ALTHOUGH JOE DIMAGGIO MET WITH Marilyn Monroe only periodically in the years between 1958 and 1960, it appeared they met often enough to assuage his damaged soul. So eager was he to continue seeing Marilyn that he agreed to seek professional counseling in order to overcome his jealousy and anger issues. Dr. Kris, Marilyn’s psychoanalyst, provided her patient with the name of a psychiatrist for DiMaggio. Marilyn passed it on.
Joe went for a while, and the sessions seemed to help. Although he remained critical of those he deemed a threat to Marilyn’s happiness, he learned to temper his condemnations. He appeared better able to deal with Marilyn on her terms as opposed to his own. For her part, she appeared better able to deal with DiMaggio now than when she’d been his spouse.
Marilyn still had the Big Fellow very much on her mind. To Lena Pepitone, she mused, “I guess everybody I’ve ever loved, I still love a little.” Or maybe more than a little—who was to say? In addition to the poster of Joe Marilyn had mounted in her closet, she now carried a small snapshot of Joe in her wallet. She changed the combination on her jewelry box to 5-5-5, honoring Joe’s retired Yankee number. When she informed DiMaggio of the change, he said, “You should’ve made it 36-24-36.”
Joe’s psychiatrist, whose name has never been divulged, advised him to rejoin the workforce and to do something not directly related to baseball. In mid-1958, through retired quarterback Sid Luckman, he connected with the V. H. Monette Company, based in Smithfield, Virginia. The company was the leading supplier of merchandise and goods to military exchange stores and outlets in the United States and Europe. He signed on as corporate vice president and was paid a salary of $100,000 a year plus expenses. Among other benefits, the company paid for DiMaggio’s executive suite at the Lexington Hotel in New York.
In his new position, DiMaggio served as a kind of public relations figure, often traveling to military bases with the boss, Val Monette. He dined with generals and admirals, visited local officers’ clubs, and played an occasional round of golf with the company’s clients. He smiled, shook hands, and doled out his autograph. He met with the kids on the base and sometimes tossed a baseball around with them. Besides France, Germany, Italy, and Denmark, Joe accompanied Val to Poland and Russia, simply because Monette wanted to visit those countries. Joe remained with his employer through July, 1962.
“It was a good job for him,” said Joe DiMaggio Jr. “It kept him busy but not all that busy. He had plenty of downtime. He even visited me at school. Marilyn shamed him into it. When she learned that he hadn’t come out to see me at Lawrenceville, she said to him, ‘If you don’t visit your son, I will.’ So he and George Solotaire drove out one day. And my dorm mates went gaga. The head of the athletic department and the baseball coach heard he was visiting and came around to meet him. They couldn’t get over being in the same room as the great Joseph Paul DiMaggio. They kept asking question after question about his days as a Yankee. I felt almost embarrassed for these two guys. George Solotaire just kept rolling his eyes.”
Although unaware of Marilyn’s clandestine meetings with DiMaggio, Lena Pepitone acknowledged that Joe called Marilyn from time to time. “Marilyn enjoyed hearing from him,” said Pepitone. “She knew how much he loved her—and she always loved him. I remember the afternoon she went to Gallagher’s steak house with press agent John Springer. She came home afterward and said she’d seen Joe’s picture in the restaurant and how much that pleased her. I recall the day Lew Wasserman, her agent at MCA, called her to inquire whether she thought DiMaggio might agree to be the subject of a feature film. ‘You must be kidding,’ she told him. ‘That’s the last thing in the world he’d want.’ ”
According to Pepitone, one of the basic problems in Marilyn’s marriage to Arthur Miller was that he never wanted to do anything other than sit in his study with the door closed. “One evening,” said Pepitone, “Marilyn suggested they go to a movie that had just opened. He agreed. She bathed and dressed and sat in the living room waiting for him. After a while, when he failed to materialize, she went to his study and timidly knocked at the door. ‘I’m working,’ he said. Marilyn was crushed. She went to her bedroom, tore off her blouse, and began to sob. The one function she succeeded in getting him to attend in 1958 was Elsa Maxwell’s April in Paris Ball at the Waldorf. She knew Joe DiMaggio sometimes attended Elsa’s parties, and I think she hoped he might be there. He wasn’t. But her presence at the function caused absolute pandemonium. The place went wild. DiMaggio also showed up at the Actors Studio the day she and John Strasberg performed a scene out of A Streetcar Named Desire. It was standing room only.”
