MARILYN MONROE HAD BECOME THE world’s number one female box office attraction. That fact notwithstanding, she remained, as Joe DiMaggio had constantly reminded her, a hapless victim of the pernicious Hollywood system. Twentieth Century–Fox continued to dictate her selection of films, roles, costars, producers, and directors. Moreover, although she’d recently received an increase in salary, it didn’t come close to the pay base commanded by other high-visibility stars. While she and DiMaggio had discussed the possibility of her breaking away from Fox and starting her own independent film production company, nothing had come of the idea. Ultimately, it was Milton H. Greene, a young, opportunistic magazine photographer, who persuaded Monroe to take matters into her own hands.
Marilyn first met Greene in September 1949 at a Beverly Hills house party. He’d come to town to put together a photo essay for Life magazine on promising Hollywood starlets. Johnny Hyde, with whom Monroe was then living, had gone to Palm Springs for the week on a business-related matter.
Attracted to the vibrant, darkly handsome, twenty-seven-year-old photographer—and hoping to be included in his photo essay—Marilyn spent two nights with him at what he referred to as “my West Coast house,” the Chateau Marmont, overlooking Sunset Boulevard. After his return to New York later that month, he received a playful telegram from Marilyn addressed to Milton “Hot Shutter” Greene:
. . . .
It’s that I think you are superb –
And that, my dear, is not just a blurb. . . .
Marilyn and Milton didn’t meet again until October 1953, when he returned to Hollywood with Amy Greene, his newlywed bride, a former New York fashion model. In the interim, Greene had moved from Life to Look magazine. Monroe again spent time with the couple in September 1954, during the New York location filming of The Seven Year Itch.
Like Joe DiMaggio, Milton felt strongly that Twentieth Century–Fox had exploited Monroe and that she possessed far more promise and talent than the studio seemed willing to admit. Frank Delaney, Greene’s lawyer, read Marilyn’s contract with Fox and contended that it was basically a “slave labor agreement” and therefore invalid. By December 1954, encouraged by Milton Greene, whose judgment she’d come to trust, the “not-so-dumb blonde” had made up her mind to sever her connections with Fox and to leave Hollywood altogether and relocate to New York.
In the back of her mind lurked the enticing figure of Arthur Miller, who worked and lived in New York. But there were other considerations as well. Her old flame Elia Kazan had often spoken to her of the Actors Studio, located in Manhattan, which he had cofounded and which acting guru Lee Strasberg ran.
The school taught the Method approach to acting, and it had earned a reputation as the country’s leading training ground for both novice and experienced performers. The school would be an ideal place for Marilyn, insisted Kazan, since it represented an extension of the acting style she’d previously studied with Michael Chekhov. While still in Los Angeles, Marilyn Monroe met with Paula Strasberg, Lee’s wife, and she, too, offered encouragement, suggesting Monroe could refine her acting skills by taking courses at the Actors Studio at the same time as she launched her film production company.
To expedite Marilyn’s move to New York, Milton Greene flew to Los Angeles and helped her pack. On her last night in Hollywood, she and Greene went nightclubbing with Sammy Davis Jr., Mel Tormé, and Shelley Winters, who’d studied at the Actors Studio and gave it high marks. The entire group, including Greene, assured Marilyn she’d made the right decision. The next day, escorted by Milton Greene, she flew to New York.
In early January 1955, having checked into a sixth-floor suite at the Gladstone, an apartment-hotel on Fifty-Second Street, off Park Avenue, Marilyn held a press conference announcing the establishment of Marilyn Monroe Productions, Incorporated (MMP). Not surprisingly, she named Milton Greene as the other major partner in the corporation. Marilyn, as president, controlled fifty-one percent of MMP’s 1,012 shares, which went public that spring. Greene quit his $50,000-a-year job at Look in order to devote more time to the new project.
Fox executives were outraged by what they regarded as Marilyn Monroe’s blatant refusal to live up to her existing contractual obligations. They threatened to sue and vowed that she would never again appear in a Hollywood film, depicting her in the press as a talentless floozy who dared to make preposterous artistic demands on the greatest and noblest of Hollywood’s film studios. “It was as though,” wrote one film critic, “Cinderella had betrayed her fairy godmother.”
