Marilyn, Mom & Me, a play by Luke Yankee – son of actress Eileen Heckart, who played Vera in Bus Stop – opens this weekend at the International City Theatre (ICT) in Long Beach, California. The play stars Alisha Soper, who previously had a cameo role as Marilyn in the Netflix drama, Feud; and Laura Gardner as Eileen.
“A true story written and directed by Long Beach resident Luke Yankee, whose mother was a well-known, Oscar and Tony-winning character actress named Eileen Heckart. In 1956, when Heckart was cast as Marilyn Monroe’s best friend in the film, BUS STOP, Monroe, the ultimate ‘method actress’, set out to make Heckart her best friend in real life. 40 years later, Luke tries to unravel his complex, often volatile relationship with his mother by better understanding her intense friendship with one of the biggest movie stars of all time.”
Ahead of its opening, Luke spoke about Marilyn, Mom & Me in an interview for Hey SoCal.
“Eileen Heckart, the no-nonsense Broadway actress, and Marilyn Monroe, the glamorous Hollywood legend, developed an enduring bond during the filming of Bus Stop — perhaps the most important film of Monroe’s career. Forty-five years later, Yankee tries to unravel his mother’s relationship with Monroe in order to better understand his own path with this highly critical, yet loving woman. If Luke can get his mom to open up about Monroe, maybe it will make her a more sympathetic mother — or at least help him to connect with her on another level.
‘In 1956, when Marilyn was cast as the lead in the film Bus Stop, she was the biggest star in the world,’ says Yankee. ‘She had taken the previous year off to study with Lee Strasberg and had become the poster child for method acting, where an actor has to experience every moment truthfully. My mother was cast as her best friend in the movie, and, as a part of her newly discovered style of acting, Marilyn was determined to make my mother her best friend — both on screen and off. Reluctantly, Eileen went along with it for the sake of the film and found herself emotionally entrenched in Marilyn’s life.
‘My mother loved to talk about her career… except when it came to Marilyn,’ he continues. ‘Whenever she would do so, she would get very quiet and change the subject. If pressed, she would burst into tears. No one else she worked with had this effect on her.’
Marilyn, Mom & Me received readings at the Stella Adler Theatre and the Manhattan Theatre Club. During the pandemic, a reading was streamed live on Zoom as a benefit for the Actors Fund. The script has been awarded the 2020 Rising Artists Sponsor’s Choice Award from Southwest Theatre Productions, ‘Best Play’ in the 2021 Writer’s Digest Play Competition, and the 2022 Stanley Award for Drama from the Stanley-Timolat Foundation.
Film critic Rex Reed calls it ‘a stirring footnote to movie history you won’t want to miss. It’s a funny, dark, heartbreaking and unforgettable new play.’ Larry King found it ‘a truly wonderful piece of work which reveals the playwright’s extraordinary talent at creating characters and storytelling.'”
The Marilyn Report 