Remembering Tyrone Power

“There he was, dark-looking with black hair and eyebrows, and no man had a right to be that handsome.” So aviator Bob Buck remembered first meeting Tyrone Power. Buck, enlisted by his boss Howard Hughes, the owner of TWA, to pilot Power on a tour of South America, Africa and Europe, would spend three months with the actor and a small retinue on a trip that was set to begin in September 1947. The group would travel in Power’s plane, The Geek, named after a character in his latest film, Nightmare Alley.  At the time, at age 33, Tyrone Power was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, an adored “matinee idol,” but his straightforward, unassuming manner instantly disarmed the skeptical Buck.

Tyrone Power, father and son

Born in Cincinnati in 1914, Tyrone Power descended from a long line of performing artists. His father, born Frederick Tyrone Power in England and billed as Tyrone Power, was a Shakespearean actor and hisfather was concert pianist Harold Power, son of celebrated Irish actor Tyrone Power. Tyrone Edmund Power was born May 5, 1914 to his 45-year-old father and his second wife, Emma (known as Patia Power). Young Tyrone and his sister, Anne, were the esteemed actor’s only children. Power, Sr., and Patia, who had shared the stage with him from time to time, divorced in 1920. The actor soon remarried and continued his stage and movie career while his ex-wife cared for the children and worked as a voice and drama coach.

It was at age 17 when he was just out of high school that the younger Tyrone Power was able to spend some months with his father. Encouraged by his parents, he had begun acting early in life and that summer of 1931 his father took him to Chicago where he was appearing in a production of The Merchant of Venice. Young Tyrone was given a small part in the play. The two later returned to Hollywood where the elder Power began work on a film. Several weeks into production he suffered a massive heart attack at the Hollywood Athletic Club and there he died in the arms of his son.

Tyrone Power on stage in St. Joan, 1936

By 1935, Tyrone Power, Jr., as he was then known, had made his way to Broadway and been taken under the wing of stage icon Katharine Cornell. He had a small role in Flowers in the Forest (1935), a play the actress produced, and Romeo and Juliet (1935 – 1936), in which Cornell and Maurice Evans starred. When he appeared in a supporting role in St. Joan (1936), starring Cornell, Power was approached by talent scouts from 20^th Century Fox and offered a screen test; Katharine Cornell told the young actor he was ready for Hollywood.

She was right. Power’s brief appearance in his first film for Fox, Girls' Dormitory (1936) prompted a deluge of fan letters. Legend has it that powerful Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper stayed to watch a second showing of the film just to check the credits for the name of the handsome young actor she’d spied in a brief role toward the end of the film.

It was with his third outing for Fox in 1936 that Tyrone Power became a star. Child actor Freddie Bartholomew, who played protagonist Jonathan Blake as a youth, was top-billed in Lloyd's of London. Fourth-billed Tyrone Power, who had far more screen time than anyone in the film, portrayed Blake as an adult. Only 22 at the time, but handsome, charismatic and self-possessed, Power walked away with the film. He would share top billing on his next assignment, In Old Chicago (1937), with Alice Faye and Don Ameche. Following the film’s great popular success, Fox would re-team him with Faye and Ameche in Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938). Later in 1938, on loan to MGM, he appeared opposite Norma Shearer in the costume melodrama Marie Antoinette. Tyrone Power was now a firmly established leading man.

Tyrone Power on the set of Marie Antoinette (1938) with Norma Shearer

1939 would prove to be a watershed year for the 25 year old actor. He would portray the outlaw Jesse Jamesin one of only two Technicolor pictures Fox produced that year, and he would star in the studio’s spectacular The Rains Came. Nominated for six Academy Awards, it would win, in that year of the Gone with the Wind sweep, only one, for Best Effects, Special Effects. Power’s leading lady Myrna Loy remembered him as one of the nicest human beings she’d ever known. She would recall much later, “I’m sorry to report that we weren’t lovers, but close to it. I loved him, but he was married to that damn Frenchwoman.” That Frenchwoman was Annabella, the actress Power met a year earlier on Suez (1938) and married in 1939. Also in 1939, in an annual nationwide newspaper poll, Tyrone Power was voted “King of Hollywood.”

Tyrone Power, 1939's "King of Hollywood," with Ed Sullivan and "Queen" Jeanette MacDonald

Power next appeared as what has to have been one of the most attractive criminals in Hollywood history in Johnny Apollo (1940) opposite Dorothy Lamour. His first swashbuckler would follow, The Mark of Zorro (1940). Among his best known films, it features one of his most memorable performances. Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone had reputations as two of the best fencers in film and they would dramatically cross swords in The Mark of Zorro:

Dec. 2012 update: sadly, this (colorized) YouTube clip was recently blocked

Before joining the U.S. Marines and departing for World War II, Power would star in one of his favorites, the vivid Technicolor Blood and Sand (1941). Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, it is the story of a brilliant bullfighter undone by temptation and jealousy. Power was apparently entranced by co-star Rita Hayworth, one of his two leading ladies (the other was Linda Darnell), and his stand-in reportedly noticed that the actor could not take his eyes from her throughout filming.

