Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (58 page)

But neither columnists nor government agents went so far as to see any dark significance in one event that February: on March 12, Norma Jeane Mortensen (as she usually signed herself) at last legally became Marilyn Monroe. “I am an actress and I found my name a handicap,” she testified. “I have been using the name I wish to assume, Marilyn Monroe, for many years and I am now known professionally by that name.”

There were three other important formalities to certify, and they were quickly dispatched. First, after some grumbling from Milton—delivered, as usual in such delicate matters, through the mediation of Irving Stein—Marilyn assigned to Milton not the fifty-one percent in MMP he had requested, but two percent less, reserving control for herself. Had
Time’s
editors known this, it would have been their best evidence that she was indeed a “shrewd businesswoman.”

Second, Marilyn’s agents at MCA (in this matter monitored by chief executive Lew Wasserman himself) urged Greene and Stein to “shoot for the best deal, a quality distributor” for MMP’s forthcoming productions. Wasserman suggested Warner Bros. for the Olivier film. “Be conservative,” Wasserman cautioned Milton, “for if you reach for the moon and miss you will destroy Monroe Productions.” You deal with the distributors, Milton responded to Wasserman in several notes and calls. Good idea, replied Wasserman, adding ominously, “There are already uninvited cooks in the kitchen. Be careful. MMP has the flair for public relations, so we [i.e., Greene, Monroe and Wasserman] will tell the studio what to do.” The cooks, presumably, were studio executives elsewhere offering deals disapproved by Wasserman, whose corporate and political influence at this time (not to say in the decades to come) cannot be overstated.

Third, there was the matter of Marilyn’s will, which she signed on February 18 and which, as such things do, tells much about her sentiments early that year. Presuming an Estate valued at $200,000 (an arbitrary figure based mostly on hopes for the future), her bequests were: $20,000 to Dr. Margaret Herz Hohenberg; $25,000 to Lee and Paula Strasberg; $10,000 to Mrs. Michael Chekhov; $100,000 to Arthur Miller, “to be paid however is best for him tax-wise”; sufficient cash to cover sanitarium expenses for Gladys Baker Eley for the rest of her life (but not more than a total of $25,000); $10,000 to the Actors Studio; and $10,000 for the education of Patricia Rosten, daughter of Norman and Hedda.
¹
The signing complete, Irving then asked Marilyn if she had an idea for her tombstone motto: “Marilyn Monroe, Blonde,” she said, tracing lines in the air with a gloved finger and adding with a laugh, “37-23-36.”

*    *    *

Just before she departed for Hollywood and
Bus Stop
, Marilyn gathered up her courage and prepared to act onstage with Maureen Stapleton in part of the barroom scene from Eugene O’Neill’s
Anna Christie
. “This was really a brave thing for her,” said Stapleton 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! This meant that everyone in a professional audience came with an idea of how it should be done.

Marilyn was terrifically serious while they rehearsed, added Stapleton, a Broadway leading lady then best known for her success in Tennessee Williams’s
The Rose Tattoo:
“I found her intuitive, bright and attentive, though I could see she was absolutely terrified of this new experience.” Once, after concluding a rehearsal at the Studio, they shared a taxicab, arriving first at Marilyn’s apartment. Because they were so emotionally drained, the matter of sharing the fare took on the proportions of a scene from O’Neill himself. “Look,” Stapleton finally said, “if you don’t get out of this cab and go home and just let me pay, I’m finished with you
and
the scene!”

Distressed, Marilyn alighted, kept her money and watched the taxi depart. When Maureen entered her apartment soon after, her telephone was ringing. “You really don’t want to do the scene with me, do you?” Marilyn asked, her voice wavering. A few minutes were needed for the reassurance that Maureen was still a good friend and colleague and very much wanted to do the scene with Marilyn.

The night of the performance, February 17, Marilyn was nervous to the point of collapse, terrified she would stumble or forget her lines as she so often did before a camera. Maureen suggested that Marilyn put a copy of the script on a table, an acceptable custom at Studio workshops. “No, Maureen—if I do it this time I’ll do it for the rest of my life.”

