The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Bus Stop

In February 1956, Marilyn Monroe returned to Los Angeles to begin work on her next film, Bus Stop. This would be the first co-production of her newly formed Marilyn Monroe Productions in partnership with 20th Century-Fox. Marilyn and MMP vice president Milton Greene and his wife, Amy, and their baby son, Joshua, rented a house in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. The next month, in March (the twelfth), she made it legal—her name, that is. Norma Jeane Mortensen officially became Marilyn Monroe. “I am an actress and I found my name a handicap,” she said in the hearing to finalize the name change. “I have been using the name I wish to assume, Marilyn Monroe, for many years and I am now known professionally by that name.”

In April, Bus Stop would begin shooting in Phoenix. Marilyn felt it would be her most important role—a big stretch for her as an actress—and she sought to do her best to make sure the powers that be at Fox were not sorry they had acquiesced to her contractual wishes. After scoring big with The Seven Year Itch, the studio honchos had wisely acquired the Tony Award–winning comedy of 1955, William Inge’s Bus Stop, for their new box-office queen. The Harold Clurman–directed play opened at the Music Box on March 2, 1956, and starred the redoubtable Kim Stanley as Cherie, the haunting, vocally challenged saloon singer. It ran for 478 performances and closed at the Winter Garden on April 21, 1957.

After Fox acquired the movie rights, it assigned George Axel-rod, author of The Seven Year Itch, to write the screenplay, which he adapted from Inge’s play. Broadway director Joshua Logan was then selected to guide the cast through its paces. For reasons unknown, the play’s setting was moved from Kansas City to Phoenix and Sun Valley–Ketchum, Idaho, for the movie’s exteriors, perhaps due to financial considerations. Joining Marilyn in the cast was Don Murray, making his film debut as the obnoxious, hunky cowboy Bo, a role for which he received an Oscar nomination. Besides theater vets George Axelrod and Josh Logan, the film’s casting director went to the Broadway talent pool for the supporting parts—Arthur O’Connell (Virgil), Betty Field (Grace), and Eileen Heckart (Vera).

The plot of Bus Stop can be summed up in just a few sentences: A macho, twenty-one-year-old cowboy, naïve to the ways of the world, travels from Montana to Arizona for a rodeo event and while there finds his “angel,” tarnished though she may be. She is turned off by his crude, clumsy attempts to woo her, her rejection making him only more determined. He kidnaps her and takes her on a bus ride back to his ranch, pulling into a bus stop along the way. She is horrified, but weakens when he reasons that with her (carnal) experiences with so many men and his lack of experience with even one woman, doesn’t that kind of average things out? “That’s the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me,” she sobs to him, as she accepts his marriage proposal.

Marilyn’s “look” was significantly altered for this role, though her beauty and sex appeal are not affected in the least. Cherie is a saloon singer who works at night and sleeps in the day, hence her pale complexion, which her personal makeup artist, Allan Snyder, achieved by a dusting of white, cornstarchy face powder and pale pink rouge. A touch of mascara and light brown eyebrow pencil complete the transformation, which is in sharp contrast to the tanned-by-the-sun-and-wind skin of Bo (Murray), the bronco-riding, lovesick braggart. Hairstylist Helen Turpin transferred Marilyn’s platinum-colored hair to Cherie’s more subdued honey blonde. The role also required that Marilyn forgo her studio-trained, how-now-brown-cow dulcet tones and deliver her lines in Cherie’s corn-pone Arkansas drawl. She also had to learn to become a bad singer, which she cannily demonstrates as she stands center stage, her soul laid bare, skimpily clad, singing “That Old Black Magic.”

Marilyn fully realizes the role of the desperate, lonely, abused, and confused Cherie, whose pain is often in sharp contrast to the good humor and laughter displayed by some of the other characters. In the words of one critic, “[Monroe] creates a complete and deeply moving character.” Another hailed it as Marilyn’s breakthrough role. It’s true. She had never been better on film and some film historians maintain that it’s her best work. It’s worth seeing—repeatedly.