LIKE THE SEVEN YEAR Itch and The Sleeping Prince, Bus Stop was a play long before it was made into a movie. Starring Kim Stanley, the Broadway production was a smash hit, though the actress refused to accept all the glory, claiming that the other actors in the play were just as good as she was. “Nobody believes it now that they have seen Miss Stanley in action,” wrote Mawby Green for Theatre World. “For she is contributing the best comic characterization since Judy Holliday fractured the town in Born Yesterday, stopping the show on several occasions merely with her delivery of a line.”
It was reviews like this that made Marilyn a little hesitant to take on the role. Hearing just how much audiences and critics alike enjoyed Miss Stanley’s performance was daunting. However, among all the praise there were a few who—while admitting it was a slick show—complained that perhaps the depth of performances in the play as a whole was somewhat lacking. This gave Marilyn hope that she could bring something more to the film than had been given onstage.
The play Bus Stop was written by William Inge and revolves around a group of bus passengers who are stuck in a diner during a snowstorm. Over the course of one night, the characters all reveal their hopes and fears, until the snow has cleared and their lives can return to normal. Among the passengers is a nightclub singer named Cherie, who has been “kidnapped” by a cowboy named Bo intent on marrying her. At first she has no interest in this bully and instead is desperate for a man who will respect her. During the course of the play, Bo proves that he can be that man, and she unexpectedly falls in love.
The film—written by The Seven Year Itch’s George Axelrod—carried far more action than was portrayed on the stage, and as a result, some of the original characters were removed and new scenes added, among them one of Cherie singing “That Old Black Magic” in a nightclub and major parts shot on location at a parade and rodeo. Director Joshua Logan later explained to William Inge that as the main plot revolved around the love story of characters Bo and Cherie, the deletion of some secondary characters made way for a better exploration of their own personal tale. He did not explain, however, that some longer speeches had been deleted because Marilyn had told George Axelrod that she had a problem with long lines. Years later, the writer would remember Marilyn as “a unique work of art, manufactured (flaws and all) in an edition of one. Afterwards they broke the mold. Later they broke her, too, but that’s another story.”
To prepare for the role of Cherie, Marilyn worked closely with Paula Strasberg, who also agreed to go with the actress on location. There were countless hours spent discussing the project with Milton Greene, and together they deliberated over everything from what makeup Cherie should wear (pale because she spends most of her time indoors) to the state of her fishnet stockings (ripped and darned because she doesn’t have much money).
Behind the scenes, teacher Lee Strasberg wrote to Joshua Logan to tell him that he believed Marilyn to be one of the greatest actors that ever came through the doors of the Actors Studio. It was this comment that made Logan finally commit to the project, and by the end of filming, he completely shared Strasberg’s view. For the rest of his life, whenever interviewed he would say that Marilyn was a combination of Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin. He wholeheartedly believed that she was one of the most extraordinary actresses that ever lived. This was fine praise indeed from a professional who had worked extensively on Broadway and had just directed the Academy Award–nominated film Picnic.
Bus Stop was to be a pivotal role for Marilyn, not just because it was an extraordinary part, but also as it required her to go back to Los Angeles for the first time in over a year. When she left after the making of The Seven Year Itch, the actress had been adamant that she would only return when she received positive answers to her demands. Critics had laughed, but now she was going back as the president of her own company, an Actors Studio protégée, a friend of poets and intellectuals, and most important of all, armed with the best contract of her career. The critics remained perplexed, but at least they found it harder to laugh now. Marilyn had taken on Hollywood and won; only a fool would make fun of that.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARTHUR Miller and Marilyn had become extremely serious, and he had finally moved out of his family home. The couple continued to see each other secretly, but if there was any hope of long-term happiness, it was clear that Miller would have to obtain a divorce as quickly as possible. Marilyn’s trip to Los Angeles gave him that opportunity, and he made arrangements to travel to Nevada while Bus Stop was being filmed.
