STATE

PUBLISHING HOUSE

"ART"

ARTHUR MILLER

COLLECTED

The play takes place in the family of a small provincial manufacturer, who during the war supplied the CETA War Ministry with parts for aircraft engines. The fate of all members of this family is closely intertwined with the fate of the war. Both sons fought as soldiers in the American army, and the younger one, a pilot, went missing. His mother still hopes for his return, although there has been no real reason for this for a long time. Her anticipation colors the atmosphere of the play with tension and anxiety.

Joe Keller, the head of the family, dreamed of getting rich all his life. During the war he finally succeeded. But at what cost? It turns out that he once, fearing ruin, handed over a batch of defective aircraft parts to the War Ministry. As a result, a group of American military pilots died...

To escape justice, Joe Keller slandered his companion and friend, presenting him as the only culprit of the incident. Thus, in the name of personal enrichment, the interests of the homeland were betrayed, the ideals of patriotism, honor and friendship were trampled.

At the other extreme of the play is Joe Keller's son, Chris. His life philosophy was formed at the front, where patriotism was not an empty word - there they paid for it with blood and life.

“There was real honor at the front,” says Chris, “and there was something to protect.” Chris is still true to his ideals, although he understands that no one around him shares them.

Having learned about his father's crime, he demands that he surrender himself to justice.

But he condemns his father only from a moral standpoint, since he does not see in Joe Keller’s actions those deep reasons, the roots of which are in the contradiction between private interest and public duty that is inherent in capitalist society. Joe himself is well versed in them. Justifying himself to his son, he asks him: “Who worked for nothing during this war?.. Did they send at least one gun, at least one truck, before they received a profit for them? And is this pure money? There is no clean money in America." Success in the world in which the Kellers live is incompatible with the ideals of humanity and true patriotism, so Joe does not feel remorse for the crime he committed. And the playwright, with great artistic power and hot human anger, exposes the predatory philosophy of his hero.

Miller indicated that while working on All My Sons, he had a clear idea of ​​the idea for his future play for the first time since becoming a playwright. People are obliged to answer to society for the actions they have committed, since there is an inextricable connection between a person and society. And Miller emphasized that he sought to fully condemn the anti-social act of his hero, because “people like Joe Keller are a threat to society...”.

The scene in which Joe Keller's true aspirations are revealed is the most powerful scene in the play. In it, Miller managed to rise to the heights of a truly social critique of the essence of the capitalist world.

(1915-2005)

Theater, as a form of entertainment, is designed to bring people together in a public place to experience common experiences. The ancient Greeks used theater as a debate between deeply felt sadness and laughter. The gods and noble rulers of the earth were portrayed in epic tragedies and very funny comedies in which catharsis was achieved through tears and laughter. Over the centuries, the meaning of theater has changed for successive generations - from free pastime to religious happening. Partly Shakespeare, later largely Ibsen and Strindberg were concerned with public affairs and people's relationships.

Born in 1915 in New York, Arthur Miller became the most prominent of the 20th century. the herald of the “theater of the concerned.” In realistic plays that played skillfully with time, often with fantastic results, Miller sought to create - as he himself called - "the drama of all mankind."

How do any of us remain true to ourselves and attentive to those we love while hopelessly working hard every day to survive in this world? How does our lifelong work affect our lives? Why do people suddenly go crazy, reveling in hatred and oppression? When should the victim confront the abuser? Can we compensate for the harm we cause to each other and to ourselves?

Miller asked all these questions (and many more). His plays often respond to them with an unbearable, but reflecting the truth of life, despondency. That Miller demands a response from us enhances his impact, for his theater was never a passing fad (to paraphrase the words of Ira Gershwin, if Gibraltar falls, it will bury us). There is nothing easy about Miller's work, except for the exceptional accessibility of his words. He used to say: to become a good playwright, a person must write by listening to how people speak. Miller's characters for the most part seem to be real people, revealing their thoughts to us in words and actions. The drama lies in their predicament, as narrated by themselves or their actions.

The hero of his masterpiece Death of a Salesman: Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem, Willie Lowman, is Miller's greatest and most characteristic character. First produced and acclaimed in 1949 with a remarkable cast (Lee J. Cobb, Mildred Dunnock and Arthur Kennedy; directed by Elia Kazan), The Salesman won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards. The play was staged in many countries and in many languages, including China, with the author as director. It is unquestionably the most famous and notable play ever written by Jewish playwrights.