Anna Christie was a good role for Marilyn, for the character is (thus the text) “a blond, fully developed girl of twenty, handsome but now run down in health and plainly showing all the outward evidences of belonging to the world’s oldest profession.” She comes to a waterfront
saloon in New York, sinks wearily into a chair and utters the opening line made immortal by Garbo in the 1931 film version—but spoken that night at the Actors Studio with a breathless urgency that made Anna pathetic as well as hardboiled: “Gimme a whisky—ginger ale on the side—and don’t be stingy, baby.”

After a friendly exchange with tough Marthy (Stapleton), Anna speaks of her childhood in words O’Neill could have written especially for Marilyn—and which those who attended the performance thought were delivered with almost painful authenticity:

“It’s my old man I got to meet, honest! It’s funny, too. I ain’t seen him since I was a kid—don’t even know what he looks like. . . . And I was thinking, maybe, seeing he ain’t ever done a thing for me in my life, he might be willing to stake me to a room and eats till I get rested up. But I ain’t expecting much from him. Give you a kick when you’re down, that’s what all men do.”

Of that evening, Marilyn said not long after,

I couldn’t see anything before I went onstage. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t remember one line. All I wanted was to 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.

The result, according to most people present, was astonishing. Anna Sten found her “very deep and very lovely, giving and taking at the same time—and that’s a very rare quality.” Kim Stanley remembered that spectators “were taught never to clap at the Actors Studio, like we were in church, but it was the first time I’d ever heard applause there.” As for Lee and Paula, they were ecstatic, and later at their apartment—while Marilyn wept over what she considered her unworthy performance—they hailed her as the greatest new talent of the decade, which she must have realized was glitteringly hyperbolic. This sort of praise she rightly rejected, but something in her wanted to believe it, and that caused damage enough, as events would soon disclose.

Robert Schneiderman, on the teaching staff at the Studio at the time, recalled that Marilyn was “often brilliant when she performed [in scene-studies], but when she finished a role she would collapse in tears, although she was told she had been right on target or sustained a character
perfectly. Marilyn had low self-esteem but she was really an excellent actress and constantly strove to be better.”

On February 25, Marilyn returned to Hollywood for the first time in over a year, accompanied by Amy and Milton Greene, their two-year-old son Joshua, and Irving Stein. At Los Angeles International Airport, Marilyn calmly and wittily fielded questions about her new company and, so it seemed, her new life: “When you left here last year you were dressed differently, Marilyn,” began one reporter. “Now you have a black dress and a high-necked blouse: is this the new Marilyn?” Resting a black-gloved hand on her chin, she needed no time to think: “No, I’m the same person—it’s just a new dress.”

She and the Greenes then proceeded to a rented house at 595 North Beverly Glen Boulevard in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, very near the University of California and close to Fox, where the interiors of
Bus Stop
were scheduled after location shooting in Phoenix, Arizona, and Sun Valley, Idaho. For leasing a nine-room home belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Lushing, MMP paid $950 per month.

Four days later, however, there was a more serious public appearance, although it, too, had its light moments. On November 21, 1954, a Los Angeles police officer had cited Marilyn for driving along Sunset Boulevard without a license, but because she was in New York she had failed to appear in court that winter. Now that the matter was to be settled, dozens of reporters, photographers and television cameramen greeted her and Irving Stein at the Beverly Hills City Hall.

“You may have the idea that this is good publicity,” rumbled Judge Charles J. Griffin, warming to his momentary place in the sun.

“I’m very sorry,” Marilyn replied in a clear voice. “It isn’t at all the kind of publicity I want.”

“Well,” continued the judge, “it isn’t the type that will win you an Oscar.” He continued somewhat loftily, making a little speech about laws being for everyone, the true nature of democracy—almost everything but an exegesis of the Gettysburg Address. At last, somewhat more gently, he concluded: “I would suggest, Miss Monroe, that in the future I would much rather pay to go and see you perform than have you pay to come and see me.” Irving paid the fifty-five-dollar fine, and they departed. Outside, she could not resist answering a few questions: “I couldn’t get a word in edgewise in there!” she said. “Apparently
the judge didn’t know I’ve been away for a year. But don’t get me wrong, boys. I don’t really believe in ignoring traffic citations.”

