“Is this a happy set I’m visiting tomorrow?”

Her tone lightened. “Oh, yes. And you have to love it-Marilyn knows just how to play these kind of people.”

These kind of people were mostly men, of course. And Marilyn had known all she had to do to get them eating out of her hand was take off her clothes.

When Sam and I stepped onto Soundstage 14, the world turned a bilious shade of pink. The elaborate, expansive set would have filled Soldier Field: spread out before us was the ass end of a stone-and-stucco Mediterranean mansion with a vast, angular pool surrounded by rococo lawn furniture and bushes and trees, one bearing a tree house.

Catwalks and lighting platforms made a spiderweb sky. A dapper little old gnome of a man was strutting around up there barking commands, and spotlights took various angles, as if searching for an escaped prisoner. This, I later learned, was Cukor, who-other than issuing very general orders, including the obligatory “Action!” and “Cut!”-gave Marilyn scant direction that afternoon.

On the fringes of the brightly lit set, an inky darkness prevailed. In one such pocket Sam and I positioned ourselves.

When a blue-robed Marilyn arrived with Pat Newcomb, a phalanx of attendees formed around her like Secret Service agents guarding the president. This group included Snyder and other hair and makeup techs, as well as Marilyn’s acting coach, Paula Strasberg, a fat witchy-looking figure in a black muumuu. Another slant board was waiting for Marilyn between takes, but the truth is-except for a lunch break, which for her was coffee-she never got completely out of the pool, once she got in.

She just swam happily, the center of attention in the elaborate set in the cavernous soundstage, queen of her domain. At first-when she slipped out of the blue terry-cloth robe, and into the pool-she wore a flesh-colored swimsuit. But after only a few minutes, a voice called down from a catwalk.