The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Some Like It Hot

By May 1958, Arthur Miller had convinced Marilyn that she needed to return to work—or at least that’s what he told his friends. It’s also possible that Marilyn had come to terms with the fact that as she put it to one intimate, “someone needs to bring some money in this house,” so it might as well be her. She put her agents to work on finding the right project. After a few false starts, Billy Wilder submitted a two-page proposal to Marilyn for a film he was writing called Some Like It Hot. On July 7, Marilyn departed for Los Angeles to begin work on the movie.

Every single person who contributed his or her talent to Some Like It Hot can be assured that it was the group collaboration that made it the comedy classic it is, and arguably one of the best pictures ever made. They can also be assured that without Marilyn Monroe and Billy Wilder, it would have been just another funny film. Wilder lifted the central premise from an obscure German movie musical, Fanfares of Love—that of two unemployed musicians who resort to cross-dressing in order to join an all-female band—and stretched it into two hours of unmitigated hilarity. Adding the subplot of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and its fallout is the engine that drives the train. (Wilder’s writing partner on this and many other scripts was I. A. L. Diamond, and the film earned them an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.)

Now that they had a script—or at least they had one in mind—the next concern was how to cast it. According to one source, Wilder early on envisioned Danny Kaye and Bob Hope as the drag duo. Tony Curtis received a verbal pitch for the film from Wilder himself and agreed to sign on. Then when Frank Sinatra expressed an interest in the project, Wilder toyed with the idea because he needed a “name” to get studio financing. He was actually relieved when Sinatra dropped out, though, because Ol’ Blue Eyes was well known for following his own rules—shooting nine to five, limited retakes, and other special treatment. Wilder was happy to keep it A Billy Wilder Film. Meanwhile, Mitzi Gaynor was being considered for the role of Sugar Kane, due mainly to her excellent showing in the recently released South Pacific. But then Marilyn launched a campaign for the part. Her box-office pull had placed her on Quigley’s list of Top Ten stars for three years, and though she had been absent from the screen for the two previous years, attending drama classes at the Actors Studio and trying to shore up her disintegrating marriage, her popularity with the fans was at an all-time high.

Marilyn’s legendary reputation for causing delays apparently was overlooked and she was signed for the film for $200,000 plus 10 percent of the gross over $4 million. In its initial release, the movie earned $25 million, which comes to $215.4 million in today’s dollars, enough to place it at number 150 in the top-grossing films of all time. Marilyn’s share: $2.3 million

The first actual footage filmed was a scene that took place at the standing train set at MGM Studios in Culver City. It is twenty-four minutes into the film and we see Sugar Kane (Marilyn) for the first time as she walks along the side of the train with the all-girl band, the Sweet Sues, to board. It went off without a glitch and Marilyn was letter perfect. During the setup prior to the shot, Wilder observed a woman hovering beneath an umbrella out of view of the action. When the scene was over, he called out to the woman, “How was that, Paula?” He recognized her as Paula Strasberg, a constant presence on every Marilyn set, just as Natasha had been before her. From that deferential moment on, Wilder controlled the set.

After getting the go-ahead from Wilder, Tony Curtis (Josephine), and Jack Lemmon (Daphne) went to couturier Orry-Kelly, Monroe’s costumer, and asked him to make their outfits. Of course, there were problems with two straight men playing transvestites that had nothing to do with how well the clothes fit. The actors had to become women, believable as such in their walk, talk, attitude, actions, the way they stood, the way they sat. But their problems paled compared to those Wilder (and the rest of the cast and crew) had with Marilyn: Her problems in her marriage and her lack of self-confidence as an actor drove the production costs up, according to Wilder, adding another $750,000 to the $2.9 million budget. He said, “Sometimes [Marilyn’s lateness, demand for constant retakes, etc.] would stretch out to three days, something that we could have completed in an hour because after every bad take, Marilyn began to cry and there would have to be new makeup applied.” In addition, she couldn’t remember her lines. They would have to write them on cards and place them where Marilyn could read them. The simple line “Where is that bourbon?” had to be shot and reshot as many as forty times.

“There were days when I could have killed her, I admit it,” Billy Wilder added. “I knew, of course, that she had serious problems. I hate to say it, but at the time, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about her problems. I was trying to make a movie and she’d been paid a good deal of money to be in it. But, that said, there were a lot of marvelous days, too, when she would do something we all knew was golden.”

Yet somehow, Marilyn got through it all with unbelievable results onscreen. Watching her magical performance, there is no hint of the nightmare making the film was for her. Maybe her friend Jeanne Martin put it best: “I treasure every moment of that film, but without Marilyn it would have been nothing.”

