Page 24 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“How are things going at the studio?” Joe Schenck asks Marilyn.

“I lost my job there last week.”

“Keep going,” he says.

“I will,” she promises.

What a fool she’s been, allowing herself to think that she was something special. Marilyn draws her curtains, gets into bed,and stays there for a week, mourning the end of “Marilyn Monroe,” before she’s even been truly born.

It’s Sid Skolsky who finds her, face gaunt and tearstained, hair uncombed, in a twist of unwashed bedsheets. He brings her out into the sunshine and treats her to a meal at Schwab’s.

“Joe Schenck told me to keep going,” she says, sitting at the counter sipping an ice-cold Coca-Cola. “It’s not so easy.”

“Schenck is right,” Skolsky says. “You do what everyone does in this town. You put on a brave face and you pretend. You’ve got guts and determination, beauty, and smarts. All you’re missing is craft. Come with me —”

He leaps off his high stool and grabs her hand. Together, they walk out of the drugstore and into the back parking lot.

“There.” He points to a long, low warehouse of a building.

“What?” She squints.

“It’s the Actors Lab, where some of the best actors in the world teach. Lee Strasberg? D’you know him? It’s the Hollywood home of the Group Theatre. From New York.”

“New York?” Marilyn repeats. That far, far away town, where actors and directors spend hours talking? “I heard they all wear black clothes and eyeglasses in New York.”

“And they’re all Communists!” Skolsky is joking, though fears of pitting the Democratic United States against a Communist Soviet Union is a serious and growing global concern.

“They’re for the people, aren’t they? The Communists? I think I might be for the people too,” she says.

“Don’t say that out loud!” he warns, only half teasing. He looks over at her. “It’s where the cool kids go. The theater people.”

“You know, it’s shocking but I’ve never seen a play,” Marilyn admits. “I am not sure I could read one either.”

“It’s no different from reading a book.”

“But all those parts. They’ll muddle my brain.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

Hmm.Maybe it’s time to graduate from the acting classes on the Fox lot.

Dressed in “actors’ blacks,” Marilyn crawls along a wooden floor pretending to be a cat. She curls up in a corner, lies on her side, and starts to lick the back of her hand. She purrs.

She’s learning new terms, like “motivation” and “sense memory” and “animal improv.” The Group Theatre techniques are based on the theatrical teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, the Russian actor and director who founded the Moscow Art Theatre and is considered the father of Method Acting—which involves much self-analysis and reflection.

Marilyn has never been surrounded by so many talented actors. They take their art seriously, drawing from knowledge learned from books. They study plays by Chekhov and Ibsen. They analyze the philosophy of Engels and Marx. They’ve read the Romantic poems of Keats. Ashamed that she left school at fifteen, Marilyn hides at the back of the class, listening, learning, and keeping so quiet it’s as if she blends in with the gray walls.

When Marilyn relates her studies to Skolsky, her voice is animated, her energy contagious.

“I don’t want them to know I have been in the movies, but what a difference. Film actors might have one line, one scene,for the whole day. No knowledge required. Just wait for them to do the lighting and line up the shot. These guys learnwholeplays.”

“What did F. Scott Fitzgerald say? That movies are a place where many people sit around for a very long time, doing absolutely nothing.”

“Well, Fitzgerald is right! Whoeverheis. At the Actors Lab, they’re always complaining that movie actors get paidsomuch more than theater folk. And they are always talking about the poor. The ‘disenfranchised poor.’ I don’t want to tell them how poor I was. Or, actually … how poor I am!”

Marilyn gives Joe Schenck a call, tells him about her studies. She’s kept her word. She’s kept going.

Schenck says he’ll reach out to Zanuck. They’re pals. The studio bosses are all pals. And there are plenty of studios. Has she tried Columbia? He’s got friends over there, too. Harry Cohn’s always looking for new talent.

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