Marilyn Monroe A Closer Look at the Woman Behind the Myth FULL DOCUMENTARY

23rd of May 1957. It was over. Arm in arm with Arthur Miller, her third and last husband, Marilyn returned to Hollywood. Two years earlier she had fled the great movie studios which had turned her into a household name around the world. Now, here she was, stepping back into line. Yet despite appearances, she had changed. The course of her life had been deeply affected Struck by his boyish looks the first time they were introduced, Marilyn exclaimed, but you're just a kid. So are you, he retorted. She was 27. He was barely 30. Hollywood at around the time this story began. Marilyn was one of the biggest stars of the decade. She shot one film after another. The public worshipped her. But for all that, she was not fulfilled. She felt that Hollywood was determined to teach her nothing. All that mattered was churning out the product, churning out her own words. She was cast in films without even being consulted, given roles that went against her express wishes. Each time she found herself playing the curvaceous blonde, when all she wanted was to become a real actress. 18th of August 1953, commissioned by the magazine Look, Milton Green arrived in Los Angeles. He was the photographer of the moment. He had photographed Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra. Now he had to photograph Marilyn Monroe, the hottest thing in Hollywood since Jean Harlow, according to 20th Century Fox. She was the girl most likely to thaw Alaska, gushed one journalist. The New York Herald Tribune wrote that she could set the night on fire. But from the start, Milton Green refused to treat Marilyn like a sex goddess. With disarming familiarity, he lent her his wife Amy's own red sweater for their first photo shoot. Maybe we should get some tea from the room service. Do you think so? I would. Tea and lemon. How about you? Milton would later say that what first attracted him about Marilyn was her voice. Just tea and lemon for me. No, how about you? I'd already seen so many models and actresses that I felt that nothing could impress me, but I'd never met anyone with such a tone of voice. Marilyn looked at the photos Milton had taken of her and said, you've made me look interesting. Milton Green could leave Los Angeles feeling satisfied. He had succeeded in moving his subject. Marilyn was obsessed with a fear of not being good enough. Nothing could ever reassure her. No praise, no compliment, not even the eulogies of her directors, Henry Hathaway and Billy Wilder. She lived in dread of being appreciated only for her vampish looks. Why are people so obsessed by sex? She asked one day. To me, it's about as interesting as polishing shoes. But here, for probably the first time, Milton Green had captured something in her that had escaped other men. His photos revealed her to herself the way she wanted to be seen by I would like to be happy, but who's happy? Loose-fitting clothes, modest poses, a lack of provocation. At no point did Milton ask her to be sexy. This pleased her more than he could have imagined. Confronted with this attentive and respectful young photographer, Marilyn suddenly felt sure of her own worth. So it was with a very real pleasure that she later accepted the look of the year prize for their first photos together. It's a great thrill and I'm very appreciative to everyone who's made it possible. On the 14th of January 1954, Marilyn married Joe DiMaggio. Joe was 39, an American baseball hero, retired three years previously, who now spent his time drinking beer in front of the television. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and Marilyn accepted. It was a marriage that made no sense. Such a man could never fulfill Marilyn's needs. She gave him a small medallion to attach to his watch, on which was engraved a phrase from Saint Exupery's Petit Prince. You can only see with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eyes. What the hell's that supposed to mean? grunted Joe. In February, right in the middle of their honeymoon, Marilyn went to Korea to entertain the American troops there. In the United States, it was said that she received more than 20,000 letters a week from fans. Among the GIs, she was made aware of how incredibly popular she had become. For the first time in her life, she gave a live concert and was able to gauge the audience's reaction immediately. A dozen shows, 60,000 soldiers, and each time she made every soldier there feel that she was giving her undivided attention to him alone. Marilyn was happy, flattered, and dumbfounded. It's like they want to own you, possess pieces of you, she said. Was she thinking of Milton Green as she watched all those cameras zooming in on her, but not seeing her? So it would seem. They don't see me, she