The Books: “Marilyn and Me” (Susan Strasberg)

Daily Book Excerpt: Entertainment Biography/Memoir:

Marilyn and Me: Sisters, Rivals, Friends, by Susan Strasberg

There is much to say here, about the smothering psychodrama of the Strasberg family – and the introduction of Lee Strasberg’s most famous student – Marilyn Monroe – as practically an adopted daughter into the family.

Lee Strasberg had been one of the founding members of the Group Theatre in the 30s. It soon became clear that his gift was not in acting or in directing – but in teaching, and theorizing. People came to him for help with scenes – he was a close student of the Stanislavksy “system” (known, in its American version, as “the Method”) – and he put his own spin on it very early on, by introducing what is known as “affective memory” [corrected!] into the pot.

“Sense memory” is when you, the actor, concentrate on creating, say, a coffee cup full of coffee. You work at it with your hands, you try to feel the weight of the cup, you try to feel the heat emanating, you try to create for yourself the smell of coffee. These exercises are meant to unleash the actor’s creativity and imagination. The point of acting is to come alive under imaginary circumstances and for some actors that takes practice. Strasberg was always fascinated by those who did it anyway, who did it easily – who did it naturally, with no training. What was it in, say, Eleanora Duse – or Paul Muni – that was so authentic? Duse is famous for blushing on stage when a blush was called for (it was George Bernard Shaw who first noticed it and commented on it, how it seemed to him to be the purest example of imagination and creativity he had ever seen). Her sense of reality and being in-the-moment was so intense, so unshakeable, that she would blush. On cue. No one alive today has seen “Duse’s blush” – any audience member from her time is now long dead – and yet the impression it made has remained famous, and you will still hear people reference “Duse’s blush”.

Strasberg wondered if such authenticity (which came natural to the geniuses of the world – the Duse’s, the Brando’s) could be taught. Could an actor train his concentration so that the world of the play would be so real that all kinds of involuntary things (like a blush) could be possible? The “affective memory” exercise that Strasberg developed is the most controversial aspect of the Method, and I have pretty mixed feelings about it (mainly because it didn’t work for me). You go back in time (in your mind) to re-create a memory, something from your past … trying to not just think about it, or remember it intellectually – but re-live it. This is not meant to be a general experience, a re-hashing of an old familiar narrative from your life – that would do you no good as an actor. The point is to use that concentration you have been training – on creating coffee cups and taking a shower and a hot humid day – in the services of resurrecting that old memory – but you do not do it by focusing on the emotions of the old memory, you do it by focusing on the sensory details. For example, one day when you were 6 years old, a phone call came, and your mother answered, and the news arrived that your beloved grandmother had died – and it was your first moment of grief, loss, fear, whatever … It was an important moment. For “affective memory”, you don’t go straight for the jugular, and think about your grandmother dying. No. You focus on how the light looked on the kitchen tile that day, and the smell of breakfast on the stove … the shoes your mother was wearing, the sound of the telephone ring … and through focusing on those sensory details, you can get closer to the actual source of the memory. Because, of course, our bodies remember sensoral details better than it remembers actual information. You touch a hot stove once, you never do it again, to use an obvious example. Much of this is at a primitive level, an animal level … but we, as complex intellectual creatures, tend to distance ourselves, or we forget … But to quote Metallica: “the memory remains” – not in the brain, but in the sensoral apparatus at our disposal. I have been in classes where everyone is doing an “affective memory” at the same time and it is literally like sitting in the main room of a psych ward. People babble, weep, moan, talk out loud – some people freak out so badly they have to stop the exercise. Just because it never worked for me is not to say that it is not a useful exercise, or that some people were really set free by it. Actors are not cookie-cutters. We are all different.

