Reno

Roy Smiles

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786825193
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: British Drama

Reno is the story of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller's marriage imploding in Nevada during the making of her last movie The Misfits. Miller is the writer, Monroe the star, but Miller finds himself the referee between Marilyn and tyrannical director John Huston, as she finds comfort in addiction and the suffocating method acting teachings of Paula Strasberg.

Act One

Darkness.

In the darkness music: ‘It Never Entered My Mind’ by Chet Baker.

Lights rise on:

One

A spotlight on the playwright - ARTHUR MILLER.

The music fades.

He addresses the AUDIENCE:

ARTHUR. I see her in my dreams. Like an unwanted song that returns to haunt me. Looking back - and it’s not something I do willingly - I don’t know if I raised Marilyn up or did her down. I suppose there were days of both, yes, days of both. But, you see, I married a thing of flesh and bone and feeling. I never married the myth. Mailer, and all the other literary ghouls who have picked over her bones since, made that. I was just the lousy schnook who loved her. Hell, I was Mr. Monroe in those days. Not the somewhat pious elder statesman of theatre I have since become. I carried her bags. I drove her places. Cameramen pushed me aside to get a shot of her glorious countenance. Booking clerks and salesmen in bars made snide sexual cracks when I passed by. Why I didn’t sock every one of those sons of a bitch on the jaw is down to my reticence and being my mother’s son, a gentle soul in a garish world. A world where celebrity is all that matters a damn and being a movie star means you own the world. Or, maybe, the world owns you. Marilyn found out that lesson sure enough. The world wanted too much and it consumed her in the end. I was powerless to stop it or just not strong enough. The jury on that, including myself, is still out. It was ten lifetimes ago, it was yesterday, it was 1960. I was in Reno writing the movie The Misfits for John Huston. He’d given Marilyn her first big break in The Asphalt Jungle. Being holed away in his castle in Ireland I don’t think he comprehended the level of fame she’d achieved since. Or the hold the Actors Studio had on her, including her acting coach Paula Strasberg, perhaps the worst ghoul of them all. It was all out war from the beginning; between her and Huston, between Marilyn and me. None of us took prisoners. Would I change that past? You’re damn right. But the past is not for changing - only rewriting. This is the past as I remember it, with all the failings therein of my bias and memory.

A blackout.

The music swells once more.

Lights change to:

Two

A hotel room, Reno, July 1960.

It is late morning.

ARTHUR sits at a desk in front of a typewriter, typing slowly.

Dressed in a rolled up white shirt and grey trousers; a jacket hangs on the back of his chair.

The music fades.

A toilet flushes off, a woman enters - the actress MARILYN MONROE.

She is dressed in jeans and a baggy white shirt. She is barefoot.

ARTHUR. Did you vomit?

MARILYN. No.

ARTHUR. I thought I heard you.

MARILYN. No.

ARTHUR. Are you sure?

MARILYN. (Laughs) It’s the sort of thing you remember.

ARTHUR. You can’t go on like this.

MARILYN. I know.

ARTHUR. You should lie down.

MARILYN. I’m fine.

A...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Reno
• Act One
• Act Two