable and cordial with Olivier; for her sake he brushed off Miller’s sneaky asides. As a playwright, Arthur had no understanding of film production—but he thought he did. When Marilyn fretted about going over budget, Arthur dismissed her concerns with ridiculously inaccurate statements. “What do you care? It’s Warner Brothers’ money.” Milton, who usually bit his tongue around Arthur, finally exploded: “Schmuck! It’s our money!”
If there was any hope for Milton and Marilyn, it dissolved at that point. It was the beginning of the end for MMP.
It was also the end of the Olivier-Monroe partnership. Their own insecurities got the better of them both. By the time the film wrapped, Olivier had turned into a tyrant, seizing control of the cutting and editing. Marilyn’s pet project was no longer her own—it had deteriorated into a burden she dragged herself through each day. Olivier was equally miserable. Later, he’d claim that Marilyn had aged him fifteen years. Decades after her death, Olivier would still refer to her privately as “that bitch.”
“Give the odds of 37-23-37 to one that they’ll never film together again,” quipped a reporter from The Sun. That day, Marilyn packed her bags, boarded a plane, and left Europe for the last time.
* * *
After The Prince and the Showgirl wrapped, Arthur continued to insert himself in MMP. Friends were shocked to find him at his desk—not working but neatly snipping newspaper clippings and pasting them in scrapbooks. Others witnessed him huddled up with Marilyn and her dressmaker, deliberating over swatches of satin: turquoise, champagne, kelly green, or burgundy? It was shocking—a man who scorned glamour and fashion neglecting his own work to fuss over dresses. Of course, Arthur knew this left little room for Milton—that was the whole point. By January 1957, Arthur had successfully torn them apart. The Milton and Marilyn partnership was over.
“I went through that split up with Milton and Marilyn,” said John Eula, “and it was tragic. Milton never believed that she would do what she would do, so he just sat there and did nothing about it. He never believed Marilyn would leave him, because he really was such a breadwinner for her, such a guiding light, such a foundation. The goddamned fool didn’t understand that her husband had taken her away long before. Would you want your wife being owned forty-nine percent by somebody else?”
“I heard Milton on the phone and they were both crying,” wrote Amy, who witnessed the terrible breakup. “These two people should have been together through thick and thin. Nothing—nothing—should have put them apart.”
On February 17, 1957, Milton Greene met with Marilyn to negotiate the end of his contract with MMP. Arthur stood by like a sentry, flanked by his lawyers and ready for battle. But Milton only asked for half of his investment: $100,000.
“That’s all you want?” Arthur asked.
“Take more,” Marilyn whispered to Milton, her voice about to break.
“No,” said Milton firmly, looking her in the eye. “Let me be the only one in your life never to take more.”
It was the last time she ever saw him.
* * *
The spell that started in late 1954 was broken. Unlike Bus Stop, The Prince and the Showgirl opened to mixed reviews and poor box office counts. MMP was destroyed. Cut off from Milton, Marilyn descended rapidly into a darkness from which she never fully recovered.
After her Olivier fiasco, Marilyn took a break from career to focus on marriage and family. But inertia proved far more harmful than the stress of filming. She and Arthur returned to Sutton Place, and bought a flat at 444 East 57th Street. There were wood-paneled elevators and white-gloved door attendants, but inside it looked haunted, dismal, and eerily hotel-like. She’d brought her white baby grand, her books, and beloved Sinatra records. She kept the fridge stocked with dozens of Piper-Heidsieck splits. But the bedroom was boxy and bare as a cell, with only a queen-sized mattress, a rickety gray nightstand, and a black Bakelite telephone she threw on the floor. There was a sad dining alcove, barely used, huge dingy mirrors propped on modular sofas, and pale carpeting marred by stains from the dog. Walls kept bleach-white and blank, no paintings of flowers and bulls, no 59th Street Bridge—just a gloomy view of buildings across the street. Not that it mattered: Marilyn covered each window with blackout curtains, sealed shut day and night.
Her world shrank; she grew lonelier each day. She passed undisciplined, unhappy hours in a haze of breakfast cocktails, phone calls, and temper tantrums. She’d wake around noon, shrieking “No! Don’t!” when her maid tried to open the curtains, then sweetly order a Bloody Mary from her cook. Entire days were spent in bed, spinning Sinatra records, calling DiMaggio on the phone. One year into her marriage and she was already mourning Joe, obsessing over him (“Joe used to take me for the best Italian dinners”), asking her maid to cook lasagna, as if ricotta and tomatoes would bring him back. Arthur rarely dined with her, so Marilyn ate in bed, staining the sheets with red sauce, Hollandaise, and gravy.