Marilyn’s bold step pleased Joe DiMaggio. He congratulated his former wife and complimented Milton Greene for having liberated Marilyn from the Fox “salt-mine,” a feat even he had not been able to accomplish. He did, however, take some satisfaction in the knowledge that his constant badgering had evidently played some role in Marilyn’s decision to part company with the studio. It must also have occurred to him that if Marilyn were to remain in New York, he might stand a reasonable chance of getting her back. Lest one forget, New York belonged to Joe DiMaggio.
Retaining her suite at the Gladstone, Marilyn began spending time at the Greene residence on Fanton Hill Road in Weston, Connecticut, an hour from Midtown. For her part, Amy Greene seemed blithely unaware—or unwilling to concede—that her husband and Marilyn had been sexually involved. Even harder for her to believe was the possibility that they were still lovers, though years later she would describe Marilyn to author Donald Spoto as a “home wrecker” and her husband as a cagey, elusive man, “given to excesses and indulgences he seemed unable to control,” one of which was evidently a long-term addiction to pharmaceuticals. In fact, he soon replaced Sidney Skolsky as Marilyn’s “candy man,” regularly supplying her with pain pills and barbiturates. He had no problem getting prescriptions, as several members of his family were physicians.
Despite her ongoing affair with Milton, which ended only that spring, Marilyn managed to establish a close friendship with Amy. They often drove into New York together to shop for clothes at Saks and Bonwit Teller, Marilyn hidden under her usual disguise of sunglasses and a black wig. With her background in fashion, Amy helped Marilyn put together a “proper” New York wardrobe, a collection of outfits of which even Joe DiMaggio would have approved.
Marilyn became very much a member of the Greene household, claimed Amy. The Greenes had an infant son, Joshua, for whom Marilyn often babysat. She enjoyed bathing and feeding the young child, and she frequently bought him presents, including a large stuffed bear named Socko. She told Amy that more than anything she wanted to have children of her own but feared that she couldn’t, having undergone a number of early “two-dollar” abortions.
As Marilyn’s latest confidante, Amy heard stories about the failed marriage to Joe DiMaggio, a marriage that might have succeeded had he permitted her to get on with her career. “I don’t know whom he thought he was marrying when he married me,” she told Amy.
Marilyn characterized her marriage to DiMaggio as “a sort of crazy, difficult friendship with sexual privileges.” Later in life, it occurred to her that that’s what marriages often turn out to be. At another point, she maintained that she never should have married Joe—she never could have been the Italian housewife he wanted her to be. She’d married him, she said, because she’d felt sorry for him; he seemed so lonely and sad. A number of years later, she would describe her marriage to Arthur Miller in much the same way.
As Amy Greene saw the marriage to DiMaggio, “Joe never fit into her life, and she never fit into his. They were in love, but unmatched, except sexually. They fucked like bunny rabbits.”
Joe and Marilyn’s friendship had not ended. In late January, Milton Greene and Marilyn traveled to Boston to meet with Henry Rosenfeld, the wealthy dress manufacturer who’d once had a brief interlude with the actress. Presently in Boston to open an apparel factory, he’d contacted Marilyn and invited her to join him to discuss the possibility of his investing a large sum in MMP. He hadn’t counted on her bringing along her business partner. Nor did he realize that Marilyn was still involved with Joe DiMaggio.
The ballplayer happened to be visiting his brother Dom and Dom’s wife at their home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Marilyn called DiMaggio at his brother’s and said she wanted to see him. He picked her up at her hotel, and they spent the next five days together at Dom’s house.
“The instant the press got wind that Joe and Marilyn were staying together, they were on top of us,” recalled Dom DiMaggio. “We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without the press coming along. One evening we drove to Boston and went out to dinner. As we were finishing our meal, a journalist came over to the table. He wanted to know if Joe and Marilyn were reconciling. Joe looked at Marilyn. ‘Are we, darling?’ he asked. Marilyn paused, then said, ‘Let’s just call it a visit.’ ”
Several days later, a half dozen press cars sat across the street from Dom DiMaggio’s house. They’d been there for hours waiting for Joe and Marilyn to emerge. One by one they began to leave. Ed Corsetti, a reporter for the Boston Herald American, sat behind the wheel of a brand-new, black-and-white Ford with photographer Carroll Myett. They, too, were about to leave when the door to Dom’s house opened, and out walked the celebrated couple. Marilyn wore a big floppy hat and sunglasses. Without a word, they climbed into a Cadillac convertible and drove off. Corsetti and Myett followed them.
