My Week With Marilyn. Colin Clark

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      After lunch I sneaked up to see my little Wdg⁴³ again – pretty as ever. She is no Einstein, but who cares about that. I just want to get my arms around her tiny waist and squeeze. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, so I intend to make my move next weekend.

      TUESDAY, 24 JULY

      More arrivals from the USA. Most important is Paula Strasberg. SLO and Tony B have worked themselves into a lather about her already. She is MM’s drama coach and current Svengali. SLO has been warned by Josh Logan (MM’s last director on Bus Stop) that she is a total menace. She contradicted everything and she muddled MM up. I thought Lee Strasberg was the drama coach. I don’t know what qualifications his wife has, except by association, although I hear she used to be an actress herself.

      SLO has determined to ban Paula from the set while we are filming. Several times he has given me a diatribe about her and drama coaches in general. Finally, he told me to throw her out if I see her!

      ‘She can stay in Marilyn’s dressing room.’

      ‘What about MM’s dressing room in the studio?’ (MM is to have her own sort of pre-fab, or ‘portable’ dressing room built for her right by the set. It too will be all decorated up in beige and soft lights.)

      ‘Oh, the devil take her!’ shouted SLO, seeing that he wasn’t going to win.

      Other arrivals from the USA are Amy and Joshua Greene, Milton’s wife and baby son. Milton almost looks too young to be a father. He is evidently a famous photographer, although I hadn’t heard of him. He does look a little like Bert Stern,⁴⁴ but that is hardly enough of a qualification. I will find an excuse to visit Tibbs tomorrow and meet everyone.

      There is also a lady called Rosten who used to work as AM’s secretary and now is going to be MM’s secretary.⁴⁵ She is said to be a chum of MM’s but I suspect she is still loyal to AM. She will live with them both at Parkside.

      WEDNESDAY, 25 JULY

      I drove down to Tibbs in the morning – with Mr P’s blessing. He loves a bit of spying, and I’m afraid he already sees the American and British camps as ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. As I know Tibbs so well, and I was the one who arranged it, I went in through the back door as if I was the boss. This has a calming effect on the servants who are already in semi-revolt. It seems that Milton and his friends never give them a thought and are very untidy. The Cotes-Preedys are definitely going to lose their staff if we are not careful. I persuaded everybody that the arrival of Mrs Milton Greene would change all the bad habits. They countered that by saying they had never been told there would be children.

      ‘Just one,’ I said, ‘very small, and I have been told he is very well behaved.’ (Absolute lie.)

      But they may still walk out with no notice despite their huge wages. ‘As good cooks go . . .’

      Milton, to his credit, does not seem in the least surprised or upset when I wander into his living room unannounced.

      ‘Hi Colin. Want a beer?’

      I explained that I was just checking if he was comfortable and well looked after.

      ‘Sure am. Stick around and meet Amy. She’ll be down soon.’

      Amy looks even younger than Milton. She is also extremely attractive – small, pale, dark hair, intense – very much a contrast to my little Wdg with her empty eyes.

      The little boy is about 2½ and known as Josh. He toddles all over the place, pretty much unhindered and with very little sense as yet. Milton seems very involved with both of them. Perhaps he is not as much of a rascal as Mr P implies. I absolutely can’t help liking him.

      In the afternoon I drove over to Parkside. Plod opened the front door cautiously (I don’t know the staff here so I can’t go round the back). It seems that MM and AM spend all their time upstairs, having meals and newspapers sent up. I met Hedda Rosten, MM’s ‘personal secretary’. She is very New York, middle-aged, but sympathetic and clever. She had a drink in her hand and seemed to me a little tipsy. I suppose she is still exhausted from the overnight flight.

      Plod seems happy enough. It is a great relief to have him there.

      As I was leaving AM appeared in a white towelling bathrobe and gazed round slowly over his hornrimmed specs. Plod explained who I was – the house etc. – but AM just grunted and went back upstairs.

      And to think that this is the man the whole world envies – on honeymoon with Marilyn Monroe.

      THURSDAY, 26 JULY

      Mr P and I and Vanessa went to Pinewood again to check everything once more. (Vanessa is going to be Mr P’s production secretary.) We already have Studio A and the major set – or scenery – is being put up there. It is going to be the purple drawing room in the Carpathian Embassy in Belgrave Square, and it is built so that each of the four walls, with their windows, fireplace, doors etc. can be swung away, and the camera can film the other three. There will be various bedrooms and dressing rooms leading off it which will be built later. It is meant to be on the first floor of the Embassy, and a huge columned hall and grand double staircase will eventually be put up in Studio B when we have finished in A.

      There is a lighting grid or gantry all over the ceiling of each studio, with literally hundreds of lights hanging from it. They are on telescopic, rotating metal rods so that they can be altered by the electrician working up above. The lighting cameraman, Jack Cardiff, will work out which of these lights he wants lit, how high they should hang and where they should point. He will make a plan beforehand and give it to the lighting foreman, or ‘gaffer’, to set up. Then Jack will fine-tune all the lights using the stand-ins – one for MM, one for SLO, one for Dame Sybil Thorndike etc. until all is ready for the stars to walk in and perform.

      The stars will be made up in their dressing rooms and walk in costume to the set. MM will do most of it in her main dressing room and then walk to her ‘portable’ dressing room for her costume. The idea is to have her ready to go in front of the camera at the same time as the set has been lit and prepared, and all the technicians are ready.

      I get the strong impression that the technicians are the bosses here. If MM has to be kept waiting, so be it. Woe betide the actor or actress who keeps the technicians waiting!

      That seems to be the attitude to British stars, anyway, but I doubt if MM will see it that way. Nor do I. There is no doubt that the technicians are admirable men – calm, professional, efficient. But basically they are replaceable and MM is not. Skills are common. Talent is rare. One day someone will have the courage to sack every technician in the industry and only rehire them if they promise to do what they are told.

      However if I said that, even to David, I’d get lynched, so I better keep my mouth shut.

      To go back to the filming – you never shoot a scene in one go. You shoot all the bits with the camera pointing in one direction and then swirl round and shoot the others later. And each shot is done many times to get it just right. The boy with the clapperboard marks each one so that the editor can put the whole thing together in the right order later. The film goes off to a laboratory to be processed overnight. The sound is transferred from thin magnetic tape to wider tape in the Sound Department, and the editor uses the ‘Clap’ of the board to ‘sync’ the two up on his machine. The board also tells СКАЧАТЬ