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Icon: The Life, Times, and Films of Marilyn Monroe
Volume 1: 1926 to 1956
© 2015 Gary Vitacco-Robles. All Rights Reserved.

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 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Goddess, Legend, Icon

Part I: Norma Jeane Baker

Chapter One — Ancestry
Chapter Two — 1926-1934
Chapter Three — 1934-February 1938
Chapter Four — March 1938-1939
Chapter Five — 1940-1944
Chapter Six — 1945

Part II: Marilyn Monroe

Chapter Seven — 1946
Chapter Eight — 1947: Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! & Dangerous Years
Chapter Nine — 1948: Ladies of the Chorus
Chapter Ten — 1949: Love Happy, A Ticket to Tomahawk, & The Ashpalt Jungle

Part III: Rising Star

Chapter Eleven — 1950: The Fireball, Right Cross, Hometown Story, & All
About Eve
Chapter Twelve — 1951: As Young As You Feel, Love Nest, & Let’s Make It
Legal
Chapter Thirteen — Clash By Night
Chapter Fourteen — Don’t Bother To Knock
Chapter Fifteen — January-February 1952: We’re Not Married & Monkey
Business
Chapter Sixteen — March-June 1952
Chapter Seventeen — Niagara
Chapter Eighteen — July-November 1952

Part IV: Goddess

Chapter Nineteen — Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Chapter Twenty — January-March 1952
Chapter Twenty-One — How To Marry a Millionaire
Chapter Twenty-Two — Spring & Summer 1953
Chapter Twenty-Three — River of No Return
Chapter Twenty-Four — Autumn 1953

Part V: Mrs. Joe DiMaggio

Chapter Twenty-Five — January-May 1954
Chapter Twenty-Six — May 1954
Chapter Twenty-Seven — There’s No Business Like Show Business
Chapter Twenty-Eight — The Seven Year Itch

Part VI: The Actress

Chapter Twenty-Nine — November-December 1954
Chapter Thirty — January 1955
Chapter Thirty-One — February 1955
Chapter Thirty-Two — Spring 1955
Chapter Thirty-Three — Summer 1955
Chapter Thirty-Four — Autumn 1955
Chapter Thirty-Five — January-March 1956
Chapter Thirty-Six — Bus Stop
Chapter Thirty-Seven — May-July 1956

Appendix — Selected Marilyn Monroe Film Synopses (1950-1956)

Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
 Acknowledgements

The Life, Times, and Films of Marilyn Monroe is the result of a decade of
research culminating in two volumes reviewing five decades of literature on this
extraordinary subject. My previous book, Cursum Perficio: Marilyn Monroe’s
Brentwood Hacienda, resonated with her many fans across the globe who
contacted me with appeals to write an unabridged biography. I extend
appreciation to the many people who have supported this project.
Christelle Montagner graciously served as my overseas volunteer research
assistant. She created a timeline of Marilyn’s life and organized her archive of
documents and photographic images into a visual biography. Christelle was
especially helpful in identifying the context of Marilyn’s life through
photographs and scans of letters that Marilyn had written.
Prolific author Michelle Morgan served as my advisor, cheerleader, and
coach. As a researcher and biographer of film stars of the Golden Age of
filmmaking, she related to my frenzied excitement over finding an obscure
article published nearly seventy years ago containing a tidbit of information, and
validated such discoveries as worthy of a day of investigation. From across the
Atlantic Ocean, Michelle took my hand and wisely guided me to Ben Ohmart of
BearManor Media, who believed in and accepted my manuscript. My thanks
also go out to Beth Jacques at Mptvimages.com who facilitated the licensing of
the cover’s 1953 photograph by Frank Powolny (1901-1986), chief portrait and
still photographer at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios.
I am grateful to those who participated in interviews:
Greg Schreiner of Marilyn Remembered provided a private tour of his
exceptional collection of Marilyn’s personal property and archive and served as
a consultant.
Scott Fortner of The Marilyn Monroe Collection also permitted my access to
his colossal archive of Marilyn’s documents and personal property, which had
recently been displayed with Greg’s at the Hollywood History Museum in Los
Angeles. Both collections serve as artifacts documenting a personal archeology.
The late Evelyn Moriarty spoke to me at length about Marilyn’s generosity
and the productions of Let’s Make Love, The Misfits, and Something’s Got to
Give.
Marilyn’s internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, corresponded with me and
requested that I write questions on index cards and mail them to him. Like a
devoted pen pal, the retired physician jotted down his responses on the cards and
returned them.
During Marilyn Monroe’s fiftieth anniversary memorial service, Joshua
Greene of The Archives of Milton Greene and Amy Greene shared their personal
memories of Marilyn as a member of their household.
James Haspiel provided consultation through a surprise long distance
telephone call on New Year’s Eve 1999 and discussed his memories of Marilyn
in Manhattan.
Stylist Mickey Song invited me into his home in Los Angeles and recounted
his encounter with Marilyn at President John F. Kennedy’s birthday gala in 1962.
Jason Dow discussed his adolescent encounter with Marilyn on North
Redington Beach, Florida, in March 1961.
Sal Arena discussed Marilyn as a customer in his pet shop in Manhattan,
where she regularly purchased canine vitamins for Hugo, her Basset Hound.
James Dougherty exchanged email messages with me and shared fond
personal memories of his young bride, Norma Jeane. Our communication
branched into many other topics until his death.
Phyllis Goddard, who managed an archival website dedicated to William
Spratling, discussed the American expatriate’s friendship with Marilyn and her
trip to Mexico.
Margot Stipe of The Archives of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in
Scottsdale, Arizona, shared with me floor plans of Wright’s design for the
Monroe-Miller house, and we often digressed to stories about our mutual love
for dogs.
Eric Monroe Woodard assisted with information about Marilyn’s Brentwood
hacienda and ill-fated production of Rain for the NBC television network. Eric
provided a fateful introduction to Greg Schreiner of Marilyn Remembered.
Michael Greenwald discussed the history of Brentwood, Los Angeles.
Ceasar Vasallo shared his expansive archive, including a photograph of
Marilyn’s childhood pet dog, Tippy.
George Bailey, Niagara’s local historian, discussed the production of Niagara
(1953). He also honored me by serving as best man at my wedding in Niagara-
on-the-Lake.
Ernie Garcia nurtured my interest in Marilyn during the twentieth anniversary
of her death and provided articles dating back to 1962; it was during the editing
process of this project thirty years later that we reunited via social media.
Marilyn Monroe has an international following of devoted fans who
generously offered to share their astounding knowledge of the details of her life.
Through the Internet, I was able to reach across the globe to consult with many
experts to clarify a date, a name, or an event. Their enthusiastic willingness to
answer a question or identify a source at any hour of the day or night is greatly
appreciated. The lovely Mary Sims, President of Immortal Marilyn Fan Club,
assisted in researching rare and vintage periodicals. Special thanks to: Jackie
Craig, Melody Lockard, Dorothy Bartlett, Sebastien Cauchon, Ashlee Davis,
Shar Daws, Marijane Gray, Jane Guy, Brandon Heidrick, Roman Hryniszak,
Michelle Justice, Leslie Kasperowicz, David Marshall, Hanna Nixon, Angie
Paul, Tony Plant, Judy Stetson, Rebecca Swift, Sunny and Greg Thompson, Roy
Turner, Marco van der Munnik, Miguel Angel Gomora Vazquez, and Peggy
Wilkins. Please forgive any oversight in acknowledgment of every
“Monrologist” who answered a question or pointed me in the right direction.
I am indebted to the biographer Sarah Churchwell, who provided
encouragement via email across the Atlantic; she generously permitted me to
include quotations from the definitive The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe.
Sarah’s observations about Marilyn are priceless gems, and were essential as
textural source material.
I am grateful to Joshua Greene for permission to include Marilyn’s own
words from her 1954 autobiography, My Story. The photographic archive of
Milton H. Greene, his father, can be accessed at www.archivesmhg.com.
I am also appreciative to Mona Rae Miracle, Marilyn’s niece, for her
authorization to include quotations from My Sister Marilyn. Please see
www.MonaRaeMiracle.com.
Additional thanks to Jonas Mekas for permission to quote extensively from
his poetic review of The Misfits; Luke Yankee for permission to quote
extensively from his memoir, Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with
Eileen Heckart; and TIME/LIFE for permission to quote from Richard
Meryman’s interview with Marilyn from the August 3, 1962 issue of Life. Thank
you, Amy Wong of TIME/LIFE, for assistance.
Carl Rollyson granted permission for excerpts from his scholarly biography
Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress as he completed his latest work on our
shared subject, Marilyn Day By Day. He reviewed my manuscript and offered
valuable advice on the publishing process.
Social and political activist Gloria Steinem permitted my inclusion of
quotations from Marilyn Monroe: Norma Jean, and actress/journalist Sheila
O’Malley allowed a passage from her review of Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)
from her classic film blog The Sheila Variations.
Joann Schwendemann, representing Dover Publications, arranged for
permission to include the excerpt from the Molly Brown soliloquy in James
Joyce’s Ulysses; and Kevin Neelan, CEO/Founder of Digireads.com Publishing,
granted permission for the excerpt from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie.
Having been born three years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, I first discovered
her through the 4:30 Movie on WABC-TV’s Channel 7 and in a Funk and
Wagnalls Encyclopedia in my childhood home in New York, circa 1973. In an
article about the American motion picture industry, her portrait appeared with
three other iconic actresses: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Bette
Davis. Marilyn’s image seemed more approachable than the others. I next saw
her image in photographer Milton Greene’s famous “ballerina session.” Looking
into her eyes, I did not see a sex symbol. Instead, I felt as though I peered in the
soul of a fascinating and complex young woman. Marilyn seemed to follow me
everywhere, and I’ve chased her ever since. She looms in my consciousness like
a deceased relative whose stories I knew, even though we had never met.
This biography critically cites from genuine research and credible sources,
and purposefully excludes speculative and unreliable material.
The first book I read on this remarkable woman was Fred Lawrence Guiles’
Norma Jean: The Life of Marilyn Monroe. In 1967, the author had adapted his
1963 screenplay, Goodbye, Norma Jean into a series for Ladies’ Home Journal,
the magazine in which Marilyn had longed to be featured, titled, “The Final
Summer of Marilyn Monroe.” Guiles expanded the piece into his definitive
biography in 1969.
Shortly thereafter, I discovered Norman Mailer’s, Marilyn: A Biography,
illustrated with mesmerizing photographs of his subject by Eve Arnold,
Lawrence Schiller, Bert Stern, Milton Greene, and others. Another Norman, poet
Norman Rosten, published his affectionate memoir, Marilyn: An Untold Story, as
a rebuttal and shared his personal insight into his family’s relationship with
Marilyn during the last seven years of her life. Rosten later collaborated with
photographer Sam Shaw, another friend of Marilyn’s, whose family also
embraced her, to produce Marilyn Among Friends.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the culture rediscovered Marilyn as a
serious talent and cultural icon and acknowledged her inimitable role in film.
Equality activist Gloria Steinem published an article, “The Woman Who Died
Too Soon,” in a 1972 issue of Ms. magazine and offered the first exploration of
Marilyn’s journey from a feminist perspective. Steinem followed up with
Marilyn: Norma Jeane fourteen years later.
Later, Marilyn was often the target of literary exploitation aimed to profit at
the expense of her dignity. Too often, she was reduced to sensational speculation
about her alleged relationships and theories about the circumstances of her death.
This tabloid focus overshadowed her extraordinary life and accomplishments.
The scales tipped in Marilyn’s favor when scholar Carl Rollyson honored and
validated her talent and performances with Marilyn Monroe: A Life of An
Actress. Donald Spoto’s landmark Marilyn Monroe: The Biography replaced
Guiles’ work as a definitive biography as its title asserts. Later, Donald H.
Wolfe’s The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe and Barbara Leaming’s Marilyn
Monroe offered additional insights. On the cusp of the new millennium, Sarah
Churchwell’s similarly academic The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe
summarized four decades of biographies.
Marilyn evolved as less of an archetype and more of a living, breathing
woman in housekeeper Eunice Murray’s Marilyn: The Last Months, Susan
Strasberg’s Marilyn and Me: Sisters, Rivals, Friends, and Berniece Miracle and
Mona Rae Miracle’s My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir of Marilyn Monroe. These
treatments dispelled myths created by those who seem to have made scurrilous
claims about their alleged associations with Marilyn. Most of those in whom
Marilyn actually confided remained silent over the decades, and spoke only to
defend her. Time revealed that she chose her confidantes wisely. Ralph Roberts
and Inez Melson never published their manuscripts, yet were arguably closer to
Marilyn than other published authors.
Interestingly, Maurice Zolotow’s first scholarly biography, Marilyn Monroe,
remains accurate and salient fifty-three years after its original release and rivals
many of its six hundred-odd subsequent challengers. With similar relevance, My
Story, Marilyn’s 1954 autobiography, written in collaboration with Ben Hecht,
was finally published in 1974 and gave its subject her own voice. Marilyn’s
voice resonated again in Lois Banner and Mark Andersons MM — Personal:
From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe and Fragments: Poems, Intimate
Notes, Letters, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment.
Anthony Summers’ exhaustive research culminated into Goddess: The Secret
Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Though I question the credibility of many of the
subjects he interviewed and sometimes disagree with his conclusions and
implications, Summers provided an unprecedented depth of detail. Sandra
Shevey and Richard Buskin interviewed many of Marilyn’s co-stars and
directors in their later years and documented their insights respectively in The
Marilyn Scandal and Blonde Heat: The Sizzling Screen Career of Marilyn
Monroe.
I direct those interested in further reading to the plethora of above-mentioned
works, in addition to actual interviews with Marilyn by Richard Meryman,
Georges Belmont, George Barris, and Alan Levy. My researched relied upon all
of these legitimate sources.
I thank Michelle Levy for her editing and patience, Mary Monson for being
my life-saving second set of eyes (it is no coincidence that her initials are MM),
John Teehan for the layout design, and Valerie Thompson for her beautiful cover
design.
Personal thanks to my wonderful parents, Gloria and Frank Vitacco; my
supportive brother, Mark Vitacco; my beloved aunt, Priscilla Muralo; my mentor
and friend, Courtenay O’Connell-Sims; my sister-in-law, Penny Himmler
Vitacco; and Oscar Vitacco-Robles, my spouse and eternal soul mate, who
selflessly and lovingly supported this project while enduring the massive amount
of time and attention it required. Thanks also to Oscar’s family, who has become
my family in the last twenty-three years: Gloria and Bob Ward, Mitzi Robles,
and David, Tori, and Wyatt Robles.
Finally, I dedicate this book to Norma Jeane, the resilient little girl who
became Marilyn Monroe, and the many girls and young women who have also
survived trauma and are reaching for their dreams.

Gary Vitacco-Robles
Trinity, Fl
June 1, 2013
Introduction
 Goddess, Legend, Icon

Marilyn Monroe survived a childhood marked by neglect, chaos, and sexual

abuse to become a psychological, cultural, and spiritual phenomenon of the
Twentieth Century.
Born Norma Jeane Baker, Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) battled depression,
anxiety, sexism, and addiction to prescribed medication while she established
herself as a shining star, accomplished motion picture actress, and historical
figure. Marilyn continues to illuminate the world and fascinate young people
with her remarkable story. Marilyn’s idiosyncratic style of requesting supportive
energy from her friends was to say, “Please hold a good thought for me.” On the
half-centennial of her untimely death, a new generation continues to hold a good
thought for this beloved cinematic and cultural icon and admire her legacy of
vulnerability, strength, talent, and beauty.
Marilyn’s screen image often contrasted with her soulful, shy, and
introspective personality. Close friends witnessed a conscious and spontaneous
transformation from her real self to persona when she asked them, “Do you want
me to be her?” Denied a sense of grounding by the unfortunate circumstances of
her childhood, Marilyn searched for identity through a personal journey toward
growth, culture, knowledge, and love.
As she was in the 1950s, Marilyn remains frozen in time as stunningly
beautiful, desirable, charismatic, forever smiling, and carefree. She was the last
modern love goddess, a cultural archetype of idealized feminine sexuality.
Paradoxically, she is also our icon for a tragic and premature death. She is
simultaneously the embodiment of desire and death.
Part of Marilyn’s enduring appeal may be the empathy her pain and life
experiences evoke in each of us. She inspires us to project our own subjective
interpretations onto her extraordinary life. Volumes of biographies are published
each year analyzing the events in Marilyn’s life and their impact on her personal
and professional functioning. We hear repeatedly of her illegitimate birth,
mentally ill mother, three marriages, divorces, and multiple miscarriages.
Authors provide varying perceptions of Marilyn’s professional triumphs,
personal suffering and tragic death. She commonly emerges as a virtually
parentless waif who grows up to become the nation’s sweetheart; a Cinderella
who transforms and goes to the ball. “I knew I belonged to the public and to the
world,” Marilyn wrote, aware of the emotional chord she struck in her audience,
“not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged
to anything or anyone else.”
Marilyn was decades ahead of her time and greatly misunderstood during her
lifetime. She was the first public figure to disclose childhood sexual abuse, and
one of the few female stars to establish her own production company. She also
suffered from symptoms consistent with the diagnoses of Bipolar Disorder long
before it had an effective treatment.
An insecure and often introverted woman, Marilyn generally avoided
dressing in furs and jewels and attending the lavish parties and public spectacles
of Hollywood’s social circuit. She preferred wearing Capri slacks, no make-up,
and discussing literature and acting theory in the kitchens of her New York
intellectual friends. She engaged in intense relationships with a small number of
motion picture technicians whose contributions were made behind the camera.
The actress walked with poets, authors, politicians, liberals and artists, but the
non-celebrities upon whom she had depended for loyalty and friendship attended
her funeral.
In the last weeks of Marilyn’s life, a housekeeper greeted her at the door of a
host’s home and stared with surprise. “No one will believe me when I say I met
and shook hands with Marilyn Monroe,” the housekeeper gasped. “I can hardly
believe it myself.”
“Well, I can’t believe it, too,” Marilyn replied, joining in the maid’s
astonishment. “I guess I am. Everybody says I am.” Marilyn’s response suggests
that she identified with her audience and felt detached from her own celebrity.
Through twenty-nine films released during a sixteen-year career, Marilyn left
behind a legacy of brilliance that has established her as the motion picture
industry’s reigning actress icon. She possessed enormous charisma and a
powerful screen presence that made the audience focus on every nuance of her
performance.
Marilyn’s screen roles demonstrated a wide range within typecasting. Her
early portrayals of the “dumb blonde” elevated the two-dimensional archetype
into a textured, satirical parody. Even in her most minor roles, she emerged as an
adroit comedienne and dramatic artist whose personal depth radiates through
often limited scripts. Later, screenwriters altered Marilyn’s roles to reflect the
sensitive artist beneath the sexual facade presented by her screen image. Her
characterizations were wise, gentle and nurturing; they engendered goodness and
compassion, taught lessons, and united opposing forces.
Despite the motion picture industry’s goal to limit Marilyn’s range and
exploit her physical attraction, she was obsessively driven to evolve into a
serious, dramatic actress. She courageously risked ridicule and her career by
rebelling against her studio and rejecting its imposed direction. She embarked on
the study of the controversial Method Acting technique at Lee Strasberg’s Actors
Studio in New York City while collaborating with photographer Milton Greene
to produce her own films.
Although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences snubbed
Marilyn’s critically acclaimed performances in Bus Stop (1956) and The Misfits
(1961), she received significant laurels from other corners. In March 1960,
Marilyn was presented the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or
Comedy for her performance as Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot (1959). At one
point, the public speculated Marilyn’s career was declining, but when she
received the Golden Globe Award, in March 1962, as World Film Favorite of
1961, she proved them wrong. Three years earlier, Marilyn was awarded both
the French and Italian film industries’ respective Crystal Star and David di
Donatello Award for her performance as Elsie Marina in The Prince and the
Showgirl (1957). These European honors for Best Foreign Actress were
equivalent to the Oscar. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Marilyn
Monroe sixth among the list of legendary screen actresses behind Katharine
Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, and Greta Garbo.
Ultimately, Marilyn’s impact on the world overshadows the contribution of
many statesmen. Her extraordinary life elicits strong emotional reactions and is
still celebrated and respected in our popular culture today. “She was (and still is)
adored by men and women alike,” wrote Nancy Valentino, “and the depths to
which she can stir the emotions of both sexes indicate a profound sense of
humanity.”
In the five decades following her death, Marilyn Monroe has resonated as a
legend, a myth, and the subject of apocrypha. “A religious metaphor like
apocrypha seems particularly apt in the case of Marilyn, our ultimate goddess,
divinity, icon, idol,” wrote Sarah Churchwell, the first to document to scale of
the myth of Marilyn Monroe and its reflection on our cultural values and our
attitudes about women, celebrity, sex, and death.
With her rags to riches story, Marilyn embodies the American dream. She
proved that no matter how meager one’s background, with hard work and
determination, one can achieve one’s dreams. Feminist Gloria Steinem
acknowledges Marilyn as an inspiration to women because she exemplified
almost celestial energy and, despite evident vulnerability, exerted her will,
strength, and intelligence.
Marilyn’s story has been reproduced in an estimated six hundred books
written since her death in 1962. They include traditional biographies,
biographical novels, and fictionalized autobiographies; collections of
photographs, trivia, and quotations; encyclopedias, film reviews, essays, and
elegies; dramatic interpretations of her life in the form of plays, musicals,
operas, and films. Many books and documentaries address only speculation
about the circumstances of her death. “Marilyn has gone from sex symbol to a
symbol of mourning, from a promise of the liberation of sex to a cautionary tale
about the dangers of loneliness and spinsterhood,” wrote Churchwell. “And
chiefly it is the writing and rewriting of her life story that has achieved this
transformation.”
Marilyn Monroe was a character created and honed by Norma Jeane Baker.
She performed as this character in films and in public life, reserving her
authentic personality for private life. It is due to our lack of knowledge about
Marilyn the woman, not Marilyn the star, that has made her character flourish
posthumously though the legend and myths surrounding her life.
Despite all of the fictional and truthful tomes and dramatic interpretations of
Marilyn Monroe’s life, she remains an enigma in part because she left behind no
definitive autobiography or televised or filmed interview of any merit. Her
partially ghostwritten memoir, My Story, depicts only snapshots of her childhood
and life until 1954. In a brief Person to Person interview with Edward R.
Murrow in 1955, Marilyn appears vacuous, and mirrors her screen persona as
she speaks in the affected baby doll voice in response to mindless and trite
questions such as: “What was your smallest part in a film?”
Marilyn’s more substantial interviews with Georges Belmont in 1960 and
Richard Meryman in 1962 more effectively capture the real woman and her
intellect, but these were preserved only in audiotapes and remain obscure. In the
first interview, conducted on the set of Let’s Make Love, Marilyn speaks
maturely and seriously in her natural voice about her past, her work, aspirations,
routine, relationships, philosophy, and personal struggles. Her responses sound
spontaneous and thoughtful with a hint of an underlying depressed mood.
In the latter interview conducted for Life shortly before her death, some of
Marilyn’s responses seem rehearsed. She punctuates witty remarks with a giggle
that culminates in a nervous laugh, and sounds manic. Journalists recorded
Marilyn’s most cerebral discussions in written form only, with no audiotapes
released yet to the public.
 The true depth of Marilyn Monroe’s psyche is not revealed in the interviews
or the plethora of biographies, but rather, through the archive of her journals,
diaries, poems, and letters published or auctioned as historic documents decades
after her death. Reproduced in auction catalogues, the prose echoes Marilyn’s
inner voice in a stream of consciousness and private confessions. Through them,
her now silenced voice is strong and clear. Herein lies the truth.