Willie Lowman is a global icon and one of the most significant characters in the history of tragedy. It is significant not only for the pity it evokes in us, but also for its denunciation of our capitalist society. Willie believes in the American dream with all his heart. If you work hard, play by the rules and protect your friendships, then you will succeed. Miller shows how Lowman's life turned into a tragic farce. Willy does not even realize that he is deceiving himself (until his suicide at the end of the play). His responsiveness scares people away, he rarely manages to sell anything anymore, and secretly from his faithful wife, he supports a woman for business trips. Only by killing himself for insurance was he able to defeat the system that possessed him and repair the harm he had caused to his family.

In The Salesman, Miller freed drama from the constraints of convention and reality. The time values ​​and psychological accents of the drama of Ibsen and Strindberg were expanded and reshaped in Miller's play. We are lured into Willie's thoughts and world through brilliantly crafted plotting and caustic language.

Before The Salesman, Miller wrote plays while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan for the then-Federal Theater and CBS and NBC. His first successful play on Broadway, All My Sons (like The Salesman, is about a man and his two sons) was a raw, imperfect and yet moving prelude to his greatest work. Miller used techniques acquired from radio in The Salesman and later plays to change audience expectations and their perception of time.

First staged in New York in 1953, The Crucible was Miller's response to McCarthyism. Distressed that his friend and colleague Kazan was forced to name some names during House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and that Senator Joseph McCarthy committed atrocities “in the name of freedom,” Miller demonstrated extraordinary courage and loyalty to his best. American traditions of resistance to despotism. In his remarkable autobiography, Miller wrote that the KRAD hearings were structured as a special, almost religious ritual. The accused was required to name his comrades in the Communist Party. After formulating the charges, the committee usually absolved the witness of all sins and allowed the accused to return to normal life. The Crucible reminds us that personal dignity and fighting those who try to humiliate us are vital to preserving our humanity.

In other plays - "Memories of Two Mondays", "A View from the Bridge", "After the Fall", "It Happened at Vichy", "The Price" and "American Chronograph" and the film scripts "The Misfits" and "Trying to Buy Time" - Miller examines many of the themes first introduced in The Salesman and The Crucible. Two works, “The Misfits” and “After the Fall,” are known to be closely associated with Miller’s second wife, Marilyn Monroe. The Misfits starred, in addition to Monroe, Clark Gable (his last film), Montgomery Clift, Eli Fallah and Thelma Ritter, and was directed by John Huston. The Misfits was a box office and critical success when it was first released, but is now considered a great work for its careful exploration of despair, unfulfilled desires and the need for love. After the Fall continues to be a controversial play (mainly because of the great love that audiences still have for Marilyn), but remains an example of great technique, as the action takes place "in the mind, thought and memory" of the main character Quentin, in which many they see Arthur Miller himself. This work is by no means an ordinary theater play, but a moving and merciless exploration of Quentin's relationship with Maggi (Marilyn?) and the author himself.

Miller's work is projected into the distant future, orienting playwrights emotionally and formally in the same way that Ibsen and Strindberg oriented him. Its deep insight into the most troubling prospects of human existence should warn us about what we can do for each other and, ultimately, for ourselves.

• 77.

Booker Igor 03/15/2019 at 23:55

Marilyn Monroe's longest marriage lasted only four and a half years. On June 29, 1956, the most desirable blonde in the States married the cult intellectual playwright Arthur Miller. The marriage broke up a year and a half before the actress’s death. Great love was accompanied by high-profile infidelities, miscarriages, taking tranquilizers and filming in films.

Arthur Miller was the second scion of a wealthy Jewish family from New York. He was the son of the owner of a factory (though not palaces or steamships), which employed 800 people. The financial well-being of a family living in the center of the Big Apple - their apartment windows overlooked Central Park - collapsed with the onset of the global economic crisis.

By the time he met Monroe, Arthur was married to a Catholic, Mary, whom he met while a university student in 1936. She shared his leftist beliefs. They had two children. In the late 1940s, Miller wrote three plays, thanks to which he gained fame as America's first playwright and acquired some snobbery. Suspected of Communist sympathies, he was brought under surveillance by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The appearance of the future husband of the first beauty of his time was, frankly speaking, far from the classical canons. He resembled either a Goebbels propaganda caricature of a Judean drone, or a caricature of an intellectual posing as Abraham Lincoln: slick black curly hair on the back of a balding skull, protruding ears and an eternal cigarette or pipe in the corner of his mouth.

