Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have their head examined.
—Sam Goldwyn
Lee Strasberg never directed a distinguished play or gave an extraordinary performance, yet he became one of the leading visionaries of the American theater. His unique gift was in the discernment of talent and the teaching of technique. Strasberg’s forebears were Talmudic scholars, and he brought to the theater a patriarch’s zeal that transcended knowledge. There was a mystic quality to his burning intensity that superseded theory. The laser cast of his eyes betrayed a penetrating intelligence, a unique ability to see into the heart of a matter—the discernment of temperament, the hidden nuggets of talent or a gift, the truth behind the pretext, the origins of aberration and self-deception, the nature of a psychic wound.
Strasberg became the Dalai Lama of Dream Street, and among those artists starving for enlightenment who made pilgrimages to his walk-up West Side kitchen-temple were Julie Harris, Paul Newman, James Dean, Ben Gazzara, Shelley Winters, Dustin Hoffman, Maureen Stapleton, Al Pacino, Rod Steiger, Patricia Neal, Eli Wallach—and Marilyn Monroe.
Elia Kazan observed, “Actors would humble themselves before his rhetoric and the intensity of his emotion. The more naive and self-doubting the actors, the more total was Lee’s power over them. The more famous and the more successful these actors, the headier the taste of power for Lee. He found his perfect victim-devotee in Marilyn Monroe.”
Actor Kevin McCarthy recalls hardly noticing Marilyn at the Actors Studio at first as they sat side by side watching a badly acted scene from Chekhov’s Three Sisters. “This tousled piece of humanity was sitting to my right, and I didn’t recognize her. Then as I glanced at her I saw this metamorphosis take place. I looked again and I realized that a breathing, palpitating Marilyn Monroe had transcended out of that nothing…. I remember looking and thinking, ‘My God, it’s her’—she’d just come to life!”
Lee Strasberg, who had never seen a Marilyn Monroe movie, was astonished at the Monroe magic—the “mystic-like flame,” the size of the crowds she drew, and the sizable monetary benefits to the Actors Studio. Her appearances at Studio fund-raisers proved to be a financial windfall, and critics accused Strasberg of being an opportunist. Marilyn gave her Thunderbird to Strasberg’s son, John, who observed, “The greatest tragedy was that people, even my father in a way, took advantage of her. They glommed onto her special sort of life, her special characteristics, when what she needed was love.”
Marilyn’s classes were on Tuesdays and Fridays at the Studio, which was then located in the Paramount Theater building on Broadway. There were exercises in “sense memory” in which Marilyn would close her eyes and recapture a childhood experience in all its sensory immediacy. She would try to recall objects and surroundings in detail, as well as the sequence of events that occurred and—most important—the emotional content of the experience. Another exercise would be to sing a song without gestures, so that the emotion and context would be projected solely by voice. When the blond refugee from Hollywood did her first exercise, the blue-jeaned disciples of Stanislavsky were laying in wait. MM was a tinseltown moovie stah. The sans culottes of Shubert Alley were of the Théâtre.
She was to sing a song.
Most students chose a simple song like “Happy Days Are Here Again” or “Give My Regards to Broadway.” Marilyn chose “I’ll Get By.” She stood limply on the stage, rag-doll arms at her sides, head tilted up in surrender to the muse.
This old world was as sad a place for me
As could be,
I was lonely and blue
Until I met you.
Although wealth and power I may never find
Still as long as I have you, dear, I won’t mind.
Though there was a trace of a brave smile, tears began streaming down her face, and the familiar refrain seemed to take on new meaning….
For I’ll get by as long as I have you.
Tho there be rain and darkness too,
I’ll not complain, I’ll laugh it through.
Poverty may come to me that’s true.
But what care I?
Say, I’ll get by as long as I have you.
Not wiping away the tears, she kept her concentration, singing in surrender to the song—its victim. The most cynical studio observers were swept up in the emotion. Susan Strasberg recalled that when Marilyn finished her song there wasn’t a dry, jaundiced eye in the house. Everyone wanted to run onstage and hold her. It was said that Lee Strasberg nudged Paula and said, “I told you she was great—now even I believe it!”
Strasberg maintained that some students couldn’t benefit from the Method unless they unblocked emotions dealing with their past through psychoanalysis. He suggested to Marilyn that she open up her unconscious through psychotherapy, and she began visiting Dr. Margaret Herz Hohenberg, who was recommended to her by Milton Greene. Margaret Hohenberg had studied medicine in Vienna and practiced in Prague before fleeing to America in 1939. Milton Greene had been her patient for several years, and in the spring of 1955, Marilyn began commuting several days a week to Hohenberg’s office at 155 East Ninety-Third Street.
Not long after the windfall of Marilyn’s arrival on the East Coast, the Strasbergs moved from their walk-up on West Eighty-Sixth Street to a spacious apartment at 135 Central Park West, where Marilyn was a frequent guest. Strasberg was an avid reader, and several of the rooms were stacked with books from floor to ceiling. Marilyn referred to the decor as “early Brentano’s.” The family rented a house on Fire Island for the summer, and Marilyn was often there on weekends, when champagne would bubble on Saturday nights and Marilyn would dance to phonograph records. “She was like a child,” Susan Strasberg recalled. “She’d fill the room with her full laughter, sensual movements, and high spirits. My father loved it. He had this smile of pleasure on his face. He got that smile around children and animals. Marilyn made him laugh.”