For me, I certainly could do the exercise. It wasn’t that I was blocked or anything like that. I could re-create anything. I live in a fantasy world half the time, anyway, this shit is old hat to me. The problem (for me) came when I had to “use” it in my acting. As an exercise it was fine, but I never seemed to use it when I was actually onstage acting. Now, much of the purpose of sense memory and effective memory IS just for training. It helps you hone your skills, it’s a craft, you have to practice – it’s like practicing giving yourself permission to enter an imaginary world. Sense memory helps you do that, and it also helps you to be specific, as opposed to general. Actors who are good are good because of all kinds of reasons – but actors who are bad all have one thing in common: They are GENERAL. Generality is death to good acting. But people working on sense memory DURING a scene had a tendency to look like they were in a fog, they were unable to connect with their scene partner, they were so busy creating the damn sound of rain on the windows. It had a tendency to look belabored. I would rather be an actor who is not, perhaps, transported to another dimension by a sense memory exericse – but is able to listen and talk in a believable manner onstage. However: it doesn’t have to be either/or. It actually shouldn’t be either/or. I ended up basically just using sense memory as strictly a training exercise – like practicing meditation … which can be difficult. It was a way to leave the workaday everyday world, and surrender to the moment. It was about giving myself permission to be a little kid again. Again: this is not to say my experience is right. It was just my experience. Judging other people’s acting processes is, to me, a little bit like judging how other people have sex. There cannot be a more pointless and idiotic way to spend your mental energy. If it works for someone, who are you to say it shouldn’t? What kind of an arrogant insecure son-of-a-bitch are you anyway? But you see that a lot. Young actors, perhaps not as knowledgeable as they should be, try to assert their own process as THE way to do things. I have noticed this, too, with my friends who have become mothers. Other mothers can’t just be like, “I do things THIS way with my baby – maybe that would work for you …” They have to be like, “I do things THIS way with my baby, and if you DON’T do it that way, then you are abusive and selfish.” It’s retarded. So because Spencer Tracy didn’t consciously sit around using sense memory, that means he’s somehow lesser? How fucking condescending. You use it if you NEED it. But there can be a rigidity in acting training – because it’s such an uncertain pursuit – there are no guarantees – and so actors (some actors) want to believe that there is only one way to do things, and if they could just “do it right”, then all the glory in the world will follow.

There are also teachers out there who are charlatans – of the New Age Deepak Chopra variety – who insist that THEIR way is the only way, if you follow THEM you will succeed … It’s almost like a cult. Like, if you decide to switch teachers, or stop taking class altogether, it’s seen as you leaving the fold, going beyond the pale. Acting careers, like any other, have pressures, and people are looking for the magic bullet, the golden goose, whatever it is.

My process usually involves music (I always have a “mix tape” for whatever show I’m in … stuff that gets me into the world of the play) – and then just practical concerns – like learning my lines, and doing what the character does, whatever that may be. I like things like costumes … they help set me free and launch me into another person’s psyche as opposed to my own. Things like shoes are very important. How you walk, and how your feet feel … it’s something palpable, tangible. And then, I’m a huge fan of what I call the “Bang Bang You’re Dead” school of acting. I go into that a bit here, in my piece on William Holden. Meaning: when a little kid is playing cops and robbers and shouts at his friend, “BANG BANG YOU’RE DEAD”, the other little kid will launch into a swandive of death more convincing than any seasoned actor could ever hope to accomplish. There is no gap between impulse and action, there is no questioning of “how” to do it … You know that you have to die, and you have been shot, and so you throw your body into the void. Much of acting is remembering what it was like to be a child playing make-believe (at least it is for me) – when you are unselfconsciously in the world you have created … and so much of my process involves doing whatever I have to do to get into that state. This (for me) never involved sense memory. Or, maybe I’m stating it too strongly. There were moments, yes, when it came in useful. Working on Summer and Smoke, and doing a scene that happens on a hot humid night, where the air sits there like soup, making you sluggish and tired. I would use sense memory for that … to create the sensation of humidity, and still thick air. Often, though, it seemed to me that it came easier if I would just give myself the cue, the “Bang Bang Youre Dead” cue – only this time it was, “Hot Humid Night – GO” … and, because I’m a human being, aware, and open, my senses would jump into action. I remember humidity. I didn’t need to turn myself inside out to get there. However, that could just be a matter of practice and talent … You don’t always need to turn yourself inside out (and I very much disliked teachers who were suspicious of ease. Those people have a vested interest in you, the student, being in their thrall, of needing them … so they keep you weak. They don’t like ANYTHING to come easy.)