In early 1951, 36-year-old Miller was in Los Angeles working on the script for the film As Young As You Feel. His then (then) friend, director Elia Kazan, who brilliantly staged Death of a Salesman at the theater and successfully filmed A Streetcar Named Desire, was convinced that Miller was exhausted by the desire to cheat on his disgusted wife. Kazan was also married, but he was not at all disdainful of going on the left and tried to involve his friend in this, dragging Miller to parties in Beverly Hills and looking into the dressing rooms of starlets.

Somewhere in this world, Miller met a bleached, blonde, 24-year-old supporting actress who was openly harassed by many men and who slept with Kazan in hopes of landing a role that would never happen. Marilyn, who understood that in Hollywood she was taken for a fool or a whore, and sometimes for both at the same time, dreamed of communicating with the intelligentsia, wanted to study, become educated. Finally, she wanted to be simply respected as a person, and not seen as a beautiful doll.

With French relaxedness, biographer Marilyn Monroe, writer Anna Plantagene, writes about the acquaintance of two lovers: “The sexy blonde is fascinated by the man in black, his brilliant mind, respectability, age. She stutters and begs with her gaze. The playwright sees her vibrating body and at the same time her reddened, swollen eyes with bruised from insomnia. He hears a call for help. He sharply senses this discrepancy: the soul of a lost child in the body of a goddess. He already feels desire and guilt. He watches as Kazan places his thick hands on the white skin of an airy nymph. And furiously flagellates himself so that punish for unclean thoughts."

At one of the receptions held in his honor, Arthur Miller, according to eyewitnesses, caressed Marilyn’s foot with flaming cheeks. In his autobiography, however, Miller claimed that he did not even speak to Monroe that evening. The lovestruck playwright delayed his return to the farm in Connecticut, where his wife and children were waiting for him, but was forced to return to the East Coast.

When fate brought them together again in 1955, great changes took place in the lives of each of them. Miller tasted the next fruits of fame (his play “The Witches of Salem” had been running with triumph for two years already), and Monroe turned from an ordinary “cover girl” of magazines for men into an American sex symbol. In 1955, all the walls of houses in New York were covered with posters of Marilyn with her skirt hiked up - the famous shot from the film “The Seven Year Itch” ( The Seven Year Itch).

June 21, 1956 turned out to be an unlucky day for both. As soon as Marilyn, without makeup or a wig, wearing simple black glasses, jumped out of the house at dawn, she was immediately surrounded by reporters and paparazzi. The crying, hunted woman confessed her affair with Arthur Miller. The playwright was no longer living with his wife at that time, but the official divorce had not yet followed. Pictures of Monroe without makeup spread all over the world.

On the same day, Arthur Miller was summoned to the Committee on Un-American Activities in connection with obtaining a foreign passport. The playwright was going to fly with Marilyn to London, where filming of “The Prince and the Showgirl” with the great Laurence Olivier was to begin. Subsequently, Miller said that the chairman of the committee allegedly suggested that he secretly “come to an amicable agreement”: give him a photograph of himself with Marilyn Monroe - and everything would be settled. Miller did not say anything to his beauty.

On the day of their wedding, tragedy occurred. Anna Plantangene writes: “At the height of the day, the Paris Match correspondent, who had been spying on the actress and writer, crashed in her car. Her blood splattered on Marilyn’s yellow pullover, who, a few minutes later, having taken a heavy dose of sedatives, had to go out to the press.” Someone whispered - a bad omen.

On July 1, 1956, Marilyn, wearing a white and purple dress, converted to Judaism. After a two-hour session with a Reform rabbi, she locked herself in the second floor of a house rented for a religious wedding ceremony. Marilyn no longer wanted to marry Arthur. Eight years later, Miller would write the play After the Fall, in which he would tell the story of his affair with Monroe, including their wedding and the bride's hesitation. Nevertheless, the newlyweds exchanged rings engraved with the inscription “Today and Forever” and two weeks later they were heading to England. There, at the luxurious Parleside House, a five-hectare estate next to the Queen's estate, they received a sumptuous reception given by Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

While Marilyn spent her days on the set, where not everything was going smoothly, Miller was overwhelmed by doubts, which he confided in his notebook. Is Sir Lawrence right and the woman whom he, Arthur Miller himself, mistook for an angel, is in fact a whore causing nothing but problems? There is evidence from contemporaries that during the filming of the film “The Prince and the Showgirl,” Monroe dated a certain man in the evenings. In the play "After the Fall" there is a scene: "The only woman I have loved in my life is my daughter." Marilyn read her husband's notebook. They returned to the United States in October.

