hello goodbye hello by craig brown

7/31/2019 HELLO GOODBYE HELLO by Craig Brown

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FRANK LLOYD

WRIGHT designs a house for

MARILYN

MONROE The Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue, New York

Autumn1957

One afternoon in the autumn of 1957, the most venerated architect in

America, Frank Lloyd Wright, now aged ninety, is working in his suite in

the Plaza Hotel, New York, when the doorbell rings. It is Marilyn Monroe,

come to ask him to design a house.

Since their marriage in June 1956, Arthur Miller and his bride Marilyn

Monroe have been based at Miller‟s modest two-storey country house

near Roxbury, Connecticut. Dating from 1783, it has 325 acres of land

planted with fruit trees. A verandah at the back looks out across endless

hills. A short walk from the house is a swimming pond, with clear spring

water.

It is just right for Miller, who likes to live in the countryside, away from

the flash world of celebrity, and is known to be careful with money. But

Marilyn has other plans. She loves to spend, and has firm ideas about whatis glamorous and what is not. Her self-esteem is bound up with her ability

to splash out: she craves nothing but the best.

Like so many men, Frank Lloyd Wright is immediately taken with

Marilyn.* He ushers her into a separate room, away from his wife and his

staff, and listens intently as she describes the sort of home she has in mind.

It is spectacularly lavish. Once she has left, Wright dips into his archives

and digs out an abandoned plan for a building he drew up eight years

earlier: a luxury manor house for a wealthy Texan couple.

The parsimonious Miller is taken aback when he hears of Marilyn‟sgrandiose vision for their new home. „That we could not really afford all

of her ideas I did my best not to dramatize, but it was inevitable that some

* Later, when cheekily asked on a talk show, „What do you think of Miss Monroe as

architecture?‟ Wright replies, „I think Miss Monroe‟s architecture is extremely goodarchitecture.‟

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of my concern showed.‟ When she tells him the name of the architect,

Miller‟s heart sinks. But he bites his lip, hoping good sense will prevail.

„It had to seem like ingratitude to question whether we could ever beginto finance any Wright design, since much like her, he had little interest

in costs. I could only give him his day and let her judge whether it

was beyond our means or not.‟

One grey autumn morning, the Millers drive Frank Lloyd Wright to

Roxbury. Wright is wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. He curls up in

the back seat and sleeps throughout the two-hour journey.

The three of them enter the old house together. Wright looks around

the living room, and, in what Miller describes as „a tone reminiscent of

W.C. Fields‟s nasal drawl‟, says disparagingly, „Ah, yes, the old house.Don‟t put a nickel in it.‟ They sit down to a lunch of smoked salmon.

Wright refuses any pepper. „Never eat pepper,‟ he says. „The stuff will

kill you before your time. Avoid it.‟

After lunch, Marilyn remains in the house while the two men trudge

half a mile up the steep hill to the crest on which the new house is to be

built. Wright never stops to catch his breath: Miller is impressed. At the

crest, Wright turns towards the magnificent view, unbuttons his fly and

urinates, sighing, „Yes. Yes indeed.‟ He glances about for a fewseconds, then leads the way back down the hill. Before they go back into

the house, Miller steals a quick private word with Wright. „I thought

the time had come to tell him something he had never bothered to ask, that

we expected to live fairly simply and were not looking for some

elaborate house with which to impress the world.‟

The message is plural, but it should have been singular. An elaborate

house with which to impress the world is, in a nutshell, just what Marilyn

is after, which is why she hired Frank Lloyd Wright in the first place. But

Wright affects not to hear. „I saw that this news had not the slightest inter-est for him,‟ says Miller.