Part I
Norma Jeane Baker
Chapter One
 Ancestry

“I was never used to being happy, so that wasn’t something I ever took for
granted,” Marilyn Monroe said of her childhood. “You see, I was brought up
differently from the average American child because the average child is brought
up expecting to be happy.” Marilyn’s lifelong, obsessive ambition to become a
mother and actress were deeply rooted in childhood, and were shaped by the
women who participated in her upbringing. Born in Hollywood, the city where
motion pictures are produced, to a mother who worked off-camera in the
periphery of the industry, Marilyn rose to its pinnacle. As a performer on the
screen, she achieved success and power unrealized by her mother or by any other
member of her family.
Marilyn’s pedigree was glaringly dysfunctional on many levels and included
intergenerational mental illness, sexual abuse of children, broken families,
absent husbands and fathers, and single mothers who financially struggled and
frequently partnered with a succession of men. During a time of economic
hardship and limited choices, the women in her family were true survivors who
managed despite the odds against them and passed their strength on to her.
Marilyn managed to survive a horrifying childhood while preserving the radiant
spirit her public persona later projected. Philosopher Ayn Rand suggested this
exemplifies a heroism that inspires our collective interest in her, despite the
eventual tragic circumstances of her death.
Marilyn’s documented ancestry originates with her maternal great-
grandfather, Tilford Marion Hogan. He was born on February 24, 1851, in
Adams County, Illinois, to a farmer, George Washington Hogan, and his wife,
Sarah Ann Owens, both originally from Kentucky.
George Washington Hogan’s grandfather, John Hogan (1756-1798), was
linked to the legendary American explorer and frontiers-man, Daniel Boone.
John and his two brothers, William and James, were members of Boone’s second
scouting unit that carved out the two-hundred mile Wilderness Road from
Virginia southward to Tennessee and northward over the Cumberland Cap to
Kentucky in 1775. Working for the Transylvania Company, which purchased
land from the Cherokee tribe, Boone and his frontiersmen established Fort
Boonesborough, the first English-speaking settlement west of the Appalachian
Mountains. John and James Hogan began the first ferry service used to transport
pioneers across the Kentucky River in 1785. William Hogan married Sarah, an
orphaned girl raised by Daniel Boone and his wife, Rebecca.
Marilyn’s great-great grandparents, George and Sarah Hogan, left their home
in Grant County, Kentucky in the 1840s, en route to Illinois. They were detained
in Louisville where they had a daughter, Mary Ann, and two sons, John and
William. The family arrived in Concord, Illinois where their third son, Newton,
was born in 1850. Tilford was born the following year. Within the next nine
years, George and Sarah had three additional children.
By the age of twelve, Tilford stood six feet tall and resembled the strong
frontiersmen in his lineage. At nineteen, he was working as a day laborer in
Missouri and married Charlotte Virginia “Jennie” Nance in 1870. In a sepia-
toned family photograph taken ten years later, Tilford wears a long, full beard
and mustache as he sits beside Jennie, who stands and projects a mournful
visage. Their first-born child, Dora, poses between them on an ornate pedestal.
The toddler wears a dress with a prominent white collar and matching cuffs. The
couple produced two other surviving children and frequently relocated to rented
farmhouses and log cabins in Barry County as Tilford moved from job to job.
Despite long hours of hard work, Tilford was unable to elevate his family
from extreme poverty. Often, they had no choice but to live in sheds among
horses. A sensitive man, Tilford taught himself to read, and like his famous
great-granddaughter, cultivated interests in literature and poetry despite his lack
of a formal education.
Unlike most working class couples of the American Victorian period, Tilford
and Jennie divorced in 1889 after two decades of marriage. Jennie took the
children and lived with her sister in Chariton County while Tilford faced
judgment from his Christian neighbors. Socially shunned, he eventually
relocated to Linn County to live near his sister, Mary Ann.
Tilford suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and respiratory infections, and the
combination of his hardworking lifestyle and extreme poverty only worsened his
physical condition. Like his great-granddaughter, Tilford was known as a
generous human being, sharing with friends and neighbors his scant supply of
food and living supplies. His three daughters rarely visited, leaving him isolated
and lonely. Eventually, Tilford remarried in 1928 at the ripe age of seventy-
seven, but he had not yet reached the depth of his despondency.
Jennie and Tilford’s second-born child was Della May Hogan, born on July 1,
1876, in Brunswick County, Missouri. Described as energetic and impish, she
frequently skipped class with friends to fish and swim in the local pond. Della
dropped out of school before age fifteen and alternated between her parents’
households, before meeting a house painter named Otis Elmer Monroe in 1898.
Originally from Indiana, Monroe was ten years older than Della and interested in
European art. Della married him the following year.
In 1901, the Mexican National Railway offered Otis Monroe work. He and
Della traveled the Overland Trail to Eagle Pass, Texas, crossing the border into
Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, Mexico, known today as Piedras Negras. Della adjusted to
a routine in rural Mexico where she became a teacher and midwife to Native
American and Mexican women.
On May 27, 1902, Della gave birth to her first child, Gladys Pearl Monroe, in
Piedras Negras. The next year, she and Otis moved to Los Angeles for more
lucrative jobs in a growing metropolis. Otis accepted a position with Pacific
Electric Railway, and the couple rented a bungalow on West Thirty Seventh
Street. In 1905, Della gave birth to a boy named Marion Otis Elmer Monroe.
The Monroe family lived in eleven rented residences between 1903 and 1909,
mirroring Della’s nomadic childhood with Tilford and Jennie, and
foreshadowing her famous granddaughter’s lifestyle a half-century later. The
couple and their children had virtually no opportunities to develop or sustain a
social support system.
Otis finally settled his wife and children in a home on Folsom Street, but his
severe alcohol problem robbed the family of stability. He often failed to return
home from work, claiming to have memory lapses that prevented him from
locating his own home. This may appear as the excuse of a philandering
alcoholic, but at age forty-one, Otis’ health deteriorated to the point of
influencing his behavior and emotions. He displayed episodes of rage and
depression, tremors in his limbs, and seizures. He eventually became partially
paralyzed.
In 1908, Otis was admitted to Southern California State Hospital in San
Bernardino County. Under examination, he was diagnosed with General Paresis,
a neuropsychiatric disorder affecting the brain and central nervous system,
causing psychosis and eventual complete incapacitation. Sadly, he was in the
final stage of syphilis of the brain. Otis likely sustained the illness through
unsanitary conditions while living in Mexico rather than through sexual activity.
The first successful treatment became available that year, but not soon enough to
save him. On July 22, 1909, nine months after his hospital admission, Otis died
at forty-three without ever leaving his hospital bed. Although no genetic
predisposition for mental illness was noted in the medical record, the doctors
told the family he died insane. Della arranged for burial in Rosedale Cemetery.
 At age thirty-three, the widowed Della generated income by accepting
boarders into her home at 2440 Boulder Street. She also focused her energy on
entertaining eligible bachelors, dating many men over a three-year period with
seemingly little concern about how it might negatively impact her young
children. Gladys would later say, “Mama liked men, and we all wanted a papa.”
In 1912, Della married Lyle Arthur Graves, a railway switchman supervisor
for Pacific Electric from Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was six years younger than
she. The couple moved to a home at South Hill Street. Like Otis Monroe, Graves
was a violent alcoholic and once hurled young Gladys’ pet kitten against a brick
wall, killing it. A mere eight months after the wedding, Della fled for safety,
taking her children to a residential hotel. The couple reunited at Christmas, but
Della left him again in May 1913.
Charging failure to provide, dissipation and habitual intemperance, Della
swiftly filed for divorce and legally changed her name back to Della Monroe to
share her children’s surname. On January 17, 1914, the divorce was granted. By
late 1916, Della, Gladys, and Marion lived in a boarding house at 26
Westminster Avenue in Venice.
Through Otis Monroe and Lyle Graves, young Gladys and Marion learned
that husbands and fathers are transient, unreliable, and violent. Through Della,
they learned that struggling women hook up with the wrong men who become
temporary and abusive daddies to their children.
Entering adolescence, Gladys was bright and flirtatious. She had brown hair
with red highlights and a widow’s peak. Her voice was high, and she loved to
laugh. Gladys also craved and sought attention from older men. This
combination placed her at risk for early sexual activity, pregnancy, and abuse.
Gladys brother, Marion, now eleven, grew oppositional and defiant. Hoping to
provide him with a positive male role model, Della sent the boy to live with
cousins in San Diego, where he developed into a champion swimmer in high
school.
At a New Year’s Day dance in 1917, Della met Charles Grainger, a rigger in
the Los Angeles oil boom. A widower with sons and originally from northern
California, Grainger had worked in India and Southeast Asia as a drilling
supervisor for the Burma Oil Company. The couple decided to cohabitate in
Grainger’s bungalow at 1410 Carroll Canal Court in the beachfront
neighborhood of Venice, in the western region of Los Angeles County. Della
now referred to herself as Mrs. Grainger despite the lack of a marriage license.
Venice was patterned after its namesake in Italy with gondolas taxying
residents through salt-water canals in a storybook setting. The city’s developer
built the 1,200-foot Kinney Pier with an auditorium, restaurant, dance hall, and
water plunge. A block-long arcaded business street designed in Italian Venetian
architecture offered amusements, an aquarium, a scenic train ride, a racing derby,
and game booths. Tourists arrived from Los Angeles and Santa Monica on the
Red Cars of the Pacific Electric Railway to enjoy the beach and recreational
opportunities.
Grainger’s relationship with Della afforded him freedom from financial
responsibility for her children and no obligations to prevent him from taking
contracts abroad. Gladys never warmed to her mother’s lover, and instead spent
her time brooding. Della considered her daughter an irritating obstacle to
developing a closer tie to Grainger, but the acceptance of a position in the local
tourist industry soon eliminated this hindrance.
John Newton “Jasper” Baker, a twenty-six year-old businessman from Knox,
Kentucky, pursued fourteen-year-old Gladys. After serving in the military, he
operated both a gaming concession and a hotel in Venice. Baker met Gladys
through Della, who managed his hotel. On May 17, 1917, ten days shy of her
fifteenth birthday, Gladys married Baker. Della gave her blessing for the
marriage and served as a witness to the wedding. She also signed the marriage
certificate, falsifying her daughter’s age as eighteen. Della’s willingness to bless
the union may have been motivated by Baker’s financial success.
The grim reality was that Della had surrendered her pregnant fourteen-year-
old daughter to her employer, a man twelve years the girl’s senior. Seven months
after the wedding, Gladys gave birth to Robert Kermit Baker, known as Jackie
Monroe Baker, on November 10, 1917. Jackie’s birth was never officially
recorded, although the county of Los Angeles routinely issued birth certificates
during this era. The absence of an official birth record suggests the family kept
the circumstances of the baby’s conception a secret. Gladys was now a mother at
fifteen, and Jasper Baker had committed statutory rape.
On July 30, 1919, seventeen-year-old Gladys gave birth to Berniece Inez
Baker. Gladys falsely listed Berniece as her first born on the birth certificate. Ill-
equipped as a child bride and teen mother, Gladys frequently left the children in
the care of neighbors, and went to dances and beach parties, while her husband
worked as a general merchandizing agent in the Auditorium Building in Venice
Beach. According to some sources, the couple may have also operated a
concession stand at Pickering Pleasure Pier. The marriage was tumultuous at best
and only worsened after the couple traveled to Flat Lick, Kentucky, in close
proximity to the home of Gladys’ maternal ancestors, to visit Baker’s family.
One of these early trips would lead to Jackie’s medical challenges, which
ultimately shortened his life.
“Jackie seemed destined for disaster,” Berniece wrote of her brother’s fate.
When Gladys disposed of a broken bottle in a trashcan, the toddler retrieved it
and severely cut himself, nearly losing an eye. Later, when Jackie was about
three and a half, the family traveled in an open car from California to visit
Jasper’s family in Kentucky. Jackie sat alone in the backseat while Berniece, age
two, sat up front with her parents. As Jasper negotiated the curvaceous mountain
road and argued with Gladys, the car swerved and Jackie fell out, injuring his
hip.
When doctors finally removed Jackie’s cast, one leg was shorter than the
other. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone. Although the disease
most commonly infects the lungs, up to twenty percent of all diagnosed cases of
tuberculosis infect the bones. Years later, on the Fourth of July, Jackie placed a
firecracker in the neck of a Coca-Cola bottle and lighted it. The firecracker
exploded in his face, and he lost his right eye.
During her visit to Flat Lick, Gladys violated the morals of the era when she
hiked into the mountains with Jasper’s younger brother, Audrey, without a
chaperone. When she returned, Jasper reacted with violent jealousy. He beat
Gladys across the spine with a horse’s bridle until she bled. Gladys escaped into
town and showed her wounds to people on the street, declaring that she was
afraid of her husband. Maggie Mills, a forty-eight-year-old widow, watched the
spectacle from the window of her grocery store. Thirteen years Jasper’s senior,
Maggie married him following his divorce from Gladys. Apparently, witnessing
this incident of domestic violence did not scare Maggie. She later told her
stepdaughter Berniece, “Jasper told me [Gladys] wouldn’t cook and she
wouldn’t clean house. She wouldn’t do anything. She just liked to get out and
roam around. He decided next time to find somebody older and responsible.”
Back home in Los Angeles, Gladys filed for divorce in June 1921, citing
extreme mental cruelty. The divorce petition accused Jasper of calling her vile
names, using profane language in her presence, striking her, and kicking her.
Gladys cited the date of their marriage as one year earlier than it had occurred,
possibly in an attempt to conceal Jackie’s conception while she was unmarried.
Baker filed a counter-claim, citing Gladys’ “lewd and lascivious” conduct, and
the court forbade her to take the children from Los Angeles County.
Gladys and Jasper Baker’s divorce was finalized in May 1923, when he had
found employment as an insurance salesman. One day, Jasper arrived at Gladys’
home to take Jack and Berniece for a weekend visit, and kidnapped them to
Kentucky. They settled in Pineville, one of the oldest settlements in the state, in
Bell County. Gladys traveled East to retrieve the children, soliciting help from
Baker’s sister, Myrtle. At the time, young Jackie was hospitalized for
complications from the hip injury sustained several years earlier when he fell
from the moving vehicle.
Jasper and his mother kept Berniece hidden and told Gladys to stay away
from Jackie. Jasper also ordered the doctors to prohibit Gladys from removing
her son from the hospital, but she went anyway. According to Berniece, Gladys
remained in Louisville, secured a job as a housekeeper, and waited for her son to
recover. Many biographers cite the advent of Gladys’ mental illness to the early
1930s, yet a recent biographer tracks it nearly a decade earlier. J. Randy
Taraborrelli’s research reveals that while Gladys lived in Kentucky and
attempted to gain custody of her children, she worked as a nanny in Louisville
for Harry and Lena Cohen, and experienced what may have been her first
psychotic episode. This upper middle class couple had a three-year old daughter
named Norma Jeane and lived in a two-story house with a grand piano.
The Cohens’ idyllic family life seemed to mock Gladys’ agonizing loss of her
own children. According to Taraborrelli, the couple returned one evening to
discover their young daughter screaming and bundled in soiled sheets. Further
exploration of the house revealed Gladys in a fetal position behind the piano.
She claimed that a group of men had been sneaking around the house for a few
days but she did not want to alarm her employers with this news. Gladys also
reported finding a man lying inside the kitchen cabinet and seeing a man enter an
upstairs bedroom, only to vanish when she went upstairs after him. She also
described hearing voices. These paranoid delusions and hallucinations were the
emerging symptoms of a budding Schizophrenia. The onset for this chronic
mental illness is typically in late adolescence to early adulthood; Gladys was
now twenty-one. Michelle Morgan disputes this version, citing Norma Jeane
Cohen’s assertion that her family never discussed such an episode.
At Rock Haven Sanitarium in the 1960s, Gladys told Rose Anne Cooper that
forty years earlier, she planned to take Norma Jeane Cohen back with her to Los
Angeles to start a new life together. Gladys’ misery of losing her own children
had prevented her from inflicting a similar fate on Harry and Lena Cohen, but
she would name her next child after little Norma Jeane. This debunks the myth
that Gladys named her daughter after film actresses Norma Talmadge or Norma
Shearer.
Jasper was now married to Maggie Hunter Mills, and Gladys went to their
home to announce her plan to return to Los Angeles. “Maggie told me that when
it was time to say good-bye, my mother just stood there and argued with my
father instead,” Berniece recalled as an adult. Throughout childhood, Berniece
heard only her stepmother’s oft-repeated version of Gladys’ departure. In a voice
filled with dismay, Maggie remarked, “I just don’t see how a mother could turn
her back and walk away from two children like that.” As an adult, Marilyn spoke
of a romanticized interpretation of this event, borrowed from a Barbara
Stanwyck film plot. “Like the mother in Stella Dallas,” Marilyn said, “she went
away and let them to enjoy a happier life than she could give them.”
In late 1923, Gladys returned to Los Angeles and was greeted by an
enormous sign rising from the slopes of Mount Lee and towering over the
Hollywood Hills. Housing developer Harry Chandler had recently erected
thirteen, fifty-foot tall letters spelling out “HOLLYWOODLAND” as
promotional signage for his real estate enterprise. The last four letters were
eventually demolished. Visible from miles away and originally illuminated by
five thousand light bulbs, the sign has served as a universal emblem for the
motion picture industry.
Los Angeles’ sunny climate lured the fledgling film industry from the East
Coast as early as 1907, when Chicago’s Selig Polyscope Company filmed scenes
for The Count of Monte Cristo on Santa Monica Beach. Working out of a former
Chinese laundromat on the corner of Eighth and Olive Streets, the company
filmed The Heart of a Race Tout, the first movie made completely in California.
Other companies soon followed suit. The major studios included Biograph Film
Company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, United Artists, Vitagraph Company, Warner
Brothers, Columbia, Fox Films Studios, and Famous Players-Lasky, which was
later renamed Paramount Studios.
By 1923, more than one-fifth of the population of Los Angeles worked in the
motion picture industry. Gladys found employment in Hollywood as a splicer, or
negative cutter, at Consolidated Film Industries. Located on the corner of
Seward and Romaine Streets, Consolidated developed and printed film for studio
directors to view the dailies (or rushes), hastily printed scenes shot the previous
day and selected by the director for possible inclusion in the final version of the
film.
Mostly female employees worked in the film laboratories as precision cutters.
Wearing white gloves to protect the negatives from natural oils in their skin, they
spliced the film as marked by the editor and passed it on to another team of
white-gloved women who glued pieces of negatives together into a coherent
montage. The work was long and monotonous, usually six days per week.
Gladys’ supervisor was Grace Atchison McKee, who soon became her closest
and most loyal friend. The women experienced an immediate mutual connection
and decided to live together, sharing an apartment at 1211 Hyperion Avenue in
the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles.
Standing a mere five feet one, with hair dyed peroxide blonde, Grace was
born on New Year’s Day 1895 in Montana. She had the reputation of being
hardworking, boozing, and promiscuous, moving from one romantic relationship
to another. Grace married an automobile mechanic, Reginald Evans, in Sawtelle,
Los Angeles in 1915, but soon left him. In 1920, she married a draftsman, John
Wallace McGee, and longed for a career in motion pictures. She settled for a
position behind, instead of in front of, the cameras.
In 1924, at Grace’s urging, Gladys dyed her hair a liberated bright red. The
two women could be considered flappers of their era, better known as the Jazz
Age. They drank bootlegged liquor, took un-chaperoned weekend trips with their
beaux to the mountains, and fraternized with men at beach parties. Flappers
challenged the social and sexual norms for women established by the preceding
Victorian and Edwardian periods. They wore cosmetics and short skirts exposing
the knees, bobbed their hair in mannish styles, listened to raucous jazz music,
danced the Charleston solo, drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes through long
holders, drove automobiles, and engaged in casual sex outside of marriage.
These changes illustrated the beginnings of political and social
transformations in the Roaring Twenties. The nation’s economy more than
doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this growth elevated many Americans to
middle and upper class affluent status. Largely due to radio programming and
nationwide advertising, people from coast to coast listened to the same music
and shared a new, urban culture. For the first time in United States history, all
women were permitted to vote in public elections. The first wave of the feminist
movement had forever changed the political and social roles of women in the
twentieth century.
Coaxed by Grace, Gladys dated many men, but in truth wanted a husband to
love her. Enter Martin Edward Mortensen, a meter man for Southern California
Gas Company. Born in California in 1897, the son of Norwegian immigrants,
Mortensen was divorced, age twenty-seven, and a devout Lutheran who enjoyed
motorcycles. His religious convictions meshed with Gladys’ newfound spiritual
preoccupation, demonstrated by her attendance at Christian Science services and
attraction to the bohemian lifestyle. The couple married on October 11, 1924, at
the home of a Presbyterian minister in North Hollywood.
Gladys was not the only member of the family to marry that year. On
September 20, 1924, her brother, Marion, now nineteen, falsified his age on a
marriage certificate and married a classmate, Olyve Brunings, originally from
Oregon. The newlyweds lived in Salinas, where Marion worked as a mechanic.
He fathered three children, the first born seven months after the wedding, before
abandoning his family. When his last child was nine months of age, Marion left
for work one morning but never returned home. Despite the investigations of a
private detective and law enforcement agencies in four states, Marion remained
missing until he was declared legally deceased.
Della’s unstable relationships provided poor examples for both Marion and
Gladys. As an example, Gladys left Mortensen only four months after their
marriage to live with Grace. Mortensen filed for divorce in May 1925, claiming
his wife willfully and without cause deserted him. Despite the parting,
Mortensen remained protective of his wife’s reputation, as illustrated by the
recollection of Olin Stanley, a co-worker at the film laboratory interviewed by
Roy Turner and published by Donald Spoto.
Several male employees had taken a smoking break together outside and at a
safe distance from the flammable chemicals. When one of the men looked up
and saw Gladys gazing out of a second floor window, he made a crass comment
about wanting to have sex with her. A second man accused her of agreeing to
have sex with any man who asked her. Suddenly, Mortensen lunged toward the
second man, wrapped his hands around the man’s throat, and demanded he never
repeat the slander. Stanley and the others had to pull Mortensen off the impudent
man.
Gladys’ extreme sexuality was less an indicator of any moral depravity or
flaw in her character and more a symptom of the psychiatric disturbance of
mania. Her mood fluctuated rapidly and with dramatic polarity. She changed
suddenly from being joyful to irritable, angry, and even hostile. At times Gladys
seemed manic, like her mother. She was restless, talked rapidly and incessantly,
displayed poor judgment, had little need for sleep, and experienced racing
thoughts.
During her manic episodes, Gladys engaged in reckless behaviors, such as
seeking out numerous sexual liaisons. Other times, she experienced episodes of
depression marked by crying spells, fatigue, poor concentration, lethargy,
withdrawal, and loss of interests and feelings of pleasure. Only a few years
before in Flat Lick, Gladys had suffered disturbing delusions of paranoia. These
symptoms indicated a severe and persistent mental illness, which ultimately
rendered her incapable of functioning outside of a psychiatric medical institution
for many years.
“My mother was mentally ill,” Marilyn acknowledged, “and both of her
parents died in mental institutions. My mother was also committed. Sometimes
she got out, but she always had to go back.” To Marilyn, Gladys was the pretty
woman who never smiled, never kissed or held her, and barely spoke to her. “I
was a mistake,” she offered as a narrative of her birth. “My mother didn’t want
to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I wish, I still
wish, she had wanted me.”
Chapter Two
 1926-1934

In late 1925, ten months after leaving Martin Edward Mortensen, Gladys
learned she was pregnant again. She had been dating several co-workers at
Consolidated Film Laboratories, such as Harold Rooney, Clayton MacNamara,
and Raymond Guthrie. Unmarried, Gladys turned to her mother for comfort and
advice but received neither. On March 30, 1926, Della swiftly abandoned her
daughter and accompanied Charles Grainger to the island of Borneo in Southeast
Asia, where he traveled on business for Shell Oil.
On May 27, Della sent a picture post card featuring an anaconda to “dear
little Berniece,” her young granddaughter in Kentucky. The handwritten
message indicates Della was not aware that Gladys’ children had no contact with
their mother: “Do you and Jackie ever write to her? Write to me.” Della
formally signed the card, “Your Grand Mother, Mrs. Chas. Grainger.”
Many biographers named Charles Stanley Gifford, one of Gladys’ co-
workers, as the father of her third child. Marilyn, in adulthood, also believed this
to be true. Born in 1898 to Frederick Almy Gifford and Elizabeth Easton
Tennant in Rhode Island, Gifford fathered two children and relocated to
California at age twenty-seven. He owned two homes in Los Angeles and was
employed by the Thomas H. Ince Studios in Culver City, supplementing his
comfortable salary by selling automobiles. Gifford later worked as a foreman of
the day shift at Consolidated Film Laboratories.
Gifford was separated from his wife, Lillian, and reputed to be a wild
philanderer. Lillian’s divorce complaint cited that he associated with women of
low and dissolute character; boasted of his conquests; showed her marks of
hypodermic injections of addictive drugs; and caroused with fellow workers in
the film lab. The truth remains unknown. According to some sources, Gifford
may have also briefly dated Gladys in 1923 before her marriage to Mortensen.
“Everything that’s been said about my father, or my fathers, is wrong,” Marilyn
told Georges Belmont in April 1960. “My mother’s first husband was named
Baker. Her second was Mortensen. However, she’d been divorced from both of
them by the time I was born. It’s true that I was illegitimate.”
Throughout her life, Gladys consistently insisted that Gifford was the father
of her third child, and the timing of their relationship supports this claim. She
left Mortensen twenty days after a judge finalized Gifford’s divorce on May 6,
and coworkers acknowledged the affair during the spring of 1925. Nevertheless,
when Gladys announced the pregnancy to Gifford during the second trimester on
New Year’s Day 1926, he denied paternity and cited her concurrent sexual
involvement with several other men. “When you love a man and tell him you’re
going to have his child and he runs out on you, it’s something a woman never
gets over,” Marilyn would tell photographer George Barris in 1962. “I don’t
think my mother did. I don’t think I did.”
If Stanley Gifford, indeed, fathered Gladys’ daughter, the child would be
distantly related to the early American settlers of the Plymouth colony, British
royalty, and several American heads of state. According to genealogist Richard
E. Brenneman, Gifford’s ancestry can be traced through six generations to his
birthplace, Newport, Rhode Island; also the birthplace of his mother, maternal
grandparents, and great-grandparents. He may also have been connected to
pilgrims who traveled on the Mayflower to America and may share a distant
kinship to Princess Diana of Wales, her sons, and eleven United States
Presidents, including George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. CBS News
reported that Marilyn Monroe was George W. Bush’s ninth cousin, three times
removed.
Gladys’ baby girl was born at 9:30 in the morning on June 1, 1926, in the
indigent maternity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. Dr. Herman M.
Beerman delivered the child. The birth certificate, issued by the California Board
of Health and Vital Statistics, listed the baby girl’s name as Norma Jeane
Mortenson. Gladys indicated three previous children and claimed two were
deceased. She also provided her address as 5454 Wilshire Boulevard and
designated the father as Edward Mortenson, spelling the surname differently
than that of her estranged husband. She claimed that her husband was employed
as a baker whose residence was unknown. These inaccuracies seemed based
upon the truth and may have reflected the reality Gladys had created for herself.
Indeed, she had no contact with her children and her first husband’s name was
Jasper Baker. The child would be known as Norma Jeane Baker and would later
be surprised to learn of the surname Mortenson when she first saw her birth
certificate.
“I was always told that my father was killed in a car crash in New York
before I was born,” Marilyn would recall. “Strangely enough, on my birth
certificate under father’s profession there’s the word ‘baker,’ which was the
name of my mother’s first husband. When I was born, illegitimate, as I said, my
mother had to give me a name. She was just trying to think quickly, I guess, and
said, ‘Baker.’ Pure coincidence, and then the official’s confusion.”
 In 1929, Gladys learned from friends that a man named Martin Edward
Mortensen died in a motorcycle accident. Indeed, an obituary in a newspaper in
Ohio reported the death of Norwegian immigrant named Edward Mortenson,
who died of a crushed pelvis in Youngstown in June 1929, when he crashed his
motorcycle into a Hudson sedan as he attempted to pass a car in front of him.
The deceased man’s death certificate listed his year of birth as 1894, three years
earlier than her former husband’s.
After the delivery of Norma Jeane, Gladys fell into a serious post-partum
depression. She cried for days, refused to eat, lost weight, and experienced
insomnia, which prevented her from bonding with her baby daughter. According
to J. Randy Taraborrelli, Della recognized that Gladys was too ill to care for the
child. The concerned grandmother wrote that her daughter held the infant with
her eyes closed. A laboratory executive, Dick Rodgers, raised a collection of one
hundred forty dollars from Gladys’ generous co-workers and presented it to her.
Grace often watched the infant Norma Jeane while Gladys went grocery
shopping. On one occasion, Gladys returned in a manic and paranoid state. She
accused Grace of poisoning the baby and superficially lacerated her friend with a
sharp kitchen knife. However, this incident did not scare Grace out of her life.
Some say Della recommended to Gladys that she arrange for Norma Jeane’s
care with a couple in their forties, Ida and Albert Wayne Bolender, who lived
across the dusty, unpaved street in a bungalow at 459 Rhode Island Avenue in
Hawthorn.
Ida E. Masheeco was born in 1887 and raised by devout Baptists on a farm
near Buffalo, New York, before marrying Albert Wayne Bolender. Born in 1883,
Albert originated from an eighty-acre farm in Brown County, Ohio. In 1919,
Albert and Ida sold their farm in Ohio and relocated to two acres of land in
Hawthorn, where they remained for fifty years. Exempt from the draft during
World War I, Albert worked as a mail carrier in Los Angeles County. The couple
also raised chickens and rabbits on their land.
Ida was known as a cold, unsympathetic woman with indifference toward
children. Although challenged by hearing impairment, she avoided hearing aids
and struggled with communication. From her home, Ida also sold flamboyant
women’s garments, probably film costumes brought to her by a friend, Anna
Raymond. The Bolenders were members of the Hawthorn Community Church
and have been described as Christian fundamentalists, bordering on religious
fanaticism, who strongly believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. The
Bolenders’ version of Christianity preached heaven and hell, sin and salvation,
fire and brimstone. They condemned secular music and motion pictures.
Licensed to provide childcare through the County of Los Angeles, Ida earned
additional income by taking in child boarders belonging to women entering the
workforce. She charged twenty-five dollars per child per week. Although the
Bolenders have been considered Norma Jeane’s first foster parents, they were
actually not licensed as foster parents. On June 13, two-week old Norma Jeane
became the newest boarder at the Bolender home. The 1930 Census recorded
Gladys as residing with the Bolenders, but she actually lived in Hollywood and
visited her daughter on Saturdays.
In October 1926, Della returned from Asia with malaria. She was described
as psychotic and was soon diagnosed with Manic Depressive Psychosis, known
today as Bipolar Disorder with Psychotic Features. The psychiatric disorder is
characterized by alternating episodes of mania and depression. Extremes of each
may result in losing touch with reality (psychosis) through false but strongly
held beliefs (delusions) or hearing or seeing things that don’t exist
(hallucinations). Effective treatment for Bipolar Disorder currently involves
mood stabilizing and antipsychotic drugs. Lithium, the first mood-stabilizing
drug, was well out of Della’s reach. It would be approved for use with Bipolar
Disorder in 1970.
In 1927, Della sought spirituality at Four Square Gospel Church at Angelus
Temple in Echo Park, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson, a prominent and
powerful radio and tent revival evangelist and faith healer. Born-again
McPherson preached fundamentalist Christianity and fought a personal crusade
against alcohol and teaching evolution in public schools. In addition to saving
the souls of her many followers, McPherson baptized Norma Jeane. Later,
McPherson was exposed as an adulteress who attempted to conceal an affair
with a married engineer who worked for the radio station that broadcast her
sermons, claiming she had been kidnapped. She suffered a nervous breakdown in
1930 and died of an overdose of sleeping pills fourteen years later. The self-
righteous McPherson was one of the first of many charismatic media evangelists
to crash and burn in a hypocritical scandal.

