The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn’s Rebellion

The end of 1953 saw Marilyn Monroe close to total collapse. She had been working hard, the relationship with Joe DiMaggio was draining (though she would never think to leave him), she was still upset about Grace’s death, worried about Gladys, and now she was also having tremendous problems with 20th Century-Fox. The studio announced that her next movie was to be The Girl in Pink Tights. From the title alone, Marilyn felt that she was in for another dumb-blonde role, and she didn’t want to do it. If she had looked beyond the title, she would have discovered that it was a movie based on a recently closed Broadway musical of the same name starring French singer/dancer Zizi Jeanmaire. “Directors think all I have to do is wiggle a little, not act,” she complained to one reporter. To another, she was even more specific about her unhappiness. “I’m really eager to do something else,” she said. “Squeezing yourself to ooze out the last ounce of sex allure is terribly hard. I’d like to do roles like Julie in Bury the Dead, Gretchen in Faust and Teresa in Cradle Song. I don’t want to be a comedienne forever.”

Ever since the advent of sound movies, studio contractees were forced to take part in whatever movie was thrown at them by their studio, and they had to be happy about it. When it came to The Girl in Pink Tights, Marilyn displayed nerve and shrewdness unheard of at the time—she demanded to see the script. Darryl Zanuck, who had never made a secret of the fact that he didn’t like and, even more unfortunately, didn’t respect Marilyn, said that there was absolutely no way he would consider giving her script approval. She didn’t actually want “approval,” though—she just wanted to see the script. Of course, if she didn’t like it, she would then not want to do the movie. Zanuck said that the production was going to cost Fox more than two million dollars and that the role was “written and designed” for Marilyn. He couldn’t understand her problem. The Girl in Pink Tights obviously had not been “written and designed” for Marilyn, because the property had tried and failed on Broadway.

It got worse. When Marilyn found out that Frank Sinatra was making $5,000 a week to her $1,500, she became even more dissatisfied with Fox. “I’ve been in this business a long time, and I know what’s good for you,” one executive told her. Her response was, “I’ve been in this business a very short time, but I know what’s better for me than you do.”

Later, she would say of River of No Return and (the soon-to-be-filmed) There’s No Business Like Show Business, “I was put into these movies without being consulted at all, much against my wishes. I had no choice in the matter. Is that fair? I work hard, I take pride in my work, and I’m a human being like the rest of them. If I keep on with parts like the ones Fox has been giving me, the public will soon tire of me.”

At this same time, Marilyn began confiding in a very good friend, the excellent photographer Milton Greene (who would go on to take many of the most amazing photographs of her). She told him that she was very unhappy about the ridiculous amount of money Fox was paying her at this time—$1,500 a week. She said that the roles she was playing “are all the same, all dumb-blonde types with sex appeal,” and “it’s too much tedium. I’m sick of it.” Greene suggested that perhaps the two of them should start their own production company. She could then choose her own roles, select her own films, and work in tandem with the studio system instead of strictly for the system. Today, of course, major actors and actresses develop their own projects or, at the very least, cherry-pick their roles carefully to suit not only their tastes but also whatever image they have cultivated to present to their public. Most major stars have their own production companies through which such projects are developed and even financed. While the biggest male stars of that time did in fact have their own production companies—Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, and Burt Lancaster, to name a few—and thus exerted creative and financial control over their careers, that was not the case with female stars. But Marilyn Monroe was about to change that. This was the only way to go, and Marilyn and Milton had decided their goal would be to create their own company. They began discussing the matter with her attorneys. It was definitely one way to avoid the “dumb blonde” kind of movie.

Marilyn was supposed to report to work on December 15. She didn’t. When the studio sent executives to her home on Doheny to try to convince her to change her mind, they were met by an enraged Joe DiMaggio, who ordered them off the premises.

Joe and Marilyn were having their own problems at this time. He was still unhappy about the demands of her career. In his view, she wasn’t even the same woman he had met a year earlier. She was constantly distraught, run-down, anxious. She could not sleep without pills. Then she would be lethargic for much of the next day. He felt she needed a break—a long break. However, there was no chance of that happening anytime in the near future. She had a tight schedule of TV appearances, photo shoots, rehearsals, and, of course, movies.

“Joe was sick and tired of Marilyn’s career,” said Stacy Edwards, who was a sportswriter at the time in Philadelphia and knew Joe well. “I know he went with her to Canada when she made River of No Return. He called me from there to do an interview. ‘I hate it up here,’ he told me. ‘They treat her like she’s a princess and if you want to know my opinion,’ he said, ‘I think she’s getting to be too spoiled. She expects everyone to treat her like these people on these movie sets, and this ain’t real life.’ He said he wanted to get her out of the movies. ‘We’ll buy a nice home in San Francisco and just live a simpler life,’ he told me. I said, ‘Joe, are we talking about the same Marilyn Monroe—I mean, the movie star? Because she ain’t quittin’ the movies. She looks like she loves it too much for that.’ He said, ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.’

“I knew Joe and I knew what he was about deep down, and it wasn’t just Marilyn’s career. The attention she got, he was used to getting. When he walked into a room with her, he disappeared. He wasn’t used to that at all. He was used to being the center of attention. But with Marilyn, no man could ever be the center of attention. She drew focus wherever she went. Joe couldn’t accept that.”