January 1955. Marilyn Monroe founded Marilyn Monroe Productions with her great friend Milton H. Greene, in a decisive episode in the history of Hollywood. Nowadays, it is common for stars of the screen to put their signature on the production of their films, making the most profit possible from their coveted names. However, in the star system In the mid-1950s, this was an act of rebellion. And even more so coming from the great MM (when you only need two letters to identify yourself, you are truly great). Fox’s brightest star was unhappy with the treatment from her studio and with the projects they chose for her. Of her last film, River of No Return, she had said: “I think I deserve something more than a Z-grade cowboy movie, where the acting is overshadowed by the scenery.” In addition, that year she would release The Seven Year Itch, the epitome of the dumb, sexy blonde archetype that had brought her fame. “I’m not opposed to doing comedies and musicals, in fact, I love them, but I also want dramatic roles,” she told the famous Ed Murrow in an interview. A new Marilyn had been born. The Marilyn of the Actor’s Studio.
Free and divorced from the jealous Joe DiMaggio, whom she had always loved and with whom she had a great friendship, Marilyn was ready to get her career back on track. She had already flirted with the Stanislavski method a few years earlier, when she had a affair with Elia Kazan, Broadway’s enfant terrible, who brought the Actor’s Studio to Hollywood with A Streetcar Named Desire. “The afternoon Marilyn announced her marriage to DiMaggio, she slept with me,” Kazan said, not needing to be pressured by Senator McCarthy to open his mouth. It was Kazan himself who introduced her to Arthur Miller, but not before Marilyn had a torrid affair with Marlon Brando, the visible head of the famous acting school. Thus was born the intellectual, ambitious, tenacious and committed Marilyn. The first star to openly reveal her traumas and sins, something inconceivable in the Hollywood studio system, in decline since the emergence of television in the early fifties. “I lied because I was ashamed that the world knew that my mother was in a mental hospital… and that I had been born out of wedlock, without having heard my father’s voice. (…) I was surprised by the way the magazines treated my new confessions. They were very kind and nobody messed with me,” he wrote in his memoirs. Tired of Hollywood hypocrisy (“I like important people, but when they’re doing important things… not just accumulating bows from less famous guests”), she donned the typically bohemian black turtleneck and decided to take creative control of all her projects with Marilyn Monroe, Inc. Displaying a fun sense of humor, she declared: “I’m the same person, but I wear different clothes.”
The laughter at the press conference gave way to another question.
—Is it true that you sent a list of directors with whom you approve of working?
—I prefer to say that I have to give the go-ahead, that’s true. It’s very important to me.
There was a rumour that Mrs Miller (who married in 1956) had drawn up a list of directors she was willing to work with. A display of power that had not been seen in a Hollywood star since Mary Pickford founded United Artists in 1919 with Charles Chaplin, DW Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks. In September 1961, a contract was drawn up for Marilyn containing the list of directors, thus putting an end to speculation. A first draft of this list, handwritten by Monroe, was auctioned in 2016 for more than eight thousand dollars. It belonged to the estate of Lee Strasberg, lord and master of the Actor’s Studio, who helped her draw up the famous list on which he himself appeared. He never directed her in Hollywood (or anyone else), but they forged a great friendship. He introduced her to his family, gave her the home she had never had (and that so many tried to give her) and his wife, Paula Strasberg, became an essential part of the filming of Marilyn. Mrs. Strasberg was his confidant. Monroe wrote her a personal note: “I feel like I’ll never be able to act or do anything (…) Something has happened that makes me lose confidence. I don’t know what it is. Oh, Paula! I wish I knew why I’m so worried. I think I’m crazy, like the rest of my family members. I’m so glad you’re here with me!” MM needed her approval in every scene, to the point of becoming an unbearable presence for the real directors. As a morbid detail, I will say that in that same auction a bottle of pills prescribed to Mrs. A. Miller was awarded for $8,125, the handwritten note addressed to Paula Strasberg went for more than ten thousand.
