Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were also in town doing their weekly show at the Copa. “Both Jerry and Dean are always yelling and falling all over the place when they see me,” Marilyn said with a giggle, “and I love them for it. Other people have criticized me for the way I dress and the way I walk, but Dean and Jerry never do.” So was Sammy Davis Jr., another affectionate prankster who treated her with that brotherly mix of teasing protectiveness. Back in LA there’d been a rumor she and Sammy had slept together, a rumor they both found hilarious. To the Rat Pack guys she was just Marilyn—no starlet and certainly no piece of studio meat.
Supportive as they were, these friendships paled in comparison to Marilyn’s devotion to Milton Greene. Their creative collaboration showed no signs of slowing down. That winter they spent nearly every day together bustling around his Lexington studio, rooting through magazine stacks and clothing racks, hatching up plans for quirky new photo shoots. Tables heaped with screenshots, ashtrays, old copies of Look, and black Bakelite telephones that never stopped ringing. Sinatra would be playing on the phonograph; Sammy Davis Jr. would stop by for a drink. You might catch them pasting tissue-thin flowers to a white paper background, or with their heads bent together at the worktable, discussing their plans to collaborate on a book. He’d crouch on the floor, straightening the seams of her stockings, fiddling with his Nikon, and humming along to a bebop record, while she’d vamp around in rosary beads or played with a litter of Pekingese puppies. With every click of the camera, Marilyn’s confidence swelled. “There was a kind of magic between them, something that you could tell was clicking,” wrote Jay Kanter. “It was fun to watch.”
Those months, it was always Marilyn and Milton and Milton and Marilyn. Winter snapshots reveal a catalog of intimacy—nestled together at the Astor or sprawled out on the floor of 480 Lex pouring nightcaps after a movie premiere. They finished each other’s sentences, drank from the same glass like twins. Norman Mailer described their relationship as haunted by “some wistful longing of the past,” and if Marilyn ever fell in love at first sight, it was surely with Milton. Whether clipping rhinestone barrettes to celebrity dogs or collapsing in giggles over proposals from Prince Rainier, their bond went far deeper than shiny urban frolics. “The two of them knew a secret,” observed Amy. “When they planned and schemed they would be on the sofa and I would be in a chair next to them and they went right off into their own world that only the two of them understood.”
That winter, she and Amy planned a surprise party for Milton’s thirty-third birthday. Marilyn and Jay Kanter called a three o’clock meeting at the Gladstone, while Amy filled the studio with drinks, guests, and decorations. (“Keep him out till six thirty,” Amy instructed.) “We had a hard time with Milton,” Jay remembered later. “We transacted all the business in a couple hours, but we had to keep him another hour. So Marilyn would say, ‘Oh, that reminds me of something else I’ve been wanting to take up.’ We’d dispose of that in a few minutes and Milton would say, ‘I’ve got to be going.’ Then I’d say, ‘Oh, here’s something else to worry about.”
They kept Milton busy until six forty-five, then walked him to the studio, where everyone burst out “Surprise!” Marilyn beamed, watching Milton’s face light up with joy. “Marilyn was wondrously happy,” said Amy, “for she felt she had put it over—and she had. It’s the first time she ever had a surprise party for anyone.”
The loves of our lives aren’t always our lovers, and Marilyn’s great romance never ended in marriage. Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller loved Marilyn, but Milton understood her. For Marilyn, who said she felt like “a fish out of water,” being understood was everything. Milton was the closest she came to those elusive words “soul mate”—a concept she believed in until the day she died.
* * *
By this point, Marilyn had been dodging the press for months. But journalist George Carpozi Jr. coaxed her into an interview by suggesting a walk in Central Park—he’d read that she loved long walks in the woods. He arrived at the Gladstone with photographer George Miller in the late afternoon of January 27. Miller bullied Marilyn as if he were some major director—ordering her to touch her toes, get on her back and cycle in the air, drop to the floor and do ten push-ups. Emboldened by bourbon, he asked her to switch out her tennis sweater for a camisole.