The closeness between Miller and Marilyn came at a price. Ever since her arrival in New York, she had listened to the advice presented by Milton Greene and his associates. She didn’t always take their suggestions, but her attention was in their direction. After the appearance of Miller, however, this began to shift. He had a long career in theater, he read scripts and plays with an unfaltering eye, and he knew a lot about the business. Marilyn listened to his views and agreed with his opinions on politics and literature. Despite being touted as complete opposites (or the “Beauty and the Brain,” as the press liked to call them), the pair actually had a great deal in common, and this inevitably threatened to jeopardize the relationship she had with Milton, since she now looked to Miller for support before her business partner.
Still, away from romantic entanglements, there was work to be done. In that regard, the last week of February 1956 and the first few weeks of March were extremely busy. After flying into Los Angeles on February 25 with Milton, Marilyn was met at the airport by dozens of reporters all intent on getting an exclusive. They wanted to know about the new Fox contract, what it was like to be back in Los Angeles, and whether she was happy.
Marilyn took it all in her stride and assured everyone that she was thrilled to be back in her hometown. She wasn’t enraptured, however, when she attended a court appearance to sort out the 1954 charge of driving without a license. During proceedings on February 29, Judge Charles J. Griffin enjoyed reprimanding the actress, while she smiled sweetly and promised not to do it again. Afterward, Marilyn appeared on the court steps and declared that the judge had made the right decision by penalizing her. “I don’t really believe in ignoring traffic citations,” she said with a grin.
On March 1, a Sleeping Prince distribution deal with Warner Bros. was announced. The event created a lot of publicity, and at a press party Marilyn was seen posing ecstatically with Jack Warner and greeting actor and fellow Warner Bros. associate James Stewart. This was an extraordinary moment for Marilyn, and it seemed as though everyone was thrilled with her success. However, one person quietly waiting for her to fall was former teacher Natasha Lytess. She had tried unsuccessfully to contact Marilyn since her dismissal at the end of The Seven Year Itch, and on hearing that the actress was back in Hollywood, the scorned woman was prompted to try to reunite once and for all.
After receiving no reply to her phone calls, Lytess turned up at the Beverly Glen home Marilyn was sharing with the Greenes and demanded to see her former pupil. She was sent away by agent Lew Wasserman, and as she walked down the path, turned back to look at the house. Marilyn was standing at an upstairs window, but did not wave or smile. Afterward, the actress instructed her agents to put a stop to the unwanted attention and Lytess went away—for a while.
SO WHAT BECAME OF Natasha Lytess? The drama coach never forgave Marilyn for her dismissal, and in 1960 she wrote a fairly stern but sanitized version of their relationship with researcher Jane Wilkie. Wilkie did not particularly like Lytess and complained bitterly that, despite her best efforts, almost all the manuscript was a complaint against Marilyn. It remained unpublished.
Several years later, Lytess wrote another memoir, only this time it was filled with every sordid, degrading, and scandalous story she could muster. In 1962, Marilyn’s press agent received word that Lytess had sold it for $10,000 to France-Soir, the owner of a magazine called France-Dimanche. The agency asked how much it would cost to buy it back, but the publisher refused, explaining that they had world rights to the piece and therefore were on course to make a lot of money. They also disclosed that the story was so intimate that they probably wouldn’t be able to publish it in its entirety. Lawyers were consulted, but the agency was told that until the article actually appeared, there was nothing that could be done to stop publication. For now, all everyone could do was wait.
While the agents concerned themselves with its possible release in France-Dimanche, the story suddenly appeared in London’s Sunday People newspaper. As predicted, the piece left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The first installment boasted the horrendous title “Marilyn Monroe: Her Secret Life, I Made Her—Body and Soul.” In the article, the embittered teacher told readers all about her first meeting with Marilyn—how the starlet was dressed like a “trollop” who had dyed yellow hair and a petulant mouth. She said Marilyn’s voice was “like a knife clattering on a cafeteria plate.”
Natasha’s foul-mouthed tirade was utterly without compassion toward her former pupil and disclosed everything she could possibly think of to blacken Marilyn’s name. Some of the less intrusive stories involved Marilyn having a romance with millionaire Howard Hughes when she was still a starlet. During that time, he apparently flew her and the drama coach to Palm Springs and delivered yellow roses to the house every single day. Natasha boasted that she went along for the ride and received flowers too, but even she had to admit that hers were just out of courtesy, not romance.
