BTS: Don’t Bother to Knock

Darryl F. Zanuck— production chief for 20th Century Fox— was virtually matchless when it came to underestimating the appeal of rising star Marilyn Monroe in 1951. Even as a staggering torrent of fan letters began to swamp the studio’s mailbox, practically on a daily basis, he remained adamant she was little more than a photogenic model, and a dim-witted one at that. Powerful beyond measure in the industry at the time, failing to draw his attention could and often did result in the end of many actress’s careers. But there’s always a bigger fish, and back then that fish was Joseph Schenck, elderly cofounder of Fox and one of its most influential board members.

“He simply could not bring himself to fully respect her as an actress or a woman. From Monroe’s point of view,” writer Scott Eyman explains in his book 20th Century Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio, “her past history with Zanuck and Schenck only made her more conscious of their lack of respect towards her, producing a toxic combination of insecurity and anger.”

Schenck had taken a fierce, personal interest in Monroe’s future… for some reason. Rumors had been flying around the office that they were involved. Regardless, he wanted her cast as the lead in an upcoming thriller based on Mischief, a novel by Charlotte Armstrong. Fox’s president, Spyros Skouras, was also in Monroe’s corner. Together, they pressured Zanuck to turn the project into her first star vehicle.

Zanuck countered pragmatically, insisting she prove her ability with a screen test first. If she failed, he’d have the justification he needed to give the job to someone else. If she passed, at least he could say he’d ensured she was up to the challenge.

• Click to Open: Zanuck's Legacy

  Nebraska accented, cigar chomping Darryl Zanuck, once a lowly screenwriter at Warner Bros, had been in charge of production at 20th Century Fox since 1935. “He pursued a hands on approach to every project underway at the studio,”  wrote Foster Hirsch in his book Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties, “offering advice whether solicited or not, about scripting, casting, and editing.” Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Wilson (1944), Gentleman’s Agreement and The Snake Pit (both 1948), Pinky (1949), All About Eve and No Way Out (both 1950) were just a handful of the highly-regarded films released during his tenure. Zanuck already had three Best Picture wins under his belt by 1951 (for How Green Was My Valley (1941), Gentlemen’s and Eve), and a plethora of nominations for the prestigious award otherwise, dating back to Disraeli, a 1929 historical film he had produced about the life of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

  On a much uglier note however, in a 2017 article penned by Nick Schager (an entertainment critic for The Daily Beast)— Zanuck is credited alongside fellow movie mogul Harry “White Fang” Cohn (Columbia Pictures cofounder and production head from 1919 to 1958) as the originators of the industry’s notorious “casting coach”. Variety writer Thelma Adams, in an article also released in 2017 (both were responses to allegations regarding Harvey Weinstein, which had just broke), quotes Marilyn Monroe’s memoir My Story. “I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes— an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.” Zanuck, according to Schager, held “conferences” with actresses “every afternoon from 4-4:30 p.m.”

  In 1951, while vacationing on the French Riviera, Zanuck and his wife Virginia met Bejla Węgier, a bisexual Polish-Jew and compulsive gambler who had survived captivity in a concentration camp during World War II. Alexander D’Arcy, a friend of Virginia’s, had introduced her to them. She soon became intimate with Zanuck and was invited to live in an annex attached to his house in Santa Monica the following year. He also paid off her gambling debts and groomed her for stardom under the name Bella Darvi (a bizarre combo of his and his wife’s first names). Rumors spread that she was, in some capacity, involved with Virginia as well— although this is perhaps unlikely if reports regarding the the latter becoming aware of her husband’s relationship with Węgier and kicking the woman off the property in 1954 are to be believed.

Monroe, assisted by her acting coach Natasha Lytess, prepared with near-pathological dedication. Reportedly, she stayed awake for forty-eight hours straight, attempting to summon the dizzy, wide-eyed energy required for the part. The outcome was as raw and intense as she’d hoped it would be. Left with no other choice, Zanuck begrudgingly green-lit the movie.

• Click to Open: Marilyn's Life

  Norma Jeane Mortenson, better known as Marilyn Monroe, was born in Los Angeles on June 1st 1926. She struggled as a youth, most of it spent shuffling between foster homes and orphanages. At sixteen, in 1942, she married James Dougherty— and found work in a munitions factory while he was overseas serving as a Merchant Marine in the Republic of China during World War II. Discovered by an Army photographer, she became a model and in 1946, divorced her husband (who did not approve of her new career) and signed a film contract with 20th Century Fox (where she adopted her stage name). Monroe was dropped by the studio the following year but her luck finally turned around in 1950 when Johnny Hyde, a powerful talent agent for William Morris, decided to champion her.