Rita Hayworth and Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand (1941)

Also prior to entering the service, Power completedA Yank in the R.A.F. (1941), a war-time romance that paired him with Fox’s other superstar, Betty Grable. He also appeared in The Black Swan (1942), a Technicolor swashbuckler in which Maureen O’Hara, as an aristocratic young beauty, plays hard-to-get with Power’s character, a dashing reformed pirate.

Tyrone Power, U.S. Marine Corps

Tyrone Power was about to turn 28 when he joined the USMC. He had developed an interest in flying through director Henry King and flew in the Pacific during the war, carrying supplies into Iwo Jima and flying the injured out, often under heavy enemy fire. When he returned to Hollywood just a few years later, he seemed to have aged. Though still very handsome, he appeared weary.

Power returned to the screen in the Edmund Goulding-directed production of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge in 1946. Myrna Loy later remarked on the spiritual quality she saw in Power’s eyes. As Larry Darrell, a war veteran on a quest for enlightenment and meaning in The Razor’s Edge, she believed he was perfectly cast, “That was Ty,” she said.

Nightmare Alley (1947)

Nightmare Alley (1947) was a film Power battled with Fox chief Darryl Zanuck to make. Zanuck, protective of Power as a valuable studio asset, feared that casting him as a dark character in a downbeat film would damage his box office appeal. But Power was frustrated with the endless string of heroes he invariably played and longed to break type. As sleazy carnival huckster Stan Carlisle, Power is fascinating - and convincing. But Zanuck had no confidence in the film and it was given little promotion. Though it quickly faded from view it developed a solid reputation and following over the years. Captain from Castile (1947), Power’s first post-war swashbuckler, would not be his last. At the time the picture was filming in Mexico, he was in the midst of a high-profile romance with Lana Turner. She flew south of the border to be with him on Christmas 1946 and would remember their New Year’s Eve together as the happiest night of her life. Her daughter Cheryl Crane recalled that one of her own earliest memories was of sitting on Power’s lap in the family den. “I was only about three years old, but I remember his face.” Lana would forever refer to Power as the love of her life and recall, “No man except possibly Tyrone Power took the time to find out that I was a human being, not just a pretty, shapely little thing.”

1946: Lana Turner and Tyrone Power in Mexico

It was while involved with Lana and following the completion of his first three post-war films that Power readied for his trip across the Atlantic with pilot Bob Buck and crew. As the group prepared to depart on September 1, 1947, Turner took Buck aside and told him, “I love that guy, be sure you bring him back to me.”

Though Buck was originally drafted to pilot The Geek, Power confided early on that he would like to do most of the flying himself. Buck quickly learned that the actor “flew like an old pro” and relaxed into backing him up as co-pilot. Wherever The Geek landed, they were mobbed and sometimes pursued. Even landing in a jungle in Liberia and greeted by only two natives, one of the two pointed to Tyrone Power and said, “I know him.” When they arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, Power’s group was welcomed by a crowd so large and enthusiastic that their driver commented, “they didn’t do this for the king and queen.” According to Buck, Power believed that people weren’t reacting to him but to the characters he played and their own romantic fantasies. Buck felt this perspective “kept his head size normal.” Buck formed a life-long friendship with Power and saw in him an all-American guy and natural athlete who could also talk religion, philosophy, art and literature. He had a photographic memory – which Buck witnessed first-hand when he watched the actor scan a script and then discuss it in great detail.

Once The Geek made its way to Europe, the group spent some time in Rome. It was there that Power encountered Linda Christian, a young starlet he would marry the following year. They would have two daughters before divorcing in the mid-‘50s.

The Dark is Light Enough on Broadway, 1955

Back in Hollywood, Power’s career would continue with a mix of swashbucklers, adventures, light fare and big budget A-films.

In 1951 Power went on the London stage for a six month engagement of a Joshua Logan-directed production of Mr. Roberts. It was a sold-out run and Variety characterized his performance in the title role as a “warm, colorful and meaningful interpretation.” He toured the U.S. very successfully in John Brown’s Body and took it to Broadway in 1953 with Raymond Massey and Judith Anderson. He returned to Broadway in 1955 with The Dark is Light Enough, starring with Katharine Cornell (a young Christopher Plummer would win a Theatre World Award for his supporting performance in the play). Power’s final Broadway appearance came in Back to Methuselah in 1958 with Faye Emerson.

