J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Later, she would say of River of No Return and (the soon-to-be-filmed) There’s No Business Like Show Business , “I was put into these movies without being consulted at all, much against my wishes. I had no choice in the matter. Is that fair? I work hard, I take pride in my work, and I’m a human being like the rest of them. If I keep on with parts like the ones Fox has been giving me, the public will soon tire of me.”

At this same time, Marilyn began confiding in a very good friend, the excellent photographer Milton Greene (who would go on to take many of the most amazing photographs of her). She told him that she was very unhappy about the ridiculous amount of money Fox was paying her at this time—$1,500 a week. She said that the roles she was playing “are all the same, all dumb-blonde types with sex appeal,” and “it’s too much tedium. I’m sick of it.” Greene suggested that perhaps the two of them should start their own production company. She could then choose her own roles, select her own films, and work in tandem with the studio system instead of strictly for the system. Today, of course, major actors and actresses develop their own projects or, at the very least, cherry-pick their roles carefully to suit not only their tastes but also whatever image they have cultivated to present to their public. Most major stars have their own production companies through which such projects are developed and even financed. While the biggest male stars of that time did in fact have their own production companies—Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, and Burt Lancaster, to name a few—and thus exerted creative and financial control over their careers, that was not the case with female stars. But Marilyn Monroe was about to change that. This was the only way to go, and Marilyn and Milton had decided their goal would be to create their own company. They began discussing the matter with her attorneys. It was definitely one way to avoid the “dumb blonde” kind of movie.

Marilyn was supposed to report to work on December 15. She didn’t. When the studio sent executives to her home on Doheny to try to convince her to change her mind, they were met by an enraged Joe DiMaggio, who ordered them off the premises.

Joe and Marilyn were having their own problems at this time. He was still unhappy about the demands of her career. In his view, she wasn’t even the same woman he had met a year earlier. She was constantly distraught, run-down, anxious. She could not sleep without pills. Then she would be lethargic for much of the next day. He felt she needed a break—a long break. However, there was no chance of that happening anytime in the near future. She had a tight schedule of TV appearances, photo shoots, rehearsals, and, of course, movies.

“Joe was sick and tired of Marilyn’s career,” said Stacy Edwards, who was a sportswriter at the time in Philadelphia and knew Joe well. “I know he went with her to Canada when she made River of No Return . He called me from there to do an interview. ‘I hate it up here,’ he told me. ‘They treat her like she’s a princess and if you want to know my opinion,’ he said, ‘I think she’s getting to be too spoiled. She expects everyone to treat her like these people on these movie sets, and this ain’t real life.’ He said he wanted to get her out of the movies. ‘We’ll buy a nice home in San Francisco and just live a simpler life,’ he told me. I said, ‘Joe, are we talking about the same Marilyn Monroe—I mean, the movie star? Because she ain’t quittin’ the movies. She looks like she loves it too much for that.’ He said, ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.’

“I knew Joe and I knew what he was about deep down, and it wasn’t just Marilyn’s career. The attention she got, he was used to getting. When he walked into a room with her, he disappeared. He wasn’t used to that at all. He was used to being the center of attention. But with Marilyn, no man could ever be the center of attention. She drew focus wherever she went. Joe couldn’t accept that.”

Natasha Continues Her Dual Purpose

O f course, Natasha Lytess was still a permanent fixture in Marilyn Monroe’s life. Most observers felt that she was determined to keep Marilyn under her control by reinforcing the notion that she was indispensable to her. “She is not a natural actress,” Natasha said in an interview in 1953. “She has to learn to have a free voice and a free body to act. Luckily, Marilyn has a wonderful instinct for the right timing. I think she will eventually be a good actress.”

“There wasn’t a single moment on the set of any film Marilyn made during this time that Natasha wasn’t there,” said Jane Russell, Marilyn’s costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . “I felt that Marilyn was using her too much as a crutch. After she would do a scene she would look over to one side or another to see Natasha’s reaction. Directors didn’t like it, I can tell you that much. At one point, [Natasha] was removed from the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because the director just had enough of her presence.”

Only a select few people, however, knew that Natasha had a dual purpose in Marilyn’s life—she was her acting teacher, certainly, but she was also the one person who could calm Marilyn when “the voices” became too loud in her head.

In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , Marilyn had a scene with Charles Coburn in which his character, “Piggy,” was reciting to Monroe’s character, Lorelei, a line in Swahili. “The actor was speaking gibberish, of course, and in each take Coburn read the line a bit differently,” Natasha wrote in a letter to her former student Helena Albert. For some reason, his pattern of speech was something Marilyn could not get out of her head, Natasha wrote. Apparently, days after the shooting of this scene, Marilyn locked herself in her dressing room and refused to speak to anyone but Natasha. The director, Howard Hawks, adjusted the shooting schedule and then sent for the acting coach, who arrived quickly. According to Natasha’s memory of events, Marilyn explained to her that she couldn’t stop her mind from playing and replaying Coburn’s Swahili impression. “It was as if she had become haunted by it,” Natasha wrote. “Marilyn told me she couldn’t even bear to look at Charles Coburn. Prior to this time, she had adored him. They had appeared in Monkey Business together.”

Somehow, after less than an hour with her star client, Natasha managed to get Marilyn back in action. It was as if nothing had ever happened. Natasha knew how to bring Marilyn out of these kinds of episodes. “Whenever Marilyn works herself into a panic about something, only I have the cure,” Natasha wrote, rather cryptically.

Similarly, during the making of How to Marry a Millionaire , Natasha was ordered off the set. The next day, Marilyn didn’t show up for work, claiming she had bronchitis. Marilyn would often cloak her mental breakdowns with excuses of physical illnesses. When the studio sent a doctor to her home, which was the procedure at that time, she insisted on speaking to Natasha. Not surprisingly, Marilyn soon returned to work, and Natasha was brought back in—at an even higher salary. Nunnally Johnson, who worked with Marilyn on that film (in March 1953), recalled, “Natasha was really advising her badly by this time, justifying her own presence on the set by requiring take after take and simply feeding on Marilyn’s insecurity. ‘Well, that was all right, dear,’ she often said to Marilyn, ‘but maybe we should do it one more time.’

“I’m not sure, but I think Joe felt that Natasha was more important to Marilyn than he was—and he may have been right.”

“If it were up to me, Morticia would take a long walk off a short pier,” Joe DiMaggio told Stacy Edwards. “Maybe I could get through to Marilyn if I didn’t have this broad to deal with. This broad is gonna ruin her, I’m telling you.”