  Hyde left his wife hoping to marry Monroe, but she did not feel the same— seeing him as a father-figure (she never knew her own father). Brief but notable roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve that year earned her critical attention. But unfortunately, tragedy struck in December when Hyde, while recuperating in Palm Spring after experiencing chest pains days earlier, died of a sudden heart attack. Monroe had been Christmas shopping in Tijuana with her acting coach Natasha Lytess at the time.

  Just eight days before his death, Hyde managed to get Monroe back under contract with 20th Century Fox. Grieving, but determined to prove herself, she threw herself into her work. In early 1951, she met director Elia Kazan on the set of As Young as You Feel (one of three comedies featuring her that year, the others were Love Nest and Let’s Make it Legal). They began a brief affair (Kazan had been married to his wife Molly Day Thatcher since 1932), and he introduced her to his friend, playwright Arthur Miller. Together, Kazan, Miller and Monroe paraded around Los Angeles— according to biographer Donald Spoto— going on long drives through the canyons, visiting friends and enjoying picnic lunches. The men nicknamed her “Miss Bauer,” apparently stemming from a prank the three of them had played on Columbia’s Harry Cohn, in which Monroe posed as Kazan’s private secretary during a meeting with Cohn, where Kazan pitched The Hook, a script penned by Miller. Kazan and Monroe’s relationship ended that summer, when Monroe informed him that she was pregnant with his child. She evidently was not, but the shock alone was enough to drive Kazan back into his wife’s arms.

  While her association with Arthur Miller remained platonic in 1951, an emotional bond soon took hold. Miller attempted to stay loyal to his own wife, Mary Slatterly, as best he could— and feared that Monroe’s “neediness” would eventually consume him. At the end of February, he left Los Angeles abruptly. Before he departed, at the airport, Monroe gave him a light kiss on the cheek— a gesture that startled Miller. Back in New York with his family, he struggled to forget the actress, and they wrote to each other sporadically. In one letter, she told him, “Most people can admire their fathers, but I never had one. I need someone to admire.” “If you need someone to admire,” Miller replied, “why not Abraham Lincoln?” Monroe purchased a portrait of the late-president and a biography by Carl Sanburg. She also apparently kept a copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. According to The Marilyn Monroe Collection, Monroe identified Miller with Lincoln, seeing them both as honorable, intelligent men committed to their principles.

• Marilyn at the 23rd Academy Awards

  On March 29th 1951, Monroe attended the 23rd Academy Awards for the first and only time. All About Eve, in which she had played a small part, earned fourteen nominations that year and she had been asked to present Best Sound Recording. According to a VOGUE article written by Hayley Maitland, there were 1,800 attendees at the Pantages Theatre that day, located at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard (roughly a half hour away from the hotel she had been living in at the time). Mayor Mogens Skot-Hansen of LA and Governor Earl Warren of California were in the audience, and the host was Fred Astaire.

  In Maitland’s account of the night, Monroe’s chose a gown from Fox’s costume department (most stars of the era did the same, from their own studios). Her’s had been made by Charles LeMaire, who had been awarded, along with Edith Head, Best Costume Design for All About Eve. Just before going on, Monroe became upset when she noticed a rip in her dress and refused to go on stage. A seamstress arrived to solve the problem and before long, Monroe headed out to make her speech. The award she presented was also ultimately won by All About Eve— which had been up against Disney’s Cinderella, among others.

  Fred Astaire, introducing her, made reference to a recent photoshoot she had participated in with the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. It’s unclear why he mentioned this team, but as an article on The Marilyn Report concludes, “he may have been referring to another baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, whom she had met less than three weeks before.” Noted in the same piece, this photoshoot is what caught the eye of Joe DiMaggio— who began pursuing Monroe almost a full year later.

Zanuck may have refused to drown the production in cash and fanfare (he allocated about $2 million), but he wasn’t particularly interested in sabotaging it either. He assigned solid professionals and simply demanded they adhere to a tight schedule. Daniel Taradash, who would win an Oscar in 1953 for From Here to Eternity, wrote the screenplay. Veteran cinematographer Lucien Ballard was hired to shoot it and respected composer Alfred Newman oversaw the score. Producer Julian Blaustein made sure any requests from Zanuck were actioned promptly and the entire story was filmed on the studio lot— where Fox regulars quickly constructed a credible hotel setting.

