The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

She happened to see a journal of his on a table in the living room, glanced at it—and then decided to read the pages that were opened. She was in for a terrible shock. On those pages, Arthur confessed that he had second thoughts about having married her. She wasn’t what he’d thought she was—she was just a child, not a woman. She wasn’t as intelligent as he had hoped and, in fact, she was someone he pitied. Moreover, he thought his own career might be jeopardized by his new association with her, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He had heard that Laurence Olivier thought she might be a spoiled brat, and he didn’t know how to respond to that since he basically agreed. Olivier had been hired by Marilyn—the movie was being produced by her company—but wasn’t exactly grateful. He couldn’t have been any less patient or understanding. Of course, that Miller seemed to be siding with him was devastating to Marilyn. It was the realization of her worst fear—that she would be “found out,” that she wasn’t as smart or as talented as she had made him think she was, and now he knew the truth about her.

“It was a terrible thing for her to find, that journal,” Susan Strasberg would say many years later. “It would set her back a great deal. She lost so much confidence in herself when she read that. The question in my mind was this: What was it doing out? Everyone is entitled to their private thoughts, of course. But to leave it out and open like that? It made me wonder when I heard this… it made me wonder.”

It felt to many people at the time that Miller had left the journal open and available to his wife on purpose. As a playwright, he certainly recognized the power of the written word. He had to have known how much his thoughts, once committed to paper, would hurt Marilyn. Some thought he was acting like a coward who was afraid to divorce her and just hoped she would leave him instead. One does have to wonder about Miller’s character. After all, he married Marilyn after having convinced himself that he and she were a good match, and mere weeks later he made the decision that she was not for him. It suggests an enormous immaturity on his part and lack of judgment. Whatever the case, it seems safe to say he left the diary out on purpose. Why he did so would be a question only he could have answered—and he didn’t. Marilyn would later tell her half sister, Berniece, that the marriage was never the same from the moment she read the journal. When she told her that Miller had written that she was “a bitch,” Berniece was shocked. She couldn’t believe, she said, that Arthur would be so cruel. However, Marilyn then clarified that what he wrote was that he agreed with Olivier that she could be a bitch. Somehow that didn’t seem much better to Berniece—nor to Marilyn. Marilyn told her that she wished she could get past it, but she was certain she would never be able to do so. She wanted to tell Arthur that he should try acting with the capricious Olivier and see how that worked out for him, and she would sit on the sidelines and write about it, but “I don’t have the nerve.”

As upsetting as the discovery was, it still would not be the catalyst for Marilyn to actually leave Arthur. “She had decided that no matter what happens, I’m staying married to this person,” said her friend Rupert Allan. “I don’t think she realized it was going to have to kick in so soon. If something like this had happened after her first marriage, she would have divorced him. But I think she felt she had something to prove with this third marriage. But I also think she decided, [Miller] will never again get all of me. He will only get the part of me I will allow him to get. Now, I will be careful around him and that shall be his punishment. He will now be getting a percentage of who I am. The rest that he would never again see would be the part of her that was vulnerable.”

Mable Whittington recalled an incident that occurred at around the time Marilyn found Miller’s journal. “I knew about the incident with her finding the diary, or whatever it was. Everyone in the household knew about it. We didn’t know what had been in it, only that Mrs. Miller saw it and read it and was very, very upset about it. That same week, I heard a sound in the kitchen and went down to investigate. There was Mrs. Miller, sitting alone at the kitchen table, having a cup of tea and a good cry. I just peeked into the kitchen and stood there watching for a long while. I thought many things. First of all, I was struck by just how beautiful she was. She had on a pink robe with marabou feathers at the neck and sleeves. Her hair, so blonde… just so pretty, I thought. I decided not to go into the room, to just leave her to her privacy. Then, I thought, my, how sad she is. There was a deep sense of sadness about her, and that’s what I remember most. The sadness. I distinctly recall that, one day, her psychiatrist showed up from New York. I went into the living room and there was a strange woman in there reading. I asked someone who it was and was told, ‘That’s Mrs. Miller’s analyst.’ She did seem somewhat better when the doctor arrived, that was certain.