His last finished film would be Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957) with Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich. In it, Power, cast against type as an accused killer, delivers one of his most acclaimed performances. Billy Wilder reported that co-star Marlene Dietrich developed an enormous crush on Power during filming and remarked, “Everybody had a crush on Ty…it was impossible to be impervious to that kind of charm.”

Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

In 1958, 44-year-old Tyrone Power married 26-year-old Debbie Minardos. They traveled to Spain in September where he was to film the King Vidor epic Solomon and Sheba. On November 15, Power collapsed on the set during an arduous swordfight scene with George Sanders and suffered a massive heart attack; he died on the way to the hospital. It had been ice-cold on the set that day and he was a heavy smoker. Power’s wife gave birth to their son, Tyrone Power IV, in January 1959.

“His voice was beautiful to listen to, deep, clear and strong,” Bob Buck wrote; his dark, long-lashed eyes radiated warmth and a soulful quality. He performed with sensitivity and conviction and he brought to the screen a certain nobility and tempered reserve. He was Fox’s top leading man for more than 15 years and though his late career had its ups and downs, his last films were some of his greatest successes. He has been called “illegally handsome” and perhaps his looks, coupled with a powerful onscreen charisma, blinded both studio and audience to his actual talent and capacity to be something more than a leading man.

Today, August 25, Turner Classic Movies honors Tyrone Power with a full 24 hours of his films as part of its annual Summer Under the Stars celebration in August. Click here for the schedule of films.  Click here for more on Michael and Jill’s Summer Under the Stars blogathon.

Portrait of Tyrone Power by Claire Trevor, 1958

Notes:

North Star Over My Shoulder: A Flying Life by Bob Buck, Simon & Schuster (2002)

Being and Becomingby Myrna Loy and James Kotsilibas-Davis, Alfred A. Knopf (1987)

On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov, Hyperion (1998)

Lana: the Memories, the Myths, the Movies by Cheryl Crane, Running Press (2008)

Website: www.tyrone-power.com

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Gene Kelly's Brief Sojourn, "Let's Make Love" (1960)

The Classic Movie Blog Association is sponsoring the Gene Kelly Centennial Blogathon from August 20 - 25 and this is my contribution to the event. Please click here for links to the other participating blogs.

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1960 was the year that

Echo I

• an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was imprisoned there
• young Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) won the gold medal in the light heavyweight competition at the Summer Olympics in Rome
• Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and John Updike's Rabbit, Run were published
• NASA launched the first communications satellite, Echo I, into space
• the first working laser was built by American T. H. Maiman
• #1 hit songs of that year included the Everly Brothers' "Cathy's Clown," The Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me" and Percy Faith's version of the theme from A Summer Place
• on TV, Western series ruled the ratings, with Gunsmoke, Wagon Train and Have Gun Will Travel ranked one, two and three for the year
• Camelot, starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet, debuted on Broadway
• John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th President of the United States

As the new decade dawned and the U.S. prepared to embark on a New Frontier, Hollywood was in a state of flux, still reeling from the impact of television on movie attendance. Alfred Hitchcock, whose films since 1954 had been almost exclusively Technicolor/Vistavision dazzlers featuring top stars, shocked audiences and critics with the psychological thriller Psycho. Filmed in black and white, with TV production values and just one bankable star who is killed off in the first half-hour, Psycho was the highest grossing film for that year in the U.S. None of the top ten box office hits of 1960 were musical films. Two musicals did surface in the year's top twenty, Vincente Minnelli's Bells are Ringing with Judy Holliday and the George Cukor-directed Marilyn Monroe vehicle, Let's Make Love.

Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Gene Kelly and Taina Elg - Les Girls

Gene Kelly had made his last musical for MGM, the studio with which his name and career are forever intertwined, in 1957. The film was Les Girls, a vibrant extravaganza directed by George Cukor, co-starring Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg. Cukor was unhappy about Gaynor in the leading lady role ("one of MGM's flat tires") and with the prospect of Helen Rose designing costumes. He had to live with Gaynor but insisted on Orry-Kelly for costumes and the designer went on to win an Oscar for his work.

Kelly's next film, the drama Marjorie Morningstar (1958), teamed him with a nearly grown-up Natalie Wood. Later that year he would return to Broadway and direct the original production of The Flower Drum Song, a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that went on to garner six Tony Award nominations and to win one.

With the musical film genre on the wane, Kelly happily accepted an invitation early in 1960 from A.M. Julien of the the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique and travelled to Paris to devise a modern ballet for the company. While in France Kelly made a quick trip back to the States to appear in George Cukor's latest film-in-progress.