Natasha Lytess was completely and utterly obsessed with Marilyn’s sex life, as evidenced thoroughly throughout the articles. Mostly her stories concentrated on the actress’s lack of knowledge about kissing and intimacy. According to Lytess, she had to explain what the word sensual meant, and Marilyn then bought manuals to study the subject. The fact that the actress had already been married and knew the basics of sex long before she met the teacher was completely ignored by Natasha.
The complaints that Jane Wilkie noted in her unpublished manuscript are everywhere apparent in the articles, but there were times when Lytess had to confess that Marilyn was actually a good person. One story involved a millionaire who wanted to give the actress a car in exchange for sex. She turned him down and the vehicle was returned. Then Lytess fell behind on her mortgage payments, so to help her out Marilyn sold a mink coat given to her by agent and lover Johnny Hyde. These small, heartwarming memories were rare, however, and for the most part Lytess’s story was one of utter vitriol.
It is bad enough that the teacher went after her former student in such a brutal and coldhearted manner, but it is especially distressing to know that the first three articles were published on July 15, 22, and 29, 1962—also known as the three weeks leading up to Marilyn’s death. The next one—published on August 5, 1962, the very morning the world woke to the news that Marilyn had passed—detailed the star’s turbulent relationship with Joe DiMaggio. The series should have ended there, but in light of Marilyn’s passing, Lytess was happy to write one more article, published on August 12, 1962. Was this last installment to be an apology? A declaration that the other articles had been mean-spirited and unkind? No, not at all.
Aside from describing her as “my poor Marilyn,” the final article was much the same as the rest, only this time Lytess compared an apparent suicide attempt from the early 1950s to Marilyn’s real death the week before. She had already written about this episode, but now wanted to share more to shed light on why Marilyn had ultimately died. She was sure—she claimed—that Marilyn would want the world to know all about it, although she had chosen not to disclose the words previously because “some confidences must be kept until death.” In the form of a conversation between herself and the actress, Lytess described Marilyn’s reason for the first suicide attempt as being because men only wanted one thing from her. Then, in order to pass some blame to the public who adored Marilyn, Lytess claimed that because the star had been admired by the world for her body, it had given her a complex about sex, which had been ever-present in her mind.
To finish it all off, the teacher then spoke about Marilyn’s marriage to Miller, and added a dubious conversation that supposedly happened between Lytess and Monroe after the marriage had broken down. According to the coach, she spotted Marilyn at Schwab’s drugstore in Los Angeles, where she supposedly poured her heart out about Miller and—once again—her sex life.
If Lytess felt in any way sorry for the loss of Marilyn’s life or the articles leading up to it, she certainly never showed it. Instead, she remained embittered about the relationship until her own death on May 12, 1963, less than a year after she had penned the vicious editorials. While it was clear that the teacher felt abandoned by Monroe, it should not have come as a surprise. After the limits she tried to impose on the actress’s life and career, it was only a matter of time before Marilyn rebelled and took back control. The way Lytess handled events afterward was nothing short of deplorable, and to continue the slander even in the week after Marilyn’s death was proof that not every woman was on her side and the actress made the best decision by letting her go.
IN SPRING 1956, A press conference held at Marilyn’s rented Beverly Glen accommodation brought out the silliest of questions from reporters who were just happy to have Marilyn back in Hollywood. Thomas Wiseman, a reporter for the London Evening Standard, must surely have been an object of jealousy, however, since he was able to garner a private audience with the actress.
Flirtatious and playful, Marilyn wore a low-cut dress with a white rose tucked into her neckline, until she suddenly pulled it out and tossed it aside. “If I keep it there much longer,” she laughed, “it is liable to wilt.” She then commented on a variety of topics, including how the house furniture was not to her taste, her belief that men were helpless creatures, and the notion that her ideal man must be a poet, “though that doesn’t mean he has to write poetry.” At one point the star briefly lay on the floor and kicked her legs in the air. “That would make a good photograph, wouldn’t it?” she asked. “Sell a lot of papers.”
