relationship. The two had been having problems for many months with Greene attempting to control, at least in Marilyn’s view (shared by many observers), too much of her business affairs. Money was always an issue with Greene—he never seemed to have enough and always seemed to be looking to MMP to bail him out. Also, there were any number of creative issues between them over The Prince and the Showgirl. When he suggested that he be recognized as executive producer of the film, Marilyn balked. That she took issue with it suggested she was really finished with Milton Greene by this time, because he, by rights and by contract, had every right to be recognized as an executive producer. In the end, Greene blamed Arthur Miller for any problems, not Marilyn. The two men didn’t like or trust each other. Greene felt that since Miller had Marilyn’s pillow-talk ear, there was nothing he could do to redeem himself from whatever Miller had accused him of at any given time. Moreover, Greene couldn’t stop himself from criticizing Miller in Marilyn’s presence, which made her uncomfortable and left her feeling that she had to take sides. Once she decided that she had to choose her husband, there was nothing Greene could have done to rectify the situation. After some wrangling, Marilyn made a decision to eject him from the company on April 11. She issued a very unkind statement saying that he had mismanaged MMP and had even entered into secret agreements about which she knew nothing. When Greene acted as if he didn’t know what had happened to cause such a schism, Marilyn issued another statement that sounded suspiciously not like her—but a lot like Arthur Miller: “As president of the corporation and its only source of income, I was never informed that he had elected himself to the position of executive producer of The Prince and the Showgirl. My company was not formed to provide false credits for its officers and I will not become a party to this. My company was not formed merely to parcel 49.6% of all my earnings to Mr. Greene, but to make better pictures, improve my work and secure my income.” After much legal wrangling, Marilyn settled with Greene for $100,000, which was just the return of his original investment in MMP. She never spoke to Milton about what had happened, simply refusing his telephone calls much as she had with Natasha Lytess. These decisions were not like Marilyn. It was as if she were doing anything she could do to impress Arthur Miller, who had made his loathing of both Lytess and Greene quite clear.
In June 1957, The Prince and the Showgirl opened at Radio City Music Hall. Marilyn, of course, attended with Arthur. The reviews were favorable and it seemed as if there might be a new appreciation of her ability as an actress, which somehow made all of the angst in England worthwhile, or at least most of it. What’s perhaps most interesting about this film is the active role Marilyn took in its production and how far she had come as a thoughtful and, indeed, imaginative artist with a keen eye toward filmmaking. When she was unhappy with Fox’s final cut of the film, she expressed her dissatisfaction to Jack Warner, MCA, and Laurence Olivier’s production company. What she had to say and how she expressed it says so much about who she was at the time: “I am afraid that as it stands it will not be as successful as the version all of us agreed was so fine. Especially in the first third of the picture the pacing has been slowed and one comic point after another has been flattened out by substituting inferior takes with flatter performances lacking the energy and brightness that you saw in New York. Some of the jump cutting kills the points, as in the fainting scene. The coronation is as long as before if not longer, and the story gets lost in it. American audiences are not as moved by stained glass windows as the British are, and we threaten them with boredom. I am amazed that so much of the picture has no music at all when the idea was to make a romantic picture. We have enough film to make a great movie, if only it will be as in the earlier version. I hope you will make every effort to preserve our picture.” Does that sound like the critique of an empty-headed movie star? In the end, no changes were made to the picture. It came out as Fox and MCA saw fit, but not for lack of trying on Marilyn’s part.
In July, Marilyn would learn that she was pregnant. She wanted nothing more than to have a baby, but now she wasn’t sure how she felt about this child’s father. However, she had to admit that the last six months with Arthur had been very relaxing. She wasn’t sure that she had his respect, but she knew he cared about her. Still, it was difficult for her to get past what she’d read in his journal. “My little girl is always going to be told how pretty she is,” Marilyn said when she learned of the pregnancy. She was sure it would be a girl. “When I was small, all of the dozens and dozens of people I lived with—none of them ever used the word ‘pretty’ to me. I want my little girl to smile all the time. All little girls should be told how pretty they are and I’m going to tell mine, over and over again.”