MILLER: “Now, Marilyn, can you drop the strap please?”
MARILYN (uneasy whisper): “I don’t think the strap will come down.…”
MILLER: “Aw, come on, Marilyn, you can make it fall. Give it another shake.”
It was as if she were back at Fox—forced to shimmy like a stripper till the strap inched down her shoulder.
Sensing that Marilyn needed to be rescued, Carpozi stepped in: Why don’t they take that walk in Central Park? He’d parked his Buick outside. Marilyn changed into a black slip (“Do I need a coat?”) and threw a bowler hat over her messy hair. She grabbed her mink and Carpozi’s hand.
Central Park was pitch black. Wind snarled through the leafless trees, whipping Marilyn’s bare, stilettoed legs. She smiled broadly, heedless of the frigid air. This was her new home, New York in its glittering darkness. Freed from the strain of his sleazy photographer, Carpozi tried once more to open Marilyn up. This time she didn’t dodge him with batted lashes or jokes. She took his arm and began, “I was born Norma Jean Mortensen in Los Angeles County General…”
* * *
Carpozi was shocked by Marilyn’s optimism. How could she seem so happy? She’d left Hollywood for a chilly, ramshackle suite swarming with rats, paparazzi, and greasy teens. Bad press, lawsuit threats, and Darryl Zanuck still breathing down her neck. With MMP teetering and no investors in sight, her situation was tenuous—even her clothes were still in LA. She had no money, no relationship, no future—at least not one she could see. But she had her freedom, she had Milton, and for now that was all that mattered.
One late January morning, Marilyn emerged from the Gladstone arm in arm with Milton and George Nardiello. A dark-eyed fourteen-year-old named Peter Mangone shivered by the door, fiddling with a Revere movie camera he’d borrowed from his brother. Marilyn turned on her heel to blow Peter a kiss, and Milton gamely allowed the boy to follow. Perhaps Peter reminded him of his younger self—a shy kid from the Bronx, skipping school to stake out his favorite star.
For the next few hours, Peter followed the trio as they sauntered down Fifth Avenue, making stops at Elizabeth Arden and I. Miller & Sons. Sometimes she’d pause to adjust her fur collar or to whisper and giggle into Milton’s ear. Sometimes she’d gaze skyward and yawn, lashes lowered like a cat’s. The late-morning light cast a lo-fi haze. She looked like a blonde peach.
Marilyn looked particularly beautiful in those first months of 1955, her tousled locks skimming her chocolate collar, her skin iridescent against the city’s gray matte. She cut a stark hourglass figure in fitted black cashmere—and for once her figure looked elegant, not exaggerated. Cars screeched to a halt on the curb. Somewhere on 54th Street a Checker cab crashed into the back of a delivery truck, its dazed driver grinning out the window: “Marilyn!!!”
She squeezed Milton’s arm tighter, smiling in the frosty air. They marched at a merry clip—Lexington Avenue still glittered with ice, but a giddy thaw hung in the air. Winter was halfway over, and all it took was one balmy gust to unleash spring’s woozy levity. They might end up bankrupt and disgraced, but spring was coming, and it looked bubbly and blonde and dizzy with promise. Like a bottle of champagne straight from the freezer—the one you were saving for Sunday but open on Tuesday. Because you no longer feel worried and woolen—just clear, smooth, and synthetic as a Lucite bauble. Because of the creamy camellias in the Liz Arden window. Because you’re going to share the bottle with your best friend—the one who makes you curious as a teenager, and you want that high to last all night, all week. You want it to last forever.
Were they foolish? Many were impressed by their boldness, but few actually believed in them. “I don’t think Milton really knew how powerful these men were,” said their friend Jess Rand. “You could win the battle, but you never won the war.”
Four
Liquor, Literati, Lee Strasberg
“When she came to New York she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream.”
