#1
Posted: 3/10/14 at 3:58pm
“You’re very tough on the Strasbergs in your memoir,” I say.
“Well, I meant to be,” Miller says.
“You describe them as poisonous, and vacuous.”
“That’s a good description.”
“Humbugs.”
“Mr. and Mrs.”
“The inference one draws is that they were almost instrumental in Marilyn’s dissolution.”
“Well, put it this way. They had an immense influence on her mind. Immense. Not the wife, but him. The wife she saw through, pretty much. But she never saw through him. He had the fascination of a guru. Not just for Marilyn, but for a lot of much less suffering people. What he was saying, in effect, was, You can’t do anything without me. From time to time you’re gonna have to, but never forget that.
“Well, if you’ve already got weak legs, and you’re not standing on them solidly, that can be a severe blow. In other words, you’re never gonna grow up.”
Monroe’s fantasy about Miller centered on domesticity, and true domesticity meant having a child. When she suffered an ectopic pregnancy in 1957, and learned she might never have a baby, she was crushed. As a kind of compensation, Miller wrote her a short story called “The Misfits,” about the cowboy Gay Langland and his gentle lady friend, Roslyn. The story was meant for the movies, and the part of Roslyn was patently built for Marilyn. But it was a love gift that failed. By the time, John Huston began shooting The Misfits in July 1960, the marriage barely existed.
“Is the story of The Misfits a story of the two of you coming apart under the influence of the Strasbergs?” I ask.
“Well, they helped,” Miller says. “Because they helped to justify her worst self-defeating strategies, if you’d call them strategies. In order to continue to have power over her, they would justify anything. With a large dose of intellectualization. When, if they really had her welfare at heart, they’d have tried to draw her gently closer and closer to reality. And the reality was what she ultimately faced, which was a studio that fired her. Because she wouldn’t appear to make the film.
“Had it been an ordinary situation on The Misfits, she probably would’ve come close to being fired then. ‘Cause we were up there on this dry lake, with some pretty big stars, sitting around for days at a time waiting for her to appear.
“We were coming apart ourselves, irrespective of that,” Miller says. “Because, well, Marilyn always—as I learned later—she would exhaust areas of her life. Simply exhaust them. Then she’d go on. And this was one of them.”
“You, you mean.”
“Well, the whole idea of a domestic existence. I mean, I can’t live for too long in a tent and on the road. I have to have a steady domicile, and some peace and quiet, or I can’t work. And she wanted that, too, with part of her psyche—wanted it desperately.”
“And a child.”
“And a child. But she also wanted something that made that very difficult to have. Which was this power. Star power. Because the opposite was to be destroyed. To be totally destroyed.”
Fascinating!
“Well, I meant to be,” Miller says.
“You describe them as poisonous, and vacuous.”
“That’s a good description.”
“Humbugs.”
“Mr. and Mrs.”
“The inference one draws is that they were almost instrumental in Marilyn’s dissolution.”
“Well, put it this way. They had an immense influence on her mind. Immense. Not the wife, but him. The wife she saw through, pretty much. But she never saw through him. He had the fascination of a guru. Not just for Marilyn, but for a lot of much less suffering people. What he was saying, in effect, was, You can’t do anything without me. From time to time you’re gonna have to, but never forget that.
“Well, if you’ve already got weak legs, and you’re not standing on them solidly, that can be a severe blow. In other words, you’re never gonna grow up.”
Monroe’s fantasy about Miller centered on domesticity, and true domesticity meant having a child. When she suffered an ectopic pregnancy in 1957, and learned she might never have a baby, she was crushed. As a kind of compensation, Miller wrote her a short story called “The Misfits,” about the cowboy Gay Langland and his gentle lady friend, Roslyn. The story was meant for the movies, and the part of Roslyn was patently built for Marilyn. But it was a love gift that failed. By the time, John Huston began shooting The Misfits in July 1960, the marriage barely existed.
“Is the story of The Misfits a story of the two of you coming apart under the influence of the Strasbergs?” I ask.
“Well, they helped,” Miller says. “Because they helped to justify her worst self-defeating strategies, if you’d call them strategies. In order to continue to have power over her, they would justify anything. With a large dose of intellectualization. When, if they really had her welfare at heart, they’d have tried to draw her gently closer and closer to reality. And the reality was what she ultimately faced, which was a studio that fired her. Because she wouldn’t appear to make the film.
“Had it been an ordinary situation on The Misfits, she probably would’ve come close to being fired then. ‘Cause we were up there on this dry lake, with some pretty big stars, sitting around for days at a time waiting for her to appear.
“We were coming apart ourselves, irrespective of that,” Miller says. “Because, well, Marilyn always—as I learned later—she would exhaust areas of her life. Simply exhaust them. Then she’d go on. And this was one of them.”
“You, you mean.”
“Well, the whole idea of a domestic existence. I mean, I can’t live for too long in a tent and on the road. I have to have a steady domicile, and some peace and quiet, or I can’t work. And she wanted that, too, with part of her psyche—wanted it desperately.”
“And a child.”
“And a child. But she also wanted something that made that very difficult to have. Which was this power. Star power. Because the opposite was to be destroyed. To be totally destroyed.”
Fascinating!
"The gods who nurse this universe think little of mortals' cares. They sit in crowds on exclusive clouds and laugh at our love affairs. I might have had a real romance if they'd given me a chance. I loved him, but he didn't love me. I wanted him, but he didn't want me. Then the gods had a spree and indulged in another whim. Now he loves me, but I don't love him." - Cole Porter
