August 27th
Marilyn Monroe has long since moved in the public imagination from movie star and model to icon, legend and myth. People see the Marilyn Monroe they want to see, from the forlorn Marilyn who suffered and was misunderstood and taken advantage of, to the driven Marilyn who succeeded against all odds. But with all the attention and, in some quarters, worship—there have probably been more books, articles and documentaries about her than any other performer of the 20th century—sometimes the breadth of her film work itself, and her under-appreciated ability as an actress, get a bit lost in the shuffle.
Like most stars of the era, Monroe’s persona was molded and cleverly developed by studios and filmmakers. Her best films were made by directors who understood how to use her effectively, and who were interested in giving her chances to hone her burgeoning talents as comedienne, musical star, sex symbol and Method actress.
Born in Los Angeles as Norma Jeane Mortenson, her last name was quickly changed to Baker, and she was raised by foster parents as well as by friends and relatives of her mother. She married at 16—a brief marriage of convenience—and while working at an airplane factory during World War II was discovered by a photographer. Soon she became a successful model and attracted the attention of Hollywood.
In 1946, 20th Century Fox gave her a screen test, signed her to a contract and changed her professional name to Marilyn Monroe. “Marilyn” came from Marilyn Miller, an old-time actress whom the Fox casting director thought she resembled, and “Monroe” was Marilyn’s mother’s maiden name. Fox put their new hire in two films, but she had barely any dialogue or screen time and made no impact. The studio dropped her, and Columbia swooped in to sign her to a six-month contract and a leading role in Ladies of the Chorus (1948), a snappy and enjoyable B musical. 21-year-old Marilyn performs three numbers staged with pizzazz. She is young, fresh and charming, more like the girl next door than the glamorous sex symbol she would become. But the film caused no great shakes and was quickly forgotten—and Columbia dropped Monroe. Now two major studios had decided she wasn’t talented enough to warrant a buildup, and she was back to scouring Hollywood for bit roles (with the help of her agent, who was also her lover).
In 1950, she appeared in five films. Three were quite minor, and she had small, insignificant roles. But the other two were major pictures in which her small roles were highly significant: All About Eve and The Asphalt Jungle. The writer-directors, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and John Huston respectively, bent over backwards to showcase Monroe’s beauty and sex appeal and incorporate them into the storytelling. Huston allows her to make the most of her three scenes: he holds shots of her a bit longer than needed, has her walk through the frame slowly and gives her first-rate lighting, hair, make-up and dialogue. In return, Monroe proves that she can really act. Her body language tells the audience that she is a kept woman but still exercises some control over Louis Calhern, and only pretends to love him. Monroe herself thought The Asphalt Jungle and The Seven Year Itch (1955) provided the two best roles she ever had.
Audiences took notice of Marilyn Monroe in All About Eve and The Asphalt Jungle. She also made a huge impact on Hollywood itself, with Fox chief Darryl Zanuck now signing her to a new contract with plans to build her stardom. She appeared in nine films over the next two years, most of them mid-budget comedies that allowed her to gain experience but for the most part showed that Fox didn’t really know what to do with her. In several of these films she is merely ornamental. It once again took the talents of great directors, including Fritz Lang and Howard Hawks, to employ her effectively onscreen. Lang directed her in Clash by Night (1952), an intense melodrama based on a 1941 play by Clifford Odets, about a love triangle in a coastal fishing village. Marilyn has a supporting role as a cannery worker engaged to Barbara Stanwyck’s brother. She wears jeans most of the time, radiates a fresh naturalism and earthy sexuality and holds her own among the powerhouse cast, which also includes Paul Douglas and Robert Ryan. Behind the scenes, Marilyn was a nervous wreck, scared of the autocratic Lang. She hid in her trailer out of fear, delaying production. She flubbed her lines. She even vomited before many of her shots, out of sheer nervousness. Barbara Stanwyck, who could see that Marilyn was rising to bigger things, took her under her wing and later said that Marilyn “couldn’t get out of her own way. She wasn’t disciplined...but she didn’t do it viciously, and there was a sort of magic about her which we all recognized at once.” Stanwyck also defended her against Paul Douglas, who didn’t like the idea of Marilyn getting billed above the title. But she got that billing, for the first time in her career, and deservedly so.
In Howard Hawks’s Monkey Business (1952), a farcical comedy about the discovery of a youth-restoring scientific potion, Monroe makes the most of limited screen time and holds her own opposite Cary Grant. Her big sequence here is a frenetic outing with Grant as they go roller-skating, swimming and on a hair-raising drive. She delivers her lines with perfect comic timing, as in the office scene where she shows Grant her stockings. Grant later said he had no idea she was going to become a big star. “If she had something different from the other actresses,” he said, “it wasn’t apparent at the time. She seemed very shy and quiet.”
