Page 25 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

DIRECTOR JOHN HUSTON is casting for The Asphalt Jungle, a gritty crime drama about an aging criminal mastermind’s doomed bid to pull off one last jewel heist.

Ryman Carroll lobbies Huston, who’d refused to audition Marilyn for one of his earlier films, to give her a chance at the role.

The talent scout has a unique influence over the director, who’s boarding twenty-three horses at the ranch Ryman Carroll and her husband, actor John Carroll, own in Grenada Hills outside Los Angeles.

Huston, the son of actor Walter Huston (whom he’d directed to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ) and a former actor himself, is known to be particular about pairing actors with roles.

“When I cast a picture,” he describes the process, “I do most of my directing in finding the right person.”

“Tell your agent to get in touch with Mr. Huston,” the casting director instructs Marilyn. “I’ve already discussed you with him. It’s not a big part, but you’re bound to make a big hit in it.”

Marilyn arrives for her first meeting with Huston dressed as she imagines the fictional Angela—a young woman kept by an older man—might be.

She’s wearing a low-cut, clingy red dress over a bra padded to the point of absurdity.

The producer, Arthur Hornblow, laughs and asks her to remove all the tissues. She’s given a script to look over.

“Do you think you can do it?” her agent Johnny Hyde asks. “You have to break up in it and cry and sob.”

“I thought you thought I was a star, and I could do anything,” Marilyn replies.

“You can,” he assures her. “But I can’t help worrying.”

Drama coach Natasha Lytess rehearses Marilyn continuously for three days, returning her suitably dressed and styled.

Ryman Carroll consults with studio hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff, who creates “an original style, much shorter than the standard length at that time and structured to follow the contours of her face.” The new look accentuates Marilyn’s natural beauty, though she’s still lacking confidence.

“I don’t think I’m going to be any good,” she admits to Huston when she comes in for the audition. “Would you mind if I read the part lying on the floor?”

Huston agrees, and a nervous Marilyn removes her shoes and lies on the ground. She does the scene once and then leaps up and requests to do it again.

There is something touching and appealing about Marilyn, Huston decides. He lets her run through the scene twice but assures her, “You got the part after the first reading.”

Even MGM chief Louis B. Mayer is impressed. He signs off on Marilyn for the role and agrees to employ Lytess as her private coach ahead of the fall 1949 shoot.

Mayer isn’t spending freely these days. Headlines like JUDY GARLAND LEAVES PICTURE ; COSTS SOAR ran in mid-May after MGM halted the musical Annie Get Your Gun and suspended Garland—eight months after the star exited The Barkleys of Broadway following a nervous breakdown.

Mayer had put Garland under the care of two studio doctors, but she was too ill and addled to perform, costing MGM millions.

On the set of Asphalt Jungle, Marilyn knows there’s no margin for error. After every take, she glances across to where Lytess is standing on the far reaches of the set, seeking her coach’s approval.

Shuttling between Johnny Hyde’s guest house in Beverly Hills, the Beverly Carlton Hotel, and Natasha Lytess’s apartment in Los Angeles, Marilyn is feeling the strain of displacement mirrored in the shooting script.

One evening, when it’s time to run lines, Lytess knocks repeatedly on Marilyn’s door—but gets no response, though she knows her student is there. When Marilyn finally answers, her eyes are wide with fear.

There’s a gang of men stalking me , a terrified Marilyn tells her. I can hear their voices, mocking and goading.

At first Lytess thinks that Marilyn is projecting, getting into character for the suspenseful scene they’re about to rehearse.

In an unnamed Midwestern city, Marilyn’s character, Angela, is ensconced in a hideaway by the corrupt lawyer who controls her.

But Marilyn keeps pausing, sitting in rigid silence to listen for voices that only she can hear.

The drama coach has been waiting for an excuse to complain about the pressure she feels MGM is applying. Marilyn needs to be nurtured and looked after, not exploited and used. Lytess marches into Johnny Hyde’s office at the William Morris Agency.

“She’s hearing voices!” Lytess declares, glaring across the agent’s desk.

Hyde barely reacts, conceding only, “We need to help her.”

MGM calls in the doctors, the same ones Judy Garland complained would “give us pep pills, then they’d take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills … That’s the way we got mixed up.” Anything to get the scenes in the can.

A medicated Marilyn finishes the shoot.

MGM executives turn out in force to preview Asphalt Jungle .

Spontaneous wolf whistling and generous applause erupt whenever “Angela” walks into the frame.

In the darkness of the screening room, Marilyn sits beside Johnny Hyde, holding his hand as he beams with the pride of vindication. He was right all along.

On May 12, 1950, Asphalt Jungle opens in theaters.

“There’s a beautiful blonde, too, name of Marilyn Monroe,” Photoplay magazine proclaims, who “makes the most of her footage.” Along with critical acclaim comes an outpouring of popular enthusiasm. The studio receives sacks of letters from fans inquiring about the pretty blonde.

Life magazine photographer Ed Clark gets an inside tip on Fox’s new “hot tomato” and brings Marilyn to Los Angeles’s Griffith Park, where she poses under the shade of the trees, reading scripts.

Not everyone is as impressed. When Clark sends a few rolls of film to his editors at Life, they wire back, “Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?”