In all these appearances, people noted, there was indeed a new Marilyn, a woman more poised, with more self-confidence and assurance than before: so much was confirmed by a number of reporters to whom she granted interviews in February and March, among them writers for
McCall’s, Modern Screen, Harper’s Bazaar, The Saturday Evening Post, Movieland
and
The Toronto Star
. “She seemed content and more serious than ever before,” according to Allan Snyder, with whom she had a happy reunion. But her manner on a movie set remained to be assessed.

The usual personal dramatic scenarios continued. Informed of Marilyn’s return to Los Angeles, Natasha Lytess tried desperately to contact her. A dozen telephone calls and several hand-delivered letters came to Beverly Glen within the first week of Marilyn’s return, but she ignored them, having quietly replaced Natasha with Paula Strasberg just as she had dropped Famous Artists and signed on with MCA. But here there was a poignant twist, for Natasha had been stricken with cancer and was no longer able to work at Fox. Entirely dependent on her work with private students, she hoped to resume with Marilyn.

Marilyn’s lack of response confused and hurt Natasha deeply, and then, on March 3, she received a telephone call from Irving Stein:

I identified myself as Marilyn Monroe’s lawyer and instructed her firmly not to call Marilyn Monroe or visit or attempt to see Marilyn Monroe. These instructions must be obeyed to avoid trouble. Natasha, whom I’d never met, called me “Darling” and asked if I’d listen. The following are exact quotes: “My only protection in the world is Marilyn Monroe. I created this girl—I fought for her—I was always the heavy on the set. I was frantic when I called the house and she would not speak to me. I am her private property, she knows that. Her faith and security are mine. I’m not financially protected, but she is. Twentieth told me on Friday, ‘You don’t have your protection any more, we don’t need you.’ . . . But my job means my life. I’m not a well person. I would like very much to see her even with you if only for one half-hour.” I told her no. Marilyn wouldn’t and didn’t intercede and we didn’t want to speak to or see her. I told her she must not call Marilyn or I would have to use other means to stop her.

“In Marilyn’s powerful position,” Natasha said a few years later, “she had only to crook her finger for me to keep my job at the studio. Had she any sense of gratitude for my contribution to her life, she could have saved my job.” With this statement it is impossible to disagree, for however thorny the relationship had been, Natasha was always available to Marilyn.

In great emotional and physical pain, Natasha arrived unannounced at Beverly Glen on March 5. Lew Wasserman, present for a meeting with Milton, answered the bell, “barring my way, his arms stretched across the doorway. ‘Your engagement with the studio,’ he said, ‘is none of Miss Monroe’s concern.’ ” Natasha glanced up, and there at a second-story window was Marilyn, looking down at her without expression. “It was the last time I ever saw her,” Natasha said not long before her death. “Between us there was always a wall, and communication was impossible. I have wondered many times that I still care.” To everyone’s astonishment, Natasha Lytess outlived Marilyn, but after a long and bitter struggle she succumbed to cancer in 1964.

That Marilyn ignored so humble a plea, that she could have dictated a recommendation and did not, that she turned away from one who had negated herself to cater to Marilyn—all this remains a conundrum, an uncharacteristically inclement act of her life. But Natasha was, after all, a mother figure like Grace Goddard, and once again Marilyn—even while she was trying to create an entirely new life with a new set of colleagues—was perhaps primarily motivated by the subtle desire to reject Natasha before Natasha (by dying) withdrew from her. The entire scenario recalled the term of Grace’s relationship with Marilyn. Perhaps out of guilt for her unkindness to Natasha, Marilyn at once contacted Inez Melson, who was charged with the supervision of Gladys’s care, and then she called the office manager at Rockhaven Sanitarium. Her payments for Gladys’s care were indeed arriving regularly through Inez—three hundred dollars monthly.

As the starting date for
Bus Stop
approached, Milton Greene assumed the burden of details and finalized the production schedule. For a man
without an hour’s experience in such matters, he learned quickly and for the most part expertly. In all his tasks he was much assisted by Irving Stein, who ran interference with Marilyn: for the moment, she was indifferent to everything except what would affect her performance. But she also felt Milton’s assumption of so much responsibility gave him control of MMP—its long-range plans as well as daily decisions—and this aroused her suspicions.