All of this is to say that Lee Strasberg was THE teacher of “The Method” for 20, 30 years – and even with the controversies, having ringing endorsements from people like Al Pacino did much to maintain his mystique (and the mystique of the Actors Studio- with which Strasberg was forever linked – as though they were one and the same).

Lee Strasberg remains a controversial figure (and his third and last wife Anna Strasberg even more so_, a very important man in American theatrical history, but there is no “official” version of him. Some people hated him, some loved him, some felt liberated by his teaching (Ellen Burstyn), some felt stifled. There is no right answer here.

But when we get into the Marilyn Monroe connection, things get even more murky. I have read both of Susan Strasberg’s books (Marilyn and Me and Bittersweet) – and I have to say: they make me feel stifled. Susan Strasberg, daughter of Lee and Paula Strasberg, was an actress. Because of who her parents were (and Paula had been an actress in the Group Theatre – she became Lee Strasberg’s second wife – they had two children) – it was expected that she would go into the theatre, but it was also expected that she would study with her father, join the Actors Studio, take that route. They were unbelievably pushy parents. Or, Paula was pushy … a very ambitious woman, bloated with her own thwarted dreams … Paula was an acting coach herself (and she ended up having a very close relationship with Monroe – which caused all sorts of problems on movie sets – with Monroe deferring to PAULA’S judgment as opposed to the director’s) … and she wanted her daughter to thrive. However, I can’t help but get the sense that she wanted her daughter to thrive on HER terms. She didn’t REALLY want Susan to be free and independent. Whatever Susan had as an actress (and she had a pretty fine run!) would be OWNED by her parents. Just the thought of that makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Lee Strasberg was, famously, a very remote man. He was cut off, somewhere deep inside, and while he obviously had a gift of insight into acting – and into other people’s processes – he wasn’t as good with his own family. The house was always full of actors, all toadying up to Lee, and Susan grew up in that heady atmosphere, a little dark-haired girl on the sidelines, watching movie stars suck up to her father. Would there be room in that for HER? The thought of breaking free of her parents was unthinkable. They were too powerful. However, Susan started studying at the Actors Studio. Of course that meant that she was studying with her father – which, naturally, would make her freeze up … If he treated her like he treated the other students (pushing at them, shouting at them, slicing through their defenses) … how would she take that home with her? How would that affect their relationship? But even with these struggles, Strasberg started working. Very early. She got the role of Anne Frank in the Broadway production – she was just a teenager – and it was a giant smash hit. She was the toast of Broadway. Here’s a picture of Susan from that time – and you can see, smiling above her – the mouth of Marilyn Monroe – one of the oddest things to see – because Marilyn Monroe is always the focus of any photo she is in. But here – in this case – she is not. It’s Susan Strasberg’s night.

She went on to minor success – playing Millie Owens in Picnic (a part with which I have many fond memories myself) and other roles.

Meanwhile, though, Marilyn Monroe had latched on to Lee Strasberg (and the feeling was mutual). Marilyn Monroe had moved to New York at the height of her career with two goals in mind: 1. To nab Arthur Miller and 2. To study with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Monroe and Shelley Winters were great friends, and Winters had suggested that the Studio would be a good no-pressure place (ha!) for Monroe to go to work on her acting. She could take classes, have private sessions with Lee. Monroe would probably never get the chance to work on Nora in Doll’s House (although I think she would have been wonderful in the part) – but there at the Studio she could.

Monroe dedicated herself to her classes at the Studio, and Strasberg very early on had some kind of connection to her. Perhaps he was enamored at the thought that this glamorous movie star had chosen him. Perhaps he was a little bit in love with her. Perhaps he had a Svengali complex. I think there was all of that going on. His devotion to Marilyn Monroe became paramount. He was more devoted to her than he was to his own children (at least that is how Susan and Johnny – the Strasberg’s son – felt). Both of them had artistic ambition and dreams … why couldn’t their famous father stay focused on THEM?

