Marilyn Monroe Read online

  Everything changed for Marilyn, however, at Sam Spiegel’s New Year’s Eve party in Beverly Hills on December 31, 1948. Recently, Marilyn had established herself as one of the producer’s “house girls.” Spiegel’s parties were famous for—in the words of Orson Welles—“the best delicatessen and the best whores” in town. Indeed, some of the “house girls” were actually prostitutes hired by Spiegel to entertain his guests; others were starlets who hoped to advance their careers by catering to the needs of Spiegel’s rich and powerful friends. An invitation to Spiegel’s New Year’s Eve gala was one of the hottest tickets in Hollywood. That year, the guests included the directors Otto Preminger, William Wyler, John Huston, Henry Hathaway, Jean Negulesco, Anatole Litvak, and many others.

  One prominent guest, Johnny Hyde, was not in the best of moods that night. Two weeks before, his most important female client, Rita Hayworth, had sailed to Europe with Prince Aly Khan; at this point, it looked as if she had no intention of ever coming back. Harry Cohn, who had Hayworth under contract, was fuming. As Hyde entered Spiegel’s house on North Crescent Drive, he seemed preoccupied and even a bit melancholy. Then he spotted Marilyn seated on a barstool across the room, and his demeanor changed entirely. Hyde, who had discovered Lana Turner, had a famous eye for beauty. In a room crowded with directors and producers, he looked at Marilyn and saw what not one of them had even remotely perceived: the makings of a great star.

  Johnny Hyde was the first person, aside from Grace McKee, who saw Marilyn as she saw herself. But Johnny, unlike Grace, had the power to make Marilyn’s dream a reality. And, despite his poor health, he had the will to keep pushing until others saw her as he did. Johnny’s close friendships with many of the most important men in the film industry made it inevitable that eventually he would be able to force one of them to give Marilyn a chance.

  The week after Spiegel’s party, Hyde invited Marilyn to Palm Springs for a few days. By the time they came back, the little fellow with a taste for tall blondes had fallen hopelessly in love. That was another thing that made Johnny different from anyone Marilyn had ever known in Hollywood. He sincerely cared for her. Certain of his friends and associates laughed that he was obsessed.

  Soon, Johnny was taking Marilyn everywhere, in an effort to be certain people saw her. If he had lunch with a client at Romanoff’s, more often than not Marilyn would be at his side. If he played poker with the boys, Marilyn would be nearby reading a book. At the card table, he used every opportunity to hint to friends like John Huston and William Wyler that they ought to give the kid a chance. On visits to film studios, Hyde carried a silver film tin containing Marilyn Monroe footage under his arm. “You’ll see! They’ll all see!” he declared. “This kid has really got it. It’s not just her looks, although everybody admits she’s a knockout, but she’s got the spirit. And she’s funny. And a hell of an actress. And what’s more important, she wants to do it. She wants to get there and be somebody.” Still, no matter how powerful or well-connected Johnny might be, for some time none of his friends was willing to listen.

  For her part, Marilyn listened very carefully when Johnny explained his strategy to her. She absorbed all he said. He didn’t want to put her in just any film. The kind of “nothing” pictures she had already done would never make her a star. She could appear in a great many such films and still go nowhere. Johnny believed that for Marilyn to realize her dream, she needed a part that would get her noticed. It didn’t have to be a large role, just an interesting one, in a picture by an important director.

  Finally, Hyde’s persistence paid off. With Sam Spiegel’s help, he persuaded John Huston to let Marilyn read for a role in his new film. That was the break they had been waiting for. The Asphalt Jungle proved Johnny correct. In due course, some of the very men who had overlooked Marilyn at Hollywood parties were interested in using her. At Johnny’s urging, Joseph Mankiewicz viewed a rough cut of Huston’s film in early 1950; he promptly offered Marilyn a tiny role in All About Eve. Howard Hawks, once so scornful of Marilyn, fired off a telegram congratulating Huston on his discovery of “the girl.” As Johnny never tired of reminding Marilyn, The Asphalt Jungle was the first of her films that mattered.