Amid a summer heat wave on the East Coast, silent screen star Rudolph
Valentino arrived in New York after the end of his marriage to actress Natacha
Rambova, to promote his latest film, The Son of the Sheik. Hailed as The Great
Lover, he was arguably the first modern superstar and media sensation whose
charismatic persona reaped more accolades than his ample acting talents.
Valentino’s seductive tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and exotic
role as a Persian prince in The Sheik offered iconic images of male sexuality to
the popular culture.
Suffering from appendicitis and a perforated ulcer, Valentino underwent
emergency surgery at Polyclinic Hospital on West Fiftieth Street. Although the
surgery was successful, Valentino contracted peritonitis and lapsed into a coma.
He died of pleurisy at age thirty-one on August 23. The Italian-born Valentino
had shared fame with colleagues who captured Gladys’ imagination as she
spliced together their images in a film-editing laboratory: Douglas Fairbanks,
John Gilbert, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charles Chaplin. Their leading
ladies included Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Marion Davies, Mary Pickford,
Clara Bow, and Greta Garbo.
Silent films contained no synchronized soundtrack or dialogue; therefore,
screen performers employed exaggerated body pantomime and facial expression
to convey the emotion of the characters portrayed. Fictional silent screen star
Norma Desmond’s classic line in Sunset Boulevard (1950) captures the acting
style best: “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces.” Title cards spliced within
the action provided text narrative and brief dialogue to convey plot. At the
theatre, a piano, organ or orchestra accompanied the film with an improvised
musical score appropriate to the emotional theme playing onscreen.
The Bolenders did not share the popular culture’s fascination with moving
pictures and held no interest in screen actors, an emerging class of American
royalty. The industry growing around their modest farm in Hawthorn appeared
morally threatening to the next generation they were raising as conservative
Christians. From her bungalow across the street from the Bolenders, Della
closely monitored Norma Jeane’s upbringing, sometimes taking her
granddaughter to her home for a few hours. Della also scrutinized Ida’s
caretaking of the child. On one occasion, Della chastised Ida for spanking
Norma Jeane when the toddler spilled a bowl of food on the floor.
By the end of summer, Della’s mental state worsened, and she was
alarmingly out of control. In an incident that many biographers cite as definitive
evidence of her insanity, an enraged Della stormed across the street and banged
on the Bolenders’ glass front door. The purpose of this intrusion is unknown.
According to various sources, she may have been demanding to see Norma
Jeane or under the delusion that the child was dead. The Bolenders did not
respond, and Della broke their glass door with her elbow and entered, harshly
confronting the couple. Ida went into the kitchen to bring her a glass of water.
When she returned, Ida allegedly discovered Della attempting to smother the
baby with a pillow.
“I remember waking up from my nap, fighting for my life,” Marilyn recalled.
“Something was pressed against my face. It could have been a pillow.” Marilyn’s
memory of this early childhood trauma has been widely criticized; she would
have been just over one year in age. Recent research in childhood trauma
suggests infants have a remarkable ability to store and retain information for
long time, and this skill may have survival value. It is likely that Marilyn heard
the story repeated from the adults around her and created a visual narrative of the
event. Arthur Miller would hear the story from Marilyn over thirty years after it
allegedly happened. This first childhood memory would provide Marilyn with a
negative frame for her early life. “It’s the memory of a struggle for survival,”
Marilyn painfully recounted in 1960. “I was still very small, a baby in a little
bed, yes, and I was struggling for life. But I’d rather not talk about it, if it’s all
the same to you. It’s a cruel story.”
Gladys’ reaction to her mother’s violent outburst is unclear. She moved into
Della’s home as her mother’s mental health deteriorated. Della now claimed
Grainger intruded and raped her. She accused the butcher of putting shards of
glass in her ground beef. It is believed that as both women lived together in the
bungalow on Rhode Island Avenue, each experienced auditory hallucinations of
voices and paranoid delusions. The situation advanced from bad to worse.
In a final violent episode, Della ran across the street, naked by some
accounts, and tried to kick down the Bolenders’ front door. The shattered glass
pane lacerated her hand. Della bled profusely, and Albert Wayne called for help.
Law enforcement officers responded, subdued Della, and forcefully placed her in
the back of an emergency vehicle. The Bolenders watched as she was taken
away to Los Angeles General Hospital.
Della was committed to Norwalk State Hospital on August 4, 1927. She died
nineteen days later of a heart attack during a seizure at the age of fifty-one. The
official death certificate cited cause of death as myocarditis with manic-
depressive psychosis as a contributing factor. The Bolenders now closely
monitored little Norma Jeane for a possible genetic predisposition for mental
illness. “We have to watch that one very carefully,” Ida told Albert Wayne. “It’s
in her family, you know.”

In October 1927, Warner Brothers Studio released the first feature length film
with synchronized sound dialogue and musical sequences, The Jazz Singer,
starring Al Jolson. The first words uttered on screen “Wait a minute, wait a
minute…you ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” ushered in the revolution of talking films
and a new, more natural style of acting.
At one year, Norma Jeane also uttered her first words, mimicking Lester, a
fellow child boarder who was a few months younger. When she heard Lester call
Ida, “Mamma,” she did the same. Ida permitted Lester this honor, but scolded
Norma Jeane. Marilyn described this as a defining moment in her life:

When I was real little, I’d say, “Oh, there’s a daddy.” But one
morning — I was only about three — I was taking a bath and I said,
“Mommy” to the woman who was taking care of me. And she said,
“I’m not your mommy. Call me ‘aunt.’ ” “But he’s my daddy!” I said
and I pointed to her husband. “No,” she said, “we’re not your parents.
The one who comes here with the red hair, she’s your mother.”

Norma Jeane felt a deeper attachment to Albert Wayne than to Ida or to her
own mother. Sitting beside him on a stool in the bathroom as he shaved in the
morning, Norma Jeane asked him a plethora of questions about the world as only
a young child could. “He was the only one who had ever answered any questions
I asked,” Marilyn recalled. The Bolenders photographed Norma Jeane sitting on
the running board of their Model T Ford and petting the goats, rabbits, and
chickens on their land. They also had professional photographs of the child taken
in a print dress and bonnet sewn by Ida. Many biographers interpreted this as
photographic evidence that Marilyn Monroe’s childhood was less grim than she
reported because the photographs did not capture the physical abuse, punitive
discipline, and outsider status she experienced in the Bolender home.
Norma Jeane and Lester, close in age, looked alike and were frequently
referred to as “the twins.” During the summers, the Bolenders packed the
children in their Ford and drove them to Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach
across what Norma Jeane called “the rollercoaster road.” When the young child
gazed at the ocean, she announced, “It’s a big wet!” The Bolenders eventually
adopted Lester and another female foster child, Nancy, five years younger than
Norma Jeane. They might have also adopted Norma Jeane if her mother had
consented. From Norma Jeane’s young perspective, the Bolenders favored and
loved Lester more than her because they adopted him. When interviewed by
biographers, the Bolenders claimed to have loved Norma Jeane and likely did.
Love and abuse are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
After Della’s death, Gladys left her mother’s bungalow and visited the
Bolender home on weekends. During one visit, Ida observed her nervously
smoking cigarettes and covering a bruised eye with dark glasses. At times,
Gladys took Norma Jeane on the trolley to outings at Santa Monica Beach with
her friends. Photographs exist of Norma Jeane as a toddler in a rented striped
bathing suit, playing in the sand among a large group of young adults.
By 1929, Gladys was promoted to a section head at the Melrose Avenue
location of Consolidated Film Laboratories. She was known as a compulsive
worker who was well respected by the other female employees. Sadly, that was
also the year the laboratory caught on fire. Gladys remained calm as she led her
coworker from the second floor to safety amid combustible film. After the fire,
Consolidated merged with Bennett Film Lab. The new job location, requiring
two trolley changes, seemed too far for Gladys. She resigned and was briefly
unemployed, but maintained regular payments to the Bolenders. Gladys’ best
friend, Grace McKee, worked as an assistant in the studio film library at
Columbia Studios on Gower Street and helped Gladys find employment. The
two single females frequently double-dated with men and reveled together.
Soon after, the United States’ stock market crashed on October 29, 1929,
plunging the country into the longest, deepest economic depression of the
twentieth century. As the income of many Americans dropped two-thirds and as
unemployment rose to twenty-five percent, life in the Bolender home was
unyieldingly pious. Every night Norma Jeane was instructed to pray so that she
would not wake up in hell. Marilyn would recall the prayer asking God for
strength to avoid buying, selling, or drinking alcohol and to abstain from tobacco
or using the Lord’s name in vain.
Norma Jeane and Lester soon compared private parts and discovered their
differences. Lester was spared the Bolenders’ discipline for this normal and
natural mutual exploration, but Norma Jeane was punished severely; likely to
ensure her salvation. Norma Jeane also contracted whooping cough from Lester,
so Gladys stayed with her at the Bolenders’ home, possibly during the census of
1930, as public census records list her address there.
On September 1, 1931, Norma Jeane and Lester attended kindergarten at
Ballona Avenue Elementary. Eleven days later, she and twenty other students
posed for a class photo with their teacher. Norma Jeane’s expression appears
sullen and joyless. Gladys continued to visit her daughter, but no bond existed
between them. Marilyn remembered her mother as a “pretty” woman who never
smiled. “She had never kissed me or held me in her arms or hardly spoken to
me,” Marilyn wrote. “When I think of her now my heart hurts me twice as much
as it used to when I was a little girl. It hurts me for both of us.”
Norma Jeane possessed enormous creativity and an active imagination. Play
is the language of children, and through play she found a voice and a means to
express herself. Play also inspired an early life goal. Marilyn would remember:

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress.

I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own
boundaries. It goes beyond house; you could make your own situations
and you could pretend, and even if the other kids were a little slow on
the imagining part, you could say, “Hey, what about if you were such
and such, and I were such and such, wouldn’t that be fun?” When I
heard that this was acting, I said that’s what I want to be. You can play.

One day in 1931, a mixed breed dog followed Albert Wayne home from the
trolley line. Norma Jeane adopted the stray and named him Tippy. The new
canine companion followed her and Lester to school, waited for his mistress, and
followed her home. To Norma Jeane, Tippy was a loving and loyal friend.
The Bolenders permitted Tippy to roam outside at night to the vexation of a
neighbor in whose garden the dog would dig. The neighbor harshly complained
to the Bolenders. Biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles asserted that Norma Jeane
awoke in the night to the sound of a shotgun firing. Purportedly, the neighbor
had stayed up late with his shotgun, waiting for Tippy to roam his property at
night and trample his garden; the milk deliveryman found the dog’s carcass at
dawn. Marilyn’s memoir contends the neighbor savagely severed the dog in half
with a hoe.
According to J. Randy Taraborrelli, a Bolender relative finally offered the
truth. Ida had observed a car run over and kill Tippy and didn’t want the remains
repeatedly crushed by passing cars, and she used a hoe to drag the body to the
driveway until Albert Wayne returned from work to bury it. Norma Jeane
returned home from playing with friends to discover the mutilated remains of her
beloved pet lying beside the hoe and concluded it had been purposefully killed.
At the sight of this carnage, Norma Jeane became hysterical, ran into the house,
and screamed and cried uncontrollably. Ida and Wayne could not console her.
Believing the child would be comforted if she thought the death had been
instantaneous and less painful, Ida told her Tippy was shot in the head by an
angry neighbor. Norma Jeane would not accept the lie and invented her own
narrative based upon the scene she saw. Concluding that the child’s reaction was
paranoid and delusional, Ida felt uncomfortable with this reactivity to the
trauma. Norma Jeane’s response may have eventually contributed to Ida’s
decision to request the child’s removal from her home.
Before starting the first grade, Norma Jeane and Lester transferred to Vine
Street School, on the corner of El Segundo Boulevard and Washington Street,
the area now occupied by the Los Angeles International Airport. Teacher Evelyn
Gawthrop recalled Norma Jeane as a “timid child who loved to sing.” As an
adult, Marilyn recorded her memories of Mrs. Gawthorp in a green Italian
leather agenda book, as well as her feelings of guilt for having lied about the
Bolenders and little Nancy.
The exact nature of the lie is unclear, but it involved Nancy being pushed
against the stove. Quite possibly, Marilyn alleged abuse of the other child.
Marilyn surmised that she had sought revenge by telling lies because no other
adult in her life listened. Mrs. Gawthorp was a motherly figure who showed
kindness, talked to her, and seemed to be the first adult to take a genuine interest
in her. In the green diary, Marilyn also jotted recollections of wanting the teacher
to treat her differently than the way she was treated by Aunt Ida.
In second grade, Norma Jeane participated in an Easter Sunday sunrise
service at the Hollywood Bowl. The children wore black robes over white tunics
and stood in the formation of a cross. They sang as the sun rose behind them. On
cue, the children threw off their black robes in unison, instantly changing the
cross from black to white. Distracted by the puffy white clouds in the sky,
Norma Jeane didn’t see the cue and was the only child who forgot to shed the
robe. “I was the only black mark on a white cross,” she recalled.
In the spring of 1933, Norma Jeane contracted an illness, and Gladys took
three weeks off from work to care for her at the Bolender home. It is unclear
whether this illness was another case of whooping cough or another illness;
biographers’ claims vary.
In either case, Gladys’ act of maternal devotion suggested to Ida that Norma
Jean’s mother might someday take permanent custody of the child. When Norma
Jeane recovered, Gladys took her to Catalina Island for the weekend, where the
child watched her mother dance with men at the landmark circular casino and
dance hall. They returned on Independence Day and brought Lester with them.
Gladys also took her daughter to Gay’s Lion Farm, a tourist attraction in El
Monte dedicated to the breeding, training, and exhibition of African lions.
Marilyn told actor John Gilmore of enduring disturbing memories of the wild
animals being trained in ways she considered unnatural for them and wished
they had been left in the wild.
Eventually, Norma Jeane began visiting Gladys at her apartment. Initially, the
child was frightened and hid in a closet, playing with her mother’s clothing and
shoes. Gladys told Norma Jeane to keep quiet, as even the sound of turning
pages in a storybook made her nervous. During one of these early visits, Norma
Jeane experienced what she later referred to as her happiest memory: seeing a
sepia photograph of Stanley Gifford, whose pencil thin mustache and slouching
fedora hat reminded her of the actor, Clark Gable. Gladys explained the man was
her father. Until now, the child was only told he had been killed. Apparently,
Gladys told others that her former husband, the man whose name appeared on
her daughter’s birth certificate, was the child’s father. Secretly, Gladys knew the
father had been her lover.
Every time Norma Jeane remembered the smile of the man in the photograph
and his tipped hat, she felt “warm and not alone.” Later, she created a scrapbook
of movie star portraits from magazines and pasted a photograph of Clark Gable
on one of the pages because he reminded her of Gifford, especially because of
Gable’s hat and mustache. In 1960, when preparing to work with Gable in The
Misfits, Marilyn recounted the fantasy she had created in childhood by
pretending the actor was her father.
Norma Jeane also created fantasies of her father waiting for her, scolding her
for not wearing her galoshes, visiting her in the hospital when her tonsils were
removed, and comforting her when she was feeling ill or sad. The father in these
fantasies, though, was vague and fleeting. Marilyn wrote, “I could not get him in
my largest, deepest daydream, to take off his hat and sit down.”
Norma Jeane’s life with the Bolenders would soon end, and she looked back
at these years with little attachment. “The people I thought were my parents had
children of their own,” Marilyn said. “They weren’t mean. They were just poor.
They didn’t have much to give anybody, even their own children. And there was
nothing left for me. I was seven, but I did my share of work.” Marilyn’s words
reveal her painful disappointment in learning she was not a member of the
family, but she did not blame her foster parents, despite the fact that pejorative
biographers accused her of fabricating a darker version of her childhood, as if
they held the truth of her personal experience.
As with most adults, Marilyn’s childhood memories were a bit fuzzy and
distorted. Without a consistent adult to fill in the blanks and provide a narrative
for her early life events, she was left alone to make sense of her disjointed
memories, like pieces of a puzzle, and to draw her own conclusions. Marilyn
would believe the Bolenders’ physical abuse led to her removal from their home
at age seven. “They were terribly strict,” she recalled. “They didn’t mean any
harm; it was their religion. They brought me up harshly, and corrected me in a
way I think they never should have, with a leather strap. I was taken away and
given to an English couple in Hollywood.”
Gladys removed Norma Jeane from the Bolenders in August 1933 so that she
and her daughter could live together and establish a stronger bond. “I’m going to
build a house for us to live in,” Gladys told Norma Jeane during a weekend visit.
“It’s going to be painted white and have a back yard.” Gladys’ motivation was
unclear, though. Did Norma Jeane’s reaction to Tippy’s death disturb the
Bolenders and motivate them to request her removal from their home? Did their
physical abuse of Norma Jeane disturb Gladys? Had Gladys achieved emotional
and financial stability, and did she desire to create a normal life for the only one
of her children of whom she had custody?
It is also possible that Gladys’ plan to independently parent Norma Jeane
stemmed from the sudden news of Jackie’s death. In Kentucky, Jackie’s health
had dramatically deteriorated during the time mother and son lived apart.
Impacted by the chronic infection in his leg, Jackie’s kidneys failed, but rather
than provide his son with proper medical care in a hospital, Jasper catheterized
the boy himself at home. Jackie died on August 16, 1933, at the age of fifteen.
When Gladys learned of her son’s death, she suffered severe emotional
problems.
Frightened to leave the only home she ever knew, Norma Jeane hid in the
closet with other children on the day Gladys arrived to collect her from the
Bolenders’ home. Gladys successfully lured the child out of the closet and
brought her to an apartment at 6021 Afton Place, in Hollywood. Gladys
continued working days at Columbia Studios and evenings at RKO Studios,
saving $750.00 for a deposit on a home.
During the spring of 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a
series of important bills aimed at rebuilding the country after the Great
Depression and improving the quality of life for millions of Americans. These
economic programs would become known as Roosevelt’s New Deal. In October
of 1933, because of the passing of the New Deal, Gladys secured a low-rate
$5,000 loan from the California Title Mortgage Company and purchased a six-
room white bungalow at 6812 Arbol Street, off Highland Avenue near the
Hollywood Bowl. The neighborhood buttressed Whitley Heights, an affluent
tract in the Hollywood Hills inhabited by motion picture starts such as Bette
Davis, William Powell, Jean Harlow, and Carole Lombard. Gladys furnished the
three-bedroom home with a radio and a black baby grand piano previously
owned by the actor Frederick March. Norma Jeane took piano lessons with
Marion Miller and attended Selma Avenue School, and shortly thereafter, Gladys
lost her job at Columbia Studios.
As a single parent with mounting bills, Gladys took in boarders to
supplement her income. She sublet the entire home to an older British couple
and their adult daughter, claiming only the upstairs bedroom for herself and
Norma Jeane. Biographers disagree about the name of the British family; it is
possible that their name was Atkinson. The husband is believed to have been
either George Atkinson (1877-1968), a stand-in for the actor George Arliss, or
Murray Kinnell (1889-1954), also a British actor. After Gladys’ psychotic break
and subsequent hospitalization, the British couple took care of Norma Jeane and
possibly subleased the vacant bedroom to a British actor named either Kinnell or
Kimmell. This speculation becomes more significant later.
RKO Studios hired Gladys full-time, and she sometimes brought Norma
Jeane to the lab. Co-worker Reginald Carroll remembered the child sitting for a
long time without complaining while her mother spliced film negatives. In the
late 1950s, Maurice Zolotow interviewed Leila Fields, the only remaining
negative cutter on the RKO lot. He spoke with her in the cottage where she once
worked alongside Gladys. Fields recalled having accompanied Gladys and
Norma Jeane to a film premiere attended by actress Mary Pickford, the first
motion picture actress to establish a production company with her husband and
other partners.
While Gladys expanded her work at RKO, she left Norma Jeane under the
care of the British couple, who had reportedly worked in vaudevillian theatre.
They taught Norma Jeane to throw knives, juggle oranges, and dance the hula
while they hosted parties with friends from the entertainment industry in Gladys’
absence. Apparently, many visitors entered and exited the home on Arbol Drive,
especially between jobs. Often the couple permitted young Norma Jeane to go
alone to local theatres and watch motion pictures. The child would sit for hours
in darkened, ornate cinemas such as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the
Egyptian Theatre, both on Hollywood Boulevard, watching double-featured
movies, shorts, newsreels and animated cartoons.
 Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the quintessential venue for motion picture
premieres, resembled a red Chinese pagoda. Beneath a relief of a golden dragon,
two sculptures of Ming Dynasty heaven dogs guarded the entrance of three sets
of double doors. Outside in the forecourt, Norma Jeane fit her hands and feet in
the prints of movie stars who had cast their signatures, handprints and footprints
in cement slabs; inside, she escaped into a fantasy of films. At the nearby
Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, Norma Jeane traced her fingers in the
hieroglyphics etched in its walls and fed peanuts to the monkeys caged in the
forecourt.
Gladys’ preoccupation with religion intensified as she attended Christian
Science church services, possibly inspired by Grace McKee’s aunt, Ana Lower, a
practitioner of the faith. On Sundays, Norma Jeane attended services with her
mother and learned a belief system different from the Bolenders’. Christian
Science and the teachings of its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, do not acknowledge
the concept of sin, but identify pain and sickness as the results of personal
weakness.
In October, Gladys received the belated news that her grandfather, Tilford
Marion Hogan, had hanged himself at age 82 in Linn County Missouri.
Following Della’s death, he had married a widow, Emma Wyett. Within just a
few years, the couple’s health declined. Emma became ill with heart disease
while Tilford’s lungs and kidneys began to fail. Their situation worsened when
they faced eviction from their farm.
On May 29, 1933, Tilford waved from the window to his wife, who cranked
their old car to run errands in town. Hours later, Emma found him hanging from
a rope tied around his neck from a second floor joist in the barn. She ran to the
house, screaming for help, and fainted. Two male neighbors came to Emma’s aid
and revived her. An inquest deemed Tilford’s death a suicide, and he was buried
in Laclede Cemetery. Della’s two surviving sisters attended the funeral. Many
historians agree that 1933 was the worst year of the Great Depression, and
Tilford became a tragic statistic of the economic woes facing the country.
Gladys learned of her grandfather’s suicide from a cousin shortly after the
tragic demise of her son, and shortly after she had taken on the responsibilities of
making monthly mortgage payments and raising a daughter without paternal
support. These enormous losses combined with multiple stressors strained
Gladys’ internal resources and taxed her coping skills. She began experiencing
auditory hallucinations of her deceased son’s voice calling her and visual
hallucinations of her deceased grandfather standing in the house. Gladys’
psychiatric stability continued to unravel into 1934.
It is impossible to know the extent of the daily horror Norma Jeane witnessed
during the emergence of Gladys’ psychotic episode during the first months of the
year, or its impact on the child’s later life. Other children in the neighborhood
avoided Norma Jeane. “She’s just like her mother; crazy,” they said, pointing to
the young child.
Norma Jeane set up a stand on the sidewalk and played store. Pretending the
passing adults were customers, she offered them empty whiskey bottles and
packs of cigarettes discarded after the British couple’s soirees. She imagined the
bottles as a doll family, made clothing for them with scraps of fabric, and gave
them names. Ida Bolender would be revolted by the child’s dreadful existence on
Arbol Drive. By the age of seven, Norma Jeane coped with the tragedies in her
life through her creativity and by escaping into the fantasy world of motion
pictures. However, even her vivid imagination could not foresee the huge
success and global sensation she would someday become.
Chapter Three
 1934-February 1938

