The Twinkle Hasn't Faded

By Richard Zoglin

Not long after getting fired from her last, unfinished movie, Marilyn Monroe sent a telegram to Robert Kennedy. In it she declined an invitation to visit the Kennedy clan, making an odd, wistful joke by way of explanation. She was too busy "protesting the loss of minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars," Monroe said. "All we demanded was our right to twinkle."

And twinkle she has. More than 28 years after Monroe's death from a drug overdose at 36, the star's legend has not just endured, it has prevailed. The tide of Monroe reminiscences and memorabilia flows on. Two weeks ago, a watercolor self-portrait by Monroe, painted in 1955, was displayed in a collection of artworks by 40 celebrities, assembled as a benefit for the American Cancer Society. A series of photos of Monroe at 19, taken by an Army photographer when the actress was working at an airplane factory in 1945, has been unearthed for an exhibition opening Jan. 3 at the Helander Gallery in Palm Beach, Fla. A close friend, actress Susan Strasberg, is writing a book about Monroe, due out in 1992.

Now a TV documentary re-creates the sad final chapter of Monroe's career: her work on Something's Got to Give, the 20th Century Fox film left uncompleted when she died in August 1962. The hourlong special (Thursday, Dec. 13, 9 p.m. EST, the Fox network) unveils raw footage that had been thought lost until it was discovered in a warehouse on the Fox lot in 1982. Written and narrated with nicely understated affection by producer Henry Schipper, the documentary gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of a Hollywood star -- and a Hollywood studio -- in extremis.

In Something's Got to Give, a remake of the Cary Grant-Irene Dunne comedy My Favorite Wife, Monroe was cast as a woman, presumed dead, who returns after five years on a deserted island to find her husband (Dean Martin) remarried. The TV documentary shows that contrary to Hollywood lore, Monroe was not listless and drugged-out in her last film appearance. In fact, she looks terrific (she had lost 15 lbs. for the part) and seems alert and spirited in the clips -- especially in the famous nude swimming scene that landed her on magazine covers around the world.

But Monroe's frequent absence from the set threw the production into turmoil. She called in sick for the first two weeks of shooting, arrived late or not at all many other days and enraged studio bosses when she left the set to fly to Washington for President Kennedy's birthday party. As shooting fell further and further behind schedule, Fox executives, already reeling from budget overruns on the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton extravaganza Cleopatra, fired her and sued for breach of contract. But they quietly hired her back weeks later when co-star Dean Martin, out of loyalty to Monroe, refused to work with the actress chosen to replace her, Lee Remick. Monroe died before filming could resume.

Marilyn: Something's Got to Give includes interviews with an array of people who took part in the filming, from producer Henry Weinstein to the former child actors who played Monroe's children. Wonderful nuggets of Marilyniana emerge. Her insecurities led Monroe to demand that a blond extra be tossed off the set and later to complain that co-star Cyd Charisse was padding her bra. When the Shah of Iran visited the Fox lot, Monroe refused to meet him until she found out Iran's position on Israel.

And the movie? From the unedited clips and outtakes, a few things become clear. Beleaguered director George Cukor was something close to a saint. Monroe was almost laughably miscast. And the film looks like a dog that would have done little to revive her sagging Hollywood career. For her thriving legend, however, it should be boffo.