Marilyn and Arthur Miller were among seven famous couples profiled for Italy’s F Magazine last week (#34 – dated August 26, with Madonna and Sean Penn on the cover.) The photo above shows the newlywed Millers arriving at a party in the home of English playwright Terence Rattigan during production of The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956.
Inside, photos taken before, during and after their four-year marriage accompany a fictional ‘love letter’ from Marilyn to her ex-husband nearly two years after the relationship ended, and only three days before Marilyn died.
As written by author Chiara Gamberale, the letter imagines Marilyn coming to terms with the impending birth of Arthur’s baby with his new wife, Inge Morath. She also addresses her past miscarriages, and ambivalent feelings for two key figures in her life: Arthur, and her mother Gladys.
FYI: Marilyn was pregnant twice – not thirteen times, as stated below …
“Los Angeles, August 1, 1962
Dear Arthur,
I’ve never written you a letter, I know, and do you know how many times you’ve told me you’d have liked to receive at least a note from me to accompany a gift? But those have never been lacking, come on. My gifts to you, I mean. The watch with the leather strap, for example. Travilla’s hat, that night in Washington, after the trial, in that hotel room I’d left for you all swollen with yellow tulips. My conversion. My conversion, my conversion—in my opinion, that’s worth three gifts. The night in Washington—two.
I’ve already lost the thread, I know—I know, I know, I know, I know. It’s just that for a few months now, I haven’t quite figured out where the thread has gone. It’s not a big deal, you might think: and that’s the main reason why, before tonight, I never wrote to you. Not because I’ve never been too familiar with the thread, with the sense of what happens, no, no. But because you thought so, because you thought. I felt hot, cold, the need to argue, the desire to make love. While you. You were thinking. You were thinking so many things about me, you were thinking so many things in general, that before saying something, or before doing something, by dint of thinking whether you would think good or bad of it, I didn’t say it, I didn’t do it. Imagine if I could ever have done it then. Write. Me. To you!
It’s pointless to apologize right away for any mistakes you’ll find, now that I’ve decided to try. Actually, more than a decision, that’s what always led me to write to you. A feeling. It’s still my way of thinking, what can you do? And you keep telling me that a feeling is the exact opposite of a thought. I’ll keep telling you that it’s not. That it depends on the person you are. From the child—the child the child the child the child the child the child the child the child the child the child the child the child the child. I’ve written it thirteen times, because thirteen times I’ve wanted a child. Thirteen times my body was ready for a child. But perhaps my heart was ready, my body wasn’t. Or perhaps, I feel, I who can’t think, my whole heart was ready, my body. My head. But my god, who wasn’t yours but then became yours, or perhaps yours who wasn’t yet mine, or a god who chooses who to protect regardless of who chooses what to believe in, the god of children who should be born and those who aren’t, wanted them not to. That I, a child with too much of a mother, all wrong, and no father at all, shouldn’t have become a parent.
And what about this? Have you ever, really, thought about it? About a child of ours, I mean. With my eyes, your brain. With your eyes, my brain. With my feelings, your thoughts. My tantrums, your tantrums. Fanatical like me, like you. Shy like me. Who knows. If you ever understood, while you were thinking and thinking, how shy I was. Who knows. If you ever think about that child, now that your Inge is pregnant.
Yes, I found out. Of all your thoughts, one wasn’t telling me: I’m going to be a father. Anyway, the news reached me—you talk, talk, talk, always talking about nothing, you, you kept repeating this to me, and you lowered your voice when you said you, as if to say: how disgusting you are. You. But you’re not ashamed. People who belong on stage, people who belong in the spotlight, shitty people. People who don’t deserve a child. Not like Inge who stands back. Behind a camera, behind her man. Inge who gives him her place so he can stand in the center. Him at the head of the table. Him on the stage that his intelligence deserves and that his idiotic passion for the actress, his passion for the idiotic actress, had stolen from him.
No! No, no, no. No, moved from my heart, never moved from my heart. I’m not mad at you. I will never be mad at you. Not tonight—certainly not tonight. Tonight the air smells of gin. Of tired sheets. Of stars that don’t fall. Tonight in my head, which maybe is my heart, which maybe is my body, something strange is creeping up, something strangely sweet, and it concerns you, us, everything that would be beautiful, if it weren’t impossible. It’s hot, all three of them are naked—head, heart, body. Naked for a while. They’re cold, even though summer is going crazy. Bitterly cold, the cold of someone who hasn’t had a child, hasn’t had another, another one. Thirteen, thirteen. Forty-nine, the beds where, when I was a little girl, I went to sleep, thinking (when I still knew how to think): this is the right time. This! This is my home. But no. Because then she would come back, my (?) mother (?). Then she would leave.
Mom, please come back: mom, please go away. Arthur, please come back. Go away, Arthur. I adore you: fuck you. I hate you: I love you, hold me tight, don’t leave me, never leave me. Especially now that we’ve broken up, Arthur. Especially now. Tonight. Don’t leave me. That’s why I’m writing to you, and for the same reason I don’t think I’ll ever mail this letter. I’m writing to you, and I won’t mail it, to pray to you, and through you to pray to the whole world—because he was the only true god for me, and as I confess it to you, tonight, I discover it. Don’t leave me. Even if I leave you, even if I can’t take it anymore, you stay. All of you stay. Be a son to me, Arthur, be a mother to me, a father to me. Be a son to me, world, be a mother to me, a father to me. Love me even when I don’t deserve it at all and I’ve just woken up or, like tonight, I can’t sleep. That’s exactly when I’ll need it. That I needed it, moved from my heart. Never moved from my heart. I love you: I hate you.
Arthur, world. My life. I hate you, I love you.
Norma Jeane”
Marilyn previously graced the cover of F Magazine in 2022, with photos by Douglas Kirkland illustrating Teresa Ciabatti’s rather lurid article marking the 60th anniversary of Marilyn’s death.
The Marilyn Report 