The former home of publisher and Misfits producer Frank E. Taylor in Connecticut is on the market for the first time in fifty years – with a $16 million asking price, Greenwich Time reports. Taylor published Arthur Miller’s non-fiction book, Situation Normal, in 1944, and his only novel, Focus, in 1945. His other literary successes included Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Grace Metallious’ Peyton Place, and Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse.
Frank later moved to Hollywood and produced a low-budget film noir for MGM, Mystery Street (1950), and also worked briefly at Twentieth Century-Fox before returning to New York as political blacklisting took hold in Hollywood. He commissioned Malcolm Lowry to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night for the screen, but the script went unproduced. In 1959, Frank was involved in a musical adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, which was also abandoned. However, the story would later reach the stage (and screen) as Cabaret, though without Taylor’s input.
“To Marilyn, the Taylors were by far the liveliest and most convivial of Miller’s married friends,” noted Monroe biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles. “She came in time to confide in both Frank and Nan Taylor” (see here.) The eldest two of their four sons, Mark and Curtice, were also playmates to Arthur’s children, Bobby and Jane.
Joining her husband, Nan became Marilyn’s assistant on the Misfits set. Sadly, their friendship with Marilyn would not long survive her separation from Arthur Miller, although she kept a touching letter Nan wrote to her in February 1961, following a period of illness. The Taylors divorced in 1975, and Frank later moved to Key West, Florida, where he lived in an openly gay relationship until his death in 1999.
The Marilyn Report 