The Billionaire, a romantic comedy/musical was offered to Marilyn Monroe by producer Jerry Wald of 20th Century Fox. Though it had been hoped Billy Wilder would direct, he was already working on The Apartment (1960). And so the package Wald brought to Marilyn and that she accepted included director George Cukor, screenwriter Norman Krasna and co-star Gregory Peck. The film's slight premise followed the shenanigans of a billionaire (Peck) who discovers that an Off-Broadway revue spoofing him is in the works. When he surreptitiously attends a rehearsal of the show, its star (Monroe) mistakes him for an actor on audition. The billionaire falls for the cabaret star and decides he must learn to be a nightclub performer so he can join the act and woo her. Incidentally, since he is a billionaire and can afford the best possible tutors, he eventually hires three of great expertise - Milton Berle to instruct him in the art of comedy, Bing Crosby to help him learn to sing and Gene Kelly to teach him dance moves.

Playbill, 1959

Just as the production got underway, the Writers Guild went on strike. Because there were script problems, this was a major setback. To keep the project moving, Jerry Wald approached Marilyn's husband, playwright Arthur Miller, offering him the job of developing and rewriting the script. Miller, surprisingly, broke ranks with the striking writers and agreed, quickly delivering revisions. Wald then sent Miller's script directly to Gregory Peck who, alarmed at the extent to which Marilyn's role had been enlarged, balked and asked to be released from his role as the titular billionaire. Many actors were mentioned, but French singer/actor Yves Montand, who had lately taken Broadway by storm with his one-man show, won the part; he would make his American film debut in the film now titled Let's Make Love.

As with each of Marilyn Monroe's late-career films, there would be problems on the set. Though the star was coming off a smash hit film, the one considered the best of her career, Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot (1959), she was in trouble. According to her half-sister, Berniece Miracle, "It was in 1960 that Marilyn began to come completely apart." She believed the drugs Marilyn had initially taken to relax and get to sleep "had turned against her," affecting her moods and ability to work.

Though George Cukor struggled mightily to keep filming on track, the production fell expensively behind schedule. Arthur Miller was called back for further rewrites. And the powers at Fox, mystified by her capricious demands, began to believe that Marilyn was actually mad. As if there wasn't enough chaos, Marilyn created a public scandal by openly carrying on an affair with Yves Montand, whose wife, Simone Signoret, had just won the Oscar for Best Actress.

In the midst of this commotion, Gene Kelly made the 6,000 mile flight from Paris to Hollywood to film his cameo for the picture. Arriving on a Sunday night, he filmed for two hours with Montand on Monday and departed for Paris and his ballet project on Tuesday. Quickly in and out, his may have been the best experience of anyone on the film.

Yves Montand, Marilyn Monroe and Gene Kelly on the set

Let's Make Love opened to great fanfare in September 1960. 20th Century Fox slyly used the Monroe/Montand affair to generate publicity and the crowds turned out - taking the film to #17 among 1960's U.S. box office hits. How audiences managed to sit through the film's first hour is hard to fathom. Let's Make Love gets off to a painfully long, slow start and never gains enough momentum to stir much interest. The cameos of Berle, Crosby and Kelly are highlights, and Montand's charms emerge, at last, during the final 20 minutes or so. But, though the film was promoted with the (silly) tagline, "It's dedicated to the NEW Monroe Doctrine!", Marilyn, whose physical appearance thankfully improves over the course of the film, conjures nothing so much as a careworn rendition of a character that, by now, had become a cliché. It is saddening to watch an actress, a great and gifted star, who had so wished to be taken seriously, wriggle, writhe and whisper her way through the film. Character icons Tony Randall and Wilfred Hyde-White are wasted in a muddle that might best be described, to use a term of the time, as "dullsville."

Gene Kelly's 45-minute jazz ballet, Pas de Dieux, was a great success in Paris. His next film, the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated Stanley Kramer drama, Inherit the Wind, was released just a few month after Let's Make Love. He would remain busy throughout the 1960s - appearing in the 1962 - 1963 TV series, Going My Way, the 1964 Fox musical comedy/romance, What a Way to Go! with Shirley MacLaine (in a role originally intended for Marilyn Monroe) and the imaginative Jacques Demy musical, Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) with Catherine Deneuve and her equally beautiful (now long-lost) sister, Françoise Dorléac. The decade would also bring Kelly opportunities to direct - the poignant Jackie Gleason vehicle Gigot (1962), the comedy hit A Guide for the Married Man (1967) starring Walter Matthau and the musical Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand.

Gene Kelly and Françoise Dorléac in Les demoiselles de Rochefort

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Turner Classic Movies honors Gene Kelly's centenary birthday today, August 23, with 24 hours of his films as part of its annual Summer Under the Stars celebration in August. Click here to learn more...And click here for links to blogs participating in Michael and Jill's Summer Under the Stars blogathon on Gene Kelly's day.