To her great joy, Monroe learned that she was pregnant. On August 1, 1957, Miller heard a wild scream and found her almost unconscious in the garden. Marilyn was losing her child. Only in this marriage did Marilyn manage to get pregnant, but due to endometriosis she had three miscarriages. After she left the hospital, Miller bought (though with his wife’s money) an old farm in Roxbury, where he surrounded Marilyn with care. During his stay in London, Miller wrote a short story, “The Misfits,” which later became the basis for the script of the film of the same name, in which his wife starred. Miller specially remade the novella, developing the role of Roslyn and offering it to Marilyn. But Monroe did not like either the plot or the heroine - broken by life, manic-depressive, copied by her husband from life, that is, from herself. She soon grew tired of the life of an exemplary housewife in a godforsaken corner, and Monroe returned to New York, where she began making endless visits to doctors, changing psychoanalysts, and studying at the Actors Studio. She increasingly began calling her ex-husband, basketball player Joe DiMaggio.

Current page: 5 (book has 11 pages total) [available reading passage: 3 pages]

Chapter 14
Arthur Miller. "Eve" from "The Asphalt Jungle" "After the Fall"

The premiere of “The Asphalt Jungle,” a film in which J. Hyde arranged for the newly minted star, took place in the spring of 1950 in Westwood Village.

"The Asphalt Jungle" is a twisted detective story about a jewelry heist, about crime and punishment and, in general, about what happens when thieves quarrel. They say that even today this picture is one of the best among films in the adventure-detective genre. Marilyn played Angela, the young mistress of an aging criminal, whose relationship was presented as that of “niece” and “uncle.” They say that the appearance of a blonde in silk pajamas on the screen as Angela was greeted with applause. Her appearance was noticed by columnists of leading newspapers - the New York Post, the Herald Tribune, and the Times (a reporter from one of the newspapers even called her performance “flawless performance”).

After this success, Johnny Hyde told Marilyn that he would now definitely snatch a contract that was profitable for her from the film company. However, he never received a contract. Unlike him, the producers did not believe in the talent of the sexy blonde and, if necessary, recruited them from the street in batches.

At that time, Joseph Mankiewicz was preparing a film for Darryl Zanuck with the working title All About Eve. He was just looking for a flirtatious and sexy blonde for a cameo role. He watched “The Asphalt Jungle” and decided to find the one who played the sexy Angela. Marilyn was to appear in only two episodes of Eve.

With Arthur Miller

During the filming of All About Eve, during one of the breaks, Marilyn once chatted with the young actor Cameron Mitchell, who played one of the characters on Broadway in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman. But then her gaze recorded the appearance of two strange people - tall, thin, arguing with a short man about something. The shorter one turned out to be director Elia Kazan, and the tall one turned out to be writer Arthur Miller, who, according to Monroe, was so similar to Abraham Lincoln.

And just as there had previously been a photograph of Lincoln hanging in her room, so from now on, among other images on the wall of her room, there appeared a photograph of Arthur Miller, taken from a newspaper and enlarged.

Marilyn was twenty-five, and had already experienced several difficult losses and three suicide attempts. Her fierce love for the writer Miller also emerged from the psychopathic chaos aggravated by unhealthy genetics.

“What did she do all day? – asks S. Rener. And she gives her answer: “I was waiting for a phone call from the man in the portrait.”

She was now sleeping on the floor, afraid that she might fall out of bed at night. She painted the walls in different colors - during insomnia it seemed to her that she could not distinguish the doors in this gray space where she was imprisoned without any possibility of getting out. She ran away onto the windy highway along the Pacific coast, but this did not calm her mind, heated by an obsession. She tried, unnecessarily, to memorize the play Death of a Salesman. Now, when asked who she knew, she blurted out: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Wolfe, Miller. Sometimes she added Jerry Lewis to the list. She wrote on the mirror in lipstick sayings that she had either read or made up: “Don’t expect more than you can achieve.” Or: “Don’t worry, but worry.” And when she got dressed in front of the mirror, aphorisms appeared in her image; they were more important for her life than the figure, the lines of her body.

