My Week with Marilyn (2 page)

When normal life resumed, I continued to write my diary as before. I made notes on what I felt had been the key events of those ‘missing' days, but that is all. It was not until the filming was over that I could go back and write down what had happened, in the form of a letter to the friend for whom I was keeping my journal.

This, then, is the story of those missing nine days. Of course it goes much further than the letter (the text of which is reproduced as an appendix to this book), but I make no apology for that. The whole episode is still as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday.

I could never have written this account while Marilyn was alive. I produce it now as a humble tribute to someone who changed my life, and whose own life I only wish I could have saved.

‘Can't Roger handle it?' asked Milton Greene.

Milton and I were pacing up and down the small piece of new lawn outside Marilyn Monroe's dressing room at Pinewood Studios. As usual, Milton could not make up his mind.

‘I'm not sure if anyone from the film crew should go near her home, Colin. Even you.'

‘I rented that house for Marilyn, just as I rented yours for you,' I said. ‘I hired Roger as her bodyguard, and I also hired her cook, her butler and her chauffeur. I know them all well. If we aren't very careful, everyone will just walk out. Roger is a very nice man, but Roger is a policeman. He's only used to dealing with subordinates. You can't treat servants like that. You have to behave as if they were part of the family. Believe me, Milton, I'm very familiar with these problems. My mother worries more about her cook than she does about me.'

Milton groaned. He had gone to great lengths – and considerable personal expense, he told me – to make absolutely sure that Marilyn was happy in every way. A sumptuous dressing-room suite had been built in the old make-up block at Pinewood, all beige and white, and I had taken a lease on the most beautiful house I could find – Parkside House at Englefield Green, a few miles away, which belonged to Garrett and Joan Moore, old friends of my parents. Despite all this, Marilyn did not seem to be satisfied, and Milton's pacing was distinctly uneasy.

‘OK, Colin, go over to the house if you must. We can't have the servants leave. Marilyn would be mad. But whatever you do, don't let her see you. You are Sir Laurence's personal assistant, after all. And she definitely doesn't seem too keen on Sir Laurence these days.'

That was certainly true. After only three weeks of filming, a gulf had already opened between the two great stars, and everyone had started to take sides. The entire British film crew had been selected by Olivier to give him maximum support. Marilyn had brought only a small team from Hollywood – including her make-up man and her hair stylist – and they had all gone back by now. She was left with no one to support her in the studio but Paula Strasberg, her dramatic coach. Of course, she also had her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (their marriage – her third, his second – had taken place two weeks before they flew to England), but he had sworn not to interfere with the filming in any way.

Milton was Marilyn's partner and co-producer, but she didn't seem to be listening to him as much as she used to – probably because Miller resented the fact that Milton had once been her lover – so he needed all the allies he could get. I was only the third assistant director on the film – the person anyone can tell what to do – and as such I was hardly a threat to anybody, but Marilyn had always seemed quite sympathetic when I got yelled at, if indeed she noticed me at all. At the same time, I was Olivier's personal assistant, and I sometimes had access to him when Milton did not. So Milton had decided that he and I would be friends. On this occasion, he had probably guessed that what I really wanted was an excuse to go over to Marilyn's house; and he would have been right. After all, he spent half his time trying to stop anyone getting near Marilyn, because he knew that she was like a magnet that nobody could resist – not even a little assistant director, seven years younger than her. I should have been used to ‘stars' by now. After all, Vivien Leigh and Margot Fonteyn were both family friends. But those two ladies, wonderful as they are, are both human beings. Marilyn is a true goddess, and should only be treated as such.

‘I'm between a rock and a hard place, Colin,' said Milton. It was a glorious summer morning, but we had been awaiting Marilyn's arrival for over an hour, and he was getting impatient. ‘Why can't Olivier accept Marilyn for what she is? You British think everyone should punch a timeclock, even stars. Olivier's disappointed because Marilyn doesn't behave like a bit-part player. Why can't he adapt? Oh, he's very polite on the surface, but Marilyn can see through that. She can sense that underneath he's ready to explode. Josh Logan
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used to yell at her occasionally, but he worked with her as she was, and not as he wanted her to be. She's scared of Olivier. She has this feeling that she'll never measure up.'

