The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

There’s No Business Like Show Business

In March 1954, Marilyn Monroe’s victory against Fox seemed complete when the studio decided that she didn’t have to appear in Pink Tights. Instead, they offered her a supporting role in There’s No Business Like Show Business. She was also scheduled to appear in a more major role in The Seven Year Itch. Plus, the studio promised to give her a new contract in August and a huge $100,000 bonus. It definitely seemed as if Darryl Zanuck had blinked—or, at the very least, realized that he had a good thing in Marilyn Monroe and didn’t want to lose her.

Marilyn began work on There’s No Business like Show Business in May. This big, splashy musical all dressed up in CinemaScope, stereophonic sound, and color by Technicolor, with its star-heavy cast, classic tunes from the Irving Berlin songbook, and Oscar-nominated costumes, had “blockbuster” written all over it. After all, it would star Ethel Merman, Donald O’Connor, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, and pop singer Johnnie Ray. In these waning days of the big studio musical, Fox’s decision makers knew it lacked the one ingredient that would send moviegoers stampeding through the nation’s theater turnstiles: Marilyn Monroe. And though the part was not even yet written into the script, it was added with Marilyn specifically in mind after the Pink Tights debacle.

To lift a line from the film’s title song in describing the movie, “Everything about it is appealing.” It clocks in at 117 minutes and with sixteen musical numbers, at least half of them so elaborately staged, it’s hard to imagine that anything comparable would be possible today—even with CGI (computer graphics and imaging). The film chronicles the saga of the Donahue family, both on and off the stage, from 1919 to 1942. As evidenced by a whole slew of successful movie musicals, from Hollywood’s Golden Age up to the mid-sixties, stories about showbiz families were audience favorites—from the Cohans and the Foys to Gypsy Rose Lee and the von Trapps—and it didn’t seem to matter if the stories were true or not.

Terry and Molly Donahue (Dailey and Merman), vaudeville headliners, incorporate their three kids, one by one, into their act from toddlerhood to teenager. The first time we see all five Donahues performing together is at the New York Hippodrome in an overwrought and overlong production of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” We are soon treated to the sight of Marilyn in an abbreviated French maid’s costume as she makes her first appearance—as Victoria Hoffman, a nightclub hat checker. Two minutes later, she is auditioning for producer Lew Harris, singing and dancing to “After You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It).” Dressed in a white, see-through, skin-revealing gossamer gown, with embroidered, jewel-studded appliqués strategically placed on the slit-to-the-hip, formfitting costume, and wearing a crown of snowy egret hackle feathers, Marilyn is breathtakingly beautiful.

The film unfolds as complex relationships evolve between Victoria and the Donahues. Tears and heartbreak give way to reconciliation and apologies all around—and then a big number for the Five Donahues, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” That number segues into “There’s No Business like Show Business,” with the Five Donahues and Vicky descending an imposing staircase, marching in unison and singing in harmony. Merman is in a draped, strapless white evening gown. Gaynor is gorgeous in a slinky red floor-length gown. And Monroe is elegant in a silver-sequin-spangled, powder blue number with a modest décolletage. Of course, she is—as always on film—dazzling. There is much to admire in this film, with Marilyn more than holding her own with old pros Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, and Donald O’Connor.

However, the shoot was fraught with problems, mostly from Marilyn. She was ill with bronchitis for part of it and was also diagnosed with anemia. Moreover, her growing addiction to sleeping pills and barbiturates had become a real issue in her life, affecting her performance. She was sluggish and unhappy most of the time. Naturally, she was also late very often.

Natasha Lytess—who was on the set with Marilyn every day, of course—later claimed that Joe was beating Marilyn during this period and that Marilyn had confided in her details of the terrible confrontations. It would be difficult to trust Lytess’s word given her animosity toward DiMaggio, but others close to Marilyn concur—and even some close to Joe. “He was smacking her around, yes,” said one of his closest friends. “He didn’t seem too ashamed of it, either. He said that she brought the worst out in him, that he wasn’t usually that kind of man. He said she was spoiled and very self-centered and it drove him crazy. He told me he was sick of coddling her, tired of her ‘woe is me stories,’ as he put it. I said, ‘Joe, maybe you two should get divorced.’ He looked at me as if I was crazy. ‘I ain’t letting her go,’ he said. ‘Hell if I’m letting her go.’ ”

In marrying Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn may have repeated a pattern in her life of becoming fixated on a man who would not support her desires or her ambitions. The concensus is that he was physically abusive to her. He also could be insensitive and dense. For instance, Marilyn once gave him a gold medal as a gift that she’d had inscribed with a quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “True love is visible not to the eyes, but to the heart, for eyes may be deceived.” He took one look at it and said, “What the hell does this mean?”

“When he came onto the set of Show Business, it happened to be the day we were doing Marilyn’s big ‘Heat Wave’ number. She had worked so hard on it with [her vocal coach] Hal Schaeffer, and I know she was proud of it. He just stood there, a big lug of a man, so unpleasant and unsupportive,” said one person who worked on the movie’s production team. “She would come in with bruises here and there that they would cover with makeup. If you cared about Marilyn, and I think everyone there really did, you wanted to say to her, ‘Dump this guy. Now!’ You just wanted to hold her and keep her safe, that’s the way she affected you.”