The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Natasha Non Grata

Marilyn’s return to the West Coast marked the first time she’d set foot in California in more than a year. There was at least one person more than a little anxious to see her: Natasha Lytess.

It had been just a few weeks into Marilyn’s stay in New York that Lytess had a strained telephone conversation with her. “Marilyn told her she needed a ‘new beginning,’ ” recalls an actress friend from New York. “She had been feeling constricted by Natasha, and Lee was trying to loosen her up.”

Marilyn made no secret of the fact that Natasha had unrequited feelings for her, and most everyone in Marilyn’s New York world saw that as a roadblock to growth. “If your goal as an actress is to be as authentic as possible, imagine how difficult it would be to rehearse scenes with someone who’s told you she’s in love with you,” actress Maureen Stapleton once observed. “Every role Marilyn played was sexy. I can’t imagine how she could have felt comfortable exploring her own ‘sexiness’ with a woman who actually had a sexual attraction to her. Any actor would agree that would be a recipe for a superficial performance.”

Whatever Marilyn’s reasoning, over time it became clear that Natasha Lytess’s usefulness in her life, and at 20th Century-Fox, was drawing to a close. The time Marilyn had spent in New York was humiliating for Natasha. The few friends that Lytess had at Fox had begun to drift away, and her regular paychecks from the studio were suspiciously late. On one occasion, she went to the studio to have the bookkeeping division issue her a check that was overdue, and she saw for herself that word had been spreading about her—not just word of her difficulty with Marilyn, but much more. From the giggles Lytess heard while on the lot, it wasn’t difficult for her to recognize that people at the studio knew more than she would have liked.

Natasha, a woman who had been well-respected as a dramatic scholar, was now feeling the chill of her disappearing welcome at the studio. It wasn’t long before it was made official. She would no longer be on the payroll of 20th Century-Fox. Since her calls and letters to Marilyn were not being answered, if she wanted an immediate response from Marilyn, she would have to go to New York and confront her. However, Natasha must have known that her sudden appearance in New York would only solidify people’s image of her as a pathetic woman obsessed with a movie star. Therefore, she chose to wait in Los Angeles and began to tutor clients privately, if through clenched teeth. To a woman who had once wielded the power to halt production of a multimillion-dollar film, it must have felt humiliating to now be handed cash as hopeful actors left her apartment, maybe with dreams of being the next Marilyn Monroe.

Despite the awful circumstances in which Natasha found herself, she loved Marilyn dearly and was concerned for her former friend’s well-being. She had been a stabilizing factor for Marilyn, even if some may have viewed their dynamic as somewhat bizarre. She worried that whoever Marilyn would find to replace her wouldn’t have the ability to navigate her out of her complex emotional disturbances. Her career hopes and income aside, Natasha couldn’t help but view Marilyn as a helpless soul. Without her, Natasha believed, Marilyn would spiral downward.

Now back in Hollywood, Marilyn appeared to be a changed woman in many ways. She had gone to New York with every intention of leaving the past behind. Grace Goddard’s death, the divorce from Joe DiMaggio, and a seemingly endless string of misery as far back as she could remember made that “new beginning” a requirement. Her time in New York was well spent, she believed. She had aligned herself with Lee Strasberg, which she viewed as a positive move, even if it may have led her down the dangerous road of self-exploration. She now had her own production company with Milton Greene—and she owned 51 percent, incidentally, a controlling interest. She’d been in intensive therapy. Strasberg’s wife, Paula, had become one of her best friends, and also her new personal acting coach. Paula and Marilyn would go over the script to Bus Stop line by line, working on it day and night—much the way Natasha and Marilyn had worked on Don’t Bother to Knock. Indeed, the last year had been one of sweeping changes for Marilyn Monroe—out with the old and in with the new. Unfortunately for Natasha Lytess, she had fallen into the former category. “She was a great help to me,” Marilyn concluded during a cocktail party at her new home, possibly understating Natasha’s importance in her life. “Whatever road leads to growth, you take.”

When Natasha became aware that Marilyn had returned to Los Angeles, she wanted desperately to see her. She drove to the studio and convinced an employee from the press office that she had misplaced Marilyn’s new phone number, and she left the studio with what she needed. She then called the new Westwood residence dozens of times—to the point where it could have been viewed as, if not outright stalking, then certainly harassment. Marilyn had made a firm decision, however—she wanted nothing to do with Natasha Lytess. In the last year, she had done very well without Natasha, and even managed to get Fox to do for her what, arguably, Natasha had never really done: take her seriously as an actress.