‘Vivien says that Olivier fell for Marilyn's charm just like everyone else when he first met her,' I said. ‘She says he even thought he could have a romance with her. And Vivien is always right.'

‘Oh, Marilyn can charm any man if she wants to, but when she gets mad, it's a very different story. You watch out. By the way, what the hell has happened to her this morning?'

‘I thought you said she shouldn't have to punch a timeclock.'

‘Yes, but when it's her own money going down the drain – and mine . . .'

‘I wouldn't mind if she kept us waiting all day. Working in a film studio is hot, boring, tiring and claustrophobic. I sympathise with Marilyn a lot.'

‘Yeah, but it's her job.'

At that moment Marilyn's big black car came nosing round the studio block. It was instantly surrounded by a crowd of people who seemed to appear out of thin air. The new make-up man, the wardrobe mistress, the hair stylist, the associate director Tony Bushell, the production manager, all clamouring for attention before the poor lady could even get inside the building. She already had Paula Strasberg, with her script, and ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Smith, late of Scotland Yard and protective as ever, carrying her bags. No
wonder she fled inside like a hunted animal, taking no notice of Milton, or, of course, of me.

As soon as Marilyn had disappeared, with Milton trailing behind her, I tackled Roger. I knew I had only a few seconds in which to explain. Roger returned to Parkside House as quickly as he could after dropping Marilyn off in the mornings, and David Orton, my boss on the studio floor, would soon be wondering where I was.

‘I'm coming over to the house tonight to talk to Maria and José,' I said firmly. Maria and José were the Portuguese cook and butler I had hired to look after Marilyn at Parkside House. ‘Milton says it's OK.'

‘Oh yes? Problems, are there?' Roger looked sceptical.

‘It won't take long, but we mustn't let them get upset. They would be terribly hard to replace. We can have a drink afterwards, and maybe a bite to eat. Ask Maria to make some sandwiches.'

Roger is devoted to Marilyn. After thirty long years in the police force, this is his finest hour. He follows her everywhere like a faithful Labrador dog. I'm not sure how much use he would be in a crisis, but he is clearly very shrewd, and with a bit of luck he could avert trouble before it occurred. I expect that he could see through my ploy, just as Milton had; but Roger has no one to talk to in the evenings, and he gets lonely. He reminds me of the drill sergeants I knew when I was a pilot-officer in the RAF, so we get on very well. All of the other people around Marilyn talk in film language, which Roger hates. He and I can have a gossip in plain English.

‘So you don't need to come over to collect Marilyn this evening,' I went on. (There wouldn't be enough room in the car if he did.) ‘I'll ride in the front with Evans, and then he can take me back.'

Evans is Marilyn's driver. Like Roger he had been hired by me; and he is one of the stupidest men I have ever met. I don't think he even knows who Marilyn Monroe is; but he does what he is told, which is the main thing.

‘Hmm,' said Roger doubtfully, but just then a shout of ‘Colin!' came from inside the building and I dashed away before he could reply.

I have known the Oliviers since I was a child, and I've met all sorts of famous people with my parents. But Marilyn is different. She is wrapped in a sort of blanket of fame which both protects and attracts. Her aura is incredibly strong – strong enough to be diluted by thousands of cinema screens all over the world, and still survive. In the flesh, this star quality is almost more than one can take. When I am with her my eyes don't want to leave her. 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 easily confuse with love. No wonder she has so many fans, and has to be so 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 so hard to turn up at the studio at all, let alone on time. When she does arrive, she flashes from her car to her dressing room like a blur. She seems frightened, and perhaps she's right to be. I know I must not add to those persecuting her, yet I can't resist being in her orbit. And since I am paid by Olivier to make her life easier and smoother, I have to be in the background of her life, I tell myself, if nothing more.

