J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Berniece may not have been a highly educated woman, but she knew her half sister well and she had pinpointed a major problem in her. “All of that therapy” had definitely caused Marilyn to want to think and rethink every move she made—whether in real life or her reel life. Nothing seemed left to chance anymore. Everything had to be the orchestrated result of looking within in a quest to develop her inner life. That would have been fine had she not at the same time been constantly coached to conjure up bad memories. As a result, she was miserable much of the time. Ironically, from outward appearances, anyway, she had little reason to be in pain at this time in her life. She was on top of the world. She was a success. She had money. She had an interesting and challenging role in what could become a very good movie. However, she also had a new therapist on the West Coast—and that was the problem. She would constantly ruminate over her sad childhood, her troubled relationship with Gladys, her arranged marriage to Jim Dougherty, the nightmare of Joe DiMaggio, and anything else that could be dredged up from her past. Whether drawing from it as an actress for her role in Bus Stop or as a woman for her self-improvement, she always found herself in a terribly dark place, never moving past it. Now she was also faced with the prospect of being involved with someone she knew was intellectually superior to her, and that, too, hurt. Whether looking backward or ahead, attached to it was a sense of dread. She was her pain, now—there seemed no escaping it.

Marilyn and Arthur Marry

I nterest by the House Un-American Activities Committee in Arthur Miller came to a head on June 21, 1956, the day he was summoned to appear in Washington and answer questions about his alleged association with certain Communist front organizations. The committee had done everything it could to find some kind of link between Miller and the USSR, even calling upon J. Edgar Hoover in the hope that maybe some of Hoover’s rumor-filled files would hint at something that could be used against him—but to no avail. If Hoover couldn’t come up with at least some kind of innuendo, Miller was definitely clean. Still, he was compelled to appear, and he dutifully did to address all concerns. Not much came of the hearings, though. He didn’t name names—mostly because he didn’t know any “names.” For instance, he confirmed that back in the 1940s he had attended a few Communist Party writers’ meetings, but he would not provide the names of anyone he ever saw there, risking a contempt of court charge.

The testimony was a little dull—Miller wasn’t exactly charismatic—but he did say a few things of interest. He mentioned that he wanted to have his passport returned to him because “I have a production which is in the talking stage in England, and I will be there with the woman who will then be my wife.” This was a big surprise to everyone—including Marilyn, who was sitting home watching on television. (In the end, Miller did get his passport back.) During a break in the proceedings, Miller was told that a pending contempt charge against him that had been spearheaded by Congressman Francis E. Walter could very easily “go away” if Miller did one thing: Persuade Marilyn to take a picture with Walter. That this was even suggested says a lot about these hearings. Miller refused, of course. (Congress would issue a contempt citation against him in July.)

Marilyn wasn’t sure how she felt about the proposal of marriage Miller had made on national television during the very strange HUAC proceedings. On one hand, she was impressed that he felt so strongly about her he would make a point of it on national television. However, she also wished he had discussed it with her first. His audacity bothered her. He hadn’t taken her feelings into consideration at all. How could he be so presumptuous? She was Marilyn Monroe, after all, and she could have any man she desired. Was he so cocky he just assumed he was the one for her and that was the end of it? “He does have a lot of nerve,” she told Milton Greene. “I mean, I wish he had told me of his plans to marry.” No matter how conflicted she was, though, she also didn’t want to be alone any longer. She so loved being in love, she said, that she just hoped what she was feeling for Miller was the real thing. It felt like an obligation now. She’d been told what was expected of her, and—proving perhaps that Norma Jeane was still alive and well—she was going to do it. On June 22, she held a press conference in which she said that, yes, she would marry Arthur Miller. Just prior to this press conference, a car traveling behind Marilyn and Arthur had crashed into a tree, killing the New York bureau chief of Paris Mat ch magazine, Princess Mara Scherbatoff. Marilyn was very shaken by the accident. It was everything she could do to get through the press conference.

That night, during a very quick and perfunctory private service—four minutes long!—Marilyn and Arthur were married before a judge at the Westchester County Court House in White Plains, New York. Then, on July 1, a second ceremony was planned, this one a Jewish ceremony performed before friends. Unbeknownst to most people, Marilyn took a quickie course in Judaism, which allowed her to marry in the faith (though she would never really practice it.)

In the two days that passed after the first ceremony, Marilyn began to have serious reservations about the wisdom of her decision. “She wasn’t sure that she loved him,” said one of her relatives, “but she wasn’t sure that she didn’t. At the core of her confusion, though, was her sense that she was in over her head with this man. Her insecurities were running wild by this time. She couldn’t help but wonder what this intellectual wanted with her, and it was driving her crazy. Was he just looking for a trophy wife, as Joe [DiMaggio] had? What was really going on here?”

Before the second ceremony, which was to be held at the home of Arthur’s agent, Kay Brown, Marilyn was in bad shape. Tears sprang to her eyes whenever anyone would offer her congratulations. She was not at all the happy bride. Milton Greene told her that she didn’t have to go through with it if she didn’t want to. The guests would be told to go home, he said, and everyone would just have to deal with it. The embarrassment was better, he suggested, than another bad marriage. Marilyn agreed. The second ceremony would not take place, and the first one would be annulled. For about a minute, she felt better. Then she realized she couldn’t do it—she couldn’t let Arthur Miller down and also humiliate him that way. So the second ceremony went forward. Afterward, Marilyn was all smiles at the wedding reception. Indeed, she was a good actress.

The Prince and the Showgirl

M ost of the summer of 1956 would be devoted to filming Marilyn’s next movie, The Prince and the Showgirl , which would star her with Laurence Olivier and be set in London. Marilyn and her new husband, Arthur, would be ensconced in Parkside House, a large manse in Englefield Green. Rehearsals for the movie began on July 18 and continued until August 3. Filming would commence on August 7 and continue through November.

Laurence Olivier’s original connection to the movie was when he appeared on the London stage in the Terence Rattigan play The Sleeping Prince , on which the film was based. Sir Larry starred with his wife, Vivien Leigh, forever remembered as Margaret Mitchell’s beautiful, resourceful heroine Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Set in London in 1911 during the coronation of King George V, the plot has us spend an evening with Grandduke Charles (Olivier), the prince regent of Carpathia, who’s come to town for the royal proceedings to take place the following day. Taking advantage of his one evening off, the grandduke, a notorious womanizer infamous as a seducer of chorus girls for one-night stands, attends a musical at the Coconut Girl theatre and is immediately charmed by a beautiful American understudy, Elsie Mariner (Monroe). He orders his British attaché to invite her to the embassy for a private supper. It plays like a French farce disguised as a Victor Herbert operetta, with neither the sex of the former nor the music of the latter. Elsie is led to believe she’s being invited to a party, not a one-on-one, intimate late-night repast. Foreplay consists of the grand-duke’s attempts to get Elsie sloshed and then in bed. He succeeds in the first and fails in the last. The sub rosa political shenanigans going on behind closed doors, involving the competition between the grandduke’s seventeen-year-old son, Nicolas, the king-in-waiting, and the grandduke, are too complicated to go into. What is important to know is that despite all odds, Elsie and Charles manage to fall in love, but their future plans must be put on hold while Carpathia fights for its survival in the Balkan Wars.