said. They see their own hidden thoughts, and then they whitewash themselves by claiming that I embody them. When she had met up with Milton the previous October, they had spent almost a month together, taking some new photos in the Los Angeles area. She told him that she worked hard and was proud of what she did, but that she couldn't go on accepting the kind of roles imposed by 20th Century Fox without the public growing tired of her. Milton told her that he agreed, and that when the time came, if she so wished, he would help her change her life. Back to real life. More photographers. And the same old Marilyn look. The same old Marilyn smile. And the astonishing ability to be just where others expected her to be. Yet, looking at Milton Green's photos, we can see how far away from all that Marilyn really was. In fact, her anger towards the studios was growing all the time. She no longer identified herself with this actress. She was an idol to all, but her salary, by Hollywood standards, was derisory, and out of all proportion to the profits she generated. Meeting Milton Green proved, in a way, to be her emancipation. On the 9th of September 1954, Marilyn went to New York to film the exterior shots for Billy Wilder's film, The Seven-Year Itch. She honoured her commitments with as much grace as she could muster, but her mind was made up. It's hard today to appreciate the courage it took to do what she decided to do, and leave Hollywood. She was willing to try what no star had ever dared to do before. Go to the other end of the country, and start again from scratch. Everything had now become unbearable to her, beginning with the new screenplay she was given to read. Milton found a team of lawyers who pored over the contracts she had signed with 20th Century Fox. They were riddled with errors, which she would soon exploit. Hereafter, she would speak of her fight with the studios, explaining to her friends that it was not about money, but about the defence of human rights. I'm tired of being known as the girl with the shape. I want to show them that I can act, and act well. This may have been what she was thinking as she hugged herself in her lucky white bathrobe. Yet she never stopped playing at being Marilyn, without complexes and without effort. She quite obviously still loved it. I was born a Gemini, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two people in one. To tell the truth, I'm probably more than just two. Marilyn's career lasted 16 years. 1954 was the turning point. 24 films before, and only five after. Fatigue? Depression? Boredom? Perhaps. But could it not also be a direct consequence of her definitive farewell to Hollywood's vision of her? The day following her arrival in New York, Marilyn hurried over to Milton Green. A rental costume was ready for her, too small. Depending on her mood, on her anxieties, but also on what she was doing to herself with alcohol and drugs, her weight would fluctuate wildly. But thanks to the genius of both photographer and subject, these photographs of a Degas-style ballerina soon drive away all thoughts of the imperfections of reality. In an extraordinary moment of epiphany, a new, touchingly tender Marilyn had taken wing. A Marilyn freed from her sex symbol image. A Marilyn who henceforth wanted to be spoken to as equal to equal. A Marilyn who rejected partial happiness, claiming her share of immortality. Fame will go by, she said, and so long I've had you, fame. I've always known it was fickle, so at least it's something I experienced. Marilyn returned to Los Angeles once the film was finished. Before splitting up with Hollywood, there were still a few knots that had to be untied. On the 6th of October 1954, eight months after marrying him, Marilyn divorced Joe DiMaggio. She cited the serious anxiety and mental cruelty that she had suffered. She could as easily have brought up a few instances of physical violence. Joe was about as gentle as he was talkative. Marilyn would say, not without humor, in the days of the silent movies, me and Joe would have made a great couple. A month later, she was hospitalized. Since her teens, her stomach had been causing her trouble. Miscarriages, suicide attempts, depression. All her life, Marilyn gave her body to medicine in the same way she gave it to the cinema. On the 23rd of December 1954, just before Christmas, Marilyn, incognito, in a brunette wig and dark glasses, flew from Los Angeles airport to New York, using the cheeky pseudonym Zelda Zonk. Since 1947, she had belonged body and soul to 20th Century Fox. Milton Green took her off to another planet. He wanted to make her a queen, but with a less artificial throne than those of Hollywood comedies. Marilyn loved his ingenuity. Not being part of the system, he knew nothing about being a producer, but