Free The Genius and the Goddess by Jeffrey Meyers

who worked with her getting angry,
because she was certainly responsible for slowing down the work. But
she was very responsive." She was a minor if promising actress, but
the publicity generated by the nude calendar forced the studio to
tolerate her costly and unprofessional behavior. A newsman on the
set, concentrating on the hottest story, exclaimed, "We don't want to
speak with Stanwyck. We know everything about her. We want to talk
to the girl with big tits." 12
    Marilyn seemed more at ease on screen in the comedy Monkey
Business , her third movie of 1952, but did not get on with the
director, Howard Hawks. Physically impressive (like Huston) Hawks
was "six-feet-three, broad shouldered, slim-hipped, soft-spoken,
confident in manner, conservative in dress, and utterly distinguished
overall." Born in Indiana, the son of a wealthy paper manufacturer,
Hawks was educated at Exeter and graduated from Cornell in 1917
with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was a lieutenant in
the Army Air Corps in World War I, and after the war built airplanes
and a racing car that won the Indianapolis 500. In 1922 he came
to Hollywood, where screenwriterNiven Busch found him impressively
distant and formidably frigid: "He gave me his reptilian glare.
The man had ice-cold blue eyes and the coldest of manners. He
was like that with everyone – women, men, whatever. He was
remote; he came from outer space. He wore beautiful clothes. He
spoke slowly in a deep voice. He looked at you with these frozen
eyes."
    This haughty patrician directed the absurd and labored Monkey
Business , in which a chimpanzee in a research lab accidentally concocts
an elixir of youth that makesCary Grant and Ginger Rogers behave
like children. Marilyn has the decorative but unrewarding role ofCharles Coburn's secretary. In one scene the seventy-five-year-old
Coburn "had to chase and squirt Marilyn with a siphon of soda, a
moment he approached with glee. Any seeming reluctance, he later
explained, was only his indecision about where on Marilyn's . . . um . . . ample proportions to squirt the soda." Despite her small part, Marilyn
also caused trouble on this picture and forced Hawks to shoot around
her when she failed to show up. The problem, as everyone later discovered,
was her infected appendix, which she had removed, in late
April 1952, as soon as her work was completed.
    No doctor performing an appendectomy would excise her reproductive
organs. But Marilyn, who hoped to have children, taped a
pleading note to her abdomen before the operation:
    Dr. Rabwin – most important to Read Before operation. Cut
as little as possible. I know it seems vain but that doesn't really
enter into it. The fact that I'm a woman is important and means
much to me.
    Save please (I can't ask enough) what you can – I'm in your
hands. You have children and must know what it means – please
Dr. Rabwin – I know somehow you will!
    Thank you – thank you – thank you. For God's sake Dear
Doctor No ovaries removed – please again do whatever you can
to prevent large scars.
    Thanking you with all my heart.
    Marilyn Monroe.
    The formidable Hawks, mistaking her pain and fear for stupidity,
was even more critical than Fritz Lang. Hawks considered Marilyn
"'so goddamn dumb' that she was wary and afraid of him. Still, Hawks
admitted that she did a fine job in the film and that 'the camera liked
her.'" Cary Grant, like Celeste Holm and many other colleagues, was
surprised by her meteoric rise to fame the following year: "I had no
idea she would become a big star. If she had something different from
any other actress, it wasn't apparent at the time. She seemed very shy
and quiet. There was something sad about her." 13 To the other actors
Marilyn could seem ordinary, unresponsive and apparently "dumb,"
but on camera she seemed to glow.
    In Don't Bother to Knock (1952) Marilyn had a spectacularly unsuitable
role that revealed her inability to play a dramatic part. She gave
an unconvincingly