A few days later, Miller visits the Plaza Hotel alone. Wright shows

him a watercolour of his extravagant plan: a circular living room with

a dropped centre surrounded by five-foot-thick ovoid columns made of

sandstone with a domed ceiling sixty feet in diameter, rounded off with a

seventy-foot-long swimming pool with fieldstone sides jutting out from

the incline of the hill. Miller looks at it in horror, mentally totting up the

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cost. He notes with indignation that Wright has added a final flourish to

his painting – a huge limousine in the curved driveway, complete with a

uniformed chauffeur. Miller asks the cost. Wright mentions $250,000, but Miller doesn‟t

believe him: it might cover the cost of the swimming pool, „if that‟. He

also notes that Wright‟s „pleasure dream of Marilyn allowed him to

include in this monster of a structure only a single bedroom and a small

guestroom, but he did provide a large “conference room” complete with a

long board- room-type table flanked by a dozen high-backed chairs, the

highest at the head, where he imagined she would sit like the reigning

queen of a small country, Denmark, say‟.*

The marriage goes from bad to worse. Miller and Monroe have nothingto say to each other. „He makes me think I‟m stupid. I‟m afraid to bring

things up, because maybe I am stupid.‟ Marilyn adds that „I‟m in a fucking

prison and my jailer is named Arthur Miller … Every morning he goes

into that goddamn study of his, and I don‟t see him for hours and hours. I

mean, what the fuck is he doing in there? And there I am, just sitting

around; I haven‟t a goddamn thing to do.‟

Miller fails to give the go-ahead to Wright, who dies in April

1959. Miller and Monroe divorce in 1961; Monroe dies in August 1962.Thirty years later, the plans are dusted off and enlarged. Marilyn‟s

dream home finally emerges as a $35-million golf clubhouse in Hawaii,

complete wtih banqueting rooms, a men‟s locker room and a Japanese

furo bath with a soaking pool, not to mention seated showers.

* Wright also incorporates an elaborate nursery suite in his plans, but thirty years later Miller

fails to mention this detail in his autobiography.

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MARILYN

MONROE wears her tig htest, sexiest dress for

NIKITA

KHRUSHCHEV The Café de Paris, Hollywood

September 19th 1959

In her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Marilyn Monroe is preparing

to meet the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev. When she was first invited,

his name hadn‟t rung a bell, and she wasn‟t keen to go. It was only when

her studio told her that in Russia, America meant two things, Coca-Cola

and Marilyn Monroe, that she changed her mind. „She loved hearing that,‟

recalls Lena Pepitone, her maid. Marilyn tells Lena that the studio wants

her to wear her tightest, sexiest dress. „I guess there‟s not much sex in

Russia,‟ she concludes.Her preparations are lengthy and elaborate, involving a masseuse, a

hairdresser and a make-up artist. When they are halfway through, the

president of Twentieth Century-Fox, Spyros Skouras, arrives, just to make

sure that, for once in her life, Marilyn will be on time. As agreed, she

squeezes into a low-cut, skin-tight black lace dress. Her chauffeur drops

her at the studio before noon. The parking lot is empty. „We must be late!

It must be over!‟ gasps Marilyn. In fact, they are far too early.*

Nikita Khrushchev‟s American tour has had more than its share of ups

and downs. He is a temperamental character, apt to flair up at the slightestprovocation. Perhaps because of this, the American media cannot get

enough of him. „It‟s Khrush, Khrushy, Khrushchev!‟ writes a columnist for

the New York Daily News. „The fellow‟s all over the dials these days …

The pudgy Soviet dictator is smiling, laughing, scowling, shaking his

forefinger or clenching his iron fist.‟ Others have been less generous. A

rival columnist in the New York Mirror describes him as „a rural dolt

unwittingly proving a case against himself and his system‟. The three

main television



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networks show live coverage of his visit, repeating it every night in

special thirty-minute bulletins. He is followed everywhere by 342

reporters and photographers, the largest travelling media group theworld has ever known.

On the fifth day of his tour, Khrushchev arrives in Los Angeles, in time

for lunch for four hundred people at Twentieth Century-Fox. There has

been such demand for places that spouses have been banned unless they

also happen to be stars. There are one or two couples – Elizabeth Taylor

and Eddie Fisher, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh – but they are few and far

between.