On weekends when Miller and Monroe happened to be in Roxbury, they sometimes visited Elia Kazan, whose country estate wasn’t far from theirs. Miller had reconciled with Kazan, at least professionally. The playwright still felt emotionally distanced from the director, but, as he wrote in Timebends, “the whole Communist issue had gone cold.” Miller chose Kazan to direct a production of A View From the Bridge because, wrote the playwright, “I was not at all sure that he should be excluded from a position for which he was superbly qualified by his talent and his invaluable experience with The Group.”
“Seeing his old crony wasn’t a social commitment that particularly bothered Miller,” said Pepitone. “Kazan’s house was usually overridden with members of the Actors Studio: Ben Gazzara, Eli Wallach, Anne Bancroft, Walter Matthau, Paul Newman, and others, including Marlon Brando on occasion. They played softball in the afternoon, and as I heard the story, the first time Marilyn came to bat she belted the ball a country mile. None of them had hit it that far before. As she rounded the bases and touched home plate, Ben Gazzara said, ‘My God, Marilyn! Where the hell did you learn to do that?’ And she responded, ‘I had a good teacher. Remember? I was married to Joltin’ Joe.’ Needless to say, Arthur Miller didn’t exactly appreciate her response.”
If Marilyn felt emotionally cut off from Miller, he, too, felt frustrated in the marriage. “One subject Marilyn refused to discuss was money,” noted Pepitone. “Whenever the topic arose, she put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t know a thing about money,’ she’d say. ‘I just want to act. I want respect. I don’t want to be laughed at. I want to be happy.’ She was totally impractical when it came to finances. I remember, for example, that for a while she used Kenneth as her hairdresser. He later became famous for styling Jacqueline Kennedy’s hair. He used to come to the apartment to do work on Marilyn, and she’d keep him waiting for hours. She paid him by the hour so she didn’t think it mattered to him if he had to wait. The trouble is that the final cost of a visit became exorbitant.”
For all her difficulties with her husband, Marilyn remained infatuated with the thought of having a baby. “Whenever she saw a baby carriage with an infant in it, she would get excited,” remarked Pepitone. “A couple one floor below us at 444 East Fifty-Seventh Street had a newborn, and the baby nurse would take the infant for a carriage ride every morning. On weekends, the baby’s mother would push the carriage. Marilyn became friendly with her and began asking her all sorts of questions. What was it like giving birth? What did she feed the baby? Did the baby sleep at night? After they became friendly, the mother let Marilyn hold and play with the baby. Marilyn confided in the woman that she wanted a baby of her own but was having difficulties. ‘Why not adopt?’ the woman asked. ‘I know all about adoption,’ said Marilyn. ‘I want to give birth and then raise the child. More than anything, that’s what I’d like.’ ”
The actress told Norman Rosten that she felt torn between becoming pregnant again and making another film. “I’d love my child to death,” she remarked. “I want to have one, yet I’m afraid. Arthur says he wants it, but he’s losing his enthusiasm. He thinks I should do the picture. After all, I’m a movie star, right?”
• • •
The “picture,” as Marilyn referred to it when talking to Norman Rosten, was Some Like It Hot, a United Artists production costarring Marilyn, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. Produced and directed by Billy Wilder, who’d last worked with Marilyn on The Seven Year Itch, the new film began shooting in Los Angeles at the beginning of August 1958. A spoof about a pair of musicians (Curtis and Lemmon) who witness a gangland massacre and then, to avoid being bumped off themselves, dress up as women and join an all-girls orchestra, Some Like It Hot became a film classic. It is one of the funniest American comedies of its time—or of any time, for that matter. Monroe’s performance netted her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. She told Earl Wilson that she thought she deserved an Oscar. In reality, although Marilyn had hoped to succeed as a serious actress performing serious roles, her greatest successes came in comedies such as this one.
The quality of her Some Like It Hot performance aside, Marilyn’s personal behavior had never been worse. “Her lack of professionalism during the making of Seven Year Itch was bad enough,” complained Billy Wilder, “but it reached new heights in the present film.” With her endless lateness and pathological block against remembering even the most mundane bits of dialogue, she managed to antagonize almost everyone connected to the film. A scene in which Marilyn uttered a three-word line (“Where’s the bourbon?”) had to be reshot more than sixty times. Weakened by drugs, MM missed entire days on the set, remaining fast asleep in her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When on the set, she complained nonstop about numerous aspects of the film, starting with the fact that she’d once again been cast as “the dumb blonde.” She criticized the studio for shooting the film in black and white. She wasn’t getting along with Billy Wilder. She couldn’t stand Tony Curtis. Although she was top-billed, she thought it all wrong that the film’s plot line should revolve around her two male costars.