During the publicity blitz for the film, Curtis was asked repeatedly and relentlessly by the press what it was like to kiss Marilyn Monroe. “What was I supposed to say, ‘It was like skiing down a snow-covered mountain and being launched into the air by a ski jump and then floating to earth on gossamer wings?’ C’mon, kissing the most desirable woman in the world and then being asked repeatedly what it was like is a no-brainer and it began to annoy me. Whether the Hitler comparison came out as irony or sarcasm, which is the way I meant it, the press preferred the sound-bite and refused to print the whole story.” The following few days, Curtis was bombarded with phone calls asking him to verify the report. For forty years, he denied he ever said it—and actually became hostile when confronted about it when appearing on a Larry King show with Marilyn Monroe historian James Haspiel—but he came clean to Leonard Maltin in an interview taped for inclusion in the deluxe DVD two-disc set of Some Like It Hot, released as part of “The Marilyn Monroe Collection.” ^*

The number of “best” lists accorded Some Like it Hot continues to grow every year. The American Film Institute named it number one on its list of the 100 Funniest Movies of All Time. AFI has also ranked it variously as number 14 and number 22 Greatest Movie of All Time. The film’s last line, “Well, nobody’s perfect,” was voted number 48 on AFI’s list of Greatest Movie Quotes. Entertainment Weekly readers voted it the 9th Greatest Film of All Time and the Greatest Comedy of All Time.

During production of this movie, on Friday night, September 12, 1958, after a long and emotional telephone conversation with Arthur, Marilyn took another overdose of sleeping pills. Had it not been for Paula Strasberg coming to her rescue, she might have died. As always, she said that she hadn’t intended to commit suicide.

“She had so much to live for,” said Rupert Allan, “but she didn’t see it that way. That said, the way I heard it, it happened when Arthur arrived in Los Angeles and he was the one who took her to the hospital. Typical of Marilyn’s overdoses, no one could ever get the story straight. However, yes, she definitely overdosed. When and how she got to the hospital doesn’t matter. Arthur came in immediately from New York to be at her side,” said Allan. “I can’t say that helped, though. In fact, I think it may have made things worse.”

Once Arthur Miller arrived in Los Angeles and had a chance to take in the terrain, he realized that practically everyone connected with Some Like It Hot found his wife to be incredibly unprofessional. That she was able to eventually turn in a brilliant performance didn’t seem to matter much at the time. Miller was again embarrassed for her, and also for himself. It caused him to be angrier with her than ever. “My feeling about Arthur Miller was that he was a little too resentful of his wife,” Billy Wilder recalled. “I wasn’t married to her. I didn’t have to be patient and loving. But he was her husband and I thought he could have been more understanding. I remember saying at the time, finally, I have met someone who resents Marilyn Monroe as much if not more than I do.”

Rupert Allan recalled, “Marilyn told me and Susan [Strasberg] that [Miller] lashed out at her one day and said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. How dare you not know your lines? How dare you be late? Who do you think you are?’ Instead of being her support, he had turned into her enemy. It was very unkind of him. I can’t say I know what he was thinking. Anyway, Marilyn said, ‘He can kiss my ass, Rupert. As far as I’m concerned, he can just kiss my ass.’ So, really, things were, shall we say, a bit on the tense side.”

One might have thought that things would have taken a turn for the better when, in October, Marilyn learned that she was once again pregnant. Of course, she was overjoyed by the news. She had been scheduled to accept a film award in France, but was happy to have a good reason to decline. In a two-page Western Union telegram to the Académie du Cinéma in Paris, dated November 26, 1958, she said in part, “I had greatly looked forward to coming to Paris and receiving the honor which you so graciously awarded me (stop) However nature intervened and I am expecting a baby (stop) Because of some recent complications in regards to the pregnancy my doctor has forbidden travel of any kind.”

It’s not clear what Arthur Miller thought of the pregnancy, though he didn’t seem very happy. “At this point, I think Marilyn put Arthur out of her mind and began to think, okay, I can have this child and go on with my life without my husband, and at least I won’t be alone,” said Rupert Allan. “A big problem for her, though, with the pregnancy was all of the drugs she was taking… that was a problem.”

During this time, Marilyn was taking—among other prescriptions, such as Nembutal—a barbiturate to calm her nerves as well as allow her to sleep. Her gynecologist, Leon Krohn, was against all drugs in her system, but he realized that there was no way she would be able to function without them. He warned her against drinking on this and other medications and hoped to monitor her closely—he was on the set every day—but, truly, she was not manageable. When it came to pill-taking, Marilyn Monroe would always find a way if she felt the need.

After the movie was completed on November 6, Billy Wilder—who was not speaking to Marilyn by that time—went on record as having made a few unkind statements about her. For instance, when one New York reporter asked if he would ever make another movie with her, his response was, “I have discussed this project with my doctor and my psychiatrist and they tell me I’m too old and too rich to go through this again.” To another reporter he said, “She’s very good, obviously. But is she worth it? I don’t know.”

Marilyn was stung by his remarks. In her view, yes, she had presented some problems—what else was new?—but in the end she did turn in a good performance. She felt that Billy Wilder could have shown some gratitude by having a little more tact in discussing her with the media. One afternoon, after deliberating over it for a while, she had a few drinks and then picked up the telephone to talk to Wilder, calling from New York to Los Angeles. His wife, Audrey, answered the phone. Marilyn asked if she could speak to Billy. She was told that he wasn’t at home. “That’s fine,” Marilyn said. “I wonder, Audrey, if you could give him a message for me.” Audrey said, “Of course.” Marilyn continued, “Would you please tell him that Marilyn called… and that she would like it very much if he would… go and fuck himself.” There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Oh, and Audrey,” Marilyn concluded sweetly, “my warmest personal regards to you.”