Finally, directing duties fell to Roy Ward Baker. An Englishman in his mid-thirties, he had sharpened his skills in the British film industry, working initially on wartime documentaries and later feature films. Recently contracted by Fox, Don’t Bother to Knock would be his first wholly American-made picture.

Morning Departure, a tense submarine drama helmed by Roy Ward Baker and starring John Mills, caught Zanuck’s attention in 1950. Always on the hunt for new talent, the mogul brought Baker over to Fox on a three year contract. His first assignment was I’ll Never Forget You, a period fantasy shot in the U.K.

Like Zanuck, Baker harbored serious misgivings about the casting of Marilyn Monroe. He thought her too physically mature to play a frail, mentally-ill babysitter, and furthermore, he saw her as generally inexperienced. Interviewed decades later, he would reveal that, despite his feelings he understood that DBTK could have been something akin to a last chance for her. He noted that, at the time, she had been in about fifteen motion pictures without really “breaking out,” in a traditional sense. So, if this opportunity failed to garner significant accolades, her career could have run its course then and there.

With the wardrobe department, Baker met with his leading lady for the first time to brainstorm her look. Billy Travilla, a costume designer and friend of Monroe’s, was also in attendance. Collectively, they decided to dial down her trademark glamour for the role. “We made her look as plain as possible,” Baker recalled, “all of which made her look, if anything, more attractive.”

• Click to Open: Marilyn's Contract

  The contract with 20th Century Fox that talent agent Johnny Hyde helped Marilyn Monroe land in December 1950, just before his death, only lasted six months— and Hyde’s colleagues at William Morris weren’t responsive to her requests for their help— Susan Doll recounts in an article on howstuffworks.com. “She called her former agent, Harry Lipton, for advice,” Doll goes on, “and he suggested that she see Hugh French at the Famous Artists Agency.”

  While French agreed to help her extend her contract with Fox, it was Monroe’s appearance a Fox exhibitors’ party during the spring of 1951 that likely sealed the deal. In typical fashion, she arrived late and flustered. Susan Hayward, Tyrone Power and Gregory Peck were there, as was Fox’s president Spyros Skouras— who she had managed to get herself seated beside. According to Doll, a reporter for Collier’s captured the moment. “Amid a slowly gathering hush, she stood there, a blond apparition in a strapless cocktail gown, a little breathless as if she were Cinderella, just stepped from the pumpkin coach.” For obvious reasons, her contract was subsequently extended to seven years.

As the pieces started to fall into place that December, another individual made her presence known behind the scenes in a less official capacity. Natasha Lytess was Monroe’s German-born acting coach, the same one who had helped her vigorously prepare for Zanuck’s screen test. The duo had been associated since 1948, when the actress was still under contract at Columbia Pictures. Lytess had been the head drama instructor, and was assigned to work with Monroe that year on Ladies of the Chorus, a B-musical in which she had been given a small part. Hungry to learn and chronically insecure, Monroe latched onto her teachings. Their collaboration continued after Monroe’s contract lapsed, and within a few years Lytess had become far more than just a pedagogue to the ambitious bombshell. She was her confidante, quasi-therapist and all-around guru.

• Click to Open: Natasha Lytess, Woman of Mystery

  “Marilyn was inhibited and cramped,” Marilyn’s biographer Donald Spoto recounted as Natasha Lytess's impression of Monroe during their first meeting, “and she could not say a word freely. Her habit of barely moving her lips when she spoke was unnatural. The keyboard of the human voice is the gamut of emotion, and each emotion has its corresponding shade of tone. All this I tried to teach Marilyn. But she knew her sex appeal was infallible, that it was the one thing on which she could depend.”

  Lytess claimed to have been born in Russia to avoid anti-German prejudice, but she had actually been born in Berlin. Max Reinhardt, the famous film director, had been her teacher and she told acquaintances she was married to a novelist named Bruno Frank for a while, although some say this was not true and they were never married, and other sources state he returned to Germany, while others still claim he died of a heart attack in 1945. He was apparently the father of her daughter Barbara, who was born in 1943.

  Lytess acted here and there during World War II, eventually settling in as a drama coach for Columbia Pictures in the late 1940s, where she met Marilyn Monroe. She was, as Spoto put it, “autocratic and severe, Natasha impressed executives and actors alike, often intimidating them with her language fluency, her knowledge of the arts and literature and her stern correction of young actors she considered inferior to those she had known abroad.”

