“Let’s make Marilyn,” she said.
As the make-up artist began his familiar routine, Marilyn was quiet and withdrawn. It was nothing personal. Her mini-conversation with Ralph and dealings with May were all she could manage this morning. She knew Whitey understood that she was conserving her energy. It wouldn’t be until the make-up artist had carefully applied the lipsticks — several different shades for contouring, because her lips were surprisingly fat — that together they would bring to life her creation, “Marilyn Monroe” emerging from Norma Jeane like a butterfly from its cocoon.
Whitey lined Marilyn’s famous mouth with dark red pencil, and even as he was skillfully coloring it in, May entered again, and announced the arrival of hair stylist Sydney Guilarof.
Discovered by Joan Crawford in 1935, the Canadian Guilarof — at age forty-nine — was still the most sought-after hairdresser in Hollywood. And for an event as crucial as today’s, Marilyn insisted on no one but the best.
Marilyn, now in her movie-star persona, bid goodbye to Whitey, and greeted Guilarof — ever dapper in a gray sharkskin suit and silk black tie — with a delighted squeal and outstretched hand.
“I want something different, Sydney,” Marilyn said, wrinkling her upturned nose. “How are the women wearing their hair in Moscow these days?”
“Under a babushka,” he answered dryly.
Marilyn giggled. “Well, that won’t do.”
“I doubt today’s honored guest wants to meet Marilyn Monroe,” the hairdresser opined, “because he’s longing to meet a typical Russian woman.”
“You’re right as always, dear.” She plopped down on the satin chair, facing the mirror. Guilarof removed the towel from her head and ran his fingers expertly, like an intelligent comb, through her thick, damp, naturally curly locks. Out in the bedroom, May was putting on another stack of Frank Sinatra singles.
“Let’s style it straight, with a flip on one side,” Guilarof suggested, his narrowed eyes meeting her wide ones in the mirror.
“Okay!” she said, in the little-girl voice that belied the strong-willed woman possessing it.
While Guilarof began setting the screen queen’s hair in large rollers instead of the usual pin curls, his client coyly asked, “And how is Liz?” She knew the hairdresser had just come from Elizabeth Taylor’s.
“Delightful as always,” he responded. “All of my clients are sheer delights… you know that.”
“I’m sure… Any gray hairs…?”
It was a game she played with Sydney, to get him to talk about his other clients. But no matter how much she cajoled him, or tried to trick him into candor, he never succumbed. Having coifed screen legends from Clara Bow to Doris Day, Guilarof was rigorous about maintaining strict client confidentiality — whether to the press or his other patrons.
“I tell you what, Sid…” And now Marilyn turned her head to look right at him, disrupting his work. “I’ll give you permission to reveal to anyone you like that…” She looked side to side, then leaned toward him conspiratorially. “…I dye my hair.”
He chuckled and, as she turned away, resumed his work.
She grinned cutely at him in the mirror. “Come on, Sid… just one little tidbit.”
Guilarof sighed dramatically. “All right,” he said. “I give up. But just one.”
Marilyn straightened, eyes bright. “Just one.”
He bent and whispered into a perked ear. “After I finished with Elizabeth, working absolutely all of my magic, giving it my very best effort, and in spite of whatever extreme measures I took…” He paused.
Her eyebrows climbed the smooth forehead. “Yes?”
He shrugged. “…she looked simply fabulous.”
Marilyn slapped at him playfully. “You’re lying. She’s a fat, hideous witch and you know it.” And she slumped in the chair, half kidding, but nonetheless not pleased to hear of her competitor’s beauty.
Though she barely knew Taylor personally — just to exchange strained pleasantries with, when they’d attend the same studio function or wind up at the same party — Marilyn disliked her fellow Fox star with an unreasonable intensity. Not so much because of Taylor’s beauty — which didn’t hold a candle to her own, she thought (usually) — but because of the high salary her brunette rival commanded.
Yet who was it that had pulled Twentieth Century’s fat from the fire, time after time? Marilyn Monroe’s movies had kept the studio afloat — despite the bad scripts that were frequently foisted upon her. Even a weak vehicle was strong at the box office, when it had Marilyn in it. Could Liz Taylor have survived River of No Return? Or There’s No Business Like Show Business? Not hardly!
Anyway, that busty little munchkin couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag, and that mannered acting style of hers — well, really!
Marilyn had been crushed when she didn’t get the ripe role of Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She could have torn up the joint in a rich part like that — done a much better job than the stilted Taylor. Even Tennessee Williams himself had admitted as much, when Marilyn cornered him at a party recently.
Anyway, Marilyn oozed sex — whereas Liz Taylor just oozed.
And now La Taylor seemed about to bring the whole goddamn studio to its knees with that exorbitant barge of a picture, Cleopatra, what with her outrageous demands and film-halting illnesses… how could any actress be so unprofessional?
The only reason Twentieth Century Fox remained afloat, at present, was Marilyn’s latest box-office smash, Some Like It Hot.
Marilyn was just pondering what an interesting position this put her in when a knock drew her attention to the reflection of the bathroom doorway in the mirror, where a figure appeared unannounced.
Few men would have dared such a thing — even Arthur or Joe would have waited for May to present them…
But this was — speaking of the devil… that is, the Twentieth Century Fox variety — the president of the studio, Spyros Skouras himself, a tall, imposing, yet fatherly fellow, with thinning white hair and black glasses. The normally cool and collected president seemed quite unnerved.
“Dahling! For once in your young life, you must be on time!” Skouras delivered this lamentation to his star in his trademark Greek accent, which was no thicker than a slab of feta cheese.
“Don’t worry, S. S.,” she said slowly, drawing the words out, again mimicking Sinatra, who from his bedroom corner sang, “Don’t Worry About Me.” “Have I ever let you down?”
Skouras looked skyward, slapped his sides, though not in laughter. “Constantly!”
She gave him a million-dollar pout. “Don’t be mean.”
He shook a scolding finger. “This is big honor, today, young lady — for both of us.”
“I know.”
“World leader. Very important person.”
“Oh yes,” Marilyn nodded. “Almost as important as a movie star, don’t you think?”
Skouras tried not to smile; he was very fond of her, despite the difficulties she brought to the sets of the movies he produced, and she knew how to manipulate him.
“Please,” he said. “For once, my sweetness, my dumpling, hurry up your sweet tushie.”
Her mouth pursed into the famous kiss. “I love it when you talk dirty… Have you looked at those clips yet?”