Ever since she met Arthur Miller, she had never stopped dreaming of a wonderful role written for her by a real writer. The writer seemed to her as a healer and inspirer of people. She treated the great writer with a reverent feeling.”

Arthur Miller was married and had two children. His wife for twelve years had been Mary Slattery; they got married while they were students and he wrote a play a month in the hope of someday becoming famous.

Waiting for a role in Miller's wonderful play became an obsession for Monroe, but the playwright was clearly not inclined to let the pretty stranger into his personal life. The famous writer of pro-communist views of Jewish origin (is this where his resemblance to Monroe’s idol, Abraham Lincoln comes from?) drew attention to Marilyn only after she herself was at the zenith of fame. This happened a few years later, in the mid-50s, when the actress "moved to New York, began studying at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, and preferred to spend time in the company of Arthur Miller."

Since, during the filming of an episode of the film “Seven Years of Thoughts” (translations of this film as “The Seven Year Itch”, “The Seven Year Itch” are also often found), the heroine Marilyn, standing on a grate above the subway line, had an air flow from below her skirt rose above her head, the personal life of actress Marilyn Monroe became a legend. The episode, which has become a classic, made the actress a cult figure.

That is why when the question of marriage with Miller was resolved, and in June 1956, Marilyn converted to Judaism, this immediately caused a strong reaction from the American and world public.

By the way, looking ahead, let us remember that the last film in which Marilyn Monroe starred, “The Misfits,” was based on a script written by Arthur Miller especially for her. The film was directed by the same John Huston, who also directed “The Asphalt Jungle.”

Scene from A. Miller's play “All My Sons” (1947)

"The Misfits" is a story of three men of different ages who "can cope with mustangs, but are unable to cope with omnipotent femininity, was a kind of metaphor for Marilyn's whole life." It is known that during filming the actress was in a state of depression and abused alcohol and sleeping pills. The film turned out to be fatal for her partner Clark Gable, who played his last role as an aging seducer. In addition to everything, on January 21 (according to other sources - 20) 1961, a week before the premiere of The Misfits, Marilyn divorced Arthur Miller. However, newspapermen had long predicted a breakup, because the actress deliberately provoked gossip surrounding the filming of the film “Let's Make Love” in 1959, where her partner was the famous Frenchman Yves Montand. For a long time, newspapers never tired of gossiping about the ruined happiness of Montana’s friend, actress Simone Signoret and Monroe’s next husband, Arthur Miller.

Having lost her last husband, Marilyn once again felt a lack of support in life - which became the final phase in her dramatic fate.

Genetics, coupled with numerous and sometimes promiscuous sexual relationships, alcohol and pill abuse brought the actress to a logical end.

Speaking about Monroe's supposed love life, biographer Fred Giles wrote: "Even if there are readers who cannot fully believe the image of the virtuous and sexually choosy Marilyn, they believe that she was a hedonist, taking turns to bed with all the men between periods of marriage, and sometimes and during the latter, nevertheless, all the men in her life, from Jim Dougherty to Arthur Miller, do not consider her depraved. I say this despite obvious inconsistencies, including in her behavior: in at least two documented cases, Marilyn spent all or part of several nights with men while she was married to others. But her husbands themselves considered these emergency situations the result of a disagreement or an escape from loneliness. In fact, Marilyn was too self-absorbed most of the time to respond to men's feelings."

Children are Marilyn's unfulfilled dream

* * *

By the way, not so long ago, as journalist K. Razlogov reported, the first production of Arthur Miller’s play “After the Fall” took place in Moscow with the participation of the author himself. This autobiographical work told about the relationship between the playwright and the movie star, which lasted many years and was equally painful for both. And no one noticed how symbolically the stages of their relationship developed: when they met, Marilyn, who had just played in “The Asphalt Jungle,” was filming the film “All About Eve”... and it all ended with Arthur Miller’s tragic play “After the Fall.”

Truly “Eve” from “The Asphalt Jungle” “After the Fall”.

Eve from the Asphalt Jungle after the Fall...

Chapter 15
Marilyn as a "sexual enhancer"

Before Marilyn Monroe came to screen fame, she managed to become famous as a fashion model. Despite the fact that, thanks to the efforts of Johnny Hyde, the film company "XX Century - Fox" renewed the contract for seven years and even from time to time provided Monroe with tiny roles, she was considered mediocre and was rather in the line of unknown Hollywood beauties.

