Page 22 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

FRED “FREDDY” KARGER is a composer and arranger for the Columbia music department.

Marilyn seeks out his office on the studio back lot. Clutching sheet music for Ladies of the Chorus to her chest, she makes her pitch: “I am hoping you can teach me to sing.”

“I’ll teach you whatever you want,” he replies, taking the sheet music from her and placing it on a stand in the middle of the room.

The charming Karger has a Hollywood pedigree. His father, Max Karger, is a co-founder of MGM Pictures along with Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer. His mother, Ann Conley, starred in the Ann & Effie Conley Sisters vaudeville act.

The thirty-two-year-old vocal coach casts his bright green eyes on his new pupil and assesses her voice.

A little reedy and untrained, but he can help with that.

Ladies of the Chorus is a low-budget romantic musical, and he teaches her two songs for the film, “Anyone Can Tell I Love You,” and “Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy.”

They rehearse until the light fades. To read the music more clearly, Karger reaches for a pair of glasses.

Marilyn is intrigued by the sight. I don’t know why, but I have always been attracted to men who wear glasses. Now, when he puts them on, I feel suddenly overwhelmed.

She decides that Karger, who is divorced with a young son, will be her first true love. He’s tender at times but can be critical in his demands.

“You cry too easily,” he says. “That’s because your mind isn’t developed. Compared to your breasts, its embryonic.”

Later, Marilyn looks up the word in the dictionary. She lies awake for hours, puzzling over Karger’s feelings toward her. He can’t love me or he wouldn’t be so conscious of my faults. How can he love me if I’m such a goof to him?

Too emotional and exhausted to rehearse, Marilyn cancels their next session.

Karger drives to her apartment. He knocks and knocks.

“Won’t you come in?” Marilyn says when she finally comes to the door. There’s no hiding that she has been lying in bed, crippled with hunger pangs.

Karger has her pack her few things. He invites her to live in his parents’ house, where he and his son have been living since the collapse of his marriage, a place where sisters, nieces, and nephews run up and down the stairs of the large, boisterous home and the family shares meals around a long kitchen table.

The shoot for Ladies of the Chorus begins on April 22, 1948, and wraps two weeks later on May 3. The musical’s low budget requires the cast and crew to work quickly.

“In a movie you act in bits and pieces,” Marilyn tells Freddy Karger’s mother, Ann Conley, over coffee.

“You say two lines, and then ‘cut.’ They relight, set up the camera in another place—and you act two more lines. You walk five feet, and they say ‘cut.’ The minute you get going good in your characterization, they cut.”

This is her first singing role, but thanks to voice work she’s done, Marilyn’s two numbers are favorably received.

“One of the bright spots is Miss Monroe’s singing,” the Motion Picture Herald praises her performance.

“She is pretty and, with her pleasing voice and style, she shows promise.” Variety singles out “the nifty warbling of Marilyn Monroe” and says that “Miss Monroe presents a nice personality in her portrayal of the burlesque singer.”

In June, Marilyn’s application for a sought-after place in the Hollywood Studio Club is accepted.

She moves into Room 307 of the Italian Renaissance Revival–style residence that houses one hundred young women who pay $10 to $15 per week for a room and two meals per day while they seek careers in show business.

Men may visit Studio Club residents, but only on the first floor.

With strong advance notices on Ladies of the Chorus buoying her, Marilyn turns her attention to a new question: What will be her next picture? She hopes to have an answer in her meeting with Max Arnow, Columbia’s casting director.

Everyone in Hollywood knows the story of Columbia Pictures’ biggest star, teenage dancer Margarita Carmen Cansino, who, as Rita Hayworth, won a seven-year contract from the studio chief known as “King Cohn” or “White Fang.”

How Harry Cohn cast her in Gilda, opening the film with the onscreen credit “Columbia Pictures Corporation presents Rita Hayworth as Gilda.” The April 1946 film noir infuriated censors with a so-called strip tease in which Hayworth, dressed in a black evening gown and a pair of long, black gloves, removed them one by one from her shapely arms.

On June 30, in advance of the “Able” test on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, Hayworth’s husband Orson Welles announced on the ABC radio network that the atomic bomb “will be decorated with a photograph of a sizeable likeness of the young lady named Rita Hayworth.”

At the height of her fame, Cohn christened Hayworth his “Love Goddess,” even as she famously resisted his advances.

“I fought Cohn—and I won,” Hayworth says. “I was trained to do this. Fred Astaire knew I was a dancer, he knew what all those dumb-dumbs at Columbia didn’t know. I was not picked up in a corner drug store like Lana. And O.K., so I happened to be ‘pretty.’”

Marilyn is thinking only of her career as she waits to meet the casting director. In her personal life, she’s hopelessly devoted to Freddy Karger.

The office door swings open and, instead of the affable Mr. Arnow, in walks the “White Fang,” Harry Cohn. “Follow me,” the president of Columbia Pictures says, walking toward a connecting door.

“I’ve been told to wait here for Mr. Arnow,” Marilyn replies, not moving from the chair.

“To hell with Arnow. He’ll know where you are!”

“I’d rather wait here for Mr. Arnow, if that’s all right with you.” She clutches the office chair in a white-knuckled grip.

“Miss Monroe.” His heavy face looms close. “I run this place. No one here says no to the boss.”

“Of course, Mr. Cohn,” she says, following him into a space with panoramic views over the lot.

“I hear you’re a model,” he says. “Show me.”

She turns slowly in her nipped-in jacket and tight skirt.

“Good.” He nods. “You look smaller than you do on screen. But then you ladies always do. Now sit.” He indicates a padded armchair, then leans over his huge leather-topped desk and flicks a switch. “Hold all my calls,” he orders an unseen receptionist.

Marilyn’s heart stops. Her mouth is smiling. But inside, she is terrified.

“Now,” he continues, opening the top drawer of his desk.

He pulls out a large photograph of an impressive-looking yacht.

“Do you like boats?” He uses his fat hands to smooth down a photograph of a yacht.

“You’re invited on board my yacht.” He walks behind her and gives her shoulders a painful squeeze.

“I’d love to join you and your wife, Mr. Cohn. What a delightful invitation.”

“My what?”

“Your wife.”

“Leave my wife out of this!” His cheeks puff as he hisses, “The boat leaves in an hour and we’re staying overnight.”

Marilyn doesn’t move. She sits with her back straight, staring ahead, her bottom lip quivering.

“This is a one-off invitation, Miss Monroe,” he barks. “Refuse me at your peril.”