The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

All About Eve

Even though Marilyn knew she’d done a good job on The Asphalt Jungle, it wasn’t to be released for some time. Therefore, 1950 would be a year of great anticipation for her—and a certain amount of frustration as well.

In January, Marilyn filmed another awful movie that Johnny Hyde had secured for her, another bit part, this one in a roller-derby film, The Fireball, starring Mickey Rooney. Marilyn’s role was purely decorative, with only a few scenes and lines of dialogue. Another film that received little play at this time was a fluff movie Marilyn made that same season called Right Cross. This one was a boxing film from MGM starring the studio’s popular, peach-cheeked girl next door June Allyson and her husband Dick Powell. Marilyn was uncredited and mainly unnoticed in the tiny role of Dusky Ledoux, a bar girl who has a brief encounter with Powell’s character. Then, in the spring of 1950, Marilyn was jettisoned into yet another mediocre movie called Home Town Story. The less said about this one the better—though it did resurface abroad as a curiosity after her death. In it, Marilyn has a two-minute scene as a receptionist in a newspaper office.

Johnny Hyde’s rationale for having Marilyn make brief appearances in such terrible movies was that he hoped if she were seen enough onscreen, MGM might actually offer her a contract. That didn’t happen, though. In the meantime, Marilyn would end up spending most of her free time posing for ads, pinups, and photo essays—anything to make a living while she waited to break into what she was finding to be a very tough business.

Meanwhile, Johnny continued to squire Marilyn around town. Ironically, the power had shifted in their relationship. She had gone into it feeling that she needed him. Now, a year later, he was acting as if he needed her, and he seemed to want to do whatever he could think of to keep her happy lest she walk out on him. True, The Asphalt Jungle was important in retrospect because it showed what Marilyn was capable of, but it was such a brief role it went unnoticed by critics. (Later in the year, Johnny would book her in a TV commercial—her first and only—for a motor oil!)

In April of 1950, Johnny Hyde took Marilyn to meet writer and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was getting ready to mount a new film for Darryl Zanuck at Fox. It was All About Eve, and Mankiewicz cast Marilyn in a small but pivotal part based on the job she had done in The Asphalt Jungle. “I thought she was right for the role, which was of an aspiring theater actress,” he recalled many years later, “and Marilyn was nothing if not aspiring at the time. It was suggested that the character would do whatever she had to do to get ahead, and I sensed that in Marilyn there was a certain amount of cunning as well as the innocence. I found her a fascinating mix. On one hand, she was vulnerable. But, on the other, calculating. She knew what she was doing, that one. There was never a false move with her.”

The story of Eve, adapted from a Cosmopolitan short story, is well known—a ruthless, conniving ingénue, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), insinuates herself into the life and career of a legendary, aging Broadway star, Margo Channing (Bette Davis), wrecking the lives of all those she touches, as she claws her way to the very pinnacle of theatrical stardom. In two of three set pieces upon which the movie is based, Marilyn shone brilliantly and displayed the early promise she would later fulfill as a dominant screen personality for the next decade and a half. In a scene on the staircase at a birthday party in Margo’s apartment, she is seated in the center with most of the film’s stars seated or standing around her—Baxter, Gary Merrill, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Gregory Ratoff—and it is impossible to take your eyes off her, even when other characters are delivering their lines. As has been said a thousand times, the camera loves her, and so do we. In her other scene, in the lobby of a theater, she has just fallen victim to her nerves over an audition and has gotten sick in the ladies’ room. Her queasiness is unmistakable and we feel like pressing a cold towel to her forehead, her emotions spent, raw.

Today, All About Eve is recognized as one of the classic films of all time and certainly the best picture about the Broadway theater ever made. Entire books have been written about the movie, the best of these being More About All About Eve, by Sam Staggs. Anecdotes abound about this production, one of the best being that production was constantly held up due to Marilyn’s lateness. She simply could never be on time.

At any rate, when released, All About Eve would generate fourteen Oscar nominations. It would also hold the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ record for most nominations for a single picture until 1997, when James Cameron’s disaster epic Titanic received the same number of nods—with Titanic winning a total of eleven Oscars, while Eve earned six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Also, interestingly, the first and only appearance Marilyn would make at the Oscars—on March 29, 1951—was to present the award to Thomas Moulton for All About Eve for Best Sound Recording.

Considering her small part in All About Eve, one would think Marilyn would have done anything in her power to not be tardy, but that just wasn’t her way. One day, actor Gregory Ratoff declared of her, “That girl will be a big star!” Celeste Holm rolled her eyes and said, “Why, because she keeps everyone waiting?” Indeed, much has been made over the years about Marilyn’s penchant for being late. She was tardy for just about every appointment she made, whether it was work-related or just a coffee date with a friend. It didn’t matter the occasion, everyone in her life knew she would be late for it. It was a maddening habit, but because she was who she was, most people just put up with it. To be fair, she usually made it worth their while. One thing was certain: She did light up the room with her presence. “It’s not so much that I’m always late,” she once quipped, “it’s just that everybody else is in such a hurry!”