Khrushchev enters a packed room. Everyone who is anyone is here:

Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Kirk Douglas, TonyCurtis, Dean Martin, Debbie Reynolds, Nat „King‟ Cole, Frank Sinatra,

Maurice Chevalier, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Mrs Khrushchev is seated between Bob

Hope and Gary Cooper. Conversation proves stilted.

„Why don‟t you move out here? You‟ll like the climate,‟ suggests Cooper.

„No,‟ replies Mrs Khrushchev. „Moscow is all right for me.‟

Khrushchev is on the top table, next to Skouras. Lunch has its awkward

moments. When Khrushchev is told that his spur-of-the-moment request

to visit Disneyland has been turned down, owing to security worries, hesends the American Ambassador to the UN a furious note. „I understand

you have cancelled the trip to Disneyland. I am most displeased.‟

The after-lunch speeches are awkward. Khrushchev heckles Skouras

during his speech of welcome, and further heckles Henry Cabot Lodge as

he speaks of America‟s affection for Russian culture. „Have you seen

They Fought for Their Homeland ?‟ he yells. „It is based on a novel by

Mikhail Sholokhov.‟

„No.‟

„Well, buy it. You should see it.‟ In his own speech, Khrushchev grows very bullish. „I have a question

for you. Which country has the best ballet? Yours?! You do not even have

a permanent opera and ballet theatre! Your theatres thrive on what is

given to them by rich people! In our country, it is the state that gives the

money! And the best ballet is in the Soviet Union! It is our pride!‟

After going on like this for forty-five minutes, he suddenly seems to

remember something. „Just now, I was told that I could not go to

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Disneyland. I asked, “Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching

pads there?” Just listen to what I was told: “We” – which means the

American authorities –

“cannot guarantee your security there.”

What is it?Is there an epidemic of cholera there? Have gangsters taken hold of the

place?‟ He punches the air, and starts to look angry. „That‟s the situation I

find myself in. For me, such a situation is inconceivable. I cannot find

words to explain this to my people!‟

At last he sits down. The Hollywood audience applauds. As he is being

shown to the sound stage to watch the movie Can-Can being filmed,* he

recognises Marilyn Monroe and darts over to shake her hand. All wide-

eyed, Marilyn delivers a line that Natalie Wood, a fluent Russian speaker,

has coached her to say. For once, she gets it right first time: „We the work-ers of Twentieth Century-Fox rejoice that you have come to visit our

studio and country.‟

Khrushchev seems to appreciate her effort. „He looked at me the way a

man looks on a woman,‟ she recalls.

„You‟re a very lovely young lady,‟ he says, squeezing her hand.

„My husband, Arthur Miller, sends you his greeting. There should be

more of this kind of thing. It would help both our countries understand

each other.‟ Afterwards, Marilyn Monroe enthuses, „This is about the biggest day in

the history of the movie business.‟ But when she gets back home, she has

changed her tune. „He was fat and ugly and had warts on his face and he

growled,‟ she tells Lena. „Who would want to be a Communist with a

President like that?‟†

But she is pretty sure that the Premier enjoyed their meeting. „I could

tell Khrushchev liked me. He smiled more when he was introduced to me

than for anybody else at the whole banquet. And everybody else was there.

He squeezed my hand so long and so hard that I thought he would break it. I guess it was better than having to kiss him.‟

* Throughout the racy can-can routine, involving a male dancer diving under the skirt of

Shirley MacLaine and emerging holding her red knickers, the Russian Premier appears to behaving a whale of a time, but he later denounces it as immoral, pornographic exploitation,adding that „a person‟s face is more beautiful than his backside‟.

† Her husband Arthur Miller, who was not invited, gives a rather diplomatic account of Marilyn‟s

opinion of Khrushchev in his autobiography. „The Soviet chairman was very obviously smittenwith her, and she in turn liked him for his plainness,‟ he writes. Miller‟s achievements are inmany ways overshadowed by his association with Marilyn. „When Arthur Miller shook my hand



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