Meanwhile, Miller hid in his study. When he did emerge, he had more interest in chatting with the cook or secretary than his own wife. It was pitiful—if he suggested a movie or party she leaped up like it was Christmas and spent the day fussing with makeup and clothes. Half the time he’d cancel, opting instead for another evening of brooding, avoiding his wife, and struggling over a play he could not seem to write. Their next four years were punctuated by miscarriages, overdoses, and chilly stretches of silence before ending in a Mexican divorce in 1961.
Untethered to marriage or home, Marilyn had to revive her career, which unfortunately meant moving back to Los Angeles. She bought a house in Brentwood and nailed a plaque to the door inscribed CURSUM PERFICIO, Latin for “My journey ends here.” For Marilyn, Hollywood had always been “just a place to work,” but this Spanish hacienda was pure LA, from the “telephone room” to the kidney-shaped swimming pool she never used once. She flew to Mexico to buy authentic handmade furnishings—woven blankets, scallop-trimmed benches, ceramic tiles for her kitchen—most of which remained in their cardboard boxes. She bought paintings but never hung them, leaving them propped against bare bedroom walls alongside Saks bags full of still-tagged clothes. A house, not a home—half furnished, half lived in, half a life.
According to Marilyn’s housemaid, Eunice, leaving New York was her fatal mistake. Had she stayed in Manhattan, Eunice repeatedly claimed, Marilyn would have lived. Away from New York’s creative cocoon, Marilyn’s confidence withered. Her East Coast friends never deserted her. The Rostens and Shaws sent her postcards and presents, calling her weekly or daily, nurturing her to the end. But Marilyn needed more. Beset by gallstones, sinus infections, insomnia, and worsening endometriosis, Marilyn’s dependency on barbiturates and painkillers soared. She fell in with a deluded, celeb-obsessed shrink who pushed even more pills and kept her dependent. Cut off from the only friends who understood her, she spiraled into loneliness.
“I was walking through La Scala restaurant in Beverly Hills,” remembers her Studio friend Jack Garfein, “and she’s sitting there with her secretary Pat Newcomb, and I said, ‘Marilyn, it’s Saturday night and you’re with your secretary,’ and she said ‘Why, what would you want me to do, Jack?’ I said, ‘Well, you know what you should do—move to Paris—live there and they’ll give you a parade down the Champs-Élysées.’ The wit, the humor, the touch of reality: She said, ‘Well, Jack, would you leave your wife to go with me?’ And of course, I didn’t answer, but my look was obviously that I wouldn’t do that. So then she said to me, ‘You know, Jack, remember when we went shopping for clothes, I was changing in the room and you were helping me change—you said something to me, Jack—it stayed with me all my life. You know, when I went through difficulties with Arthur, many times I thought of what you said to me in that room. Do you remember?’ Of course, I didn’t—like most men, when we’re taken by a woman, we say things.… And I said, ‘Yes, I remember.’ She looked at me and said, ‘You’re lying, Jack; you don’t remember.’ Obviously I said something that came out, her presence inspired me, and that was important to her—with all the games, and changing the dresses, in the end she saw that I was just a man, that whatever I said that was important to her came out of me but obviously didn’t stay with me. I was on a ship crossing the Atlantic coming back from Europe when I heard about her death, and the first thing I thought of was what the hell did I say to her?”
Epilogue
In July 1962, Amy Greene woke from an unusually bad dream and turned to Milton:
“Marilyn needs you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“In my dream she’s alone, she doesn’t have anybody she can trust. She was sending me signals to tell you to go to Los Angeles.”
“You know we’re leaving with Sally Kirkland in three days to cover the Paris collections. I can’t do that.”
“Milton, for once in your life listen to what I’m saying. She needs your help. Get on a plane, don’t take the assignment. Go and help her.”
So he picked up the phone and called her for the first time in five years.
“You know,” she said, “I’m right back where I was before MMP. They’re giving me the worst roles. It’s like the last ten years never happened. I’m right back to where I don’t want to be.”
“Don’t do it,” Milton urged. “If you want me to come out there, I’ll leave today.”
Of course, Marilyn assured Milton she’d be fine—that he had to go to Paris for the fashion show, that she’d call in a few weeks and they’d all meet for dinner or drinks at La Scala or the Mocambo. Milton had saved her eight years ago, and despite all that had happened, he was ready to do it again.
But Marilyn never made that call. Perhaps she was guilty about the way she’d treated him years before. Perhaps she was embarrassed—by her fear, her neediness, her inability to make a relationship stick. Perhaps she was ashamed that at thirty-six she was once again Zanuck’s plaything. So Marilyn packed her pain down. She gave a few sunny interviews, posed for photo shoots on the beach, and hinted at new career moves on the horizon. On Sunday, August 5, she died alone, clutching the phone in an unmade bed full of phenobarbital and chloral hydrate.
