ON the surface it was the perfect transaction. An intellectual playwright with an unfulfilled thirst for sexual experience and a sexually uninhibited movie star with a hunger for intellectual respectability.Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe may have been made for each other, in another life.
The problem was that beneath the surface of complementary desires there lurked psychological monsters just waiting to destroy the liaison.
As many have discovered, it is much harder to control the physical sexual impulse than it is to harness the intellectual creative one.
To paraphrase Monroe’s final, uncompleted film, something had to give.
Jeffrey Meyers’s new book The Genius And The Goddess offers an intriguing insight into his playwright friend’s fascination with the actress and charts the trajectory of a relationship doomed to self-destruct.
Monroe met Miller in 1950 on the set of the comedy As Young As You Feel.
Then he was regarded as his country’s foremost playwright, a celebrated chronicler of contem–porary America who dissected the American Dream with the skill of a surgeon in plays such as All My Sons and Death Of A Salesman.
Monroe was an insecure model and actress, having had small parts in films such as The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve as well as bit parts in trivial comedies.
She was desperately attempting to improve her game through acting lessons and a dutiful reading programme.
They swiftly became friends and Monroe supposedly gushed to her drama coach Natasha Lytess (who was herself infatuated with her pupil): “It was like running into a tree! You know, like a cool drink when you’ve got a fever. You see my toe, this toe? Well he sat and held my toe and we just looked into each other’s eyes almost all evening.”
The starlet and the playwright exchanged letters and phone calls for some months but Miller’s marriage to college sweetheart Mary Slattery prevented any serious involvement.
His marriage had been in trouble for years but his shyness and moral code prevented him from having adulterous dalliances. However, he clearly envisaged a time when he and Monroe might be together.
The time came five years later when Miller heard that Marilyn had moved to New York City.
He obtained her phone number from a friend and they began secretly dating in 1955. In the intervening half decade, Monroe had risen from aspiring starlet to world famous movie star and their respective positions had altered drama––tic–ally. They married in secret that –summer but it lasted only five tempestuous years.
When they divorced in 1961 –neither was the same person they had been when they married.
To understand the issues at stake one has to look at their respective characters, forged in childhood.
Although Miller’s father had lost everything in The Depression he grew up in a secure, upper-middle class family.
His father Isidore, a Polish emigre, had been a successful garment manufacturer and his mother Augusta (Gussy) enjoyed the fruits of her husband’s labours while berating him for his “demeaning” profession.
Miller’s intellectual condescension was learnt at his mother’s knee.
Monroe’s mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who spent most of her adult life shuttling around institutions.
The illegitimate Monroe was farmed out to various foster homes and ageing relatives until she made the break by marrying a neighbour’s son, James Dougherty, largely to avoid being returned to an orphanage.
Four years later she left to pursue a career as a model and movie actress.
Her combination of naivety, aspiration and sexuality was a magnet for unscrupulous, powerful men who used her and sexually abused her before discarding her.
But her early experiences on the Hollywood casting couch taught her that her body was her best weapon and she flaunted it.
Miller found this combination of innocence and sexual allure irresistible. “He had sex on his mind constantly,” wrote film director Elia Kazan. “He was starved of sexual release.”
Riddled with guilt, Miller embarked on an affair with Monroe but found it difficult to be thrust into the limelight and the centre of press attention, simultaneously getting a divorce on the grounds of infidelity and conducting an affair with Monroe.
He never really recovered from the shock of the attention which continued throughout their marriage and some time afterwards.
Monroe, on the other hand, was already practised in the arts of media manipulation.
Always ready with a soundbite or quip to entertain reporters and newspaper readers, she loved the constant attention, which seemed to nourish her eternal hunger for acclaim and approval.
But the cost to both of them was greater than they could have imagined. Miller became increasingly self-conscious and it leaked into his work which became pompous and sanctimonious.
Monroe’s fragile personality started to crack and she turned to drugs and alcohol to help assuage her demons.
Miller responded to a question years later on whether he had foreseen the problems that would destroy his marriage and Monroe.
“If I had been sophisticated enough I would have seen them. But I was not. I loved her.”
Monroe was more aggressive in her response to their unlikely liaison. “If I were nothing but a dumb blonde he wouldn’t have married me.”
The bilious Truman Capote, whom Monroe had befriended when she came to New York, returned her friendship in typically treacherous fashion.
Upon hearing of her marriage to Miller he declared that it would be the “Death Of A Playwright”.
Capote was only half right. The marriage between the vulnerable Beauty and the intellectual Beast precipitated the creative death of one and the actual death of the other.
During the difficult making of The Prince And The Showgirl, in which Monroe clashed with the director and co-star Laurence Olivier, Miller found himself in the demeaning role of the “diva’s servant”, ministering to his wife’s increasingly hysterical demands and attempting to stop her descent into addiction.
As Norman Mailer put it, Miller slid from his position as America’s greatest playwright to “the most talented slave in the world”.
By the time The Misfits was due to be made the marriage was in meltdown.
The elements involved came together like the strands of a Greek tragedy.
Clark Gable was dying. Montgomery Clift was, as Monroe put it: “The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am.”
Director John Huston was in a more brutal mood than ever and Miller was desperate to reclaim his literary crown.
Monroe, her personality and inner psychology in tatters, was a mess. The result is one of the saddest American movies ever made, an accidental collision of collapsing egos and self-flagellation.
Although Miller had written the screenplay as a gift to his wife he made the terrible mistake of mining her life and persona for her role.
Monroe was intelligent enough to understand this and deeply unhappy about his perception of her.