Marilyn Monroe was the first public figure to disclose childhood sexual
abuse to the media. In today’s era of reality television and daytime television talk
shows such as Dr. Phil and Oprah, it is difficult to remember a time when
celebrities did not regularly reveal intimate details of their lives such as
addiction, eating disorders, sex, child abuse, incest, domestic violence, mental
illness, and bearing children out of wedlock. During the 1950s, such topics were
taboo in American society; especially childhood sexual abuse. The issue of child
sexual abuse has only recently been identified as a major social problem and
main source of human suffering and personal problems, and only in select
countries and cultures.
According to recent studies, one in every four girls is sexually abused, and
one in every six boys is sexually abused before the age of sixteen. Retrospective
studies yield the same statistics, concluding that sexual abuse is no more or less
prevalent today than it was in the past; what has changed is our willingness to
discuss it as a culture. In the past, we chose to deny the existence or extent of
child sexual abuse. This denial permeates Marilyn’s legion of predominately-
male biographers.
Sarah Churchwell was the first biographer to compare and contrast the
treatment of Marilyn’s childhood sexual abuse by her biographers. In Goddess:
The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (1985), Anthony Summers expressed
skepticism each time he recounted a story of Monroe’s abuse or exploitation, and
accused her of living in a “fantasy world.” However, each time he shared a story
that portrayed her as a sexually insatiable woman, he treated it as truth. In Gloria
Steinem’s Marilyn Monroe: Norma Jean (1986), the feminist author confronted
the larger context of the manner in which the abuse of women has historically
been ignored, contradicted, and ridiculed by a patriarchal society.
In Marilyn: A Biography (1972), Norman Mailer affirmed the assertion of
Marilyn’s first husband, James Dougherty, that she was technically a virgin
bride. Steinem argued that Mailer seemed unaware that childhood sexual abuse
includes molestation, oral sex, other sexual acts, and humiliations not involving
vaginal intercourse. The evidence upon which Dougherty asserted his claim is
unknown. Was virginity based upon an intact hymen, apparent sexual
inexperience, or his own sexual experience with her? Dougherty’s claim was
substantiated without consideration that earlier episodes of intercourse might not
have been obvious to a new husband having sex with his new bride for the first
time. Others have challenged Dougherty’s claim, alleging his self-described title
as the first man to be sexually intimate with the legendary sex symbol afforded
him special status.
Often the biographers focus on differentiating molestation from rape, as if
rape is a more valid and damaging form of abuse, thus minimizing the impact of
molestation. All forms of sexual abuse can be equally traumatic or damaging.
Molestation can be especially damaging as it may create pleasurable sensations,
resulting in feelings of shame, guilt, and responsibility in the survivor. Forceful
rape resulting in injury and pain defines the victim’s role and offender’s
responsibility. Molestation involving pleasurable sensations, but no injury or
pain, may lead to the survivor perceiving herself as a participant, making the role
of victim challenging to define.
Marilyn’s memory of her childhood trauma is documented in her
autobiography, based upon collaboration with ghostwriter Ben Hecht. She recalls
having been nearly nine and living with a family that rented a room to a well-
respected, “stern-looking” man whom she called, “Mr. Kimmell.” When she
passed the open door of his room, the tenant invited her inside. Norma Jeane
thought he would instruct her to run an errand. He closed the door, turned the
key in the lock, and smiled.
“Now you can’t get out,” he said in a way that sounded as if here were
playing a game.
Marilyn remembered freezing and staring at him: “I was frightened, but I
didn’t dare yell.”
As the man proceeded to molest her, Norma Jeane remained silent and
physically resisted. He overpowered her with his strength while whispering an
order to be a “good girl.” After the assault, the man unlocked the door, and
Norma Jeane went to her Aunt and disclosed the experience in a stammer. In My
Story, Marilyn divulged the woman’s response:

“Don’t you dare say anything against Mr. Kimmell,” she said angrily.
“Mr. Kimmell’s a fine man. He’s my star boarder! Shame on you!” my
‘Aunt’ [said, glaring] at me, “complaining about people!” I started
stammering again and couldn’t finish. Mr. Kimmell came up to me and
handed me a nickel. “Go buy yourself some ice cream,” he said. I
cried in bed that night and wanted to die.
 George Barris quotes Marilyn’s account of her disclosure to the caregiver
from an interview in the summer of 1962: “I ran to my foster mother and told her
what he did to me. She looked at me shocked, then slapped me across the mouth
and shouted at me, ‘I don’t believe you! Don’t dare say such things about that
nice man!’ ” Both recorded recollections contain the caregiver’s disturbing lack
of protection and the offender buying her compliance and silence with money.
Not only was the caregiver in denial of the abuse, but she physically punished
the child victim.
The identity of Norma Jeane’s abuser remains a mystery. Biographer Maurice
Zolotow believes Norma Jeane briefly lived with a foster mother who operated a
two-story boarding house in southeastern Hollywood, and that she was abused
by one of the elderly male boarders employed as a certified public accountant.
Donald H. Wolfe alleged that the perpetrator was Murray Kinnell, the British
actor who rented a bedroom in the house on Arbol Drive. Murray Kinnell
appeared in seventy-one films between 1930 and 1937, including Public Enemy
(1931) starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow. When Marilyn named “Mr.
Kimmell” as her abuser in her autobiography, she might have spelled his name
incorrectly. She never disclosed the names of the English man and wife who
rented space in her mother’s home.
Roy Turner’s research may have been the first to allege that the woman
Marilyn referred to as, “Aunt,” who had heard her disclosure of the abuse was
actually Gladys. Quite possibly, Marilyn was protecting Gladys, who may have
failed to protect her. The loss of the boarder due to the report of abuse would
signal Gladys’ inability to maintain the home and continue to live with her
daughter. If accurate, this betrayal would forever impact Marilyn’s relationship
with her mother.
The time frame of the abuse is also unclear, making the offender difficult to
determine. It is unknown if it began before or after Gladys’ breakdown, or
whether the offender was Gladys’ male tenant or a boarder taken in by the tenant
following her institutionalization. Norma Jeane was frequently left alone with
the British couple while Gladys worked and was fostered by them after Gladys’
hospitalization. Although Marilyn disclosed one episode in her memoir, it is
likely that she minimized the experience. Privately, she told friends of having
been sexually abused on a near daily basis for many months.
Marilyn would recall being taken to a religious revival meeting in a tent soon
after the first trauma. The preacher called on the “sinners” to approach the altar
for repentance. “I fell on my knees and began to tell him about Mr. Kimmel and
how he had molested me in his room,” she remembered. “I looked back and saw
Mr. Kimmel standing among the non-sinners, praying loudly and devoutly for
God to forgive the sins of others.” This memory illustrates Marilyn’s childhood
narrative of shame and adult hypocrisy.
When the early traumas unrelentingly affected Marilyn as an adult twenty
years later, she recorded her childhood memories in a black leather notebook. A
particularly painful recollection was physical abuse and humiliation by Ida
Bolender. Marilyn wrote of continuing to obey Ida long after leaving the
woman’s home and of wanting to discontinue this trauma bond, a strong
emotional tie that develops between an abuser and a victim. “I will not be
punished or be whipped or be threatened or not be loved or sent to hell to burn
with bad people feeling that I am also bad or be afraid of my genitals…or
ashamed,” Marilyn bravely wrote in her journal two decades later as a survivor
standing up to her perpetrator and claiming control. In the entry, she also
identified having strong sexual feelings since the time of her early childhood
sexual abuse.
Since Norma Jeane was also a neglected child, she might have grown up
feeling guilty about possibly enjoying some positive aspects of the abuse as it
may have occurred within the context of adult attention, closeness, intimacy or
what she may have perceived as love. Like many survivors of childhood sexual
abuse, she may have grown up struggling to cope with the fact that her body felt
aroused during the abuse. Survivors often feel guilty, ashamed, and confused
about their bodies’ natural response to the stimulation. Without a loving adult
helping her understand these confusing feelings, putting the abuse in perspective,
and holding the perpetrator accountable, Norma Jeane may have held herself
responsible, especially later in development, when she became aware of her own
physical beauty. Her eventual treatment by Freudian psychotherapy, with its
theory of Electra complex (the notion of a girl’s sexual competition with her
mother to possess her father) may only have reinforced her distorted self-
defeating beliefs and self-loathing.
Norma Jeane’s overwhelming trauma of childhood sexual abuse was
compounded by another trauma; her mother’s terrifying psychotic episode.
Modern research reveals that multiple traumatic experiences substantially
increase the likelihood of persistent depressive symptoms. In the absence of
treatment, Norma Jeane had no support or intervention to prevent the future
chronicity of her depressive reactions. The stressors of bereavement, single
parenting, and increased responsibilities exacerbated Gladys’ genetically
predisposed mental illness. Family history is a strong risk factor for both
Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, and both disorders tend to aggregate in
families as they did in Gladys’ family. These conditions can skip generations or
manifest as less or more severe in subsequent generations.
Norma Jeane heard the terrifying sounds of Gladys’ psychotic breakdown
from the kitchen. As her mother lay on the sofa in the living room staring up the
staircase to the second floor, she experienced frightening visual hallucinations.
“Somebody’s coming down those steps to kill me!” Gladys yelled as she kicked
and convulsed.
Marilyn later recalled hearing “the most frightening noise,” as if someone
were falling down the stairs near the kitchen. The British woman prevented her
from seeing what caused the sounds, and the woman’s husband went to the stairs
to manage the commotion. Later, when he returned to the kitchen, the British
man told Norma Jeane he had called for the police and an ambulance. She asked
if they were called for her mother. He affirmed that they had, but prohibited the
child from seeing Gladys in such a state.
Norma Jeane stayed in the kitchen and heard the professionals arrive to
subdue Gladys and take her away in an ambulance. The British man told Norma
Jeane to remain in the kitchen, but she ventured into the hall and saw her mother
screaming and laughing at the same time. Gladys was first taken to the Santa
Monica Rest Home before transferring to Los Angeles General Hospital. Her
illness was characterized by preoccupation with religion, announced a
psychiatric evaluation report, and chronic episodes of serious depression and
agitation.
Psychiatrists diagnosed Gladys with Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type. This
chronic brain disorder is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized
speech, lack of emotion, and grossly impaired social functioning. Typically,
people with paranoid schizophrenia hear hallucinations of voices and are
suspicious of others, whom they believe are persecuting them. Before the advent
of antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s, the prognosis for those with the disorder was
poor. Gladys was declared legally incompetent in January 1935 and transferred
to Norwalk State Hospital, where Della had died. The British couple served as
caregivers for Norma Jeane for nearly a year. Initially, the motion picture studio
paid Gladys’ salary, but eventually Grace provided cash for the child’s support.
Reportedly, the British couple sold off Gladys’ possessions and may have
taken in other boarders to pay the mortgage on the property. Life with the British
couple was “pretty casual and tumultuous,” Marilyn said, and a drastic change
from the Bolenders, who forbade dancing, talking about movies and actors, or
singing, with the exception of psalms. She had difficulty adjusting to a lifestyle
the polar opposite of Ida and Wayne’s. Due to her strict religious upbringing,
Norma Jeane thought her new caregivers were going to hell and spent hours
praying for their salvation.
On Saturdays and Sundays, Norma Jeane was sent to the theater. Marilyn
later said the British couple worked hard during the week and “didn’t want to be
bothered with a child around the house, you can’t blame them.” She went to the
movies early in the morning, paid an admission of ten cents, and often watched
the same film repeatedly. Little Norma Jeane sat in the first row in front of the
big screen all day and into the night. “I loved anything that moved up there and I
didn’t miss anything that happened,” she said. The British couple instructed
Norma Jeane to return home at night, but she did not know when it turned dark
outside. Consequently, the child frequently walked home alone in the dark.
Norma Jeane coped with the realities of her life by escaping through the
fantasy of films of the 1930s. As an adult, she recalled seeing Claudette Colbert
as the seductive Egyptian queen in Cleopatra (1934) and the course-looking
character actress, Marie Dressler, in Dinner at Eight (1933). The leading female
stars of the 1930s included primarily strong-willed actresses whose film roles
mirrored their own independent personalities: Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn,
and Joan Crawford. Screen sirens of the era, Mae West and Jean Harlow,
depicted blonde, overly sexy, and cunning characters. The male stars of the era
personified strength, hyper-masculinity, and gentlemanly demeanors: Clark
Gable, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, and Humphrey Bogart. Norma
Jeane was especially drawn to Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, who starred
together in six films.
These cinematic diversions allowed Norma Jeane to escape her existence
with the British couple. Some sources reveal Grace, Gladys’ best friend and
former supervisor, was aware of the British couple’s mistreatment of Norma
Jeane, but the extent of her awareness and the extent of the mistreatment are
unclear. According to Berniece, Grace was aware that the British couple rented
rooms from Gladys. “They stayed until [Gladys] found out they were treating
Norma Jeane unkindly and we got rid of them,” Grace told Berniece. Treating…
unkindly may have been a euphemism for sexual abuse, physical abuse, or
neglect.
There were attempts to find Norma Jeane a permanent family placement. One
prospect was Harvey Giffens, who worked for Radioplane Company, and his
wife, Ellie. Originally from Mississippi or Louisiana, he and his wife
temporarily took in the child to their ranch home near Arbol Street as they
planned to return to their home state. Norma Jeane was then placed in the
household of Reginald Carroll, a sound engineer at RCA and formerly a co-
worker at Consolidated, his wife, and their three children.
Norma Jeane landed with another couple on East Palmer Street in Compton.
The husband, Bryan Atchison, was Grace’s brother, who made furniture polish,
and his wife, Lottie, who peddled to hardware stores throughout Los Angeles
County. The child rode along with her new foster mother, learned the geography
of the area, and frequently suffered carsickness. Marilyn remembered them
because the woman delivered products made by the man, but was apparently
unaware of the couple’s relation to her guardian. Before Norma Jean could
adjust to this new placement, she was whisked away once again.
On Easter Sunday, Grace packed up Norma Jeane’s meager possessions and
took her to live with her mother, Emma Willette Atchison, age fifty-eight, in an
apartment on Lodi Place. Meanwhile, the court investigated Grace as a suitable
temporary legal guardian for Norma Jeane. Grace also petitioned the court to
appoint her as Gladys’ guardian in control of her financial affairs. Before the
court resolved these legal issues, Grace transferred Norma Jeane to the home of
her sister and her husband, Enid and Sam Knebelkamp, on Glendon Avenue in
Westwood. Sam worked as a supervisor at a telephone company, and the couple
had a daughter, Diane. Neither placement with Grace’s relatives was permanent,
as Gladys insisted that Norma Jeane remain in the state of California and not be
adopted.
In 1935, the state assessed Gladys’ estate. She owed $200 on the baby grand
piano, $250 on a 1933 Plymouth, and had $60 cash and $90 in insurance checks.
The bank repossessed the house on Arbol Drive and swiftly evicted the British
couple. According to estate documents, the piano was sold for $235.00.
However, according to Berniece Miracle, Ana Lower, Grace’s aunt, took
possession of the piano in safekeeping for Norma Jeane.
Disgusted by the British couple’s transgressions against her best friend’s
vulnerable daughter, Grace delivered the child to safety and focused her efforts
on developing a relationship with her. “She was the first person who ever patted
my head or touched my cheek,” Marilyn recalled of these safe touches. “That
happened when I was eight. I can still remember how thrilled I felt when her
kind hand touched me.”
 Norma Jeane was happy to accompany Grace to Holmes Bakery each week
to buy a sack of stale bread for twenty-five cents. Sometimes Grace skimped on
the bread in order to afford Norma Jeane’s trip to the beauty parlor to curl her
hair like Shirley Temple’s. This attention was significantly meaningful to the
child and would remain one of Marilyn’s rare happy childhood memories.
Another man in Grace’s life would derail Norma Jeane’s stability. Enter Ervin
“Doc” Silliman Goddard (1904-1972), a man ten years Grace’s junior, who
resembled the actor Randolph Scott. At six feet five inches tall, he towered over
Grace, who stood a mere five foot one. Once employed as a stand-in for the
actor Joel McCrea, Goddard had played a toy soldier in Babes in Toyland with
Laurel and Hardy while briefly chasing a career in films. Originally from Texas,
Goddard was now an amateur inventor employed as an engineer in charge of
research at Adel Precision Products Company in Burbank. Divorced from
Eleanor Roeck, he had three children: Eleanor, known as Bebe; John, known as
Fritz; and Josephine, who would later be known as the actress Jody Lawrence.
Grace and Doc married on August 10, 1935 in Las Vegas, after a whirlwind
courtship. Norma Jeane lived briefly with the newlywed couple and young
Josephine in a bungalow at 6707 Odessa Avenue in Van Nuys, in the San
Fernando Valley. Marilyn would never publicly judge Grace for choosing a
husband over her. “They were very poor, so they couldn’t care for me,” she said,
instead. “And I think she felt that her responsibility was to her husband,
naturally, and to his kids.”
On September 13, 1935, Norma Jeane became the three thousand four
hundred sixty-third child admitted to the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home. Founded
in 1880, the home was located a block away from RKO Studios and a short walk
from Paramount Studios. When Norma Jeane arrived with Grace in front of the
brick Georgian colonial administration building on El Centro Avenue, she
screamed, “I’m not an orphan! I’m not an orphan!” In fact, during the Great
Depression, many other children with living parents found refuge at the
orphanage, as their parents were unable to care for them. Grace promised to visit
the child every Saturday and bring her back home once she obtained a larger
house. Each month, Grace paid Norma Jeane’s room and board.
Norma Jeane cried as she was dragged into the building and quieted once she
was brought to the dining hall where the other children were eating dinner. She
felt embarrassed when the children’s heads turned from their plates to her watch
her emotional outburst. She was immediately placed in the dormitory behind
main building with twenty-six other girls. Her bed faced a window overlooking
the water tower of RKO Studios, bearing its logo of forked lightning. Norma
Jeane would sit on her bed and stare out the window at the studio where her
mother had once worked.
The child often cried because she felt lonely, but began to daydream and
fantasize about working in the studio where films were made. Every day, Norma
Jeane waited for Grace to fulfill her promise and take her back home. “I wanted
more than anything in the world to be loved,” Marilyn recalled during the last
summer of her life, reliving the pain that had haunted her for twenty-five years.
“Love to me then and now means being wanted. The world around me just
crumbled. It seemed nobody wanted me.”
Inferring rejection by Grace and her own worthlessness, placement at the
orphan’s home engendered hopelessness in Norma Jeane. She felt unloved and
unlovable. Her despondency was rooted in pervasive negative childhood
experiences, beginning with her conception. Before Norma Jeane’s birth, her
father denied paternity. At the Bolenders’ home, she was physically abused and
made to feel like an outsider, and was reminded that she was not a biological
member of the family. Her grandmother allegedly attempted to smother her
during a psychotic episode and subsequently died. Afterward, Norma Jeane was
pulled from her foster family to live with a mentally unstable mother with whom
she shared limited attachment. She survived both sexual abuse and exposure to
her mother’s mental illness. After her mother’s institutionalization, Norma Jeane
was left in the care of non-relatives who provided inadequate structure. She had
no contact with living relatives who could protect and care for her. Instead, she
was left to the mercy of her mother’s only close friend, who discarded her for a
man and his children.
“I knew I was different from other children,” Marilyn wrote of this morose
period in her life, “because they were no kisses or promises in my life. I often
felt lonely and wanted to die. I would try to cheer myself up with daydreams. I
never dreamed of anyone loving me as I saw other children loved. That was too
big a stretch for my imagination.” The child longed for the love of other people
rather than God and imagined nonspiritual validation by people admiring her and
saying her name aloud.
Norma Jeane found no solace at school during her fifteen-month stay at the
orphanage. She attended fourth and fifth grades at Vine Street School, where she
struggled to blend with her peers and find social connection. Marilyn later
professed that it was poor practice to permit children from an institution to
attend a public school. Other children pointed to her and her peers from the
orphanage and whispered, “They’re from the home.” Norma Jeane felt ashamed
to live in the orphan’s home and wear an orphan’s uniform.
Marilyn summarized life at the orphanage as unhappy. She didn’t get along
with the matrons, but liked the kindness of the Sula Dewey, the superintendent.
Once the woman called Norma Jeane into her office and complimented her skin.
Marilyn remembered feeling “honored” when the superintendent powdered her
face. Mrs. Dewey applied rouge to Norma Jeane’s cheeks and permitted her to
wear the cosmetics for the remainder of the day. The woman also kept her
Pekinese sequestered in an office because it was known to bite, but the dog was
friendly and gentle with Norma Jeane.
In a collective effort to escape, Norma Jeane banded with other wards and
attempted to climb over a wall. The staff caught them in the act. Marilyn recalled
begging the staff not to tell the superintendent because the woman showed her
kindness and compassion. “She made me smile,” Norma Jeane cried, “and put
powder on my nose and let me pet her dog.”
Marilyn’s published memories of her experience at the orphanage disturbed
its staff in the 1950s after the facility was renamed Hollygrove. They denied her
memory of washing a hundred dishes, but several tall stacks of dirty dishes
might seem like a hundred to a discarded, isolated nine-year old girl. “I used to
tell [my step-children], for instance, that I worked for five cents a month and I
washed one hundred dishes,” Marilyn told Life magazine in 1962, “and my step
kids would say, ‘One hundred dishes!’ and I said, ‘Not only that, I scraped and
cleaned them before I washed them.’ I washed them and rinsed them and put
them in the draining place, but I said, ‘Thank God I didn’t have to dry them.’ ”
At first, Grace fulfilled her promise to Norma Jeane by visiting her at the
orphanage and taking her on outings to the local beauty parlor and to Grauman’s
Chinese Theatre. Impresario Sid Grauman had created the concept of the film
premiere with celebrity attendees arriving on the red carpet. At his iconic
Chinese theater, leading film stars immortalized their signatures, hand, and
footprints in cement squares that comprised the forecourt, beginning with Mary
Pickford in 1927. This successful advertising gimmick evolved into shrines for
motion picture legends of several generations.
Norma Jeane spent hours trying to fit her feet into the footprints in the
cement. “My school shoes were too big for the stars’ slim, high-heeled ones,”
she recalled. “Then I measured my hands with theirs, but mine seemed too small.
All in all, I was very discouraged.” Valentino’s handprints fit Norma Jeane’s, but
her favorite actress was platinum-haired Jean Harlow. Norma Jeane dreamed of
having light hair and felt close to the actress. Alone in her room at the
orphanage, the child acted out scenes inspired from the films she saw. Rather
than act the scene, she would act out the back-story or what she believed
happened after the film ended. She performed all of the parts, both male and
female. Given the circumstances of her young life, the themes of her playacting
tended to be tragic.
In a letter to the orphanage’s superintendent, Sula Dewey, dated December 5,
1935, Grace demanded that no visitors have access to Norma Jeane without her
written permission. A series of visits from Ida and Albert Wayne Bolender
triggered this strong response. The couple claimed to love the child and, since
Gladys was institutionalized, may have hoped she would return to their care. The
following day, Dewey wrote to Grace advocating for Norma Jeane’s emotional
needs and reported to have advised Ida against discussing Gladys with the child.
“Norma is not the same since Mrs. B. visited with her,” the superintendent
wrote. “She doesn’t look as happy. When she is naughty, she says,‘Mrs. Dewey, I
wouldn’t ever want my Aunt Grace to know I was naughty.’ She loves you very
much.”
In a telephone call, Ida Bolender apparently convinced the superintendent to
permit continued visitation with Norma Jeane. In another letter to Grace, Dewey
concluded that it might have been unfair to attribute Norma Jeane’s moods to
visitors, as the child often seemed depressed with no apparent trigger. Dewey
took a personal interest in Norma Jeane and continued corresponding with Grace
as late as October 1947. “Norma Jeane Baker has great success in pictures and
promise to be a star,” Grace proudly wrote. “She is a very beautiful woman and
is now acting as Marilyn Monroe.”
Norma Jeane’s mood darkened when, for five consecutive weeks, Grace
failed to arrive for scheduled visits. The child’s worst fear seemed realized. The
only consistent adult in her life had abandoned her, and the experience was
emotionally scarring. Her file at the orphanage read, “Anxious and withdrawn…
and at such times she stutters…If she is not treated with much reassurance and
patience…she appears frightened. I recommend her to be put with a good
family.” Husband Arthur Miller would write about Marilyn’s uncanny ability to
“walk into a crowded room and spot anyone there who had lost parents” or had
lived in an orphanage.
Social workers visited Norma Jeane and recorded her physical needs in her
case file. If the soles of her shoes were not completely worn, Marilyn
remembered, she was reported to be in thriving condition. She would reenact one
such encounter to Georges Belmont, recalling the social worker recording the
need for a pair of shoes, a sweater, and two dresses, one appropriate for school
and one for Sunday. Marilyn described the clothes provided by the state as
resembling flour sacks. Little Norma Jeane boldly told the social worker she did
not want them.
Marilyn wrote of a recurring childhood dream that illustrated her early
spiritual experiences and lack of self-esteem, acceptance, and love. In the dream,
Norma Jeane enters a church wearing a hoop skirt with no undergarments as the
congregation lay on their backs in the aisle. She steps over the people as they
look up at her in adoration. Marilyn would write that her impulse to appear
naked was nonsexual. Quite simply, without an orphan’s uniform, she resembled
all the other girls who lived with their birth families.
What Marilyn missed in her interpretation of the dream was a manifestation
of childhood sexual abuse, neglect, and abandonment. In the dream, she finds
validation and love through the perfection of body and face. “No one ever told
me I was pretty when I was a little girl,” Marilyn professed. “All little girls
should be told they are pretty, even if they aren’t.” Even in her waking hours at
church services, Norma Jeane experienced impulses to disrobe.
Awake or asleep, Norma Jeane longed for validation. These feelings were
crushed when she heard others discouraging Grace from adopting her because of
a family heritage of mental illness. Instead of pursuing adoption, Grace filed for
permanent guardianship on February 26, 1936, which the court granted one
month and one day later.
On June 1, Norma Jeane turned eleven and would soon enter a brighter
period of her life. Six days later, her screen idol Jean Harlow (1911-1937), the
Platinum Blonde, died of uremic poisoning at Los Angeles Good Samaritan
Hospital. The actress was only twenty-six years old. Since the spring, she had
been filming Saratoga with Clark Gable at Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios.
Harlow had collapsed on the set and returned to her home on North Palm
Avenue in Beverly Hills, where her mother refused medical care and instead
implemented Christian Science prayer. Harlow’s partner, actor William Powell,
paid for her private mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Norma Jeane read
romanticized tabloid articles about Powell sending a dozen roses to her idol’s
tomb for years to come [Marilyn would co-star with Powell in How To Marry A
Millionaire, and Clark Gable would be her last co-star].
Later in the month, Grace fulfilled her promise. Ashamed of having
permitted Norma Jeane to languish in an institution for twenty-one months,
Grace and Doc arrived at the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home, collected the child,
and welcomed her into their home. Doc’s daughter, Eleanor, known as Bebe,
lived with her mother, and so the couple offered Norma Jeane a bedroom of her
own. Norma Jeane finally landed in what she believed would be a safe home.
She was quiet and well behaved, earning the nickname “The Mouse.” Doc
permitted Norma Jeane to call him “Daddy”, a title Ida Bolender forbade her to
use. “[Grace] was always wonderful to me,” Marilyn later declared. “Without
her, who knows where I would have landed! I could have been put in a state
orphanage and kept there till I was eighteen.”
Norma Jeane was beginning to develop into a pubescent young lady, and the
physical changes in her body and face drew attention; but not the kind she
craved or needed from adults. Instead, she received the sexualized attention of
adolescent and adult males. Marilyn described this period to Richard Meryman
in Life magazine:

When I was eleven, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was
on the outside of the world. Suddenly, everything opened up. Even the
girls paid a little attention to me because they thought, “Hmmm, she’s
to be dealt with!” And I had this long walk to school, two and a half
miles [there], two and a half miles back. It was just sheer pleasure.
Every fellow honked his horn, you know, workers driving to work,
waving, you know, and I’d wave back. The world became friendly.