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Sources:
Marilyn Monroe by Barbara Leaming, Crown (1998)
George Cukor: Master of Elegance by Emanuel Levy, William Morrow & Co. (1994)
 

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"The Misfits" and Me - by Christian Esquevin

Where does the first step begin on a journey to fate? For me it was sometime in August of 1960, just a kid on a camping trip with his parents and their friends. Lake Tahoe was the destination, with side trips to Squaw Valley, Reno, Carson City, and Virginia City, Nevada. Little did I know, nor anyone else in our little party, that we would run into the production of The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, as directed by John Huston. It was clear from the entourage around Gable and Marilyn that this was a very big deal. And my father reinforced this message with his excited exclamation, “there’s Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable!” although he probably uttered this in French, my parents’ and their friends’ native language. 

My recollections of this event are from the mists of time, and likely distorted by accretions of images and later reflections on the significance of the occasion, and the powerful warping auras of the stars themselves. As a kid turning twelve I was already highly aware of the significance of stardom. We did after all live very close to Hollywood, and in those days before paparazzi, seeing stars was not uncommon. But seeing Marilyn and Clark Gable at work was like entering the stratosphere. My best recollection of the scene was that it was taking place in a casino in Reno, likely Harrah’s Club. Production personnel were orbiting around the magic couple.  An aura emanated from Marilyn. In spite of the effects on her of nerves or drugs, which I wouldn’t have known anything about, she was glowing from the lights and the sheen of her platinum blonde hair. I don’t believe a scene was being filmed at the moment, since she seemed to be smiling and basking in the rapt attention of the small audience that was there, of which we were a part. Clark Gable was smiling too, though in a sort of cool, smirky way, aging, but still the king of the jungle. I couldn’t see their figures very well, and I was old enough to know that Marilyn’s figure was very special. But with the big stars, then and now, “we had faces” was all-important, and with these two in particular, their very unique faces reverberated in the room.  I had a particular affinity to Clark Gable. I grew up with prominent ears, the cause of a childhood complex, and my father would always tell me that this physical feature was what made Clark Gable famous. I believed him, and as a chubby kid with a funny name, I believed in the possibility that there was hope for me yet. Seeing Clark Gable in person might just provide that twist of fate that would correct my negative self-image. “See what I mean,” my father said to reinforce his message. 

That perception of Clark Gable, directly seen and experienced, provided me the kind of connection that seems magically possible to children; a more direct connection than just seeing him on the screen, as I had done, during a re-release of Gone with the Wind.  

Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift

Marilyn seemed even more magical. Here in real life and in plain sight she still seemed ethereal. Perhaps it was that very quality that made people, especially men, want to possess her, and somehow to hold onto a cloud. She was the embodiment of contradiction, an ethereal, almost angelic image that was hotly desired for her earthly body, and that most famous of movie stars, capable of moving mountains, yet unable to control her own life or emotions.

Finally we moved away from all the action, onward to seeing other sights, me looking backward at the marvel just beheld. Alas, the whole scene was destined to be an ethereal vision. Clark Gable, “the King” died of a heart attack three months later in November 1960. The Misfits premiered in February 1961, to mixed reviews.  Then my father died on June 5, 1962 and Marilyn Monroe died two months after that on August 5, 1962, now fifty years ago.  How could these giants just disappear? My own fate had indeed led me to The Misfits, a rendezvous with the realization that I too might become one.  Marilyn’s star now shines ever more brightly, a testament to film and the power of image. We continue to try to hold onto a cloud.

The Misfits was not a hit in 1961. No one then knew, of course, that it would be the last film that both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe would ever star in, nor that Montgomery Clift would also die five years later. The audience wasn’t ready for this modern, existential film in 1961. Its reputation, because of all its baggage, doomed it to the “missed opportunity,” or “underrated film” category. Today it is being rediscovered. The Misfits is not a fun film to watch, its barren landscape parallels its wounded characters. But it is a true reflection of the human condition, and for film buffs, a unique view into the life of several movie legends. For me, it was a rendezvous with destiny – an opportunity to see those legendary stars before they faded, and the passion to now write about them and the world they lived in, a world I briefly transited.

Christian Esquevin is the author of Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label, published by the Monacelli Press in 2008. The book is about the life and career of MGM’s famed Golden Age costume designer Gilbert Adrian and his subsequent fashion business. Christian also produces his Silver Screen Modiste blog covering classic film fashion. This is Christian's third guest contribution to this blog, and for each piece I am eternally grateful...
TLE

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Ticket(s) Giveaway: "Singin' in the Rain" on the Big Screen

Singin' in the Rain returns to theaters nationwide on Wednesday, August 22, for an encore presentation of a stunning new print of the film.

