August 6, 2012--My Night With Marilyn

It cannot be true that so much time has passed since Marilyn Monroe died. But yesterday was the 50th anniversary. I remember it as if it were yesterday--where I was when I learned about it and who I was with.

I also remember vividly my night with her. This is true, I did spend a night with her. Well, a memorable two hours.

Not as you might be thinking. Or as I, like most men in America at the time, would have . . .

It was 1960, my last year in college and as the drama critic for the Columbia Spectator I tried to get to as many plays as possible, mainly off-Broadway where the scene was lively--Ionesco's, Pirnadello's, Brecht's, Genet's, Beckett's, and Lorca's plays were being translated and produced in ramshackle theaters all over downtown. I proudly haunted these places and wrote about the Theater of Ideas and the Theater of the Absurd.

And occasionally, I went to something on Broadway. If it promised to have literary merit or an especially noteworthy lead actor. Yes, I was quite the poseur.

My night with Marilyn was one of those Broadway nights. When Thorton Wilder's Our Town was being presented.

I was able to secure two front row center seats in the mezzanine. Like other critics I arrived late and leave early so, I pretended, like my colleagues from the Times and Herald Tribune there would be no way for someone from the production to attempt to influence my judgment or what I would race away to write.

It was an eight o'clock curtain and so my date and I slipped into our seats at five-to. But we were forced to wait for the curtain for more than half an hour, which is unusual for Broadway where, among other things, shows begin on time. The audience was restless. Many had after-theater dinner reservations and the late curtain was upsetting their plans. The house lights were still on and then they finally began to blink. A loud burst of ironic applause greeted the signal that the play was about to begin.

Then it became apparent why we had been forced to wait.

Down the center aisle, in no hurry, appeared an elegantly dressed couple. Who might that be for whom they held the curtain? Not, I could see, JFK and Jackie. Not some other royal couple. I strained in my front-row seat to see who it was that upset hundreds of dinner plans.

And then I knew--from the back of his distinctive head I saw that it was Arthur Miller and on his arm, it had to be, it only could be, it was his wife. MARILYN MONROE.

They slide into their seventh-row-center seats, the lights dimmed, and the curtain rose to reveal the austere stage with the iconic Our Town ladder on which was positioned the Stage Manager narrator.

About the play that is all I remember. And I am not even sure I remember this from that production or from one of the many others that through the tears I have seen.

My mind, my eyes, my imagination, my fantasies were all focused on Marilyn.

Even in the darkness of the theater her platinum hair was lit as if powered by an inner spotlight. And then there was the flesh.

She had let her mink coat slip from her shoulders and to those behind and above her it revealed a naked back.

I nearly fell out of the balcony as I strained forward to get a closer look. Could it be that this temptress who fueled the erotic life of millions of both genders was not . . . ?

I schemed--Was there any way I could get close to her? Perhaps at intermission though in some productions Our Town is played right through without one. But this was Broadway, not the Fringe, and people would need to have a pause to get something to drink or stretch their legs.

Thus, well before the time that an intermission was likely scheduled, without a word to my date, I rose from my seat and pushed my way, over protests by those whose view of the stage or Marilyn I was blocking, toward the aisle and raced downstairs to the orchestra level where I paced in the back, waiting for the curtain to fall and the lights to come up. Which it in a few minutes did.

Along with others who had the same idea as I, I pushed my way down the center aisle, against the flow of traffic as a stream of the older folks shuffled their way toward the bar and facilities.

Both sides of the row in which they were seated had emptied so there alone, in Marilyn's glow, sat Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Which is how she viewed herself, as the wife of the author of Death of a Salesman. 

I tried not to stare but she knew why we were there. She knew I, with others, were there to see what else beside her luminous back would be revealed beneath that mink.

She shifted in her seat to play with and torture us. It was still an era of repression and she knew well what she represented--the magic of fame and, much more, unapologetic sexuality.

The lights began to flash again signaling it was time to retreat, and with a forlorn smile I turned to head back to the mezzanine.

I think, understanding, in return she smiled wistfully.

But I am likely imagining that. But then again, full of jizzum, wasn't I, like her husband, a man of the theater, albeit only a lowly critic from my college paper, but wouldn't that . . . ?

Thus, feeling good about myself, back in my seat I waited for my date to return. But she never did.