“None whatsoever,” Marilyn countered with a little laugh that she hoped didn’t sound too forced. “The rumors that I’m leaving Arthur for Nikita Khrushchev are just so much borscht.”
This made the boys laugh — even the hawkish enemy — and distracted them from digging deeper. For all intents and purposes, her marriage of three years to the brilliant playwright was over. She knew it; Arthur knew it. But the Millers had decided to keep up the pretense, through the filming of her next movie — and probably that of the following project, which he really was writing for her. Arthur believed she was ill-served by most of her scripts, and he still loved her enough to want to leave her with that gift, anyway.
Now other movie stars were arriving in through the commissary door, and when the attention of the newshounds turned their way, Marilyn slipped inside while the press swarmed new all-star victims, following them into the “Cafe de Paris,” as well.
Bob Hope, natty in a light gray suit, was bantering with his on-screen cohort, Bing Crosby, attired causally in a beige ban-lon shirt and yellow cardigan, the ever-present pipe in one hand. Several reporters cornered them, and Hope made a loud nasal remark about maybe making The Road to Moscow with Bing.
Several other reporters honed in on Marilyn’s nemesis, Elizabeth Taylor, those fat, bulgy bosoms of hers popping out of a low-cut emerald-green cocktail dress. Marilyn just knew that those were real emeralds around the munchkin’s throat, watching as the woman made her entrance with lapdog Eddie Fisher on her arm, Fisher looking bewildered, nervous, uncomfortable.
Almost at once the press rushed past Taylor and the singer to another woman who had just stepped in through the door: Debbie Reynolds, looking cute as the teenage beauty queen she’d been not so long ago, petite and nicely shapely in a blue and white polka-dot dress.
Marilyn liked — and felt sorry for — the pretty, perky Reynolds, who had just lost her husband to Liz. Debbie had always been friendly to Marilyn, and there was no rivalry between them. Reynolds was no threat.
As the reporters converged on Reynolds, the spurned wife and mother held her head high, smiling, even laughing. If Debbie was acting, Marilyn thought, it was a damn fine job of it — Lee Strasberg would have approved. The press obviously adored Debbie and were in her corner. And that pleased Marilyn, who hoped they would be as compassionate to her, the next time tragedy struck.
As the commissary began filling up — bobbing with more famous faces than the Hollywood wax museum, and alive with the chatter and laughter of dueling egos — Marilyn managed to catch Frank Sinatra’s eye.
In a sharp gray suit, the singer — who had briefly been her lover, after the break-up with Joe — threw Marilyn a dazzling smile, his blue eyes twinkling, obviously happy to see her. She adored him, at least when he was in a good mood; depressed, he was no prize. But she considered him a genius in his way, and knew what kind of pressure he endured, and so cut him all the slack in the world.
The statuesque, flat-chested redhead on his arm, however, was not happy to see her. Marilyn nodded at Juliet Prowse — who had a part in Frank’s current movie, Can-Can — and bestowed the dancer her warmest smile. No sense in starting a feud.
Marilyn knew she could have Frankie, any time she wanted him. But even if she could have put up with his mood swings, she couldn’t handle his hypocritically old-world view of matrimony. He’d told her that he only wanted a wife who wasn’t in show-business… someone who would stay at home and take care of him and the kids.
And she had said to him, “Hmmm… didn’t you already have that once?”
Sinatra hadn’t talked to her for two months, after that; such a child. Nobody could pout like Frankie. But, also, nobody could sing like him…
Anyway, for the moment at least, Sinatra served her best via her phonograph.
Relieved to be out of the clutches of the press — she hadn’t always felt about them that way, there’d been a time when she longed for such media attention — Marilyn stopped occasionally for a chat with the likes of Judy Garland or Louis Jourdan, as she ambled her way to the front of the room, where a long banquet table was elevated on a small riser, setting itself apart from the tables on the floor.
While she was not to be seated at the head table with Khrushchev, the other dignitaries, and studio bosses, Marilyn had been carefully positioned at the round table nearest the premier.
As the only Hollywood star the premier had wished to meet, Marilyn had been told by Skouras that she would have the “best seat in the house.”
“You bet I will,” she’d said.
And Skouras had said, “No, no, not that kind of seat”; he had placed her thus, “so the Russian, he can gaze upon your beauty.” The rest of the actors and actresses were scattered around, more stars than in any nighttime sky, but out of her immediate orbit. She had insisted that no other screen personalities, particularly female ones, be seated with her; the men at her table were writers and directors, including Walter Lang, whose Can-Can set would be visited later by the guests.
Marilyn noticed Henry Fonda, sloppily dressed, seated at a back table, facing the wall, legs spread lazily over the next chair, sullenly listening to a transistor radio, probably a ballgame. She had heard, through the studio grapevine, that Fonda had been required to come — even though he despised Khrushchev; this had surprised Marilyn, at first, since Fonda was openly left-leaning in a time when that was dangerous. She’d admired him for that, and maybe this bad behavior today came from Fonda feeling dictators like Khrushchev gave leftists a bad name.
Even so, Marilyn felt this was short-sighted, even immature. How was America supposed to thaw the cold war with bad manners like that?
After all, Hollywood stars were America’s royalty. She believed that; she had aspired since childhood to such a throne. And with that came responsibility… from small things like being thoughtful to your fans, to bigger things like taking meaningful political stands, and improving yourself, your mind, your craft.
Marilyn stood quietly by her chair, feeling a tingle from the excitement in the air, drawing on it to sustain her movie-star persona. Five hundred people had been invited to the luncheon, honoring the premier of Russia. In this room were some of the most important, influential people in Hollywood — not just the royalty of stars, but the powers behind the thrones.
Suddenly, the crowd hovering about the front door stirred… and made a pathway, like God parting the Red Sea (or anyway Cecil B. DeMille) as the most influential, important person in this room trumped all of the show business bigshots.
Nikita Khrushchev had entered.
He was a short, rotund man, bald, except for a silver fringe of hair rimming elf-like pointed ears. Round-faced, with an upturned nose and several chins, his eyes hard black marbles, the dictator seemed peeved, as if he’d been turned down for a job as a department store Santa. He was wearing a tan suit, well-tailored, a cream-colored shirt, silk chocolate-colored tie, and brown wing-tipped shoes.
Flanking Khrushchev, an entourage of perhaps twenty-five formed a protective, moving barrier: bureaucrats, agents from the FBI, CIA, and Russia’s own uniformed KGB, and what appeared to Marilyn to be some of the premier’s family members.
Finally, trailing behind the entourage came the mayor of Los Angeles — she couldn’t recall his name, only that she hadn’t voted for him — his lips a thin tight line, like a cut in his face that was refusing to heal. Frowning, Marilyn wondered if perhaps something had gone wrong at the airport, because Khrushchev was scowling back at His Honor, eyebrows knitted together, thick bottom lip protruding like a pouting child’s.