The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

After Fox acquired the movie rights, it assigned George Axel-rod, author of The Seven Year Itch, to write the screenplay, which he adapted from Inge’s play. Broadway director Joshua Logan was then selected to guide the cast through its paces. For reasons unknown, the play’s setting was moved from Kansas City to Phoenix and Sun Valley–Ketchum, Idaho, for the movie’s exteriors, perhaps due to financial considerations. Joining Marilyn in the cast was Don Murray, making his film debut as the obnoxious, hunky cowboy Bo, a role for which he received an Oscar nomination. Besides theater vets George Axelrod and Josh Logan, the film’s casting director went to the Broadway talent pool for the supporting parts—Arthur O’Connell (Virgil), Betty Field (Grace), and Eileen Heckart (Vera).

The plot of Bus Stop can be summed up in just a few sentences: A macho, twenty-one-year-old cowboy, naive to the ways of the world, travels from Montana to Arizona for a rodeo event and while there finds his “angel,” tarnished though she may be. She is turned off by his crude, clumsy attempts to woo her, her rejection making him only more determined. He kidnaps her and takes her on a bus ride back to his ranch, pulling into a bus stop along the way. She is horrified, but weakens when he reasons that with her (carnal) experiences with so many men and his lack of experience with even one woman, doesn’t that kind of average things out? “That’s the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me,” she sobs to him, as she accepts his marriage proposal.

Marilyn’s “look” was significantly altered for this role, though her beauty and sex appeal are not affected in the least. Cherie is a saloon singer who works at night and sleeps in the day, hence her pale complexion, which her personal makeup artist, Allan Snyder, achieved by a dusting of white, cornstarchy face powder and pale pink rouge. A touch of mascara and light brown eyebrow pencil complete the transformation, which is in sharp contrast to the tanned-by-the-sun-and-wind skin of Bo (Murray), the bronco-riding, lovesick braggart. Hairstylist Helen Turpin transferred Marilyn’s platinum-colored hair to Cherie’s more subdued honey blonde. The role also required that Marilyn forgo her studio-trained, how-now-brown-cow dulcet tones and deliver her lines in Cherie’s corn-pone Arkansas drawl. She also had to learn to become a bad singer, which she cannily demonstrates as she stands center stage, her soul laid bare, skimpily clad, singing “That Old Black Magic.”

Marilyn fully realizes the role of the desperate, lonely, abused, and confused Cherie, whose pain is often in sharp contrast to the good humor and laughter displayed by some of the other characters. In the words of one critic, “[Monroe] creates a complete and deeply moving character.” Another hailed it as Marilyn’s breakthrough role. It’s true. She had never been better on film and some film historians maintain that it’s her best work. It’s worth seeing—repeatedly.

Natasha Non Grata

Marilyn’s return to the West Coast marked the first time she’d set foot in California in more than a year. There was at least one person more than a little anxious to see her: Natasha Lytess.

It had been just a few weeks into Marilyn’s stay in New York that Lytess had a strained telephone conversation with her. “Marilyn told her she needed a ‘new beginning,’ ” recalls an actress friend from New York. “She had been feeling constricted by Natasha, and Lee was trying to loosen her up.”

Marilyn made no secret of the fact that Natasha had unrequited feelings for her, and most everyone in Marilyn’s New York world saw that as a roadblock to growth. “If your goal as an actress is to be as authentic as possible, imagine how difficult it would be to rehearse scenes with someone who’s told you she’s in love with you,” actress Maureen Stapleton once observed. “Every role Marilyn played was sexy. I can’t imagine how she could have felt comfortable exploring her own ‘sexiness’ with a woman who actually had a sexual attraction to her. Any actor would agree that would be a recipe for a superficial performance.”

Whatever Marilyn’s reasoning, over time it became clear that Natasha Lytess’s usefulness in her life, and at 20th Century-Fox, was drawing to a close. The time Marilyn had spent in New York was humiliating for Natasha. The few friends that Lytess had at Fox had begun to drift away, and her regular paychecks from the studio were suspiciously late. On one occasion, she went to the studio to have the bookkeeping division issue her a check that was overdue, and she saw for herself that word had been spreading about her—not just word of her difficulty with Marilyn, but much more. From the giggles Lytess heard while on the lot, it wasn’t difficult for her to recognize that people at the studio knew more than she would have liked.