“DiMaggio must have driven five miles before he realized we were behind him,” said Corsetti. “We were on Route 9, headed west. I didn’t know where he was going. Maybe he was going back to New York. Carroll had his camera, one of those big old cameras, up by the windshield. I didn’t know for sure if DiMaggio, looking through the rearview mirror, saw this car following him with this guy with a camera. But he put on the gas. And I mean, he took off. We were following him and he had to be doing eighty miles per hour! Carroll kept saying, ‘You’re going to get us killed!’ I was hoping like hell the state troopers would show up and stop him. As I was trying to pull alongside him so Carroll could get his shot, he pulled his car to the left. I had to brake and back down. We must have chased him for fifteen or twenty miles. He put it in overdrive. He had to be going a hundred miles per hour. I said, ‘This is crazy. We’re driving a Ford, and he’s driving a Cadillac.’ We let him go. I’ll give him credit—he was a hell of a driver. And the two of them were as big as anything in the country at the time.”
Ed Corsetti had been correct. Joe and Marilyn were indeed en route to New York. He dropped her at the Gladstone Hotel and headed straight to Toots Shor’s, where he bumped into Red Smith and Lou Effrat, a sportswriter for the New York Times. Elated by the five days he’d just spent with his former wife, Joe intimated that he and Marilyn might soon embark on a second honeymoon.
That DiMaggio remained hopeful regarding a possible second marriage is evidenced by entries he made at this juncture in an ongoing series of notebooks he had begun keeping in the late 1940s, a kind of chronological journal of his comings and goings. A second set of notebooks—twenty-nine of them—covering the years 1962 to 1999, were even more impersonal than the first set and made no mention at all of Marilyn. Both sets served primarily as a daily reminder of appointments as well as a detailed record of DiMaggio’s expenditures—how much he’d spent and where. Yet buried within his first set of jottings are two pages devoted to Marilyn.
The first page presents a list of guidelines for what to do and what not to do in Marilyn’s presence: reminders to himself to avoid being critical, to be humbler and to share his true feelings and show affection, to practice patience, and to refrain from jealousy.
The other journal page devoted to Monroe recounts details of a conversation between Joe and Marilyn, where, in making a date to see each other, Marilyn requested time to apply makeup because, she averred, “You like me in makeup.” He says he told her, “You look good anytime, made up or not. You have natural beauty.”
Their late-evening date took place on February 9. Joe stayed overnight with Marilyn at the Gladstone, where their room service breakfast consisted of champagne and caviar. They met again a few weeks later, when he invited her to accompany him to a private birthday party for Jackie Gleason at Toots Shor’s.
Jane Duffy, a guest at the Gleason party with her husband, remembered being introduced to Marilyn. “Mike Duffy, my husband, was a good friend of George Solotaire,” said Jane. “Joe DiMaggio and George were staying in a two-bedroom suite at the Hotel Madison. Later they moved into the Mayflower. At any rate, the four of us went to dinner quite often, usually at ‘21.’ You couldn’t get through a meal without a dozen strangers approaching the table to ask DiMaggio for an autograph, including the waiters and busboys. He wasn’t a rocket scientist, and he didn’t strike me as terribly deep, but there was definitely something special about him. Let’s face it: he was as renowned as they come. I mean, here’s a guy who partied with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Truman, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Dietrich, Sinatra, Orson Welles, and the Rockefellers. Yet, for all his fame, he exuded a real shyness. He wasn’t aloof or stuck up, but he was exceedingly private. He almost never mentioned Marilyn.
“So anyway, we were at Jackie Gleason’s birthday party and Joe introduced me to Marilyn. She had a voluptuous figure, naturally, but she was small boned, which added to her beauty. She was smaller in person than she looked on-screen, which I suppose is true of most movie stars. I could understand what DiMaggio saw in her. She had what Billy Wilder once called a kind of ‘elegant vulgarity.’ On a personal level, she seemed polite but distant. She didn’t say much. I asked if I could bring her a glass of Piper-Heidsieck, which is the champagne they were serving, and she said, ‘No thanks, I don’t drink.’ An hour later she had a glass of champagne in her hand and looked half-crocked. The next time my husband and I dined with George and Joe, I asked DiMaggio whether Marilyn drank alcohol. ‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’ he answered. Coming from Joe DiMaggio, that made for quite a statement.”