  All About Eve was the second. On the basis of the rushes, Darryl Zanuck agreed to take her back at Twentieth Century–Fox. Hyde negotiated a new seven-year contract that went into effect on May 11, 1950. That same month, the release of The Asphalt Jungle signaled that Marilyn’s career had taken off. From here on, Johnny assured her, everything was going to be very different.

  But there was a problem. Johnny wanted something in exchange for all that he had done. He wanted Marilyn to be his wife. Marilyn refused. She was perfectly willing to sleep with little Johnny, but she wouldn’t consider marriage to a man she did not love. He pleaded; he threatened; he cajoled. He warned that without his help, Marilyn would soon be right back on her ass with all the other girls. Again and again, Johnny threw her out, then took her back in the next day.

  By the time All About Eve was released in October 1950, Johnny was gravely ill. A doctor had warned him that his sexual relationship with Marilyn was a strain on his already weak heart. Johnny replied that he would rather die than give her up. Mortified by Marilyn’s refusal to marry him, he asked Joe Schenck to try to change her mind. Uncle Joe took a practical approach: He informed Marilyn that Johnny was unlikely to live much longer and urged her to marry for her own good. As Mrs. Hyde, she would inherit his palatial home on North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills and much else that he owned.

  Still, Marilyn said no. It wasn’t money that Marilyn wanted in life but respect; and who would respect a girl if she married a man she didn’t love just to be sure she inherited his estate? Yet even as Marilyn said all this, she could not quite bring herself to accept that Johnny really was about to die. And she certainly didn’t think it would happen so soon.

  Two months later, all at once Marilyn was alone. Yet again, her career screeched to a halt. Yet again, she had no one to turn to. For a time, it seemed to Marilyn that without Johnny she was helpless. Everything good that had happened recently—the films with Huston and Mankiewicz, the new studio contract—had been due to his connections. Marilyn had paid attention to all that Johnny had said. She understood his plan for her. But on her own, Marilyn had no access to the A-list directors Johnny insisted she needed in order to become a star.

  When she and Kazan saw Arthur Miller off at the airport in January of 1951, there was not really any question of what Marilyn must do next. Whatever her feelings for Miller, she knew that Kazan was her main chance. Marilyn was prepared to hold onto Kazan in whatever way she could.

  The Beverly-Carlton on West Olympic Boulevard had a reputation as a good second-rate hotel where screenwriters took up residence when the studio was not paying the bill. Across the street, an annex offered four apartments on the second floor. Marilyn moved there when Arthur Miller went to New York. She gave no explanation to her roommate and dramatic coach, Natasha Lytess, who guessed that Marilyn required privacy because she was seeing a new man.

  The bed, which dominated the tiny studio apartment, was actually a fold-out sofa covered in a nubby beige fabric. Marilyn almost never made it up as a sofa. There were plump, block-shaped bolsters along one gray wall beneath a large unframed mirror. Two low, light wood bookcases, crammed with books and pictures, served as a headboard. On one shelf was the slender red edition of Death of a Salesman that Miller had given her. There was a copy of Focus, his novel about anti-Semitism. There was a copy of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, a play which Miller had recently adapted for Broadway. Directly over the place where Marilyn slept on a tufted, white satin comforter, a black-and-white photograph of Miller’s gaunt face leaned against some books on the lower shelf. She expected him to return soon.

  Harry Cohn, nervous about the politics of Miller’s screenplay, had submitted it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for review. He also consulted the labor leader Roy Brewer, of the International Alli
ance of Stage Employees. In sending The Hook out to be vetted, Cohn was almost certainly motivated less by patriotism than by economics. Films that were politically suspect, whether by virtue of their content or of the leftist backgrounds of the people who made them, ran the risk of being boycotted by patriotic and religious groups. The image of pickets at the box office was enough to put off any studio executive. Presumably, Roy Brewer could advise Miller and Kazan on potential problems in the script. Brewer was soon to testify at HUAC on the Communist conspiracy to seize control of the Hollywood labor unions.

