Marilyn Monroe, page 18
“But why, oh why, do they keep casting me as a dumb blonde?! When Joe offers Sugar diamonds, she says, ‘Diamonds? They must be worth their weight in gold!’ How stupid can you get? I was born under the sign of Gemini. That stands for intellect!
“Anyway, Joe invites Sugar Kane out to a yacht owned by Osgood Fielding III, a rich millionaire. Jerry, as Daphne, keeps Osgood dancing so that Joe can pretend he owns the yacht. Osgood Fielding keeps harassing Daphne throughout the film, nagging her—really him—to visit his yacht.
“But as the playwright said, all’s well that ends well. Everything gets straightened out, and all the would-be lovers get together. The film ends with the best movie line of any I’ve ever heard. The Lemmon character reveals to Osgood that he’s really a man, yet Osgood proposes marriage to him anyway, saying, ‘Well, nobody’s perfect!’
“We had a lot of fun making the film. Lemmon and Curtis had a great time being coached by a German drag queen, and rehearsals were filled with jokes and laughter. We often went to the Formosa restaurant together for lunch. ‘Josephine’ and I took frequent trips to the ladies’ room to see if he was getting away with his disguise. We rocked with laughter when nobody gave him a second look.
“The whole cast took a lighthearted approach to making the movie, which added to the pleasure of working in it. It was one of the few movies where I felt a real part of the cast—until Tony ruined it for me.
“Many of the cast and crew were very upset by my habitual lateness. So what else is new? You’d think they’d have accepted my idiosyncrasies by now and be grateful I make their films so successful. But they were all saying how difficult I was to get along with. Nobody mentioned that the men directing me have had as many problems as I have. Billy Wilder is a monster and a sadist. John Huston is a drinker and gambler, and you never can tell when he’ll be under the influence. Howard Hawks is a big bully who reminds me of Wayne Bolender with his belt out.
“But I was most upset by what Curtis said about me at the end of the film. A reporter asked Tony what it was like kissing me. ‘It’s like kissing Hitler!’ he responded. I cried when I read his remark and refused to talk to him after that. He later denied that he’d ever made the comment, but in my mind the damage had been done.
“Despite all the problems, the film turned out to be the greatest financial success of any movie I ever made. People lined up for blocks to see it. And, according to the reviewers, I was wonderful in the movie, so my performance greatly added to my reputation.
“So there, Tony Curtis! Call me Hitler, why don’t you? You’d be lucky to be half the actor I am.”
OCTOBER 2, 1959
For some reason, Marilyn now wanted to return to the months after her debacle in London with The Prince and the Showgirl, before the Ochos Rios vacation and Marilyn’s subsequent miscarriage, when Arthur Miller’s fate was still in question.
“Arthur and I patched things up, or so it appeared,” Marilyn said. “We were riding back to New York one day from his farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut when, from the driver’s seat, he suddenly burst out laughing. I was surprised, because he’d been pretty glum lately.
“I said, ‘What’s the joke, Art?’
“He answered, ‘I can’t tell you. It isn’t very nice.’
“‘Oh, come on, Arthur!’ I said. ‘You and your conscience! This is not the House Un-American Activities Committee. For goodness sake, I’m your wife! Don’t be such a prude.”
“He said, ‘OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ I waited as he struggled with his conscience. This time, unlike most times, his conscience lost.
“‘Did you see that big brown building we just passed?’ he said shyly.
“I shook my head. He said, ‘It’s the ugliest piece of architecture, if you can call it that, ever designed. A cow could have done better. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like a giant turd . . . Who do you think owns the building?’
“I said, ‘It must be Yale University.’
“We both burst out laughing.”
I struggled to keep from laughing, too. When I got myself under control, I said, “Marilyn, dear, we know that you often run away from troubling subjects by making a joke. You are very witty, but are you trying to push away something unpleasant that happened on that car ride? I cannot imagine that you and your husband sat enclosed in a car for—what was it? Two hours?—and had nothing more important to exchange than a dirty joke.”
“For a change, Dr. Freud,” she answered, “you’re right.”
I did not take the bait.
“As a matter of fact,” she confessed, “we had a terrible argument that lasted most of the trip.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He was all huddled up, sulking as far away from me as he could get and looking out the window. I knew he needed to be quiet a lot, so I bit my tongue to keep from intruding. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and said, ‘What are you thinking about, Arthur?’
“He looked irritated and answered, ‘Nothing much,’ and sank even deeper into the door. His silence said to me, ‘Don’t bother me, you moron. I’m thinking about something a dumb blonde like you couldn’t possibly understand.’
“Tears ran down my cheeks. I said, ‘Arthur, talk to me. Please. I’m lonely.’
“He answered, ‘For God’s sake, Marilyn, can’t you amuse yourself without me for one moment? Think about your next film. Open a book. Look at the scenery. I’m supposed to be a playwright, and a playwright has to have solitary moments so he can think.’
“‘But that’s all you ever have, Arthur—solitary moments,’ I said. ‘You never talk to me anymore except to say, “Please pass the salt.” Why do you want a wife if you need your privacy so badly?’