Susan Strasberg, who was only sixteen at the time, remembered many whispered conversations about “Arturo,” a married man Marilyn was having a heavy romance with. Marilyn and Paula Strasberg would have long discussions about “Arturo” far into the night. “Arturo” didn’t like Lee Strasberg. In 1967 Arthur Miller interrupted Fred Guiles when the subject of Strasberg came up: “Don’t talk to me about Lee Strasberg because I can’t stand the man!” he exclaimed. “My sister, Joan Copeland, who is an actress, believes Strasberg is a great man…. I think there is something false about him. Lee became a guru to these people and unless he is there, they can’t move. I never blasted him to Marilyn because she needed him. I recognized that dependency, and as long as she got something out of it, I never said anything. We just didn’t discuss him.”
Miller wrote of Marilyn’s double-edged vulnerability in an unpublished play in which the character modeled on Marilyn has a purgatorial effect on three dedicated research physicians. The researchers are employed by a wealthy pharmaceuticals maker who inspires them with social idealism, while, in fact, using them for raw capitalistic ambition. “They typified what I then saw as the captive artist-creator,” Miller stated. Into their midst comes Lorraine, the mistress of one of the doctors, who Miller admitted was a character modeled on Marilyn:
With her open sexuality, childlike and sublimely free of ties and expectations in a life she half senses is doomed, she moves instinctively to break the hold of respectability on the men until each in his different way meets the tragedy in which she has unwittingly entangled him—one retreats to a loveless and destructive marriage in fear of losing his social standing; another abandons his family for her, only to be abandoned in turn when her interests change. Like a blind, godlike force, with all its creative cruelty, her sexuality comes to seem the only truthful connection with some ultimate nature, everything that is life-giving and authentic. She flashes a ghastly illumination upon the social routiniation to which they are all tied and which is killing their souls—but she has no security of her own and no faith, and her liberating promise is finally illusionary.
Miller stated that the play remained unfinished because he couldn’t accept the nihilistic spiritual catastrophe it persisted in foretelling: “That is, I believed it as a writer but could not confess it as a man. I could not know, of course, that in the coming years, I would live out much of its prophecy myself.”
In mid-May thousands watched as a fifty-two-foot-high image of Miller’s “godlike force” was lifted into place in Times Square, advertising the opening of The Seven Year Itch at the Loew’s Broadway; and on June 1, all five feet five and three-quarters inches of the real thing showed up for the premiere on the arm of Joe DiMaggio.
“We’re just good friends. We do not plan to remarry. That’s all I can say,” she told the press. It was Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday, and after the premiere DiMaggio hosted a party for her at Toots Shor’s. She and Joe had a violent argument and Marilyn went home early. “Marilyn was afraid of Joe,” said Arthur Jacobs’s New York publicist, Lois Weber. “She was physically afraid. He was obviously rigid in his beliefs. There must have been a great ambivalence in his feeling toward her…. There were times she made it clear he had hurt her very badly, maybe even struck her in some jealous rage.”
The Seven Year Itch was a giant success both for Marilyn and Fox. Variety termed Itch the hottest ticket seller of the summer. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said, “From the moment she steps into the picture Miss Monroe brings a special personality to the screen.” The New York Daily Mirror stated, “Marilyn’s a fine comedienne. Her pouting delivery, puckered lips—the personification of this decade’s glamour—make her one of Hollywood’s top attractions.”
But Hollywood no longer had its “top attraction,” and the giant success of Itch had Fox attorneys scratching their heads. Marilyn Monroe was earning a fortune for Fox and they were newly motivated to appease their runaway star. For directing Itch, Billy Wilder received half a million dollars plus a share of the profits, and producer Charles Feldman, who was also paid as Marilyn’s agent, received $318,000 plus guarantees. Marilyn received $1,500 a week plus a $100,000 bonus, which Fox had failed to pay. During the summer, when Milton Greene and Irving Stein were negotiating a new agreement with Fox, the studio was forced to recognize the inequity of her contract. And in November word rippled through the Fox lot that the studio had agreed to a new nonexclusive contract with Marilyn Monroe Productions.
The “dumb blonde” had won.
The agreement called for Marilyn Monroe to appear in four Fox pictures over the next seven years. She was to receive at least a hundred thousand dollars per picture. In addition, she was given director approval. A Fox executive commented, “There was only one topic of conversation today in the producers’ dining room, and that was Marilyn’s fantastic deal. I’ve been in the business a long time, and when I tell you a deal is fantastic, you know I mean fantastic!”
The holiday season of 1955 ended happily for Marilyn. Her life seemed to be coming together. She had learned a little bit more about herself; moreover, she had won her war with Fox. Zanuck, in fact, had resigned and was being replaced by Buddy Adler. And in private Marilyn and “Arturo” were talking about marriage. According to Norman Rosten, Marilyn brought about a transformation in Arthur Miller, who had always been a staid, introspective loner. “Miller was in love, completely, seriously in love. It was wonderful to behold.”
New Year’s Eve was celebrated at the Greenes’ home in Connecticut among a small group of Marilyn’s friends. Snow was falling, and at midnight a champagne toast was made to the future, which held bright promise. Truman Capote later wrote to a friend, “Saw Marilyn M. and Arthur Miller the other night, both looking suffused with a sexual glow. They plan to get married, but can’t help feeling this little episode is called, ‘Death of a Playwright.’”