Marilyn Monroe became ensconced in the Strasberg household. She and Lee would have hours-long sessions in his study, and she would emerge, unsteady on her feet, drained from weeping, and ready for a drink. Boundaries were blurred. Monroe slept over (as a matter of fact, she slept in the same room as Johnny – who was a 16 year old boy at the time – can you imagine the sexual confusion of that situation for him?) John, though, years later, would remember very movingly his first impressions of her, the biggest movie star in the world:

The first time I met her I remember she came out of the living room and Pop said, “This is my son,” and my first impression of her was that she was different from most of the people who came to the house. I’d watch all these people trading their most human qualities, betraying themselves for success at all costs, to become rich and famous, and afterward, when it was too late, they’d realize they had lost the best part of themselves along the way, but she, she was like me. When I looked into her eyes, it was like looking into my own, they were like a child’s eyes. I was still a child. You know how children just look at you. My feeling was she had less ego or was less narcissistic than most of the actors who never really bothered with me. She was just another person to me, another one from that world I felt cut off, excluded, from. She was nicer, real simple, no makeup, and she really looked at me as if she saw me. It wasn’t that I wanted people to look at me, but I knew the difference when she did. I knew everyone said she was the sexiest, most sensual woman in the world. Not to me. I thought there was something wrong with me for not feeling that from her. I’d felt it from other women who came to the house. I was pretty sexually frustrated then. She was so open, so loose, and her sensuality as such was so totally innocent, nothing dirty in it at all, and the first time it was just like talking to an ordinary person, only realer than most who came into the house in those days. She was quiet, too, I remember, like an animal is quiet, and I was like that too, survival tactics. She seemed smart, but not in an educated way, instinctively smart, nobody’s fool.

They had a special bond. She had a special bond with Susan as well, they were practically like sisters. They would sleep in in the mornings, lying in Susan’s bed, talking about boys and makeup and life. As Susan Strasberg started getting important parts in plays that were truly relevant, Monroe was proud and happy for her – but jealous as well – since she had never been given the chance to do anything that would be “important”. Monroe, like most brilliant comediennes and sex bombs, yearned to be taken seriously. Her relationship with the Strasbergs was deep, complex, disturbing to read about, and, frankly, a mess. Everyone was just trying to get their needs met. But her presence in the family messed up an already strained dynamic.

Monroe looked to Strasberg as a father figure, and if there were any sexual shenanigans (who knows, just speculating) Paula looked the other way. Paula insinuated herself into Monroe’s life, becoming a constant companion. She, in lieu of Lee, would travel with Marilyn, going on her shoots with her, to work on the part privately, and have private sessions. Directors HATED her. They HATED her. She would stand behind them as they shot the scene, and the director would call “Cut” and Marilyn would not look at the director to see if it was good, she would glance over the director’s shoulder to Paula. An insufferable situation. Paula Strasberg was banned from many sets. She was seen as interference. She got in the way of Marilyn doing good work – as opposed to the other way around. It was almost like (and this is my interpretation from all the reading I’ve done) that Paula’s presence made Marilyn doubt herself. Marilyn was a huge talent. Yeah, she had problems memorizing lines (she probably was dyslexic) and had other issues … but dammit, she knew how to be a movie star. Come on. She created that all on her own without the help of Paula Strasberg. In a cynical sense, I can see that Lee and Paula saw Marilyn as a possible gravy train (and the debacle with Marilyn’s estate – a controversy to this day – is indicative of what perhaps they had hoped to happen). Lee Strasberg made his living through acting teaching. He was not a director, he was not an actor. So he wasn’t a wealthy man. Marilyn Monroe was loaded, and willing to pay.

But I think, too, there was something in Marilyn that was, perhaps, weaker than other actresses – who also need to be coddled and told they are wonderful, etc. Marilyn Monroe yearned to be seen as a real actress, and Lee Strasberg, unlike most of the folks in Hollywood, saw it in her. He saw potential unlike anything he had ever seen before. I do think that part of it was genuine for him. He made her work on Anna Christie and Shakespeare. He made her work on Molly Bloom’s monologue at the end of Ulysses. He saw that Marilyn Monroe had a natural ability – rare indeed – to project herself, her personality, her soul – out into the open. Most actors need to be taught to do what she did naturally.

