Marilyn’s Screen Test
Monroe auditions with sex appeal
In 1962, Marilyn Monroe, one of the greatest sex symbols in Hollywood history, was at the height of her career and only months away from her death at age 36. She was mentally unstable, having been hospitalized for depression, and was seriously addicted to barbiturates. Her love life was in tatters, with her tabloid-fever marriages to baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller ending in divorce. She had recently moved back to Los Angeles from New York, and had become involved with Frank Sinatra and (largely unknown to the public) President John Kennedy. Her ex-husband DiMaggio had renewed contact with her and had become a supportive friend, but her relationship with her studio, 20th Century-Fox, was fairly frayed, and it was under this cloud that she began work on Fox’s Something’s Got to Give, a remake of the 1940 comedy My Favorite Wife. It was to be directed by George Cukor, and would costar Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse.
Her screen test for the film, which can be viewed above, shows her full of energy and verve. Yet Monroe didn’t show up for the first two weeks of filming, due to what was reported to be the flu or sinusitis but may very well have been barbiturate abuse. On May 19, she took a break from the shoot to go to New York and sing “Happy Birthday to You” to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, an event that was filmed and has become notorious for its over-the-top carnality. Monroe whisper-sang the song, and was wearing a bejeweled dress so skin-tight and form-fitting that she appeared to be nude. On returning to the Something’s Got to Give shoot in California, she shot a nude pool scene with publicity photographers present—unprecedented for a major star—and was soon after fired from the film and sued by Fox for breach of contract. The studio claimed she was mentally ill and drug-addicted, and though Lee Remick was hired to replace her, the movie was eventually shut down. It would never be completed or released.
As damage control, Monroe did publicity over the next month for Life and Cosmopolitan, and a photo shoot with Bert Stern for Vogue, including a now-famous session in the nude. She had begun negotiating with Fox to re-commence production on Something’s Got to Give when, on August 5, she was found dead in her house by her psychiatrist, poisoned by barbiturates. It was ruled an apparent suicide. She was gone, but the legend of Marilyn Monroe had only just begun.