It was during Monkey Business that Marilyn started dating Joe DiMaggio; she often had to be pried away from the telephone to get back to work. She was also saturating newsstands as a magazine cover model. She was simply everywhere with all this media attention, and when a calendar was published containing two nude photos she had shot years earlier, the press went crazy and hounded the set. Marilyn made the best of it, garnering public sympathy by explaining she was broke at the time she posed, and, when asked if she really had nothing on, by joking that actually the radio was on.
Despite all the attention and her steady buildup in nine films, Darryl Zanuck still believed Monroe was a passing phenomenon. 1953 proved him wrong. Her three releases that year turned her into a bona fide superstar, starting with Niagara and followed by Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, both of which were among the top-ten moneymakers of the year.
Zanuck had originally intended Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for Betty Grable, the reigning Fox blonde musical star over the past decade. But after Howard Hawks finished Monkey Business, Zanuck rethought his plans: Grable’s popularity was starting to wane, and maybe Monroe could handle a big, splashy role in a film again directed by Hawks. Furthermore, Grable now had a salary of $150,000 per film, while Monroe was making just $1500 per week. She earned a total of $18,000 for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a fact that started a rift with the studio that culminated with her breaking her contract and moving to New York a couple of years later.
But the movie is a terrific showcase for Monroe’s musical and comedy talents. She is truly funny as Lorelei Lee, whether helping Jane Russell pull off Elliott Reid’s pants, or getting stuck in a porthole, one of the funniest scenes she ever did. She also did all her own singing, except for the brief “No, no, no” prologue to the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number. (Those high notes were dubbed by Gloria Wood.) But Zanuck was still so skeptical of Marilyn’s talents that he didn’t believe it was really she singing those numbers; he made her come to his office and sing the songs to him in person, to prove it.
Zanuck also hedged his bet on Marilyn by securing a major co-star in the form of Jane Russell, although he had to pay a steep price to borrow her from RKO. That studio’s owner, Howard Hughes, demanded $200,000, top billing for Russell, her use of RKO’s hair, makeup and wardrobe artists, and even of Russell’s preferred RKO cinematographer, Harry J. Wild. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is about the friendship between two women who are loyal, supportive and protective—a big reason the film is so endearing—and Russell and Monroe became good friends offscreen, too.
Monroe’s next film, How to Marry a Millionaire, was another monster hit that allowed the actress to further develop her comedy skills. This is one of her most famous “dumb blonde” roles, but she’s not so much “dumb” here as she is just blind. Her character, Pola, literally can’t see without her glasses, and that’s the source of much comedy. Marilyn plays one of the most charming scenes of her career when, on an airplane, she puts on her glasses for David Wayne and he tells her how good she looks in them; the scene moves from comedy to genuine sweetness. Marilyn shares the screen with two other leading ladies, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. The presence of Grable was significant. By pairing their long-established musical star with their brand-new starlet, Fox was in effect saying, “these two are equals,” and Grable herself seemed to be endorsing Marilyn, who was now receiving thousands of fan letters every week.
After next making the western River of No Return (1954) with Robert Mitchum, Monroe was placed in another musical extravaganza, There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954). This one, however, is more a string of musical numbers than a real story, and Marilyn wasn’t especially interested in it. She only agreed to do it when Fox promised her The Seven Year Itch, a project she was clamoring for. In Show Business, she plays a hat check girl who becomes a singer and breaks up a family vaudeville act when she falls for the son, played by Donald O’Connor. It’s all an excuse for splashy musical numbers set to songs by Irving Berlin, in vibrant Technicolor. Marilyn’s rendition of “Heat Wave” was heavily criticized by some for being overly vulgar. Her husband Joe DiMaggio thought so—he was there, watching from the sidelines, before he angrily walked off the set. The movie is also notable for the chance to see and hear Ethel Merman recreate her rendition of the title song, which she had introduced on Broadway in 1946.
Marilyn’s next film was indeed The Seven Year Itch, a comedy that created the most indelible image of Marilyn Monroe to this day: standing on a New York sidewalk atop a subway grate, with the wind from a passing train sending her dress billowing high. The image defines Monroe’s sexy screen persona, expressing playfulness, naughtiness, exuberance and a kind of joyful sensuality. The movie itself is based on a hit play by George Axelrod, who wrote the screenplay with director Billy Wilder. Marilyn plays the beautiful blonde neighbor who tests Tom Ewell’s fidelity when she moves into the apartment above his one summer while his family is away. The subway-grate scene was first shot on location in New York, but primarily for publicity. The studio leaked the news of the shoot, and thousands of fans gathered to watch. Many famous still photos were taken, which is why we often think of the scene with Marilyn’s body in full-frame, head to toe. Onscreen, however, she is never shown that way. The scene was re-filmed on a soundstage a few weeks later, and very little from the location shoot was ultimately used. One onlooker in New York had been Joe DiMaggio, and he once again was so disgusted by what he considered to be vulgarity that he stormed away; within weeks, he and Marilyn split up.