• • •
For reasons that Joe DiMaggio could never understand, Marilyn suddenly disappeared from his life. She took his phone calls and continued to seek his advice, but she was always too busy to see him in person. For one thing, she found herself enmeshed in legal discussions with Twentieth Century–Fox.
To avoid a costly legal battle with the studio, Marilyn Monroe and Milton Greene agreed to let her attorney Loyd Wright work out a compromise with Fox. The renegotiated agreement called for Marilyn to star in four Fox films over the next seven years. However, she would have director approval and the right to veto “substandard” screenplays. She would receive $100,000 per film and a percentage of the profits. Most important, she retained the right to make one film each year for a studio other than Fox, which cleared the way for the operation of Marilyn Monroe Productions. Milton Greene estimated that, with any degree of luck, MMP stood to make a minimum of $1 million a year for the next seven years and far more thereafter. With this figure in mind, he agreed that the production company would underwrite all of Marilyn’s living expenses.
In addition to her involvement with MMP, Marilyn had begun taking acting lessons with Lee Strasberg, director of the Actors Studio. Born in Budaniv, in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1901, Strasberg rapidly emerged as one more in her never-ending list of surrogate fathers. “He became my coach, friend, advisor, mentor, hero, champion, and savior,” said Marilyn. Strasberg compared Marilyn’s talents favorably to those of Marlon Brando, the most esteemed of his acting students. “I saw that what Marilyn looked like was not what she really was,” noted Strasberg. “And what was going on inside was not what was going on outside, and that always means there may be something there to work with. It was almost as if she had been waiting for a button to be pushed, and when it was pushed, a door opened, and you saw a residue of gold and jewels.”
One of Lee Strasberg’s standard suggestions—practically a requirement—was that students enhance their reservoir of primal memories and emotions (what he called “sense memory”) by entering psychoanalysis. He and Paula were undergoing analysis, and both felt, among its other advantages, that it had strengthened their marriage. Turning to Milton Greene for advice on the subject, Marilyn was soon given a referral. Greene himself had been in therapy for several years with Dr. Margaret Herz Hohenberg, who, like Lee Strasberg, had come to the United States from Hungary to escape the concentration camps of the Third Reich.
A follower of the Viennese school of psychoanalysis founded by Sigmund Freud, Hohenberg, at fifty-seven, was a tall, heavy woman with white hair that was often braided and wrapped around her head. She lived at 11 Riverside Drive and worked out of an office located at 155 East Ninety-Third Street, off Lexington.
On Milton Greene’s recommendation, Marilyn met with the analyst. By March 1955, she was seeing Hohenberg five times a week. Monroe’s presence on the block did not go unnoticed; Hohenerg’s neighbors would frequently stop her on the street and inquire, “How is Miss Monroe doing today?”
During their sessions, for which Marilyn invariably arrived late, they dealt with the traumas of Monroe’s chaotic childhood, her lack of self-esteem, her lust for approval, her dread of rejection, her obsessive search for a father figure, her need to satisfy “everybody,” and her fear of abandonment.
To facilitate the analytic process, the actress recorded her thoughts and dreams in a series of binders that, in 2010, were posthumously published as a single volume called Fragments, which seemed an appropriate title considering Hohenberg’s pronouncement, made soon after she met Marilyn, that the actress possessed “a fragmented mind.”
Typical of Marilyn’s nightmarish notations in Fragments is one that reads: “For Dr. H—Tell her about that dream of the horrible, repulsive man—who is trying to lean too close to me in the elevator—and my panic and then my thought despising him—does that mean I’m attached to him? He even looks like he has a venereal disease.”
After six months of treatment, Hohenberg diagnosed Monroe as suffering from borderline personality disorder, a psychological condition characterized by intense turmoil and instability in relationships and behavior. Marilyn demonstrated two of the conditions commonly associated with BPD: dissociation and depersonalization. Under stress, her mind and body would literally shut down, which helped explain (at least to Hohenberg) why Marilyn was always late for appointments and had difficulty remembering her lines when appearing in films.
Strangely enough, Hohenberg also determined that Marilyn had a hearing dysfunction in her right ear. She sent her to Dr. Eugen Grabscheid, an audiologist, who confirmed that she had a mild case of Ménière’s disease, a permanent buildup of fluids in the inner ear, a potentially dangerous, difficult-to-treat ailment that led to hearing loss and bouts of dizziness.