he was very ambitious. In fact, they were very much alike. She wanted to become a real actress, and he didn't want to remain just a photographer. On the 7th of January 1955, Marilyn and Milton officially launched Marilyn Monroe Productions. They celebrated the event with 80 hand-picked guests. Their joy was complete. From that day on, they would shoot films over which they had complete control, from beginning to end, and together would make profits far superior to the salaries paid by 20th Century Fox. Or so they thought. The producers over on the west coast had been caught off their guard, and were quick to capitulate. They agreed to co-produce all the projects of the new company, of which Marilyn, with 51% of the capital, was president. Becoming an artist, some people would laugh. I would like very much to be a fine actress, a true actress, that's what I mean by fine, a real actress. Marilyn, New Yorker and undefeated, the boss of her own company. Could it be because it doesn't seem to fit with the legend that today everyone has forgotten this episode? Marilyn's huge, blown-up picture was splashed all over New York in the most famous scene of her career, her skirt tantalizingly lifted by a giant fan. Cars and passers-by stopped in their tracks. It's a funny feeling, she admitted. Everyone knows me, and I don't know any of them. The best way for me to prove myself as a human being is to prove myself as an actress. Winter drew to a close. Marilyn discovered the New York spring, which aroused a childlike wonder in her. She experienced the same at this charity gala in Madison Square Gardens. As a child, I never went to the circus, she explained. The audience watched her lovingly as she paraded on an elephant. A thousand voices whispered, be careful. But was she really taken in by all the affection displayed under the big top? These people are so emotional, she said. If they love you so much without knowing you, couldn't they just as easily hate you? With The Greens, Marilyn discovered a life totally different from the one she'd known in Hollywood. A life with structure in a well-organized household. She held onto a small bedroom at their place, but now also had her own suite in a palatial New York hotel. Each time Marilyn enjoyed moments of happiness like this, she remembered little Norma Jean, her real name, and how she'd been abandoned in the orphanage by her mother. It's not Marilyn who's basking in all this, she said at the time. It's Norma Jean, and I want Norma Jean to be at the party. Whenever she was criticized for giving herself airs, for example, or for making sensational entrances, she replied that it was Norma's fault, that it was Norma who wanted to be noticed, not her. In the mirror, it was Norma that Marilyn saw. To learn that she was my mother, quite a shock. Because I think I have a gay side to me, also a sad side, and I think that's the way with people also. Photographs of her in New York at that time show her looking wiser, relaxed, and not trying overly hard to seduce the camera. In front of Milton's camera, Marilyn came across as serene. In reality, she was often tense, nervous, and unable to sleep. During this time, she was pursuing something else dear to her heart, psychoanalysis. She had begun while she was still married to DiMaggio, having six months of consultations. In New York, she started going to see Dr. Margaret Hohenberg three, four, even five times a week. Milton Green didn't only recommend this imposing Hungarian immigrant with the plaited white hair, he accompanied Marilyn to her office. Margaret Hohenberg had been his psychoanalyst for several years. To Amy, Marilyn simply said, I like talking to her. But soon there would be someone else in Marilyn's life she liked talking to, Arthur Miller. At the time, she kept him a secret because he was married, but she was already sufficiently in love to suspect that he might be her next husband. I like to dress when I go out in the evening. In the meantime, New York hustled and bustled all around her. Now and then, Marilyn would talk to the press. Marilyn sometimes went to premieres, the flash bulbs and cameras reminding her of her time in Hollywood. Milton Green, protective and discreet, hardly ever left her side. And after the show, like a symbol of her newfound independence, there was jazz. Marilyn loved jazz and the One day, hearing that Ella Fitzgerald would not be able to sing in a fashionable nightclub because she was black, Marilyn phoned the owner and promised she would reserve a front row table every night if he'd go back on his decision. And each night that Ella sang, Marilyn kept her promise. At night, when Marilyn the insomniac was not posing for Milton, she read poetry. As a book by Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, which has