• Click to Open: Marilyn and Natasha

  Marilyn Monroe was a transient individual, calling at least forty-three different locations “home” throughout her life according to one source. In 1950, Marilyn moved into a rented house at 718 North Palm Drive with her agent, Johnny Hyde. Donald Spoto, Monroe’s biographer, explains the arraignment as such: “Determined to make Marilyn the second Mrs. Hyde, he brought her from the Studio Club to live with him in a rented house at 718 North Palm Drive, Beverly Hills. To avoid press problems, however, she agreed to maintain a tiny one-room apartment at the modest Beverly Carlton Hotel, 9400 Olympic Boulevard, where she received mail and professional notices.”

  In late 1950, just before Hyde’s death, Monroe was invited by her acting coach, Natasha Lytess, to cohabitate her Harper Avenue, West Hollywood apartment. In a 2016 article for architectural digest, Spoto notes she arrived with “some books, pictures and records, and her wardrobe, which consisted of a few sweaters and skirts.” Lytess’s daughter Barbara and a chihuahua named “Josefa”, given to Monroe by Joseph Schenck for her birthday earlier that year, lived with them. Some sources, including the actress’s friend Terry Karger, claim the dog’s lack of house-training strained Monroe and Lytess’s relationship.

  During that bleak winter, Monroe slept on a futon in Lytess’s living room and took night courses at UCLA. Susan Doll, in an article that can be found on howstuffworks.com, describes Monroe as “inconsolable” after Johnny Hyde’s death. His family evidently blamed her for the destruction of their family and let her know she was not welcome at his funeral. She attended anyway, encouraged by some of his associates. According to Spoto, “Marilyn sat a long while at the cemetery until, at twilight, attendants gently asked her to leave.” The next day or at least soon after, Lytess returned home to find a note on her pillow: “I leave my car and fur stole to Natasha.” Monroe was in the bedroom, unconscious after swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. After being rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped, according to another source, Monroe exclaimed “still alive. Damn. All those bastards.” She may have later told an associate, Milton Green, that her coach “found her with a melted sleeping pill in her mouth and blew up the incident…” This was not, apparently, her first suicide attempt. There may have been one in the mid-1940s, during her marriage to James Dougherty while he was serving oversees, after she became aware of an affair he had with an ex-girlfriend. She also, according some some sources, regularly made “pacts” with people she knew at this time, attempting to prevent herself from ending her own life.

  Monroe moved back into the Beverly Carlton Hotel at the start of 1951, this time bunking with her friend and fellow actress Shelley Winters. Lytess’s lease had run out, and she planned to buy a small house at 611 N. Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills, but found herself $1000 short on the mortgage. When Monroe found out, she immediately sold her pink stole and gave her coach all the proceeds. The stole was her most prized possession and a gift from Johnny Hyde. By the end of the year, she was once again living with Lytess and her daughter. She stayed there throughout the filming of Don’t Bother to Knock, departing at the end of production to reestablish her own residence in the early 1952. 

Baker was forewarned about Monroe’s dependency on her coach. Before production began, she made a formal request for access to the set on Lytess’s behalf. It ascended the chain of command until it reached Darryl Zanuck, who’s response was a firm and predictable, “no.”

One morning in late December 1950, Marilyn Monroe called Lytess and informed her that she had just found out the name and location of her father. Lytess agreed to travel with her to meet him. Together, they drove towards Palm Springs and then into the desert where they stopped at a service station. There, Monroe stepped out to call ahead but returned with bad news— her father, according to biographer Donald Spoto, had refused to see her. No name for this individual has ever been revealed, and it’s possible they may have never actually existed.

In a letter dated December 10th 1951, he called her request, “completely impractical and impossible.” Clearly referencing Lytess (though not by name), he warned, “You have built up a Svengali and if you are going to progress with your career and become as important talent-wise as you have publicity-wise then you must destroy this Svengali before it destroys you.” He concluded by reminding her that she had been cast “as an individual,” implying that her own instincts— not Natasha Lytess’s— were what the studio expected her to rely on.

Monroe, of course, brought Lytess to work anyway. Baker generously tolerated her inclusion as long as she stayed out of the way. But inevitably her influence started to seep in. Monroe turned to her every time Baker yelled “cut,” looking for approval. If she frowned or shook her head, the actress would fall apart and beg for a do-over. The breaking point came during a take in which she delivered a line of dialogue in a way that struck him as odd. Suddenly, Baker realized that she was imitating a heavy German-accent— channeling Lytess instead of the character she was meant to portray. At once, he decided to banish her from the set for good.