Regardless: the Strasberg involvement in Monroe’s life was intense. It makes me stifled to read it. By the end of Marilyn’s life, she was trying to cut the cords. It was not easy. It is never easy to change a dance step. To say to someone who is convinced that you need them: “Yeah, thanks, I got it now. I can do it on my own.” Especially when there is a financial element to the relationship. They depended on Marilyn financially.

Anyway, books have been written about all of this. You could obviously look at it through many different lenses. Arthur Miller was furious at the Strasbergs for taking advantage of Marilyn, as he saw it. John Huston was like, “If I ever see that black bat [meaning Paula Strasberg] on my set …”

The book Marilyn and Me is Susan’s story – of trying to survive in that environment and carve out her own place. Even though her work was good and she was getting great reviews … it didn’t seem to win her parents’ approval. They would drop everything if Marilyn called. And Marilyn – never a woman with rock-hard boundaries – seemed to not realize how much damage she did … she couldn’t help herself. She also loved the Strasbergs (all 4 of them, not just Paula and Lee). She loved them as the family she never had.

But boy. What a mess.

You can’t wait for Susan and Johnny to move out and get on with their OWN lives. Interestingly enough, Marilyn seemed to sense that as well. She had a big sister role to the two younger Strasbergs, and sometimes (with her sensitivity) could see what the situation was clearer than any insider could. John Strasberg (who has gone on to be an amazing director and teacher – I took a workshop with him and he blew me away) tells a beautiful story about Marilyn, one of my favorites:

I think I was talking about cars to Mother and Father. You know how I loved cars. I’d just come home and it was going to be my eighteenth birthday. I’d wanted to come for that.

Mother and Father hadn’t wanted me to come. “Why don’t you wait till the end of the year?” Well, i’d already been kicked out of college. They didn’t know yet.

When I’d gone off at the airport, I’d turned to Mother and said, “For two cents, I won’t go.” Nobody gave me the two cents, but I’d meant it. What I’d wanted to do was work. I’d wanted to work from the time I was fifteen, and they were always against any effort on my part to be strong or independent. I remember how much I resented it. “You don’t have to work, we’ll take care of everything,” undermining me.

So I was talking about cars, no one was listening, and Marilyn was there and out of the blue said, “Why don’t you take my car, Johnny?”

I thought I hadn’t heard her right, and I said, “What?” She had remembered the summer before, in California, I’d had that Chevy I’d rented. God, I loved that car, a ’57 Bel Air silver Chevy, and she had the Thunderbird.

She continued, “I’ve got the Ford Mustang the corporation gave me, and Arthur and I have a car. That one’s just sitting in the garage, we don’t use it.”

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe she meant it.

Mother and Father were horrified; they didn’t like it at all. I don’t know if it felt like too much to give me or if they were worried about my driving in my state of mind, but they objected strenuously. “He’s too young. Maybe later, Marilyn. You don’t have to. It’s impossible, he can’t afford it, it could be dangerous.”

Marilyn just said, “Well, don’t worry about any of that, it’s in the corporation’s name, so I’ll take care of the insurance.”

I’ll never forget that … There were so few, so very few people who were generous like that. Especially to me, who couldn’t do anything for her.

I think that car saved my life.

It was a family, what can you say. A makeshift one, with all kinds of weirdness – described by Susan. When Susan was in Anne Frank on Broadway she was 16, 17 … and she started an affair with the married Richard Burton, who was also on Broadway at the time. It was her first love. Paula Strasberg was Susan’s mother. Instead of being either scared for her daughter, or judgmental – she was thrilled. What a great opportunity for her daughter – to lose her virginity to one of the biggest stars of the stage! I mean, I’m coarsening it – but Paula was so excited – had Burton over to the house, let him sleep in Susan’s bed, and made sure that Susan was well-versed in all things birth control. Paula was a woman who, in the 30s, had been a blonde buxom fraulein-type girl, a committed Socialist, and a good actress. Years would destroy her. She was obese by the 50s, and dressed only in black, with a black scarf draped over her head like a bubushka. She had had dreams, of course, she had been at the forefront of the American theatre for a brief decade and life seemed to pass her by. She had married the ultimate acting coach … and who knows … I think there were a lot of issues there. If you read books about the Group Theatre, you meet Paula as one kind of person … then you read the books about Marilyn Monroe, and another person entirely emerges. She was despised by those who loved and cared about Monroe. She was like a leech, a bloodsucker … and she restricted access to Monroe, isolating Monroe from the world. You had to go through her. So who knows – I don’t feel qualified to weigh in on who Paula actually was – I can only guess.

