Marilyn Monroe by Barbara Leaming Read Free Book Online

to the wall behind his desk. A framed photograph of his beak-nosed wife, Saroula, dark hair piled on top of her head, leaned against the map on a side table littered with other, smaller family photographs. In front of his desk were a pair of beige club chairs and a large globe. Skouras, a bald, stocky, square-shouldered immigrant, always wore a conservative blue suit with a crisp white linen handkerchief in the breast pocket. His oversized eyeglasses had thick, shiny, black frames. He had a meaty face, with prominent eyebrows and a broad nose. He had coarse, mottled skin and deep, dark creases in his forehead. Impatient, always in a hurry, he was perpetually drumming thick fingers on the slab-like marble desktop. In a Turkish bath that adjoined his office, two masseurs, one on either side, would pound and knead the muscles of his bear-like body while Skouras dictated correspondence in mangled English to a secretary who perched behind a screen. The Old Greek was famous for the ability to fall asleep at will, awakening in a minute or two visibly refreshed, though some business associates believed the whole thing was just an act. He was prone to take a nap when people started to say anything he didn’t want to hear.
    Darryl Zanuck had little respect for Skouras. Privately, he regarded him as a fool. The production chief prided himself on excluding Skouras from creative decisions, revelling in his power to decide which projects were made and which were not. Calling himself a “one-manshow,” he made it a point of honor never to send Skouras a script. Zanuck sent finished films to New York, where Skouras, alternating between puffs on his cigar and a sip of Scotch, watched them late at night in his screening room. As long as the firm’s chief executive officer remained in New York focused on business matters, Zanuck was content.
    That March, Skouras came to Los Angeles for the annual sales conference. Five days of screenings culminated in an exhibitors’ luncheon at the studio commissary, where theater owners mingled with Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Anne Baxter, and other stars. Zanuck, known as “the Coast,” was in attendance, of course, but this was very much New York’s show.
    Skouras, hoarsely muttering “Won’erful! Won’erful!” as he liked to do, worked the room. He was brilliant with exhibitors. The connection was direct and intense. His eyes shot open. His greeting was electric. He gave them a bear-hug. He kissed them on both cheeks. He inquired about their wives and children by name. He told them about the infestation of Mediterranean worm that had destroyed the family vineyard when he was a boy. He reminded them that he himself had started out in motion pictures as co-owner of a St. Louis theater with his brothers Charlie and George.
    After drinks and hors d’oeuvres, Skouras had taken his place at the main table when there was a fuss at the door. All heads turned as Marilyn Monroe burst in, more than an hour late. She appeared to have been sewn into her chiffon and satin black strapless cocktail gown. Someone said that she looked like Cinderella in flight from the pumpkin coach. Marilyn’s air of helplessness and bewilderment masked a fierce determination to force the issue of her contract. This was her moment to attract Skouras’s attention, and she put on quite a show.
    Joe Schenck, also at the main table, watched with the others as Marilyn wiggled toward the first available chair. It was at a table of Midwestern exhibitors. From where Skouras sat he could not hear the conversation, but the theater owners’ excitement was palpable.
    “And what pictures are you going to be in, Miss Monroe?” one theater owner shouted.
    “You’ll have to ask Mr. Skouras,” Marilyn replied in a wispy voice, at once childlike and seductive.
    Skouras, who recognized Marilyn from
The Asphalt Jungle
and
All
    About Eve
, demanded to know the same thing. Marilyn Monroe did not have an assignment, Schenck informed him. And