Lytess didn’t quite disappear. She continued to work with Monroe every night and Monroe found ways to contact her discreetly during the day. In any event, as the weeks rolled on, through the holidays and into January 1952, the cast and crew held their breath, hoping she could still solider-on under the director’s new conditions.

• Click to Open: The Cast of DBTK

  Richard Widmark, cast as Jed Towers, had rapidly become one of Fox’s brightest stars in the postwar years. Coming off a streak of noir movies like Panic in the Streets and No Way Out, DBTK was a break from the psychotic heavies he had been recognized for. On the other end of the spectrum, the film was Anne Bancroft’s screen debut— she had just signed her first contract with the studio that year and adopted her stage name at Zanuck’s insistence (she was born Anna Marie Italiano). Bancroft was given third lead status and a polished introduction scene.

  Elisha Cook Jr., Hollywood’s go-to for shifty, anxious characters, was brought on to play Nell’s uncle. Jim Backus, the voice of Mr. Magoo, was cast as Peter Jones— the father of the child Nell is asked to babysit. One regularly recited antidote regarding Backus involved Monroe summoning him to her dressing room and begging him to “Do Mr. Magoo!” Backus’s wife was played by Lurene Tuttle, known in the industry as “the First Lady of Radio.” Their daughter was played by Donna Corcoran. Corcoran was part of a know acting family, and she had been borrowed from MGM in the midst of a busy run. Verna Felden, a titan of radio comedy and Jeanne Cagney, sister of legendary, award-winning actor James Cagney, inhabited the minor roles of Emma Ballew and Rochelle respectively.

Monroe, as she was known to do often, arrived late— throwing off the timetable and frustrating co-star Richard Widmark. “We had to hell of a time getting her out of the dressing room,” he recollected. Once they did, she often appeared flustered or unprepared. She flubbed her lines, missed her cues, performed with little energy and then overcompensated with way too much. “She couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag,” Widmark said, “but she became an icon because something happened between her and the lens, and no one knows what it is.”

In the months leading up to her role in DBTK, Monroe was introduced by Lytess to acting coach Michael Chekhov, and began attending his classes. Chekhov was the nephew of Anton Chekhov, a Russian playwright and an associate of Konstantin Stanislavsky. His book, Actor: On the Technique of Acting, was one of Monroe’s favorites. In the words of Donald Spoto, “he was the kindliest mentor-father in her life thus far, and still another of Marilyn’s connections to the Russian tradition so prized by the Actors Lab and Natasha.” The Actors Lab he referred too was an LA acting school that would play an important role in her life during the mid-1950s.

Anne Bancroft had very different perspective. Just as nervous as Monroe (Bancroft was starring in her debut role as lounge singer Lyn Lesley), she watched as her co-star openly battled her demons and learned from what she witnessed, rather than judged. Bancroft praised her performance when asked about the film years later, stating that in their crucial scene together— where Lyn confronts a distraught Nell (Monroe’s character) towards the end of the movie— Monroe’s authenticity caused a real emotional response from her. “It was a remarkable experience,” she said, “she moved me so tears came to my eyes.” Interestingly, according to her, Monroe disagreed with not just Baker’s opinion on how to play that scene, but also Natasha Lytess’s. If true, that would suggest Monroe actually did end up taking Zanuck’s advice, prioritizing her own instincts… at least once.

At the end of the day, Baker’s primary directorial challenge was molding something coherent out of her erratic process in the editing room. He’d exercised great patience, blowing through ten or fifteen takes by some accounts, hoping to cobble the usable bits together into a fluent whole. In time, behind the scenes accounts would suggest the exact opposite occurred, that Baker only needed one or two takes at most— bucking the usual narrative that Monroe was difficult to work with. Whatever the truth may have been, Don’t Bother to Knock was released during the summer of 1952 on that cautiously optimistic note. Baker had weathered the storm, Monroe could breathe a sigh of relief and Darryl Zanuck got the film he wanted, on time and under budget, with hopefully enough flair to recoup its cost. Thankfully, it did indeed (although just barely).

Despite the mixed reviews it received, the picture circulated in theaters alongside two others featuring Marilyn Monroe. Cultural saturation, boosted by a famously tumultuous relationship with retired Yankees megastar Joe DiMaggio that had kicked off the previous March— made her a household name, and defined the final decade of her tragically brief life.