However, when the studio management received bags of letters with questions about Monroe and requests to send her photos, the situation changed dramatically. The blond woman, better known as a fashion model, appeared at parties in Hollywood for some time as a sex bait. She walked through the studio without stockings, in very low-cut outfits, to the cheerful cheers of the employees. Her mere appearance caused a furore among the male half of the film fraternity, while women tried to show her contempt, behind which was hidden poorly disguised envy. It seemed that in her gait, in herself, there was hidden a deliberate sexual arousal.

This is how the viewer saw her in episodic roles in the films “Give Me Back My Wife”, “Nest of Love”, “Let’s Get Married” - there she appeared exclusively in a bathing suit, tennis shorts or an openly low-cut evening dress.

Without yet openly recognizing her acting talent, even the popular magazine Colliers published an article about Monroe, “Fashion Model of 1951 in Hollywood.”

At the same time, the blonde received an offer to play in the film “The Demon Wakes Up at Night,” where she again had to captivate the audience with revealing outfits. However, this time it was about the main role in a feature film produced by the RKO film studio. But here too, fate played a cruel joke on her. Marilyn Monroe was to play a crazy governess who lived in a New York hotel with a tiny child. She wanted to kill the baby because, for some incomprehensible reason, she mistook for his father a airline pilot who lived in this hotel during his vacation. The scenario, which included some kind of psychoanalysis, was a major milestone for Marilyn: she was no longer a sexy blonde, “she was a sick woman, suffering from delusions of destruction.”

As if having felt all the emotional pain of the heroine and easily transferred it to herself, Monroe suddenly became too constrained on the set, almost paralyzed.

“I’m so scared that it seems like I have both left legs.”

Was she afraid of experiencing a similar nightmare in the film herself? Or did the plot remind her too much of her own life? Or maybe she had a presentiment that a new scandal was about to break out in her life? By the way, the scandal really didn’t take long to happen.

When the filming of the film was completed, the story that has already been described above took place - the story associated with the appearance on the printing market of a calendar with a nude Marilyn. Photographer Tom Kelly sold the photographs of naked Marilyn he took in 1949 to the Western Lithograph Company for a series of calendars. And then one of them, on the eve of 1952, with Monroe’s body, gained unprecedented popularity among ordinary people; boys and men hung the calendar on the walls of their bedrooms, garages, and workshops.

And while the bosses of the film studio scolded the blonde for her carelessness and disruption of the film’s distribution, Norman Krasna, one of the film’s producers, found a great way out of the situation and said:

“This scandalous calendar will make a movie star out of Miss Monroe!” Let it sell out, and don’t deny that she posed for it, but on the contrary, talk about it at all street corners!

So the talk about breaking the contract with Marilyn and stopping the filming of the film “Night Fight” with her participation, fortunately, turned out to be unfounded. The distribution of the film “The Demon Wakes Up at Night” was also saved.

* * *

By the time the film was released, Monroe was no longer an ordinary simpleton, seeking only to brilliantly play her hips in front of a crowd of millions, confident that this was the meaning of her life.

Back in 1951, twenty-five-year-old Marilyn enrolled in the evening faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles, choosing literature and art history (she was interested in Renaissance art). Fellow students and teachers who knew her claim that she went to classes in a modest dress and looked like “a girl who had just left the monastery.”

At the same time, the sexy blonde, who perfectly played the role of a “nun” in an unfamiliar environment (perhaps even her true role), continued to work hard on her acting skills. Without telling Natasha Lytes anything, Marilyn began taking additional lessons from Mikhail Chekhov, the nephew of the great Russian writer and student of Stanislavsky. Mikhail Chekhov “revealed the secrets of the Moscow Art Theater to his students.” It is known that in the last months of her life, Marilyn would voice her sincere desire to erect a monument to Mikhail Chekhov. Natasha Lytes, who had long become Marilyn’s shadow, learned about the “betrayal” and became furious:

– What else do you need to learn, I taught you everything.

“Art,” Marilyn answered with dignity.

Shortly before her death, in an interview, Monroe called Chekhov her idol, saying that he was “the man who showed me that I actually have talent and that I need to develop it.” She also cited one of her conversations with the master, in which she confessed to Chekhov:

“I want to be an artist, not an erotic whim.” I don't want to be presented to the public as a celluloid sexual enhancer. For the first few years I was quite happy with this. But now a lot has changed.

