Marilyn in Manhattan by Elizabeth Winder

Author:Elizabeth Winder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

Ten

Shangri-la

But will he look like this when he is dead oh unbearable fact inevitable yet sooner would I rather his love die than/ or him?

MARILYN MONROE

January 1951. Thirty-six-year-old Arthur Miller was still basking in the glow of his newly won Pulitzer. Death of a Salesman took him to Hollywood for the first time, where he and Elia Kazan were house-sitting for Charlie Feldman. Beverly Hills was miles away from Miller’s humble writer’s life in Brooklyn Heights, full of clanking typewriters and chain-linked fences, with his progressive, bespectacled wife Mary Slattery and three children cozily installed in the Little Red Schoolhouse. Now he was plopped in a Spanish Colonial mansion surrounded by swimming pools, Renoirs, Vuillards, Bonnards, Modiglianis, and streams of ingénues trailing clouds of money and Arpège.

Arthur set his Corona by Feldman’s pool—officially he was here to work. The plan was to edit his screenplay The Hook, then shop it around the studios with Kazan. Their first stop was Twentieth Century Fox, where Kazan hoped to run into one of his girlfriends. They dropped in on the set of As Young As You Feel, where a young blonde actress was rehearsing a scene. “That’s Marilyn Monroe,” Kazan whispered, nudging Arthur. “Fair game and easy prey,” he grinned, staring straight ahead. As if to confirm, Marilyn shot him a look, eyes brimming with tears. Maybe it was her honest tears, or the way she swayed in her dress of black openwork lace, but something struck Arthur, triggering a protective response that would last for a decade.

Of course she recognized Arthur Miller—the literary Lincoln and working man’s Hemingway. He fished; he hunted; he even boxed. He certainly looked the part, with his corncob pipe, lumberjack plaids, and Brandoesque tees. Arthur’s quiet reserve and lanky grace appealed to Marilyn, who preferred the congressman to the dandy, the simple tie and jacket to the chichi dinner suit. Instead of swooning over Tony Curtis, she liked her sixty-something acting coach or Jawaharlal Nehru. Her ideal man had the soul of Thomas Wolfe and the heart of Abraham Lincoln, masculine without bravado. No wonder she was lonely and dateless. There weren’t many Wolfes and Lincolns in this town of flashy cads and clammy bullies.

The next day, Feldman threw a party in absentia for Miller, with an orchestra, lavish buffet tables, and a fully stocked bar in each room. “I asked Art to cover for me,” wrote Kazan, who was working late that night and unable to pick up Marilyn. “When he called to tell her he’d pick her up she said no, she’d take a taxi and meet us at Feldman’s. Art wouldn’t allow it—he’d come and pick her up. Again she demurred. I said don’t worry about it, she’s used to that, but Art insisted. And the first thing that impressed Marilyn about her future husband was that he refused to let her come to the party in a taxi. How little these glamour girls expect out of life.”

Within minutes, they were dancing together. Arthur

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