The attention of same-age males is a normal and natural experience for a

pubescent female, but Marilyn’s recollection also referred to a dark and
inappropriate form of attention. The long-anticipated placement with Grace
would not live up to Norma Jeane’s expectations. Children who survive sexual
abuse are at risk for further targeting, and Norma Jeane was no exception.
What Norma Jeane did not know during those nights spent dreaming that
Grace would take her home from the orphanage was that Grace’s husband had a
problem with alcohol. According to Norma Jeane’s first husband, James
Dougherty, Doc got drunk one night, stumbled into Norma Jeane’s bedroom, and
climbed into her bed. In what the child thought was an act of fatherly affection;
Doc allegedly kissed her passionately, fondled her, and attempted to force
himself sexually upon her. Frightened, Norma Jeane managed to escape.
Alarmed, Grace immediately found another home for the child with her own
blood relatives. Rather than evict Doc from the home, Grace removed Norma
Jeane, implying that the victim was somehow responsible for her abuser’s
behavior.
Norma Jeane now lived in North Hollywood with her Uncle Marion’s wife,
Olyve, their three children, and Olyve’s mother, Ida Martin. Mrs. Martin was a
strict disciplinarian. After the birth of their last child in 1929, Marion told Olyve
he was leaving the home to buy a newspaper and never returned. The court
eventually pronounced him dead in 1939, but until then, his family was
ineligible for financial benefits. They lived in virtual squalor, with Olyve
working as a migrant farmhand to feed the children. From November 1937 to
August 1938, Norma Jeane lived with her aunt through marriage and cousins,
and experienced a difficult adjustment. “At first I was waking up in the mornings
at the Goddards’ and thinking I was still at the orphanage,” she remembered.
“Then, before I could get used to them, I was with another aunt, waking up and
thinking I was still at the Goddards’. It was all very confusing.”
Olyve enrolled Norma Jeane in Lankershim Elementary on Bakman Avenue
in North Hollywood. Escaping the grim reality of her life with relatives, Norma
Jeane attended movies at El Portal Theatre on Lankershim Boulevard, directly
behind the school. [On the evening of the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn’s death,
the theater’s small playhouse was rededicated as the Monroe Forum Theatre.]
Films appearing in early 1938 included Blondie, based on the newspaper comic
strip by Chic Young; The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring dashing Errol
Flynn in green tights; Love Finds Andy Hardy, with teen stars Mickey Rooney
and Judy Garland; and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, featuring Fox Studio’s
talented prodigy, Shirley Temple, singing, “On the Good Ship Lollipop” and
“Animal Crackers in My Soup.”
Norma Jeane didn’t hit it off with her three, newfound cousins: Jack (born
1925), Ida Mae (1927) and Olive (1929). “The other kids knew I was related to
them,” she said, “but I felt on a desert island with natives or primitive people out
of the hills of Appalachia. I was more alone and separated from anything than I
had ever been. I was feeling the predicament of my life, and that frightened and
depressed me so much I would get sick and could not eat. When I did I would
often throw up.”
Last in line for food and a bath, Norma Jeane recalled, “I never minded
coming last in these families except on Saturday nights when everybody took a
bath. Water cost money, and changing the water in the tub was an unheard of
extravagance. The whole family used the same tub of water. And I was always
the last one in.” Ida Martin’s granddaughter, Ida Mae, shared a bed with Norma
Jeane and remembered her talking about becoming a schoolteacher, owning
many dogs, and never marrying. These goals are not surprising, given the child’s
history of trauma. The resilient Norma Jeane clearly understood that she must
depend upon herself and vowed to protect canines in honor of slain Tippy. Her
exposure to physically and sexually abusive males taught her that males were
dangerous. Experiences yet to come would further confirm these notions.
Norma Jeane turned twelve on June 1, 1938. Subsequently, her cousin Jack,
age thirteen, violently sexually assaulted her. Bebe Goddard, Norman Rosten,
and Jack’s sister, Ida Mae, confirmed this story. Ida Mae told Donald Spoto that
Norma Jeane felt so violated and dirty that she obsessively bathed for days
through the fall of 1938. Norma Jeane had survived the assaults of three sexual
offenders in her short, unprotected, and confused life. Jack, like his father, would
soon disappear, never to be heard from again.
The last documented reference to Aunt Olyve in Marilyn’s life appeared as
handwritten directions to the woman’s home on a Fox Studio envelope dated
June 12, 1954: “Aunt Olive/VE8-7202/ Culver City/triangle/cross the street/9430
Washington/close cleaners/4:30/ work…” Part of the Scott Fortner Collection,
the note suggests that Marilyn sought out Aunt Olyve to provide financial
assistance to a relative who was impoverished and aged. It is unlikely Marilyn
would have been unresponsive to Aunt Olyve, abandoned by Uncle Marion, who
had taken her in as a child even when the woman was struggling to provide for
her own children.
Chapter Four
 March 1938-1939

Norma Jeane’s early childhood neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse by
an adult boarder set her on a trajectory of additional sexual abuse experiences
later in childhood. She experienced incest by both a father figure and an older
cousin. This domino effect is supported by modern research showing that
survivors of abuse experience reenactments of abuse throughout their lifespans.
Victims of rape are more likely to be raped, and women who are physically and
sexually abused as children are more likely to be abused as adults. Similarly,
victims of child sexual abuse are at high risk of becoming prostitutes or
marrying pedophiles, and victims of incest reported violence in marriage twice
as frequently as those who had not experienced incest.
Understanding the concept of complex trauma is essential in understanding
Norma Jeane’s childhood experience and Marilyn Monroe’s adulthood. The
modern term describes a child’s exposure to multiple traumatic events, abuse,
neglect and other negative life events, and their impact over the victim’s
lifespan. Complex trauma interferes with a child forming a secure attachment
bond with her caregiver, the primary source of safety and stability in a child’s
life. The lack of a secure attachment can result in the loss of essential capacities
for emotional self-regulation and formation of healthy relationships. If the
trauma or neglect occurs within the first five years, the child’s brain undergoes
changes that disrupt normal development. Later in life, the survivor of complex
trauma often experiences psychiatric and addictive disorders, chronic medical
illnesses, immune deficiencies, and occupational and relationship problems.
Marilyn Monroe suffered all of these challenges.
A secure attachment enables a child to develop the ability to regulate intense
physical and emotional states, her sense of safety, her knowledge of how to
operate in the world, and her ability to communicate. The absence of a consistent
and predictable caregiver to protect and nurture the child allows the trauma to
derail the child from attending to normal development and to focus instead on
survival. Gladys’ mental illness, Ida Bolender’s punitive punishment, Grace’s
abandonment, and the refusal to acknowledge sexual abuse denied Norma Jeane
a secure attachment early on and would later rob Marilyn Monroe of internal
resources to cope with life stressors.
An unpredictable, rejecting, or abusive caretaker creates feelings of
helplessness and abandonment in a child. The child may have difficulty
managing stress and using language to solve problems. She may have challenges
in focusing her attention and controlling her physiological arousal. She may also
feel overwhelmed by intense emotions and inappropriately seek help or
demonstrate maladaptive dependency on others. Marilyn Monroe grew
dependent upon relationships with men and on surrogate parental figures and
acting coaches.
The child’s primary caregiver is most influential in her recovery from trauma.
The caregiver’s reaction and level of support can significantly decrease the
child’s development of symptoms and enhance her resiliency. Research shows
that the child benefits from the caregiver believing and validating the child’s
experience, tolerating her strong emotions, and self-management of own
emotional response to the trauma. Conversely, when the caregiver denies the
child’s trauma, the child is forced to act as if it did not occur and learns she
cannot trust the caregiver. When Norma Jeane told her caregiver of having been
sexually abused, the woman slapped her in the face and disbelieved her. The
psychological damage of this response was devastating.
The child who perceives herself as unlovable or powerless expects others to
reject her, is likely to blame herself for the negative experiences, and will likely
have problems relating to others. She feels like a bad person and loathes herself,
often engaging in self-destructive behavior. She may constantly seek approval
form others, sometimes by becoming submissive or overly compliant.
Sadly, Marilyn Monroe, like other survivors of complex trauma, could not
recapture what she did not receive in early development. The treatment options
of her era were unable to provide relief and little was known about the impact of
trauma. In fact, its existence was mostly denied. Unfortunately, she did not have
access to modern, effective treatment, which can provide skills to accept
childhood losses to help her cope and function in the world. However, for
Marilyn Monroe, as well as for today’s survivors’ the void in childhood cannot
be filled later in life. Love, trust, and affection absent in childhood cannot be
replaced.
Research supports the theory that there is a link between traumatic childhood
experiences, particularly involving caregivers, and Borderline Personality
Disorder. Biographer Anthony Summers was the first to suggest that Marilyn
Monroe suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder because of all of the
symptoms she exhibited. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for
Mental Disorders, the disorder can be diagnosed based upon five of the
following symptoms:
 Frantic avoidance of abandonment.

A pattern of difficult relationships, alternating between extremes of

admiration and hostility.

An unstable self-image or confusion about one’s own identity.

Acting impulsively in self-defeating ways such as excessive spending,

frequent sex with multiple partners, substance abuse, binge eating, or
reckless behavior.

Recurring suicidal thoughts or repeated suicide attempts, gestures, or

self-injury.

Frequent emotional overreactions or intense mood swings, including

feeling depressed, irritable, or anxious.

Long-term, overwhelming feelings of emptiness.

Episodes of feeling paranoid or losing a sense of reality, including

brief episodes or psychosis (hallucinations or severe dissociative
symptoms), especially during a personal crisis.

Display of inappropriate temper tantrums or challenges in controlling

anger.

Even if Marilyn did not meet all the criteria for this diagnosis in adulthood,
she displayed many of its traits. As described by Dr. John M. Grohol, the self-
destructive acts of an individual with the disorder are usually triggered by threats
of separation or rejection, or by the individual taking on increased responsibility.
She is also prone to sudden shifts in her view of others, alternating from
perceiving them as all good or all bad. Along with feeling as though she is bad,
the individual with the disorder may sometimes feel intense emptiness or feel as
though she does not exist, especially when she lacks support and nurturing.
Because of these interpersonal challenges, she typically experiences multiple job
losses and broken marriages.
Since the disorder is marked by impulsivity or an inclination to act quickly,
the individual may engage in suicidal behaviors during an episode of intense
emotional pain, without fully thinking about the consequences. Substance use
can increase lethality since it can lead to greater impulsivity, and those using
substances have access to a means for overdose. As high as seventy percent of
those diagnosed with this Personality Disorder admitted to psychiatric facilities
meet the criteria for a co-occurring substance abuse disorder. These statistics
would support the trajectory of Norma Jeane’s adult life.

“I didn’t like the world around me much because it was kind of grim,”
Marilyn told Richard Meryman in the summer of 1962. This was an
understatement. Norma Jeane accepted that she belonged to no one, and no one
was willing or interested in committing to the role of a permanent caregiver in
her life. She also believed that sexual abuse was a normal part of life. During
that last summer of her life, Marilyn recounted various forms of abuse in foster
homes to George Barris, including beatings, threats, being locked in closets, and
a foster parent holding her head under water whenever she was “naughty.” She
punctuated the litany of trauma by saying, “But you remember the good times,
too.”
When the children of Norma Jeane’s caregivers blamed her for their own
misbehavior, the adults believed them instead of Norma Jeane, the outsider.
“Most of the families had children of their own,” she said, “and I knew they
always came first. They wore the colored dresses and owned whatever toys there
were, and they were the ones who were believed.” Norma Jeane withdrew into
the background, learning to avoid trouble by never complaining or asking for
anything.
During these formative years, Norma Jeane also learned about relationships
between men and women through the examples provided by couples with whom
she lived. “I guess I got soured on marriage,” Marilyn told a journalist in 1957,
“because all I knew was men who swore at their wives, and fathers who never
played with their kids. The husbands I remember from childhood got drunk
regularly and the wives were always drab women who never had a chance to
dress or make up or be taken anywhere to have fun. I grew up thinking ‘if this is
marriage, who needs it?’ ”

In March 1938, following an escape attempt, Gladys transferred to Agnew

State Asylum in Santa Clara, California’s first modern mental health hospital.
She had been worried about receiving calls from Edward Mortensen, whom she
believed was deceased. Alive and well, he had been searching for her, and she
attempted to join him. When Gladys discussed this with the staff, they assessed
her as delusional and psychotic.
Mortensen eventually retired from the Southern California Gas Company and
lived in a modest retirement community in Mira Loma, on the outskirts of
Riverside. In 1981, at age 83, he died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his
new car. Among the possessions found in his studio apartment were photocopies
of marriage and birth certificates listing Gladys and Norma Jeane, but neither
provided evidence of paternity. “Legally, he is [Marilyn Monroe’s] father,” the
chief deputy coroner told People magazine before the advent of DNA paternity
testing. “But biologically we’ll never know. Trying to figure out who [her]
mother was sleeping with in late 1925 is pretty darned difficult.”
In February and March of 1938, oceanic storms swept inland across the Los
Angeles Basin, causing abnormal rainfall and a great flood that killed over a
hundred residents and left millions without electricity. The natural disaster
prompted Grace to move Norma Jeane from the Martin-Monroe home to live
temporarily with her friends, Alan and Ruth Mills, in the San Fernando Valley.
Shortly thereafter, Grace placed Norma Jeane back with her brother, Bryan
Atchison, and his wife Lottie, in Compton, and enrolled her back at Vine Street
School. When the dangerously high water receded, Norma Jeane returned to the
unsafe Martin-Monroe household.
By the fall of 1938, Grace decided to rescue Norma Jeane from the traumas
of Aunt Olyve’s house and placed her with Ana Lower, Grace’s fifty-eight year
old paternal aunt. Ana would be the healthiest and most stable of the succession
of females in Norma Jeane’s short life, and the child adored her. In Marilyn’s
words:

She changed my whole life. She was the first person in the world I
ever really loved and she loved me. She was a wonderful human
being…She showed me the path to the higher things in life and she
gave me more confidence in myself. She never hurt me, not once. She
 couldn’t. She was all kindness and love.

Divorced from alcoholic Edmund H. Lower, Edith Ana Atchison Lower lived
in a small, second-story apartment at 11348 Nebraska Avenue in Sawtelle, near
Culver City, a poor area with unpaved streets. Lower derived income from
renting the first-floor apartment of her property, as well as other properties she
had purchased with her husband and retained after their divorce. She also earned
a modest income as a practitioner of the Christian Science faith. Lower provided
for Grace and Doc by permitting them to live rent-free in her property on Odessa
Avenue. “Aunt” Ana took Norma Jeane with her to stand in long lines to buy
day-old stale bread for a quarter. Sensing the child’s sadness, Ana squeezed her
hand said, “Norma Jeane, when you grow up, you will be a rich, beautiful, and
talented lady.”
By the end of 1938, Berniece had married Paris Miracle and was pregnant
with Gladys’ first grandchild. Berniece received a letter from Gladys through
one of the Baker relatives, which included a bombshell: Berniece had a younger
half-sister living in Los Angeles. Gladys provided Grace’s mailing address so
that Berniece could contact Norma Jeane and closed the letter with pleas for help
in leaving the hospital to live with Della’s sister, Dora Hogan Graham, in
Portland. Nearly fifty years later, Berniece wrote that she was “ecstatic” to learn
she had a younger sister. She wasted no time in contacting Grace with wishes to
connect with Norma Jeane, and the half-sisters soon exchanged photographs and
letters.
In February 1939, twelve year-old Norma Jeane enrolled in seventh grade at
Sawtelle Boulevard School in West Los Angeles. She was a term behind due to
multiple disruptions in her education. Marilyn recalled attending six elementary
schools, averaging nearly a different school each grade. This track record did not
promote social connection or a consistent education. She reached menarche and
experienced painful cramps that forebode lifelong gynecological issues. This
serious issue might have been surgically corrected in adolescence, but Ana’s
religious beliefs opposed medical intervention and relied solely upon prayer.
Marilyn told Maurice Zolotow of having exhaustively tried to implement Mary
Baker Eddy’s religious mysticism, but ultimately gravitated to Freudian
psychology.
Prayer alone could not alleviate the pain caused by a medical condition. In
adulthood, Norma Jeane was diagnosed with chronic endometriosis, a
debilitating disorder of the female reproductive system in which the tissue
normally lining the uterus develops on the fallopian tubes, ovaries, and in other
areas in the pelvic region. During each menstrual cycle, the displaced tissue
thickens and bleeds, but has no path of exit from the body. Consequently, the
surrounding tissue becomes irritated and causes pain. Trapped blood may also
cause scarring, adhesions, and cysts that inhibit or arrest fertility.
In June 1939, Grace took Norma Jeane to the San Francisco Bay Area to see
Gladys on an afternoon pass from the institution. At lunch in a restaurant,
Gladys sat silently, staring at Norma Jeane. She barely knew her own thirteen
year-old daughter. Gladys’ only words to Norma Jeane were, “You used to have
such tiny little feet.” The following month, Grace and Doc Goddard passed
through Pineville, Kentucky, en route to West Virginia. The couple anticipated
Doc’s promotion to Adel Precision’s East Coast plant and visited the area in
preparation for an eventual relocation. During the trip, they visited Berniece and
Paris with hopes to reunite and place Norma Jeane with a blood relative. Grace
took one look at the couple’s modest two-room apartment and abandoned the
plan she had entertained about Norma Jeane moving in with them.
While Grace and Doc traveled, Norma Jeane remained in Los Angeles with
yet another family who were friends of Ana Lower. Attorney Chester Howell
and his wife, Doris, accepted her into their stately home at 432 South Bentley
Drive for a summer placement. The couple had three daughters, including twins,
Loralee and Doralee. The Howells lived near Grace’s sister and brother-in-law,
Enid and Sam Knebelkamp, and their young daughter, Diane, on Glendon
Avenue. Norma Jeane and Bebe often babysat the Howells’ twin daughters and
Diane at the Knebelcamp home.
The Howells preserved color home movies of Norma Jeane executing
cartwheels on the beach and playing with their daughters. In the documentary
Remembering Marilyn (1988), Mrs. Howell fondly remembered her young
houseguest: “She was a lovely girl and we loved her. We had been asked to
adopt her and we really considered it because we loved her, she [fit] in our
family beautifully, but finally we decided not to because we already had three
daughters and we thought we really had enough to take care of.”
When summer ended, Norma Jeane entered eighth grade at the newly
constructed Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School at 1650 Selby Avenue in
Westwood. Emerson’s diverse student body consisted of children from wealthy
Bel-Air, middle class West Los Angeles, and the poor neighborhood of Sawtelle.
In junior high school, students typically gravitate to cliques and categorize their
peers based on dress, appearance, and socioeconomic status. From Sawtelle,
Norma Jeane stood at the bottom of the social caste. “Everyone talked so glibly,”
Marilyn remembered. “They all knew the latest slang and the smart stories, and
I’d stand around like an idiot, never knowing what to say.”
Despite the tremendous challenges in her life, Norma Jeane was an average
student. She earned good grades in bookkeeping, journalism, office practice, and
physical education, and C’s in social living and science. Her essay on Abraham
Lincoln was rated best in the class. “A little thing, perhaps,” she would recall,
“but it encouraged me. I didn’t feel so dumb anymore.” The few dresses Norma
Jeane retained from the orphanage no longer fit her developing body despite
Ana’s efforts to alter them. Therefore, her clothes were exceptionally tight,
accentuating her newly formed curves. “She was very much an average student
but she looked as though she wasn’t well cared for,” teacher Mabel Ella
Campbell confirmed. “Her clothes set her a little bit apart from the rest of the
girls.” Norma Jeane fantasized about someday owning enough clothes “so other
girls wouldn’t make fun of me.” Blossoming physically and emotionally, she
eventually made many friends and seemed to come out of her shell.
In response to reading “The Power of Marilyn” in the San Francisco Gate on
the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn’s death, Susan Johnsen Nordlof wrote to the
author, Mick LaSalle, and recounted a family story that supported his
examination of her enduring charm. Nordlof’s father, Paul Johnsen, attended
Emerson Junior High School and met Norma Jeane early in the eighth grade. She
looked like an angel walking toward him, Johnsen would later tell his family,
describing the first time he saw her while serving as a hall monitor. Paul adored
the pretty girl from a distance for most of the school year before disclosing his
feelings to a friend shortly before summer vacation. He suspected the friend
shared the confidence with Norma Jean because at the last school event of the
year, she approached him warmly and introduced herself.
Norma Jeane and Paul dated during the summer between eighth and ninth
grades. As he was too young to drive, Paul called on her in his affluent family’s
chauffeur-driven car and took her skating. As Paul was aware of Norma Jeane
being more mature than he and having no romantic interest in him, he never
attempted to kiss her. According to Paul’s daughter, Norma Jeane always gave
him her undivided attention and made him feel as though he was the only person
in the world while they spent time together. In the ensuing decades, Paul Johnsen
spoke of Marilyn Monroe as one of the nicest people he had ever known.
Norma Jeane’s friendship with the Paul Johnsen lasted only the summer as
they enrolled in different high schools, but he kept a wallet-sized school portrait
and a personal letter she had sent to him. Nordlof wrote, “Even before she
became Marilyn, when she was barely more than a child, she apparently had the
gift of making others feel appreciated.”
How did thirteen year-old Norma Jeane cope with the circumstances of her
life? She allowed the sorrow and pain in her heart to help her better understand
others and treated them with compassion and kindness. Norma Jeane also
escaped the negative aspects of her life through the cinema during 1939,
considered an outstanding year in filmmaking by modern motion picture
historians. Within the next two decades, she would have a personal link to many
of those involved in the best-reviewed films of the year.
Perhaps the film to resonate most with Norma Jeane in 1939 was MGM’s
musical adaptation of Frank C. Baum’s beloved children’s book, The Wizard of
Oz. The film starred Marilyn’s future friend, sixteen-year old Judy Garland, as
parentless Dorothy Gale, who lives with her aunt and uncle on a Kansas farm,
and is attached to her terrier, Toto, and three farm hands. She sings about a
dream of a fairytale place without worries or troubles in Harold Arlen’s Oscar-
winning ballad “Over the Rainbow.” Norma Jeane heard Garland sing lyrics,
which expressed the longing in her own heart for which she had no words to
express. The best evidence of the song’s resonance with Gladys’ little girl lies in
Marilyn Monroe’s request that it be played at her funeral.
Despicable Miss Gulch takes Dorothy’s beloved Toto to the pound (shades of
Tippy), but the dog escapes and returns home to his mistress. Fearing the wrath
of Miss Gulch, Dorothy runs away from home with Toto as a tornado sweeps
across the plain. Her family and the farm hands hunker in the cellar as the
cyclone winds transport Dorothy and Toto in the house to the Land of Oz. At this
point, the film switches from sepia to Technicolor, and Garland delivers the
iconic line, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
The empowering story metaphorically explores children’s internal resiliency
in overcoming unfortunate circumstances. Norma Jeane likely equated her own
“grim” life to the black-and-white scenes of the austere Kansas farm. She must
also have associated her past traumas to the Wicked Witch and her Winged
Monkey minions, who capture Dorothy, lock her in the castle tower, and threaten
her with death. Created on a Hollywood soundstage minutes from where Norma
Jeane lived, the Land of Oz and Emerald City represented the idyllic places that
existed only in her dreams.
Gladys and Grace had romanticized moviemaking to Norma Jeane since she
was a young child, and the industry’s glamorous movie stars represented
idealized adults absent in her life. They also served as models for what she might
become. If she could only grow up to become a beautiful and famous movie star,
she thought while laying bed before falling asleep, then perhaps her father would
claim her and love her.
Chapter Five
 1940-1944

