Marilyn Monroe: and Other Conversations by Sady Doyle

Author:Sady Doyle [Doyle, Sady]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2020-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARILYN

CONVERSATION WITH WILLIAM J. WEATHERBY

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARILYN

1961 [FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1976]

When she was half an hour late, I decided she wasn’t coming. Why the hell had she bothered to make the date? But I reminded myself that she had been several hours late on The Misfits and that had been more important. How long should I give her? I usually gave people a half hour, but this time I was unwilling to leave after thirty minutes, so I decided to give her an hour.

I had chosen a booth in the back where the lighting was dim, so no one would recognize her and we could talk. It was one of those simple bars with no table service, so I went up to the bar for another drink. If Marilyn was very late, I’d be drunk by the time she got there. But I was convinced by that time she’d either forgotten—the scatterbrained dumb blonde of legend (disappointment was making me nasty)—or she’d decided she couldn’t make it on time and so would skip it and make apologies the next time we met at the Actors Studio.

For the first half hour I had kept my eyes on the swinging doors in the distance, but then the bar had become crowded and I’d given up and given all my attention to my drink and my thoughts about an article I was writing about Christopher Isherwood. I’d interviewed him when I was in Hollywood.

“A dollar for your thoughts,” a voice said. A female voice. A familiar one.

“Not worth it,” I said, looking up.

There she was, dressed the same way she had been at the Actors Studio, except that the head scarf was different and tied much more loosely. A little of her hair showed. She was smiling gaily, like someone intent on having a good time. Just seeing her there certainly made my spirits rise.

I glanced around, a little embarrassed. Maybe a smart hotel bar was more her style, like the one we’d drunk in in Reno. “We can go to another bar—”

“No, no, I like it.” She sat facing me, grinning. “I’m not often taken to a real bar.”

“What’ll you have to drink?”

“What are you drinking?”

“Gin and tonic.”

“Okay, I’ll try that.”

I didn’t know whether that meant she’d never had one before, or whether she’d see how this particular bar made one, or whether, to be friendly, she was having one because I was. I got it from the bar as quickly as I could, feeling strangely responsible for her there. I didn’t want anyone to bother her.

“What were you thinking about?” she said. “You were very far away.”

I explained about Christopher Isherwood. She knew that part of Santa Monica where the writer lived. She became most interested in something Isherwood had told me. It had been mystical and, to me, a little hard to grasp, but she seemed to follow immediately, as if it was close to one of her own ideas. I got out my notebook to read Isherwood’s exact words to her: “I didn’t decide to live here.

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