Marilyn & Me (4 page)

“You see what I’m saying?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” I answered, though it would be years before I really understood what she’d been concerned about back then. I was too green.

I never discussed with Marilyn whether I thought an image was good or bad. She knew what she was doing. And my goal was to have as many approved pictures as I could. We both got what we wanted.

As luck would have it, I’d meet Marilyn again. By then, we’d both have a little more experience with life.

S
hortly after I photographed Marilyn, my wife, Judi, and I settled into a small ground-floor apartment in West Hollywood. The living room/eating area was an L-shaped room with the kitchen off to the side. By then I had opened up a studio on Sunset and was doing advertising photography while waiting for magazine assignments. I loved traveling. I loved the adventure of parachuting into someone’s life and trying to tell a story in a few pages of a publication. I didn’t have to be a specialist in anything, and it was exciting moving from one story to another.

Look
had hired me again. I had shot covers for
TV Guide
. I’d done stories on the Colorado River for
Life
and photographed more motion pictures for different magazines. I had gotten my big break when
Paris Match
assigned me to cover the final weeks of Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, in October and November 1960. One of my photographs earned me the National Press Photographers Association
Picture of the Year Award. It was election night, and Nixon was conceding to Jack Kennedy. Nixon’s wife, Pat, stood by his side, a tear in her eye. That was the first time that every magazine editor realized that I could deliver.

Less than two weeks after I took that picture, on November 19, it seemed I was moving back in the direction of Marilyn when, on another assignment from
Paris Match
, I photographed what is now a classic image of Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart at Clark Gable’s funeral, capturing the sadness and the loss on their faces. The editor in chief called to congratulate me.

Since I retained the copyright and publication rights to all my photos, an important agent, Tom Blau, took me on and started to syndicate my photographs all over the world. It wasn’t long before my wife and I moved into a larger apartment and I was driving a Mercedes 220. I talked a lot, I told stories about the people or events I covered, and by November 1961 Judi and I had become the parents of a baby girl, Suzanne.

As my ego was being fed and getting healthier, I would soon discover that Marilyn’s was shrinking.

In those same two years,
Let’s Make Love
died at the box office. The press reported that Marilyn had suffered a third miscarriage, and her next picture,
The Misfits
, with the dream
cast of Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach, fell apart when John Huston, who directed it, was at a loss trying to get Marilyn to work on time. Her eyes didn’t focus, and she eventually had to return to Los Angeles from location for a hospital rest. Filming in Nevada was shut down for ten days. Shortly after the movie was finished, Gable died and Marilyn was unfairly blamed for his death—they said she had kept him waiting too many hours in the broiling-hot desert sun. Marilyn’s six-month affair with Frank Sinatra, which followed, didn’t seem to solve any of her emotional problems. Against her will, she spent three days in a locked and padded room at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York. After being rescued from there by Joe DiMaggio, she had gallstone surgery. At the same time, she suffered from chronic constipation and debilitating insomnia. Back in California, she found a new psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who saw her five times a week. She also bought a house, her first one. It was in Brentwood, between Beverly Hills and the Pacific Palisades. She also trimmed down twenty pounds to make
Something’s Got to Give
for 20th Century–Fox, to which she was still under contract.

T
he next time I saw Marilyn was almost two years later at Peter Lawford’s Malibu beach house, where I had been shooting him for
Paris Match
. One evening he invited me to photograph him at a cocktail party he was throwing, but he made it a point to say that I shouldn’t bother his guests.

A little after I arrived, I saw Marilyn in conversation with, I think, the historian Arthur Schlesinger. They were standing in a corner of the living room. Marilyn was holding a drink. I decided not to reintroduce myself, hoping rather that she might notice me. I stood off to the side, out of her line of sight, and heard snippets of their conversation. Mostly they talked politics: “Bay of Pigs”; “Communism”; “civil rights.” Marilyn wasn’t a dumb blonde with Schlesinger. She wasn’t asking questions; she was giving
opinions. That night I remember her voice being deeper, with some authority. I was impressed.

In May 1962,
Paris Match
assigned me to photograph Marilyn in
Something’s Got to Give
, in which she would co-star with Dean Martin and Wally Cox. After Marilyn approved me, I asked Perry Lieber, from Fox’s publicity office, for a copy of the script so that I could get some idea of the story and of what scenes might work best photographically. By then I had learned a lot more about the business. I understood the power of publicity and of
Life
magazine in the United States and
Paris Match
abroad. I’d become a much better businessman, maybe a little tough. I understood the value of exclusivity to a photographer.

I soon discovered that Jimmy Mitchell, the studio photographer, and Don Ornitz for Globe Photos would also be covering the movie. Ornitz, who had photographed Marilyn in 1951, early in her career, was a fine photographer of women, and I gave Globe a call to touch base with him. Don was out sick, I was told.

When I looked over the script, which contained numerous pages of revisions, it didn’t take me very long to find the one scene I was sure I wanted to shoot: when Marilyn jumps into a swimming pool to seduce Dean Martin, who is looking down at her from a balcony. This scene would shoot for several days in May.

I knew I had to call Pat Newcomb, Marilyn’s personal press representative, whom I had not met in 1960. Pat suggested that we meet at Marilyn’s house to discuss the shooting schedule. I didn’t understand what there was to discuss: Marilyn swims, I shoot during rehearsals or camera setups, she gets out of the pool, I shoot her wearing a bathing suit. And I cover some other scenes that are on the schedule to flesh out my coverage.

Meanwhile, Globe called me back to say that Don Ornitz was still out sick and that William Read Woodfield might be covering for him. I’d never heard of Woodfield, and I didn’t know that although he had photographed Hollywood, he was more of a writer than a photographer. When I asked to meet him, I was told he’d meet me on the set. That was it.

When I arrived at Marilyn’s new house, at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, I found the one-story Spanish-style home almost bare. The house wrapped around a nice-size pool in the back, and there was a guesthouse. There was no art on the walls, just a few pieces of furniture, and loose tiles were scattered all over the living room and kitchen floors. Later I would learn that her bedroom contained only a mattress and two small tables. There was nothing on the walls in there, either.