As Norma Jeane survived the traumas of her childhood in Los Angeles

during an American economic depression, a growing menace threatened Europe
and created apprehension in the western hemisphere. A similar depression in
Germany had brought the Third Reich to power and established a totalitarian
state ruled by Adolf Hitler. The Nazi government restored prosperity and ended
mass unemployment through military spending and extensive public works,
while demonizing liberal and socialist opposition. The Third Reich
systematically eliminated opposition by imprisoning dissenters in concentration
camps and later expanded to include Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and the
disabled. This eventually led to the horrific mass genocide of Jews and other
minorities in what became known as the Holocaust.
In February 1940, as newspapers and radio broadcasts informed Americans
of the anguish in Europe, the Muir family, neighbors of the Goddards, invited
Norma Jeane and some other young people along on their vacation to a resort in
Green Valley Lake. Their son, Bob, also attended Emerson Junior High School.
Norma Jeane had often visited the Muir home along with Bob’s other friends
from school, Betty and Bill, where the group played the Monopoly board game
and rolled up the rugs in the living room to dance on the hardwood floors. Bob’s
mother, Dorothy, found Norma Jeane sweet, mature, and especially considerate
of others.
In photographs of the Muir family’s vacation, Norma Jeane smiles broadly as
she plays in the snow surrounded by the white-capped San Bernardino
Mountains and national forest. The road trip was not without incident, though.
During the drive home, a large rock hurled down the mountainside and crashed
into the middle of the Packard’s hood. A bundled Norma Jeane was sitting in the
rumble seat with Betty at the back of the coupe at the time, and when Dorothy
later told the girls how close they had come to being killed by debris, Norma
Jeane laughed. “My head’s too hard,” she said. “That old rock would have
bounced right off and wouldn’t have left a dent.”
In May, the Muirs invited Norma Jeane on a road trip into the desert for a
picnic and to pick wildflowers. The teen could be talkative and effervescent, but
steered clear of conversation about personal topics. Dorothy Muir also noticed
Norma Jeane delicately carrying a bouquet as if it were an infant. “No two
flowers are alike,” she told her friend’s mother. “I never saw anything so lovely.”
The group stopped at a ghost town and explored a dilapidated jailhouse. When
they posed for pictures behind the bars of a cell, Norma Jeane made everyone
laugh by getting into the role. “I don’t think we should have our picture taken,”
she said. “We’re patrolled prisoners and should be very careful.”
After turning fourteen in June, Norma Jeane joined her friends in hangouts in
the Mediterranean-themed Westwood Village, such as the Hi-Ho Drive-In
restaurant on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood Avenues, Tom Crumpler’s
soda fountain, known for having the best malts, and the Fox Bruin Theatre, built
in Modern design. Developed by the Janss Investment Company in response to
the opening of University of California Los Angeles in 1925, the quaint Village
contained shops and cinemas within walking distance of residential
neighborhoods. The Fox Westwood Theatre, with its iconic one hundred
seventy-foot Spanish Revival Tower emblazoned with neon letters spelling
“Fox,” was and remains the most popular movie premiere venue in the world.
Here Norma Jeane saw Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath, and in 1953, she
attended the premiere of her own smash hit, How to Marry a Millionaire.
While spending time with friends in Westwood Village, Norma Jeane caught
the eye of Chuck Moran, a freckled, redheaded, and rebellious fifteen-year-old.
He took a photo of her recreating Claudette Colbert’s iconic scene in It
Happened One Night (1934), thumbing for a hitch while holding up her skirt to
expose her leg to the knee. Besides giving Norma Jeane instruction on using her
feminine charms, the film decreased sales in men’s undershirts because co-star
Clark Gable didn’t wear one in a key scene. Chuck would later become infamous
for posing provocatively with the middle finger of his left hand lifted in a
photograph of his graduating class.
Chuck escorted Norma Jeane to Ocean Park Pier where the Lawrence Welk
Orchestra performed, where she defended herself against his amorous advances
on the dance floor. “Suddenly his hands were everywhere!” Marilyn recalled.
“But that made me afraid, and I was glad I knew how to scrape. Poor Chuck, all
he got was tired feet and a fight with me. Besides, I really wasn’t so smart about
sex, which was probably a good thing.”
When summer ended, Norma Jeane was promoted to ninth grade at Emerson
Junior High as Chuck entered tenth grade at neighboring University High
School. Although they parted ways, Chuck sent Norma Jeane Valentine’s Day
postcards in 1941 and 1942. “I decided finally that the boys came after me
because I was an orphan,” Marilyn concluded insightfully, “and had no parents
to protect me or frighten them off.” Defiant behavior resulted in Chuck’s
expulsion from high school. He enlisted in the army and was killed in World War
II shortly after his twentieth birthday.
Ana’s health declined later in the year, forcing Norma Jeane to return to the
Goddards’ household on Archwood Avenue in Van Nuys. Doc’s daughter,
Eleanor “Bebe”, now lived with Doc and Grace, since her biological mother was
deemed an unfit parent. Norma Jeane and Bebe forged a friendship and found
that they had much in common. Bebe had lived in several foster homes before
reunification with her father and later described her mother as a psychopath.
As a good student in Miss Crane’s journalism class, Norma Jeane frequently
contributed to a column in the school paper, The Emersonian, and once wrote a
piece about gentlemen preferring blondes. For the article, Norma Jeane and other
classmates tabulated the responses of five hundred student questionnaires
regarding the qualities of a “dream girl.” Norma Jeane’s column prophetically
described the idealized blonde female image she would eventually personify:
“According to the general consensus of opinion, the perfect girl would be a
honey blonde with deep blue eyes, well molded figure, classic features, a swell
personality, intelligent, athletic ability (but still feminine), and she would be a
loyal friend.”
While writing came naturally to Norma Jeane, her stutter caused her to be
flooded with anxiety in Mr. Stoops’ Rhetoric and Spoken Arts class. The student
body elected Norma Jeane class secretary, but this did little to elevate her low
self-esteem. She’d say, “M-m-m-minutes of the last m-m-m-meeting,” thereby
earning the nickname, the “M-m-m girl.” This gained her attention in a select
group of twenty-six students in her yearbook’s M section: “M-m-m-m: Norma
Jeane Baker.” Apparently, Norma Jeane battled her stage fright well enough to
perform in Petronella, the class musical produced for Valentine’s Day. She
successfully completed ninth grade in June 1941.
In September, Norma Jeane began her sophomore year after enrolling in
nearby Van Nuys High School on Cedros Avenue. An itemized expense report
from September to November revealed that the Goddards spent $34.77 on
Norma Jeane’s incidental expenses, in addition to providing her with a weekly
allowance of $1.50, the equivalent of about $20.00 today.
Norma Jeane enjoyed and excelled at writing poetry and prose, but grappled
to earn average grades in arithmetic. She won the first place award of a fountain
pen for writing an essay titled, “Dog, Man’s Best Friend,” idolized Abraham
Lincoln, and avidly read books about the sixteenth president. While
daydreaming in class, Norma Jeane suddenly heard the teacher reading her story
entitled, “Carlos, He Sleeps,” about a lonely Mexican girl named Juanita who
marries Carlos. Juanita labors in the fields, does the laundry and cooking, and
cares for the children while Carlos sleeps in the sun. The teacher predicted
Norma Jeane would someday become a writer.
Having grown to her full height of five-feet five and one-half half inches
enabled Norma Jeane to play a king and a prince in two school plays. She also
unsuccessfully auditioned for a part in the drama club’s production of Art and
Mrs. Bottle; her aim was to be close to Warren Peek, a boy who would claim to
have been her high school crush. The yearbook incorrectly predicted she would
become the “smiling and beaming Chairman of the Beverly Hills Home for
Spinsters,” for across the street from the Goddard home lived James “Jim”
Dougherty (1921-2005), a twenty-one-year-old handsome and eligible bachelor.
Born in Los Angeles on April 12, 1921 to Edward and Ethel Dougherty, Jim
was the youngest of five children and a graduate of Van Nuys High School. He
had played on the football team, won the election for student body president, and
acted in the school’s drama club. Jim sacrificed a football scholarship to support
his mother and siblings by working in a funeral home and by shining shoes. The
Dougherty family struggled through the Great Depression by living in a tent and
working as fruit pickers before earning enough money to rent a modest
bungalow.
Jim still lived with his parents and had already dated several girls, whom he
squired around town in his blue Ford coupe. He worked the night shift on the
assembly line at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, making bombers alongside co-
worker Robert Mitchum, who would become a motion picture actor and
Marilyn’s co-star in River of No Return.
Ethel Dougherty and Grace had become friends and conspired to somehow
bring their children together. In October, before they could play Cupid, Grace
and Doc relocated to another home owned by Ana Lower, located on a grove of
pepper trees on Odessa Avenue. The distance between their residences did not
deter the friends from matchmaking, however. Ethel asked Jim to drive Norma
Jeane and Doc’s daughter, Bebe, from school to the new home on weekdays.
Oblivious to his mother’s underlying intention, Jim graciously consented and
soon found himself attracted to his passenger, Norma Jeane, five years his junior.
He thought she looked “angelic” in white blouses, but considered her merely a
child.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese navy executed an
unannounced military strike against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii. The residents of the coastal Los Angeles area feared their city would be
another target, since it produced the majority of the country’s military aircraft.
As the United States entered into World War II, Grace asked Ethel if Jim would
escort Norma Jeane to Adel Precision Products’ annual Christmas dinner-dance.
Once again, Jim consented.
Norma Jeane wore a borrowed red party dress, and when Jim danced with
her, he held her tight. Feeling safe with the man who had been chauffeuring her
and Bebe to and from school, Norma Jeane rested her head on his strong
shoulder. “She very neatly held things in check,” Jim said of his date’s propriety.
Perhaps due to her chastity, he continued dating other girls.
By early 1942, Adel Precision announced plans to relocate Doc to its plant in
Huntington, West Virginia in the position of East Coast head of sales. Grace told
Norma Jeane that they could not afford to take her along. Instead, the young girl
heard that caring for her was an obligation, and felt excluded from Grace’s
family. In reality, once Grace and Doc left Los Angeles, the county would
terminate financial assistance for Norma Jeane’s care. “If I’d gone with [the
Goddards] to West Virginia, they wouldn’t have gotten that money, and since
they couldn’t support me they had to work out something,” Marilyn concluded.
“In the state of California a girl can marry at sixteen. So I had the choice: go to a
home till I was eighteen or get married. And so I got married.”
The Goddards prepared for relocation by sending Norma Jeane back to live
with the ailing Ana Lower in a second story apartment in the home she owned
on Nebraska Avenue. Short on space, the elderly woman and the adolescent girl
shared a bedroom. Norma Jeane transferred to University High School, a
building in Spanish-Mission style with a red tile roof, located on the corner of
Westgate and Texas Avenues.
Ana kept her cardiovascular condition a secret from Norma Jeane, but
advised her to gain more independence and not fear loneliness. “I didn’t realize
that she was preparing me for her death,” Marilyn recollected. Ana also gave her
a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
inscribed, “Norma, dear, read this book. I do not leave you much except my love,
but not even death can diminish that; nor will death ever take me far away from
you.”
This relationship provided Norma Jeane with validating love and a
foundation for a metaphysical spirituality. After becoming an actress, Marilyn
told Maurice Zolotow that she felt strong when others on the set loved and cared
about her or held “good thoughts” for her. She believed it created, “an aura of
love,” which resulted in a better performance.
With the Goddards preparing to leave and Ana’s health deteriorating, Ethel
hastily approached Jim in March about marrying Norma Jeane. At first, Jim
considered her a mere baby even though she acted more mature than many girls
her age. In some way, she struck him as an “old soul.” Ethel urged her son to
consider marriage, otherwise Norma Jeane might return to the orphanage. Jim
thought it over and agreed.
The young couple spent time together enjoying picnic lunches, hiking in the
Hollywood Hills, and taking boat rides in Pop’s Willow Lake, a boating and
swimming resort with a dance hall and cafe along Big Tujunga Wash. Norma
Jeane started calling Jim “Daddy,” and took a liking to his pencil-thin mustache
that made him look older. It also reminded her of Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and
the photograph of Stanley Gifford in Gladys’ house.
Jim now exclusively dated Norma Jeane several times a week and introduced
her to his outdoor interests; camping, fishing, and horseback riding. Once, as
they rode horses back to a stable at dusk, Norma Jeane asked Jim how the
animals could see in the dark. He jokingly told her to turn on the headlights. She
naively asked where they were located. Jim also took Norma Jeane parking on
Mulholland Drive and introduced her to necking, hugging, and kissing, but they
did not venture further sexually.
The Goddards moved to West Virginia in March, and Norma Jeane
experienced profound feelings of rejection and abandonment. However, her
spirits improved when Jim took her shopping for an engagement ring. She
insisted against an extravagant purchase and settled for a small diamond. In class
at University High School, Norma Jeane announced plans to drop out of school
in May to get married. A social studies teacher advised against this, reproaching
her for not knowing what love was and conceivably ruining her life. Indeed,
Marilyn regretted her lack of a high school diploma for the rest of her life.
Revealing her unpreparedness for sexual intimacy and unhealed emotional
wounds from sexual traumas, fifteen-year-old Norma Jeane asked Grace if she
could abstain from sex after marrying Jim. “She began our married life knowing
nothing, but absolutely nothing, about sex,” Dougherty later recalled.
According to Marilyn, “There were no thoughts of sex in my head. I didn’t
want to be kissed, and I didn’t dream of being seduced. The truth was that with
all my lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as un-sensual as a
fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise.”
As Ana Lower and the Dougherty family made plans for the wedding and
reception, Norma Jeane ached over the absence of support from her family. To
make matters worse, a catty neighbor told her that the bride’s parents are
supposed to host the event. Jim’s sister, Elyda “Billie” Dougherty Nelson,
witnessed Norma Jeane’s deep hurt and sadness. Ana mailed engraved
invitations announcing her “niece’s” wedding, a loving white lie that likely
provided a sense of kinship to the young bride-to-be.
On June 19, 1942, eighteen days after her sixteenth birthday, Norma Jeane
married James Dougherty. The ceremony took place at the stately home of
Chester and Doris Howell, set on a hill and approached by winding steps on
South Bentley Avenue on the border of Brentwood and Westwood. Lorraine
Allen, a classmate from University High School, served as maid of honor. Jim’s
older brother, Marion Dougherty, was best man. Marion’s eight-year-old son,
Paul Wesley Kanteman, was ring bearer, and the Howells’ twin daughters served
as flower girls. Reverend Charles Lingenfelder officiated. Ida and Albert
Bolender attended the wedding and saw Norma Jeane for the very last time.
Conspicuously absent, the Goddards remained in West Virginia. Berniece and
Paris could not afford to travel to California but sent a gift of pillowcases.
With no father figure in attendance, Aunt Ana Lower gave Norma Jeane
away to the groom. In a long-sleeved while lace gown with sweetheart neckline
and veil and clutching a bouquet of fragrant white gardenias, the young bride
visibly trembled with nervousness as she descended the curved staircase in the
entrance hall. Florence Andre sang the traditional wedding song, “Oh, Promise
Me.” Jim looked handsome in a white tuxedo and a bow tie.
The bride signed the marriage certificate as Norma Jeane Mortensen although
the wedding invitation referred to her as Norma Jeane Baker. The reception
celebration also took place at the Howells’ home, and afterward, Marion brought
the couple to the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. A
waiter spilled food on Jim’s white jacket, and chorus girls dragged the groom on
the stage. For the first time, Norma Jeane drank champagne.
Unaware of his young wife’s sexual abuse experience, Jim believed she was a
virgin and had to teach her on how to use a diaphragm for birth control. He later
described having patiently assisted Norma Jeane in overcoming her initial fear of
intimacy, and asserted that the couple enjoyed a satisfying and normal sex life
together, including engaging in sex in the outdoors in secluded locations. This
version of blithe sexuality differs from Marilyn’s. “The first effect marriage had
on me was to increase my lack of interest in sex,” she wrote. “Our marriage was
a sort of friendship with sexual privileges.” Dougherty recalled his wife
complaining of headaches and cramps that sometimes hampered their intimacy;
this was likely a manifestation of endometriosis or avoidance, or both. Perhaps
herein lies the seed of Marilyn’s acting skills, and perhaps Dougherty
embellished and romanticized his marriage to the love goddess of the age.
The newlyweds spent their honeymoon weekend in a cabin at Lake
Sherwood in the Santa Monica Mountains. Jim fished as Norma Jeane placed his
catch in a wicker basket and later cleaned and cooked it. On Monday, the couple
arrived at their rented furnished bungalow 4524 Vista Del Monte in Sherman
Oaks in the San Fernando Valley. It had a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and
bath. There was even a space-saving pull-down Murphy bed. As a young bride,
Norma Jeane was a compulsive housekeeper who cleaned every day, maintained
an immaculate home, and showered and dressed for dinner before her husband
arrived home from work. She ritualistically served a side of peas and carrots
because she liked the color combination on the plate. Jim also enjoyed playing
tricks on his young bride and delighted in her naïve reactions. When Norma
Jeane came home after purchasing a new dress, for example, Jim asked what was
so special about it. She replied that it was “shrink-proof.” Enjoying his joke, he
carried her into shower and held her under the water to test the dress.
Norma Jeane followed Aunt Ana’s spiritual guidance by taking Jim to
Sherman Oaks Christian Science Church every Sunday, and the couple avoided
drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Jim’s sister, Elyda, remembered Norma
Jeane praying over sick children, being unyieldingly forgiving, and never
holding a grudge. Jim told biographer Donald H. Wolfe that his young wife
seemed “terribly proper,” a trait he later observed in her mother.
Norma Jeane was a paradox. On one hand, she was childlike, decorating the
bed and dresser with stuffed animals. On the other, Norma Jeane displayed
unpredictable and fluctuating moods that often unnerved her husband. Jim
believed she had been unloved and unwanted too early and for too long during
her developing years. According to Dougherty, he enjoyed a normal sexual
relationship with his young wife; however, her only prior sexual experiences had
been abusive. In her relationship with him, Norma Jeane felt safe for first time.
In a letter published after her death, Marilyn wrote about being, “greatly
attracted to [Jim] as one of the few young men I had no sexual repulsion for.”
She packed his lunch every day and included a love note. One read, “Dearest
Daddy, When you read this, I’ll be asleep and dreaming of you. Love and kisses,
your baby.”
Norma Jeane wrote of feeling insecure by her young husband’s,
“overwhelming qualities which I did not possess.” In turn, Jim recognized her
extreme sensitivity and insecurity, and felt unprepared to cope with her
emotions. He realized she was young, extremely sensitive, and prone to hurt
feelings. If Jim did not kiss Norma Jeane each time he left the home, she
believed he was angry with her.
Norma Jeane now enjoyed the love of an extended family of in-laws. Jim’s
sister, Elyda, recalled her sister-in-law as beautiful and lady-like, and said that
she, “loved [her] from the beginning.” Norma Jeane also maintained regular
contact with Grace, the only family she had known, and expressed appreciation
for having been looked after by her former guardian.
At this point in her daughter’s development, Gladys disclosed to Grace that
Stanley Gifford was, indeed, Norma Jeane’s father. In 2011, Norma Jeane’s
eight-page letter to Grace dated September 14, 1942 was sold at auction for
$52,460 at Bonhams & Butterfields, and revealed that Grace had disclosed the
identity of her former ward’s father:

I want to thank you so much for writing mom and explaining things
about Stanley G. I’m sure she understands now…Jimmie is so swell to
me…I couldn’t have found anyone who would have treated me better.

Norma Jeane goes on to describe her new home, even drawing a meticulous
floor plan of the rooms and furniture. The next five pages list in detail each
wedding guest and their respective gift. She vividly describes one family’s gift
of a solid copper cocktail set including a serving tray, goblets, and an ice bucket.
Norma Jeane specifically mentions John Ingram, a high school teacher and good
friend of Jim’s, who also attended the wedding.
The touching postscript reveals that as Norma Jeane began her marriage at
age sixteen, she longed to establish a relationship with the man she believed was
her father. She wrote: “How can I get in touch with Stanley Gifford? Through
Consolidated films?…Which dept [sic]?” In February 1943, Norma Jeane wrote
to Grace about planning a visit to Stanley Gifford. According to Jim, Norma
Jeane called Gifford, who told her he had nothing to say, demanded that she not
call again, and abruptly hung up on her. Norma Jeane was emotionally
devastated and cried for days. It would not be her last attempt to contact the man
she believed was her father, and her steadfast desire to meet him continued long
after she had achieved stardom.
 As the year progressed, Norma Jeane and Jim moved to 14747 Archwood
Street in Van Nuys, his parents’ former house, when the elder Doughertys
relocated to North Hollywood. The couple became friendly with a young artist
and his fiancée, an accountant, and two medical students and their wives.
In the spring, Norma Jeane and Jim moved to 14223 Bessemer Street,
surrounded by farms in a rural section of the San Fernando Valley. During a
heavy rainstorm, Jim came home from work and found his wife leading a cow
up the steps of their home in an attempt to get it into the living room. Feeling
sorry for the soaked beast mooing alone in the pasture, she had tied a clothesline
around its neck and intended to shelter it in her home until the storm passed. Jim
tried to explain that the bovine would survive in rain. Norma Jeane insisted they
couldn’t leave the “poor thing” outside in the storm.
Without first telling his wife, Jim enlisted in the Merchant Marines. Norma
Jeane was furious. She begged him to make her pregnant so that she would have
a piece of him if he perished or if something bad happened to him in war. Jim
told her she was not ready to have a child and would not be able to care for it
alone if he were killed in combat. The child, he argued, might wind up in foster
care like she had.
Jim completed basic training in San Pedro. He was then stationed at the
United States Maritime Service Training Station on Catalina Island, relocated
from Port Hueneme, California, and assigned the post as a physical education
instructor for marines in training. Established by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt to train personnel for merchant ships, USMS was under the
jurisdiction of the United States Navy. Over 250,000 raw recruits spent between
two and four months on the island in boot camp, receiving a variety of extensive
physical training to master the skills necessary to serve as a fighting marine,
including navigation, deck operation, abandoning ship, manning lifeboats, using
anti-aircraft guns, and swimming through oil and fire.
The couple lived in a $35 per month two-bedroom hillside apartment with a
front porch on Metropole Avenue in Avalon, overlooking Avalon Bay. Norma
Jeane adopted a stray Collie named Muggsy and bathed her twice a week. Since
Avalon’s population consisted mostly of males enlisted in the Marines, Navy,
and Coast Guard, Norma Jeane had few girlfriends, and Jim played poker with
his cronies and attended boxing matches hosted on Friday nights at the Avalon
Theatre. He also taught Norma Jeane weightlifting skills that she would practice
for the rest of her life. They became close to two other couples living on the
military base, Mr. and Mrs. Gaddis and Mr. and Mrs. White. Jim was later
chosen as the godfather of little James Edward Gaddis.
On Saturday nights the Maritime Service Band entertained during street
dances in Avalon. Jim and Norma Jeane were good dance partners who mastered
the rather acrobatic Lindy Hop and Jitterbug, popular swing dances during the
era of Big Band Sound and fast-tempo Swing. They practiced dance routines to
“Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, “In the Mood” by the
Glenn Miller Band, and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” by the Andrews Sisters.
Mr. and Mrs. Dougherty also attended dances at Avalon Casino Ballroom,
where Gladys and Grace were belles of the ball during the jazz era. When other
men noticed Norma Jeane and cut in to dance with her, Jim felt threatened and
jealous by the attention she drew. She tried to reassure him by vowing that if he
were ever to leave her, she would jump off the Santa Monica Pier. Several
yellowed pages of a diary entry typed by Norma Jeane during her time on
Catalina and published in Fragments suggests Jim may have had an affair or, at
least, an emotional attachment to a female Norma Jeane refers to as the “other
woman ,” underlined for emphasis. She wrote that her husband “spent most of
the evening & most of the next morning” with the woman and concluded that he
was an insecure man.
Meanwhile, Berniece and Paris’ marriage remained strong. The couple left
Kentucky with their young daughter and relocated to Detroit, where Paris found
work at a Ford automobile manufacturing plant. Similarly, the Desoto plant hired
Berniece, and Paris’ sister, Niobe, worked for the Chrysler Corporation. In
response to sending a photograph at Christmas, Berniece received a letter from
Norma Jeane expressing a desire to connect with her half-sister, establish a
meaningful relationship with her, and gain a perspective on their mother’s
challenges. Norma Jeane wrote of her surprise at Berniece’s resemblance to
Gladys; although she had darker eyes, Gladys shared similar facial features with
her oldest daughter. “Aunt Ana said that she could see a slight resemblance
between you and I and that you looked more like my mother than I did,” Norma
Jeane related. “I have my mother [‘s] eyes and forehead and hairline but the rest
of me is like my dad…”
Norma Jeane went on to describe her life on Catalina and memories of
having visited the island with their mother at age seven. She recounted having
watched Gladys dance at the casino long after bedtime and having recently
returned to the casino with Jim to attend a Christmas dance held by the Maritime
Services. Norma Jeane begged Berniece and her daughter, Mona Rae, to visit
her; and even suggested they relocate to Catalina so that Paris might avoid the
draft by joining the Maritime Service. In conclusion, Norma Jeane proclaimed
having displayed a photograph of Berniece and Paris on the top of a bookshelf in
her living room and taking pride in announcing to curious guests that the portrait
was of her family. Forged through correspondence and exchange of photographs,
the relationship provided solace as Norma Jeane experienced yet another
desertion.
In the early spring of 1944, without telling his young wife, Jim requested sea
duty for the period of a year. When Norma Jeane found out, she once again felt
upset and abandoned. Wearing an expensive watch, a parting gift from Norma
Jeane, Jim boarded a cargo freighter Julia S. DuMont bound for the South
Pacific. He eventually arrived in Townsville, Australia. “She wrote me long
letters, love letters, describing her love for me, the things that would go on in our
marriage when I got home,” he recalled in the 2004 documentary film Marilyn’s
Man. “She used to write the lyrics to songs; she’d write, ‘That’s the way I feel
for you.’ They were beautiful; and sometimes it was sad, because we couldn’t be
together.” In a mournful letter penned in December, Norma Jeane may have
metaphorically described the uncertain feelings about her future when she wrote
about seeing nothing from the front porch in Avalon but a gloomy fog. She soon
left Catalina and settled with her in-laws, Ethel and Edward, in a house at 5254
Hermitage Street in North Hollywood.
During the war, eighteen million women entered the workforce and three
million worked in war plants. The term “Rosie the Riveter” appeared in a song
in 1942 and represented the flood of females in traditionally male jobs. That
same year, Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee
hired Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller to create a series of posters for the war
effort. One of the posters featured a female worker in overalls and a headscarf
flexing her bicep with the text, “We Can Do It!”
Radioplane Company hired a more feminine Norma Jeane Dougherty in
April 1944 at seventy cents per hour and assigned her to the parachute inspection
department. She worked on her feet ten hours a day on an assembly line, and
packed parachutes used in the recovery of the target drone planes. Norma Jeane
soon transferred to a position in the paint department, where she applied liquid
plastic, or “dope,” over the target planes’ cloth fuselages, and was exposed to
unhealthy chemical fumes.
By all accounts, Norma Jeane was an exemplary employee and was
accordingly promoted three times to the rate of eight-five cents per hour. She
was crowned Queen of Radioplane at a company picnic in Balboa Park, received
a gold medal award for submitting useful suggestions for the plant’s operation,
and earned a certificate of excellence, inciting jealously among her female co-
workers. “The other girls were furious when I got it and they’d bump into me
and make me spill my can of dope when I’d go for a refill,” Marilyn recalled.
“Oh my goodness, they made life miserable.”
Jim’s sister, Eldya, recalled that although many female employees of
Radioplane Company dated other men while their husbands and sweethearts
were away in war, Norma Jeane remained faithful. She spent evenings after work
and weekends with Ethel and her brothers-in-law, Marion and Tom, playing
poker and keeping her winnings in a large mason jar. During these games, she
often spoke of life in the orphanage.
On June 15, 1944, Norma Jeane composed a four-page letter to Grace. In neat
printing, she recounted working physically exhausting ten-hour shifts at
Radioplane Company, and saving to pay for a new home when the war ended.
She had been hired in a Civil Service job with the army but declined the position
upon learning she would be working with all male servicemen. There had been
too many “wolves” at Radioplane Company, Norma Jeane wrote, and she had no
intention of facing an “army” of them in the Civil Service.
Feeling lonely without Jim and living among his close-knit family, Norma
Jeane longed for her own familial relationships. She learned that the Goddards’
heavy drinking caused them marital problems and resulted in their subsequent
separation. Grace took a job in a film laboratory in Chicago, where her addiction
only worsened. The only family with which Norma Jeane felt a connection was
now breaking apart. However, her frequent correspondence with Berniece, now
age twenty-five, led to an invitation to a visit so that the sisters might meet in
person for the first time. In late 1944, eighteen-year old Norma Jeane used her
earnings from Radioplane Company to purchase a rail ticket. She boarded a train
from Union Station en route to Detroit, and planned to visit Grace in Chicago
and Doc in West Virginia.
Berniece, Paris, Niobe, and Mona Rae waited at the train station in Detroit
for a girl they had never met, with only a description of what she would be
wearing and the memory of what she looked like in photographs. Berniece
watched the passengers step off the train and thought they all looked ordinary.
“All of a sudden, there was this tall gorgeous girl,” she wrote. “All of us shouted
at once. None of the other passengers looked anything like that: tall, so pretty
and fresh, and wearing what she had described, a cobalt blue wool suit and a hat
with a heart shaped dip in the brim.”
 During the extended visit, they traveled over the Michigan border to Canada
and visited Miner’s Bird Sanctuary in Ontario. The sisters bonded over
discussing their shared knowledge of family history, putting together the pieces
of Norma Jeane’s memories of Gladys’ mental illness and Berniece’s memories
of Jasper’s drinking problem. Fortunately, Berniece was raised by a stable
stepmother who nurtured her in ways Gladys could not. Together, the young
women helped each other gain a better understanding of the family
circumstances that had impacted them in both similar and different ways.
When the visit ended, Norma Jeane traveled to Chicago to see Grace and then
on to Huntington, Virginia to see Doc and Bebe, before returning to Los
Angeles. During the Goddards’ marital separation, Norma Jeane sent money
saved from her meager earnings to Grace out of respect and gratitude for Grace
having cared for her during Gladys’ battle with mental illness.
The depth of Norma Jeane’s love and gratitude toward Grace is revealed in a
letter dated December 3, 1944. She thanked her former guardian for sending
hand-me-down dresses and reported having made alterations to one, writing, “I
just love it,” but expressed discomfort in accepting another, adding, “I just
wouldn’t feel right about it.” Since it was expensive and fit Grace so well,
Norma Jeane insisted on merely borrowing the second dress and thanked her
profusely for her generosity. In closing, Norma Jeane advised Grace to work
less, rest, and write back to her. She also promised to send more money in the
future, implying the letter contained a cash gift or check. “I love you and Daddy
so much,” Norma Jeane wrote before she added a line of X’s and O’s.
The visits, gifts of money, and letters indicate the possibility that Norma
Jeane may have forgiven the Goddards for having abandoned her. If, indeed, Doc
had molested her, Norma Jeane’s life experiences allowed a warped acceptance
of sexually abusive behavior as ordinary, and possibly a trauma bond developed
between them. A trauma bond sometimes occurs in abusive relationships
because the well-being of the child is often dependent upon the offender. Doc
was not a stranger to Norma Jeane; he was a father figure who provided
affection and caretaking during her formative years. She discontinued
communication with Doc shortly after Grace’s death in 1953. According to some
sources, Marilyn allegedly threatened Doc with legal action when he announced
plans to write a book about her, an act she might have perceived as further
exploitation.
Chapter Six
 1945