Rumor had it that the only reason she’d signed on to do the film was because she and Arthur Miller had run out of money. Angry that she’d agreed to star in Some Like It Hot, Marilyn took out her wrath on the film’s director, embarrassing Wilder in front of the other actors by telling him he was incompetent and refusing to follow his instructions. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she berated him. “I’ll play the scene my way.”
Marilyn’s delicate emotional state was nowhere more evident than in her diary entries, one of which read: “Help, help, help. I feel life coming closer when all I want is to die.”
A letter she wrote to Norman Rosten while on location at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego was only slightly more uplifting: “Don’t give up the ship while we’re sinking. I have a feeling this boat is never going to dock. We are going through the Straits of Dire. It’s rough and choppy.”
Sensing that Arthur Miller could neither control nor help his wife, Paula Strasberg telephoned Dr. Kris in New York and asked her to come to California and see Marilyn in person. Monroe had bombarded Kris all summer with letters, telegrams, and phone calls. Kris had contacted Anna Freud in London to discuss Marilyn, and Anna had advised her to see Marilyn on the set. Her presence did little good. In addition to her massive drug abuse, MM was drinking more than ever. After each take, she insisted she be brought a thermos of coffee, but as Billy Wilder soon discerned, the thermos was filled with vermouth and not coffee. At the completion of the film, Wilder sent Arthur Miller a letter of complaint: “Had you, dear Arthur, been not her husband but her . . . director, and been subjected to all the indignities I was, you would have thrown her out on her can, thermos bottle and all, to avoid a nervous breakdown. I did the braver thing. I had a nervous breakdown.”
It had been Miller who apprised Wilder that his wife had again become pregnant. Dr. Leon Krohn, Monroe’s gynecologist, had confirmed the pregnancy. At the same time, he cautioned the actress that the effects of accumulated barbiturates—and other drugs—could cause her to lose the fetus. He advised her to cease her use of sleeping pills and to reduce her hours on the set. Arthur Miller asked Wilder if Marilyn could leave every day no later than four in the afternoon, to which the director responded, “That’s the time she usually gets here. If you bring her at nine in the morning, ready to shoot, I’ll let her go at noon.”
The possibility of giving birth, an eventuality Marilyn anticipated with both hope and dread, encouraged her to follow her physician’s recommendations. She stopped drinking and cut back on her consumption of drugs, limiting herself to the use of Amytal, a milder barbiturate than Nembutal. She began turning up early for work, as Wilder had suggested. He, in turn, kept his end of the bargain and most days allowed her to leave the set just before lunch. The damage, after all, had already been done: the film was more than two months behind schedule.
Marilyn contacted Lena Pepitone in New York and asked her to buy a cradle for the baby. “She told me she sensed it would be a girl,” recalled Pepitone, “so she wanted the cradle to be pink. ‘And if it’s a boy?’ I asked. ‘What’s the difference?’ said Marilyn. ‘No baby ever cared about the color of its cradle. That’s an adult perversion.’ So I went to an antique store and purchased a pink handmade wooden cradle, with a pink-checkered baby girl in a bonnet carved into the tiny headboard. A pink baby lamb had been etched into the side of the cradle.”
Shooting on Some Like It Hot came to an end on November 6. Billy Wilder threw a cast party but didn’t invite Marilyn, though in the end, it was largely her comic brilliance that made the film such a success.
On November 8 the Millers were back in New York. Marilyn placed the tiny cradle next to her bed and spent most of the next five weeks at home, resting. She wrote poems, sending one or two of them to Norman Rosten with a letter that she signed “e. e. cummings,” in imitation of the famous American poet who rarely used capital letters. She took one night off to accompany her husband to the opening of Yves Montand’s one-man Broadway show in which the Italian-born (but French-speaking) actor demonstrated his skill as a singer.