When the topic moved to the fact that during the whole interview she had not received any telephone calls, Marilyn grew pensive. She ceased the leg kicks and sat quietly on the sofa. There then followed a rather touching conversation where Marilyn explained that she never had any real friends while living in Hollywood, and that her move to New York had finally enabled her to find some. She then defended her studies and stressed that her move was no publicity stunt. She did not want to rid herself of the Marilyn Monroe character, she said, but stressed that while it was part of her personality, it certainly wasn’t the whole part.
Another reporter who interviewed Marilyn during this time was Elsa Maxwell, and the two chatted about a variety of subjects. The one she most wanted to mention, though, was the rumor of a romance with Arthur Miller. With other reporters, Marilyn had denied the relationship so much that it was beginning to look as though she didn’t know Miller at all. However, with Elsa she opened up slightly: “I like Arthur very much. And I’m proud to have such a great playwright for my friend. I’ve had very few friends in my life, as you know.” When Elsa said that the two should get married, Marilyn laughed and replied, “You’re wonderful! Unfortunately we haven’t reached any such serious stage—yet…. I don’t say I won’t marry him. But I tell you, honestly, I have no plan to marry him—now.”
Life at the Beverly Glen house was hectic, with the Greenes, their son, Joshua, and numerous staff and colleagues mulling around. To gain a little privacy, Marilyn rented a room at the Chateau Marmont hotel. There, she spent time with Arthur Miller, who sneaked in and out of Los Angeles during his Nevada divorce residency.
The schedule for Bus Stop was relentless. Preproduction had begun on February 27, and by March 8 Marilyn and costar Don Murray (acting as Bo) posed for photographs on the Fox lot. The production then headed to Phoenix on March 15 for location shots at a parade and rodeo. After that, filming moved on to Sun Valley, Idaho, before returning to the stages of Hollywood shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, exhaustion, coupled with all the old insecurities that had plagued Marilyn during her years in Hollywood, soon returned, and her anxieties often reached mammoth proportions. Having Paula Strasberg on set proved beneficial to the actress, but as with Natasha Lytess before her, she seemed to fall into the role of second director, which none of the cast and crew particularly enjoyed. Eventually Logan asked her to stay in the dressing room until the day’s scenes were completed.
Despite this being the first time Joshua Logan had ever worked with the actress, he seemed to understand Marilyn better than any other director. He later told Laurence Olivier that he had never worked with such a talent before, and that she was a “tremendous actress.” If she understood a direction, she would achieve such heights that Logan was often completely taken aback. If she did not understand what he wanted her to do, he would gently repeat the request and then Marilyn would give it everything she had.
Her main problems on set were all related to the anxiety of whether she was giving a good performance. Logan noted straightaway that Marilyn would sometimes forget her lines, not because she hadn’t learned them but because she was too busy thinking about the way she had delivered a line prior to the one she was now speaking. With her mind still on something they had shot ten seconds before, it was impossible for her to remember what she was supposed to be doing now.
He noticed that Marilyn was highly critical of herself, so he spent a great deal of time reassuring her that everything was perfect. It was a hard task, though, as the actress was so nervous on set that she would often break down and declare herself terrible. At those times, no amount of reassurance would convince her that she was actually giving a magnificent performance.
Instead of growing impatient like so many directors before and after him, Logan used a simple but effective technique of asking his assistant to repeat the words to her whenever she stumbled. That way he could continue shooting the scene and Marilyn would get back on track quickly. He then edited the scene later so that it appeared flawless. Another trick was to shoot as many angles as he possibly could, because even when she made a mistake, other parts of the scene would be perfect and usable.
Logan also got into the habit of leaving the camera rolling even when the scene had finished. That way, if he sensed that Marilyn was in a particularly good mood, they could do the scene again immediately, without any interruptions. If he shouted “Cut” after it was finished, she would cool off considerably and it would take a while for her to warm up again. The technique of keeping the camera rolling whenever possible proved invaluable for actor/director relations, as well as for the final edit, but another tactic was stressful for others on set. Because Marilyn was rarely happy with the way she had played a scene, Logan started printing every take she approved of, or was word-perfect in. This meant that it did not matter what kind of performance her costars gave during that scene, if Marilyn was good it was going in the can anyway. As a result, other cast members felt unnecessary pressure, trying to remain flawless during each and every take.
