Marilyn’s decade of success was the 1950s. Her free "liberated" attitude to sex was something of a double edged sword for her... In the repressive 50s, she was noticed as being sexy and charming... and unthreatening to men. Women were less inclined to be fans. However it imprisoned her in a stereotype of the “dumb sexy blonde” which distressed her. She wanted to be taken seriously as an actress and grew upset and angry that she was seen as a sex symbol with a past of multiple affairs with men... who had helped her to get a start in the business. Marilyn was more frank about her sex life than women usually were, in the 50s, and this led to complaints bout the vulgarity of her personal life and her screen roles. She was mocked at as the “dumb blonde” who was foolish enough to think she could ever be taken seriously…
She had a moderate talent for singing and dancing, and had several roles in musicals, including her most famous one Sugar In “Some like it Hot”, but she began to dislike this sort of work as she felt it would ruin her chances of ever playing serious roles. Marilyn had suffered from low self-esteem, fearing that all she had to offer was her sexuality and her looks... and her “sweet but silly” persona. She feared too that she might have inherited her mother’s mental problems. Although her career took off, she was always afraid that she would fail at her work or break down. She used drugs and alcohol as a crutch and became increasingly addicted to pills…. This in turn began to affect her performances. She was notoriously late on set and began to have difficulty learning her lines.....Marilyn was insecure about her talents, in spite of her desire to become a serous actress. She grew difficult, and depended heavily on her acting coaches, Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg of the Actors Studio. She irritated directors by having her coaches on set, turning to them for advice and assurance and wanting re takes if they felt that she hadn’t done a scene well. She grew more addicted to various drugs, uppers to help her keep going and barbiturates to help her sleep and by the mid-50s she had a definite problem with these drugs.
She quarreled
with Fox - and they suspended her when she refused to do “yet another sex comedy”...
and in 1954, she married Joe Di Maggio, who was the most famous baseball player
in the US at the time. However while di
Maggio loved her, he was an old fashioned controlling man and showed jealousy and
anger at her playing in “sexy” roles. He was furious at the famous scene in Seven Year Itch, where her skirt blows up and reveals her underwear, which was a scandalously shocking scene at the time.... He began lose his temper with her and became physically abusive and the marriage only lasted 9 months. Di Maggio did remain loyal to her and they
were friends in spite of the divorce.
Marilyn continued
to be at odds with her studio, so she then set up her own production company. She left Hollywood and went to New York,
where she joined the Actors Studio, hoping to improve her acting skills. The Strasberg family, who ran the Studio, was
fond of her and were flattered to have attracted such a popular sex symbol to believe
in their “Method” acting. However, when
Marilyn tried to delve into her unconscious to find material for her performances,
it was stressful for her. She had had so
many traumas in her life and was fearful that she had inherited her mother’s
mental problems. Dwelling on her own emotions and remembering the problems of her past probably wasn’t the wisest method for her to choose, to
help her acting. She began to date playwright
Arthur Miller who was seen as an intellectual… He left his wife and they planned
to marry. Miller was being investigated
by the House Un-American Activities Committee, because of supposed “communism”
in his plays, and Marilyn wanted to help him.
She married Miller in 1956 and returned to film making. She undertook a film called “Bus Stop” where
she played a small time singer who dreams of stardom but falls in love with a
cowboy... and goes to live with him. She
worked hard to give a convincing performance as a not very successful none too glamorous singer, and began to
impress some critics and convince them that she could act…
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