Montand and his wife, actress Simone Signoret, had starred in the French film version of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, and the two men had become friends. Following the show that evening, Miller, Montand, and Monroe ate a late-night dinner and discussed the possibility of Yves and Marilyn working together on a film. When the Millers returned home, Marilyn admitted that she liked Montand and found him attractive.
Sadly, in mid-December, despite her precautions, Marilyn suffered yet another miscarriage. She was taken by ambulance to Manhattan Polyclinic Hospital. News of the miscarriage received wide media coverage. When he heard, Joe DiMaggio called her at home. They spoke briefly. DiMaggio told Paul Baer that Marilyn couldn’t stop crying.
Lena Pepitone had forgotten to remove the newly bought pink cradle from Marilyn’s bedroom. “I tried to take it out after she returned from the hospital,” said Pepitone, “but she insisted I leave it. That night, she hurled it against the wall, and it broke into pieces. ‘This was my last chance,’ she wept. ‘My last chance.’ ”
Late at night on December 26, a highly distraught Arthur Miller called Norman Rosten and asked him to come over as soon as possible. The Rostens arrived at three in the morning. Marilyn had taken Amytal plus Nembutal with wine. Unable to rouse his wife and seeking to avoid unwanted publicity, Miller had called a physician friend of his, who’d come over and pumped her stomach. She made a rapid recovery. On New Year’s Eve, the Millers attended an Actors Studio party given by Lee and Paula Strasberg.
Some Like It Hot premiered to rave reviews and record box office revenue on March 29, 1959, at Loew’s State Theater on Broadway. Plugging the film in Los Angeles, Tony Curtis was asked what it was like to have kissed Monroe in the film. “It was like kissing Hitler,” he said. Marilyn’s response to her costar’s hurtful remark was offered in a Life magazine interview conducted in the summer of 1962. Asked how she felt about Curtis’s earlier remark, she said, “That’s his problem.”
Tony Curtis perpetrated one further indignity against Marilyn, claiming in his book The Making of Some Like It Hot, published in 2009, and in a number of interviews publicizing the book, that he’d had a fleeting affair with Monroe during the production of the film. Yet in his autobiography, published sixteen years earlier, Curtis makes no such claim, stating only that he and Marilyn had dated informally when both were new to Hollywood. When asked about the discrepancy by a British journalist, Curtis—who died in September 2010—responded, “I’m not the only Hollywood actor who fantasized about sleeping with Marilyn Monroe. To put it another way, I so frequently dreamed of sleeping with her that it seemed almost as if I had. But I do stick to my earlier statement: kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler. Of course, that’s also a debatable statement, since I never had the pleasure of kissing Herr Hitler—I never even met the man.”
• • •
In mid-April 1959 Truman Capote met with an editor friend to discuss his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was soon to be made into a feature film. Having just seen Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, Capote felt she would make a wonderful Holly Golightly, the book’s main character, a kind of wholesome harlot, a girl-woman with her own set of values and a singular vision of the world. “Marilyn’s perfect for the role,” Capote told the editor. He’d discussed the possibility with her, and she’d expressed interest.
“Have you seen her lately?” asked Capote’s companion. “I heard from Delos Smith that her psychiatrist put her on Tuinal, a barbiturate composed of Seconal and Nembutal. She takes five Tuinal pills at night to try to sleep. Seven Tuinal can kill you. She’s two pills away from oblivion. I have the feeling that girl’s not going to be around much longer. Delos agrees. He says in class at the Actors Studio she sits next to him and keeps whispering to him, ‘Let’s kill ourselves.’ ”
“She should be monitored,” remarked Capote. “Blood tests and all that. Her shrink’s got to monitor her.”
Capote went on to say that there were two Marilyns. There was the frenetic, fast-talking, street-savvy, tough, sometimes mean and spiteful Marilyn, often so drugged and drunk that she didn’t know who or where she was. But when she felt relaxed, she changed into the other Marilyn. She became a soft, lovely person with a wonderfully sweet smile and a full, hearty laugh, a bit shy, a keen listener, with wide, inquisitive eyes, nice but always naughty.
“The two Marilyns in combination,” said Capote, “are what make her the perfect Holly Golightly.”
Lee and Paula Strasberg were against Marilyn’s accepting the role. The last thing she needed was to play the part of a hooker, even a sophisticated one. Paula called the producers to remove Monroe’s name from the list of actresses being considered. Audrey Hepburn came away with the part. When the film came out in 1961, Marilyn sent Hepburn a telegram congratulating her on a fine performance. She graciously told Truman Capote, “Audrey probably did a better job of it than I would have.”