By April 1956, the shoot was almost halfway through. However, Marilyn fell ill with a bronchial infection and was admitted to Cedars of Lebanon hospital in Los Angeles. Whenever the actress became ill during a film shoot, there would inevitably be some talk as to whether she was being genuine. However, in Joshua Logan, Marilyn met a staunch ally, and in a letter to George Axelrod he made clear his belief that she was genuinely unwell. In another note written on the same day to William Inge, the director expressed his view that Marilyn was perfect for the character of Cherie; he loved her accent and thought she was adorable.
While she recovered from the infection, two of the film’s actors—Don Murray and Hope Lange—were married. Lange had been lucky to be cast as a young waitress, since Marilyn was paranoid about having another blonde on set and had previously asked for her to be removed. She was not, however, and her performance, with slightly darker hair, complimented Marilyn’s perfectly.
After the excitement of the Murray wedding, the company busied itself by shooting scenes that didn’t involve Marilyn. Several of these took place on the bus heading toward Grace’s Diner, and saw Bo and his friend Virg (Arthur O’Connell) having a conversation about women and, of course, Cherie. Joshua Logan loved Don Murray’s performance as Bo, and predicted that Bus Stop would make him a big star. He was right, as while the actor perhaps didn’t reach the heights of Marlon Brando or other contemporaries, he worked regularly from then on, and was still making movies into his seventies.
Marilyn returned to work and shooting continued, but now Don Murray was unwell with pleurisy. However, because of Joshua Logan’s careful eye toward any problems Marilyn might have, the filming of Bus Stop was easier than it could have been. This did not mean that there were no problems, though. Logan was a patient man, but even he had his limitations. During one outdoor scene, the company had a tiny snippet of time to get the shot in a perfect light. Marilyn knew this and yet continued putting on her makeup, oblivious to everyone clock-watching outside. When she eventually walked onto set, she did so just as the magic light faded. Logan was so incensed with her behavior that he jumped up and down in front of hundreds of spectators, swearing furiously.
Another problem arose between Marilyn and Murray. During one scene where Bo tries to stop Cherie from walking away, he tugs on the train of her show costume and is shocked when it comes off in his hand. She flies around, shouts at him furiously, and grabs the tail from his grasp. During one take, Marilyn shocked Murray when she turned and went at him with her fists. He braced for impact and the actress bounced off him and straight onto the floor.
As Murray picked her back up and apologized, Marilyn stayed in character and delivered her line. This time, though, instead of just grabbing her tail, she whipped it across the actor’s face and he was left with a cut just below his eye. As she ran off set, Murray stormed after her, intent on telling her off. It was Logan who eventually managed to persuade him not to, fearful that it would create more drama.
Even scenes that had already been shot caused controversy at times. One proved more bothersome than others due to the possibility of nudity and sexual connotation. During one part of the story, Bo visits the guesthouse where Cherie is staying, gets past her landlady, and proceeds to barge into her bedroom. Flinging open the curtains, he demands that she get up to join him at the parade, but then ends up on the same bed as Cherie, stroking her naked shoulder and getting rather carried away with himself.
Murray told columnist Earl Wilson that Marilyn was totally naked underneath the sheet, and he did his best to make sure she stayed completely covered during the scene. However, as she moved around, the sheet kept coming off, and he would have to move quickly to pull it back on. On May 16, 1956, Bus Stop producer Buddy Adler received a letter from Fox colleague Frank McCarthy, who had queried the problems that could come from such a scene. While everyone agreed that the camera operator had made sure Marilyn looked covered at all times, a difficulty arose because Logan changed the scene slightly to have it dissolve at the crucial moment. This new development could lead viewers to think the couple had sex when the camera turned off, and Fox could not risk this happening.
McCarthy was happy for the scene to stay as directed, but knew that the company needed to protect itself against any misunderstandings. On hearing the initial concerns, Adler proposed a change that could work for everyone: the landlady would be seen in Cherie’s bedroom, walk to the door, but not actually leave. Throughout the conversation between Bo and Cherie, the camera would then cut away to the landlady, particularly when his hands were on Marilyn’s body.
