Marilyn Monroe (17 page)

For Jim, having Marilyn attempt a reunion – albeit a misguided one – must have been an extremely difficult time for him, but his heart had been broken once, and he was unwilling to let it happen again. Paul Kanteman knows just how much this must have hurt his uncle: ‘He really loved that woman and in my mind did till the day he passed away. I watched him many times and saw the tears come to his eyes. Yes, there was a great love there and I still believe it was mutual. It was a love that had gotten past both of them and they had gone in other directions and could do nothing about it. Of course he had married again which I’m sure was on the rebound but they had children together and that was important to him.’

By the end of 1948 any serious romance that she had shared with Fred Karger had fizzled out, and as Marilyn looked towards the New Year, a new gentleman entered her life, in the form of Johnny Hyde, an agent who was Vice-President at the William Morris Agency. Marilyn met Hyde one evening at a friend’s house, and they got along so well together that he called her the next day, inviting her to lunch. After that they became very close and it’s fair to say that the fifty-three-year-old Hyde was more than a little smitten with the twenty-two-year-old starlet.

The already married Hyde was a small, slightly built man with a heart condition, but he was nonetheless one of the most influential agents at William Morris. At first he didn’t know where she lived, but that didn’t stop Hyde bombarding Marilyn with letters, gifts and cards, asking her to write to him at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, where he was staying for a time. ‘What is your street address?’ he wrote in one early letter, ‘All is forgiven because you say you miss me,’ he wrote in another. He called her ‘My Precious Girl’ in one card, and ‘My Dear Marilyn’ in another, while in public he would refer to her as ‘Baby’. Simply put, Johnny Hyde had fallen heavily for Marilyn, and he very much hoped that she felt the same way.

When he saw her in person, he began to encourage her to continue her acting career and made plans for her to leave her agent, Harry Lipton, and sign with William Morris. Marilyn later remembered: ‘When I first mentioned my acting hopes to Johnny Hyde, he didn’t smile. He listened raptly and said, “Of course you can become an actress!” He was the first person who ever took my ambitions seriously and my gratitude for this alone is endless.’

Actually he wasn’t the first person who had taken her seriously, but Marilyn was so grateful to him that she was willing to give him full credit. In return Hyde introduced Marilyn to a great deal of literature and classical music, and taught her how to manage her time. Usually when out of work, Marilyn would sleep late, have a long breakfast and while away the hours on the telephone, but Hyde encouraged her to stop that; to study and use every spare moment to better herself. As a result, she became more confident, started speaking up for herself and even improved her punctuality. Introducing her to a dramatic script entitled
The Brothers Karamazov,
Hyde encouraged Marilyn to aim for dramatic parts and take herself seriously, and as a result, he soon became an inspiration, a father figure, protector and, soon, her lover. Johnny Grant remembered: ‘He was a short little fellow and he really broke his ass on her behalf.
I used to see them together at Ciros quite a bit – she was truly fond of him.’

Although Hyde was an obvious mentor to Marilyn, she was still experiencing the occasional let-down, as witnessed by model and contracted actress Annabelle Stanford. ‘I remember one day I was at Columbia studios when I came across Marilyn standing with a small, beautifully dressed man [Hyde]. She was wearing a black satin cocktail dress and I remember thinking that she shouldn’t be wearing such a dress at that time of day. Marilyn was crying because she had been turned down for a part; turned out that it was a part that had just been given to me.’

On 29 February 1949 Marilyn’s contract with the Carrolls came to an end, and on 2 March 1949, thanks to Johnny Hyde, Marilyn signed with the William Morris Agency. Later that month, on 13 March, she left the Hollywood Studio Club and moved into a one-bedroom suite at the Beverly Carlton Hotel, complete with kitchenette and plenty of room for her books. By this time Hyde had left his family and moved into a large house at 718 North Palm Drive, installing booths and a dance floor in the dining room, to emulate Romanoffs, Marilyn’s favourite restaurant in Hollywood. She spent many nights in the house – probably far more than she spent at the Beverly Carlton – but by keeping her room at the hotel, she was assured not only independence, but also respectability.