In 2012, Julien’s auctioned an eight-page letter penned by Norma Jeane to

Grace and postmarked June 4, 1945. In it, she related a pivotal event that
occurred shortly after she returned to work at Radioplane Company, where she
had not worked since January despite her foreman’s coaxing. After returning
from her trip East, Norma Jeane went back to Radioplane on the day army
photographers from the First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City descended upon
the plant to produce a military propaganda film about women’s contributions to
the war effort.
The foreman selected Norma Jeane to pose for still and motion pictures and
wondered where she had been hiding. Norma Jeane reminded him of her recent
leave of absence to visit family. In the letter, she recounted army officers asking
her for dates writing, “Naturally I refused!” She also told of Captain David
Conover’s asking her to participate in an additional modeling session for an
accompanying photographic essay for Yank, a weekly army magazine circulated
to service personnel. Conover (1919-1983) had quickly focused on Norma
Jeane’s wholesome beauty and graceful movements. When he asked her to pose
outside, she refused until he obtained written permission from her direct
supervisor.
Later, Conover called Norma Jeane at the plant to rave about her photographs
and encouraged her to model professionally. He also expressed an interest in her
posing for him again and offered to recommend her to his many contacts. “He is
awfully nice and is married and is strictly business, which is the way I like it,”
Norma Jeane wrote. “Jimmy seems to like the idea of me modeling so I’m glad
about that.” The letter documents what would become the professional birth of
Marilyn Monroe, indirectly orchestrated by the wartime efforts of actor Ronald
Reagan.
Long before he was elected fortieth President of the United States, widened
the gap between the rich and the poor, and chose to ignore AIDS as a plague
affecting a segment of the population he devalued, Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
was a mediocre contract player at Warner Brothers Studio cast in romantic
leading roles in B movies. Reagan got his first taste of political power when he
earned a majority of votes and served as President of the Screen Actors Guild.
He joined the Army Enlisted Reserve and was ordered into active duty in 1942.
Due to nearsightedness, Reagan was deemed unfit for combat and was
assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit. During the war, the US Military leased
the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City and placed Reagan in charge of producing
four hundred Army Air Force training films. Dubbed “Fort Roach,” the studio
had produced the Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy and Our Gang (or Little Rascals)
comedy short film series. Reagan was responsible for sending the team of
photographers to Radioplane Company.
Marilyn recounted the sessions with Conover to George Barris seventeen
years later. “You are a real morale booster,” Conover told her. “I’m going to take
your picture for the boys in the army to keep their morale high.” He
photographed Norma Jeane in overalls and asked if she had a sweater in her
locker. When she nodded, he instructed her to change into the sweater. Norma
Jeane was a natural in front of the lens.
“Her response to the camera was amazing,” Conover observed during the
three days he worked with her. “There was a luminous quality to her face, a
fragility combined with astonishing vibrancy.” The photographs were published
in Yank and Stars and Stripes. A model’s standard salary was about five dollars
an hour in 1945, and compared to Norma Jean’s Radioplane salary of twenty
dollars per week, what did she have to lose?
Conover showed the photographs of Norma Jeane to Potter Hueth, a
commercial photographer with a studio on Pico Boulevard, who recognized her
promise as a professional model. Norma Jeane met with Hueth, and he offered
an opportunity to model for him on speculation, promising to pay her if the
photographs were purchased by a magazine. Wearing a red sweater and plaid
skirt, Norma Jeane posed for Hueth’s camera. He also captured her seated on a
bale of hay with a Dalmatian, in jeans on a farm, and in a bikini standing on a
cliff overlooking the Pacific Coast.
The connection to Hueth led to Norma Jeane’s modeling work with William
Carroll of the Ansco Color film processing and printing service in Los Angeles,
for a counter display. When Carroll called her for the job, Norma Jeane
suspiciously inquired how he acquired her phone number. “She was concerned
about my level of professionalism,” Carroll told Michelle Morgan, “to eliminate
potential trouble of working with an amateur photographer who is just trying to
meet a pretty girl.” After she consented to pose at the beach, Norma Jeane
advised Carroll against requiring her to wear a bathing suit so as not to offend
his clients.
On June 4, 1945, Norma Jeane wrote a letter to Berniece following a visit
from Jim and only briefly mentioned modeling. Her focus was on deepening
their relationship:

I do hope some time you could all move out here to live. Berniece, I
think of you so much and wish we could be together at least where we
could see one another often. For dear I do love you very dearly.

In August, Hueth sent his photographs of Norma Jeane to Emmeline Snively

(1909-1975), the prim and proper owner of the Blue Book Modeling Agency.
Snively operated the agency with her elderly mother, and their newspaper ads
targeted career girls and college girls interested in fashion modeling. They also
advertised a three-month course on voice coaching, personal grooming, and
wardrobe planning. The mother and daughter team granted attractive young
women the opportunity to purchase a portrait in the agency’s catalogue for
prospective modeling work. Recognizing raw beauty, Snively mailed Norma
Jeane a brochure.
Upon receiving the literature, Norma Jeane scheduled an appointment with
Miss Snively and ironed a white sharkskin dress for an interview at the Blue
Book Modeling Agency. “[She] looked like the girl next door, and I thought I
could make her into something quite marketable in a short amount of time,”
Snively remembered shortly after Marilyn’s death. “She was very beautiful in a
clean-cut, American, wholesome way.” Of course, there was the problem of
paying $100 for the three-month course, but Snively assured Norma Jeane that
she could enroll immediately, and her modeling fees could be conveniently
garnished until the debt was paid.
In early August, Norma Jeane paid $25 for her full-color picture’s inclusion
in Snively’s catalogue of about twenty girls, and was warmly welcomed to the
Blue Book Modeling Agency. On an index card, Snively recorded Norma Jeane
as a size twelve, five foot-six inches in height, 120 pounds, and measuring 36-
24-34. She also described her as “curly haired blue-eyed teeth perfect.” At the
bottom of the card, the woman wrote, “Dance little sing.” Norma Jeane arrived
alone to Snively’s classes while the other models’ mothers accompanied them.
The instructors noted she never missed a class or repeated a mistake. “She
smiled too high,” Snively recalled, “and it made deep lines around her nose. We
taught her how to bring her smile down and show her lower teeth.”
Snively brokered Norma Jeane’s first assignment as a hostess at Holga Steel
Company’s aluminum exhibit in September in the Los Angeles Home Show at
the Pan Pacific Auditorium. Norma Jeane received ten dollars a day for ten days’
work and earned enough money to pay for her modeling course. The second
assignment was less successful. Snively sent Norma Jeane with several other
young women to Malibu Beach for a photographic assignment to model sports
clothes for the catalogue of Montgomery Ward, a national department store
chain. After two days, she was sent home. “They would not tell me why,”
Marilyn recalled. “I was very upset, here I was the only model in the group
fired.”
“It’s just that you have more than the usual amount of sex appeal,” Snively
gently explained as she debriefed the inexperienced Norma Jeane after the
rejection. However, Snively added, this was also a blessing. She pinpointed her
young protégé’s niche as a magazine cover-girl and warned her never to pose
“undraped,” as it would ruin her modeling career and eliminate any chance of a
transition to motion pictures. While aspiring to cover-girl status, Norma Jeane
found consistent work as a model for pin-up or cheesecake photography; terms
for pictures of scantily-clad, attractive models, typically wearing bathing suits or
tight sweaters and intended for men to post on their walls. The models were
often depicted as innocent girls in provocative attire or poses, but pin-up
photography of the World War II era never involved nudity.
Successful film actresses such as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable achieved
pin-up status with iconic photographs that resonated with American servicemen
and defined the two as “Love Goddesses.” At the start of the war, Life
photographer Bob Landry’s 1941 shot of Hayworth crossed the Atlantic and was
displayed in the barracks of American soldiers stationed in Europe. Perched on a
bed in a satin and lace negligee, Hayworth tilted her head, her long hair
cascading over her shoulder, and looked outside the camera’s frame toward an
unknown admirer. Grable’s pose by Twentieth Century-Fox Studio’s
photographer, Frank Powolny, emphasizing her famously shapely legs, became
the best-selling mass produced pin-up during the war.
It was a long, arduous road to magazine covers. An early modeling
assignment involved Norma Jeane posing with a turkey beside a haystack in a
Thanksgiving theme. The photographer instructed her to remove her wedding
ring and she misplaced it temporarily, foreshadowing the loss of her marriage
over this new career. Snively also sent her on an assignment with instructions to
wear a bathing suit, but when Norma Jeane arrived, the photographer explained
the shots would be used in the marketing of toothpaste. Naively unaware of the
link between sex and advertising, she questioned the need to wear a bathing suit
for toothpaste sales.
Norma Jeane’s first major commercial assignment was with Raphael Wolff, a
photographer contracted to shoot Rayve shampoo print advertisements.
Coincidently, Wolff was Doc Goddard’s friend. There was only one caveat to the
job: Rayve’s model must be blonde. Snively encouraged Norma Jeane to dye her
brown hair not only to please the client, but also because blondes were in vogue
and more versatile in modeling clothes of varying hues. Norma Jeane complied
without question.
Snively scheduled an appointment for her popular model directly across from
the Ambassador Hotel at Frank and Joseph’s Salon, where Rita Hayworth, Ingrid
Bergman, and wrestler Gorgeous George received services. Norma Jeane was
placed in the competent hands of tinting expert, Sylvia Barnhart (1919-2010).
Over the course of several months, Barnhart straightened and gradually
lightened Norma Jeane’s brown, curly hair to a golden honey blonde. The two
women became friends, and Barnhart engaged Norma Jeane as her hair model in
Los Angeles shows, styling her newly blonde tresses in upswept styles of the
era.
During this period, Norma Jeane participated with eight other models from
the Blue Book Agency in a short film shot poolside at the Ambassador. Of all the
girls, Norma Jeane is the radiant standout in close-ups, and as she models a
white bikini swimsuit and a blue sundress. In addition to being photogenic,
Norma Jeane was enormously self-critical and a perfectionist. However, at this
point in her career, she channeled this energy in evaluating her own work by
scrutinizing each of her poses. She asked photographers to identify any fault and
implemented their feedback in correcting past mistakes and improving her craft.
“Girls ask me all the time how they can be like Marilyn Monroe,” Emmeline
Snively said after the death of her greatest discovery. “And I tell them, if they
showed one tenth of the hard work and courage that that girl had, they’d be on
their way. But there will never be another like her.”

During the end of World War II, the United States’ secret Manhattan Project
developed nuclear weapons for use against Japan. The American B-29 bomber,
Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb, “Little Boy”, on the city of Hiroshima at
8:15 AM on August 6, destroying houses and buildings within a one and one-
half mile radius. The total death toll was about two hundred thousand. Three
days later, after the Japanese government ignored President Truman’s second
cautionary demand that they surrender, the B-29 Bockscar dropped “Fat Man”
on Nagasaki, causing eighty-seven thousand deaths and destroying
approximately seventy percent of the city’s industrial center. On August 15, the
Japanese government surrendered to the United States and its allies. The war
soon ended, and Jim was on his way home.
In August, Gladys was released from Agnew State Hospital and placed with
Della’s sister, Dora Hogan Graham, in Oregon. She became preoccupied with
Christian Science, encouraged by Ana Lower, and wore white uniforms,
stockings, and shoes like those worn by the nurses who had tended to her over
the last decade.
Having longed for a relationship with her mother, Berniece was thrilled by
news of the release. Only too familiar with Gladys’ limitations, Norma Jeane’s
expectations were more realistic. She had long accepted that Gladys’ psychiatric
illness prevented her from fulfilling the role of a nurturing mother. Much to her
younger daughter’s dismay, Gladys had been hired in a convalescent home as an
aide with direct resident care. How could she possibly care of others when she
had been unable to care for herself and her children?
Validated by virtual strangers as a beautiful woman and promising model,
Norma Jeane now sought approval from the one person who had yet to lay claim
to her; her father. Undoubtedly, she had many fantasies about the moment he
would come into her life. At the orphanage, Norma Jeane longed for the day
when he would arrive and take her home. She endlessly daydreamed about him
caring for her if she fell ill. Lying in bed at night, Norma Jeane prayed her father
would rescue her from yet another placement and protect her from “Daddy” Doc
and Cousin Jack.
After researching his whereabouts, Norma Jeane summoned her courage and
made a telephone call to Stanley Gifford. “This is Norma Jeane,” she announced
in a breathless voice, her heart pounding. “I’m Gladys’ daughter.” Allegedly,
Gifford told her not to call again and hung up the phone. Devastated, Norma
Jeane cried for days, but despite this emotional wound, she would not give up.
She was convinced Gifford was her father and that she could make him love her.
Over the course of the next few years, after Norma Jeane achieved stardom as
Marilyn Monroe and her name became a household word, she hoped her fame
would earn his acknowledgment and soften his heart. Marilyn Monroe made
several more attempts to call Mr. Gifford as strange men across the nation
contacted her with claims of being her real father.
Recovering from Gifford’s rejection, Norma Jeane relished a corrective
experience when the photographers for the Montgomery Ward department store
found her suitable to pose for their fashion catalogue, hiring her for several days
of work. She also participated in the Hollywood Fashion Show over the course
of four days. Equally notable, Norma Jeane posed for a variety of print
advertisements and brochures for the Douglas Airlines’ luxury DC-6 commercial
passenger airplane. One of the ads, released in 1946, was published nationally in
Time.
Ethel Dougherty made no secret of her disapproval of her daughter-in-law’s
career, so Norma Jeane returned to Ana Lower’s house on Nebraska Avenue and
left Muggsy behind. Aunt Ana supported Norma Jeane’s work and remained a
bottomless well of unconditional love. “There was real connection between us
because she understood me somehow,” Marilyn later wrote. “She knew what it
was like to be young. And I loved her dearly…I adored her.”
In the fall, photographer Andre de Dienes (1913-1985) contacted the Blue
Book Modeling Agency in search of a model. Miss Snively suggested several
young girls she represented, including Norma Jeane. De Dienes failed to
mention that he desired a model to pose nude; a professional death-stroke,
according to Snively.
As a boy in his native Transylvania, de Dienes befriended a church’s mystical
bell-ringer who lived in the bell tower surrounded by countless books. The
elderly man told the boy that someday when he, too, became a man, he would
find fortune in the land of the setting sun. As the boy intently listened, the man
opened a book of illuminations and pointed to “MM” printed on a page and
prophesized the two letters would play an important role in the boy’s life.
At age fifteen, de Dienes’ mother took her own life. He left home and
traveled mostly on foot throughout Europe. Four years later, de Dienes arrived in
Paris to study art, purchased a camera, and sold his photographs to the
Associated Press. Captain Molyneux, a Parisian couturier, encouraged de Dienes
to become a fashion photographer. With assistance from the editor of Esquire
magazine, de Dienes immigrated to the United States in 1938 and worked for
Vogue, Life, and Montgomery Ward Department Stores. Encumbered by fashion
photography, de Dienes moved to Los Angeles in 1944 and pursued his passion
for realism by photographing nudes, landscapes, and Native American subjects.
His vast experience photographing celebrities made him reputable and safe in
the eyes of Norma Jeane.
Familiar with the women of Paris, the worldly European photographer found
Norma Jeane an “enchanting” but innocent schoolgirl. In the first session, de
Dienes photographed her barefoot on a stretch of Highway 101 north of
Hollywood. Norma Jeane wore braided pigtails, a simple blouse, and a skirt with
a pattern of small stars. In the early morning hours, she sat on the centerline as a
few cars passed. De Dienes also photographed Norma Jeane on a farm. She
posed innocently in a pinafore crouched beside a lamb, and more alluringly in
jeans and a red shirt tied under her breasts, her midriff bare.
A few days later, Norma Jeane frolicked on the beach in a red sweater,
checkered slacks, and a bow in her curly hair for the European’s camera. Her
movements were spontaneous and joyous. She drew a heart in the sand,
expressing gratitude for de Dienes offering her work requiring less pressure than
a formal fashion sitting. Child-woman Norma Jeane reminded de Dienes of his
previous work with the curly red-haired child actress Shirley Temple (1928 —
2014), the pint-sized reigning queen of Twentieth Century-Fox Studios.
Impressed with Norma Jeane’s photogenic quality, he contacted Emmeline
Snively and requested her again for extended location work in Nevada and
Washington State.
Although the assignment was highly lucrative, Norma Jeane initially refused
traveling out of state with a photographer. Expensive repairs on her Ford coupe
suddenly changed her mind, but first, Norma Jeane insisted, de Dienes had to
meet Ana Lower and ask her permission. The elderly woman invited him to
lunch, and Norma Jeane recited grace over the meal. De Dienes won Ana’s
confidence by recounting the story of having photographed Swedish-born actress
Ingrid Bergman in a wheat field. If the quintessential Hollywood “good girl”
who co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca trusted the photographer
with the charming foreign accent, so could Ana.
De Dienes collected Marilyn in his Buick and stopped for photographs on
Zuma Beach, near Malibu, and in San Juan Capistrano. Norma Jeane had never
experienced the attention of so passionate a photographer. He was immensely
attracted to her and wished to both shoot her nude and seduce her, not
necessarily in that order. Norma Jeane’s aloofness intrigued de Dienes, and her
husband’s absence only intensified his arousal. They traveled north through the
Mojave Desert, stopping in Furnace Creek in Death Valley, and then north to
Yosemite Valley and Nevada. When they stayed overnight in hotels and cabins,
Norma Jeane insisted on separate rooms.
When Norma Jeane posed in the snow, her hands turned purple, reminding de
Dienes of the color of a turkey’s foot. From that point, he gave her the nickname
“Turkey Foot.” Similarly, Norma Jeane playfully dubbed him “W. W.” for Worry
Wart, due his cautious nature and constant apprehension over the condition of his
vehicle during the road trip. As de Dienes and Marilyn approached Mount Hood,
Oregon, she requested that he take a detour to Portland to see her mother. De
Dienes remembered Gladys living in a depressing room on the top floor of an
old hotel and observed a lack of warmth between mother and daughter. When
Norma Jeane kissed Gladys, her mother remained rigid. To de Dienes, the
woman appeared downright apathetic, but flat affect is common with
Schizophrenia. Norma Jeane acted cheerful as she shared photographs taken by
Andre and presented gifts such as a scarf, perfume, and chocolates. Gladys
appeared overwhelmed, fell into silence, and buried her face in her hands.
When the couple left Gladys, Norma Jeane fell into a depression. According
to his memoir, arriving in Mount Hood late in the evening, de Dienes pulled his
Buick into a lodge that had only one vacancy with a double bed. He claimed that
Norma Jeane “surrendered” herself to him sexually and cried afterward. If he is
to be believed, de Dienes appears to have taken advantage of her vulnerability.
He wrote of having thought he was meant to marry Norma Jeane because of the
bell-ringer’s prediction of MM in his life. However, Norma Jeane had not yet
changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. The story is likely apocryphal, though.
Their trip was cut short by the news of the sudden and accidental death of a dear
friend of de Dienes’.
Early the next year, Norma Jeane sent de Dienes a Christian Science book in
which she underlined the passage on the frontispiece, “Divine love always has
met and will meet every human need.” Clearly, her feelings for him were
nonsexual. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli, former model Jacquelyn Cooper
asked Norma Jeane if she were having affairs with photographers. Aghast at the
very idea, Norma Jeane vehemently denied any affair and replied, “What do you
think I am?”
At Christmas, Jim arrived in San Francisco on a two-week furlough and took
a train to Glendale, where Norma Jeane waited for him. She brought along a
black lace nightgown in her luggage. The couple’s greeting was amorous, and
they swiftly checked into a motor inn, rarely leaving the room. In uniform, Jim
took her out dancing at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel,
a hotspot for movie stars and the site of several Academy Award Ceremonies.
Jim did not show much enthusiasm when he leafed through Andre de Dienes’
photographs of his wife but appreciated her $200 in earnings, which paid for the
expensive repairs to his Ford coupe.
Jim drove Norma Jeane back to Oregon for a holiday visit with Gladys.
Decades later, he remembered Gladys living at Great-Aunt Dora’s home. “She
didn’t seem to connect with me at all,” he said. “Her mind was out in left field
somewhere.” When Jim looked at Gladys’ still pretty face and figure, he could
almost see what Norma Jeane was going to look like when she reached her
mother’s age.
Wearing a nurse’s uniform, Gladys sat upright in a wicker chair during the
visit as Norma Jeane kneeled at her feet and held her hand. When Gladys
whispered a desire to return home with her daughter to Los Angeles, Norma
Jeane changed the subject by talking about her recent visit to Berniece. On the
drive home, Jim gave Norma Jeane an ultimatum about her modeling career; he
disliked it and would not support it. By his next leave in the spring, Jim expected
his wife to give up her career and start a family.