I'll be giving away three pairs of tickets for the event. Click here for a listing of all participating theaters.  Please send your entry, including your name,  mailing address and theater selection (I need all three), to: ladyevesidwich@gmail.com. A random drawing will be held on August 13 and winners will be contacted immediately. Tickets will be sent directly from the the event coordinator.

Update: Congratulations to winners Lindsay, Barry and Dawn - and thanks to Melanie of Pure Brand Communications for providing tickets for this drawing.

This event, a celebration of the film's 60th anniversary, is sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, NCM Fathom Events and Warner Home Video. Along with the film, a special TCM original production hosted by Robert Osborne will screen. This featurette includes behind-the-scenes footage and an interview with Debbie Reynolds, who starred in the film with Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor.

Don't miss your chance to see Stanley Donen's iconic musical, the film that ranks #1 on the American Film Institute’s list of the “25 Greatest Movie Musicals,” on the big screen. Enter now!

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Click here for Pulitzer Prize winning critic Lloyd Schwartz's August 9 review of Singin' in the Rain on NPR's Fresh Air.

 

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Marilyn Monroe: Out of a Dream

photo by Jack Cardiff

One chilly winter morning in 1953, a 15-year-old boy took a bus from his home in New Jersey to New York City in search of adventure. His conception of the city then was of Times Square and he roamed the neighborhood until daylight began to fade. As he made his way to the Port Authority Terminal and his bus trip home, he noticed a long black limousine driving slowly toward him. The limo came to a stop and its driver jumped out and opened the back door at the curb. As he did, he motioned the boy to stay where he was so his passenger would have a clear path across the sidewalk. Nearly 60 years later, the man who had been that boy remembered,"...a white-gloved hand reached out for help and it was given. Then came a face of dizzying beauty..." She was blonde and she wore a long gown that appeared to be made of "tiny white pearls seemingly flung at her in wild abandon and clinging to every pore. Around her neck, over her wrists and on her ears were brightly sparkling diamonds." The boy's heart was already pounding when, as she turned, the woman noticed him, smiled and whispered, "Hi."

photo by Richard Avedon

The bedazzled boy, Frank Langella, who grew up to be an Oscar-nominated, three-time Tony-winning actor, was stunned. He had serendipitously encountered Marilyn Monroe, "the girl" who enraptured the world that year in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire and would soon create pandemonium with The Seven Year Itch. Years later Richard Avedon, one of many famed photographers for whom the actress posed, would comment, "There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created like an author creates a character."

The vision that materialized before wide-eyed young Frank Langella on a New York street was the painstaking creation of the former Norma Jeane Baker, but the realization of this fantasy creature had required inspiration and encouragement from others. Not too unlike an orphan on a quest in a folk tale, she rose from humble origins, faced great obstacles and setbacks and, with the aid of others along with her own hard work and desire, transformed her life.

Norma Jeane Baker, age nine

In 1935, Grace McKee, a friend and co-worker of Gladys Baker at a Hollywood editing lab, became her unstable friend's court-appointed guardian and the legal guardian of the woman's nine-year-old daughter, Norma Jeane. A childless peroxide blonde with "stage mother" instincts, McKee filled the little girl's imagination with lavish fancies of one day becoming a bombshell movie star like the one with whom she herself was obsessed - Jean Harlow. When Grace married "Doc" Goddard, Norma Jeane was, for a time, sent to live in the red-brick mansion that served as the Los Angeles Orphans Home. Grace would take the girl out to lunch and a movie most Saturdays and regularly had the child's hair styled at a beauty parlor. Norma Jeane would be returned to the orphanage with her hair freshly curled and be-ribboned and, on occasion, wearing makeup Grace had applied to her very young face. The guardian coached the girl on her smile and paraded her in front of friends crowing "isn't she pretty?" and bragged that the child was going to grow up to be beautiful and famous. It would be little more than a decade after becoming Norma Jeane Baker's guardian that Grace Goddard would, because her charge was not yet 21, sign the girl's first contract with 20th Century Fox.

When Johnny Hyde, a powerful William Morris agent on the West Coast, met 22-year-old Marilyn Monroe on New Year's Eve 1949, she was a starlet adrift in the wilderness of the "party circuit" looking for a break. At one time known as producer "Joe Schenk's girl," she had been under contract to Fox for a year, from 1946 to 1947, and with Columbia Pictures for just six months in 1948. It was during her stint at Fox that she had adopted her screen name with the help of Ben Lyon, the studio's casting director. "Monroe" was her mother's family name; Lyon suggested "Marilyn." He had known and loved Broadway star Marilyn Miller before his marriage to Bebe Daniels, and Norma Jeane Baker reminded him of the talented and lovely blonde, blue-eyed actress who had died young.