helped me a lot, she said one day. Without that, I might at times believe I'm going mad. Rilke, especially more than his poetry, a book, Letters to a Young Poet. In notebooks or on scraps of paper, she even scribbled down some verse of her own. Good night, sleep and sweet repose. Wherever you lay your head, I hope you find your nose. 12th of April, 1955. Ed Murrow, a big star at CBS, invited himself round to the Greens. Would it be fair to say that you got rather tired of playing the same kind of roles all the time and wanted to try something different? Well, Marilyn, now that you're a New Yorker, how do you like this city anyway? Oh, I love it. Everyone's very friendly. Marilyn, tell me, what's the basic reason for this corporation? Primarily to contribute, to help making good pictures. It's not that I object to doing musical comedies. In fact, I rather enjoy it, but I would like to do also dramatic parts too. Dramatic roles. That was what Marilyn wanted. It was time to settle her accounts with the past. The Seven Year Itch, her last film made in Hollywood, was being released. Broadway New York theatre radiates glamour for the sneak preview of the cinemascope version of The Seven Year Itch and the birthday of its star. DiMaggio accompanied her to the premiere as if nothing had happened between them over the last six months. Who would have guessed seeing her that night, that at the age of 29, she would soon be undergoing yet another abortion, her 13th perhaps, and that she would never have a child. That's a very interesting point of view. And yet she was so keen on having one that every three or four months she would convince herself that she was pregnant, putting on 14 or 15 pounds in order to convince those around her. She said, if I have a daughter, she won't be any Norma Jean and I know how I'll bring her up, without lies. Nobody will tell her lies about anything, not about Santa Claus or about how the world is full of noble and virtuous people all wanting to love and help each other. No, no lies. For the moment, Marilyn and Milton's company wasn't making them a penny. And it was Milton who was covering all the expenses. The suite at the San Regis hotel, beauty products, clothes. Still concerned about her physical appearance, Marilyn was also becoming more and more preoccupied with perfecting her skills as an actress. With incredible modesty, she became a student again, enrolling at the Actors Studio, run by the most famous and most controversial of all American theatre professors, Lee Strasberg, who was venerated at the time like the leader of some cult. Go to the Actors Studio on Tuesday and Friday, and on the other days I go to Lee Strasberg's private classes. He changed my life more than any other human being. Marilyn was soon to start shooting the film of The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier. Milton had bought the rights to the play. On the 3rd of February in the New York plaza, Marilyn met Olivier. Marilyn Monroe Productions had placed the bar high. Olivier was a god of the classical tradition, a formidable tragedian. Paradoxically, he was a staunch opponent of the method style of acting which Strasberg propounded, and which henceforth inspired Marilyn. Strasberg was almost like a therapist. He encouraged his actors to be introspective, being convinced that they would find the emotions they sought in their own personal history. To Olivier, the Actors Studio was little more than a sect. But Marilyn and Milton were not yet worried about possible clashes with Olivier. Time would show that they should have been. On the 15th of February, while enjoying a weekend in the country, Marilyn posed for Milton. It was Amy who bought this sports top at the corner shop in the small Connecticut village. The next day, Marilyn went happily back to the studio at 480 Lexington Avenue. Without makeup and in dark glasses, sometimes wearing an old overcoat or wrapped up in a scarf, she now knew how to get around without being recognized. The so-called Black Session, the most disturbing series of photographs ever taken by Milton Green. Each photo seems to be contradicted by the next. In one, Marilyn is tragic, in the next she's clowning. Inaccessible and seductive by turn. Her poses evoke the pleasures of the flesh, but also the torments of the soul. This isn't my best day. The Black Session owed a lot, perhaps, to Marilyn's troubled nights. She often spoke of the strange dreams she had. As a child, she often dreamt of walking naked in a church over the prostrate bodies of her friends or neighbors, trying hard to touch no one. She would hear voices screaming for help. Hands would tear her clothes, and men would fall clutching at her as they did so. Arthur Miller would say, death was with her everywhere, all the time. She was forever