  Marilyn believed that Miller had gone to New York solely in order to finish The Hook. He had been unable to concentrate in Los Angeles. He worked best in a swivel chair at the cluttered desk in his cozy study in Brooklyn or in the ten-by-twelve-foot shack he had built with his own hands on his country property in Connecticut, where he had written Death of a Salesman. The moral crisis that, in reality, had sent Miller rushing back to New York would only have made him more attractive to Marilyn. She loved that he hadn’t tried to sleep with her, though he clearly wanted to. She was drawn to him precisely because he was a man of conscience. She longed to have someone to look up to. As a moral figure, he seemed capable of absolving her of all she was ashamed of in her past. If he could love her, perhaps she really was worthy of respect. Marilyn, pretending it came from Harry Cohn’s secretary, sent a telegram instructing Miller to finish his screenplay and return to Los Angeles.

  Meanwhile, she slept with Kazan, who remained in town during February to work on A Streetcar Named Desire. Their sexual relationship did not end now that she had become preoccupied with Arthur Miller. In a curious way, it actually seemed to have intensified. Kazan was precisely the kind of director Johnny had said Marilyn needed. But if she pushed too hard, she might lose him. Kazan had fled once before, when he passed her on to Miller. This time, she had to keep his interest. And in the light of the fact that he knew how much she cared for Miller, she had to prevent his ego from being twisted out of joint; it certainly wouldn’t do for a man to think the only reason she was sleeping with him was to get a film role.

  Instead of hiding how she felt about Kazan’s friend, however, Marilyn talked about it openly and at length. She and Kazan endlessly discussed Miller. She created the impression that in Arthur’s absence, Kazan provided a vital link to his world. In a way, of course, he did. She told him what Arthur had said about being unhappy at home, and asked Kazan to help him. On at least one occasion, she even talked about Miller as Kazan made love to her. Miller, evidently, was in both their minds as they tangled on that bed. Afterward, Kazan found himself looking into Miller’s eyes on the bookshelf over Marilyn’s pillow. It may be that, perceiving the intensity of the men’s relationship, Marilyn talked on about Miller because she knew that was the sort of thing Kazan wanted to hear. But why, if she loved Miller, did she leave his photograph in view? Making love under Miller’s watchful eyes was every bit as much a gesture on her part as it was on Kazan’s. For all of her calculation, perhaps Marilyn, too, was turned on by the idea of the triangle.

  Back in New York, Kazan had a wife and children whom he had no intention of leaving. Studio publicity described him as “an ardent family man.” Nonetheless, in Los Angeles he went about openly with Marilyn. He told himself that their relationship was not serious. He told himself that he took a European attitude to such matters. Marilyn was great fun, Kazan believed, but she wasn’t cut out to be anybody’s wife.

  Usually, she played a happy girl for him. Yet there were times when she just couldn’t bring off the act anymore. There were times when, he sensed, she clung to him as if he were all she had. Kazan, for his part, certainly didn’t want any trouble. His marriage had nearly broken up over an affair with the actress Constance Dowling. Though he carried on with many girls, he did not want anything like that to happen again. He made a point of never telling a girl he loved her. Still, Marilyn discovered that Kazan could be tender and compassionate. He was a man of powerful silences. He might say nothing, yet he made his presence strongly felt. One night when she was in despair, Kazan held her in his arms, gently rocking her to sleep.

  For the most part, however, the relationship was keyed to Kazan’s needs. Marilyn accompanied him to business meetings at Feldman’s, waiting contentedly beside the pool until the men were done. She drove up to Santa Barbara with Kazan on February 15 for the test preview of Streetcar. The following evening, after dinner at Feldman’s, she and Kazan went on to Joe Schenck’s. In poor health, Schenck had been recuperating in Hawaii when Johnny Hyde passed away. By the time he returned to Los Angeles, Marilyn, to his dismay, had already taken up with Kazan.