The selection criteria seem obvious after a quick glance at the list: Billy Wilder, John Huston, Joe Mankiewicz, Elia Kazan, Vittorio DeSica, George Cukor, Willie Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean… In other words, quality. It was clear that blondes preferred gentlemen. The list allows us to dream of projects that were never made, but also to analyse Monroe’s character through notable absences, such as Howard Hawks, who directed her in two brilliant comedies. One of them, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was always remembered fondly by the actress herself. Many had worked with her, only Huston and Cukor repeated. The former gave her the best role of her career (in terms of acting) in The Misfits; the latter despaired with the filming of what could have been her last film, Something’s Got to Give, abandoning the project (after filming what would have been the first nude scene by an American actress when the Hays Code still reigned).
Among the directors who directed her, desperation prevailed. On the contrary, Marilyn only wanted to make good films, so she chose the best. Billy Wilder directed her twice (before he imposed his list) and “his doctor and his psychiatrist agreed that he was too rich and old to go through that again.” Joe Mankiewicz gave her a small role in his colossal All About Eve, of which he said in an interview: “Marilyn had something indefinable. I don’t think she knew how to act, or dance, or walk and I’m sure she didn’t know how to talk, but there’s nothing better to become a star.” That which went down in history as “she doesn’t sing, or dance, but don’t miss her” with Lola Flores and a supposed review in the New York Times was born with Marilyn. Kazan never directed her. Neither did Hitchcock. In 1972, when asked in an interview for the AFI (American Film Institute), “the enemy of blondes” explained why he let the most famous blonde in history escape: “She wore her sex around her neck. I think it is something that should be discovered. It is more interesting to discover sex in a woman than to have it thrown at you, as Marilyn Monroe and those kinds of actresses do… For me it is something vulgar and obvious.”
In December 1961, Marilyn wrote a desperate letter to her mentor and friend. “For me, work and Lee Strasberg are synonymous,” she wrote in a friendly tone, before proposing a business venture. MM had spoken to Brando about creating a production company together (“also to make films without me”) and asked, also on behalf of her partner, for Strasberg’s advice and support. “Paula would have many great opportunities for her coaching work. And for you too, Lee, I still have the dream that you will direct me one day in a film!” The letter can be read as a swan song in her last attempt to survive. “I don’t know what else to persuade you with. I need you to study it and know that I am not alone in this. (…) Please, Lee, think this through carefully; this is a very important time in my life and, since you mentioned on the phone that you too felt that things were a bit uneasy, I have dared to hope.” Eight months later, Marilyn died at her home in Hollywood.
There have been more books written about Marilyn than about World War II. This is not my sentence, but Wilder’s. It is true that there has been much talk about the great Hollywood myth, in every sense. Bad and good films have been made. Not even her husbands understood her. Dougherty (her first marriage) said he only knew Norma Jeane, a sixteen-year-old girl “who cooked peas and carrots because she was good at plating.” DiMaggio left a rose on her grave every year until his own death. Miller despaired and went back to writing, which was what she did best. She was a free soul, deeply sad (with brief interludes of happiness), who unintentionally challenged the ironclad Hollywood studio system. Marilyn Monroe Productions produced two films: Bus Stop, its director Josh Logan appeared on the list, of course, and The Prince and the Showgirl, Marilyn chose Laurence Olivier as director because she admired him, he ended up despising her.
MM continued her contract with Fox. Her demands (such as the presence of Paula Strasberg), her delays in filming, her problems with taking pills and her chronic colds, migraines and miscarriages meant that she gradually disappeared from the lists that directors drew up when making their casts. In the early hours of August 4, 1962, Marilyn died of an overdose of barbiturates. Billy Wilder arrived in Paris in the morning and was surprised by the number of journalists who had come to greet him at Orly airport.
—Do you think Hollywood has killed Marilyn? —they asked.
—Hollywood has not killed Marilyn, it is the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
The sardonic director did not know that the actress had just died (literally) and he always remembered indignantly the trap that those journalists set for him. Nevertheless, the anecdote illustrates well the end of MM. The first star to produce her films, the first to film a nude, the first to speak honestly about herself, the first to joke about “what are you wearing?”, the first one that comes to mind when we think of an actress. The last Hollywood star.
