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listen.
    “Fifty-fifty,” I said. “Both our names and copyrights on the pictures.” The public wouldn’t have to know which pictures I shot or which ones Billy took. “We’ll sell them together all over the world,” I said, concluding my pitch.
    Finally, Billy spoke. “You’re saying fifty-fifty between us?”
    “Yeah,” I replied, “and my agent will do the selling.”
    “And what about Globe?” he said.
    “That’s between you and Globe,” I replied. “I’m making a deal with you, not with them. You develop your film, and you decide what you’re going to do.”
    Billy didn’t agree right away; he wanted some time to think it over. I told him that if he liked the idea, he should come to my studio the next afternoon, after we finished on the set. After he left, I walked back to Marilyn’s dressingroom and knocked on her door, but she didn’t answer. I knew she was there, but she wasn’t there for me, so I left.

    The next morning, before I went to the studio, I called Dick Pollard, the picture editor of
Life
. “When can we see them?” he asked after I told him what had taken place. I felt his eagerness on the phone. “As soon as Marilyn approves them,” I replied.
    That morning I shot some more scenes on the set, but Marilyn was in a strange mood, so I kept my distance.
    When she finished filming with Wally Cox, she passed me on her way back to her dressing room and asked, “When do I see the pictures?”
    She wasn’t smiling or being coy, and I sensed her steely determination. What had happened between us the day before was business, and the business was self-promotion. At the same time Fox was invested in
Something’s Got to Give
, and film production was a serious business. Was the picture going to be closed down? As Marilyn was shooting this movie, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke were starring in
The Miracle Worker
; Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were making
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
; Katharine Hepburn was doing Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night
; Geraldine Page and Paul Newman were doing
Sweet Bird of Youth
; Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon were aboutto pour their guts out in
Days of Wine and Roses
(a motion picture that I also photographed); Burt Lancaster was playing an unusual prisoner in
Birdman of Alcatraz
; and Gregory Peck was re-creating Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
.
    Marilyn knew that her movie wasn’t going to get the notices that these other films would receive unless she did something to bring it to the public’s attention, and what better way to do that than to reveal herself in a manner that could not be ignored? She had done her part, and I’m sure she wanted to see if I had done mine. Why she seemed to trust me I still don’t know.
    But first I needed to know if Billy would partner with me. That afternoon he came to my studio and said, “All right. I’m willing to make the deal.” We shook hands. There was no signed contract.
    “Where’re your pictures?” I asked as I reviewed my black-and-whites. “Let’s look at yours and look at mine, and then let’s pick the ones we want to show Marilyn.”
    “I’m not giving you any,” he said. “You go with all your pictures, and just give me half the money.”
    This was unexpected, and worrisome. “Isn’t Globe going to sell your shots?” I asked.
    “Not if they don’t have them,” he replied. “And they don’t.”
    My visceral reaction was that I was paying him half myincome for exclusivity. Was that a good deal? I wondered. I had no idea, but I told him that we should move ahead with that understanding.
    Then Billy brought up something I hadn’t thought about. “What are we going to do about Jimmy Mitchell’s pictures?”
    I couldn’t believe that I had put Mitchell out of my mind so easily.
    “The most important thing is to get the studio to kill Mitchell’s pictures,” Billy continued. Obviously, he had thought this through. “They’ll want the