Unfortunately, on August 1, Marilyn would be diagnosed as suffering from an ectopic pregnancy. She was about five or six weeks along at that point. She was extremely saddened by the loss of the baby. “My heart is broken,” she told her half sister, Berniece, in a telephone call from the hospital. She could, she said, “try again,” and she intended to—“but not now.”
The first six months of the year had been peaceful, but that changed after Marilyn lost the baby. Some in the family say that a letter she received from Gladys set in motion a chain of events that could have proven deadly. Apparently, Gladys sent a heartless note to her daughter in which she in effect said that, in her view, Marilyn wasn’t ready to be a mother. She told her that along with motherhood came certain responsibilities, “and you, dear child, are not a responsible person.” One relative recalled, “Marilyn was, I think, as upset about that letter as she was about losing the baby. She began to drink a lot more after that, and with the pills it all got to be too much. She started to say that she was hearing voices in her head. This was very scary and very reminiscent of her mother and grandmother. ‘I could never be like them,’ she said, ‘because at least I know the voices are not real.’ She was acting very strangely. Arthur told me that he was at a restaurant one night and the maitre d’ came over to tell him that he had a phone call. It was Marilyn. She was out of it and asked him to come home to save her. Luckily, he rushed home. She had taken an overdose. I don’t know if it was on purpose, or not. No one ever knew. Afterward, no one ever discussed it, which is why there’s a lot of mystery around it. It simply was never discussed.”
Marilyn’s Depression
The year after Marilyn Monroe’s ectopic pregnancy was difficult. August 1957 through about July 1958 found her in perhaps the deepest depression of her entire life. In her mind, she had already failed as a mother just by virtue of the miscarriage. Her marriage was not fulfilling. She had lost interest in her career, and especially, it would seem, in Marilyn Monroe Productions. Arthur Miller spent the year writing—or attempting to write—a screenplay, The Misfits, based on one of his short stories. He believed that it would have a plum role for his wife, if only he could pull it together. But faced with writer’s block, he found it impossible to break through, one draft after another ending up in the trash can. Frustrated with the work and exasperated with himself, he took it out on Marilyn. He was short and temperamental with her, despite regular visits to his psychotherapist to try to work his way through his own emotional problems. Marilyn—now thirty-two— gave as much as she got, if not more.
“It doesn’t overstate it to say that she was never the same after the miscarriage,” said Edward Lovitz, a struggling screenwriter in New York at this time, who had known Arthur Miller for many years. “Arthur told me that he thought she needed psychiatric help, that she would start to scream at him for no apparent reason. He wasn’t sure if it was the drugs she was taking, the alcohol she was drinking, or just her mind breaking down on her. He told me that she had stopped going to her psychiatrist after she lost the baby. He wanted to try for another baby, but that was difficult if they weren’t even getting along. He slept in a guest room, he said, many nights if not most nights.”
“The fact that Arthur was not able to write at this time is probably not surprising, given the stresses in his life,” added Rupert Allan. “However, Marilyn blamed herself for his lack of vision. She told me that she feared she no longer inspired him. ‘If I inspired him at all, he would have finished by now,’ she told me after a few months of nonproductivity on his part. ‘Oh, the hell with it,’ she decided. ‘It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’m sick of him.’ What I think she was really sick of was his judgment against her. She felt it strongly.”
The longer this cold war continued between spouses, the deeper into her depression Marilyn seemed to sink. Nothing had worked out for her the way she had hoped, she said. She desperately wanted this marriage to be a success. She told one relative that she believed there were “people out there” who felt they had “won” when her marriage to Joe DiMaggio had failed. “ ‘Ah-ha! See, she’s not happy at all,’ they said about me,” Marilyn observed bitterly. “ ‘She’s stupid and talentless and she can’t keep a husband.’ But this one is going to last,” she continued, “because I don’t want people to have the satisfaction of seeing me suffer.” She also wanted to prove to herself, as