But Susan Strasberg experienced her mother as bossy, intrusive, strangely passive around her husband, and a woman who was full of mystical thoughts about signs, messages, portents … She had a sense of destiny. Marilyn Monroe came along, and it was the most exciting thing that had happened to the family.

Susan loved Marilyn Monroe. She considered her to be her best friend.

Here are the two of them, sitting in one of Lee Strasberg’s classes.

But it must have seemed kind of like a dream – those years of the 50s into the 60s … those years when Marilyn Monroe came to stay with us … She was such a big star. Such a troubled woman. I happen to think she was a wonderful actress – but there was something in the Strasbergs that, yes, made her go deeper into her work – but also stymied her, made her stuck. I don’t take the condescending snotty view that Marilyn Monroe working on Shakespeare is silly because why would she ever be cast in such plays? That’s the whole point of training. That’s the whole point of the Actors Studio, actually: a place where you can work on things outside of commercial considerations. But like I mentioned: all the boundaries got blurred, and Monroe started being nervous about making a choice in her acting, ANY choice, without running it by the Strasbergs first.

Must have been quite an ego trip for them, but that may be a cynical interpretation.

Marilyn and Me is not well-written. It is the definition of conventional prose, which makes me believe that Susan wrote every word. If it was better written, I might suspect she had some outside help. The text is interspersed with long bits where people who knew Marilyn tell what they remembered – Susan Strasberg had obviously gone around getting people on tape for the purposes of the book. The anecdotes are fascinating. Actually, the whole book is fascinating. The picture that emerges of Marilyn Monroe is absolutely 100% three-dimensional. She was not an evil witch-woman who stole Strasberg’s parents. It was like Monroe went back to her years in the foster care system, and joined the family for a time. She was clearly a grownup but she was a good friend to the two young ones, too. She was a movie star, completely in control of her persona, absolutely in love with her own fame … but she was also a woman who still woke up from nightmares of her time in the orphanage … and who dreamt, wistfully, of being in a play like The Diary of Anne Frank – of having the critics and the public ACCEPT her as a serious actress.

Monroe said to Susan Strasberg once:

“Being a most serious actress is not something God has removed from my destiny as He chooses to destroy my chances of being a mother. It’s therefore my perogative to make the dream of creative fulfillment come true for me. That is what I believe God is saying to me and is the answer to my prayers.”

This has been an unearthly long entry, but I obviously have a lot of thoughts about the Strasbergs. I have been studying them, as a family, since I was 12 years old and decided that the Actors Studio was where I needed to be. My main response to the book (besides the revelatory anecdotes about Marilyn) is: Sheesh. Thank God I wasn’t in that family.

Here’s an anecdote from when Marilyn first started taking classes with Lee.

EXCERPT FROM Marilyn and Me: Sisters, Rivals, Friends, by Susan Strasberg

Pop and Marilyn decided that she would observe at the studio, work with him at home, sit in on the private classes and eventually do the exercise work and scenes with the other students. Observer privileges at the studio were a courtesy that was extended to foreign or already established actors. Some came once, like Laurence Olivier; others came often.

My father had gone out of his way for both known and unknown artists before, if they were needy, financially or emotionally, and if they were talented. He said that often the depth of the emotional problem was correspondent to the degree of talent. He was fascinated with the transmutation of antisocial behavior into creative work. Because of this, he was accused of doing therapy. One student and friend remarked, “Lee, you should have been a therapist.”

He shook his head. “Why, darling? I have more freedom in my work.”

He sent numerous actors to psychiatrists, and many doctors sent their patients to class because they felt his work helped theirs in analysis.

