My week with Merilym by Colin Clark

And there was my older brother, Alan. Alan’s imagination knew no bounds, even then. My twin sister and I were completely under his spell, and he led us into a succession of fantastical adventures and games. It was hardly surprising that by the age of twelve I had decided that ‘show business’ would one day be the life for me; and so it has been ever since.

I got my first job in the summer of 1956, at the age of twenty-three, working on a film called The Sleeping Prince, starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. I had just come down from university, and I had no experience whatever. I was only employed because my parents were friends of Olivier and his wife, Vivien Leigh. The Oliviers had been frequent visitors to our home, Saltwood Castle in Kent, and they had be- come part of my extended family.

The news that Olivier, the best-known classical actor of his generation, was going to make a film with Marilyn Monroe, the famous Hollywood film star, caused a sensation. Marilyn was to play the part which had been taken by Vivien herself in the play by Terence Rattigan on which the film was based. Up to then she had only played strippers and chorus girls, in very limited roles. In 1955, after a terrific struggle, she renegotiated her contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and announced her intention to do more serious work. Typecasting is never easy to escape, especially in films. Her first new role had been that of a stripper (in Bus Stop), and the second, chosen for her by Milton Greene, her partner in the newly formed Marilyn Monroe Productions, was that of a chorus girl. The only ‘serious’ element was that both films were by so-called ‘serious’ writers. Bus Stop had been based on a play by William Inge, and The Sleeping Prince on a play by Terence Rattigan.

From my first day on the production as third assistant director – the lowest of the low – I kept a journal of everything that I observed. I intended to transcribe it when the film was over, but my notes became messy and hard to read, and I simply put the volume away and forgot it. Forty years later I dug it out and read it again, and it was subse- quently published under the title The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me.

One episode, however, was not recorded in my diary.

For nine days in the middle of filming, I made no entries at all. Suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, something happened which was, to me, so dramatic and so extraordinary that it was impossible to in- clude it in my daily chatterings. For a short time the attention of the major participants – Olivier, Greene and, above all, Marilyn – seemed to be focused on me. It was as if a spotlight had swung round, for no particular reason, and singled me out as the hero or villain of the piece.

When normal life resumed, I continued to write my diary as before. I made notes on what I felt had been the key events of those ‘missing’ days, but that is all. It was not until the filming was over that I could go back and write down what had happened, in the form of a letter to the friend for whom I was keeping my journal.

This, then, is the story of those missing nine days. Of course it goes much further than the letter (the text of which is reproduced as an appendix to this book), but I make no apology for that. The whole episode is still as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday.

I could never have written this account while Marilyn was alive. I produce it now as a humble tribute to someone who changed my life, and whose own life I only wish I could have saved.

VOCABULARY 

• chorus - хор 
• dug it out - выкопать, вырыть, достать
• incomprehensible - непонятный
  
• playwrigh - драматург
• renegotiated -  пересмотрены 
  
• swung - качнулся 

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