J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

In fact, Grace and Marilyn had recently visited Rock Haven, Grace wrote, and both agreed that it was “not terrible as such places go, about as good as they get, I suppose.” She wrote that Marilyn was so traumatized by the visit, however, she didn’t sleep well that night and “had to take some sleeping pills, which did not make me very happy.” Moreover, she indicated that if it Gladys were to end up at Rock Haven, “at least it will be easier for Norma Jeane and I to visit her, though I’m not sure how many such visits Norma Jeane could make. It’s a very upsetting place for her. However, a parent must be cared for and we are all doing the best we can for Gladys.”

“Let’s please mail Mother a train ticket to come back to Los Angeles,” Marilyn finally suggested. She then telephoned Gladys and said that she wanted her to return to California. Of course, Gladys stood her ground. She wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, she told Marilyn to concentrate on her “moving picture career” and to leave her alone. She said she was tired of being told what to do, that she had her own agenda and was going to live her life exactly as she pleased. Then she slammed down the phone. The next day, Marilyn paid for a train ticket and mailed it to her mother in Florida.

Niagara

M arilyn’s 1953 films, three carefully constructed, big-budget, high-profile properties in gorgeous, eye-popping Technicolor— Niagara , Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , and How to Marry a Millionaire— would define the Monroe screen persona and secure her place in the firmament of Hollywood for the next decade, always billed above the title and more often than not in the top spot. The films would also propel Marilyn to the number five spot in Quigley’s Top Ten list of the year’s box-office stars. “The time when I sort of began to think I was famous, I was driving somebody to the airport,” she would recall in 1962, “and as I came back there was this movie house and I saw my name in lights. I pulled the car up at a distance down the street—it was too much to take in up close, you know? And I said, ‘God, somebody’s made a mistake!’ But there it was, in lights.… And I sat there and said, ‘So, that’s the way it looks’… it was all very strange to me.”

Charles Casillo, an author and Marilyn Monroe historian, best summed up Marilyn’s appeal this way: “Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. Marilyn Monroe was sexy. Marilyn Monroe was delicious… always delicious. Everyone knew that. She wasn’t just a sex symbol. She was the sex symbol. But it was a certain kind of sex appeal, initiated, developed and perfected by her. Her appeal was childlike, innocent, tempting, glowing—bursting forth and available like a dish of fresh strawberries arranged in cream.… The creation of Marilyn Monroe had made an unwanted girl of the streets the most desired, written about, analyzed, gossiped about, wondered about and longed for woman of her era.”

For the first of these landmark movies, Niagara , the studio lavished the film with an impressive team of Oscar-honored artisans and craftsmen, with veteran Fox director Henry Hathaway, who had just directed Monroe the previous year in O. Henry’s Full House.

Joseph Cotten played Loomis, a mentally damaged Korean War vet who, with his wife, Rose (Monroe), makes a trip to Niagara Falls in an attempt to repair their broken marriage. In Rose’s mind, the marriage is beyond repair and she uses the trip to continue an adulterous affair with her lover, Patrick, who agrees to murder George. The plot to kill George backfires when he hurls Patrick into the falls to his death. Rose escapes and begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with George, played out against the awesome beauty and deafening power of the falls. George’s pursuit of Rose moves furtively in and out of Niagara’s watery veil. We teeter between horror and relief as George corners the beautiful Rose in the belltower and chokes the life out of her.

Since the beginning of her film career, Marilyn had striven to win the approval and respect of those in her profession. She studied her craft and worked with coaches from day one. She had the adoration of millions of fans yet somehow felt her beauty got in the way of her being recognized as a serious actress. There is evidence that some movie critics felt the same way. But occasionally there would be favorable comments about her acting chops, and her films would also get a thumbs-up. Even Pauline Kael, the feared film critic of the New Yorker , would praise her with faint damns, as she did when writing about Niagara. “This isn’t a good movie,” she wrote, “but it’s compellingly tawdry and nasty… the only movie that explores the mean, unsavory potential of Marilyn Monroe’s cuddly, infantile perversity.” Of the same movie, a critic at the New York Times wrote, “Seen from any angle, the Falls and Miss Monroe leave little to be desired.”

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

I ’m trying to find myself now, to be a good actress and good person,” Marilyn said as 1952 came to a close. “Sometimes I feel strong inside, but I have to reach in and pull it up. It isn’t easy. Nothing’s easy, as long as you go on living.” *

Toward the end of 1952, Marilyn leased a house in Beverly Hills so that she and Joe could have some peace and quiet away from the swarm of paparazzi that gathered whenever they left their suite at the Hotel Bel Air, where they had been spending much of their time. However, it was neither peaceful nor quiet at the new home. On October 1, they had a fight—it’s not known about what—and Joe stormed out after what Marilyn later called “a lot of name calling.” They had known each other for only seven months. A major problem in Marilyn’s relationship was presented by Natasha Lytess, who disliked Joe very much. She couldn’t understand why Marilyn would be interested in him. In her view, he had no personality, was dense, and maybe even dimwitted (which was not true). Apparently, she had called Marilyn one day only to have Joe pick up and tell her that if she wanted to speak to “Miss Monroe” she should call “Miss Monroe’s” agent. In Joe’s view, she was a controlling shrew who had too much influence over his girlfriend. “She’s an acting teacher, for Christ’s sake,” he had told Marilyn. “Why do you treat her like she’s a psychiatrist?” Marilyn said that he just didn’t understand. She was right about that—he didn’t. Pretty much from the moment Joe and Natasha met, it was all-out war between them.

From November 1952 through February 1953, Marilyn Monroe would be at work on one of her most memorable movies, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Fox spared no expense in its transfer of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from stage to screen—from choreographer Jack Cole’s staging of the spectacular pre-credits opening number with Jane Russell and Monroe singing and dancing to “We’re Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock,” identically gowned head to toe in shimmery red sequins, to the reprise of the song in the final scene where the two stars are again dressed identically for a double wedding ceremony in blinding white gowns of figure-hugging lace appliqué, both by costumer Travilla, who surely must have been Bob Mackie’s inspiration in his career. Russell was billed above Monroe in all the film’s posters and publicity and in the opening credits. Russell was also first in money earned for this film, $400,000 to Monroe’s $11,250 ($1,250 per week for nine weeks). Fox wasn’t exactly kind to Marilyn. “I couldn’t even get a dressing room,” she would recall in 1962. “I said, finally—I really got to this kind of level—I said, ‘Look, after all, I am the blonde and it is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . Because still they always kept saying, ‘Remember you are not a star.’ I said, ‘Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!’ ”