Marilyn Monroe, page 14
“We got so excited about our shared artistic values that, right then and there, we decided to form our own film production company to be called Marilyn Monroe Productions. I was to be president and Milton vice-president. Milton said he would be the only vice-president in history who didn’t want the president to be assassinated. I felt great, and went around yelling, ‘Hey, everybody! Guess what? I’m incorporated!’
“We planned to produce the elegant films we both wanted to make, in contrast to the junk Fox was forcing me to act in. I was sick and tired of sex roles, and I wanted to play great juicy roles, like those in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. When I happened to mention that to a journalist, he howled and said, ‘Do you mean you want to play the part of the brothers?’
“I said, ‘No, dear. I want to play Grushenka. In case you don’t know, she’s a girl!’ Lee Strasberg said that if anybody had listened to me and cast me as Grushenka, it would’ve been one of the great performances of all time. He said, ‘You were born to play the role.’ Other people said, ‘Yeah, sure, we’ll believe it when we see it.’ But they didn’t know either Milton or me very well. Some people say they’ll do something and then don’t come through. When Milton and I say we’ll do something, we do it!”
Marilyn was the first woman star ever to form her own production company. I shook my head for the umpteenth time and thought, What an incredible woman Marilyn Monroe is!
APRIL 29, 1959
“But before we started making movies together, Milton helped me renegotiate a new contract with Fox that was far superior to the old one. The studio, to their great surprise, found they were unable to replace me in the eyes of the public, and had no choice but to sign the contract, which had the most favorable terms yet given to any female Hollywood star.
“I’d be required to make only four films over the next seven years for them, and I’d be allowed to make another movie with any studio of my choosing. Plus, Marilyn Monroe Productions would be paid one hundred thousand dollars for every film we made for Fox, along with a percentage of the profits.
“Most important of all to me, a special clause in the contract gave me the right to reject any Fox film I thought unworthy of making, and to refuse to work with any director or cinematographer I disapproved of. The Greenes and I submitted a list of sixteen directors I’d be willing to work with. The studio went along, not because of their good hearts but because we had them over a barrel.
“That was in March. The Seven Year Itch finished shooting November 5, 1954,” Marilyn said, “I had married Joe in January, and by November we were divorced. Of course, I was devastated by the divorce, and I fell into a deep depression. My dear Milton flew to Hollywood to rescue me, and brought me back to New York with him. It was at the end of 1954, the beginning of 1955, when our dreams came true and we formed Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc. Our initial plan was to do two films, Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl. We actually produced both the next year, in 1956. I consider them the finest achievements of my life.”
“I decided to move to New York and learn how to really act by enrolling at the Actors Studio. I felt I could be more my real self in New York than in Hollywood. After all, if I can’t be myself, what’s the good of anything? In April, I subleased an apartment in the Waldorf Astoria Towers.
“I’d met Paula Strasberg in Hollywood when she was visiting her actress daughter, Susan, and I resumed our relationship as soon as I
arrived in New York. To my delight, I quickly became the protégée of the Strasbergs, and an exciting relationship began among the three of us that was to change me as an actress forever.
MAY 4, 1959
In the few years that had passed since Niagara, Marilyn had gone from rising starlet to Hollywood goddess. For years, she’d been studying to improve her acting, and every role she played was an improvement over the previous one. She had become the top box-office attraction in America as well as all over the world. Despite the burdens of her personal and professional lives, and her status as a great star, Marilyn, in all her integrity, decided to leave Hollywood and move to New York to study acting. She was determined to become a serious dramatic actress, whatever the cost.
“I don’t care about money,” she said. “I just want to be a wonderful actor!”
“Why is that so important to you, Marilyn?” I said. “Many of your fans are foolish, perspiring strangers. What do you get out of it?”
“Well, when those foolish, perspiring strangers all sit down together in a theater, and you as an actor are in such good form that everything comes out exactly as it should, you get lifted to the heavens. It’s as if you’re not just you any more, an insignificant interloper in the world. It’s kind of like all the strangers melt together into one loving piece of humanity and you finally feel at home. They become the family I never had. It’s hard to explain, but once you’ve experienced it, life is never the same again.”
I was quite moved, and we both remained silent for a while. The move to New York would be a bold one for any actor, I was thinking, but particularly courageous for Marilyn, who battles terrible insecurities and all kinds of demons, external as well as internal. How many successful Hollywood actors would walk out on Twentieth Century Fox and move to New York to study with Lee Strasberg, even if he is the greatest drama teacher in the world?
As if she felt she had opened up too much to me, Marilyn’s mood shifted. She said, “A funny thing happened to me when I first arrived in New York. I’d left Hollywood suddenly without telling anyone, and nobody was at Idlewild Airport to meet me. I was lugging my beautiful white Persian cat Mitsou, who was pregnant with kittens, in a special carrier. It was quite a load to carry, seeing she was pregnant and all. Between the time the plane landed and I reached the eighth-floor apartment at Two Sutton Place that Milton Greene had found for me, three kittens were on their way.
