Ralph L Roberts.com

Susie Strasberg was arriving from Reno for a few days, we picked her up in San Francisco, and drove to Reno. She’d been going through a rough time in Rome, and she and Paula thought it would be therapeutic to be in the desert. She and Lee, and I drove to Lake Tahoe the first day, and bumped into Dean Martin, who was appearing there. He and his right-hand man, ___________, recognized me from BELLS ARE RINGING. He said that when he saw the movie, he said to his wife, "So that’s what Ralph was doing; all those weeks." I played a plainclothes policeman who was always taking pictures of him and Judy – we never had any scenes as such together. That night at dinner, Paula said that Gable had told Huston and Arthur he would like it if Lee came to the set; he found him fascinating. So the next day we drove to Dayton, where one of the rodeo scenes was taking place. Both Gable and Marilyn seemed very happy to spend time during breaks with Susie and Lee. I remember pictures taken those days of Lee, Susie, and Gable in deep conversation.

That night; "Now, if Johnny were here, we could have a family reunion. Oh, that’s something of a slip, isn’t it? But I do feel a member of the Strasberg family. I love Susie – sometimes we aren’t able to communicate. I’m sure there is sibling rivalry between us at times. I miss Johnny. I guess it’s natural to feel more comfortable with him – after all, he’s male. I gave him my white thunderbird when he reached 16 – I don’t believe a sixteen year old boy should be without wheels."

On August, the world premiere of LET’S MAKE LOVE, was to be held in Reno, with critics, reporters, photographers, celebrities from all over the world attending. Several weeks before, Marilyn said, "I’m going to LA Friday night after the shooting. It’s my period, and I could, according to my contract, not shoot Thursday and Friday, but it’s Clarks’ first big scene, and I just have to be there. I want to go to have Pearl do my hair, to get a special dress for the occasion. I also want to get away from all this morass of miasma. Don’t you feel that we’re all sinking into all the intrigue, poisonous vapors of the heat, the desert? Miasma reminds me of Monty and those evenings in New York. I love word games, but not being able to spell anything, I’m not at all good at them. Once, during a game I thought of a combination of words – two of my favorite words, incidentally, miasma and mimosa – both lovely sounding, and one meaning such a terrible thing, and the other such a lovely thing. To myself I fooled around with them, and came up with ‘mimosas give me asthma’. I couldn’t tell them what made me giggle." The scene with Gable, with him, bouncing over the radiator of the car in front of the saloon, in 115ish temperature was completed with much success, and with a burst of applause from the crew and spectators. Marilyn told him how wonderful she thought it went, and then had Rudy drive her to Reno, and then to the airport. The next thing we heard that she had been admitted to Westside Hospital in L.A. Production was suspended until more details were obtained. Arthur called me "a reporter got into Marilyn’s room in spite of the hospital security, and would I go down to LA and stay in the hospital to make sure such didn’t happen again?" I said would start driving first thing the next morning. He was flying down immediately, as was Paula and May. I told Lee and Susie, and they decided to drive down with me. He had returned to NY, and Susie to Italy. By the time we arrived in LA the next evening, it had been determined she’d suffered from heat exhaustion, complicated by her usual monthly agony. Also, the hospital had augmented their security, and although they wanted me to be around as much as possible, it wasn’t the round the clock routine I’d expected. I remember spending much time with her; with Arthur, Lee and Paula. One afternoon, she asked me to bring her some magazines, and that she would love to see May, and also Ruppert Allan. We stopped on Fairfax at a newsstand to get some magazines, and the headline of the paper blared, "MONTAND SAYS MARILYN JUST HAD A SCHOOLGIRL CRUSH ON HIM." We didn’t take that to her. She never mentioned his name until one night after she and Miller separated.