LEE STRASBERG
That winter, an unlikely friendship provided Marilyn with a welcome distraction. Novelist Carson McCullers had been holed up at the Gladstone for months, surviving on coffee, liquor, and cigarettes. At thirty-seven, Carson was eighty-five pounds, half paralyzed, and addicted to alcohol and “pinkies” (pills). Her husband had committed suicide the year before, and she herself had spent time in the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, where Marilyn would endure her own harrowing ordeal six years later.
Like Marilyn, Carson was dreamily feckless and struggled with practical things such as cooking and laundry—basically born for hotel living with its housekeeping, hors d’oeuvres, and room service. It was freezing that winter, and the two of them often sat in the lobby warming up over double shots of whiskey or cognac. Carson was never without her signature drink—the Sonny Boy, a Thermos of tea and sherry—with a flask of whiskey sloshing around in her purse just in case. On the party circuit she was known as an adorable show-off. She’d brandish her cane, outdrink everyone, then flounce home to drink more—leaving New York’s literati staggering off to sleep.
Through Carson, Marilyn met other prominent writers such as Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. By the time he met Marilyn, Truman was mascot of the ladies-who-lunch set, whispering over shrimp salad at the Plaza Hotel. Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, and C.Z. Guest flocked to him despite his backwoods pedigree. But Marilyn was no WASP-y swan—like Truman, she’d been abandoned by both parents, passed between relatives and foster homes. She was as lovely as Gloria and Babe but irreverent, passionate, and a true artist.
Marilyn and Truman both loathed LA and quickly bonded over their love of Manhattan. They’d stroll down Third Avenue, peering into antique stores, examining garnet rings and grandfather clocks. On a whim they once popped in a palm reader’s shop, then fled at the sight of a beaky lady knitting baby-booties. He’d take her to the Oak Room for drinks and discuss his new project: Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Or they’d go to the Waldorf but never P.J. Clarke’s—Dorothy Kilgallen was always in there, as Marilyn put it, “getting bombed.”
Of course, Truman loved Marilyn—her Good Humor giggle, her “dairy-fresh” skin set off by those black slips that were quickly becoming her New York uniform. Both were talkers, charmers, champagne bunnies, and secret workaholics. Truman—a self-declared “horizontal writer”—shared Marilyn’s deceptively louche habits. He’d spend days supine, martini in hand, pounding his Corona typewriter like a drunk Little Lord Fauntleroy. He understood Marilyn’s messy perfectionism: unanswered telephones, tubes of Russian Red lipstick collecting lint in her purse. When you love your work so much, it spills into your life and makes you lose track of pills, appointments, lovers, and friends.
Unlike Marilyn, Truman gossiped—which married producer kept secret girlfriends and quite possibly boyfriends, too. The rumors often involved his “friends” or even Marilyn herself. Babe Paley was convinced that her husband—William S. Paley of CBS News—was sleeping with Marilyn. “She’s awfully jealous of you,” Truman baited with glee, leaning over their table of crab legs and daiquiris.
But Marilyn wasn’t interested in mean-spirited banter. She’d rather dig deep into individual personalities—especially Elizabeth Taylor’s. (“But what is she reeeally like,” she’d press.) She’d wave her hand to hush Truman when he tried to switch back to the sordid bits. “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything all,” she’d chime, with all the sweet sincerity in the world. (Capote would go on to pen a portrait of Marilyn that was druggy, vulgar, blowsy, and inane. Years later he’d boast that his snapshot was the best celebrity piece he ever did. Was he aware that he—like Arthur Miller, Darryl Zanuck, and so many other men to come—was selling her out?)
Through Truman, Marilyn met her first New York drama coach, the renowned Shakespearean actress Constance Collier. Born in 1878, she made her stage debut at three as Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She’d started out as a Gaiety Girl before moving on to dramatic theater. By the 1930s she was living in New York, throwing lesbian lunches, holding court like a Parisian salonnière, telling tales of her engagement to Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, or nights carousing with Oscar Wilde. Everything about Miss Collier—from her wicked humor to her witchy black wraps and velveteen toques—seemed steeped in Edwardian London, as if she’d stepped off the Apollo stage and right onto Madison Avenue.
