The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Fired

When Marilyn Monroe returned to Los Angeles, she was scheduled to get back to work on the set of Something’s Got to Give. However, Dean Martin had a cold that day—May 29, 1962—and Marilyn felt that if she caught it she would not be able to work for the rest of the week, so she stayed home. “That, to me, was the funniest goddamn thing in the world,” said Mort Viner, Dean Martin’s manager. “This girl is home almost every day with some crazy sickness holding up the whole production. Then, the one day Dean has a cold, he goes to work anyway because he doesn’t want to let the cast down—and she doesn’t show up because she doesn’t want to catch his cold? That night, Dean and I had a good laugh about it. Dean said, ‘She’s got some nerve that one, you gotta hand it to her. When she doesn’t want to work, she will find a way to not work.’ ”

Marilyn did return to the studio the next day for what turned out to be an incredible day of shooting a nude scene in a swimming pool. It was the first time an American actress had ever done such a thing, and of course, it would be Marilyn doing it. The plan had been for her to wear a skin-colored bodysuit. However, she lasted a very short time in it until she took it off and decided to just be nude. The set was closed, however, with only those most required to be there allowed access. Footage from that day’s work reveals her to be in good spirits. Her body, toned and voluptuous, probably never looked better. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, certainly not a woman on the verge of turning thirty-six. Monroe historian Charles Casillo astutely observes, “It was part of the schizophrenic, contradictory view she had of herself at the time. Part of her was ready, even eager, to move into serious roles, yet another part of her realized what was still expected of her. She’d have to transcend gradually into the new image while still having to occasionally play to the legend. So if displaying her calendar girl figure would add a little fire to a mediocre movie and keep the public interested—buy her some more time—then she was willing. God, she felt like she needed a hit.”

Her friend the acting coach Michael Shaw, twenty-two at this time, saw her at the Fox studio and his comments show that Marilyn, when she did manage to get to the studio, was a pro: “I was studying with [acting coach] Sandy [Meisner] on the 20th lot and Marilyn came up to me in the parking lot, and said, ‘Peaches’—that’s what she called me—‘why don’t we meet and have lunch,’ ” he recalled. “She was wearing a pair of pedal pushers and a pair of flat shoes and a scarf and nobody paid her the slightest bit of attention because she looked like she was fourteen! She went to her dressing room, and said, ‘Well, time to put her together.’ She went into her dressing room and about forty minutes later… Marilyn Monroe walked out. It was just a total transformation. ^*

“So, we walked into the commissary. She stood in the doorway as we were waiting to go into the private section of the dining room. All of a sudden there was total, complete silence. People were in the process of eating. They had forks of food halfway up to their mouths and they stopped. She was such a knockout. She looked so great. She had lost weight, in the best health that I had seen. We had lunch. She seemed very excited about Joe DiMaggio again. I wanted to meet him. I had met him very informally. I was looking forward to seeing him again. I was a big DiMaggio fan. She said, ‘Well, then, we’ve got to have you over for dinner when I’m cooking…’

“Then, I guess it must have been a week or so later, a few of my classmates, we were at lunch in the commissary. Marilyn came in. She was wearing pink-and-white Capri pants with a matching top with a little white lace eyelet around the neck and the sleeve. She also had on white ballet slippers. She came over and greeted me with ‘Peaches!’ And she pulled me back in the chair, planted a big one on my mouth, and said, ‘I love this guy!’ Of course, I felt like a half million dollars! And, that was the last time I ever saw her.”

On Monday, May 28, Marilyn called in sick, again. Apparently, she’d had a very difficult weekend. It’s not known what happened, but any hope that she would be able to continue the kind of good work she’d done the last time she was at the studio was dashed. When she returned on Tuesday, she was in terrible shape, not really able to concentrate. Her thirty-sixth birthday was on June 1. There was a birthday cake for her on the set, which she appreciated, and that afternoon she made a charity appearance at Dodger Stadium. When she went home that night, things spiraled further downward. Later that night, Marilyn showed up at the Greensons’ home in such bad shape, his children didn’t know what to do with her. Dr. Greenson and his wife, Hildy, were on vacation in Rome.

“This woman was desperate,” Greenson’s son Danny recalled. “She couldn’t sleep and she said how terrible she felt about herself, how worthless she felt. She talked about being a waif, that she was ugly, that people were only nice to her for what they could get from her. She said life wasn’t worth living anymore.”

The doctor that Greenson had asked to cover for him while he was out of town rushed over to the house and felt that Marilyn was suicidal. He attempted to confiscate any pills she had and hoped she would be okay long enough for Dr. Greenson to return, which he did as soon as he heard how poorly his star client was faring.

After she missed yet another day of work, the cast and crew of the film were pretty much finished with her. Dr. Greenson met with the Fox executives to tell them that Marilyn would do whatever he wanted her to do, and he could guarantee that she would return to work. He wasn’t believed. On June 8, Fox fired her from the film and then filed a half-million-dollar lawsuit against her. Some thought it was George Cukor the studio should have gotten rid of, and perhaps with him gone Marilyn would have shown up for work. It was difficult to say, though, because she was so removed from reality at this time—especially off her Thorazine—that all bets were off. For instance, she wanted Cyd Charisse’s hair dyed a darker color since, in her view, there should only be one blonde in the movie and Charisse “unconscious wants it [her own hair] to be blonde.” Even more outrageous, Marilyn viewed the rushes of a bedroom scene between Dean Martin and Charisse, wearing a revealing negligee. She accused the actress of padding her bra and threatened to walk off the picture if the padding was not removed. It was another instance where Monroe’s paranoia surfaced; Cyd Charisse’s bra was not padded. In the end, Marilyn had showed up for only about a third of the movie’s production days thus far. The film was a million dollars over budget.

