Now Marilyn valiantly attempted domesticity. She secured an apartment on 57th Street in Manhattan, she and Miller bought a home in Connecticut and she supervised re-modeling. She did not work. After suffering another miscarriage, she was then persuaded to return to Hollywood for Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot.” She objected to the role, another brainless blonde, looking for a rich man. The script was superior, however, and she relented. But by then, Marilyn’s addictions and fears had grown ten-fold. Wilder, who had managed her reasonably well on “The Seven Year Itch” could not repeat that miracle. He agreed that her studies had deepened her skills, but at the same time, seemed to have left her more insecure than ever. Those who disliked Lee and Paula Strasberg said the Actors Studio gurus preferred Marilyn to believe she could not perform without their aid.

The production was a nightmare from beginning to end, made even more stressful when Marilyn discovered she was pregnant yet again. She would lose the child after shooting ended. (Her condition is heartbreakingly evident in much of the film.) “Hot” would turn into her greatest hit, and she would even win a Golden Globe for a performance that was funny and poignant, a fuzzy, disillusioned Lorelei Lee, now named Sugar Kane. But the Academy was more resistant than ever. Her behavior during “Hot” seemed to set industry attitudes in stone. Once again, a co-star, Jack Lemmon would be nominated, and the tissue-thin costumes she wore would actually win an Oscar! The clothes on her back were worthy—she was not.

Marilyn’s public image was undergoing a slow transition. The miscarriages, the not always subtle press references to her emotional problems and/or drug-taking and drinking, seemed to presage some bad end. She was no longer the G.I.’s happy pin-up. She was radiant, still, in her appearance, but the public sensed, and insiders knew, there was little in her life to envy. (The female audience that had been initially resistant to Marilyn relented as her troubles mounted.) Friends would later recount suicide attempts in these years. Or were they? She was always saved.

“Some Like It Hot” was followed by another long absence from the screen. She returned for George Cukor’s musical “Let’s Make Love”—very minor, badly written, directed by Cukor in slow-motion. Marilyn was charming in it, but had nothing to do. Nothing except fall into an affair with co-star Yves Montand. He was married to Simone Signoret and the romance was much gossiped-about, if denied by all the principals. The Miller marriage was over. But the façade had to continue. Straight to the blistering hot Nevada set of “The Misfits” the miserable couple flew. The screenplay had been written by Miller for Marilyn as a celebration of her sensitivity. She did not see it that way. She hated the character’s passivity, and resented the use of so much of her personal history. But, with Clark Gable, Monty Clift, Eli Wallach and director John Houston waiting, she could not bail out.

Mid-way through the shoot, Monroe was shipped back to Los Angeles for de-tox (“exhaustion” said the papers, unconvincingly.) Her insomnia now required near-lethal doses of medication. The film was eventually completed and the Millers separated the day the cameras stopped rolling. “The Misfits” itself offered little solace. Most critics praised the cast, but puzzled over Miller’s script. Marilyn was here an older, plumper, sadder version of her previous showgirls (the character was—one grows weary—an ex-dancer of dubious talent.) She is moving and fragile, despite her Rubenesqe curves, but audiences weren’t ready to accept her maturity, at least not as Miller presented it. The film failed to meet box-office expectations, giving her two flops in a row. Marilyn had appeared carefree at the premiere of “The Misfits,” accompanied by Monty Clift, but she was far from that. In the wake of the film’s failure—and increasing press speculation about her “middle-age”—Marilyn was hospitalized again, this time placed inappropriately in the “highly disturbed” ward of a New York facility. She was bound, and locked in a room. It was her ultimate nightmare; her mother’s insanity come home to roost. Joe DiMaggio, with whom she had remained on good terms, forced the hospital to release her and she went then to a less frightening set-up. From this environment she wrote her therapist a long, lucid and moving account of her ordeal. Marilyn Monroe had problems, but as her letter proves, she still had her wits and wit.