For the past two decades, Miss Collier had been coaching Vivien Leigh, Greta Garbo, and both Hepburns. Marilyn would never resemble the Katharines and the Audreys, with their finespun cheekbones and aristocratic chins, their respectable measurements and invisible cleavage, the ones who cast an admiring hush at award ceremonies, graciously accepting their Oscars in mellow tones. They were never breathless or overexcited, never needed colonics to squeeze into their dresses, were never side-eyed by Zsa Zsa Gabor or slut-shamed by Joan Crawford. (Nor did they inspire Jerry Lewis to crawl onstage at the Redbook Film Awards, baying like a teenage monkey.) With her pancake face and sugar lisp, Marilyn couldn’t play patrician if she tried. Her soft-serve figure was too ripe to glide into English riding jodhpurs. She’d look better snapped in a polyester frock pouring coffee at Howard Johnson’s or draped in showgirl boas handing out poker chips at the Lido. Could Miss Collier accept a starlet into her rarified fold?
“She had seen none of Marilyn’s movies,” wrote Truman, who loved to push together polar opposites, then watch them combust or fall in love. “She really knew nothing about her except that she was some sort of platinum sex-explosion who had achieved global notoriety; in short, she seemed hardly suitable clay for Miss Collier’s stern classical shaping. But I thought they might make a stimulating combination.”
This time Truman got it right—it was love at first sight. Perhaps it was her music hall past, but Constance adored Marilyn immediately. (According to Amy Greene, she once tried to seduce Marilyn at a dance.) She fawned over her, called her “my special problem,” and compared her talent to a fluttering butterfly. Marilyn’s technical training was irrelevant to her—what mattered was that “flickering intelligence … like a hummingbird in flight.” At nearly eighty, Miss Collier’s eyesight was weak, and all she could see of Marilyn was her fuzzy blonde halo—a blur of bright butter glittering in the gloom.
For her part, Marilyn loved Miss Collier, just as she loved all “tough old grannies.” Even her murky parlor—oil rich and dark as the Tintoretto paintings she adored. Between lessons at Miss Collier’s and nightcaps with Carson in the Gladstone lobby, Marilyn found solace in Victorian gloom, a welcome tonic to Hollywood’s saccharine flash.
They worked on Ophelia—Constance thought she was made for the role: “I was talking to Greta last week, and I told her about Marilyn’s Ophelia, and Greta said yes, she could believe that because she had seen two of her films, very bad and vulgar stuff, but nevertheless she had glimpsed Marilyn’s possibilities. Actually, Greta has an amusing idea. You know that she wants to make a film of Dorian Gray? With her playing Dorian, of course. Well, she said she would like to have Marilyn opposite her as one of the girls Dorian seduces and destroys. Greta!”
Marilyn longed to meet Collier’s celebrated femmes, especially Katharine Hepburn. “I’d love to just call her up,” she confessed to Capote. But she was insecure—she was still just a movie star, not a real actress, not yet. In a matter of days, this would change.
* * *
On February 1, Carson McCullers took Marilyn to a dinner party hosted by Paul Bigelow. A self-dubbed “professional catalyst,” Bigelow was known for making things happen, and could be a powerful ally for Marilyn if he liked her. Theater producer Cheryl Crawford would also be attending, another potential advocate and a close friend of Carson’s. Thin-lipped and flinty, Cheryl was Broadway’s hard-tack captain. She’d done Porgy and Bess, Brigadoon, and Tennessee Williams’s Rose Tattoo. Most importantly, Cheryl was a founder of the Actors Studio, the prestigious workshop based on the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski. Shelley Winters, Marlon Brando, and Maureen Stapleton were all members, and Marilyn hoped to join them.