Naturally, Marilyn was upset about being fired. In her view she had been loyal to 20th Century-Fox for sixteen years and was now being treated without regard for the legitimate problems she faced in her life. In Fox’s view, those had not been sixteen good years. Yes, she made a great deal of money for the studio—and, truly, was underpaid in a way that even today seems shocking—but almost every movie she ever made caused so many problems for everyone involved that some people had begun to wonder if she were worth it. Of course, the same could be said for Elizabeth Taylor and practically every other actor and actress working in the business at that time. That said, Marilyn was a woman whose aspirations had always been very basic. All she ever wanted was to be an actress and to be good at it. Oh… and she wanted to be famous. That was about it. There was never a monetary motivation. Money and prestige meant pretty much nothing to her. The modest house she’d just bought is evidence of her simple and, really, very charming taste. How her dreams got so screwed up was probably beyond her comprehension at this time, especially given her mental illness.

Marilyn wouldn’t take it all without a fight, though. As soon as she was dismissed, she began to orchestrate a major campaign to make sure the public knew she was alive and well. Her public relations venture included a cover story in Life magazine that was, no doubt, the best and most thought-provoking interview she’d ever given. Richard Merryman had told her that he wanted to discuss not only the legend of Monroe, but also the woman. In what now seems like an eerily prescient moment, Marilyn quipped, “The legend may become extinct before publication day. Not the woman, but the legend.”

Reading the article today, one senses that Marilyn was such a nice, decent person, it makes her travails all the more tragic. She certainly wasn’t one of those celebrities who resented her success or her popularity. About her public, she told Life magazine’s Merryman, “In the morning the garbage men that go by 57th Street when I come out the door say, ‘Marilyn, hi! How do you feel this morning?’ To me, it’s an honor, and I love them for it. The workingmen—I’ll go by and they’ll whistle. At first, they whistle because they think, oh. It’s a girl, she’s got blonde hair and she’s not out of shape, and then they say, ‘Gosh, it’s Marilyn Monroe!’ And that has its—you know, those are the times it’s nice, people knowing who you are and all of that, and feeling that you’ve meant something to them.”

Of course, Marilyn being Marilyn, she also couldn’t resist the dramatic “exaggeration,” like this one: “Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night—up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it.” That likely never happened. But it’s a nice image, anyway.

However, regarding her feelings for Fox, she was very clear: “I think that when you are famous, every weakness is exaggerated. This industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. Like don’t you dare get a cold—how dare you get a cold! The executives can get colds and stay home forever, but how dare you, the actor, get a cold? You know, no one feels worse than the one who’s sick. I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection. I am not an actress who appears at a studio just for the purpose of discipline. This doesn’t have anything to do with art. I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work. But I’m there to give a performance and not be disciplined by a studio! After all, I’m not in military school. This is supposed to be an art form not just a manufacturing establishment. The sensitivity that helps me to act also makes me react. An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?”

She would also do her first layout for Vogue, with excellent photos by Bert Stern. It must have rankled her, though, that he wanted her to pose nude. She was trying to break away from that cheesecake image, or so she kept saying. Was she really, though? After the skinny-dip scene in Something’s Got to Give… maybe not. It’s clear that she was very confused at this point as to what her image was to be, and where she should draw the line. Some of the partially nude shots she took with Stern are stunning, though. Others, not so much. In those, she definitely looks exhausted, troubled, and not well. She even looks older, and that was unusual for her. She ended up doing more shots for Vogue, these in high-fashion wear and in moody black-and-white. However, even in that sitting, Stern somehow managed to get her to take off her clothes for more nude shots, this time draped with a sheet in a hotel bed. In the end, Vogue chose to publish the black-and-white fashion shots—a very wise (and gracious) choice.

As for the movie? The studio decided to replace Marilyn in Something’s Got to Give with actress Lee Remick. “That was the end of it as far as Dean was concerned,” said Mort Viner. “He called me and said, ‘Get me the hell out of this movie. Jesus Christ, this is the biggest three-ring circus in show business and I’m the clown in the middle of it all.’ So we referenced a clause in his deal that said he would only work with Marilyn. And he quit the film saying, ‘No Marilyn. No Dean.’ It was bullshit, really. The real reason is that he didn’t want to start over with another actress and do all that work, again, on a movie that was not that great to begin with. He felt bad for the crew. A lot of people worked hard on that goddamn movie. It was a shame. But it was jinxed from the start. On the very first day she didn’t show up for work, the very first day, Dean said, ‘That’s it. This picture will not get made.’ ”

In 1995, Dean Martin recalled, “I met Marilyn in 1953, before she met Frank, before she met Peter, before she knew any of us. I met her before she was all screwed up, so I knew what she was like then and what she had become, and I felt badly for the kid. At the same time, I was a little tired of all the bullshit. There was only so much you could take. In fact, no one had an easy life. We were all screwed up in our own ways. We all had problems. We were all doing drugs, let’s face it. I was no saint, either. But I showed up for work. You had to show up for work. That was the priority. You had to be glad you had a job and you had to show up for work. I’m not saying she wasn’t sick all of those days. Who knows? I wasn’t following her around like the FBI, I was just sitting on my ass waiting for her to show up at the studio. So, when I had my chance to get out, I did. However, the few scenes we did, I enjoyed, but getting to them… oh my God, I mean, the takes, one after the other, it would drive any man crazy. But… look… I liked her. She was a good kid. But when you looked into her eyes, there was nothing there. No warmth. No life. It was all illusion. She looked great on film, yeah. But in person… she was a ghost.”