dancing on the brink. Admiring a dream scene in white marble by Rodin, she immediately identified herself with a sensual young woman being held in the palm of God's hand. She was continually searching for perfection through works of art. Did she perhaps hope that she could one day embrace happiness without crushing it? On another occasion, she stared for a long time at Goya's Demons. I know this man very well, she said. We have the same dreams. I've had dreams like that since I was a kid. As if for a lover's tryst, Marilyn met Milton and spent the whole night in his studio, shooting the second Black Session. A few days later, Marilyn was impatient to see the results of this session. She had a feeling they would be special. Wearing a classic long cashmere overcoat, a gift from Milton Green, she looked like the heroine of a film noir. The sort of enigmatic blonde who bewitches the detective, but leaves the audience wondering whether she's on the side of good or evil. Perhaps she had simply become an adept of Strasberg's new religion. Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream of being an actress. When Marilyn was here at the studio, she always sat in the same place, which was way in there, in the last row. She was wiser, more disciplined, and she was back at school. As a child, she'd often wondered about the father she never knew. And her mother finally showed her a photograph of a man wearing a hat and sporting a mustache like Clark Gable. Clark Gable. You won't mind if I say it, because in a Freudian sense, it's supposed to be very good. I used to always think of him as my father. I pretended. I've always felt I'm nobody, said Marilyn. And for me, the only way to be somebody was to be somebody else. That's probably why I wanted to become an actress. Marilyn was quite happy to use her fame to help the cause of the actor studio, and to show up at a party held in the honor of Strasberg's sect. The real actors she so admired were all there. What did she say that day to Marlon Brando? It was he, after all, who had said, after filming A Streetcar Named Desire, that it was Strasberg's method which had made a real actor of him. On the 25th of February, 1956, Marilyn arrived in Los Angeles for the shooting of Bus Stop, another project instigated by Milton Green. It was her first time back in Hollywood in over a year. Strasberg sent his wife Paula along to check that his method was followed to the letter. The local press quizzed Marilyn about her transformation. Are you happy to come back and do this picture? Are you pleased with your bus stop? Oh, yes, very much. I'm looking forward to working with Josh Logan and doing the picture, and it's good to be back. No, I'm the same person, but it's a different suit. Prudence, modesty, whatever the case, she was careful not to get into any confrontation with the journalists. Off to Sun Valley, Idaho, the small town where the exteriors were to be shot. Marilyn played the role of Sherry, a talentless barroom singer dreaming of fame and glory while vegetating in a dingy little southern cabaret. Tensions on the set ran high. Marilyn had a breakdown and had to stop work for two weeks. She demanded her psychoanalyst, and the production company brought her right across the United States to see to Marilyn's well-being. Bus Stop was nevertheless the first film of her new life, and as she had wished, the character was like none she had ever played before. Everything was different from the old Hollywood era Marilyn, even down to her makeup and the southern drawl she was able to dredge up from somewhere deep inside herself. It wasn't the voice that everyone had come to know. The white makeup was Milton's idea, accentuating the pathetic nature of the role. Marilyn managed to create a tragicomic character of desperate sexuality, blind to her own failure, and many believed that it was her greatest film. She would probably have been nominated for an Oscar had Hollywood not once again decided to snub her by nominating her insipid co-star in her place. But Marilyn's thoughts were not on Oscar nominations. Going by the name of Mrs. Leslie, she made telephone calls to a certain Mr. Leslie in Pyramid Lake, Nevada. It was none other than Arthur Miller, whom she sometimes met in secret. He was waiting for his divorce to be made final in Reno so that their relationship, an open secret for a long time now, could be made official. Second of June 1956, with the shooting of Bus Stop over, Marilyn went back to New York, accompanied by Milton Green. She had just turned 30 and she was drifting. As in this pool where she was photographed by Milton, who else? Drinking a toast to a world she was finding more and more tedious. Could Arthur Miller, whose own feet were planted firmly on the ground, give her the assurance she so needed since leaving Hollywood? The assurance, too, that she would never again be reduced to a sex object for whom the casting couch was just part of the job. When I started out, all the girls did it, and if you didn't play along, well, there were 50 girls lining up behind you waiting to take your place. Photographed here by Milton Green, she may well have been talking to Arthur Miller, the intellectual who seemed to be the perfect answer to all her needs for self-improvement. She believed he was so much more intelligent than herself, and he, for one, was not about to disagree. Unlike Faust, she wanted to sign a pact against the devil. Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I've often rejected the first offer, and my soul is not for sale. In New York, to exorcise the old calendar pin-up Marilyn, she had surrounded herself with her good fairies, Milton Green first of all, then Lee Strasberg and Margaret Hornburg. Now she turned to Arthur Miller, her final defense against herself. Perfectly conscious of what she was doing, she staked everything on this marriage. Who would have the last word? The New York or the Hollywood Marilyn? Which one would prevail? Jekyll or Hyde? It was while listening to Miller being interviewed that Marilyn learned that they would be married before she left for London to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl. Since journalists had camped out on her landing, she improvised a press conference. Yes, she was going to marry Arthur Miller. Yes, she would convert to Judaism for him. Yes, she was proud of him for fighting against McCarthyism and intolerance. Marilyn had never been out there on the front line, but neither did she hide her progressive opinions. Those bastards in Hollywood wanted me to dump Arthur, telling me it would ruin my career, she said. They're a bunch of cowards who just want me to be the same as them. Her first love story with the President of the United States had been with Abraham Lincoln, who a century earlier had abolished slavery in her country. She wanted to show herself worthy of his example by supporting Miller, who was now being investigated by the Anti-American Activities Committee. Miller confessed to having gone along to several meetings of communist writers, but refused point blank to give the committee the names of the other participants. Absolutely beyond the power of this committee to inquire into my association. To Marilyn's great joy, Miller became a hero over the fight against oppression. Since her husband and several of his friends were considered extreme left-wingers, according to the criteria of the time, the FBI opened a file on Marilyn too. On the 29th of June 1956, when the press was invited to witness the happiness of the bride and groom-to-be, the day was marred by an ill omen. The car in which the New York correspondent for Paris Match was traveling veered off the road and hit a tree. The journalist smashed through the windscreen and was fatally wounded, almost before Marilyn's eyes. She fainted. A shortened press conference was held a short while later under a tree on Arthur Miller's property in Roxbury, Connecticut. Marilyn seemed absent, Arthur somewhat distant. Death was in the air. Say where, for just that reason, because I think it's time enough for everybody to know what has happened. Mr. Monroe, a schoolteacher, just got a letter from an 11-year-old boy in which he was to write about three wishes, what he would do with three wishes. And he said that he would like money, first, and second, to be an engineer, and third, he said, when I grow up, I'd like to have a blonde. She has to have blue eyes. She has to be like Marilyn Monroe. This is my life. Now, you were the third choice on that, sir. I'm flattered. The wedding ceremony took four minutes. Being with her, people just want to die, said Arthur about Marilyn. This girl sets up a challenge in every man. Most men become more of what they are natively when they're around her. A phony becomes more phony. A confused man becomes more confused. A retiring man, more retiring. As for Marilyn, she confirmed what everyone had long suspected. I've always been attracted to older men. Young men have nothing in their heads. Her marriage to Arthur Miller was to last three and a half years, making it the longest lasting relationship Marilyn ever had. On the 13th of July, 1956, Marilyn and Miller boarded the plane for London. In her luggage, she had packed plenty of books. More than ever, she would seek refuge in poetry, even though Miller would later write somewhat nastily that he never saw her finish a book apart from Collette's Cherie. She also packed a supply of Miltown, one of the tranquilizers she was dependent on. Milton Green, Marilyn, and everyone else kept huge quantities of pills in their pockets