Natasha, a woman who had been well-respected as a dramatic scholar, was now feeling the chill of her disappearing welcome at the studio. It wasn’t long before it was made official. She would no longer be on the payroll of 20th Century-Fox. Since her calls and letters to Marilyn were not being answered, if she wanted an immediate response from Marilyn, she would have to go to New York and confront her. However, Natasha must have known that her sudden appearance in New York would only solidify people’s image of her as a pathetic woman obsessed with a movie star. Therefore, she chose to wait in Los Angeles and began to tutor clients privately, if through clenched teeth. To a woman who had once wielded the power to halt production of a multimillion-dollar film, it must have felt humiliating to now be handed cash as hopeful actors left her apartment, maybe with dreams of being the next Marilyn Monroe.

Despite the awful circumstances in which Natasha found herself, she loved Marilyn dearly and was concerned for her former friend’s well-being. She had been a stabilizing factor for Marilyn, even if some may have viewed their dynamic as somewhat bizarre. She worried that whoever Marilyn would find to replace her wouldn’t have the ability to navigate her out of her complex emotional disturbances. Her career hopes and income aside, Natasha couldn’t help but view Marilyn as a helpless soul. Without her, Natasha believed, Marilyn would spiral downward.

Now back in Hollywood, Marilyn appeared to be a changed woman in many ways. She had gone to New York with every intention of leaving the past behind. Grace Goddard’s death, the divorce from Joe DiMaggio, and a seemingly endless string of misery as far back as she could remember made that “new beginning” a requirement. Her time in New York was well spent, she believed. She had aligned herself with Lee Strasberg, which she viewed as a positive move, even if it may have led her down the dangerous road of self-exploration. She now had her own production company with Milton Greene—and she owned 51 percent, incidentally, a controlling interest. She’d been in intensive therapy. Strasberg’s wife, Paula, had become one of her best friends, and also her new personal acting coach. Paula and Marilyn would go over the script to Bus Stop line by line, working on it day and night—much the way Natasha and Marilyn had worked on Don’t Bother to Knock. Indeed, the last year had been one of sweeping changes for Marilyn Monroe—out with the old and in with the new. Unfortunately for Natasha Lytess, she had fallen into the former category. “She was a great help to me,” Marilyn concluded during a cocktail party at her new home, possibly understating Natasha’s importance in her life. “Whatever road leads to growth, you take.”

When Natasha became aware that Marilyn had returned to Los Angeles, she wanted desperately to see her. She drove to the studio and convinced an employee from the press office that she had misplaced Marilyn’s new phone number, and she left the studio with what she needed. She then called the new Westwood residence dozens of times—to the point where it could have been viewed as, if not outright stalking, then certainly harassment. Marilyn had made a firm decision, however—she wanted nothing to do with Natasha Lytess. In the last year, she had done very well without Natasha, and even managed to get Fox to do for her what, arguably, Natasha had never really done: take her seriously as an actress.

“I think Marilyn, on some level, felt that Natasha had been largely responsible for her earlier, sillier performances,” Marilyn’s friend Rupert Allan once said. “Natasha wanted Marilyn to be some cutesy doll, and she was kind of sickened by it.”

But in Natasha’s defense, history views these performances as near perfection, and it was Natasha’s direction that made them so specifically innocent and childlike. It was as though she took Marilyn’s vulnerable, sensitive essence and magnified it to near caricature. It’s a great testament to Marilyn’s onscreen presence that we, the audience, found her so engaging. For example, her appearances before she met Natasha, such as in Ladies of the Chorus, for example, might be considered provocative, but not the least bit “childish or naive.” Even while singing “Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy” there’s a come-hither maturity to her performance. Compare that to the first film on which Natasha coached her, Asphalt Jungle. In that one, Marilyn’s character seems wide-eyed and vapid. Though not yet the fine-tuned,