McCarthy approved this angle and then added a point of his own: the landlady should say that she runs a respectable establishment and then vocally refuse to leave the room until Bo has gone. In the final film, there was a compromise. The landlady does leave the room as Bo talks to Cherie, but she makes sure the door is open so that she can hear what is going on. As the couple are about to kiss, the landlady returns, this time to interrupt proceedings by telling Bo he’ll be late for the parade.
The Travilla-designed “snake costume” (nicknamed that way because the pattern looked a little like scales) that was worn during much of the film—including the nightclub scenes and one on the bus—was another center of concern. McCarthy told Adler that he would be on set when the costume was used, though in the end it was approved and got past the censors.
Another scene that just scraped through was the kissing one between Bo and Cherie, toward the end of the film. First, because it was believed that Marilyn’s mouth was far too open to be decent, and then after reshooting it several times, they had problems because saliva could be seen as the couple’s mouths parted. It was also a problem when Marilyn’s face was leaned against her arm in despair. As she raised her head, a stream of wet could again be seen. The censors were dismayed, but the actress fought for the spittle to be left in, claiming that it would not be realistic if it disappeared. She won her battle and the scenes stayed intact.
One scene that was not so lucky, however, was where Cherie is trying to escape the attentions of Bo. She plans to head to Hollywood to make her dreams come true, but when filming a suitcase-packing scene, Marilyn leaned over and her dress fell away from her breasts. McCarthy knew it would never be approved so suggested a cutaway shot of Cherie’s friend Betty instead. In the end, even this wasn’t enough, and in the finished scene, it is Betty who is seen packing the case, not Cherie.
On May 17, 1956, the action moved to a scene where Cherie and Bo talk in a shed outside the nightclub where she works. During this part of the movie, he insists on pronouncing her name as Cherry, much to Cherie’s chagrin, but in spite of that, her initial reaction is one of intrigue and warmth. Joshua Logan was blown away by her performance and that day sat down to write a letter to George Axelrod. In it he described another impressive scene where Marilyn’s character tells her friend all about her life’s direction and her ambitions for the future. The director thought she had played it charmingly, and he was sure that all who watched the movie would fall instantly in love.
On May 29, 1956, Bus Stop wrapped production and Marilyn presented Joshua Logan with a portrait of herself in a silver frame. Then several members of the cast went to the home of film producer William Goetz to see his art collection. That evening, Marilyn posed thoughtfully for Logan’s camera, in front of paintings by artists including Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso. A bronze statue of a fourteen-year-old dancer by Edgar Degas seemed to catch the actress’s imagination, and Logan captured her gazing wistfully at it.
The interest in this particular piece is revealing. While Marilyn might not have been a professional dancer, she took many classes during the years and starred in various movies that enabled her to dance on-screen. However, her love of the art went far deeper than that, and in her vast library of books she had several volumes of related texts. Among those acquired over the course of her lifetime were The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd and Dance to the Piper by Agnes de Mille. The former was a physiology study of how psychological processes affect movement of the body, while the latter was the autobiography of dancer Agnes de Mille. This book would have been particularly stimulating since the author had struggled against adversity to achieve her dreams, just as Marilyn did her entire life.
On June 1—Marilyn’s thirtieth birthday—a party was given for her at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Thrown by Joshua Logan, the star appeared to have a wonderful time and was thrilled to meet Indonesian president Sukarno. After Marilyn left the event, Logan’s wife, Nedda, discovered that the actress had left her purse behind. A huge Marilyn fan who loved her performance in Bus Stop, Mrs. Logan made sure the bag was returned to her several days later.
Despite the one blowup between actress and director on set, Marilyn had gotten along with Joshua Logan remarkably well. Even in the middle of Bus Stop, Logan told reporters that he was desperate to work with Marilyn on a play, and was prepared to direct her in any future film she wanted him for. Unfortunately, there was one problem that Marilyn was not aware of at the time of shooting: the film was just too long. On May 17, Logan mentioned to George Axelrod that he was worried about how he could ever bring the film to under two hours. This remained a concern throughout the entire production, and as it reached the editing stage, it became clear that some scenes would have to go.