• • •
“Joe DiMaggio finally confided in my father about seeing Marilyn again,” said Robert Solotaire. “I believe she considered him a great friend, somebody she could always count on. She obviously didn’t want to lose him. She enjoyed sleeping with him, so that feature became part and parcel of their new arrangement. Being on intimate terms with Marilyn Monroe, sex goddess, idol of millions, probably meant more to Joe than it did to Marilyn. He believed no other man could love her as much as he did. And he was probably right.”
DiMaggio sent Marilyn flowers when, on June 23, 1959, she underwent surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York to try again to correct her chronic endometriosis, an ailment that would continue to flare now and then until the end of her life.
Marilyn saw Joe at Paul Baer’s house in early September. Then, later in the month, she flew to Los Angeles to attend a Twentieth Century–Fox luncheon for the Russian premier, Nikita Khrushchev. Spyros Skouras, organizer of the event, had called Marilyn in New York to tell her that Khrushchev had personally requested her presence at the function. Perhaps because he wanted to avoid further problems with the government, Arthur Miller had refused to attend.
Zsa Zsa Gabor, one of the four hundred invited guests, recalled that the guest list featured some of Hollywood’s most recognizable names, including Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Yul Brynner, David Niven, Shelley Winters, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth, and Kim Novak. Elizabeth Taylor was there with her then husband Eddie Fisher, and they were seated opposite Debbie Reynolds, of all people, the woman Fisher had dumped to marry Liz. Nina Khrushchev, wife of the Russian premier, sat between Bob Hope and Sinatra, and showed them snapshots of her grandchildren. Sinatra looked bored. Marilyn Monroe entered via a side door on the arms of a pair of Fox security guards and was placed at a table near the dais, between Josh Logan and producer David Brown. Khrushchev gave a very long and angry speech, in Russian, which was then translated into English by an interpreter. “It contained all the usual and expected attacks on the sins of capitalism,” said Gabor, “and was followed by a few lighthearted comments by Darryl Zanuck.”
When the luncheon ended, Khrushchev headed straight for Monroe. He spoke to no one else. “To everyone’s amazement,” said Gabor, “Marilyn addressed him in Russian, having worked out a little welcoming speech with Natalie Wood, who spoke fluent Russian. Khrushchev seemed impressed, all the more so because Marilyn smiled sexily and wiggled her hips. In broken English, Khrushchev told her how popular she happened to be in Russia. If his wife hadn’t been there, I don’t doubt for an instant he would’ve enjoyed going off with her someplace.”
• • •
Returning to Twentieth Century–Fox for her next film, Marilyn Monroe decided on Let’s Make Love, a romantic comedy directed by George Cukor and produced by Jerry Wald. Shooting had been scheduled to begin in the fall of 1959, but as was commonplace on most Monroe films, there were problems. In the first place, Marilyn was unhappy with Norman Krasna’s film script; she insisted that Arthur Miller be brought in to “doctor” the script, though he’d already begun working on a script for Marilyn’s next film, The Misfits, based on a short story he’d written. In need of money, Miller was only too glad to turn his attention to Let’s Make Love.
And then there was the question of whom to cast in the romantic male lead opposite Monroe. Initially cast in the role, Gregory Peck withdrew when he read Miller’s rewrite. Cary Grant and Charlton Heston turned it down as well. Arthur Miller suggested his old pal Yves Montand, and Marilyn may well have recalled the discussion they’d had about working together on a film. Familiar to French film audiences, Montand remained a relative unknown in the States. Monroe convinced Darryl Zanuck and George Cukor to offer him a contract, assuring them that he was a first-rate actor.
“I could tell Marilyn felt something for Montand, at least physically,” said Lena Pepitone. “After Twentieth Century–Fox offered him a contract, and before she left for Hollywood, she said, ‘He’s great looking. He looks just like Joltin’ Joe. If Joe could act and sing, he’d be Yves Montand.’ ”
Arthur and Marilyn departed for California in early November, nearly a year to the day after shooting ended on Some Like It Hot. They checked into the same bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel they’d occupied during Some Like It Hot. “Marilyn arrived armed to the teeth with every drug imaginable,” said Whitey Snyder, who was again working with her. “Her psychiatrist, Dr. Kris, prescribed drugs, and Paula Strasberg’s doctor also prescribed medication for her. And if she wanted additional drugs, she’d go see some local quack. In those days, they were only too happy to oblige.