But just living part-time with Marilyn was not enough for Hyde. He had fallen deeply in love with the actress and on more than one occasion, begged her to marry him, emphasizing that if he were to die she would inherit everything if she was his wife. ‘A producer I discussed it with said, “What have you got to lose?” I said “Myself – I’ll only marry for one reason: Love.”’ Unfortunately for Hyde, Marilyn would never be in a position to marry him, and she was most certainly still seeing other men at the time.

Still, even though Hyde adored Marilyn, he didn’t consider her completely perfect, and made an appointment for her to
see plastic surgeon Dr Michael Gurdin. Gurdin decided that she needed her chin reshaped (but not her nose as some have claimed) and inserted a prosthesis into her jaw to soften her profile. The scars from this procedure are revealed in James Haspiel’s book,
Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend.

When Fred Karger discovered that Marilyn was dating Johnny Hyde he became extremely jealous and went to her house to ask for her hand in marriage. Despite any feelings she may have had in the past, she turned Karger down flat, but this didn’t stop his new-found infatuation, and eventually his mother paid a visit, asking Marilyn to reconsider. She refused, but the two women remained friends until the end of Marilyn’s life.

In April 1949, photographer Philippe Halsman was assigned to write a story for
Life
magazine, to find out how good eight Hollywood starlets were at acting. The starlets were found by editor Gene Cook, and Halsman photographed them in his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, asking each girl to act out four basic situations: listening to a good joke, enjoying an invisible, delicious drink, being frightened by a monster and kissing a fabulous lover.

When Marilyn walked into the room Halsman discovered a painfully shy girl who was wooden in her actions, and he was not impressed. But when she embarked on the kissing part of the exercise, his opinion changed and he discovered that she was an intense and hard-working starlet. He wanted to encourage her and told her that while most models couldn’t act, she showed great promise and thought she should move to New York to continue her acting career. ‘I didn’t go,’ she later said, ‘but I was thrilled by his encouragement.’

In spring 1949, Marilyn’s finances were becoming a great concern once again, and she fell behind not only with her rent, but also with the payments on the car she relied on to get to auditions. Tom Kelley, the photographer who had helped when she crashed on Sunset Boulevard, had asked her to pose nude for him several months before, but she had turned him down. However, when she was threatened with the repossession of her car, she decided enough was enough, and called his number.

On 27 May 1949, Marilyn arrived at Kelley’s studio at 736 North Seward Avenue. Kelley was known as a perfect gentleman, but to add a touch of respectability to the proceedings, Marilyn requested that his partner Natalie Grasko be in attendance. And so it was that with ‘Begin the Beguine’ playing on the record player, Marilyn removed her clothes, reclined on a red velvet blanket, and afterwards was paid $50 for her efforts. When asked years later what it felt like, Marilyn replied, ‘Very simple . . . And draughty!’ and although the photos are considerably tame compared to modern standards, she was so anxious not to be recognized that she signed the release ‘Mona Monroe’.

Initially Marilyn had felt OK about posing nude, since she certainly needed the money and was somewhat naively convinced that no one would actually see the photographs. However, as time wore on she became increasingly worried, especially when it became clear to her that Kelley intended to sell them to a calendar company. She admitted her concern to Bill Pursel, who remembers: ‘She told me she had done something
she was ashamed of, and she wanted to tell me about it before I found out elsewhere.

‘She said she wanted to apologize and started to cry, before finally telling me she had posed nude and had done it because her rent was way past due. She then asked if I would look at the pictures and when I said yes she produced them. My first reaction was that these photos were not pornographic at all and they were actually very good. She said the photographer had promised not to sell them but I told her that he probably would, since selling photographs was what he did for a living. I told her that I thought the pictures were in good taste and she asked if I was ashamed of her, to which I said no, but that neither she nor I could undo something that was already done and I was in no position to object to them anyway.’

