The story of Arthur Miller’s controversial relationship with Marilyn Monroe
Throughout her illustrious yet troubled life, Marilyn Monroe was wedded three times, though each brought its own difficulties. The pop culture icon was one of the most famous people on the planet, which naturally carried its fair share of unwanted attention and stress to her romantic relationships.
During the process of her divorce from Joe DiMaggio, Monroe dated Marlon Brando, but it was also during that time that she was introduced to her next husband, Arthur Miller, by the film director Elia Kazan. By the time her divorce from DiMaggio was finalised in 1995, the relationship with Miller had become more serious.
Interestingly, her studio urged Monroe to end the relationship as the FBI was investigating Miller on charges of communism. When Monroe refused, the FBI opened a file on her too. Journalist Walter Winchell also decried the relationship, cruelly writing: “America’s best-known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia.”
Eventually, the two married in June 1956 in a Jewish ceremony, and Monroe converted to Judaism, which led to Egypt banning all of her films. Even Variety called out the marriage with a barbarous headline that read: “Egghead Weds Hourglass”. However, the media was the least of Monroe’s problems around this time, as she also began to depend on pharmaceuticals and suffered a miscarriage, surely bringing strain on her relationship with Miller. Still, the love between the two was undeniable. Monroe wrote in her diary: “I am so concerned about protecting Arthur. I love him—and he is the only person—human being I have ever known that I could love not only as a man to which I am attracted to practically out of my senses—but he is the only person—as another human being that I trust as much as myself.”
Monroe’s addiction to prescription drugs and the pressure of the media was made all the more strenuous when she found a notebook of Miller’s lying open on the table. Miller had promised not to write about Monroe and her life, but according to his notes, he had worked some of her biography and characteristics into one of his future plays.
This would eventually lead to the couple’s divorce after the completion of The Misfits, which Miller had written in order to give Monroe the dramatic role in a film she desired. Evidently, the relationship had not worked out, and the two got a Mexican divorce in 1961.
Miller did not attend Monroe’s funeral. He told The Independent: “Instead of jetting to the funeral to get my picture taken, I decided to stay home and let the public mourners finish the mockery… She was destroyed by many things, and some of those things are you. And some of those things are destroying you. Destroying you now. Now as you stand there weeping and gawking, glad that it is not you going into the earth, glad that it is this lovely girl who you at last killed.”
