CHAPTER 36 BIRTH OF VENUS
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 15, 1954, 1:00 A.M.
WHEN MARILYN FINALLY STEPPED INTO the chilly night, holding a red-and-white-striped silk scarf in one hand and a white clutch in the other, wearing the ivory halter top dress designed by William Travilla, the crowd went berserk. They were standing atop cars, on the building rooftops and fire escapes. The applause and shouts soon devolved into catcalls and whistles. Marilyn wore no stockings or slip, but had pulled on two pairs of big white granny underpants, one on top of the other, which the crowd would get to see for hours. As if Superman were using his X-ray vision to stare right through the panties’ fabric, Marilyn’s dark pubic hair was still visible because of the bright klieg lights. The carpet did not match the drapes, the onlookers joked, elbowing one another and snickering. DiMaggio overheard them, his face growing red.
Flashbulbs popped. Men screamed from the sidelines, “Higher!” as her dress blew clear up over her head. At times her dress would simply puff up, its white pleats forming a scallop shell—her very own Botticelli Birth of Venus background slowly drifting down toward Earth.
In New York City, men had been sneaking peaks of women’s underwear for decades, starting down at the Flatiron Building on Twenty-Third Street, where the whipping wind provided a free show. But there were no cops giving the old 23 skidoo tonight. Times had changed. The New York City cops simply watched and smiled as Marilyn’s dress blew up around her ears. They had forgotten all about DiMaggio, who stood there, his red face now growing pale in the klieg lights.
Tom Ewell looked on and smirked. Sam Shaw shot roll after roll of film, Marilyn looking directly at him and saying, “Hi, Sam Spade.” That was her pet name for him. Wilder, dressed in a suit, sweater-vest, dark coat, and his usual fedora, started to get agitated when the crowd’s screaming wouldn’t end. Maybe they had oversold Marilyn’s appearance to the public. How would he possibly shoot this scene with all these people here? DiMaggio paced the sidewalk, fuming, then screamed at Wilder, “What is this circus?” Wilder later described DiMaggio’s facial expression as “the look of death.” Amy Greene was standing next to DiMaggio and saw him trembling.
The filming started and the screaming continued. The jeers. The whoops. The catcalls and whistles. Higher. Higher. It was the same refrain Marilyn had heard again and again on those casting couches, where the producers had urged her to lift her hem a little bit higher. Higher. Higher.
DiMaggio took hold of Amy’s arm and told her he couldn’t take anymore. “Tell her I’ll see her back at the hotel,” he said, walking right into the scene and ruining Wilder’s shot. Marilyn looked over toward Joe, her smile gone, as he stormed off. He was headed across town to Toots Shor’s for a much-needed drink.
Marilyn took a deep breath and got back to work. She was a professional. Pretending she wasn’t freezing her barely covered tuchus off. Beaming. Glowing. Posing. Making love to all mankind on this, her wedding night with the world.
But there was more to it than that, something primitive and sacrificial. Marilyn was the pure sexual life force, the latest CinemaScope version in a long line of Aphrodites, female fertility vessels, and Madonnas, on display for all to see. The power of the female figure was greater than anything else. In the battle of Sex vs. Violence, sex would always win. After all, the perpetuation of the species depended on it. Life over death.
For over three hours, she stood there in the cold night pretending she was hot, smiling and offering herself up to the crowd, occasionally pushing Ewell into position, looking off sadly in the distance for her Joe from time to time. Between takes, some in the crowd asked Marilyn for autographs. At one point her strappy high heel got stuck in the subway grate, coming off her foot. But she laughed and bent over and pulled it out. Then put it back on. Some laughed along with her. Most just leered and catcalled.
But not Jules. He was there armed with his Bolex camera, rolling from five feet away, one of the only people on set shooting color film, besides Wilder and teenage Frieda, who was taking color stills. It was dark out, but Jules figured the movie lights would provide enough illumination. And he was right.
A distressed Wilder moved in and out of his shot, annoyed at the screaming crowd. Marilyn shivered and Jules wished he could drape one of his furs over her goose-bumped shoulders. Wilder implored the crowd again and again to keep quiet, but they ignored him. Marilyn smiled and simply put a finger to her lips, and they all fell silent. It held for a moment, a magical silent moment when all the world seemed to stop and hold its breath.
But the silence wouldn’t last.
Because of the commotion and shouting, Wilder would shoot fifteen takes and still couldn’t get the footage he needed. But as a publicity stunt, the New York shoot was a smashing success. All those photographers. All those photos, disseminated out into the wide world, of just one woman. It became known as the Shot Seen ’Round the World, sent out on the wires early that morning and landing in nearly every newspaper in America. And across the globe.