and ate them like sweets. Their arrival in London was triumphant. Sir Lawrence and Lady Olivier came to the airport to meet the most famous couple of the day, while more than 70 policemen struggled to contain 200 rampaging journalists. Milton, who had left a few days earlier, was also there, but as usual, he didn't show himself, remaining perpetually absent from the archive footage. Did he suspect that the filming about to begin would be one of the most painful experiences of Marilyn's career, or that Margaret Hohenberg urgently called to London would tell her patients she was wrong to have formed her own production company, and that she would refer her immediately to Anna, the daughter of the famous Freud? Marilyn said of her inner struggles, when an artist wants at all costs to get to the truth, he sometimes feels close to insanity. It's because he's forcing himself to dig deep inside himself for what is true. The drugs and the alcohol plunged her into a state approaching total amnesia. In this area of her life, as in many others, her marriage to Arthur Miller changed nothing. In fact, it was perhaps Miller who was more changed by the marriage than she. Getting a taste for his new celebrity status, he had no scruples about milking it for all it was worth, particularly financially, and he soon began to see in Milton Green a rival. Milton wasn't totally innocent either. Like Miller, like Strasberg, and like all the shrinks Marilyn consumed without moderation, he too tried to control her, going so far as to supply her with all the drugs she believed she needed. But did Milton for a moment suspect that this film would spell the end of his relationship with Marilyn, that she would soon have nothing but criticism for him, and that once, thanks to him, she had emerged from her christeness, she would abandon him without allowing him any chance of working his way back into her favor? For it was in London that everything turned sour between them, and that Milton found himself ruined. It was in London too that Marilyn, having been publicly scorned by a condescending Laurence Olivier, gave voice to her doubts over her decision to leave Hollywood. And it was also in London that Arthur Miller, fearing his love life might in some way affect his creativity, began to wonder whether he had done the right thing in marrying Marilyn. I think Arthur liked dumb blondes, she would later say, and he'd never had one before me. Marilyn had barely returned from London before she put Marilyn Monroe Productions into liquidation. At the same time, she cut herself off without ceremony from the man who had helped her free herself from the yoke of the big studios. Encouraged, if not actively urged on by her new master Arthur Miller, she accused Milton of excluding her from decision making, granting himself bogus titles, and embezzling funds from their jointly held company. She thus brought about the end of the most incredible period of her life. Two years of flamboyant marginality, during which she gave the best two performances of her career. Laurence, it's one of the most important. I think love and work are the only things that really happen to us. And yet there was one final photo session with Milton. Professionalism, of course, emotion probably, and without doubt, a powerful feeling of wasted opportunities. And the color red, like the first time they got together in Los Angeles. The color red, and then nothing. Because refusing to make the slightest profit from these photographs, Milton buried them away with so many others in the shadows of his disappointment. I was devoted to her, he said afterwards, I wouldn't do anything today that might harm her career. It was over. Arm in arm with Arthur Miller, Marilyn returned to Hollywood. Yet despite appearances, she was not the same. She was coming back once again to the world of make-believe. But now she had seen what lay on the other side of the looking glass. The final years of her life were fast approaching. They would prove to be the most painful. Dark, gloomy years, during which Marilyn would be more demanding, more dissatisfied, more unbearable than she had ever been. Perpetually late, she would sink deeper and deeper into what one of her closest friends called Marilyn Time. Paris, August 1962. One day, just before leaving for Paris to photograph other women, Milton Green phoned Marilyn. Moved by the call, she promised to see him again soon. Did she perhaps blame Miller for driving her and Milton apart? For taking her away from the only person she had ever really trusted? They never did meet again, and no other woman was ever photographed by Milton as Marilyn had been. You want to know how I did it? Milton said. Easy. I just believed in her. Milton learned of her death from the newspapers, just like everyone else.