Cast of Characters

Can a type-cast sexpot keep her cinema charm while 1) pregnant, and 2) on the rise to higher levels of intellect? Can a middle-aged producer reap wild oats? Can a female swimmer be a submarine hostess? Can a tycoon's son carry on? Can a crooner liquidate a photographer? Last week these vital questions met these tentative answers: P: Marilyn Monroe, shooting her first Hollywood film (MGM's Some Like It Hot) since she left for New York and re-education two years ago, was pregnant and more intellectual than ever. Marilyn stayed coolly sealed inside the mental isolation booth that Manhattan Methodman Lee Strasberg prescribed for "getting into" a part (hers: a uke-playing songbird of the '20s). Marilyn ordered gawkers kicked off the set, banned cussing crewmen, played love scenes with Leading Man Tony Curtis as if enclosed in a cake of ice. It was tough on Curtis, a simpler type who can still exclaim: "Gee, Marilyn Monroe makin' love to me!" Marilyn also huffily rebuffed Producer-Director Billy Wilder's smallest advice ("You'll make me forget how I'm going to do this scene"). A mild man, Wilder survived by treating Monroe like a fine Swiss watch: "Only it doesn't start ticking when you just wind. You have to shake it a little--not just any old way--but just so." P: Producer Darryl Zanuck, fervent avuncular friend of Left Bank Singer Juliette ("the wild one") Greco, rode into battle for his protegee. Through a London gossip column, U.S. Moviemaker Carl Foreman irritably reported that Zanuck was over-pushing Greco for a fat part in Foreman's new picture, Guns of Navarone. Zanuck, who elevated his black-haired Lorelei from subterranean boites to stardom in The Roots of Heaven, angrily denied the Foreman charge: "I have no control of any sort over her career." Greco may have given Zanuck that impression by accepting the lead in a British-German film against his advice. When he descended on her German location not long ago to demand script changes and shower presents, Greco purred by phone from her hotel room: "You can't come up. Wait there and I might come down." Then she went to bed, leaving Zanuck to shiver alone on the terrace in the autumn night. P: Sailors' eyes clicked like gyro-repeaters in a flank-speed turn as Cinemermaid Esther Williams, sheathed in tight red slacks and sweater, pranced aboard the Navy submarine U.S.S. Trout in New London, Conn. Purpose: to play hostess on NBC-TV's Omnibus documentary on submarine training. It was Producer Robert Saudek's idea, based on the theory that "many aspects of submarine navigation are similar to swimming." Esther, whose medium is cold water, poured plenty of it on officers' wives jammed in the New London officers' club to meet her, icily asked them to leave so she could "talk business" with their husbands. Later Esther slid down the Trout hatch in a skirt that swung all eyes to the ladder, forced another costume change (back on land again) that delayed shooting for hours. Finally Esther walked out a day and a half before Producer Saudek was through. Saudek went on without her, praised the Navy's exquisite forebearance. Cracked Omnibus' host, Alistair Cooke: "This has been the noblest chapter in naval history."

P: Budding Showman Mike Todd Jr., 29, announced that he will produce next year's smelliest movie (The Scent of Mystery), using the Smell-O-Visiqn-process developed by a Swiss chemist under contract to the late Mike Todd Sr. Nearest yet to the "feelie" film envisioned by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (see BOOKS), the process is triggered by soundtrack blips, which release odors through a maze of pipes to the audience--30 odors in 90 minutes for The Scent of Mystery, including flowers, roasting chestnuts, brandy, coffee, shoe polish (the villain will be trapped by smell clues). Mike Jr. will spend $1,000,000 (with United Artists) on shooting the film in highly scented Spain. The movie will include a brief appearance at the end by Todd's stepmother-partner, Elizabeth Taylor. Liz's movie odor: still undetermined.

P: Crooner Frank Sinatra, back from several inconclusive rounds with luscious Lady Beatty and the London press (TIME, Nov. 10), started sparring with New York Journal-American Photographer Melvin Finkelstein. The photographer claimed that Sinatra tried to run him down with a rented Cadillac limousine outside Manhattan's Harwyn Club. As Sinatra left with Model Nan Whitney, Finkelstein got set to take a picture, whereupon Frankie cried to his chauffeur: "Get him! Kill that bastard." Scoffed Sinatra: "What I read in the papers must have happened to three other guys."

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