Free Marilyn & Me by Lawrence Schiller

you, Larry?” she said. “You’re a happily married one-eyed photographer who got me another
Life
cover.”
    I liked her teasing, but I was focused on business. I wanted to get her to agree to the deal.
    “
Life
started the ball rolling, but the front and back of
Playboy
will make more waves,” I said. And then a new inspiration hit me. “And what if we print the front and back covers on clear plastic, like a see-through thing that you could peel off and then put together in a frame, so you could see the whole of you, like two eight-by-ten photos in a clear plastic frame? That would be pretty spectacular.”
    “You’re always full of ideas,” Marilyn said, but I couldn’t figure out if she really liked this one.
    “I had an idea for some time also,” she said, and told me that she’d been thinking about making a movie about Jean Harlow and that she had met with Harlow’s mother just that past weekend. “Ever since I was a young girl, I was told I was the next Jean Harlow,” she continued. “Her mothersaid I reminded her of her daughter. You know she was just twenty-six when she died?”
    “I didn’t know,” I confessed.
    “She died of kidney failure,” Marilyn continued.
    “Sad,” I replied.
    Knowing I shouldn’t push Marilyn on the subject of
Playboy
, I left upset without getting an answer.

    Later I would learn that Marilyn had surgery a few days later at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital to alleviate her chronic endometriosis, a condition that caused her abdominal, pelvic, and back pain. She was in and out of the hospital within a day, and on July 25 Fox’s Peter Levathes went to her house. With all the publicity from those swimming pool photographs, along with the enormous outpouring of affection from her fans, he wanted to apologize. He said that Fox had made a huge mistake by firing her from
Something’s Got to Give
. He told her that the studio was dropping the lawsuit against her, and he offered her a new contract, with a raise in salary from $100,000 to $250,000. Dean Martin would be available in October, and Levathes proposed that as a new start date. Knowing that Marilyn liked Jean Negulesco, her
How to Marry a Millionaire
director, he wanted her approval so that the studio could make an offer and replace George Cukor.
    Fox might have been backtracking in its relationshipwith Marilyn, but the studio itself was in turmoil. A few days after he visited Marilyn, Levathes was fired, along with some board members. Darryl F. Zanuck, who looked favorably on Marilyn, was made vice president of 20th Century–Fox, and Marilyn decided to let things settle down at the studio before she agreed to return to the film. Frank Sinatra was singing at the Cal Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, and Marilyn went to see him and to personally thank Dean Martin, who was also there, for sticking up for her when Fox tried to replace her.
    When Marilyn returned to Los Angeles, she saw her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, had Robert Kennedy at her house for dinner, and began thinking about appearing on the front and back covers of
Playboy
.

    On Friday, August 3, I was packing a suitcase for a weekend trip to Palm Springs with Judi and Suzanne when Pat Newcomb called. “It’s not going to happen,” she said curtly. “So you should stop pushing it.”
    “What’s not going to happen?” I asked, playing dumb, but I had a sinking feeling.
    “
Playboy
,” she said. “I’m totally opposed to it. I don’t think Marilyn should do it. You guys have done very well with the pictures, but it’s Marilyn’s life, and she’s got her own problems. Let’s not add any more to them.”
    I didn’t know what to say.
    And then, filling the void, Pat continued. “Let it be,” she said.
    There was no sense trying to change her mind, because it sounded as if she was relaying what Marilyn had told her to say. But I wasn’t ready to give up unless I heard it from Marilyn herself. I decided that before heading off to Palm Springs the next morning,