He felt Marilyn had to go into therapy before he could work with her. She’d seen doctors before only on a hit-and-run basis, emergency room therapy with no continuity. Now she agreed to commit on a long-term basis.

After a day of teaching, my dad was usually too exhausted to talk, and even when he wasn’t exhausted, he wasn’t exactly a magpie. Now, three times a week after work he and Marilyn disappeared into the living room. Soon I’d hear laughing or weeping, sometimes an outburst of anger, a diatribe against her studio or someone who’d betrayed her trust. She was very unforgiving during these bouts, it was all ablack and white for her. People were either for her or against her, there was no middle ground. If she even suspected they were against her, and she could be very suspicious, she’d go wild. I don’t know if “those bastards … sons of bitches …” and so on were ever told off in person, but if they were, I doubt they would have ever forgotten it. And she didn’t stutter once.

Her scatological language fascinated me. My parents rarely cursed in private. You didn’t say certain words in public, it just wasn’t done. Others could do it, but we didn’t except my brother, who refused to obey the unspoken rules. “Hypocrites!” he’d yell at my parents. “Goddamned hypocrites!”

Marilyn’s vocabulary included words I’d never ever heard of, and she wielded them like a sailor, with no embarrassment. She had quite a temper when she lost control. It didn’t faze my father, perhaps because he was always battling his own prodigious rage, which more than matched hers. He seemed to have a calming effect on her. Her tirade would evaporate and, as if nothing had occurred, they’d be speaking quietly about very personal matters – men, her mother, her feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness. It was such a stark contrast to the way she behaved with me. I could hardly believe it was the same woman.

When I overheard snatches of these sessions I’d get excited with a sense of being part of something forbidden. As if I were a sieve, I’d feel her emotions run through me. If she cried, tears came to my eyes.

On the other hand, I was ambivalent about the tenderness I heard in my dad’s voice as he consoled her. When I’d gone to my father to talk about something personal in my life – my fights with Mother, my need for more freedom, a young man I’d been dating who never called me any more – he closed up. “Darling, I’m not concerned with that except as it relates to the work.” It was true, mine weren’t life-or-death problems, but they felt that way to me, and he acted as if they were so trivial he couldn’t be bothered. I wanted to cry out to him, “I don’t care about the work. I’m young, I want to have a good time. I don’t want to suffer or be in pain, I want you to help me. I want you to hold me.” The words lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t say anything.

Another thing confused me – given that my middle name was confusion. It confused me to observe the attention and time my father devoted to Marilyn. It began to dawn on me that there was some connection between them that went beyond the work. She was so different from the classic actresses he spoke of with glowing admiration, the actresses he admired – Rachel, the great French tragedienne, whom I looked like; Eleonora Duse, whom he’d seen and whom he believed was the greatest actress that had ever lived. He advocated willpower and structure and discipline. Marilyn seemed such an unlikely disciple. Her work and life seemed the antithesis of everything he stood for to me. Was he in love with her? I didn’t think so. But he was practically a stranger to me. In some ways our entire family were intimate strangers. I wondered if my mother was jeaous of the time he gave to Marilyn.

“She’s not your father’s type, you know,” Mom confided.

“My type is Jennifer Jones, that dark-haired, fair-skinned beauty,” Pop affirmed.

“It’s her talent he loves,” Mother assured herself. “She’s so incredibly talented.” Then she wondered whether I should darken my hair and eyebrows for a more glamorous look. Eventually I did and, when I saw the photos of myself, dark and dramatic, I realized with a shock that I resembled a young Jennifer Jones.

Someone who’d known Pop from the Group Theatre days was reminiscing to me: “There were two things we knew about Lee. He loved baseball and Alice Faye.” Alice Faye was a blonde like Marilyn, like my mother. Maybe my father didn’t have a type.

Even when Marilyn wasn’t physically present, she often monopolized the conversation. My father was unaccustomedly verbal about her. After dinner one night he told us, “She has this phenomenal sensitivity, her instrument is incredibly responsive. Despite the bad mannerisms and habits she may have acquired in Hollywood, and with all the abuse she was subjected to, they haven’t touched what is underneath. It’s difficult because you have to look past what she looks like to see what’s hidden. She had to hide it or she’d have been too vulnerable to survive, and she’s so eager and willing, as if she’s a flower that’s been waiting all this time for someone to water her.”