“Her dressing room for Let’s Make Love looked like a pharmacy. I remember seeing bottles of Amytal, Tuinal, Nembutal, Doriden, Luminal, and Seconal. I thought she probably had more of the same back at the hotel. I made a list of the drugs to show to my own doctor. I also noticed she’d arrive on the lot in the morning and swallow a handful of pills with a glass of ice tea laced with gin. And then she’d continue, another additional effect on her mood swings. The large quantities of medication caused chronic constipation, so that by the end of 1959, she’d subject herself to occasional enemas. I regret I didn’t say anything to her about her drug and alcohol use. Neither did Arthur Miller. He seemed content to let her consume whatever it took to get through the day.”
Although Whitey failed to address Marilyn’s drug issues, he did mention Joe DiMaggio: “I asked if she’d heard from him recently, and she looked at me as if I knew something I shouldn’t know. In truth, I hadn’t spoken to Joe in nearly a year. I learned later they were having a secret affair, but at the time, I knew nothing. Marilyn smiled and said, ‘Joe’s my personal lifeguard. He’s always there to look out for me. And when he sees I’m drowning, he swims out and pulls me to safety.’ ”
Toward the end of 1959, Marilyn learned that Carl Sandburg was in Hollywood writing the film script for The Greatest Story Ever Told. Owning a copy of his biography of Abraham Lincoln, she sought him out and the two met. One evening Arthur Miller and Marilyn took Sandburg out to dinner at Chasen’s. They were eating when the door to the restaurant opened, and in walked Joe and Dom DiMaggio. Joe was in Los Angeles on behalf of the Monette Company, and Dom had flown in to get together with his brother. The restaurant meeting with Marilyn was purely a chance encounter.
“Marilyn saw us from across the room and waved,” said Dom DiMaggio. “We went to her table. She stood. Joe took her hand and pressed it. I kissed her on the cheek. She introduced us to Arthur Miller and Carl Sandburg. Strange as it may seem, Sandburg knew my brother from some charity event they’d both attended years before. Marilyn seemed impressed. ‘You know everyone, Joe,’ she said. We remained standing while Miller and Sandburg half stood and shook our hands. This marked the one and only time Joe came face to face with the playwright. I can’t say Miller was all smiles, but he certainly wasn’t unfriendly. On the whole, he seemed almost pleased to have finally met Marilyn’s previous husband. Perhaps he felt sorry for Joe because he knew firsthand how difficult it sometimes was to be with Marilyn—it was like living with a hurricane, only you never knew in which direction the wind might blow.”
In early 1960 Yves Montand and Simone Signoret arrived from France. They were placed first at the Chateau Marmont and were then moved into bungalow 22 at the Beverly Hills Hotel; the Millers occupied bungalow 21. As work progressed on Let’s Make Love, Marilyn became friendly with Signoret, who the year before had won an Oscar for her performance in Room at the Top. Every evening after filming ended, Monroe would appear in the Montand bungalow to talk and sip champagne with the French actress. Signoret soon noticed what everyone else had sensed for weeks: Marilyn’s mood shifts were becoming increasingly erratic—so erratic she began to feel that Marilyn might be suicidal.
Whitey Snyder noticed as well. “Marilyn seemed deeply depressed one minute,” he said, “and almost giddy the next. She’d slip in and out of these moods very rapidly. One moment she’d be talking normally, and the next she’d become extremely agitated and upset. She thought, for example, that Fox had bugged her dressing room and that they were transmitting the tapes to the FBI. She insisted on hiring a private detective to sweep the room and ascertain whether there were any hidden recording devices. The investigator found nothing.”
While Agnes Flanagan styled Marilyn’s hair for the movie, the film studio hired hairdresser George Masters to work with her on publicity appearances. Masters was astounded to find the actress in such an utter state of disarray. “My first meeting with Marilyn Monroe is etched in my memory,” he said. “She was a mess. She was waiting for me in her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel . . . in a terry cloth robe, one shoulder torn, her yellow hair hanging down around her neck, no makeup, champagne and caviar everywhere. Thus began my adventures with the world’s greatest sex symbol.”