“Marilyn took it as a sign of aging,” Hohenberg told Iselin Simon, a bridge partner and sometime companion, one of the few people the therapist spoke to about her famous patient. “She was panicky about growing old. She took two bubble baths a day and lathered herself with all sorts of lotions. My office was located a few doors down from a Whelan’s Drug Store, and she spent hours walking the aisles searching for beauty ointments and creams, anything and everything to help stave off the inevitable aging process. She could never have grown old. Never!”
Confirming Dr. Hohenberg’s summation, Amy Greene remembered Marilyn’s telling her, “I’m going to die young like Jean Harlow.” Marilyn, said Greene, yearned to be Harlow. “All of Marilyn’s men were disasters—like Harlow’s. She based her life on Jean Harlow and often spoke of playing Harlow in a biographical film. In later years, I believe she even went to visit Jean Harlow’s mother.” Amy went on to say that though Marilyn claimed she needed to master her craft and become a serious actress, “I never bought it.” Marilyn, she asserted, “loved being all tits and ass. She invented tits and ass. She wanted to be a movie star, not an actress. Tits and ass were at her very core.”
Amy Greene grossly underestimated Marilyn’s resolve to improve her acting skills and perform in films she deemed worthy of those skills. “I’m tired of being a symbol,” she told Dr. Hohenberg.
Under Lee and Paula Strasberg’s influence, she became an earnest devotee not just of Method acting but also of Freudian analysis. She took an interest in all things Freud. She delighted in learning that Dr. Grabscheid, the audiologist, had once been Sigmund Freud’s physician. Through Grabscheid, she became acquainted with Harry Freud, a New York cousin of Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter, at the time living and practicing psychiatry in England. After meeting with Monroe, Harry Freud wrote to Anna: “I was surprised that today’s most glamorous and sexy film star has the intellectual capacity to be interested in Freud.” Harry’s evaluation of Monroe stood in stark contrast to the tongue-in-cheek self-appraisal put forth in Marilyn’s personal memoir: “I try to hide it, but I’m quite dumb.”
“Marilyn was anything but dumb,” said Whitey Snyder, “but I never agreed with her decision to move to New York. Milton Greene lured her there by making all sorts of promises. He was a wily, manipulative, conniving man who saw Marilyn as little more than a commodity on whose shoulders he could ride in his bid to become a successful and wealthy film producer. However, I have to add that to some extent he put his own ass on the line. To raise initial capital for the venture, he mortgaged his house and took out loans. Of course, in the back of his mind, he was convinced he’d make a fortune off Marilyn. But at least he made an effort to aid the cause, which is more than I can say for the Strasbergs. If you ask me, Marilyn put the Actors Studio on the map rather than the other way ’round. The majority of Lee’s pre-Monroe students, with the notable exception of Montgomery Clift and Brando, were in the theater; the big film names, like De Niro and Pacino, became involved long after Marilyn made the place famous.”
The worst of it, from Whitey’s perspective, concerned Paula Strasberg. “Lee’s wife was an absolute disaster,” said Snyder. “Marilyn hired her to replace Natasha Lytess as her ‘on-location’ acting coach. She was known in the trade as the ‘black witch.’ Obese and obnoxious, she perpetually wore black and knew absolutely nothing about acting. She robbed Marilyn blind. And so, for that matter, did Lee. They charged her immense sums of money for their so-called services, and Marilyn, in her naïveté, and with her insecurities, paid. Lee Strasberg took credit for creating Marlon Brando. I knew Brando, and I once asked him what he thought of Lee Strasberg. Marlon said, ‘Lee Strasberg popularized, bastardized, and misused Method acting. He’s an ambitious, selfish, untalented man who used and exploited his students. I have no respect for him. The only reason I attended the Actors Studio is that it was a good place to pick up women.’ ”
The Strasbergs had two teenaged children, Susan and John, both of whom in time turned to acting as a profession. Describing Marilyn’s dealings with his parents, John Strasberg told author Anthony Summers, “People took advantage of Marilyn . . . even my father, in a way. They glommed on to her special sort of life—her special characteristics—when what she needed was love. My parents did give her some love, but it was inextricably linked with the acting.”
