Marilyn first met famed playwright Arthur Miller in 1950 on the set of As Young as You Feel, but it wasn't until 1955, when she moved from Hollywood to NYC to formally study acting, that she and Arthur reconnected. They began secretly dating — he was in the process of divorcing his first wife, Mary Slattery — and on June 29, 1956, Arthur and Marilyn were married in a civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court in White Plains, NY. Two days later they had a traditional Jewish ceremony at the home of Arthur's agent, and Marilyn converted to Judaism, a move that prompted Egypt to ban all of her movies.
Given the differences in their careers, lifestyles, and outward appearances, the media had a field day with their union — Variety even reported the news of their wedding with the headline "Egghead Weds Hourglass." Marilyn was just 30 at the time (10 years his junior) and, never having a real family of her own, seemed eager to join Arthur's and become a stepmother to his two children.
The couple moved to London that August, where Marilyn was getting read to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier. Shortly before filming began, Marilyn stumbled upon Arthur's open journal and naturally, she read it — in it, Arthur wrote that he was having second thoughts about marrying her, that she was more of a child than a grown woman, that she wasn't as smart as he thought she was, and that he was worried that his creativity and career would be affected by his association with her.
They returned to the States after filming wrapped and Marilyn took an 18-month hiatus from work, during which she and Arthur split their time between Manhattan and Connecticut. In his book Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, Donald Spoto wrote that Marilyn got pregnant in mid-1957, but that it was ectopic and had to be terminated; a year later, she suffered another miscarriage, which sent her over the edge: her drug use got worse, and she was hospitalized for a barbiturate overdose. Her marriage to Arthur was wearing thin.
After finishing Some Like It Hot (for which she won a Golden Globe in 1960), Marilyn desperately wanted a dramatic role, so Arthur began writing the screenplay for The Misfits, which she would star in. He would go on to say that filming the movie was "one of the lowest points" in his life due to Marilyn's increasing use of both sleeping pills and uppers; she would arrive late to set and have trouble remembering her lines, which also angered director John Huston and Marilyn's costar Clark Gable. Shortly before the film was released in 1961, Arthur and Marilyn divorced after five years of marriage. The Misfits would be Marilyn's last completed role.
