Arthur Miller’s Nightmare - Fluoro Marilyn Screenprint

4 colour screenprint 

Edition of 100

330gsm Fedrigoni paper

70 x 85cm

In the early months of 1956 Marilyn Monroe was preparing to star in Bus Stop, discussing with Laurence Olivier a role in The Prince and the Showgirl and romancing Arthur Miller, who was divorcing his wife, Mary.

The filming of Bus Stop was completed by the end of May. Miller’s Reno divorce came through in June and Marilyn joined him in New York, besieged by swarms of pressmen.

Once the 400 pressmen had gone away, the couple sneaked off to the Westchester County Court House in nearby White Plains, where they were married by Judge Seymour Rabinowitz shortly before 7.30 pm in a ceremony that lasted all of four minutes.

Some days later, Marilyn happened to come across Miller’s notebook lying open on a table, looked at it and discovered that he was disappointed in her, feared that his own creativity would be threatened by this pitiable, dependent, unpredictable waif he had married and was seriously regretting the union. Marilyn told friends that he also wrote, ‘The only one I will ever love is my daughter’, though Miller could not recall having written that. It was a blow from which the marriage would never recover. Things went steadily from bad to worse and although Miller wrote the script of The Misfits for Marilyn, the pair separated in 1960 and divorced the following year.