Design Style by Robert Green Architect AIA | |
Frank Lloyd Wright: Marilyn Monroe, Ann Baxter and His Death | |
One of my jobs, for a couple of weeks, was cleaning Mr and Mrs Wright's living room. Cleaning there one day, I saw Mr Wright approach from another part of his quarters. I was standing off to the side and he did not see me. One of the family's grey Weimaraner dogs was lying across the threshold of the opened glass door leading into the living room. Mr Wright stopped an inch or two from the dog and looked down. The dog did not move. Mr Wright then peered up and around, looking to see if anyone could witness what he intended doing. He didn't see me. Then this ninety year old man pulled one leg back, and kicked that dog as hard as he could. The dog let out a yelp and jumped away. I
laughed, and then Mr Wright saw me.
He smiled and said, "That dog is always in the way, too
stupid to move."
On the weekends, the time was ours of course. On
Saturday night we had a special supper served in the underground theater,
after which we saw a first line movie, often before it had hit the
theaters. I don't know how this was managed. I remember one
night we saw a western, and after the movie Mr Wright stood up and said,
with a twinkle in his eye, "Well, boys, a good western needs lots of
shooting and horses, great scenery, and my granddaughter (Ann
Baxter)." Then he laughed and moved out of the theater.
On Sunday nights we also ate in the theater and afterward
we had classical music for awhile, sometimes though in the Pavilion and
occasionally by a world renown pianist. "Boys, you'll never hear
Schubert played better than you did tonight..."
Before I arrived at Taliesin, Marilyn Monroe and her
husband came to Mr Wright to have him do a house for them. (He
designed a wonderful circular\rectangular structure, which, however, was
not built) The story goes that Mr Wright was so taken with Marilyn
that he allowed no one--not even Mrs Wright--to be in the room with him
when he talked with Marilyn. Even at his age, he could still
appreciate a beautiful woman.
It was a few days before Mr Wright's death that we had
the big gala Easter celebration at Taliesin West. Many people were
invited and we set long tables out on the beautiful graveled walk which
extended outside, in a L shape, from the far end of the drafting room to
the steps and terrace outside the living room, around the little
reflecting poor. On the terrace were set a few other tables, the one
for the Wrights with a large umbrella shading it.
Everyone was invited to the affair, including Mr Wright's
granddaughter, the actress Anne Baxter. There was enough space for
all, including all of the members of the Fellowship. Special food
was served, a certain amount of it foreign in origin (Mrs Wright was a
native of Montenegro); and all the people were dressed to the
teeth.
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Later I saw Mr
Wright sitting under the umbrella, and I saw him raise his hand several
times and lower it to the table in a gesture of impatience and
fatigue (Mrs.Wright had kept this man up until eleven or twelve each night
entertaining guests, for several nights, this man who usually went to bed
around 7 p.m.), and then I heard him say to no one in particular, "Let's
get the show on the road; let's get the show on the road." He looked
tired.
The following Thursday Mr Wright was admitted to the
hospital and died four days later from complications arising from the
operation for an intestinal obstruction. He died on April 9, 1959,
two months from his 91st birthday.
We had already packed up to move back to Wisconsin, since
we were to spend the next six months there, before coming back to
Arizona. We had a short funeral service there in Arizona and were
instructed to un-pack. Then Mrs Wright had Wesley Peters and Gene
Masselink take the coffin containing the remains of Frank Lloyd Wright,
and, while she and several members of her inner group flew back to
Wisconsin, the body of Mr Wright was bounced to Wisconsin in the back of a
pickup truck.
Mr Wright had demanded to be buried next to Mamah Cheney,
his (I suspected) one true love.
If you haven't heard the story of Mrs Cheney I give you
the nut-shell version: Mrs Cheney had been a client of Mr Wright's in 1910
or so. He fell in love with her--and visa versa; each asked their
spouses for a divorce. Mr Wright's wife refused to grant a divorce
and that is why Mr Wright and Mamah Cheney could not marry. Mr
Wright and Mamah moved to Germany for a year, where Mr Wright oversaw the
printing of a fine edition of prints of his buildings. When they
returned to America, Mr Wright moved from Chicago to Spring Green,
Wisconsin, to the 160 acre farm his mother had given him, and he built a
home, Taliesin North, for he and Mrs Cheney and her two children.
Two years later, a servant from Barbados who worked for Mr Wright, went
berserk one weekend when Mr Wright was in Chicago checking on a building
he was doing. The deranged man nailed all the exterior doors shut,
except the lower half of a dutch door, and then he set the house on
fire. Anyone who tried to crawl out the dutch door, he be-headed
with an axe. Seven people were killed in the terrible massacre,
including Mrs Cheney and her two children. Mr Wright and his "house
of sin" became instantly infamous--to say the least.
And Mr Wright was buried next to his Mamah Cheney.
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