Marilyn Monroe by Barbara Leaming Page A

Then he underscored his reasons for breaking with the Party. “The last straw came when I was invited to go through a typical Communist scene of crawling and apologizing and admitting the error of my ways.” Kazan seemed unaware that this sentence was shot through with irony. Wasn’t crawling, apologizing, and admitting the error of his ways precisely what HUAC had required him to do? In a gesture that irked some people far more than his having named names, Kazan, unbidden, went on to catalogue play by play, film by film, his entire directorial output. He aimed to show that as an artist he had consistently upheld all-American values. It was one thing to have submitted under duress. It was quite another to have gone to such elaborate lengths to justify his own act of betrayal.
    For all the talk of duty, the final, seemingly perfunctory and anti-climactic sentence of Kazan’s testimony pointed to a very different reason for his change of heart. “I have placed a copy of this affidavit with Mr. Spyros P. Skouras, president of Twentieth Century–Fox.”
    On May 19 and 20, Clifford Odets gave a comparable performance, naming names and chronicling his own disenchantment with theCommunist Party. Of the elite Broadway trio, only Lillian Hellman declined to be intimidated. She faced HUAC on the 21st. A controlling, abrasive, outspoken character rather like Kazan, she, too, chose to read a carefully-crafted letter to the committee. Unlike Kazan, however, Hellman refused to name names, declaring memorably, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”
    Tennessee Williams, insisting he wasn’t a political person, declined to take a position on what Kazan had done. Privately, Williams told his friend Maria Britneva that human venality was something he always expected and forgave. Kazan published an advertisement in the
New York Times
to defend what he had done and to urge others to do the same. It was rumored to have been paid for by Skouras. Williams, full of compassion, told Audrey Wood that the advertisement was a sad comment on the times. Some of Kazan’s other friends were less forgiving. A few months after his testimony, Kazan was on his way out of his office building when he encountered Miller and Bloomgarden. The playwright and the producer, on their way in, pointedly ignored him.
    Kazan’s testimony also brought closure to his relationship with Marilyn. After the strain of the HUAC testimony and its aftermath, Kazan chose to shoot his next picture for Twentieth in Europe. It would be some time before he returned to Hollywood. As a result, Marilyn never had an opportunity to find out whether she really would have held to her decision not to see him again. Kazan’s prolonged absence cleared the field for Joe DiMaggio.

THREE
    A t last, Darryl Zanuck announced that he had found a second starring role for Marilyn. Ignoring the conversation he’d had with Howard Hawks, he put her in another drama, but this time, in keeping with the splash the calendar scandal had made, the film was to be a much larger, more expensive production than
Don’t Bother to Knock.
Marilyn was to play a murderess in Henry Hathaway’s
Niagara
, to be shot on location at Niagara Falls. She was very excited. Another big role meant that her career was really taking off. Expecting to begin pre-production at the end of May, Marilyn checked into Cedars of Lebanon Hospital as soon as she finished
Monkey Business.
    On the morning of April 28, 1952, Marilyn’s appendix was removed. When a nurse wheeled her back into her room, it was filled with dozens of roses from Joe, who was then away in New York. Slugger, as Marilyn called DiMaggio, had spent a good deal of time lately at her book-filled studio apartment. She said he was the best lover she ever had.
    Within hours of surgery, Marilyn received word that a new scandal was brewing. The news came as a complete shock. Erskine Johnson of the
L.A. Daily News
had contacted