HOLLYWOOD: Marilyn & the Mustangs

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Marilyn Monroe and her husband Arthur Miller are in Reno—but not for the obvious reason. They began working together professionally last week for the first time, making a film called The Misfits, written by Miller (his first screenplay) and embellished by some of the hardest talent west of Mount Rushmore: Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Kevin McCarthy and Director John Huston.

Miller's yarn, first published as a highly effective short story, follows three Western drifters in their pursuit of wild horses as they force the mustangs out of mountain passes by terrifying them with a low-swooping airplane, eventually trap them for sale as dog meat. Two of the "mustangers" refer to a vaguely mutual mistress named Roslyn. In the movie version, Roslyn has moved to the center and become, by the author's admission, a closely personal portrait of his wife.

Fear of Fear. Like Marilyn, Roslyn is a fractured, manhandled woman always "searching for relationships," full of hurtful memories about parents who "disappeared all the time." Helpless, yet flush with appetite, she is a compulsive time killer, shows a disturbing skill at batting a paddle ball on a string—which Marilyn does constantly. On the set last week, Marilyn was obviously afraid to act and troubled by her responsibility to her husband's script. Drinking coffee by the urn, she trembled, tried to control her shaking hands, broke out in a blotchy rash, spoke in a voice so constricted that it was barely audible. "I can't remember. I can't remember," she said, apologizing to Director Huston for a series of fluffs. She might well have written again in her dressing-room notebook what she wrote earlier this year during the filming of Let's Make Love: "What am I afraid of? Why am I so afraid? Do I think I can't act? I know I can act, but I am afraid. I am afraid and I should not be and I must not be."

Throughout the shooting, Arthur Miller exhaled cones of reassuring pipe smoke and soothed his wife: "I like the wonderful gradation of mood . . . You got wonderful sex in there. A couple of looks —wonderful thing going with the eyes."

"Nobody ever commented on my eyes before," said Marilyn happily.

Monty's Treat. All this poignancy, immersed as it was in the conventional eccentricities of moviemaking, rested in the big picture like an avocado in a punchbowl full of gin. Marilyn's entourage included a coiffure specialist who had just flown in from "doing Elizabeth Taylor," a makeup man in madras shorts, a massive masseur, a maid, a secretary, three wardrobe women (she has three copies of each dress she wears in the film), and Paula Strasberg. Dramatic coach, lay analyst, and wife of the Actors' Studio's Lee Strasberg, Paula stayed close to her ward, nib bled away at a large palmetto fan, sent notes around the set on postcards that pictured an ax and a chopping block. Wearing a black babushka, black glasses, black duster and carrying a black bag that seemed to contain everything from tranquilizers to a bunch of half-dead roses, she tossed lavish bouquets at her pupil ("Boom. It's like electricity") and steadily quoted her husband's theatrical dicta.