Page 76 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Flashbulbs pop, capturing the image of a despondent woman with unwashed hair dressed in a black suit. She battles her way to the waiting car, unable to escape the sound of her name until she shuts the door and blocks everything out.

CHAPTER 52

“I DON’T THINKThe Misfitsis going to knock ’em over,” Marilyn tells journalist confidant W. J. Weatherby. “First reactions are very mixed.”

“Wait and see. It’s too early,” he says.

“Maybe I didn’t have enough—you know—distance from the character. Arthur wrote me into it and our marriage was breaking up during that period. Maybe I was playingmetoo much, some ideal me —”

To a remarkable degree, Marilyn predicts the reaction of film critics.

“The casting of the film is almost impeccable,” saysThe New Yorkerin its review on January 27, 1961. “In a part literally made for her, Miss Monroe displays a gentleness and a tired, childlike grace that are appropriate and moving, and, very evidently, a reflection of herself.”

On January 31, Marilyn appears at the world premiere at the Granada Theater in Reno, Nevada, on the arm of co-star Montgomery Clift.

“Gable has never done anything better on screen,” raves theNew York Daily News,“nor has Miss Monroe.” TheHollywood Reporterstates, “Miss Monroe has seldom looked worse,” but softens the blunt assessment with praise for her acting: “But there is a delicacy about her playing, and a tenderness that is affecting.”

The film is on track to cover its $4 million budget, hardly a commercial success.

SinceThe Misfitswrapped, Marilyn has visited her New York psychiatrist forty-seven times, leading Dr. Marianne Kris to believe her patient is suicidal.

On Sunday, February 5, Kris drives Marilyn to Weill Cornell Medical Center on the Upper East Side.

She has persuaded Marilyn that she needs to check herself in for a good rest and some good meals to restore some of the weight that has tumbled off her lately.

After signing the admission papers as “Faye Miller” to avoid publicity, Marilyn is taken through the cavernous hospital corridors to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic.

A male doctor gives Marilyn a gratuitous breast examination under the guise of looking for cancerous lumps in her bosom. She is then ushered on to the floor for “disturbed patients.” Her clothes are taken from her, and she is given a hospital gown to wear. Then she is placed in a padded room, where the door is slammed shut and locked from the outside.

She’s alone.

Marilyn starts to panic. It’s as if all the nightmares that shehad at the orphanage have come true. All her life, she’s feared inheriting her mother’s insanity. It feels like it’s finally come for her. She is Gladys.

It’s all happening so quickly, so suddenly, that she goes into shock. She’s hysterical. Screaming, she pounds on the metal door with her bare hands. Her fists are raw and bleeding, and still no one comes, no one answers.

“I’m not crazy,” Marilyn yells, her face pressed against the small glass window. “Open the door, open the door. I won’t make trouble. I’ll be good. I promise. Just open the door!”

She paces around the cell like a caged tiger. She shakes her head, pulling at her hair. Suddenly, she gets an idea from her film role inDon’t Bother to Knock. She picks up the room’s only chair and hurls it at the door, repeatedly.

Eventually the small window in the steel door shatters. The staff at last comes running—with a straitjacket. After securing Marilyn in the restraint, four male nurses carry her to a more secure unit on the ninth floor, where she is sedated.

The true identity of patient “Faye Miller” spreads throughout the hospital. During the night, doctors and nurses form a procession. One by one, they peek through the small window at Marilyn Monroe, bound up in a straitjacket, screaming, crying, and rolling around on the floor of her cell.

None of her friends know where she is.

Three days later, a sympathetic nurse loosens the jacket and gives her a pen and paper, which she uses to write to Lee and Paula Strasberg, begging them to get her out. Her handwriting is spiky, the spelling is erratic, but her terror at the captivity is obvious.

Dear Lee and Paula,

Dr. Kris has had me put into the New York Hospital—pstikiatric division under the care of two idiot doctors. They both should not be my doctors.

You haven’t heard from me because I’m locked up with all these poor nutty people. I’m sure to end up a nut if I stay in this nightmare. please help me Lee, this is the last place I should be—maybe if you called Dr Kris and assured her of my sensitivity and that I must get back to class … Lee, I try to remember what you said once in class ‘that art goes far beyond science’

And the science memories around here I’d like to forget—like screeming women etc.

please help me—if Dr. Kris assures you I am all right you can assure her I am not. I do not belong here!

I love you both

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