Susan Strasberg provided an equally blunt explanation when she said, “My dad fell in love with Marilyn, while she in turn regarded him as a father figure. Despite his amorous feeling toward her, he did want to improve her acting skills. He used to tell her she lacked discipline and technique, and while he could impart the latter, she had to develop the strength to discipline herself. Regarding my mother, when she looked at Marilyn, she saw dollar signs, a means to an end. I’m certain she liked Marilyn, but it was more a question of what Marilyn could do for her. And I’m also sure she considered Marilyn a threat to her marriage, which is one reason she kept such a close eye on her. As for me, I suppose I represented a kind of kid sister to Marilyn. When I turned eighteen, she sent me to a gynecologist and paid for a diaphragm. She gave me a birthday card, which said, ‘I want you to be free, but I don’t want you to get pregnant.’ ”
• • •
Joe DiMaggio Jr., still in Los Angeles attending Black-Foxe Military Institute, heard from Marilyn on a regular basis even after she moved to New York. “She’d promised to keep in touch with me, and she did,” he said. “She used to write all the time. I recall her sending me a photograph of a beautiful female cat somebody had given her. The cat became pregnant, and she had to give away the kittens. She named one of them ‘Joey,’ after yours truly. Then she had to give the mother cat away because Sydney Guilaroff, the Hollywood hairdresser, gave her a couple of parakeets, Butch and Bobo. She sent me a snapshot of the birds. She sent me another photo of herself atop a pink elephant that she rode in Madison Square Garden at the 1955 opening of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. She was scantily attired in sequins and spangles, and I remember hearing that when the press ran the picture, my father called her up and excoriated her for appearing in public ‘practically in the nude.’ She shut him up by explaining that the day’s proceeds were being donated by Ringling Brothers to a charity [the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation]. She also reminded him that they were no longer married, and she didn’t have to account to him for her actions.”
Later that year, Marilyn was approached by Gardner Cowles, the publisher of Look, who told her that Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis wanted to meet with her to discuss the possibility of her getting together with Prince Rainier of Monaco. It seemed that the fabled prince wanted to find a wife in order to produce an heir to his Mediterranean fiefdom. “Marilyn thought it highly amusing that Rainier would consider her,” said Joe DiMaggio Jr. “She began signing her letters ‘Princess Marilyn.’ In the end, he married Grace Kelly, and Marilyn’s next letter to me read, ‘One more competitor bites the dust.’ ” Marilyn sent Grace Kelly a telegram that read “I’m so happy you found a way out of this business.”
On April 8, 1955, Edward R. Murrow interviewed Marilyn on Person to Person, the popular television program. Joe Jr. watched the show with classmates in his dormitory’s recreation room. The interview took place at the Greene residence in Connecticut. “The Greenes did far more talking than Marilyn,” said Joey, “and you could see that Edward Murrow wasn’t the least bit interested in anything they had to say. He wanted to hear what Marilyn had to say. You came away from the program with the distinct impression that the Greenes were using her to satisfy their own particular needs. Of course, my classmates were up to their usual antics, yelling and yelping whenever Marilyn appeared on camera. ‘What a pair!’ one of them shrieked. And then they all went off like a bunch of jackals.”
Establishing herself in her new setting, Monroe received help from New York Post syndicated columnist Leonard Lyons and photographer Sam Shaw (along with his wife Anne) as well as from Milton Greene. She lunched with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sidney Kingsley, actor David Wayne, and Broadway producer and lyricist Richard Adler. She met photographers Philippe Halsman, Richard Avedon, and Bert Stern. She befriended poet Norman Rosten, his wife, Hedda, and their young daughter, Patricia. Tennessee Williams visited the Greenes one evening and offered Marilyn the female lead in the film version of his latest play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which she considered but ultimately declined. At a New York dinner party, she was introduced to Mary Leatherbee, Life magazine movie editor, and Tom Prideaux, Life entertainment chief. The prevailing feminine style when Marilyn arrived on the New York scene was tall, slim, and elegant. The top models of the day were Suzy Parker, Dorian Leigh, and Anne St. Marie. But Marilyn, as the magazine editors and photographers soon discerned, had her own style. “Curves and sex are suddenly in vogue,” said Truman Capote.
