It is the 63rd anniversary of the wedding between the most sensual actress in Hollywood and one of the most prestigious playwrights. However, what seemed like a dream marriage ended in frustration because as one of the writer's characters wonders: "Can a man smile when he contemplates the saddest woman in the world?"
The year 1951, Marylin Monroe is a rising star and Arthur Miller exhibits the medals of "Death of a Salesman", the play with which he swept the Broadway billboard and shook the foundations of American society. Both are invited to one of the many Hollywood parties. The one who promotes the meeting and, much to his regret, acts as a matchmaker is Elia Kazan, the writer's comrade and who also maintains a free and uncompromising relationship with the blonde.
At one point during the party, Kazan asked Miller if he could entertain "his girl" him since he wanted to attend a commitment with another actress who was hanging around the place. Arthur gladly agreed, it's not every day you can talk to an S- icon.
Against all prejudices, the young actress who for many represented the American dream, and the writer, spokesman for the hidden side of that dream, were immediately attracted. She was enchanted by this man who seemed "the champion of the lost and the wounded". He appealed to her dancing skills and invited her to dance. She couldn't stop laughing in his arms. It was a dream night, in which, in addition to their different artistic origins, they forgot some "small" details. Miller was ten years older than him, something that could be less if it weren't for the same amount of time that he had been married to Mary Slattery, his teenage sweetheart, and mother of her two children.
For five years Arthur and Marylin had a few occasional meetings that became more and more frequent. She was already Marylin Monroe, the goddess of Hollywood, but also the actress in conflict with herself, the woman who, in less than two years, had fallen in love, married, fought, reconciled, and divorced Joe Di Maggio, baseball star from the New York Yankees. That is why thousands of Americans suffered a knockout punch when she transcended her affair with Arthur Miller. Yes, that acid writer who questioned the status quo, the intellectual suspected of being a "communist", and therefore targeted by the witch hunt that his former friend Elia Kazan had uncovered and led by Senator Joseph McCarty.
The first person who came out to attack prejudice was Marylin herself. Her words were not those of a star but those of a happy girl: "It's the first time I'm really in love. Arthur is a serious man but he has a wonderful sense of humor. I'm crazy about him." The couple announced their engagement outside their New York home, before a small crowd of journalists and photojournalists who did not want to miss any detail. The story couldn't be more captivating. Miller had just signed her divorce and Marilyn was soon to convert to Judaism, in a show of loyalty to her future husband and her parents.
On the day of the civil wedding, June 29, 1956, the couple planned to attend the press at Miller's home in Connecticut. But before the ceremony they had agreed to have lunch at the house of the writer's cousin. Some journalists anticipated the move and the wedding that had surprised the United States had a tragic scene in the store.
Mara Scherbatoff, a reporter for Paris Match, saw no signs of the couple at the Roxbury press guard, and she also had the information that one of Miller's cousins had a house nearby. She talked to his partner Paul Slade and they divided up tasks. He would stay on the farm preparing his photographic equipment, and she would travel to check his data.
When she saw a green Oldsmobile drive out carrying the most wanted couple she knew her journalistic nose was right. Upon discovering it, Morton, Arthur's cousin stepped on the accelerator. The journalists followed it as best they could along a winding and unknown route, in a sharp curve, the car left the road and collided with a tree.
Mara went through the windshield and fell onto the road. Morton stopped his car and approached the scene of the accident. Arthur ran to a house to call the ambulance and the police, while Marylin remained in shock. She was no longer a happy bride but a scared girl with a bloodstained blouse.
The press conference was chaotic. The future bride and groom standing, shocked, he smoking, she with an absorbed look, answering the journalistic request with evasions and commonplaces. They were ten eternal minutes. Meanwhile, Mara Scherbatoff could not resist the operation and died in the hospital.
The couple found out as soon as the press conference ended. A feeling of guilt assailed Marylin, and she kept repeating that if it hadn't been for them, the young journalist would be alive. He consoled her by blaming the frenzied paparazzi culture, who would do anything for a scoop. Lovingly but firmly he persuaded her to marry her, despite everything, and they did so at sunset, in the Westchester County courthouse with cousin Morton and his wife as their only witnesses. No journalist found out, and everyone present swore silence until the official wedding took place. The pact was fulfilled to the letter, the justice of the peace did not even tell his wife.
Little by little calm returned. On July 1, Marylin and Arthur celebrated their wedding. It was a traditional Jewish ceremony in a country house on the outskirts of New York. The party between the Hollywood diva and the star writer of her generation was attended by just 26 guests. The actress was walked down the aisle by her teacher and confidant Lee Strasberg. The rings were engraved with the phrase "Now is forever." They seemed happy and were ready to change their lives. She was fed up with Hollywood and wanted to be closer to the canons of the wife of the time. She longed to play the role of a housewife for once, in the service of her husband. To achieve her desire, she had something in her favor: a great relationship with her political children, ages 12 and 9, and with her in-laws, and something against her: she did not believe her tale of her.
The official story tells that the marriage began to collapse when Marylin read something so hurtful in her husband's diary that he regretted "having married a girl and not a woman." The concrete thing is that they lived a history of twists and turns, infidelities and excesses until in 1961 they separated with the same secrecy with which they had married. They informed it with a brief press release and ratified it with an express divorce signature in a court in Michoacán, Ciudad Juárez.
During the four and a half years in which they were formally married, the artistic production of both was scarce, not only in quantity but also in quality. It was like they were saving themselves for The Misfits.
Misfits), the play Miller wrote with his wife in mind. That text was used to film a film directed by John Houston and starring Clark Gable and Montgomery Cliff seconding the diva. But fate hung the damn sign on her.
The filming set was a real disaster. Marylin could barely control her demons and the abuse of psychotropic drugs. Her emotional fragility, her lack of sleep, and her crumbling marriage forced her into a two-week hospital stay in Los Angeles. There was a ripple effect on the rest of the cast, Clift lost in his own labyrinths of drugs and alcohol, Houston at the game, Gable in the sadness never surpassed by the death of his wife, in fact, he passed away three days after finishing to film. The situation of the actors was so dramatic that the studio hired doctors to monitor their stars permanently. The exception was Miller himself, who fell in love with the photographer Inge Morath in the middle of filming, whom he would marry in February 1962.
Six months after that wedding, on the night of August 4-5, 1962, Marylin was torn between life and death in California, Arthur was in the middle of the Nevada desert. A phone call informed him, he fainted and had to receive medical assistance. This is all that the playwright reveals in "Timebends", his autobiography published in 1987.
Savvy about the game, Miller simply excludes the hot facts and writes with an honesty that sounds brutal and cold. He acknowledges having fantasized that his marriage to his diva would allow him to "unify mind and body, S- appetite and justice." And also, naturally, like any two of the bunch who love each other, "support each other, help each other at work, respect and love each other." The playwright's conclusion seems to agree with those who questioned the relationship from the beginning. "Marilyn Monroe is the ultimate proof, as far as I'm concerned, that S- and seriousness are incompatible, and cannot coexist in the American mind." Harsh words from a man who, if he knew anything, was using his words to make people fall in love, to make an impact, and also to hurt.
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