“I think Marilyn, on some level, felt that Natasha had been largely responsible for her earlier, sillier performances,” Marilyn’s friend Rupert Allan once said. “Natasha wanted Marilyn to be some cutesy doll, and she was kind of sickened by it.”

But in Natasha’s defense, history views these performances as near perfection, and it was Natasha’s direction that made them so specifically innocent and childlike. It was as though she took Marilyn’s vulnerable, sensitive essence and magnified it to near caricature. It’s a great testament to Marilyn’s onscreen presence that we, the audience, found her so engaging. For example, her appearances before she met Natasha, such as in Ladies of the Chorus, for example, might be considered provocative, but not the least bit “childish or naïve.” Even while singing “Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy” there’s a come-hither maturity to her performance. Compare that to the first film on which Natasha coached her, Asphalt Jungle. In that one, Marilyn’s character seems wide-eyed and vapid. Though not yet the fine-tuned, baby-talk performances that followed, as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Seven Year Itch, her acting in Asphalt Jungle shows that Natasha was beginning to mold Marilyn more and more into a childish performer. Even after Marilyn’s association with Natasha ended, directors wanted “that Marilyn,” and she would grudgingly deliver—but none of those performances would be as precisely honed as the ones that Natasha had helped create.

Now, with a year away from her career and a few concurring opinions about Natasha’s influence on her, Marilyn believed that her New York colleagues were right—that, in a sense, Lytess had probably been carving Marilyn into Lytess’s own fantasy. Now Marilyn was left to reverse the image and change the way Hollywood viewed her, if she could. She certainly wanted to try.

Natasha continued to pursue contact with Marilyn. Finally, when she simply would not back off, Marilyn had her attorney, Irving Stein, telephone her. Stein told Lytess in no uncertain terms that she should not call or visit Marilyn Monroe under any circumstances. In response, according to the attorney’s notes, Natasha delivered this soliloquy to him on the telephone:

“My only protection in the world is Marilyn Monroe. I created this girl. I fought for her. I was always the heavy on the set. I was frantic when I called the house and she would not speak to me. I am her private property, she knows that. Her faith and security are mine. I’m not financially protected, but she is. I’m not a well person. I would like very much to see her even with you, if only for one half-hour.”

The answer was no.

“She’s surrounded by these people who don’t let her do anything by herself,” Natasha said—and one could argue that she would know. “They’re afraid to lose her. She never goes anywhere alone; they’re stuck to her like glue.”

In a very interesting letter to her former student Helena Albert, Natasha put it this way: “I, for years, have seen Marilyn’s ability to cut people out of her life. I have even encouraged it. Imagine my dismay in finding that I am now one of those people. I suppose it was inevitable, yet it pains me so much I can’t bear it another moment.”

In one last-ditch effort, Natasha revealed that she was dying of cancer. When Marilyn’s lawyer told her the news, Marilyn appeared to be unmoved by it. However, later, she discreetly sent Natasha a check for a thousand dollars, at least according to a correspondence from Lytess to Albert. “It is very generous of her, yet it does not take the place of a simple and courteous telephone call,” she wrote. Indeed, when she received that money, Natasha must have known it was Marilyn’s farewell gift—but she may also have seen it as suggesting that Marilyn still cared. On March 5, despite the attorney’s warning that there would be “trouble” if she continued her pursuit of Marilyn, Natasha showed up unannounced at the Beverly Glen home. MCA agency president Lew Wasserman, who represented Marilyn, happened to be there, meeting with Milton Greene. He refused to allow Natasha entry into the house, telling her that Marilyn didn’t want to see her and had no plans to intervene on her behalf with the studio.

“You don’t understand, Marilyn needs me,” Natasha told him.

“Marilyn Monroe needs no one,” Wasserman snapped, slamming the door in her face.

Dejected, Natasha walked back to her car. When she turned to open her vehicle’s door, she noticed a quick flash in an upstairs window of the house. There, next to a curtain, was Marilyn, staring down at her with a vacant expression. The two women looked at each other for a long moment. Then Marilyn closed the drapes. ^*