“There was an unlikely quality to it, sure, from a cultural point of view, if you want to call it that,” remarked playwright Arthur Miller about his marriage to Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe during a 1987 interview with BBC’s Alan Yentob. He acknowledged the public perception of their union as improbable—him, the esteemed, cerebral playwright, and her, the iconic sex-symbol movie star.
Miller believed that the very “inappropriateness” of their relationship underscored its appropriateness. He felt he saw the true Norma Jean behind the persona of Marilyn Monroe, a person whom the press would not allow to be anything more than a superficial symbol. The media treated her as “some kind of dancing bear,” incapable of having interests beyond sex appeal, showing off, or making frivolous remarks to newspapers.
The couple first met in the early 1950s in Los Angeles, introduced by Miller’s friend, director Elia Kazan. At that time, Miller was already a celebrated playwright, known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Death of a Salesman,” while Monroe was gaining recognition for her captivating roles in films like “The Asphalt Jungle” and “All About Eve.”
At the time, Arthur Miller was married to his first wife, Mary Grace Slattery, with whom he had two children. They had married soon after graduating from the University of Michigan, and she had supported him financially as he pursued a career in playwriting. Monroe had also been married twice before meeting Miller. Her first marriage, just after her 16th birthday, was to James Dougherty, which lasted four years. She later had a brief marriage to baseball star Joe DiMaggio, which ended after nine months.
Miller and Monroe’s connection was immediate and potent. Arthur saw the vulnerability behind the Marilyn Monroe persona, believing she was a kindred spirit. “She was sensuous and life-loving, it seemed, while at the center of it was a darkness and tragedy that I didn’t know the dimensions of at that time. And the same thing was true of me. So it wasn’t that crazy,” he told Yentob.
Reflecting on their first encounter, Miller wrote, “The sight of her was something like pain, and I knew that I must flee or walk into a doom beyond all knowing. With all her radiance she was surrounded by a darkness that perplexed me.”
Monroe, too, seemed spellbound by Miller’s intelligence and his ability to see the real her. She reportedly described meeting him as “like running into a tree. You know, like a cool drink when you’ve had a fever.”
Monroe had endured a traumatic upbringing. Born to a single, mentally ill mother who was incapable of caring for her, she spent her childhood bouncing between orphanages and foster homes, leaving deep emotional scars. Miller described her struggle as a “psychological struggle against abandonment, against abuse; in our terms today, she would have been thought of as an abused child.”
Hard-working and ambitious, Monroe had to continually strive for recognition of her talent, often being dismissed for her sex appeal. Miller likely represented the stability and understanding she had always yearned for.
“I took her at her own evaluation, which very few people did,” Miller said. “I thought she was a very serious girl, way back. And that she was struggling, I thought, because she was generally seen as a very light-headed, if not silly, human being. That’s because I loved her, so I took that attitude towards her. And so, the best of her she thought was in my eye. Therefore, the hope she had was with me, at that time of her life.”
Throughout Monroe’s brief, tempestuous marriage to Joe DiMaggio and the disintegration of Miller’s own relationship, they continued to correspond. By 1955, when Monroe moved to New York City to study acting, they were in the midst of a full-blown affair.
‘Red scare’
At this time, Senator McCarthy’s witch hunt for communists was in full swing in the US. Thousands of people were being accused of being potential communist sympathizers or “un-American,” resulting in them being blacklisted from their careers. A few years earlier, Miller had written his play “The Crucible,” an emotional response to the “Red Scare” that was sweeping the country, and he was now being investigated by the FBI due to allegations of communist sympathies.
Miller was subpoenaed to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and was found guilty of contempt for refusing to reveal the names of suspected communists. His friend Elia Kazan was also called to testify, but unlike Miller, Kazan “named names,” provoking lifelong scorn from some of his contemporaries. When Kazan received his honorary Oscar in 1999, some attendees, such as Kirk Douglas, resolutely refused to applaud.
The film studio urged Monroe to end her relationship with Miller, but she refused. She even went with him to Washington to speak in his favor at the contempt hearings. Her intervention is thought to have contributed to the later overturning of his conviction in 1957.
After their respective divorces were finalized, Miller and Monroe were married in a four-minute civil ceremony in New York in 1956. This was followed a few days later by a full Jewish wedding, for which Monroe converted to her new husband’s faith. Monroe, who had never known her real father, was given away by her acting teacher, Lee Strasberg.
Despite their strong connection, the clash between their lifestyles and aspirations soon became apparent. Monroe faced pressure to conform to Miller’s expectations of a “good” wife. Not long after they were married, Miller told journalists that she would only make one film every 18 months or so. When asked what she would do for the rest of the time, he replied, “She will be my wife. That’s a full-time job.” Monroe disagreed, and shortly after, the newlyweds left for England to film “The Prince and the Showgirl.” The production was challenging, with Monroe repeatedly clashing with star and director Laurence Olivier.
Monroe felt that Miller’s friends were critical of her, a feeling exacerbated when she came across his notebook during the filming. In it, he had expressed doubts about their marriage and confessed that he sometimes found her embarrassing.
Despite their desire to start a family, Monroe and Miller struggled to have children. Their first pregnancy was ectopic, and Monroe suffered a miscarriage while filming “Some Like It Hot” in 1959. She had already been using drugs to manage her anxiety before they married, and the relentless press spotlight, coupled with personal insecurities and past traumas, exacerbated her struggles with addiction. In 1957, she was briefly hospitalized due to a barbiturate overdose.
The fractures in their marriage became more pronounced during the turbulent production of the film “The Misfits” in 1961. Miller had written the screenplay for the film, based on his own short story, to showcase Monroe’s range in a dramatic role. However, the production was fraught with challenges. Filmed in the physically demanding heat of the Nevada desert, the shoot was hard for everyone. The film’s other star, Clark Gable, died from a heart attack at the age of 59 in November 1960, before its release.
For Monroe, the situation was particularly difficult. Miller had grown close to German-born photographer Inge Morath, who he met on the set of the film, and he and Monroe were reportedly barely speaking. Her drug use had escalated to the point where the film’s director, John Huston, shut down production in August 1960 to send her to a hospital to detox.
“Marilyn was ill, physically, she was distraught psychologically. Everything was coming to a crisis, at the same time [she was] having to do the first dramatic role she had ever tried to do,” Miller reflected. “Everything was coming together in an explosion, so that the picture was taking months longer than it should have taken and she was simply worn out. As anybody would be, we were shooting in 110-degree heat some days. It was a Turkish bath up there on that dry lake, unbelievable. So, anyway, it was the end of our marriage. It was also a terrible physical time for her.”
In 1961, after less than five years of marriage, Miller and Monroe were granted a divorce on grounds of “incompatibility.” “The Misfits” would be Monroe’s last completed film. Her divorce accelerated a decline marked by erratic behavior, alcohol, and drug abuse. On August 5, 1962, at the age of 36, she was found dead in her Los Angeles home, her death officially attributed to suicide by drug overdose. Miller married Inge Morath a month later.
Reflecting on their relationship later in his autobiography “Timebends,” Miller described their marriage as “the best of times, the worst of times.” “The great thing about her for me was that the struggle was valiant. She was a very courageous human being and she didn’t give up, really, I guess, until the end,” he remarked.