In the end, Logan and editor William Reynolds trimmed so much off that Bus Stop came in at around ninety-six minutes. They achieved this by editing tiny pieces here and there, right through to huge chunks of otherwise perfect scenes. By July 5, 1956, it was almost finished, though producer Buddy Adler still wished that more cuts could be made. Logan’s wife, Nedda, also became involved when she revealed that her favorite shot was that of Cherie putting on Bo’s coat in the final scene of the film. In honor of her, several more feet were added to the shot, making it longer than originally planned.
Marilyn had been looking forward to seeing the film, especially since it was the first she had made since she began her work at the Actors Studio. However, she came away outraged after discovering that one of her major scenes—talking to Hope Lange on the bus—was cut so dramatically that some of her best lines had completely disappeared. She became so incensed about it that when she later bumped into Logan during the making of The Sleeping Prince, she slammed a door in his face and refused to speak to him. She did not attend the premiere either, and told fellow actors that she did not like the way she looked in the movie.
Thankfully, the tension between Logan and Marilyn did not last forever, though they never did work together again. He later told Lee Strasberg that he had loved directing her, before adding that the actress’s presence in the movie gave it a distinction that would have certainly been absent without her.
While Marilyn may have complained about the way Bus Stop had been edited, the critics seemed to enjoy it mightily. Alan Dent for the Illustrated London News appreciated Don Murray’s performance, and exclaimed that Marilyn as Cherie had progressed a stage on her acting journey. According to him, Bus Stop showed that she “has some talent.” However, he was unfairly critical about Marilyn’s close-up shots, declaring that she showed no expression or emotion whatsoever while Murray’s character was speaking to her. To even the most casual observer, this comment seems totally unfair, for Marilyn’s tearful eyes reveal one of the most soulful performances of her life.
Thankfully, the New York Times was steadfastly on Marilyn’s side and acknowledged her performance as confirmation of her being a genuine actress, as opposed to a sex symbol. They told readers that while the film was a good one, Marilyn was certainly the best part of it. The New York Herald Tribune thought similarly and gave the actress great acclaim as a “New Marilyn.” Bus Stop, it said, “fools the skeptics about her ability as a serious actress. Her work had beauty, action, mobility and was very touching.”
This would have greatly pleased Marilyn. Shortly before the release of the film, she spoke about being known as a glamour girl. “If that part about my being a symbol of sex is true,” she said, “it ought to help the box office, but I don’t want to be too commercial about it. After all, it’s a responsibility… being a symbol I mean.”
While not naming the film directly, actor James Mason was thoroughly impressed with everything Marilyn had to offer to the world of acting. “[She is] the only phenomenon of the old fashioned glory of the movies that is left,” he told reporters in New York, explaining that she was “strides ahead of other young actresses with the possible exception of Gina Lollobrigida.”
One person who did not see the film however, was Kim Stanley, the actress who had played the part of Cherie on Broadway. When asked why this was, she replied, “I didn’t avoid the film because I thought [Marilyn] would ruin the part, or because I was afraid she might have done it better. But frankly, it’s possible she could do it better than I could—especially on close-ups. Marilyn has that wonderful child-like quality that is explosively sexy. Because she’s a fine actress, Hollywood couldn’t have made a better choice for the part.”
While the play’s leading lady might have been reluctant about the film, its writer William Inge was more than happy to take a look. Joshua Logan and screenwriter George Axelrod were both apprehensive about what Inge would make of the movie, considering a lot of his work had been cut out. However, a phone call from his agent, Audrey Wood, put all nerves to rest. Wood greatly enjoyed the film, and a follow-up telegram from Inge confirmed how well Logan and Axelrod had done. Logan admitted that it wasn’t quite the film Inge would have hoped for, but given the time restraints and deadlines, he felt they’d all done a fine job.
Perhaps the saddest part of the Bus Stop legacy is that while Don Murray was nominated for an Academy Award for his part as Bo, Marilyn was completely overlooked. In her entire career—performing in a variety of comedic, musical, and dramatic roles—not once was the actress ever nominated. For someone who fought so hard to gain success in cinema, it is a tragedy that she was forever ignored. Perhaps if she had been nominated even once, her legacy would have the critical support it merits.