The Guardian reports on unearthed interviews with the playwright Arthur Miller about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Some of the quotes are quite revealing:
He was one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century and she was one of the greatest actors. In newly unearthed recordings made over a period of nearly three decades, Arthur Miller opened up about his short-lived marriage to Marilyn Monroe, saying she wanted a husband who was a “father, lover, friend and agent,” and the child she longed for would have been an “additional problem”.
In taped conversations with his friend and biographer Prof Christopher Bigsby, Miller said he had felt “death was always on her [Monroe’s] shoulder – always”. He had believed that if he did not “take care of her life” she would come to a “catastrophic end”.
“One time I brought doctors to pump her out because she had swallowed enough stuff [drugs] to kill her,” he said. “So I felt she was in a very delicate psychological position. As it turned out, it took some years, but it happened. It was beyond my powers or anybody else’s to hold her back.”
Monroe’s death from a barbiturate overdose in 1962, at the age of 36, had seemed inevitable to him. “It was impossible for her to live, let alone with anybody. You couldn’t go on with that intensity of life, and those drugs, and manage to survive,” he said.
The couple began a passionate extramarital affair in 1955 and married in 1956. Miller said it took him just months to realise he had made a mistake. “I was not really prepared for what I should have been prepared for, which was that she had literally no inner resources … She wanted a father, a lover, friend, agent, above all someone who would never criticise her for anything, or else she would lose confidence in herself. I don’t know if that human being exists.”
He described Monroe as “delightful to be with” and “a very smart woman” who had “a terrific sense of humour, irony and generosity”, but said “a kind of paranoia” took over. “She began to suspect everybody of exploiting or damaging her.”
From a career perspective, he felt he had spent the four years of their marriage “doing nothing basically”, apart from The Misfits, and that even if Monroe’s feelings had changed, he would have ended the marriage then. “I couldn’t have gone on. It would have killed me. I couldn’t work anymore.”
The tragic story of Marilyn Monroe has long been a staple of popular culture. I think it relates as most of us have someone in our lives hell-bent on self-destruction, with seemingly there’s nothing you can do or say to stop them. All very sad.
Reading about Monroe, I suspect she would be what is now termed neurodivergent, either autistic, ADHD, or both.
Here is an AI summary for those curious:
While Marilyn Monroe was never diagnosed as “neurodivergent” during her lifetime—as the term didn’t exist then—modern historians, biographers, and medical researchers have pointed to several traits and documented struggles that align with various neurodivergent profiles.
The evidence for Marilyn Monroe being neurodivergent generally falls into four categories:
1. Lifelong Stuttering
Perhaps the most documented piece of evidence is her struggle with speech.
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The Breathy Voice: Marilyn’s famous “whispery” voice was actually a technique taught to her by a speech therapist to mask a childhood stutter. By using a specific breathy cadence, she was able to navigate lines without tripping over her words.
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Stress Triggers: Her stutter often returned during periods of high stress. During the filming of her final, unfinished movie, Something’s Got to Give, the stutter reportedly became so pronounced that she struggled to deliver her lines.
2. Dyslexia
Multiple biographers, including Lois Banner in Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, have noted that Marilyn lived with dyslexia.
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Academic Struggles: Despite being highly intelligent and a voracious reader (her personal library contained over 400 books), she found schoolwork and standardized testing extremely difficult.
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Script Memorization: She was known for needing many takes to get a line right, which some attribute to the way her brain processed written text under pressure.
3. Retrospective Autism Analysis
In recent years, some clinical researchers have performed “psychological autopsies” suggesting Marilyn may have been on the Autism Spectrum.
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Sensory and Social Challenges: Researchers point to her reported “social mask” (the “Marilyn” persona vs. Norma Jeane), her intense feelings of being an outsider, and her “inflexibility” or difficulty adjusting to changes on set.
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The “Masking” Theory: Some argue that her hyper-femininity and carefully curated public image were forms of high-level masking to navigate a world that felt alien to her.
4. Co-occurring Conditions (Neuro-differences)
Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that often includes mental health conditions that affect brain function. Marilyn’s history includes:
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Bipolar Disorder / BPD: Many modern assessments suggest she lived with Bipolar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder, both of which involve significant differences in brain chemistry and emotional regulation.
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Hyper-Empathy: Contemporaries often described her as having a “raw” or “skinless” level of empathy—feeling the emotions of others so intensely that it was overwhelming, a trait frequently discussed in the neurodivergent community.
A Note on History: It is important to remember that Marilyn’s symptoms were often viewed through the lens of trauma (due to her difficult childhood in foster care) or “hysteria.” Today, we recognize that trauma and neurodivergence often overlap and influence one another.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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