Review | Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller’s U.K. honeymoon was the stuff of legend: When the Queen of Hollywood met the Queen of England

Who was Marilyn Monroe? In the mid-1950s this complex woman was the world’s most famous onscreen blond. Veteran Hollywood writer Michelle Morgan’s deep dive into the four months Monroe spent in England on her 1956 honeymoon with third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, reveals that the actress’s mere presence was sufficient to throw an entire nation into a tizzy.

Be warned, however. The Queen has a only a small walk-on role in “When Marilyn Met the Queen,” a book that focuses not on the Queen of England but on Marilyn, Queen of Hollywood.

The newlyweds had travelled to London so Marilyn could make a film with England’s premier actor, Sir Laurence Olivier. The result, as Morgan details in her exhaustively researched study, was not only a clash of cultures but, sadly, a bit of a dud of a movie. Previously a West End stage hit starring Olivier and his wife, Vivien Leigh, the movie version of “The Sleeping Prince” — the title was later changed to “The Prince and the Showgirl” — mismatches Olivier, a stiff, 50-something, with the sensuously comic Monroe.

In an era when the public’s perception of platinum blonds equalled airheaded brainlessness, Monroe played her part to perfection. Yet, far from the sexy, naive nitwit perceived by public and press, Marilyn was shrewd, had just formed her own production company and yearned for artistic independence. She had spent the previous year studying Method acting in New York. She read Dostoevsky, Kafka and Dickens.

The movie with Olivier was to be her first chance to fly free of the Hollywood machine. While she rhapsodized about renting an English cottage, walking “bare-headed in the rain” and cycling country lanes, towns across the United Kingdom were holding “wiggle” contests, awarding prizes to girls who best imitated Marilyn’s walk.

Her “cottage” turned out to be a mansion staffed by servants who sold stories about Monroe and Miller to the tabloids. Peppered with questions in press conferences, Marilyn was generous with her time, impressing journalists with her wit. But the time spent answering questions delayed filming. The infuriated old-school Olivier, who was also the film’s director, promptly closed the set to reporters. Some turned on Monroe: trashing her wardrobe choices, ignoring her pleas for privacy.

There is a whiff of Princess Diana in these sad tales of a woman hunted by the press as she makes a doomed bid for independence. Monroe herself emerges as something of a conundrum. Was she fighting back against the condescending Olivier with her consistent lateness? Certainly, she endured “nerves” (stage fright), insomnia (treated with sleeping pills), was highly sensitive to criticism and took an inordinate number of sick days. Yet she also suffered from endometriosis and may have miscarried during her stay in England.

Both her health and her marriage come under scrutiny. The intellectual Miller seems an odd choice for a husband, but the many witnesses Morgan interviewed 60 years on remembered a loving couple cycling the lanes of Windsor Great Park, enjoying picnics together. Miller did provoke a marital crisis by leaving his too-candid notebook in plain view for his wife to read, and there was friction between him and the overbearing Stella Adler, Monroe’s Method acting coach from New York’s Actors Studio. But no one apart from Monroe seemed to like Adler much and the marriage survived the notebook gaffe. Moreover, with his wife’s full support, Miller launched a London production of his play “A View From the Bridge” to critical acclaim.

The real strength of Morgan’s book is her ability to place four months in a famous woman’s life under a microscope: who she met, what she wore, how she felt. Monroe’s genuine excitement about meeting the Queen and her endless friendliness to the fans who loved her are endearing. What emerges is not only a close-up of Marilyn but also a picture of someone who, like many of us, romanticizes people and places only to find disappointment.

Monroe’s touching summation of her English adventure says it all: “It seemed to be raining the whole time. Or maybe it was me.”

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