The Other Marilyn: A Biography of Marilyn Miller by Warren G. Harris

Author:Warren G. Harris [Harris, Warren G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Graymalkin Media
Published: 2016-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

♦ CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHANGES

MARILYN MILLER'S TRIUMPH INSunny marked the beginning of the end of her marriage to Jack Pickford. There was no way the relationship could survive the long separations caused by their ill-matched careers, let alone other problems that were developing.

Rumors that they were having troubles had started when Jack returned to California after the opening of Sunny. His departure was reported to be the consequence of a quarrel over Ben Finney, but Jack denied it. “That's all applesauce,” he told Hearst columnist Louella Parsons, stating that the only reason he was back in Hollywood was to make two movies, The Bat and Brown of Harvard.

Marilyn refused to comment on the rumors, but she knew they were all too true. Married to Jack now for more than three years, she wondered how much longer the relationship could continue. She still thought he was a darling—clever, funny, extravagantly generous—but completely irresponsible and undependable.

They were not so much wife and husband to each other as partners for sex and companions for social occasions. When Jack wasn't fulfilling those roles during their times together, he was recovering from a hangover or off somewhere working up the next one. He would go out to buy cigarettes and not come home for several days. Marilyn knew that Jack was taking drugs as well as drinking heavily, but there was nothing that she could say or do to stop him. In the beginning she tried, but he was like a little boy. He would pout for a while and then act up twice as badly as before. It was best to try to live around the problem and pretend it didn't exist.

Conversely, Jack could not tolerate Marilyn's flirtatious nature. If she even smiled at another man, he got upset. Yet he could not talk her out of her behavior any more than she could get him to stop drugs and drink. She was as much a spoiled brat as he was.

By that autumn of 1925, the relationship had evolved into a Twenties version of an open marriage, although Marilyn and Jack probably saw it as simply an arrangement that was preferable to getting divorced. Neither was eager to see their names involved in another public scandal, especially one that would give Flo Ziegfeld cause to gloat.

There were no set rules or regulations other than discretion. Play around if you must, but please don't talk about it. It was the old “What I don't know, won't hurt me” philosophy.

But in the gossipy world of show business it was very hard to keep such matters secret, and Marilyn was well aware of Jack's infidelities. While directing and starring in his last movie, Waking Up the Town, he'd been passionately involved with his beautiful though cross-eyed leading lady, Norma Shearer. Jack's affair with Bebe Daniels had also flared up again; among other things, they had become Hollywood's champion partners at bridge, which was a great fad at the time.

Marilyn's extramarital love life was conducted catch-as-catch-can. She needed male company,

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