“I immediately phoned three veterinarians, and would you believe it? When I said, ‘This is Marilyn Monroe, my cat is having kittens, and I need help right away,’ all three thought I was some kind of loon and hung up on me! Fortunately, Mitsou has ancestors from the jungle, where, to the best of my knowledge, they have no vets, and she is fully capable of taking care of herself. I should do as well. Incidentally, I now have four white cats.”
MAY 5, 1959
“Happy May Day, Shrinker!” she said, greeting me with a smile. “Or was that last week? I’m not so good on dates.” I acknowledged her greeting with a nod.
Then, with the swift changes of mood she was known for, she became very thoughtful and lay quietly on the couch for a few minutes before speaking. Soon, Marilyn returned to talking about Lee Strasberg. She said she was introduced to him by Elia Kazan and Cheryl Crawford, the founders of the Actors Studio. To everyone’s surprise, Strasberg immediately recognized Marilyn’s talent, and felt an excitement about it second only to his belief in Marlon Brando’s genius.
Lee immediately took Marilyn under his wing. He and his wife Paula quickly became a tremendous influence on Marilyn, taking over almost every aspect of her professional and personal life. Lee gave her free private acting lessons in his apartment at Eighty-Sixth Street and Broadway and allowed her to attend sessions at the world famous Actors Studio.
Both Strasbergs encouraged Marilyn to practically move into their home. Lee Strasberg was much more to her than an acting teacher: He was her surrogate father, mentor, acting coach, friend, adviser, hero, and guidance counselor. He fully supported her ambition to become a great dramatic actress, and felt she had a rare talent that, if properly cultivated, would catapult her to greatness. He also convinced her to go into psychoanalysis.
Marilyn implicitly trusted whatever Strasberg told her, for to her he carried the aura of a psychoanalyst, a prophet, a witch doctor, and a magician. She placed her life, her career, and her future in his hands, to do with as he thought best. He was probably the greatest influence in her entire life, and next to Marilyn herself, the person most responsible for her becoming a great actress.
MAY 6, 1959
“I’m in awe of Lee Strasberg, and all he’s done for me on a personal and professional level,” said Marilyn. “I’m eager to hear anything he has to say, whether it’s praise or criticism, if I can use it to improve myself as an actor and a person. I get both from Lee. A lot of people come into their house, but I know I’m special to him. I’m the only one he and Paula let live there.
“You know how they say that something that seems too good to be true usually is? Sometimes, I’m afraid my relationship with him is only a dream, and I’ll wake up one day and find myself back with foster parents who’ll throw me out any day now. He’s a genius who creates truth in acting as no one else has ever done in this country.”
“Tell me how he does that, Marilyn,” I said, even though I knew quite a bit about the Method myself, from my late-husband and the many years I had been interested in film and theater. I wanted her to know that she truly was living in reality, and sometimes it could be pretty wonderful.
She answered eagerly. “His major technique is called emotional memory, in which you bring to mind a moment in your life when you experienced an emotion like the one the scene calls for. The memory triggers an honest emotional response, as if it were something happening at that very moment.
“You start by relaxing and then place yourself in the time you need to re-experience. You ask yourself, ‘What do I see? What do I hear? What do I taste? What do I smell? What do I feel on my skin? Is it hot? Cold? On what part of my body do I feel it? What am I wearing? Is it my favorite clothing, or am I uncomfortable in it? Is anyone else there? Who are they? What do I feel about them? Do I like them? Love them? Hate them? Can see them? Hear them? What do they look like? What do their voices sound like? And so on.
“That, my dear doctor, is the whole exercise,” she said. “That’s all there is to it, really. The scary secret of great acting is hereby revealed to you. You can now join the ranks of Bernhardt and Duse.” She stretched out her hand. “That will be fifty dollars, please.” Marilyn, it seemed, found it hard to stay serious for any great length of time.
I didn’t respond.
Marilyn, not noticing, returned to her serious mood. “Like most great things, the genius of the technique is its simplicity. All you have to do is be completely there. For instance, people ask me what I do to look so sexy. I don’t do anything. I just think of men, or of one man in particular who I’m yearning for. It’s easy to look sexy when you’re thinking about a man who’s special to you. Working from the inside out is what makes for good acting.”
Marilyn began to giggle.
“What’s so funny, Marilyn?” I asked.
“I just remembered something that happened in class today. An actor got up and played a scene. When he finished, Strasberg asked what the guy was feeling while he was acting.
“The guy said, ‘The scene made me cry.’”
“‘Good,’ Strasberg said. ‘Now make me cry.’”
We both laughed, and I said, “I’m sure he’ll never have to say that to you, Marilyn!”
“In Bus Stop,” she continued, “when my character Cherie got what I’ve always wanted, to be loved unconditionally no matter what she’d done in the past, I thought of Lee Strasberg, and how he gives me what I’ve always needed from a father and never gotten from any other man. He doesn’t care that I say ‘fuck you’ to the world and even to him sometimes, that I am practically always late, that I pop pills by the dozen, and that I drink too much—or that ‘m unreliable and impulsive, don’t always know my lines, and sometimes lose my concentration.