The crew broke down the set, the sun silently rising on the East River, its celestial glow no match for Marilyn’s. Day in and day out, the sun rose over New York City. But Marilyn would be there for less than a week, heading back to her life in Hollywood. As George Sanders had once prophesized on the set of All About Eve, “I can see your career rising in the east like the sun.”
Bruno Bernard, the photographer from Berlin who was shooting a story on Marilyn and Joe for Redbook magazine, got himself some breakfast and then headed over to the St. Regis. He needed a shot of the couple together and Joe had told him to come by. As he was about to knock on the door, he heard screams. The sex part was over and now it was time for the Hollywood violence. Bernard turned and left. Milton Krasner, the cinematographer on the shoot, was staying in the room next door to Joe and Marilyn and heard the screams as well. No one bothered to break it up or call the cops. Wife beaters were an accepted part of American life.
Later that morning, her bruises were covered up by her hairdresser, Gladys Witten. Joe flew back to California. Marilyn was even more of an international sensation than she had been the day before. But her marriage to Joe was over, an offering on the altar of worldwide fame.
That night, pretending everything was normal, Marilyn had dinner with Milton and Amy Greene at a French restaurant and then went dancing with them and some other friends at El Morocco. Milton was not only taking her photos that week but was planning to start a company with her, Marilyn Monroe Productions, to develop better roles for her so she didn’t always have to play the dumb blonde. She would be president, Milton vice president.
That night, the Greenes noticed bruises on her back. On her return to Hollywood later that week, Marilyn filed for divorce after just eight months of marriage.
Because of the heckling in the background, Wilder would reshoot the subway grate scene on November 5 on a Hollywood soundstage. This one would be much less risqué, with the edge of the fluttering dress hovering over Marilyn’s bare legs. There would be no exposed underwear. No skirt flying up over her ears. Marilyn asked Wilder if he was planning to keep the original footage for his private collection to use at his friends’ stag parties. Always the gentleman, Wilder made sure the original location footage was lost. The only evidence of the shoot—one of the most iconic scenes in Hollywood history—were the stills and a short, grainy black-and-white newsreel announcing the divorce.
And, of course, Jules’s lush Kodachrome film, taken from five feet away. The only color-film footage to survive.
Jules developed it, spliced it together with some other home movies, screened it a few times for family, and then placed it with the rest of his growing collection of small domestic masterpieces. The film would stay stashed in his apartment, hiding for half a century.
Eight months after the shoot, to promote The Seven Year Itch, the famous shot of Marilyn’s dress blowing up was placed in Times Square as a fifty-two-foot-high cutout of the star above the Loew’s State marquee, the same theater where Robert Taylor and Maureen O’Sullivan had fallen in love on-screen in April 1938, when Jules had first come to New York. But even the cutout was too risqué and had to be replaced with a more demure version. Staring at the giant version of herself while incognito at a diner across the street, Marilyn told her friend Eli Wallach, “That’s all they think of me.”
The trailer for the movie would start with a wolf whistle and the shot of Marilyn on the subway grate. Though the original film posters featured her leaning out the window of the townhouse on Sixty-First Street, the PR for the movie—thanks to Shaw—now revolved around the billowing skirt.
The movie premiered on June 1, Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday. Though they were divorced, DiMaggio went to opening night at the Loew’s State with Marilyn, who wore a white cocktail dress with a plunging V neckline and her white fox stole. It wasn’t cold enough for the matching muff. Joe, who was still in love with her, told her if he was her he would have divorced himself, too.
The Seven Year Itch would be the highest-grossing film of the year, taking in more than $5 million worldwide. Marilyn, the only good thing about the movie, was still being paid a mere $1,500 a week as per her seven-year contract. After the success of The Seven Year Itch, Fox negotiated a new contract, paying out at $100,000 per film.
For the wrap party at Romanoff’s Restaurant in Hollywood, cutouts of Marilyn with her skirt blowing up were used as centerpieces on every table, surrounded by roses. It was the party of the year. Marilyn wore a bright red chiffon sweetheart dress and a white ermine wrap. She and Wilder’s wife, Audrey, sang, “Let’s Do It” for the crowd, which included the Hollywood A-list: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, agent Swifty Lazar, and producer Darryl Zanuck. And Clark Gable, the star whose name had once been borrowed for Superman’s secret identity and whose fame had unwittingly saved the lives of Jules and his family. Like the father of the bride, Clark led Marilyn to the dance floor.