* * *

During these same years, two important people appeared in Monroe's life. One of them was journalist Rupert Allan. Having met the actress, Rupert was struck by her erudition and intelligence as a sincerely inquisitive person. He will note that he was struck by a photograph of the Italian actress Eleonora Duse that hung in Monroe’s room. Within a few days of their close communication, Allan turned into Marilyn’s consultant in the field of art. In the future, he was destined to become her press agent and friend for life.

In the same year of 1951, when she made her breakthrough in cinema, Marilyn moved to a more luxurious apartment in a new building on Beverly Hills - the “hill of fame”, where only movie stars lived. Thanks to her first real success and move, the actress met real estate agent David Marsh. Now she “became restless and was ready to move every week,” and her new friend literally pursued her, offering more and more new apartments. Usually she lived alone, but sometimes teacher Natasha Laites lived with her; In the 50s, Monroe's confidante was a young actress whom Marilyn had met at a charity baseball game several years earlier. The new girlfriend's name was Shelley Winters. Women could calmly share love stories and complain about unfair fate. Sometimes they looked at photographs of unmarried actors in the Academic Directory of Actors and figured out which of them they could lead a family life with. On weekends, they developed their own routine: in the mornings, the young actresses listened to classical music and had intelligent conversations.

According to Winters, Marilyn felt so unprotected almost all the time, she was so lacking in attention that she literally followed her around, not leaving her alone in the bathroom or anywhere else. Winters admitted:

- As soon as she retired to the toilet, she already thought that you had disappeared forever and left her alone forever. She even opened the door to check if you were there. In essence, she was a small child...

Chapter 16
Elia Kazan. "Blonde from head to toe"

If we remember the episode when Marilyn first saw the skinny, awkward figure of Arthur Miller, we remember that at that moment Miller was having an emotional conversation with a short man named Elia Kazan.

Elia Kazan, simply nicknamed “Gedge” among his friends, at forty-one years old was already a prominent figure in American show business. Kazan was both an actor and a director; His greatest success was brought to him by the film A Streetcar Named Desire, “one of his outstanding creations.”

Born on the outskirts of the Turkish city of Istanbul, he became one hundred percent American, renowned as a leading film director and making a significant contribution to the development of American cinema.

They say that one day a certain filmmaker suggested that Elia Kazan change his surname to another, more sonorous one. “It would be better if your name was Cezanne!” - he suggested, to which Kazan noted that Cezanne is the name of an outstanding French artist who is world famous. He, not at all embarrassed, answered:

– Make at least one good film, and not a single soul will even remember this guy!

In 1951, he married playwright Molly Thacher and they had four children. Despite the fact that there is a lot of evidence about their romance, Elia Kazan himself is not one of those who spread or fuel rumors and gossip about intimacy with the blonde star. But Marilyn Monroe herself was not shy about this connection. And she confessed to her photographers and agents about her intimate relationship with the director. Both Marilyn's then-agent Allen Bernheim and another agent Milt Ebbins were privy to this secret. Both of them participated in affairs, covering for Marilyn when her lover was with his wife at official events.

Young fans of the star

Alain Bernheim recalled:

“What was unusual was that Marilyn repeated what Kazan said to her, and as if these ideas were born in her own head. I knew Kazan very well and understood that such thoughts came from him. She absorbed everything, memorized word for word what he said about love, acting and politics.

The fragile blonde turned out to be a very smart woman, absorbing like a sponge all the lessons that accomplished men taught her. Her desire for self-improvement was too strong.

One of the writers noted: “For Marilyn, friendship with Kazan undoubtedly meant the injection of a hefty dose of radical political views. Kazan was once a member of the Communist Party.

In 1952, the year he met Marilyn, before a congressional committee investigating un-American activities, he admitted his past affair, to the irritation of his friends and colleagues.”

By the way, it was under Elia Kazan that Marilyn met her future husband Miller, and it was Miller’s photo that hung in Marilyn’s room for many years. But next to him there was also a photo... of Elia Kazan. Perhaps the blonde collector was meditating on the men she liked, attracting her dream of falling into their arms and arousing their genuine interest.

