Page 62 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Arthur Miller gives Zec a crushing handshake.

“What do you think of your new bride?” Zec asks him.

“She is the most unique person I have ever met,” Miller says.

“What is it like to be married to such a quiet man?” Marilyn is asked.

Miller’s eyes narrow. “I’m not so quiet as all that,” he replies.

The July 15 press conference forThe Prince and the Showgirlfeatures a surprise. A London newspaperman wheels in a bicycle, with an oversized tag on it labeledTO MARILYN WITH LOVE FROM THE DAILY SKETCH. It’s a gift to Marilyn so that she can explore Windsor Great Park.

A week’s rehearsal begins at Pinewood Studios, where the movie will be shot. As director, co-producer, and co-star, Sir Laurence Olivier establishes expectations.

He announces a closed set and assigns a police constable to track Marilyn’s movements. The security is to ensure her safety, Olivier insists, but Marilyn chafes at the restrictions.

The gates to Parkside House are kept locked. Still, locals line up for a glimpse inside. Marilyn isn’t much more accessible on set.

Colin Clark, a gofer on the film, writes in his diary: “I just can’t seem to see enough of her, and perhaps this is because I cannot really see her at all. It is a feeling one could easilyconfuse with love. No wonder she has so many fans, and has to be careful who she meets. I suppose this is why she spends most of her time shut up in her house, and why she finds it hard to turn up at the studio at all, let alone on time.”

On the first day of the shoot, August 7, Marilyn arrives two hours late with Paula Strasberg in tow.

Olivier is taken aback at their Method acting techniques. He comes from the classical school of acting, where the emotions of a character are represented externally—with facial expressions, movements, physical attitudes, even prosthetics.

He gives specific instructions, only to have Paula interject, “Think of Frank Sinatra and Coca-Cola.”What’s her motivation?Marilyn and Paula ask themselves.What is the character thinking? Where’s the vérité?They workshop the take until Olivier loses the thread entirely.

“Can’t you just pretend?” he asks from behind the camera.

“You are the greatest woman of your time,” Paula praises Marilyn, to Olivier’s annoyance, “the greatest human being of your time; of any time, you name it; you can’t think of anybody, I mean—no, not even Jesus—except you’re more popular.”

Olivier contradicts the acting coach. “All you have to be is sexy, dear Marilyn!” the director declares.

Sexy?Marilyn is deeply offended at Olivier’s condescending tone. “He came on like someone slumming,” she says. “He upset me a lot.”

She immediately retaliates. “I started being bad with him, being late, and he hated it. But if you don’t respect your artists, they can’t work well. Respect is what you have to fight for.”

Miller is on his wife’s side, though Marilyn occasionallyaccuses him otherwise. “She was generally seen as a very light-headed, if not silly, human being,” he says, “some kind of a dancing bear, that she shouldn’t be able, for example, to have any interest in anything but sex, showing off or saying dopey things to the newspapers.”

He sees her struggle. “I took her at her own evaluation, which very few people did,” he says. “I thought she was a very serious girl.”

Dame Sybil Thorndike, leading actress of the British theater who’s playing the Queen Dowager, urges patience from Olivier. After watching early rushes, she tells him, “Larry, you did well in that scene but with Marilyn up there, nobody will be watching you. Her manner and timing are just too delicious. We need her desperately. She’s really the only one of us who knows how to act in front of a camera!”

But the damage is done. The co-stars are soon barely on speaking terms. If Marilyn must address Olivier, she calls him “Mr. Sir.”

Hoping to ease tensions, Olivier urgesThe Prince and the Showgirlplaywright and screenwriter Terence Rattigan to organize a party. Perhaps they can defuse matters over glasses of champagne.

Rattigan agrees and throws a soiree in Marilyn’s honor at his home, hiring a small orchestra to play hits from American musicals.

But even this feels rather double-handed. At the party, Arthur Miller finds himself talking to gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who declares, “We all love Marilyn.”

Miller nods, all the while thinking,Her columns have never been free of a sneering contempt for Marilyn’s ambitions to escape the starlet’s fate.

“It’s so wonderful to know that she’s happy at last. And she does look really and truly happy,” Parsons continues.

Is she truly happy?

What Miller doesn’t know is that as Marilyn was getting ready for the party, she came across her husband’s notebook, left open on his desk. She didn’t go looking, she just read what was in front her.

It’s a litany of regrets. To Lee and Paula Strasberg, Marilyn distills the essence of Miller’s marital complaints. “How he thought I was some kind of angel but now he guessed he was wrong. That his first wife had let him down, but I had done something worse.”

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