“He was supposed to be writing this for me,” she said at the time. “He could have written me anything and he comes up with this. If that’s what he thinks of me, well, then I’m not for him and he’s not for me.”
The film that was designed to bring them closer together drove them apart for good. Miller instituted divorce proceedings in January 1961.
For the playwright it was an act of survival. “If I hadn’t done this,” he said, “I would be dead.”
He lived. She died by her own hand barely 18 months afterwards.
Daily Express
Then he was regarded as his country’s foremost playwright, a celebrated chronicler of contem–porary America who dissected the American Dream with the skill of a surgeon in plays such as All My Sons and Death Of A Salesman.
Monroe was an insecure model and actress, having had small parts in films such as The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve as well as bit parts in trivial comedies.
She was desperately attempting to improve her game through acting lessons and a dutiful reading programme.
They swiftly became friends and Monroe supposedly gushed to her drama coach Natasha Lytess (who was herself infatuated with her pupil): “It was like running into a tree! You know, like a cool drink when you’ve got a fever. You see my toe, this toe? Well he sat and held my toe and we just looked into each other’s eyes almost all evening.”
The starlet and the playwright exchanged letters and phone calls for some months but Miller’s marriage to college sweetheart Mary Slattery prevented any serious involvement.
His marriage had been in trouble for years but his shyness and moral code prevented him from having adulterous dalliances. However, he clearly envisaged a time when he and Monroe might be together.
The time came five years later when Miller heard that Marilyn had moved to New York City.
He obtained her phone number from a friend and they began secretly dating in 1955. In the intervening half decade, Monroe had risen from aspiring starlet to world famous movie star and their respective positions had altered drama––tic–ally. They married in secret that –summer but it lasted only five tempestuous years.
When they divorced in 1961 –neither was the same person they had been when they married.
To understand the issues at stake one has to look at their respective characters, forged in childhood.
Although Miller’s father had lost everything in The Depression he grew up in a secure, upper-middle class family.
His father Isidore, a Polish emigre, had been a successful garment manufacturer and his mother Augusta (Gussy) enjoyed the fruits of her husband’s labours while berating him for his “demeaning” profession.
Miller’s intellectual condescension was learnt at his mother’s knee.
Monroe’s mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who spent most of her adult life shuttling around institutions.
The illegitimate Monroe was farmed out to various foster homes and ageing relatives until she made the break by marrying a neighbour’s son, James Dougherty, largely to avoid being returned to an orphanage.
Four years later she left to pursue a career as a model and movie actress.
Her combination of naivety, aspiration and sexuality was a magnet for unscrupulous, powerful men who used her and sexually abused her before discarding her.
But her early experiences on the Hollywood casting couch taught her that her body was her best weapon and she flaunted it.
Miller found this combination of innocence and sexual allure irresistible. “He had sex on his mind constantly,” wrote film director Elia Kazan. “He was starved of sexual release.”
Riddled with guilt, Miller embarked on an affair with Monroe but found it difficult to be thrust into the limelight and the centre of press attention, simultaneously getting a divorce on the grounds of infidelity and conducting an affair with Monroe.
He never really recovered from the shock of the attention which continued throughout their marriage and some time afterwards.
Monroe, on the other hand, was already practised in the arts of media manipulation.
Always ready with a soundbite or quip to entertain reporters and newspaper readers, she loved the constant attention, which seemed to nourish her eternal hunger for acclaim and approval.
But the cost to both of them was greater than they could have imagined. Miller became increasingly self-conscious and it leaked into his work which became pompous and sanctimonious.
Monroe’s fragile personality started to crack and she turned to drugs and alcohol to help assuage her demons.
Miller responded to a question years later on whether he had foreseen the problems that would destroy his marriage and Monroe.
“If I had been sophisticated enough I would have seen them. But I was not. I loved her.”
Monroe was more aggressive in her response to their unlikely liaison. “If I were nothing but a dumb blonde he wouldn’t have married me.”
The bilious Truman Capote, whom Monroe had befriended when she came to New York, returned her friendship in typically treacherous fashion.
Upon hearing of her marriage to Miller he declared that it would be the “Death Of A Playwright”.
Capote was only half right. The marriage between the vulnerable Beauty and the intellectual Beast precipitated the creative death of one and the actual death of the other.
During the difficult making of The Prince And The Showgirl, in which Monroe clashed with the director and co-star Laurence Olivier, Miller found himself in the demeaning role of the “diva’s servant”, ministering to his wife’s increasingly hysterical demands and attempting to stop her descent into addiction.
As Norman Mailer put it, Miller slid from his position as America’s greatest playwright to “the most talented slave in the world”.
By the time The Misfits was due to be made the marriage was in meltdown.
The elements involved came together like the strands of a Greek tragedy.
Clark Gable was dying. Montgomery Clift was, as Monroe put it: “The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am.”
Director John Huston was in a more brutal mood than ever and Miller was desperate to reclaim his literary crown.
Monroe, her personality and inner psychology in tatters, was a mess. The result is one of the saddest American movies ever made, an accidental collision of collapsing egos and self-flagellation.
Although Miller had written the screenplay as a gift to his wife he made the terrible mistake of mining her life and persona for her role.
Monroe was intelligent enough to understand this and deeply unhappy about his perception of her.
“He was supposed to be writing this for me,” she said at the time. “He could have written me anything and he comes up with this. If that’s what he thinks of me, well, then I’m not for him and he’s not for me.”
The film that was designed to bring them closer together drove them apart for good. Miller instituted divorce proceedings in January 1961.
For the playwright it was an act of survival. “If I hadn’t done this,” he said, “I would be dead.”
He lived. She died by her own hand barely 18 months afterwards.
Daily Express
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