Sam Weller - Shadow Show

Tah-dah!

She got to act. She got to sing.

She sang “Every Baby Needs a Daddy.”

You know, all in all, it did not take that long.

Not really.

Marilyn Monroe was becoming a star.

Hollywood Success Story.

Monkey Business .

20th Century-Fox.

Cary Grant. Ginger Rogers. A chimpanzee named Esther.

Second billing: Marilyn Monroe.

Cast as a secretary named Lois LaVerne.

—You’ll have to be funny.

—Funny? I can do funny.

—But…

She did not want to cause a p-p-problem, no, she didn’t, but just one change, really, if they could, it m-muh-… mattered…

All right. Okay.

Second billing: Marilyn Monroe.

Cast as a secretary named Lois Laurel.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.

How to Marry a Millionaire.

Starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall.

She was a big star.

A very big star.

Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio. “Joltin’ Joe.” “The Yankee Clipper.” Hemingway called him “the Great DiMaggio” and “the Dago.” She called him “my slugger.” Three-time MVP winner. Thirteen-time All-Star.

Helluva ballplayer.

Joe DiMaggio was shy. He didn’t say much. Hated that celebrity spotlight. Hated it a helluva lot more when it wasn’t illuminating Joe DiMaggio.

And Hey! Did not like his wife in it.

He thought she should come with him to San Francisco. Learn to cook linguini with a nice clam sauce. Cannelloni. Braciole like Mama Rosalie. Have a bunch of kids.

She thought she should star in a movie called The Seven Year Itch .

New York. Publicity shot. Police keep the crowd behind barricades. Marilyn Monroe on the subway grating at Lexington and Fifty-first. Wind machine kicks in. Her skirt billows up.

And a whole! lot! more!

Joe DiMaggio has a problem with this aspect of moviemaking.

Restaurateur and longtime friend Toots Shor explains it to him: —Giuseppe, What do you want? She’s just a goddamn dumb whore.

The marriage lasts 276 days.

Marilyn Monroe is dying.

Drugs are taking a long time to kill her.

Or perhaps, even with no audience, Marilyn Monroe is working the drama of it all.

Light gathers, phosphorescent waves all about her.

She wants to be smart.

She wants people to think she is smart.

She wants to think she is smart.

(Let’s hear it for the only girl Blackbird!)

She wants to act.

Chekhov. Dostoyevsky.

A review: In the demanding role of Grushenka, Marilyn Monroe exhibits what noted theater critic and raconteur Groucho Marx has acclaimed nothing less than “a million dollar ass.”

She wants to be praised.

She wants to be loved.

She married Arthur Miller. Playwright. All My Sons. Death of a Salesman. The Crucible . A talent. An intellect. We’ve got a Tony Award for Best Author, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Howzat? You want better? Check with his mother, Augusta… Gussie: — Oy , even when he was just a pisherke , what a kopf he had!

House Un-American Activities Committee comes after Arthur Miller. Pinko stuff in his plays. Hangs out with Commies. He wears glasses. Come on, I gotta spell it out? He’s a Hebe!

Marilyn Monroe saves Arthur Miller’s bacon—you should pardon the expression. Arthur Miller is married to Golden Dreams, for cryin’ out loud. Not the girl next door, but the kinda sweet, kinda daffy, impossibly sexy roundheels you wished lived next door. How much more American can you get?

Miller, aw, he’s okay. Don’t bust his chops. Let him cop a walk.

Marilyn Monroe calls Arthur Miller Pops .

Arthur Miller introduces her to the work of many writers.

She writes poetry. Sad dolls. Weeping willows. Staircase men. Balloons. Jean Harlow.

She is scared to show Arthur her poetry. She doesn’t want to hear that sniffy-nose thing he does.

She discovers Edgar Lee Masters. She loves Spoon River Anthology .

Late in the evening, the hi-fi playing Respighi’s Pines of Rome , she’s had enough to drink (1953 Dom Pérignon), and so she reads a few lines of Edgar Lee Masters to Arthur Miller.

Arthur Miller shakes his head. —Drivel, he says. —The quintessence of pulp-pap passing as profundity. Edgar Guest with a college sophomore’s vocabulary and keen intellectual grasp. It is not impossible that everything that is wrong with America is contained in those resoundingly dreadful lines.

She finds the courage. —I… I luh-like…

—Of course, says Arthur Miller.

Shortly thereafter, she finds the journal he has accidentally left open on her dressing table.

…such a dumb shiksa, takeh a goyishe kopf . I do feel pity for her, but perhaps not love. And, selfish though it may be, I wonder what deleterious effects she might have on my own career…

The Millers’ marriage, uh, not in great shape.

He wrote a screenplay called The Misfits .

—Just for you.

Her role: a depressed divorced dancer, desperate for approval, acceptance, love.

She is NEED come a-’walkin’—with a great body!

John Huston directed the film.

Clark Gable costarred.

It was Gable’s last film.

The film wrapped. Two days later, massive heart attack.

Clark Gable died ten days later.

Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller on January 20, 1961.

“I only spoke with her the once. Her regular domestic was sick and so the agency sent me over for the day. She was drinking, drinking quite a lot, and she told me just to dust, didn’t want to hear no vacuum. And then she asked me did I like doing this kind of work, was I married, did I have kids, you know, personal things like that that are not really that personal. And then she asked me was I happy and I said, ‘I guess.’

“She said her life was sad and I said that was too bad.

“She said her life was just full of despairs .

“Despairs… That was how she said it and I tell you, I never forgot that, because that is sad slapped thick on top of sad… It made me want to just pick her up and hold her, ’cause what she was was just a sad little white girl.

“But I couldn’t do that now, could I? So I clucked my tongue and I think I said something that most likely did not help her at all.”

Tried to kill herself.

Did not.

Alcohol. Drugs. Psychiatry.

The Trinity for the Salvation of the Twentieth Century Soul.

Bangs President Jack Kennedy.

Who didn’t?

Alcohol. Drugs. Psychiatry.

Tried to kill herself.

Did not.

Moved into modest house she’d bought in Brentwood, L.A.

Nembutal.

Chloral hydrate.

Vodka.