Capote saw a good deal of Marilyn following her arrival in New York. They went dancing together at El Morocco. Marilyn would kick off her shoes to reduce their height difference. She told him she liked to dance naked in front of a mirror and watch her breasts “jump around.” They window-shopped on Madison Avenue, attended the theater, and watched movies together on television. Capote introduced her to the Southern novelist Carson McCullers, who was also staying at the Gladstone Hotel, and the three of them went to a jazz club and then to a party at the St. Regis.
One evening, Truman and Marilyn ate dinner with a disoriented Montgomery Clift, after which Marilyn told Capote, “Monty’s the only person I know who’s worse off in life than me.” Capote concurred. Monty Clift was hopelessly addicted to amphetamines, whereas Marilyn, according to Capote, had become dependent on “downers”—sleeping pills and tranquilizers—which she washed down with booze. Capote took Marilyn to a party hosted by Hearst newspaper society columnist Igor Cassini at Le Club, the exclusive Manhattan nightspot, and by evening’s end, she had passed out. She gave an encore performance a few days later at the Stork Club. Capote referred Marilyn to a Park Avenue internist, who recommended that she cut back on her therapy sessions and attendance at the Actors Studio. Marilyn had no intention of following the doctor’s advice.
On April 28, 1955, Truman and Marilyn met at the Universal Funeral Home, down the block from the Gladstone Hotel, to attend the funeral of British Shakespearian actress Constance Collier. Marilyn had once taken a breathing class taught by Collier in Hollywood, and Collier had spoken to Capote about her pupil, referring to her as “a big beautiful child,” giving rise to a Capote profile of Monroe that he entitled, “A Beautiful Child.”
In his profile, Capote recalled that Marilyn had arrived late for the Collier funeral, so they’d sat in the back row of the funeral home. After the service they went to a nearby bistro and shared a bottle of “bubbly.” As they sat and drank, Marilyn said, “I hate funerals. I’m glad I won’t have to go to my own. Only, I don’t want a funeral—just my ashes cast on the waves by one of my kids, if I ever have any.” Marilyn spoke about how much she loved New York and loathed Los Angeles. “Even though I was born there, I can’t think of one good thing to say about it,” she remarked. “If I close my eyes and picture LA, all I see is one big varicose vein.” They discussed actors and acting. Marilyn wanted to know what Elizabeth Taylor was really like. “Well,” responded Capote, “she’s a little like you. She wears her heart on her sleeve and talks salty.” To which Marilyn said, “Fuck you, Truman.”
They finished their bottle of champagne and wandered down Third Avenue, past P. J. Clarke’s saloon. Capote wanted to drop in, but Monroe didn’t. “It’s full of those advertising creeps,” she said. “And that bitch Dorothy Kilgallen—she’s always in there getting bombed. Capote, an acquaintance of the columnist’s, defended her. Marilyn disagreed. “Kilgallen has written some bitch stuff about me,” she said. “All those cunts hate me. Hedda. Louella. I know you’re supposed to get used to it, but I just can’t. It hurts. What did I ever do to those hags?”
They continued down Third and looked in shop windows, one of which displayed a handsome grandfather clock. “I’ve never had a home,” said Marilyn. “Not a real one with all my own furniture. But if I ever get married again, and make a lot of money, I’m going to hire a couple of trucks and ride down Third Avenue buying every damn kind of crazy thing. I’m going to get a dozen grandfather clocks and line them all up in one room and have them all ticking away at the same time.”
They went to a second bistro, and over a second bottle of champagne, Marilyn talked about Prince Philip (“He looks like he might have a nice prick”), Babe Paley (“She makes me look like pig slop”), and Joe DiMaggio (“I still love him—he’s genuine”). Capote brought up Arthur Miller. He’d heard that Marilyn and Miller were lovers. Marilyn admitted only that they were in communication and had been for quite some time.
They ended the day by taking a taxi to the South Street Pier, past the Bowery with its pawnshops, blood-donor stations, bars, and fleabag hotels advertising 50-cent cots and $1 beds. Looking out the cab window at the ancient bums squatted curbside amidst broken glass and heaps of debris, Marilyn became upset. She began to cry when a purple-nosed “scarecrow” leaped out of the shadows and started swabbing the taxi windshield with a wet rag clutched in a shaking hand. The cab took off and finally reached South Street, where they were greeted by the sight of the Brooklyn skyline across the water and cavorting seagulls white against a marine horizon streaked with thin fleecy clouds. They stepped out of the cab and saw a man with a chow on a leash. Marilyn paused to pat the dog’s head. As she reached out, the chow’s owner said, “You should never touch strange dogs. They might bite.” “Dogs never bite me,” responded Marilyn. “Just humans.” The man recognized Marilyn and asked for her autograph. She gave it to him, and then she and Capote walked to the end of the pier. Leaning against a mooring stanchion, the breeze fluffing her hair, Marilyn looked soothed and at peace. In the course of his profile, Capote wrote of Marilyn, “I hope, I really pray, that she survives long enough to free the strange lovely talent that’s wandering through her like a jailed spirit.”