Marilyn Monroe in 1950

For Johnny Hyde, meeting Marilyn Monroe led to an enchantment that brought an end to his marriage and the beginning of his tireless promotion of her career. He saw a singular quality in the sensuous blonde and worked to make things happen quickly for her. By the time of his sudden death in 1950, Hyde had negotiated parts for her in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Joseph Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950). Her success in these roles led to a new, more generous contract with Fox, an agreement that was secured by Hyde.

Howard Hawks had been unimpressed with the starlet when he first met her in 1948. But after seeing her in The Asphalt Jungle, he realized she had something. And when she was cast in a supporting role in one of his films, Monkey Business (1952), he took a closer look at her potential. Hawks became convinced that Fox chief Darryl Zanuck was misreading Marilyn's appeal, too often casting her in the wrong sort of films. He told Zanuck, "You're making realism with a very unreal girl. She's a completely storybook character..." and urged him to produce Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a studio property, and cast her in it; furthermore, he agreed to direct.

In 1949 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had made Carol Channing a Broadway sensation; in 1953, the screen adaptation had an even more powerful impact on the career of Marilyn Monroe. With the film's tremendous success, Marilyn left behind forever her years as a struggling cheesecake model/rising newcomer and emerged a bona fide superstar. She proved to have a talent for comedy and a fine sense of timing and, with Howard Hawks creating the ideal vehicle for her and overseeing an elegant Technicolor upgrade of her look and style, she embodied to scintillating perfection a funny, sexy, sweet and unique confection that produced fireworks on the screen.

In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe and top-billed co-star Jane Russell are well-matched as a pair of gorgeous gal-pal showgirls on the loose on the high seas and in Paris. Delectably dizzy/witty blonde Lorelei and droll, down-to-earth brunette Dorothy cut loose in clever comic scenes and dynamic musical routines. Both perform renditions of the centerpiece number, "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend." Marilyn's version became legendary. 

Fox strikes again! This video clip has been blocked.

Fox's next assignment for its new star was not as solid a film as her last, but it was even more popular. How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) teamed Marilyn with not just one but two other glittery leading ladies - Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. Another glamor-fest, the story follows three models who rent a ritzy penthouse in Manhattan for a year in hopes of luring and marrying wealthy suitors before their lease expires. Bacall's is the central storyline and hers is the commonsense character; Grable and Marilyn are both ditzy-but-dear dumb blonde types. Marilyn, of course, is the knockout in the trio and, next to her, Betty Grable seems a decade out-of-date. How to Marry a Millionaire was the #5 box office hit of 1953, with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes close behind at #6. As for Marilyn Monroe, she was on top.

Marilyn in a classic Travilla gown

By the time Darryl Zanuck conspired with Billy Wilder to adapt the Broadway adultery romp, The Seven Year Itch, to the screen for Marilyn in 1955, there was no longer any need to pair her with another actress or even an established leading man to bolster the film's box office appeal. Though it is minor Wilder, The Seven Year Itch is the film that certified Marilyn as a phenomenon. On Broadway, George Axelrod's play centered on the brief affair of a married man with his gorgeous neighbor while his family is away on vacation. Even though Hollywood's Production Code demanded that there be no adultery in the adultery comedy, the onscreen presence of Marilyn Monroe was enough to tantalize and satisfy a worldwide audience. The studio's enticing publicity campaign - it was all about Marilyn in a billowy white dress - created a furor.

For a while the sensitive but wily star was able to navigate Hollywood's treacherous rapids. She managed to use the scandal of nude calendar photos to her advantage; she explained away the revelation that she was not, technically, an orphan; and she weathered the outcry stirred by the public remarks of Joan Crawford who implied she was lewd and vulgar. But Marilyn could never cope with her performance anxiety. 

Billy Wilder, ever outspoken and eminently quotable, quipped about his tribulations in working with Marilyn, "I had no problems with Monroe. It was Monroe who had problems with Monroe."

Marilyn sans makeup

Fritz Lang, who had directed her in Clash by Night (1952), remembered that she was "...scared as hell to come to the studio, always late, couldn't remember her lines..." And Howard Hawks noted, "The more important she became, the more frightened she became." Whitey Snyder, Marilyn's makeup artist from her Fox screen test to her funeral, thought her anxiety was connected to her appearance. He said that though she knew every makeup trick there was and used them to marvelous effect, "...it was all an illusion: in person, out of makeup, she was very pretty but in a plain way, and she knew it." It was more than that, though. Marilyn Monroe wasn't simply at the mercy of a fantastical physical image that required scrupulous upkeep. Her ever-shifting entourage included more than hair, makeup and massage professionals, she was also closely attended by personal confidants, studio advisors, talent agents, attorneys, psychotherapists, trophy husbands - and drama coaches.