  A stack of letters from Miller was accumulating next to his photograph on the shelf above Marilyn’s bed. She read by the light of a small, goose-necked lamp. Arthur remained unhappy at home, where he and his wife were on very bad terms. Mary, a lapsed Catholic, was appalled that he might so much as think about sleeping with another woman. And in Los Angeles, he had certainly been tempted. He could say nothing to convince his wife to give him, and the marriage, another chance. She simply refused to believe anything he said.

  Yet he had no plans to return to Los Angeles. Roy Brewer demanded that Miller change the union racketeers in his script to Communists. If Miller refused, Brewer threatened to call a strike of projectionists in order to prevent The Hook from ever being screened in the United States. Miller abruptly withdrew his script, refusing to make changes that struck him as absurd. Communists, he argued, were virtually nonexistent on the Brooklyn waterfront. He may also have been motivated by his own sensitivity to being subpoenaed by HUAC, Brewer having threatened to launch an investigation of both Miller and Kazan. It seemed to Kazan that the prospect filled Miller with panic.

  Though Miller had never been a Communist Party member, he had attended several Communist writers’ meetings in 1947. As Miller later disclosed to his attorney, he worried that some of the people who saw him there might have assumed he actually belonged to the Party during that period. Thus, if Miller testified truthfully that he had not been a Party member, there were individuals who, in the belief they were telling the truth, might come forward to say he was lying. He could find himself jailed for perjury. On the other hand, if Miller spoke frankly of his association with the Communist writers, HUAC would require him to establish credibility as a patriot by identifying others who had attended the meetings. That, as a matter of conscience, Miller would not do. As an unfriendly witness—that is, one who declined to name names—he could find himself held in contempt of Congress and imprisoned.

  It may be that Kazan, accustomed as he was to being master of his own fate, had arrived in Hollywood with a politically provocative script like The Hook as a way of taking charge, of deliberately causing a subpoena to be issued. The gesture would have been very much in keeping with his insolent, abrasive character. As it was, he was furious when Miller withdrew his script. Kazan had turned down Tennessee Williams’s play in order to work on The Hook. He had already devoted a good deal of time and effort to the project. He expected Miller to put up a fight.

  Miller preferred to write a new drama. His moral crisis over Marilyn Monroe provided fresh material. As he once said, he could not write about anything he understood completely; if an experience was finished, he couldn’t write it. He worked in his smoke-filled, third-floor study from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Posters for Death of a Salesman and All My Sons adorned the walls. A small bookcase overflowed with books. Children’s voices—the Millers had a small son and daughter—drifted in from other rooms. Frequently, Miller went back to work at night.

  In the months after returning from California, he started two plays, both featuring a wayward husband. The first drew on a true story Miller had heard on the Brooklyn waterfront as he researched The Hook. It tells of a married longshoreman who permits two brothers, Italians who have entered the country illegally, to live with him. One brother falls in love with the longshoreman’s orphaned niece, also living
in the apartment. The longshoreman, filled with incestuous desire for the young woman, betrays both men to the immigration authorities. That makes him a pariah in his community. When Miller had first heard the story several months previously, it hadn’t particularly seized his imagination. What did it have to do with him? But now, like the longshoreman, he had been stirred by illicit desire. He hadn’t acted on that desire, but he felt guilty all the same. He was part of a sexual triangle, one of two men drawn to the same woman. He knew what it was to think of another man with a woman he himself yearned for. He knew what it was to think of oneself as a betrayer. Yet still the material didn’t jell and Miller put “An Italian Tragedy” aside. He would return to it several years later.

  Marilyn, whom Miller had known for only a few days, hovered in his thoughts. She remained as much of a fantasy for him as he did for her. In a second work-in-progress, Miller wrote about a Marilyn-like woman of free and open sexuality. Lorraine, as he called her, bids men to abandon their wives and children, but those who are drawn to her come to an unhappy end. One character leaves his wife for Lorraine, who, faithless, later does the same to him. Another husband, protective of his social position, condemns himself to the safety of a cold and loveless marriage.