Rob Saduski, a Hollywood costume designer and faithful friend of Masters’s, recalled the hairstylist talking about his initial reaction to Marilyn and how he took her in hand and tried to restore the glamour that drugs and her damaged self-image were slowly eroding. “She didn’t want people to know she had a hairdresser,” said Saduski. “She wanted people to think she just looked that good. She was as calculating and vain as she was innocent and confused. Whenever Marilyn had to make a personal appearance during the making of the film, George would have to duck down in the car so nobody knew he was there. He’d work on her hair, and when they reached their destination, she’d emerge from the backseat looking resplendent, and the press photographers would start blazing away with their cameras. He remained her private hairstylist on and off until the end of her life. She gave him a brand-new white Lincoln Continental as a gift. Suffice it to say, she was enormously generous and thankful to anyone who reached out to her.”
In an ironic twist of fate, the title of the picture—Let’s Make Love—soon became a moniker for a personal escapade that, in the end, created more interest among the press and public than the humdrum film that eventually emerged. Despite Marilyn’s apparent alliance with Simone Signoret, the distinguished French actress soon became a victim of Monroe’s promiscuous nature. Called back to Paris to discuss a new film project, Signoret found herself out of town at the same time that Arthur Miller happened to be in New York. Left alone, Montand and Monroe began an affair. Montand, naturally, blamed Marilyn for initiating the relationship, claiming she seduced him in her bungalow over vodka and caviar, his favorite repast. “After we ate and drank,” he reportedly told friends, “she laid her head in my lap. What was I supposed to do?”
For roughly six weeks, Montand and Monroe were a couple. They were seen together at several Hollywood house parties, such as the poolside bash given by studio executive David Selznick. Gregson E. Bautzer, an entertainment lawyer and California socialite, spotted the pair at the party and walked over to them. Confronting Marilyn, he accused her of being ungrateful to Joe Schenck, her early benefactor. If she cared about him, spouted Bautzer, she would visit him in the hospital. He was seriously ill and quite possibly wouldn’t make it. Marilyn burst into tears and pleaded ignorance—nobody had told her about Joe. She went to see him the following day and spent two hours by his bedside.
Not long after the affair ended and while production on the film wound down, Montand told Hedda Hopper about his fling with Monroe. Montand’s “confession” resulted in a slag heap of predictable headlines. When Rupert Allan, Marilyn’s publicist, asked Montand why he’d gone public with the story, Montand responded, “Because too many people have speculated about it. Boo-hoo, I’m sorry.”
In a follow-up interview with Hopper several months later, Montand offered further commentary on the scandal: “Marilyn is a simple girl without any guile. I was too tender and thought she was as sophisticated as some of the other ladies I have known. Had Marilyn been more sophisticated, none of this would have happened. Perhaps she had a schoolgirl crush. If she did, I’m sorry. But nothing will break up my marriage.”
Rupert Allan pointed out that when Yves Montand accepted the role to play opposite Monroe in the film, he was ecstatic: “A well-known actor in Europe, he’d been searching for a vehicle to establish himself in the States. The Montands and Millers became close friends. Then Arthur found out his ‘friend’ was fucking his wife. It goes without saying Arthur was deeply hurt. When I spoke with him, he said, ‘You know, Marilyn and I are breaking up.’ ”
When the movie finally wrapped, Montand called Rupert Allan and asked him to become his publicist. “Once again,” said Allan, “he began chatting about his affair with Marilyn, as if this was his strongest selling point. He was a real prick—ungallant and indiscreet. He said when Marilyn came on to him, it was her time of the month, and it was awful. She smelled awful. She was dirty and unkempt. ‘That’s more information than I need,’ I told him. ‘Besides, I thought you Frenchmen were so liberated. Frankly, I’d take Marilyn Monroe with or without her period if I could have her.’ ‘First of all, I’m an Italian,’ said Montand. ‘But, anyway, hygiene is important to me.’ I told him to fuck off and find himself another publicist. I don’t know who ended up representing him, but I can safely and happily say that instead of Let’s Make Love enhancing his career, the film and the scandal attached to it all but buried him, at least in this country.”