• • •
In April Milton Greene decided Marilyn needed a more prestigious address than the Gladstone Hotel and signed a sublet lease in her behalf for actress Leonora Corbett’s twenty-seventh-floor, three-room suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Towers on Park Avenue—the same hotel where Dorothy Arnold had stayed following her divorce from Joe DiMaggio. The cost of the sublet was $1,000 per week. Other tenants at the Waldorf included General Douglas MacArthur, performer Tallulah Bankhead, and former president of the United States Herbert Hoover.
Although he hadn’t seen Marilyn since just after Jackie Gleason’s birthday party, Joe DiMaggio helped her move in. Their reunion was short lived. Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday on June 1 coincided with the New York premiere of The Seven Year Itch at Loew’s State Theater, in Times Square.
Monroe invited DiMaggio to the film, and he accepted. He then took the opportunity to arrange a late-night surprise birthday celebration for her at Toots Shor’s. As he subsequently told George Solotaire, he’d expected to return to her Waldorf suite with her after the party. It turned out that she’d arranged a postparty rendezvous with Marlon Brando, whom she’d been dating on and off for several months.
Robert Solotaire attended the surprise birthday party with his father and recalled the argument: “Joe was already in a miserable mood because of The Seven Year Itch premiere. To gain entrance to the theater, he’d been forced to walk under a fifty-foot sign of Marilyn on the subway grating, her private parts practically exposed. It brought back painful memories. So, when Marilyn informed him she wouldn’t be spending the night with him, it was like pouring gasoline on a hot fire. Joe loved Marilyn beyond anybody’s imagination.”
In his 1994 autobiography, Marlon Brando revealed that he’d first met Monroe on the Twentieth Century–Fox lot and then again at the Actors Studio. He saw her next at a New York cocktail party, where she sat alone, unnoticed in a corner, softly playing the piano. While holding a drink, Marlon spun around and hit her head. “I’m so sorry, it was an accident,” he said. “There are no accidents,” she replied.
He joined her at the piano, and they spent the evening talking and laughing. He called her several nights later, but she was busy. Then one night she called him. “I want to come over and see you right now,” she said. Their love affair began that evening. The morning after going to bed with Brando, Marilyn reportedly said to Milton Greene, “I don’t know if I do it the right way.”
Referring to Marlon by the code name “Carlo,” she described him to Amy Greene as “sweet and tender.” On another occasion, she was quoted as saying, “Personally I react to Marlon Brando. He’s a favorite of mine. He’s one of the most attractive men I’ve ever known.”
In his autobiography, Brando reflects on Marilyn, finding her extremely sensitive and misunderstood, much more perceptive than most people assumed. She’d been “beaten down in her life,” but she had survived “because of her strong emotional intelligence.” She had, he wrote, “a keen intuition for others’ feelings and a most refined intelligence.”
By midsummer 1955, Brando and Monroe’s affair had evolved into an intimate friendship. “Despite their very different backgrounds,” said Susan Strasberg, “they were like brother and sister. They both loved pranks and practical jokes. Marilyn once placed a life-size cutout of herself from The Seven Year Itch on the front lawn of actress Jane Wyman’s Los Angeles residence. She resented Wyman because Fred Karger had married her instead of Marilyn, and she wanted to taunt Wyman, who was older and not as beautiful as Marilyn. Not to be outdone, Brando played a trick of his own on Marilyn. She’d told him she had a strong attraction to Albert Einstein, that she’d even sent him a fan letter requesting his autograph. So Brando went out and bought a glossy photograph of the mathematician and mailed it to Marilyn. He inscribed on it, “To Marilyn, with respect and love and thanks. Albert Einstein.” Marilyn was thrilled at first, until she realized that Einstein had been dead for about six months. It didn’t take her long to figure out who’d sent it.