“Whatever I do or don’t do, Lee never yells at me. He totally accepts me, no matter what. I always feel loved by him. In doing that scene in Bus Stop, I remembered all that he is to me. The feelings that aroused allowed me to do the best work of my life. I’ve been told by many who’ve seen that film that it also broke their hearts.”
I knew what she meant.
“If only I’d had him as my real father! How different my life would be now,” she said angrily, wiping away her tears.
I found myself feeling deeply sad, too. If only life could be lived over again, and Marilyn had the childhood she deserved! If only! If only!
I also wiped away a few tears.
MAY 11, 1959
“Now, about Bus Stop,” Marilyn said, as if no time had elapsed since our previous session, “I have only one complaint. Don Murray was excellent in the leading male role, even though I don’t like him one bit and think he’s a conceited, arrogant egotist convinced that the sun rises and sets on his talent.
“Do you know why he was so good in the role, Doctor? Because I gave him so much to work with. He didn’t do a thing with the part before I made him talk right to me and look straight at me. Before that, you would’ve thought I wasn’t in the room with him. And would you believe, he got an Oscar for his performance and I didn’t even get mentioned! Boy, is that unfair! The injustice of it still stings. And Murray’s never been as good in any part since.”
MAY 12, 1959
“Let’s get back to the Strasbergs and how important they are to me,” said Marilyn. “Three days a week, after I leave here, I go to their home, where I hang out with Paula in the kitchen for a while. I tell her my troubles and she mothers me and gives me milk and cookies. I love her, but I can’t help it—I love Lee more.
“Then I have my private lesson with Lee, which I live for. Those lessons are the high point of my week. There isn’t a one I don’t come away from refreshed, encouraged, and revitalized, feeling that Lee will help me become a great actress. I feel sorry for people who don’t have a Lee Strasberg in their lives.
“After my lesson is over, I don’t want to leave the charmed atmosphere, so I often stay for dinner, and they always make me feel welcome. We all sit around the kitchen table like a real family. Classical music plays in the background. There’s a lovely ambience in the room—the fake Tiffany lamp sitting on the glass table lights up our faces like precious jewels. Lee often opens up and tells stories and jokes, illustrating them with clumsy gestures like a bad actor. Whether they’re funny or not, we all laugh.
“One day after dinner, we were sitting around the table talking, and I keeled over from taking too many pills. Everybody got very anxious, although I wasn’t, because it had happened before and I knew that eventually I would wake up. So they dragged me off to bed. I’d seen other famous actors like Franchot Tone and Montgomery Clift black out at that same table. Lee usually yelled at them, saying that what they were doing to their talent was criminal, that great actors have as much responsibility to their gifts as they do to a child.
“But for some reason I don’t understand, he’s different with me. He doesn’t yell or even preach at me, but is tender and understanding. While I lay there in a daze that time, my eyes closed, he must’ve thought I was too far out of it to pick up what he was saying, but I overheard him telling Paula, ‘Marilyn can’t handle criticism or anger directed at her. She feels rejected. But the same qualities that make her sick will make her a great actress. With her raw sensitivity, she’s able to pick up thoughts, lies, and the unconscious thoughts of other people. But because of her past, she’s not able to handle rejection . . . yet.’
Oh, that’s why he is so nice to Marilyn, I thought.
“Encouraged by the word ‘yet,’” continued Marilyn, “I smiled and fell happily asleep, thinking that sometimes it is worth having a terrible past, because it brings me lovely things in the present like my relationship with Lee.
“By the way, Doc,” she said over her shoulder as she headed out the door, “I asked him to make love to me. He said no.”
She grinned.
I grinned back.
MAY 14, 1959
“The students at the Actors Studio have been very nice to me,” Marilyn said. “They seemed surprised to have a Hollywood star attend their classes, but tried to make me feel welcome. After class, we get together and go out to lunch. I was shy at first, partly because I felt older than any of them. I really wasn’t that much older, but just felt like I was. When Paula also came along with me, I was able to relax and enjoy being with the group.”
Then Marilyn told me that when it was her turn to do an acting exercise on sense memory, she stood before a small group of students in a panic. Strasberg asked her to recall a moment in her life in which she remembered the clothing she was wearing and what she saw, heard, and smelled. Marilyn proceeded to describe how she’d felt on being alone in a room as a child, when an unknown man had walked in.
Suddenly, Strasberg admonished her, “No! Don’t tell us how you feel. Tell us what you hear and see.” Marilyn concentrated for a few moments and then began to speak.
Another student, actress Maureen Stapleton, told Marilyn later, “As you described what you wore, what you heard, what you saw, and the frightening words the man said to you, you began to cry, and sobbed until the end of the scene, when you seemed almost annihilated.” I thought, This is the real Marilyn Monroe, a vulnerable, shy woman, but a woman who’ll be a great actress one day.
“Later, I did something very brave,” Marilyn said, in one of the rare times I heard her brag.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Well, a student at the Studio did a scene. Afterward, actor Eli Wallach was critical. ‘I don’t think the scene was very clear,’ he said. For the very first time in class, I raised my hand and said, ‘I don’t know about that, Lee. It seems to me that life isn’t very clear.’