Determined to be more than a pretty onscreen face with a voluptuous body, she took acting seriously. Teacher Natasha Lytess, employed by Fox at Marilyn's insistence, coached her even as the actress performed in front of the camera. Howard Hawks balked at this and successfully barred Lytess from the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Billy Wilder referred to her as "that creature Lytess" but put up with her on The Seven Year Itch.

By the mid-'50s, Marilyn was studying with "method" guru Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York. Julie Newmar, a member of the Studio at the time, remembered her performance of a scene from Anna Christie with Maureen Stapleton. She recalled that Marilyn's hand actually shook as she lifted a drink from the bar. In her view, Marilyn reflected precisely the essence of Strasberg's teachings - she had become Anna Christie. Of Lee Strasberg, Newmar mused that he favored three kinds of artists, "the highly gifted; the injured, tortured souls; and the beauty queens. He adored Marilyn." Soon Lytess was replaced as Marilyn's personal acting coach by Paula Strasberg, Lee's wife.

...with Brando promoting a 1955 Actors Studio benefit

Billy Wilder happily agreed to tackle another project with Marilyn in 1959; her natural luminosity was "something extra, something special" that he believed no one else could bring to the film. He would struggle mightily with her on the comedy masterpiece Some Like it Hot and was critical of the effect method acting seemed to have had on her. Before she took up Strasberg's approach, he said, Marilyn came before the camera as if she were about to walk a tightrope over a pit. After adopting "the method" it seemed to him that she focused her full concentration on only the pit...

Over the years, perhaps in an attempt to deal with her terror of "the pit" and other personal woes, Marilyn became dependent on drugs - pills that lifted her up or calmed her down or put her to sleep - and alcohol. Her reputation for being unreliable and difficult grew to epic proportions. Those who worked on her later films reported that she sometimes appeared on the set as if in a daze and, during the filming of Some Like it Hot, screenwriter Izzy Diamond recalled that she sipped liquor from a thermos that ostensibly contained coffee.

photo by George Barris

When Marilyn returned to Hollywood in 1960 after years of making her home in New York, she sought the care of Freudian analyst Ralph Greenson. The doctor, who treated her until her death, diagnosed her as "a borderline paranoid addictive personality." Norma Jeane Baker had endured a confusing and chaotic childhood, passed from home to home among friends and family - to an orphanage and back - until she was handed off in marriage at just 16.  Young Marilyn Monroe was also passed around - among the powerful men of Hollywood - during her years as an aspiring starlet. From a psychological standpoint, then, it's no surprise that her relationships were intense and volatile, her identity unstable, her emotions erratic and her actions impulsive. Greenson, who viewed her as a perennial orphan, discarded traditional therapeutic methods and took up a highly unorthodox approach in treating her. In a misguided attempt to "save" her, he welcomed Marilyn into his home and family and took on the role of "father" as well as therapist. He had set for himself an impossible task.

Something's Got to Give (1962)

Even at the peak of her popularity, Marilyn was considered risqué, a sex symbol, and was not taken seriously. Her film roles changed little over time and became, for her, a deadly repetition – the artless, often giddy showgirl, or ex-showgirl. Cherie in Bus Stop (1956), Elsie in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), Sugar in Some Like it Hot, Amanda in Let’s Make Love (1960) and even Roslyn in The Misfits (1961) are variations on a type the actress wanted to break. With her final, unfinished film, George Cukor’s Something’s Got to Give, she was cast in a role that might have helped her broaden the "Marilyn Monroe" persona; Ellen Wagstaff Arden was beautiful but she was also married and the mother of two small children. Had she been able to finish the film, Marilyn might have gone on to romantic comedy roles a la Doris Day or Shirley MacLaine. It’s also possible she could have moved into mature dramatic roles as Ava Gardner, Lee Remick and others did. But this was not to be. Life as a cultural metaphor and brand-name commodity may simply have been too much for a woman already consumed by an array of insecurities.

50 years ago Marilyn Monroe stepped out of the dream and into eternity. Her extravagant fulfillment of a childhood guardian’s fuzzy fantasies had taken her on a journey both harrowing and exhilarating, but her life would come to no fairytale ending. Only with death would come transcendence, and the mythical being she so carefully fashioned and brought to vibrant life lives on, unforgettable and bewitching.

photo by Bert Stern

This post is my contribution to the Summer Under the Stars blogathon hosted by Jill of Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and Michael of ScribeHard on Film. Click here to learn more...

 

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Notes:
Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto, Harper Collins (1993)
Marilyn Monroe by Barbara Leaming, Crown (1998)
On Sunset Blvd.: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov, Hyperion (1998)
Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis by David Wills and Stephen Schmidt, It Books (2011)
Dropped Names by Frank Langella, Harper (2012)

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