Page 34 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

The next day, Zanuck orders that Marilyn Monroe be given “star” treatment with the full weight of the Fox publicity team behind her. He casts her in the suspense thrillerDon’t Bother to Knock. It is her first leading dramatic role. Her name will appear above the title.

In August, as the Korean War rages on, the US military news organizationStars and Stripesnames Marilyn “Miss Cheesecake of the Year.” At a party at the Farmers Market in Hollywood, she poses in a white strapless swimsuit, a chef’s toque, and a sheer white apron over a giant cheesecake, pretending to cut through the layers with a military-style saber. It’s a morale-boosting role, but hardly a serious one.

She begins taking acting lessons from Michael Chekhov. The famous playwright’s nephew studied with Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre and has spent the last ten to fifteen years teaching thespian greats—the likes of John Gielgud and Max Reinhardt. He’s a gentle, patient soul, the antithesis of Natasha Lytess.

Marilyn has moved out of Lytess’s apartment and into the Beverly Carlton Hotel. But the two haven’t parted ways. Marilyn helps her Fox acting coach with the down payment on a new home in West Hollywood by giving her $1,000 she gets from selling the mink stole from Johnny Hyde. Marilyninsisted, even though the studio pays both women $500 a week. Add in the $250 Marilyn pays Lytess for private lessons, and the star is earning less than the coach. Marilyn, whose new contract stipulates annual pay raises upon renewal—$750 weekly in year two, $1,250 in year three, and so on—always insists that she doesn’t mind. “I just want to be wonderful!” she says. “I don’t care about money at all.”

But she does care about her parts. Their questionable quality is beginning to depress her. She complains to Michael Chekhov, “I want to be an artist, not an erotic freak. I don’t want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisiac. It was all right for the first few years. But now, it’s different.”

“But Marilyn,” he replies, with his soft Russian accent. “You’re a young woman who gives off sex vibrations, no matter what you are doing or thinking. Unfortunately, your studio bosses are only interested in your sex vibrations.”

Chekhov and Marilyn work on reducing the “vibrations” in her performance. She imagines herself growing larger or smaller, reducing the importance of the physical body in the performance.

“Our bodies can either be our best friends or worst enemies,” Chekhov explains. “You must try to consider your body as an instrument for expressing creative ideas. You must strive for complete harmony between body and psychology.”

Yet the small walk-on, walk-off “erotic vibration” parts persist. In October 1951, the polka-dot bikini Marilyn wears inLove Nestgets reviewed—“hardly enough room for the polka dots”—with more precision than her performance does.

Consolation comes from the newfound financial stability her contract provides. She generously pays Natasha Lytess’sdental bill. She also hires a private investigator to track down her father, Stan Gifford, whom she hasn’t spoken with since he hung up on her back in 1944.

Lytess is set against her student repeating this extreme act of self-sabotage. But Marilyn is adamant. She’s never stopped looking at her father’s photograph, the smiling one where he looks just like Clark Gable.

“Maybe he’ll be excited that his daughter is a movie star?”

“You could be hurt by this.”

“After all this time, he is not going to be the same person who walked out on my mother.”

“What if he has moved on? What if he has forgotten about you?”

“He would never do that.”

As Lytess stares at Marilyn’s determined face, she sees the forgotten child screaming “Look at me!” and deciding that the only way to get her father’s attention was to achieve stardom, fame, and adulation. Yet he’s still nowhere to be seen.

They set out for Hemet, California, a San Jacinto Valley town eighty-seven miles south of Los Angeles. Along the way, Lytess persuades Marilyn to pull in at a gas station.

“Most people hate surprises,” she says. “Much better to call ahead.”

She deposits a dime in the gas station telephone booth and telephones her father.

A woman answers. “Hello, this is Mrs. Gifford. Who is calling?”

“I am Gladys Baker’s daughter … a little girl from a long time ago. I’m Marilyn. Marilyn Monroe. He is sure to know who I am.”

There’s a pause, the sound of a hand covering the receiver and then a lengthy silence. Marilyn glances over at Natasha, who is sitting in the car, staring through the open window. Marilyn’s hand grips the receiver. Her knees are bent, she’s hunched forward with the pain of waiting. She has waited for twenty-five years.

“Hello?” comes the voice through the telephone. “He doesn’t want to speak to you.” Then, after a pause, “Do you have a pencil?”

Marilyn lurches forward with hope and scrambles in her small white purse. “Yes, yes I do!”

“He suggests you speak with his lawyer in Los Angeles if you have a complaint. I’ll give you his number …”

Marilyn hangs up. Her shoulders slump. He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t want to know her. She sobs. Big heaving sobs, her shoulders shaking. And then she breathes in deeply, holds her head high until she’s back inside the car.

In the driver’s seat, she clutches the steering wheel with both hands as she cries and cries. There is nothing Natasha Lytess can do or say to comfort her. Marilyn starts the car and doesn’t speak a word on the drive back to Hollywood.

In her room at the Beverly Carlton Hotel, Marilyn takes a handful of pills and goes straight to sleep.

CHAPTER 25

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