Prior to Marilyn’s affair with Montand, Lotte Goslar went to dinner with Marilyn and Arthur Miller. “They’d just started the picture,” said Goslar. “That evening I saw a side of Marilyn I’d never noticed before. She acted very bitchy toward Arthur. First of all, she began talking about Joe DiMaggio and what a great dresser he was. ‘Arthur only owns two suits,’ she said. As we were leaving, she started ordering him around: ‘Get my purse, Arthur, I checked it.’ When he got back with the purse, she said, ‘Where’s my mink coat? They were on the same claim check. Get me my mink.’ She practically called him an idiot. She began yelling at him as he went back to the cloakroom to retrieve her mink. She treated him like a slave. She absolutely degraded him. It was terrible. And a little later, she conducted that very flagrant infidelity with Montand. I knew how audacious and bold she could be if she wanted something. Arthur Miller, by comparison, seemed an innocent, completely out of his depth. I felt for him. Everyone did. It was almost as if Marilyn had wanted to hurt him. I think she felt he hadn’t supported her emotionally. When we were alone, she said he was a great writer but a lousy husband. She remarked that the only reason he stayed on with her was to collect a paycheck for writing the screenplay to The Misfits, Marilyn’s next film.”
Monroe’s treatment of her third husband grew even harsher when she learned that he’d telephoned Simone Signoret in Paris to discuss the romance. “What does his wife have to do with it?” Marilyn asked him. “Instead of Simone Signoret, why didn’t you call Yves Montand? Why didn’t you belt him in the mouth? That’s what Joe DiMaggio would’ve done. Or why didn’t you slap me around? You should’ve slapped me.”
Simone Signoret’s only public comment regarding Yves Montand’s liaison with Monroe came after the filming of Let’s Make Love ended: “If Marilyn fell in love with my husband,” she said, “then she has good taste.”
• • •
“Can you believe this?” Joe DiMaggio asked George Solotaire one evening over drinks at Toots Shor’s. Joe had a copy of Hedda Hopper’s newspaper column in hand and was waving it in George’s face. “Why would Marilyn sleep with this guy?” Joe asked, not expecting an answer. “I don’t get it. Is she that insecure?”
Bernie Kamber, DiMaggio’s PR buddy, also present on this occasion, recalled Joe’s somewhat dramatic outburst—dramatic, that is, for Joe. “The first thing I did every morning,” said Kamber, “was read the New York, LA, and Washington, DC, papers. In my business, you had to know what was going on. So I’d already read about Marilyn and Yves Montand. But I hadn’t expected it to upset Joe to such an extent. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that they were in touch again. I knew about some of his other ladies, including Phyllis McGuire, the youngest and prettiest of the McGuire Sisters, the popular singing trio. Phyllis had several other boyfriends, among them Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mob boss, a guy you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley—or anywhere else, for that matter. So she and Joe were bosom buddies, if you know what I mean. The truth is that half the eligible women in New York were after Joe, and a large number of the ineligible ones were as well. But Joe was obsessed with Marilyn. He was in love with her, plain and simple. In any case, I said to him, ‘Well, Joe, at least Yves Montand looks like you. That should give you some satisfaction.’ I was kidding, but Joe wasn’t. Within five minutes or so, he knocked off about a half dozen shots of scotch. George Solotaire and I had to practically carry him home that night.”
DiMaggio evidently made no mention of Montand to Marilyn. They continued as before with telephone calls and infrequent meetings at Paul Baer’s Central Park West apartment. Art Buchwald remembered seeing “quite a bit of DiMaggio in 1960. That’s the year Edward Bennett Williams made arrangements to purchase the Washington Redskins. He paid around four million dollars for the franchise. A bunch of his buddies, including DiMaggio, bought shares in the team. I think Joe anted up a hundred thousand dollars. He’d come to Washington on weekends to take in the home games. He’s the only guy I ever knew who insisted on wearing a business suit to a football game. Besides myself and DiMaggio, the regulars in the group included Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Senator Edmund Muskie, John Daly, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Williams’s law partner Colman Stein, and Ethel Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy’s wife. This was the year John F. Kennedy ran for president, and it was before JFK became involved with Marilyn Monroe. But even though nothing had happened as yet, Joe couldn’t stand the Kennedys. Ethel didn’t realize this, and she kept trying to sit next to DiMaggio at the games. ‘You sit next to her,’ he’d say to me under his breath. It turned out to be kind of prophetic, I thought, given Marilyn’s death a few years later. Among those DiMaggio held responsible for her death were the Kennedys. He accused Jack and Bobby Kennedy of having ‘killed’ the woman he treasured and loved. ‘They might as well have put a loaded gun to her head,’ he told me, ‘and pulled the trigger.’ ”