The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe - Part 2

Share on Facebook

In part one, author Jeffery Meyers, author of TheGenius and Goddess - Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, University of Illinois Press, tells the story of how the Miller and Monroe 1956 wedding surprised the world and captured its attention.

MG: Was Monroe supportive of Miller’s bold stance with HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), or was she worried it might hurt her career?

JM: Marilyn’s support of Miller during his confrontation with HUAC was her finest hour. With Miller’s agreement, she refused to pose for a publicity photo with the HUAC chairman in return for setting him free.

Meyers writes in The Genius and Goddess, “ The HUAC investigation put intense and unremitting pressure on both Miller and Marilyn just before and during the first two years of their difficult marriage….Marilyn’s loyalty during this crisis was their finest hour and they would never be as close and as happy again.”

MG: Miller’s reconciliation with director Elia Kazan, who had named names before HUAC, to me, seems inconsistent with the way he lived his life. Why did they renew their relationship after the HUAC hearings?

JM: Kazan was personally loathsome, but a brilliant director. Contrary to his idealistic principles, Miller forgave Kazan because he needed him.

MG: Did he spend the rest of his life obsessed with his relationship with her?

JM: He was obsessed with her for the rest of his life and wrote about her, for fifty years, in many works from After the Fall to Finishing the Picture.

Meyers also writes in the book, “In his work, Miller often returns to the most painful period of his life: his failure to unite the genius and the goddess, intelligence and beauty, fame and celebrity.”

MG: Was she a victim of sexism?

JM: I don’t see her as a victim of the sexism of that era. She recklessly used sex to advance her career and destroyed herself. She didn’t have to be a prostitute and have all those abortions. Miller certainly knew she was wounded--that was part of her attraction--and tried very hard to help her.

MG: Do young people today know who she is or has her popularity declined like many other stars of that era?

JM: Television and DVDs—as well as T-shirts, coffee cups and Warhol prints—keep her films and image alive, and she’s still one of the most famous and popular actresses of her time. In October 1999 Christie’s auctioned off her mostly cheap and tacky possessions for $13.5 million.

MG: You write at the end of your book:"Her light, though extinct, continues to shine."What do present day critics think of her work?

JM: She was excellent in small roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, and great as the star of Some Like It Hot and The Misfits. Many people still love her rather foolish comedies and musicals.

MG: How about Miller? What were his gifts? Was he good at relationships with women throughout his life?

JM: Miller was a great dramatist in All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and A View from the Bridge. Timebends is a first-rate autobiography. After Marilyn and during the time I knew him, he had a very solid, forty-year marriage to her complete antithesis—the intellectual Austrian photographer Inge Morath.

MG: Tell us about your upcoming projects:

JM:. I’ve just completed, for Broadway Books, a biography of the fascinating John Huston, whose life is as interesting as his films. A chapter on “The Making of Huston’s Freud” will appear in the December Kenyon Review. I’ve recently discovered some love letters by Hemingway, and a lot of new information about Sylvia Plath’s mysterious lover, and will publish essays about them in Raritan and the Yale Review this summer and fall.

Please visit your library to learn more about Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. Here are some titles:

The Genius and the Goddess:Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe
by Jeffrey Meyers, University of Illinois Press

The Misfits: Story of a Shoot
Arthur Miller, Serge Toubiana, Eve Arnold, Magnum Photos
This book tells the story about the making of the film The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston and starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Photographers Eve Arnold, Cornell Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Ernst Haas, Erich Hartmann, Inge Morath and Dennis Stock of the Magnum photography agency covered events both on and off the set of The Misfits.

Timebends: A Life
by Arthur Miller
The autobiography of the playwright covering his childhood, successes and failures in the theatre, and the sources and evolution of his plays and their productions, as well as his personal life.

The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller, Robert A Martin, Steven R Centola

Arthur Miller: A Critical Study
by Christopher Bigsby
Christopher Bigsby explores the entirety of Arthur Miller's work, including plays, poetry, fiction and films, in this comprehensive and study.

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
by J. Randy Taraborreli

Marilyn: A Biography of Marilyn Monroe
by Norman Mailer

Also of interest:

The Misfits (DVD)

Images of Monroe and Miller from Life Magazine

Photo: University of Illinois Press