“‘Good question,’ he said. ‘I’ve been asking myself the same thing lately. I need a wife who understands what a playwright requires, not a little child who needs her hand held all the time.’
“I said, ‘You dare say that to me, the breadwinner in this so-called marriage? I need to have my hand held all the time? Why didn’t you say that when I turned over one hundred thousand dollars to you to build your little office where you could be alone all the time. You didn’t even ask me for the money, but just said in that pathetic little voice of yours, ‘I wish I had enough money to build a nice little office under the pine trees. Then I’d be able to write.’”
“‘Even after you pocketed my money and built the loveliest office in Connecticut, you’re still not writing. How come, Mr. Pulitzer Prize Winner? Every time I come in there, you’re smoking that stinking pipe of yours and looking out the window. No wonder you’re not earning any money!’
“He said, ‘If you’d leave me alone and not make me worry about you all the time, maybe I could write. All I have time for is protecting poor Marilyn from the paparazzi, making sure she doesn’t take too many pills, counseling her about every little detail of her life, down to whether she should eat now or later. I take her here, pick her up there, see that she isn’t taken advantage of by the producers. It’s Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn, until I forget what it feels like to be Arthur Miller. I’ve become Mr. Marilyn Monroe! No wonder I can’t write.’”
Marilyn interrupted herself to say to me, “Sometimes when you’re angry, you say terrible things. I’d give anything if I could take back what I said next. I know Arthur, and he’ll never forgive me for it.”
“What could you possibly have said that is so unpardonable?”
“I shouted at him, ‘I have nothing to do with it! I’m just a convenient peg for you to hang your lack of productivity onto. You’ve lost it, Arthur Miller. Admit it. Death of a Salesman was a fluke. In fact, there was nothing original about it. You just copied down the lines your family said. You’ll never write another good play, because you’ve used up all they had to say. Why don’t you accept the truth and become a salesman like your father? At least he paid the rent.’”
I was shocked, so I asked Marilyn, “What did he say?”
She sobbed. “He said, ‘Maybe you’re right,’ and curled up even further into the car door. When I looked over at him, tears were running down his cheeks.
“I felt awful that I had hurt him and I said, ‘Oh, Arthur, I’m so sorry! Please forgive me. You know I didn’t mean it. You know think you’re the greatest playwright in the world. I was just trying to rile you up so you’d talk to me. Even fighting with you is better than living with your terrible silences.’
“He didn’t answer me, and didn’t say a single word for the rest of the trip. In fact, he hasn’t spoken to me since, not even to say, ‘Please pass the salt.’ I’m scared, Doctor. Do you think he’s going to leave me? That I couldn’t bear.”
Actually, I, too, was afraid the marriage was doomed. I knew that Marilyn was too fragile to hear the truth, but lying to her was not an option. Coward that I was, I said, “All married couples have arguments, Marilyn. Let’s hope this one blows over, too.”
November 30, 1959
“I dreamt I fell into a deep dark well, into the very depths of depression,” is how Marilyn began our next session. “I extended my arms to you, pleading for a lifeline to draw me back up. You approached the well and knelt down. I couldn’t see you but felt your presence. I grabbed hold of you and wouldn’t let go. You stood up abruptly and announced that you had to leave, but that my mother would be waiting for me downstairs.”
How terrible it was—and how worrying—to hear that after all of our time together, Marilyn still felt that I was like her mother, who stood by and watched her drown.
DECEMBER 1, 1959
One ghastly session relentlessly followed another. As often as not these days, Marilyn turned her back on me and torpidly went through the motions. I felt her excruciating pain and tried to comfort her.
“Stop!” she shouted. “Stop! You’ll kill me with your kindness! I want to die . . . to die . . . to die! Every morning I wake up and cry that I’m still alive.”
I remembered Sheila Scott, a suicidal patient I had treated as a young analyst. The referring physician had sent Sheila to me with the note, “Her life is not worth anything to her or anyone else. Therapy is the only choice at all for any kind of future for her. If it succeeds, there’s everything to gain. If it fails, it is no great loss to Sheila.”
The astute physician was preparing me so that I would not feel guilty if Sheila killed herself. But against all odds, Sheila had gotten well. If I could help the miserable creature that Sheila was when I first set eyes on her, then I could help Marilyn, who had so much more than Sheila to live for.
DECEMBER 7, 1959
And still her melancholy continued. “I’m miserable, Doctor. Nothing in my life makes me happy. I’m a nothing—an absolute nothing. And you know what? You may be a doctor and all, but you’re a nothing, too. A nothing, a nothing, a nothing! Just like me.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re right, Marilyn. I am,” I said. “In the big scheme of things, we matter no more than the smallest flea.”
She looked at me in surprise.
“Why’s that fact so hard for me to accept?” she asked.
“When you are taught the lesson too early,” I said, “as when your mother only sporadically recognizes your existence, it is too terrible to bear. Perhaps when we are mature enough, we can accept the truth in small patches.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m obsessed with it. I want to show people what nothings they really are—each and every one of them, whether they’re Pulitzer Prize winners, movie stars, directors, or big-name producers. In the millenniums of time, nobody matters one iota, and not a one of them would honestly deny that.
