Free The Genius and the Goddess by Jeffrey Meyers Page B

and imitates her peculiar mannerisms.
Her rich but nerdy fiancé, Tommy Noonan, ironically praises
her "wonderful willingness to learn." At the end of the movie, in a
spirited exchange with Noonan's disapproving father, she seems serious
but is not afraid to make fun of herself and allow him to mock her:
    FATHER : They told me you were stupid. You don't seem stupid to
me.
    MARILYN : I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't
like it. Except Gus. He's always been interested in my brains.
    FATHER : He's not such a fool as all that.
    While making Gentlemen Marilyn formed a rare friendship with
her co-star. "Jane Russell, a down-home gal with no pretences or
complexes despite her status, welcomed Marilyn at once and gained
her confidence personally and professionally. She stuck with her
endlessly through rehearsals and privately confided to her about life
as the wife of a professional athlete, as Russell's husband, Bob Waterfield,
was the Los Angeles Rams' quarterback" – and Marilyn was planning
to marry Joe DiMaggio. She needed Russell's crucial support in this
demanding role. Under the hot lights and with millions of dollars
riding on her performance, she had to dance without losing her breath
and, at the same time, hit her musical notes, her camera marks and
her key light. Though Gentlemen was one of the most popular musicals
of the 1950s, Marilyn felt justly aggrieved that Russell earned
$200,000 for the picture and she – the blonde whom the gentlemen
preferred – got only $18,000.
    In the comedy How to Marry a Millionaire , three attractive women
rent a New York penthouse and plan to trap three millionaires. The
script of Millionaire alludes toBetty Grable's husband, the bandleader
Harry James, and toLauren Bacall's husband, "the man in The African
Queen ," but Marilyn had no husband to enhance her fame. The women's
apartment is on Sutton Place, where Marilyn actually lived at the time.
She arrives in her first scene wearing a fur muff, drinks her favorite
champagne, and is breathy, naïve and excited. Too vain to wear glasses,
especially when hunting for a husband, she has only one bit of business,
constantly crashing into doors and furniture. The near-sighted
joke is not funny. At the end of the movie, she gets on the wrong
plane and sits next to David Wayne, who's on his way to unromantic
Kansas City. The bespectacled Wayne has been beaten up by the crooked
colleague who's stolen his check instead of sending it to the IRS, and
Marilyn, for no apparent reason, marries her battered beau.
    All three gold-diggers, including the "brainy" and sophisticated
Bacall (who has the best part, but with third billing), are incredibly
dumb. This movie suggests that pretty, empty-headed women are irresistibly
attractive and desirable. Bacall mistakes the millionaire Cameron
Mitchell for a gas-pump attendant merely because he's not wearing
a tie. She deceives the elderly William Powell by declaring that she
loves him, but cruelly jilts him at the altar to marry the younger
Mitchell. The plot is hopelessly contrived, the male characters equally
stereotyped, and all the women get married suddenly and unexpectedly.
The picture could have been called "How Not to Marry a
Millionaire." The forest ranger, Grable's husband, is poor; Wayne's
money must be used to pay his huge tax debt; Mitchell is the only
rich man.
    In a scene cut from Millionaire , Marilyn is supposed to answer a
phone call while having breakfast in bed. For some reason, she became
hopelessly confused about the sequence, drank the coffee before it
had been poured and answered the phone before it rang. Bacall,
though sympathetic to Marilyn, was brutally frank about her faults:
"She was really very selfish but she was so sad you couldn't dislike
her. You just had to feel sorry for her, her whole life was a fuck-up."
Bacall also recorded an incident in which Marilyn was either ironically
witty or hopelessly dim. When Bacall brought her little son, Stevie,
onto the