As soon as I went inside the studio building I was in the usual trouble.

‘Colin! Where the hell have you been?' David says this every time he sees me, even if I've only been gone for ten seconds. ‘Olivier wants to see you straight away. It's 10 o'clock. Marilyn's only just arrived. We'll be lucky to get one shot done before lunch,' etc., etc.

Why don't they ever realise that, like it or not, this is Marilyn's pattern, and we might as well get used to it? Olivier argues that if we didn't make a fuss she'd never turn up at all, but I'm not so sure. Marilyn wants to act. She even wants to act with Olivier. She needs to make a success of this film to prove to the world that she is a serious actress. I think she'd turn up if the pressure was off. She might even be early, but I suppose that is a risk no film company would dare to take. Olivier talks about her as if she was no more than a pin-up, with no brains at all. He seems to have nothing but contempt for her. He is convinced she can't act – just because she
can't clip on a character like a suit of clothes in the way he can – and he despises her use of Paula as a dramatic coach. He can't see that Paula is only there for reassurance, not to tell Marilyn how to play the part. He only has to look at the film we've already shot to see that Marilyn is doing a very subtle job all on her own. The trouble is that he gets so frustrated by all the ‘ums' and ‘ahs', the missed cues and incorrect lines that he fails to recognise the flashes of brilliance when they come. Every evening the screenings of the previous day's filming remind him of the pain that he had to go through in front of and behind the camera, and he seems to take a perverse enjoyment in them. Why doesn't he get the editor to cut out all the horrors, and only show the bits that went well, however short? Imagine how exciting that would be. We all file into the viewing theatre; the lights go down; there is a thirty-second clip of Marilyn looking stunning and remembering all her lines; the lights go up again to a ripple of applause; Marilyn goes home encouraged instead of depressed; the editor is happy; Olivier is happy.

In your dreams, Colin! For some unknown psychological reason, blamed of course on technical necessity, we have to see every stumble and hesitation in giant close-up, repeated again and again, failure after failure, until we are all groaning and moaning, and Marilyn, if she has turned up, flees back to her house in shame. I just wish I could have a quiet chat with her and reassure her. But there are too many people already doing that – and patently failing.

I had only been over to Marilyn's house once since she moved in five weeks ago, and there was no point in thinking that I would get a chance to talk to her, or even to see her, if I went there again. All I wanted now was the excitement of riding in the front of the car, with this heavenly creature in the back. I wanted to feel as if I was her bodyguard, instead of Roger. I wanted to feel as if her safety depended on me. Luckily, Evans takes no notice of me whatsoever, and nor does Paula Strasberg. She has been ‘coaching' Marilyn all day in the studio, but then there are sixty or so technicians there with her, not to speak of twenty other actors, and Olivier himself. In the
car, Paula is only concentrating on getting Marilyn to herself for a few last minutes. She grips her arm fiercely and never stops talking, never draws breath, for the whole trip. She repeats herself again and again, pouring reassurance into Marilyn's ear: ‘Marilyn, you were wonderful. You are a great, great actress. You are superb, you are divine . . .' and so on.

In the end, her praise of Marilyn's performance and acting ability gets so exaggerated that even Marilyn starts to get uneasy. It's as if Paula knows she only has this short moment in which to implant herself on Marilyn's mind for the night, and thus make herself indispensable for the following day.

Olivier, as the director of the film, naturally resents Paula's presence intensely. Paula knows nothing of the technical difficulties of making a movie, and often calls Marilyn over to give her instructions while Olivier is in the process of explaining to Marilyn what he needs, as the director. On these occasions Olivier's patience is really incredible. Nevertheless, I like Paula, and I feel sorry for her. This dumpy little woman, swathed in differing shades of brown, with her sunglasses on her head and her script in her hand, is clinging for dear life to a human tornado.