There was this strange constriction in my throat as he continued. Was it boredom, or was it resentment? He never talked about me with that look in his eyes. He wasn’t finished either; he went on to say, “After Marlon, she has the greatest talent, raw talent, that I’ve ever come across, except in her it’s just not at all developed. But she has the desire. And if she has the discipline, the will, she can do it.”

Early one evening Marilyn had finished a particularly grueling session wtih Pop. We were waiting for dinner, which we ate around six-thirty, and she’d borrowed some of my makeup to fix up her face because she’d been crying. She was unusually relaxed and pleased about whatever they’d done. We were in my bedroom and I sprawled on my bed, watching her apply my rouge and mascara, the only makeup I used.

As she began to talk to me, she seemed to be talking to herself, too. Her voice was hushed but clear. “I thought your father would be so forbidding, I was terrified the first time I was alone with him in there. But he wasn’t scary at all. Gadge [Elia Kazan, the director], a lot of people told me he was scary, but I think they just didn’t want me to see him. Susie, the best thing that ever happened to me was when your father took me seriously. I’ve always wanted for people to see me, not the actress, the real person. Your daddy does. He treats me like I’m a human being. I was so sick of being treated like a poster babe or a broad out there. Everybody laughed when I said I wanted to play Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov, like I was a dummy. They were the dummies. If they’d bothered to read the book, they’d know she was this sensual girl, a barmaid. I could really have played her.”

She turned to look at me. “You know why I make fun of myself? So I’ll do it before they do. That way it’s not so bad, doesn’t hurt so much. It’s either commit suicide or laugh.” She had this pensive look on her face, as if she were figuring something out.

Daylight was fading fast, and she switched on the lamp near the mirror. “And you know, since your daddy’s given me his stamp of approval, other people are suddenly changing their tune. Only I’m not sure they believe it like he does.”

Inside I was dying. I’d been one of those people who’d looked down at her aspirations. Thank God she couldn’t read my mind.

In a stream of consciousness her voice flowed on. “I worked with this woman in California for years. She taught me, educated me, like your father, gave me books to read, but even she thought I was a dummy. He doesn’t, and the most important thing is, with your father for the first time I feel it’s OK to be me, the whole kit and caboodle, you know, the whole mess.

“I never dared to even think about it before – who’s got time to think when you gotta survive? But now I want to be an artist, pardon the expression, a real actress. I don’t care about the money and the fame, although I’m not knocking it, but like the man says, ‘Life’s not written on dollar bills,’ right? Since I came here to New York, I feel I’m accepted, not as a freak, but as myself, whoever the hell that is. I’m kind of just finding out.”

She was so open, her face flowing with fervor and longing. I felt glad for her, and I wondered if this was what my father was drawn to – this longing of hers.

She turned off the makeup light, and then, almost as if she’d made a discovery, she continued, “You know, for the first time in a long time I feel that something good is going to come out of my life … and I’m beginning to think that the something good is me. I know your father’s really going to help me. You don’t know how lucky you are.” I assumed she meant to have a father like that, and I was a little embarrassed on general principles and just nodded agreement.

It was dark in the room now, and we sat, unable to see each other’s faces, lost in our own thoughts. Faint notes of some lyrical strains of flute music drifted in the air. The sweet-sour aroma of red cabbage and brisket made my mouth water.

Listening to her had reminded me of this story about an agent who sold a producer on this actress, saying she’d stop the show if he cast her. On opening night she did stop the show and got a standing ovation. The agent turned to the producer triumphantly. “You see, I told you she was great, and now I believe it.”

Marilyn seemed like the agent before the ovation, hoping for the best yet not convinced.

It amazed me that she was so much older, had achieved so much, yet she was just as insecure as, maybe even more insecure than, me. She had won my complete admiration for one thing: she wasn’t scared of my father, not even a little bit. I determined I’d watch her closely so I could learn her secret.