Marilyn & Me (11 page)

While we waited for Hefner’s letter, I drove over to Marilyn’s house without having called to let her or Pat Newcomb know. I had made some eleven-by-fourteen black-and-white prints that I wanted to give her, and I thought I’d let her know what Hefner was thinking before his note arrived.

At the door, Marilyn’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, asked me if she was expecting me. I said no, that I had just stopped by to give her some prints. She suggested that I wait in the backyard, by the pool. After about fifteen minutes I heard Murray talking to someone inside. From the pool area I could see into the house through a window. She was talking to two men, one of whom I thought I recognized: Bobby Kennedy, the attorney general of the United States, brother of the president. Eunice led them into the backyard, just as she had done with me. They stood off in a corner opposite mine. Kennedy was with his aide Ed Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter whom I would come to know and work with while photographing Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign, just before his assassination.

I walked over and introduced myself to Kennedy as an acquaintance of Marilyn’s, mentioning that I had once photographed him playing backgammon at Peter Lawford’s house in Malibu. He was wearing a polo shirt over light-colored
slacks and was polite and cordial. I mentioned to Guthman that the iconic image of Richard Nixon conceding to John F. Kennedy was my work. I was talking to fill the space. I could see they hadn’t expected to find someone else waiting for Marilyn. The atmosphere was uncomfortable. I was asking myself how I was going to get out of there when Marilyn appeared at the other end of the pool.

She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under a white robe. She dropped the robe, smiled at us without saying a word (though I’m not sure she even saw me there), and dived straight into the pool. Kennedy and Guthman had big smiles on their faces as they watched her swim toward them. I felt like an intruder, like a messenger who had come to deliver a package and wound up being party to a secret he didn’t quite understand. I was holding the envelope with the prints of her nude swimming scene and fantasizing that she might do that again.

When Marilyn came to the edge of the pool and lifted herself out of the water, she had her swimsuit on. She grabbed a towel, and that was when I was sure she had noticed me. After she had greeted everyone, I said I had come over to give her a few prints and that I’d be on my way. No one implored me to stay, and I left without saying anything to her about
Playboy
.

Hefner’s letter was dated July 10, and I think I received it the following week. His whole idea was that Marilyn should offer a “peekaboo bareness” rather than full-on nudity, as this was more provocative.

Shortly after receiving the letter in July, I took it over to Marilyn’s house to show it to her. When I pulled up, I found her around back, organizing things for either the guesthouse or the garage.

“You won’t believe who may be staying here,” she said, perky and full of pep.

“Who?” I asked.

“He’s a writer and I read him when I was very young.”

At the time, I didn’t know a lot about writers, so I didn’t venture a guess.

“Mr. Carl Sandburg!” she said in girlish delight. “He’s also a poet. And he wrote an amazing biography of Abraham Lincoln, which I read.”

I would later find out that Marilyn had met Sandburg first while making
Some Like It Hot
, and then again on the Fox lot during
Let’s Make Love
. At the time he was rewriting the dialogue for George Stevens’s
The Greatest Story Ever Told
. Sandburg was now eighty-four years old, so I assume
that Marilyn’s relationship with him was platonic. Years later I would see Arnold Newman’s photos of Sandburg and Marilyn dancing together at the apartment of Henry Weinstein, the producer of
Something’s Got to Give
.

Hefner’s letter was in my pocket, but I was hesitant to show it to her. She was so friendly and candid that I didn’t want to spoil anything by bringing out a letter that asked her to wear a “transparent nightie” and “ruffled panties” and to pose with “the slightest little bend at the hips, so that the derriere is thrust back.” If Marilyn was going to be willing to pose for the cover of
Playboy
, she wouldn’t need directions on
how
to pose. The idea of putting her on the front and back covers would be enough of an enticement for her. So I left Hefner’s letter in my pocket and instead talked to her about its contents.

“Marilyn,” I said, “Hefner has purchased the other images that you approved, and when he publishes them in November or December, he wants to put you on both the front
and
the back covers of the magazine. It’s never been done before.”

In response, Marilyn changed the subject.

“Didn’t I already get you a house?” she asked.