Almost immediately after meeting the director, Marilyn was invited to a party hosted by Charlie Feldman, Marilyn's agent and Kazan's neighbor. The director was also present at the same party.

On MM's birthday

Returning home at four o'clock in the morning, the blonde, taking off her shoe and wiggling her big toe, loudly boasted to her friend Natasha Lytes:

– I met a man, Natasha, and this is something! See my thumb? He sat and held it in his hands. I want to say that I was sitting on the sofa bed, and he was also sitting on it and holding my finger. You know, it was a thrill!

* * *

In the same 1952, Marilyn began starring in the film “Monkey Tricks” with Cary Grant. On the set she noticed one young man - an aspiring actor of about twenty.

It turned out that the dark, handsome Greek Niko Minardos had recently arrived from Athens to study acting. The guy became a student at the University of California, Los Angeles. The training course included taking a film production class at the 20th Century-Fox studio. They met among the Fox sets. From then on, a love affair between Monroe and Minardos began, which lasted about seven months. Then they saw each other from time to time until her death. It is known that the actor later became a successful producer and did not like to talk about their connection with the Hollywood celebrity.

At the same time, in the spring of 1952, the well-known hype with the calendar began, ending with a wide advertising campaign. At the same time, Life magazine wrote for the first time that at last there had appeared “an amazingly gorgeous girl who will not leave a single person in the world indifferent, and from now on everyone will rush to the cinema box office.”

On June 1, 1952, Monroe turned twenty-six; The blonde “from head to toe” (as she deigned to joke) received mountains of gifts, armfuls of roses and a heap of congratulatory telegrams from the Hollywood elite on her birthday. They say that that evening the movie star wanted to dine alone, but she had a long telephone conversation with a man. His name was not Elia Kazan. The star spoke with Di Maggio, a man who received the enthusiastic nickname “The Last Hero” from the sports public and journalists.

Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan paired with Marlene Dietrich

Television version of the play at the N.V. Gogol Theater.

Teleplay based on the play by Arthur Miller, translated by Alexei Simonov.

The play is dedicated to the unsuccessful marriage of Arthur Miller and.

Three years after Monroe's death, Arthur Miller wrote the play After the Fall, dedicated to his unsuccessful marriage to the actress. This was a critical look at the actress; the play “stuck out” the nervousness and instability of Monroe’s character. At the Paris premiere of the play After the Fall, Miller was booed and pelted with eggs. Marilyn was loved too far beyond the borders of America - after the films “Bus Stop” and “Some Like It Hot” (“Some Like It Hot”) she gained worldwide fame.

The most recent film, George Cukor's "Can't Do It Anymore," was never completed; Fox Studios broke the contract with Monroe. The producers, after watching the footage, said that Monroe plays as if in slow motion and this has a soporific effect on the viewer. The actress could not pay the huge penalties due to constant lateness to filming and business meetings.

On August 4, 1962, the actress was found dead in her room. She looked terrible. The hair was not dyed, the fingernails and toenails were not cut. It was obvious that Marilyn died in severe depression.

There are many theories about Monroe's death. Some believe that she was poisoned, others that she was killed. The most scandalous version is the murder of Marilyn Monroe on the orders or even with the direct participation of US President John F. Kennedy and Justice Secretary Robert Kennedy: the actress had information about their contacts with the mafia, and she threatened to reveal these secrets to the public.

Marilyn Monroe was not an actress marked by God with great talent; her vocal abilities were also not brilliant. Her figure was far from ideal. But…

Marilyn Monroe has become a myth. This is a myth about a woman, symbolizing female beauty, naturalness and inexpressible sexuality. What is a myth? What is a star?

In our country, a star is called any artist who plays the main role. But a star is a sociological concept. This is a person from whom they take an example. They took Monroe as an example. They dyed their hair “like Marilyn Monroe.” Dressed like her. It is curious that when Marilyn wore a simple cotton dress in one film, the whole world began to wear cotton. They talked and laughed like her... Marilyn Monroe became a symbol of America and a symbol of feminine charm in general. She had a wonderful and bewitching combination of sinfulness and purity and not a bit of vulgarity. There was something indescribable in her appearance, in her nature. Such women were never born again.

Many years will pass, and old Arthur Miller, with a wife and children, will go upstairs in his apartment to a small studio to watch films with Monroe... Marilyn emanated that seductiveness that drove millions of people crazy. Even the unreal Marilyn attracted her to herself like a magnet.