In her next picture, Bus Stop (1956), Marilyn delivered one of the finest performances of her career. A comedy with dramatic, poignant undertones, it showed Monroe’s ability to straddle comedy and tragedy, to put across both qualities at once. That talent would again serve her extremely well in Some Like it Hot (1959), but Bus Stop is much more Marilyn’s movie—a showcase primarily for her. Before making it, she decamped for New York and spent an entire year on break from the movies, studying Method acting with Lee Strasberg. She yearned for more serious, dramatic roles, and Fox was so desperate for her to return that they ironed out their differences, let her do Bus Stop, and bumped up her salary to $100,000 per film plus $100,000 per year, along with story, director, and cinematographer approval—all practically unheard of. (In January 1956, Time magazine put Marilyn on the cover and called her a shrewd businesswoman.)
There are noticeable new dimensions to her acting in Bus Stop, and she does a good southern-hillbilly accent that helps her to disappear into the role of Chérie, a broken-down saloon singer pursued by a wild young cowboy (Don Murray). She is deglamorized, wearing white baby-powder facial makeup and a dress that she tore up and then darned so it would look pitiful. Screenwriter George Axelrod adapted William Inge’s play specifically for Marilyn, well aware of her abilities and limitations. (He knew she was terrible at memorizing dialogue so kept her speeches short.) One of Marilyn’s best screen moments comes when she sings “That Old Black Magic” off-key, perfectly expressing this character whose dreams will never be realized.
Following Bus Stop, Monroe left for London to start her next picture, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), a sumptuous romance about an American chorus girl and a European prince. It was based on a play by Terrence Rattigan, which Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh had performed on stage four years earlier. Marilyn’s new production company had acquired the rights, and she approached Olivier about playing the role again on film. He said he would if he could also direct, and she agreed. Marilyn wanted the prestige of working with Olivier, and Olivier liked the idea of working with the world’s most popular movie star. But the production became troubled. Marilyn’s business partnership was strained, her new marriage to Arthur Miller was already a wreck, her acting teachers Lee and Paula Strasberg were taking advantage of her financially and Olivier treated her with condescension, fed up with her tardiness and reliance on Paula Strasberg. The film has never had a good reputation and is perhaps a bit underrated. Olivier seems to be trying so hard, while Marilyn comes off as effortless. It is she who gives the film its life and charm.
Monroe next returned to Hollywood to make her most famous film, Some Like it Hot, co-starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as 1920s musicians who disguise themselves as women and join an all-female band. It is considered by many to be the finest comedy ever made. Even though it was not the type of role she wanted to play anymore, Monroe revered Billy Wilder despite their prior tensions, and was eager to work with him again. Wilder, meanwhile, had vowed never again to work with Marilyn, but he knew she could bring sex to a film like no other actress, and sex was what the part of Sugar Kane required.
She was again tough to work with, having more trouble than ever before with concentrating and remembering her lines—largely because of all the prescription drugs she was taking. Over the years, had been prescribed barbiturates to help her sleep and stimulants to keep her awake, and she basically now relied on them. Almost every shot required endless takes. For all the anguish, Wilder knew that he was getting bits and pieces of a great performance. As he said, “Anyone can remember lines, but it takes a real artist to come on the set, not know her lines, and give the performance she did.” He also said she instinctively always knew where the laugh was in any line or scene—which is not always so obvious.
Some Like it Hot showed yet again that a strong, intelligent director could use Marilyn Monroe—her instrument, body, voice, persona, way of moving through the frame—to tremendous effect. The same was true of Marilyn’s final completed film, The Misfits (1961), which reunited her with director John Huston. This movie has always held a special fascination. Marilyn’s husband, Arthur Miller, originally wrote it as a short story in 1957, then developed it into a screenplay to showcase Marilyn in a dramatic role. But by the time production started in 1960, their marriage was a disaster, and Miller’s attitude toward his wife was very different. He had written the role of Roslyn to be so close to the real Marilyn that Marilyn felt violated and resentful. Her real-life sensitivity, vulnerability and empathy are all there in the character, and Marilyn is very affecting in the role, but so are feelings of loss, abandonment and humiliation, and it was all a little too close to home. (Even some of her dialogue was lifted from reality.) In addition, production started without a finished script, which meant that Miller was often handing her new scenes the night before they were to be shot. As a result, she relied more than ever on sleeping pills. With the unbearable heat of the Nevada summer, Montgomery Clift’s drinking, Clark Gable’s declining health and John Huston falling asleep on the set because he spent many nights gambling, it’s a miracle the movie was finished at all. It does have an incomplete, sometimes unfocused, feeling about it, as well as a mournfulness from the knowledge that in real life, Gable would be dead of a heart attack two weeks after filming ended, and Monroe would be dead a year and a half later.
All the same, The Misfits casts a spell. It shows a fascinating collision of acting styles from Gable, Clift, Eli Wallach and Monroe as their characters struggle to connect to one another, to society and to themselves. The three cowboys searching for meaning are all attracted to Roslyn without understanding her, and perhaps that strikes a chord with audiences, even today, who long to understand the real Marilyn Monroe.