Still skittish around such high-powered figures, she begged Milton to meet her for moral support. After her recent spate of bad publicity, Marilyn was wary of how she came off and was sensitive to any slight or snark. Broadway often looked down on Hollywood types, especially comedy blondes with kitschy-vamp walks. How would Cheryl—in her masculine ascots, close-cropped hair, and sensible shoes—respond to a starlet like her? Worse yet, Cheryl was a close friend of Charlie Feldman’s, the agent Marilyn had split with in December. Marilyn wanted to bail on the party, but Carson McCullers bucked her up with double whiskeys by the fire. Liquor-warmed and bundled up, they set off for Paul’s home on East 54th, a skinny brownstone crammed between the Elmo and a prosthetic-limb shop.
As luck would have it, Marilyn was seated opposite Cheryl Crawford, who immediately started questioning her about her dealings with Feldman. When Milton piped up in Marilyn’s defense, Cheryl lashed back, calling him “evil and just no good.”
With Milton stunned into silence, Marilyn was forced to speak for herself: Feldman hadn’t fought hard enough for the creative input she needed and was miffed when she wasn’t satisfied with less. As a woman who’d clawed her way up in a field ruled by men, Cheryl could sympathize.
Somehow, the unthinkable had happened—Marilyn had melted the implacable Cheryl Crawford. After dinner, the two women huddled up in a happy chat about acting. Cheryl vowed to advance Marilyn’s career. They made a date for the following day. Cheryl would take Marilyn to observe her first session at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.
At nine thirty-five the next morning, Cheryl met Marilyn at the Gladstone Hotel. They took a crosstown cab to West 46th—Cheryl in tailored wool, Marilyn in her mink, sunglasses, and black scarf—and slipped in through the back entrance. Marilyn lowered her dark glasses in awe—it was as if she had stepped into an unfinished cathedral. Perched attentively on rickety-crammed chairs, this group looked more French Resistance than Chateau Marmont. There was Marlon Brando in his tight-rolled white tee and loafers, Jack Lord in a dark pullover and fluffy pompadour, Kim Stanley and Anne Jackson in simple skirts and blouses in creams and blacks. They sat in rapt attention, lit cigarettes, and drank coffee in a ritual hush, all in thrall to their mentor, Lee Strasberg.
Cigarettes ashed out and coffee went cold while Lee stalked the room in his billowy blazers—like some seductive monk beguiling his flock with the promise of enlightenment. He spoke of the “choice” of art and “the supreme essence of feeling.” The actor creates her own imaginary realities; she must inhabit the role to coax it to life. Actors, not directors, force scenes into being, and the actor creates with her own flesh and blood. He stressed feeling over reason, urging his students to look endlessly inward. “If you start with logic,” Lee warned, “you might as well give up.” This was the validation she’d been desperately searching for. Far from Hollywood’s glitterati in a cold little room on West 46th Street, Marilyn had finally found her Shangri-la.
Immediately, Marilyn arranged a meeting with Lee. Within days, she was dining at his home on Central Park West. She left the meeting with clear goals—and, perhaps more importantly, structure. One of Lee’s requirements for his students was therapy, a task Marilyn embraced wholeheartedly—she’d been deep into Freud for years. Five times a week she saw Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, a Hungarian psychiatrist with blonde braids wrapped in a crown round her head. Three nights a week Strasberg coached her alone in his Midtown apartment—she was still too shy to attend regular workshops. Marilyn’s days went from haphazard to highly scheduled, and the aimless anxiety of the previous weeks began to dissipate.
Already, Marilyn was far from the lost little girl she’d been in LA. She had a suite in Manhattan, supportive friends, two renowned acting coaches, and a good-natured analyst who looked like a buxom milkmaid. She had house calls from stylist Richard Caruso, crates of unopened Chanel No 5, and Seventh Avenue dressmakers churning out slips by the dozen. She had dinners at Sardi’s, cocktails with Capote, and wintry nightcaps with Carson McCullers. She had plans to play Ophelia and had an entrée into the Actors Studio. She had her own production company. She had Milton Greene and the creative alliance of her dreams.