Early in 1949, Marilyn was stopped by agent Louis Shurr who told her: ‘Lester Cowan, producer of “Love Happy” was looking for someone “just your type” for added scenes. I rushed over and was hired on the spot. I not only got on the screen but stayed there for one full minute. I could hardly believe it.’ The film was a Marx Brothers comedy acting alongside Groucho in a small but memorable role, playing a woman who requires detective Groucho’s help, because ‘Men keep following me.’ The detective rolls his eyes, shrugs and exclaims, ‘Really? I can’t understand why.’

This was the extent of Marilyn’s cameo appearance, but it was an important role, and took her on a publicity tour in the summer of 1949, taking in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Rockford and Oak Park, Illinois. The tour was an important step for the actress, but she was confused as to why they had asked her to appear at all: ‘I was on screen less than sixty seconds but I got five weeks work out of the part by going on the PA tour, which promoted the film in eight major cities. I felt guilty about appearing on the stage when I had such an insignificant role in the film, but the people in the audiences didn’t seem to care.’

On the morning of 21 June, she travelled to Warrensburg,
New York, to present the
Photoplay Magazine
dream house to Mrs Virginia MacAllister and her son, Rusty. Mrs MacAllister had lost her husband to polio in 1945 and had been forced to move in with her parents in order to get her life back together. Marilyn and actors Don DeFore, Donald Buka and Lon McCallister were watched by a crowd of 500 local people, as they visited the house on James Street and presented Mrs MacAllister with the keys. The actors also gave interviews to the media; met local people; and posed for dozens of photos both inside and outside the house. It was good exposure for Marilyn, and the results were eventually published in the November 1949 issue of
Photoplay,
which was quite an achievement for the budding actress.

By sheer chance, Andre de Dienes was in New York at the time of the
Love Happy
tour, and he took Marilyn to Long Island in order to take some photos on the beach, wearing bathing costumes. She also did an interview with columnist Earl Wilson, who later wrote about the encounter in his 27 July 1949 column. He was not overly impressed with the twenty-three-year-old-actress, and regarded some of what she told him as being the work of her publicists. She had been nicknamed the ‘Mmmm Girl’ by cinemagoers who had seen
Love Happy,
and most of the interview was taken up with discussing this tag, along with some other minor details about her early life and the film. In all, Wilson was very dismissive of Marilyn in the interview – something that he was to apologize for later in her career.

The tour proved to be tiring work – appearing on stage at film screenings, publicity appearances, signing autographs and having her photo taken constantly. Needless to say, by the time the tour had hit Chicago, Marilyn was exhausted, physically and mentally. She took to wearing a slave bracelet on her ankle and later said, ‘I wore it because I didn’t belong to anyone although I longed to.’ She’d had enough of the loneliness on the road, and wanted desperately to go home. Bill Pursel remembered receiving a disturbing phone call from her, whilst she was in the
Windy City: ‘She was crying and she was threatening to throw acid into her face to put a stop to the constant picture-taking of her. She had no privacy, and some of the photographers were rude and demanding, as though she owed them something. I tried to console her, and even though she owed them nothing, I told her it was part of the game. I asked her to immediately contact her agent to intercede and call off the wolves or she was going to fire him immediately.

‘I told her to tell her agent she was not a piece of meat and even though she understood the photo shoots were important to her career, and she tried to be congenial and cooperative, there comes a time when she deserves some space, and this was the time. I offered to fly to Chicago, but she said it wasn’t necessary ’cause she would be home in a few days. She finally stopped crying and settled down.’

When Marilyn arrived in Los Angeles a few days later, she called Bill again. He remembered: ‘We spent a very quiet evening together and all was normal. She was starting to have some second thoughts about following a movie career – she wanted to be an actress, not a sex object. We discussed schooling and training, and the difficulty involved and how only a few beautiful girls become stars.’

He later reflected on why she would be so upset with the constant attention: ‘Allow me to say, Norma Jeane was a very attractive female who could draw men like flies. She was constantly being pursued, and she had an engaging personality – she was kind and gentle. So, when beauty and kindness are wrapped in a glamorous package like her, things can be explosive on the outside, but underneath this sparkle there was a profound softness and glow.’