“We’ve put a down payment on one with a pool,” I replied. Then, trying to get back to business, I said, “A
Playboy
cover will keep your publicity going.” She was always interested in keeping that up. She had just finished a
Life
magazine interview with the writer Richard Meryman. It came out a month after the pool shots were published.

As I talked, I could see that the
Playboy
idea appealed to her, but she said that she didn’t want to commit without asking Pat Newcomb’s opinion.

“That’s fine,” I replied, “but I don’t think Pat likes me that much.”

“How can anybody not like you, Larry?” she said. “You’re a happily married one-eyed photographer who got me another
Life
cover.”

I liked her teasing, but I was focused on business. I wanted to get her to agree to the deal.

“
Life
started the ball rolling, but the front and back of
Playboy
will make more waves,” I said. And then a new inspiration hit me. “And what if we print the front and back covers on clear plastic, like a see-through thing that you could peel off and then put together in a frame, so you could see the whole of you, like two eight-by-ten photos in a clear plastic frame? That would be pretty spectacular.”

“You’re always full of ideas,” Marilyn said, but I couldn’t figure out if she really liked this one.

“I had an idea for some time also,” she said, and told me that she’d been thinking about making a movie about Jean Harlow and that she had met with Harlow’s mother just that past weekend. “Ever since I was a young girl, I was told I was the next Jean Harlow,” she continued. “Her mother
said I reminded her of her daughter. You know she was just twenty-six when she died?”

“I didn’t know,” I confessed.

“She died of kidney failure,” Marilyn continued.

“Sad,” I replied.

Knowing I shouldn’t push Marilyn on the subject of
Playboy
, I left upset without getting an answer.

Later I would learn that Marilyn had surgery a few days later at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital to alleviate her chronic endometriosis, a condition that caused her abdominal, pelvic, and back pain. She was in and out of the hospital within a day, and on July 25 Fox’s Peter Levathes went to her house. With all the publicity from those swimming pool photographs, along with the enormous outpouring of affection from her fans, he wanted to apologize. He said that Fox had made a huge mistake by firing her from
Something’s Got to Give
. He told her that the studio was dropping the lawsuit against her, and he offered her a new contract, with a raise in salary from $100,000 to $250,000. Dean Martin would be available in October, and Levathes proposed that as a new start date. Knowing that Marilyn liked Jean Negulesco, her
How to Marry a Millionaire
director, he wanted her approval so that the studio could make an offer and replace George Cukor.

Fox might have been backtracking in its relationship
with Marilyn, but the studio itself was in turmoil. A few days after he visited Marilyn, Levathes was fired, along with some board members. Darryl F. Zanuck, who looked favorably on Marilyn, was made vice president of 20th Century–Fox, and Marilyn decided to let things settle down at the studio before she agreed to return to the film. Frank Sinatra was singing at the Cal Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, and Marilyn went to see him and to personally thank Dean Martin, who was also there, for sticking up for her when Fox tried to replace her.

When Marilyn returned to Los Angeles, she saw her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, had Robert Kennedy at her house for dinner, and began thinking about appearing on the front and back covers of
Playboy
.

On Friday, August 3, I was packing a suitcase for a weekend trip to Palm Springs with Judi and Suzanne when Pat Newcomb called. “It’s not going to happen,” she said curtly. “So you should stop pushing it.”

“What’s not going to happen?” I asked, playing dumb, but I had a sinking feeling.

“
Playboy
,” she said. “I’m totally opposed to it. I don’t think Marilyn should do it. You guys have done very well with the pictures, but it’s Marilyn’s life, and she’s got her own problems. Let’s not add any more to them.”

I didn’t know what to say.

And then, filling the void, Pat continued. “Let it be,” she said.

There was no sense trying to change her mind, because it sounded as if she was relaying what Marilyn had told her to say. But I wasn’t ready to give up unless I heard it from Marilyn herself. I decided that before heading off to Palm Springs the next morning, I would take some prints of her, drive to her house, and let her tell me personally that the deal was off.

On Saturday morning, at around 9:00 a.m., I drove to Brentwood.