“I can also say that she was nicer to people when she first arrived. With the passing of time, she became more brittle and snappish. She seemed to never have a nice expression on her face around the house… she was always deep in thought, frowning. Also, I recall that she was late to the set almost every day. Hours late, in fact. The reason I know is that this was a never-ending source of annoyance to Mr. Miller. There were many arguments about her being late. Also, she didn’t get along with Laurence Olivier and, I have to say, from my vantage point— which was, admittedly, on the outside looking in—it seemed that she disliked him a lot. I also remember that Mr. Miller felt that she didn’t understand Olivier and wasn’t trying hard enough to fit in with him. So, there was a lot of turmoil.”

Just three weeks into the marriage and, as far as Marilyn Monroe was concerned, it was over. How could she remain with this man now? She would have to focus her energy on making the movie and do what she could to put in a good performance. However, with her heart broken, it would be very difficult. “It seemed to be raining the whole time,” she would later say of her experience in England. “Or maybe it was me.”

Quiet Before the Storm

After returning to the United States following production of The Prince and the Showgirl, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller took a lease on a spacious thirteenth-floor apartment in New York on 57th Street. They’d recently purchased a large farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, but it was being refurbished. Meanwhile, they would live in the city and spend the next few months trying to get their marriage back on track. In her spare time, during the first part of 1957 Marilyn fancied herself a housewife, preparing meals for her husband—breakfast every morning had become a specialty of hers—as well as grocery shopping and running errands that made her feel, as she put it in an interview at the time, “as if I have a real purpose in this world. I don’t mind it at all. In fact, lately, I think I prefer this kind of more simple life.” (One wonders what Joe DiMaggio might have thought if he’d read that comment from his ex-wife.) Often the couple would retire to a summer cottage they rented on Long Island where Marilyn would go horseback riding or spend her time painting with watercolors. It was actually a very pleasant year, 1957, perhaps the quietest she’d ever had in her life. Her career wasn’t that far from her mind, though. She was still studying with the ever-present Strasbergs, but she did have a new psychiatrist, Marianne Kris, recommended to her by Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund and also the founder of child psychoanalysis.

Marilyn saw Dr. Kris as many as five days a week, which at this time most people believed was too much. “Every single day she would sit in that office and lament her childhood or her marriage,” said one person who was close to Marilyn at the time. “Afterward, she would be upset for hours. Then, just as she was regaining her equilibrium, she would be back on that damn couch. Some thought she was on a quest to learn more about herself, to set right the past. I didn’t. It was, I thought, a form of self-abuse. She simply would not allow there to be any peace in her life. If there was a lull in the drama, she would create something new upon which to fixate, and most of those creations at this time came from her sessions with Marianne Kris. That, along with Strasberg’s constant nagging of her to draw upon her childhood for her acting… well, it’s no wonder she was not an emotionally well woman. As Berniece used to put it, ‘Why can’t she just leave well enough alone?’ ”

Why? Because Marilyn Monroe wanted nothing more than to, once and for all, come to terms with the sadness of her childhood. She knew she had significant emotional problems stemming from her youth, from not being wanted, not feeling loved—and she felt it necessary to explore those areas and see what she could learn from them, or at the very least find a better way to confront her demons. The constant stream of letters from Gladys—at least one a week—probably didn’t help matters. It was as if Marilyn always had one foot firmly planted in the distant past, the other in the uncertain present. The problem was that there were never any new revelations. There was never a sense of closure. Rather, the same questions were asked time after time, with the same answers being given and no progress ever made. Perhaps it was, as many people believed, a case of too much therapy. Perhaps she needed to live the present rather than constantly analyze the past.

Also at this time, Marilyn and Milton Greene—partners in Marilyn Monroe Productions—ended their