“No amount of family or education or success can ever change that. The more inconsequential anyone feels, the more they have to do to disprove it. I think that’s the one thing in all the world that’s hardest for me to endure. From nothing we come, and to nothing we return.”
My eyes filled with tears.
Marilyn was right. The truth, like death itself, was too terrible to bear.
DECEMBER 12, 1959
In the days until our next appointment, I could do nothing but worry terribly about what Marilyn might do to herself.
What I had learned from our sessions was this: If Marilyn did kill herself, it would be because she did not want to live. There was no way of knowing which was stronger in her, the Life Instinct or the Death Instinct. There was no way to predict which force would triumph over the other.
But as long as she continued seeing me, at least a small part of her wanted to live, and I would do everything I could to keep it that way.
DECEMBER 22, 1959
Marilyn was quiet for the longest time. I said nothing.
Finally, I said, “Isn’t there anything you want to say to me today, Marilyn?”
“You’re always bugging me,” she angrily retorted, and got up to walk out of the session.
When she reached the door, she turned her head and said, “Go have your head examined, Doctor! Maybe it’ll do you some good!”
DECEMBER 23, 1959
She came into the office looking quite hostile, her brows drawn together and a sullen expression on her face.
“What’s with you today, Marilyn?” I said. “You seem mad as hops. Is there something I said or did that made you so angry with me?”
She didn’t answer for a few minutes, and then she said hesitantly, “It probably has something to do with a dream I had about you.”
“Oh? And what was that?”
Her stutter grew more noticeable, an indication of true emotion. “Has—has anyone ever told you that you look s-sinister? There is s-something about you—I don’t know what—that looks—particularly dark and evil.”
“Many people feel that way at certain stages of their analysis,” I answered.
“Maybe so, but I have to find out if it’s real.”
“I quite agree with you. What in particular gives me this sinister look?”
“You remind me of an orphanage head nurse whom I hated. In my dream, you looked just like her. This nurse once tried to do a rectal examination on me. She pulled down my pants and came at my ass with a thermometer. Her face was bright red and distorted, with a twisted expression I’d never seen before. She terrified me. I wondered why she needed to stick it up my ass when the doctor took my temperature through my mouth. I screamed ‘No! No! Go away!’ and kicked her so hard she said in disgust, ‘All right. Just skip the whole thing. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar!’
“In my dream, you also came at me, like she did, to take my temperature, and I thought, Brother, if she tries to take my temperature that same way, it’s all over for her!”
“Do you think I want to do a rectal examination on you?”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised!” she answered.
DECEMBER 24, 1959
“I had two fantasies about you recently,” Marilyn said at the next session. “In both of them, I was furious with you. In the first one, I was so enraged, I ripped up your whole office. I tore down the drapes, slashed open the pillows, and broke your fancy Chinese statues into a thousand little pieces. In the second fantasy, I went outside and killed everybody I saw, getting back at the members of my so-called family and everyone else who’s ever abused me.”
“I prefer the first fantasy, Marilyn,” I said. “It is good that you can be angry with me and tell me about it without acting on it. And Marilyn, I know how depressed you are, but I do want to wish you a Merry Christmas, and extend to you my sincerest hopes that the next year will bring a much better time in your life.”
“Hah!” she said. “I didn’t even know it was Christmas,” and walked out without saying another word.
JANUARY 4, 1960
The night before, I awoke with a start. I had dreamt that Marilyn was screaming, “Help me! Help me! Help me! I don’t want to kill myself!”
When she came in for her appointment the next day, I said, “Marilyn, what were you doing last night around midnight?”
“Why do you ask?”
I decided to tell her about my dream.
“That’s funny,” she answered. “I was asleep too and also had a dream in which I screamed and screamed. But in my dream, nothing came out of my mouth. It was like was locked in a pressure chamber and nobody could hear me, no matter how loud I screamed. It was horrible.”
“That was what it was like when you were an infant, Marilyn. You screamed and screamed and nobody came. But you don’t have to scream anymore. I hear you now.”
JANUARY 6, 1960
Things began to get a little better after Marilyn learned that it was all right to have negative feelings about me and to express them. It helped, for example, that she understood I had no interest in doing a rectal examination on her, unlike the nurse in the orphanage. Gradually, Marilyn came to realize that I really cared about her, and she began to speak more and more of her warm feelings toward me.
I was delighted, and kept my fingers crossed that her progress would last, and that even if she regressed at times, which was to be expected, she would have a safe, emotional place to return to. A few months passed in which she continued to come in for her sessions and to attend the Actors Studio, where, by her account, she continued to improve a great deal and earned the near-unanimous respect of her acting student colleagues.
As for me, I was able to relax in her presence without worrying so much that she would kill herself, and could enjoy the wit, humor, and insight of this fascinating and oh-so-vulnerable woman.
FEBRUARY 24, 1960
It was now more than a year since Marilyn had begun coming to me for analysis. One day, she came into a session looking downcast. “I hate to tell you this, Doc, but we have a problem,” she began.