Part II
Marilyn Monroe
Chapter Seven
 1946

After giving his wife a deadline to end her modeling career, Jim returned to
the Merchant Marines, stationed in the South Pacific after the Allies’ victory.
Norma Jeane boldly continued working. Artist and illustrator Earl Moran (1893-
1984) paid Norma Jeane $10 an hour to pose for cheesecake snapshots.
Afterward, he used them as references to create pastel drawings for the Brown
and Bigelow Company’s pin-up calendars, and Norma Jeane liked the way her
legs were lengthened in the renderings. At Heritage Auctions in February 2011,
heated bidding drove the final price of Moran’s effervescent color painting of
Norma Jeane to $83,650, a record price for a Moran work.
On March 6, Norma Jeane reported to Joseph Jasgur (1919-2009), a
photographer who supplemented his passion by taking crime scene photos. He
thought she looked hungry and fed her hamburgers before getting down to work.
He took pictures of Norma Jeane in the alley behind his studio near the corner of
Beverly Boulevard and Poinsettia Place. Less than a week later, Jasgur
photographed her at Mount Lee above the famous Hollywood sign and at Zuma
Beach with cast of a local theatrical group. In one of the photographs of Norma
Jeane in a striped bikini on the beach, Jasgur claimed to have captured a sixth toe
on her left foot. The myth of the extra digit was later dispelled as an optical
illusion created by a clump of sand near the side of her foot.
Seeking another modeling job, Norma Jeane entered Bernard of Hollywood
Studios on Sunset Boulevard. “While nature has been generous to her figure,”
Bruno Bernard (1912-1987) wrote in his journal, “her face is just like that of any
pretty girl her age — very much the girl next door — with the exception of her
translucent skin, her waiflike innocence, the helplessness underneath.” Born in
Berlin, Bernard worked as a photographer and earned a doctorate degree in
criminal psychology from Kiel University. His name appeared on the Gestapo’s
blacklist for involvement in a Jewish youth organization, causing him to flee to
the United States in 1937 and open a studio.
“I’ve become her big brother and father confessor,” Bernard wrote of his
friendship with Norma Jeane as he photographed her. “We are on the same
wavelength. She seems not promiscuous, but a child-woman in search of limitless
love and protection as a shield for her vulnerability. She has confessed to me
that she has been looking for some human being with whom she could discuss
her hopes and problems; one who would not take advantage of her.” Norma
Jeane felt safe and understood by Bernard, whose sensitivity and background in
psychology made him a compassionate confidante.
Emmeline Snively recognized Norma Jeane’s potential for a motion picture
career and in March advised her to sign a contract with the National Concerts
Artists Corporation of Helen Ainsworth. Harry Lipton (1920-2002), a member of
the corporation, became her agent. Firmly believing Norma Jeane could succeed
more easily as an unmarried model, he advised her to divorce Jim Dougherty.
Grace echoed a similar opinion about marriage obstructing Norma Jeane’s
chances of being an actress.
Gladys saved the money Norma Jeane mailed to her in Portland for relocation
back to Los Angeles, and bought a one-way train ticket. For the first time since
their ill-fated experiences in the apartment on Afton Place and in the bungalow
on Highland Avenue, mother and daughter lived together in the apartment above
Ana Lower’s on Nebraska Avenue; only this time, Norma Jeane was the
caregiver. When Jim returned on leave in the spring, he found his mother-in-law
incapable of taking responsibility for herself and his wife stretched beyond her
capabilities to serve as the fulltime caregiver of a woman with a chronic mental
illness.
Jim also observed Gladys’ inexpressive, flat affect and emotional detachment.
Under these conditions, the young couple’s time together was severely restricted.
In a letter to Jim dated March 14, Norma Jeane responded to a note he had left
for her to read. The content suggests he might have threatened to reduce or
withhold financial support if she continued modeling. She stated that Jim left her
“no choice” but to “carry on” the best she could and wished him happiness and
prosperity in all his endeavors. “I’ll try to be as happy as I can under the
circumstances,” Norma Jeane wrote before closing with, “Always lovingly, your
wife.”
On March 16, Norma Jeane and Jim dined at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub
in the Ambassador Hotel and had their picture taken while holding hands by the
nightclub’s photographer. Wearing a stylish hat and an orchid corsage, Norma
Jeane beams into the camera lens, and Jim gazes upon her with a combination of
adoration and melancholic longing. Jim returned to sea without seeing his wife
again during the leave.
One of the black and white pictures taken by Andre de Dienes of Norma
Jeane in a pinafore with a lamb during the previous year made the cover of The
Family Circle in April. Along with three other models posing as airline
passengers, she had also appeared on the full-color cover of the January issue of
Douglas Airview, published monthly by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Working
in the spring under the name Jean Norman, Norma Jeane had become one of
California’s most popular cover models. She appeared on the cover of thirty-
three magazines, including Glamorous Models, Laff, See, Sir, Swank, Parade,
Peek, Personal Romances, Pageant, and U.S. Camera. To commemorate her
achievement, she was professionally photographed wearing a strapless bikini
with four of her cover magazines ensconcing her body, appearing as if she were
only wearing the magazines.
The newfound success offered the promise of a lucrative modeling career and
a bridge to motion pictures, and so Norma Jeane made the painful decision to
divorce Jim Dougherty. Divorce for residents of California entailed moving to
nearby Nevada to establish residency to take advantage of the state’s liberal
divorce laws. Willing to facilitate Norma Jeane’s divorce and entry into the
movies, Grace Goddard contacted an aunt in Las Vegas, Minnie Willette, and
arranged for her to house Norma Jeane beginning in May.
Standing on the porch of Minnie’s home at 604 South Third Street, Norma
Jeane met neighbor Bill Purcell. Having returned from war, he lived with his
parents and worked at a service station while saving money to enroll in college.
They went on dinner dates, sailed in a nearby lake, and attended the cinema, but
remained cautious about further intimacy. While Bill’s goal was to earn a college
degree, Norma Jeane’s eye was on a modeling and acting career. Neither wanted
to start a relationship but enjoyed each other’s company. Seated across from each
other in diners, the couple passed affectionate notes written on paper napkins
back and forth to one another. Bill’s parents frequently invited Norma Jeane to
dinner at their home, and his mother took a particular liking to her, finding her
sweet and intelligent.
Three months of residency in Las Vegas passed, and Norma Jeane’s attorney
filed her petition for divorce. “My husband didn’t support me, and he objected to
my working, criticized me for it, and he also had a bad temper and would fly into
rages,” noted the legal document. “He left me on three different occasions, and
he criticized me and embarrassed me in front of my friends, and he didn’t try to
make a home for me.” Jim returned to California, and Ana Lower gave him
Minnie’s phone number in Las Vegas, but Norma Jeane could not take his call.
She had been admitted to Las Vegas General Hospital for an infection caused by
the extraction of a wisdom tooth complicated by a case of the measles.
In early June, recovered and back in Los Angeles, Norma Jeane moved into
the Hollywood Studio Club at 1215 North Lodi Place, a chaperoned dormitory
for young women involved in all aspects of the motion picture business.
Operated by the Young Women’s Christian Association, the facility posted strict
rules and strictly forbade male visitors beyond the reception lobby. Designed in
Italian Renaissance Revival style by architect Julia Morgan, who also designed
the mammoth Hearst Castle in San Simeon, the residence included a restaurant
and patio with fountains and tropical shrubs. Similar to a sorority, the Studio
Club offered classes, hosted teas and fashion shows, and provided two meals per
day.
Norma Jeane shared room 307 for $12 per week. Roommate Clarice Evans,
who studied opera, believed Norma Jeane’s personal collection of over two
hundred books could have allowed her to start a lending library. Evans also
noted her shy roommate was a devout follower of Christian Science, who
frequently attended services and conferred with a faith healer. Norma Jeane
regularly sent money to Gladys, who would return to Portland in the fall, and
opened charge accounts at Pickwick Bookshop, Martindale’s Book Store, Marian
Hunter’s Book Shop, and I. Magnin’s.
Basically a loner, Norma Jeane made only one friend in the sorority-like
atmosphere of communal living, Eleanor Parker (1922 — 2013), who earned an
Oscar nomination for Caged (1950) and had the featured role of the Baroness in
The Sound of Music (1965). Norma Jeane had entered a powder room and froze
upon hearing a group of girls criticizing her graces and clothing. Eleanor’s voice
rose in defense, chastising them for passing judgment on someone they did not
know well: “If you actually knew her, you’d realize that most of the things said
about her are false.” This kindness gave Norma Jeane the courage to enter the
room, and the defender greeted her warmly and complimented her appearance.
Holding back tears, Norma Jeane thanked Eleanor and waited for the others to
leave before expressing an uncertainty of how to extend her appreciation.
Eleanor tenderly suggested Norma Jeane become her friend, and that would be
enough. Their friendship would be cut short by Parker’s marriage and relocation
later that year.
Emmeline Snively read in the newspaper that Howard Hughes, an eccentric
billionaire business magnet, investor, aviator, film producer and director, had
crashed his private airplane on the golf course at Hillcrest Country Club in
Beverly Hills, and lay recovering in a body cast at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital.
Wishing to launch her most promising model into the film industry, Snively
chose to capitalize on Hughes’ unfortunate condition as the thrust. She fabricated
a short account of the bored and nearly immobile billionaire leafing through pin-
up magazines in his hospital room, noticing beautiful model Norma Jeane
Dougherty, and offering her a screen test. Snively mailed the piece to gossip
columnists in Los Angeles and waited. Hughes (1905-1976) had invested in big-
budget films such as Hell’s Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw
(1943). As an innovative aviator, he set multiple world air-speed records, built
the “Spruce Goose” aircraft, and acquired Trans World Airlines.
On July 29, Hedda Hopper’s column reported on the photograph of a local
cover girl’s effect on Hughes. “He had immediately given some instructions to
sign her contract for movies,” the gossip maven wrote. “Her name is Norma
Jeane Dougherty, a model.” As Hopper took the bait, Snively called Helen
“Cupid” Ainsworth (1901-1961), a talent agent and manager of the West Coast
office of National Concert Artists Corporation, to peddle Norma Jeane to another
studio. Ainsworth called Ben Lyon and enticed him to interview the girl who
sparked Hughes’ interest. On July 17, Norma Jeane groomed, applied makeup,
and donned a white dress Aunt Ana had washed and ironed. She drove Jim’s
Ford coupe to the front gate of Twentieth Century-Fox on Pico Boulevard, where
the guard directed her to Lyon’s office in the Administration Building.
According to Maurice Zolotow, Cupid Ainsworth also attended the meeting.
Ben Lyon (1901-1979), formerly a film actor whose most memorable
performance was as a heroic World War I aviator in Hell’s Angels (1930), Jean
Harlow’ s breakout film. He asked Norma Jeane to read lines from Judy
Holliday’s character in Winged Victory (1944), a war drama. Marilyn recalled
their first meeting to Georges Belmont: “He said I looked so fresh and young. He
even said, ‘I’ve only discovered one other person, and that was Jean Harlow.’
Imagine that, my favorite actress!”
Lyon’s enthusiasm motivated him to arrange for a screen test two days later
with assistance from four of Fox’s best technicians. The first was
cinematographer Leon Shamroy (1901-1974), winner of Academy Awards for
The Black Swan (1942), Wilson (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and
Cleopatra (1963). The second was make-up artist Allan “Whitey” Snyder (1914-
1994), requested by leading actresses such as Betty Grable, Gene Tierney, Linda
Darnell, and Alice Faye. Director Walter Lang (1896-1972) was third. He had
directed several Fox musicals starring Grable and Faye. The last was director of
wardrobe, Charles LeMaire (1897-1985), who had designed costumes for
George White Scandals (1945) and Ziegfeld Follies (1946). LeMaire persuaded
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to institute a costume design
Oscar and ultimately earned four of its awards, in addition to twelve
nominations.
Unauthorized by the production chief, Lyon tested Norma Jeane in
Technicolor on the set of Betty Grable’s current musical, Mother Wore Tights.
Atypical of screen tests, Norma Jeane’s was silent, and she was not required to
perform a scene with another actor. Therefore, she needed to project her charm
within twelve minutes without the assistance of lines. On July 19 at five thirty in
the morning, Norma Jeane arrived on the set of Mother Wore Tights in a flared,
crinoline gown selected by LeMaire. Allan Snyder had professionally
transformed her with his cosmetics. A crew of technicians arranged the lighting.
Her nervousness ended when Shamroy rolled the camera. According to
witnesses, a metamorphosis took place. Norma Jeane was poised, radiant, and
self-confident. Lang provided simple instructions for her action and called for
silence on the set. She silently prayed for her career to start and began the scene.
Norma Jeane elegantly strode up and down the set, sat on a stool, lit a
cigarette, and crushed it in an ashtray. Then she rose and walked to a window.
The test has never been released and its existence remains unknown. “I got a
cold chill,” Shamroy told Maurice Zolotow. “This girl had some-thing I hadn’t
seen since silent pictures. She had a kind of fantastic beauty like Gloria
Swanson, when a movie star had to look beautiful, and she got sex on a piece of
film like Jean Harlow. She was showing us she could sell emotions in pictures.”
On film, Norma Jeane was interesting and projected “flesh impact.” With
expressive eyes and the ability to attract the attention of the audience, she
reminded the cinematographer of the radiant screen stars he recorded on
celluloid when his career began in 1925.
When Darryl F. Zanuck attended the screenings at the end of the workday,
Norma Jeane’s test was among the scenes projected for his review. Preferring
brunettes and having the profitable blond starring in Mother Wore Tights already
on his payroll, Zanuck was less than enthusiastic, but trusting Lyon and
Shamroy’s expertise, he agreed to a contract at a small risk to the studio. Helen
Ainsworth sent Harry Lipton to Fox to facilitate the simple agreement. For the
first six months, Norma Jeane would earn $75 a week. This increased to $100
the following six months, $125 at the first year, and $150 at eighteen months.
Fox guaranteed a salary whether or not she worked, but retained the option of
discontinuing the agreement six months after the contract’s start date. Ben Lyon
called Norma Jeane to his office to choose her professional pseudonym. He
suggested Carol Lind, but she preferred the name Monroe and its connection to
her mother, Gladys, and maternal grandmother, Della. Like her idol, Jean
Harlow (formerly Harlean Carpenter), Norma Jeane selected her mother’s
maiden name as a professional surname.
At first Lyon and Norma Jeane considered Jean Monroe, but she disliked its
sound. She leaned toward changing her first name, perhaps more symbolic of her
identity, and shared her childhood story with him. Lyon recommended the name
Marilyn and told Norma Jeane that she reminded him of the actress Marilyn
Miller (1898-1936), a Broadway musical star of the 1920s. Lyon had co-starred
with Miller in Her Majesty, Love (1931), and they were engaged before he
married film actress Bebe Daniels. Like Norma Jeane, Marilyn Miller had been
abandoned by her father. “Marilyn” had been the most popular American female
name since the First World War, precisely because of Marilyn Miller.
Marilyn sounded better with Monroe, Lyon advised, pointing out the sound
and alliteration. It was agreed. Norma Jeane Baker became Marilyn Monroe.
Coincidently, Marilyn Monroe became Marilyn Miller upon her marriage to
Arthur Miller in 1956. “I owe a lot to Ben Lyon,” she would tell Georges
Belmont in 1960. “He was the first to believe in me. He even gave me my
name.”
Not yet age twenty-one, Norma Jeane, although a married woman, was still
considered a minor and required a legal guardian’s authorization to work. Grace,
who had returned to Los Angeles, accompanied her to the studio and signed the
contract on the line specified for “Foster Legal Guardian.” It was a significant
achievement for both women. Grace had fostered Norma Jeane’s far-fetched
fantasy of becoming a movie star like Jean Harlow, and now her signature on a
piece of paper aided the dream’s fruition.
A week after the studio management countersigned the agreement, Variety
announced Marilyn Monroe as a new contract player at Fox. Her future at the
studio depended less on talent and more upon her ability to interest the ninety
employees of its press and publicity department. Their job was to arouse public
interest in their contract players by releasing stories in newspapers and
magazines that might ignite the attention of influential columnists such as Walter
Winchell, Sidney Skolsky, Hedda Hopper, and Louella Parsons. Fox sent
Marilyn on her first assignment, a radio interview with a few promising starlets
at station KFI at the Ambassador Hotel.
Aboard a ship sailing on the Yangtze River en route to Shanghai, Jim
Dougherty received a letter from attorney C. Norman Cornwall in Nevada
informing him of Norma Jeane’s bid for a divorce. At the next port, he sent a
telegram to a Los Angeles government office with orders to suspend her monthly
payments from his military salary. In an interview with United Press
International in 1984, Jim recounted taking another leave to persuade his wife
from divorcing. The studio would not employ a young married woman who
could become pregnant, Marilyn explained, and proposed their staying together
unmarried. Jim could not agree to this arrangement and let her go.
During the summer, Berniece took her young daughter, Mona Rae, to Los
Angeles to visit Gladys at Ana Lower’s home. Marilyn joined her mother, Grace,
and Ana at the Burbank Airport to welcome them. During the reunion, the group
toured Chinatown, Beverly Hills, the Farmer’s Market, Grauman’s Chinese
Theatre, the Hollywood Bowl, and reproductions of Michelangelo’s sculptures at
Forrest Lawn Cemetery. Gladys and her daughters sunbathed at Santa Monica
Beach and waded in the Pacific Ocean. Grace escorted the half-sisters on a tour
of their family history in Los Angeles, driving them to a home hand-built of
stone by Otis Monroe, and to Gladys’ former house on Highland Avenue,
foreclosed by the bank after her first psychiatric hospitalization.
On September 13, Marilyn returned to Nevada for a final court hearing in Las
Vegas County, but Jim did not attend. Judge Clark A. S. Henderson granted her a
divorce and Jim’s 1935 Ford coupe. Back in Los Angeles as a divorced woman
of twenty, Marilyn celebrated the next phase in her life at a local Chinese
restaurant with her mother, half-sister, niece, Grace, Ana Lower, and Enid
Knebelkamp, Grace’s sister with whom Norma Jeane had briefly lived.
Conversation focused on Norma Jeane’s new name, an homage to Gladys, and
she enjoyed recounting Leon Shamroy’s assessment. “Baby,” he had said, “you
certainly have got it!”

All but eight of Marilyn Monroe’s thirty films were crafted by Twentieth
Century-Fox Studios at 10201 West Pico Boulevard in Beverly Hills. When the
ink that signed her first contract was still wet, Fox was one of the dominant of
the “Big Five” motion picture making facilities in Los Angeles, behind Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer and ahead of RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Warner
Brothers.
Hungarian-American theater chain pioneer William Fox (1879-1952) formed
Fox Film Corporation when he merged two companies he had established in
1913: Greater New York Film Rental, a distribution firm, and Fox Office
Attractions Company, a production company. Fox was more of an entrepreneur
than a showman, and he concentrated on acquiring and building theaters rather
than producing motion pictures. The company’s first studio was located in Fort
Lee, New Jersey, where many early film studios were based at the beginning of
the Twentieth Century.
Joseph Schenck, the former president of United Artists, Darryl F. Zanuck,
former head of production at Warner Brothers, William Goetz from Fox Films,
and Raymond Griffith (a former actor who also produced short films for other
studios) founded Twentieth Century Pictures in 1933. Assisted by Spyros
Skouras of the Fox Film Corporation, Schenck and Zanuck merged with the
now-failing goliath to form Twentieth Century-Fox in 1935. Joseph Schenck
served as chairman and chief executive officer of the new corporation while
Zanuck was vice president in charge of production. Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-
1979) was the son of an alcoholic night clerk of the only hotel in Wahoo,
Nebraska and the hotel owner’s promiscuous daughter.
After serving in World War II, Zanuck returned to Twentieth Century-Fox,
where Spyros Skouras (1893-1971) succeeded Schenck as studio president in
1943. Skouras and Zanuck partnered to produce serious films during the post
war era such as Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), depicting anti-Semitism, and
The Snake Pit (1948), graphically addressing mental illness. Seriousness aside,
Zanuck allegedly employed the notorious “casting couch” as a way to interview
prospective female contract players, and was a notorious womanizer. Allegedly,
he was “in conference with a succession of young starlets in his sixty-foot long
office in the studio’s administration building between the hours of four and five
o’clock in the afternoon. By all accounts, Marilyn Monroe never attended
“conferences” with Zanuck. Until the end of her life, they shared a strong mutual
disdain.
During the period known as the Golden Age of Hollywood (roughly 1927-
1960), the Studio System controlled creative talent throughout the industry. Each
studio functioned as an assembly-line factory with a staff of employees
specializing in the various aspects of filmmaking, all under exclusive contracts,
and produced an average of one film per week. To Marilyn, Twentieth Century-
Fox was like a university for acting and filmmaking. She could never have
afforded the training on her own, and felt grateful it was free. Marilyn was
fascinated by the art of cinema and visited the various departments to learn more
about the creative and technical processes.
In the wardrobe department, Marilyn studied period and contemporary
costumes. In the makeup department, she sought Allan Snyder, commonly
referred to as “Whitey” because of his prematurely graying hair, who had
prepared her for the screen test. Eager to learn, she asked him to explain the
difference in cosmetics for black and white and color film. Touched by Marilyn’s
lack of confidence and desire to improve, he soon became a mentor. She even
stopped electricians and grips to ask questions about lighting. Ben Lyon thought
Marilyn worked harder than his other clients; while they slept until eleven in the
morning, she attended singing, dancing, acting, and fencing classes.
Considered property of the studio, contract players had little control over
their own careers. The studio assigned a player, regardless of her status as an
extra or a major star, to a role whether or not she was interested, and sometimes
loaned her to other studios. The studio groomed young contract players by
providing them education in pantomime, dancing, singing, and drama. Fellow
classmate Jean Peters told Richard Buskin about the Fox lot having served as a
sort of college campus for many players less dedicated than Marilyn, who, Peters
believed, possessed a “fantastic drive.” In acting classes conducted by Helena
Sorell and Craig Noel, Marilyn performed “terrific” bits including one in which
she portrayed a girl on a farm hanging wet clothes on a clothesline on a windy
day while a farmhand assisted in keeping her dress from blowing up in the wind,
foreshadowing the iconic scene in The Seven Year Itch. According to Peters,
Marilyn’s personal wardrobe seemed sorely limited because she perpetually
wore a blue angora sweater, white skirt, and white French pumps.
Fox also dispatched their young contract players to ride on floats in local
parades and attend store openings and premieres. Biographers who later claimed
that Marilyn’s success resulted from exploits on the casting couch only
demeaned her hard work, dedication, and perseverance. She networked, posed
for pictures, participated in publicity, and developed skills in working with the
press and marketing herself. The Los Angeles Press Club, founded by journalists
from the area’s four daily newspapers, voted Marilyn the first “Miss Press Club.”
Powerful agents, directors, producers, casting directors, and studio bosses
have traded jobs to aspiring actors in exchange for sexual favors since the birth
of the motion picture and television industries. Oscar-winning producer Julia
Phillips exposed this underground practice as alive and well in her 1991 book,
You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. In a 1996 interview, actor Woody
Harrelson said, “Every [acting] business I ever entered into seemed to have a
casting couch. I’ve seen so many people sleep with people they loathe in order to
further their ambition.”
In this same vein, Producer Chris Hanley told his former classmates at a 2005
class reunion of Amherst College, “Almost every leading actress in all of my
twenty-four films has slept with a director or producer or a leading actor to get
the part that launched her career.”
In Marilyn: Norma Jeane, author and feminist activist Gloria Steinem
discussed allegations that Marilyn fell prey to the casting couch like many other
actresses of her era and today. Now seen as sexual harassment, Steinem reframed
the practice as “normal life” for an aspiring actress in the 1930s and 1940s.
Indeed, if Marilyn had sex with powerful men, she was trading sexual favors in
order to work, not as a means of avoiding work. In her final interview for Life,
Marilyn frankly asserted, “I was never kept, to be blunt about it; I always kept
myself. I have always had pride in the fact that I was my own.” When
biographer Mel Gussow confronted Darryl F. Zanuck on rumors of his use of the
casting couch in 1971, the mogul denied this practice. “Not even Marilyn
Monroe,” he said. “I hated her. I wouldn’t have slept with her if she paid me.”
Going out on dinner dates with men who worked in the motion picture
industry and enjoying meals at restaurants and nightclubs such as Café
Trocadero, Ciro’s, and the Brown Derby was common practice for both sexually
active and inactive starlets in Hollywood. In the 1940s, men customarily paid the
expenses incurred from dating. Many starlets benefitted from this practice by
their reduction of food expenditures. In her autobiography, Marilyn clarified
drawing the line with the dinner check. “Men who tried to buy me with money
made me sick,” she wrote. “There were plenty of them. The mere fact that I
turned down offers ran my price up.” Agent Harry Lipton offered an impression
of Marilyn Monroe during this period: “There was something warm and gentle
in Marilyn’s eyes that had nothing to do with sex.”
Implying that Marilyn’s early sexual experiences after becoming an actress
were primarily driven by her falling in love with a man or finding comfort or
validation through intimacy with him, Maurice Zolotow quoted an anonymous
producer: “Marilyn never slept with a man who could do her any good.”
Sarah Churchwell also observed the resistance of Marilyn’s biographers in
accepting that her sexual experiences in early adulthood may have been no
different from those of the rest of us and may not have crystallized into a lifelong
pattern. Churchwell wrote that Marilyn might have been “prey to a confused
mixture of infatuation, bad judgment, romantic hope and insecure longing for
affirmation by an object of desire, all of which may create ruefulness when one
is older and wiser.”
Few biographers take into account the impact of childhood neglect and
sexual abuse on Marilyn’s sexual boundaries and relationships as an adult. Those
who engage in what is referred to as survival sex, the practice of trading sex for
basic needs when disadvantaged in the society, do not perceive it as exploitative.
Instead, they may identify it as the start of a potential loving relationship.
Research reveals one of the strongest predictors of participation in survival sex is
a prior history of sexual abuse by adult caregivers, suggesting the participant
reproduces familiar behavior and relationship patterns rather than acting solely
out of desperation.
Churchwell acknowledges Marilyn having made difficult choices, some of
them commendable, some lamentable. While other biographers have cited this
inconsistency as evidence of a peculiarity, Churchwell reminds us this is simply
an indication of normality. “To judge her on the basis of whether her actions
were always ideal effaces an important truth about the way in which women
have always had to strike difficult bargains with patriarchy,” the author wrote,
“and measures her by anachronistic and rigid standards.” Sexual violence would
not end for Marilyn, for Arthur Miller wrote that, as an adult, she had been
targeted for an attempted sexual assault. She told him about being held down at a
Hollywood party by two of the male guests in an attempted rape from which she
claimed to have escaped.
Despite having never received much love and support from many members
of her family, Marilyn would not be discouraged from her dream of becoming a
movie star, even if she was only one of thousands of girls across the country
sharing the same dream. Instead, she imagined herself as dreaming and working
the hardest, and even visualized her future success. Humble, Marilyn kept her
aspirations secret. Her own words best describe the blend of desire and ambition
steering her career in the remaining months of 1946: “I knew nothing about
acting. I had never read a book about it, or tried to do it, or discussed it with
anyone. I was ashamed to tell the few people I knew of what I was dreaming.
But there was this secret in me, becoming an actress, a movie star! It was like
being in jail and looking at a door that said, ‘This Way Out.’ ”
Chapter Eight
 1947: Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! & Dangerous Years

On the morning of January 15, 1947, a young homemaker walking with her
three-year old daughter along South Norton Avenue, between Coliseum Street
and West Thirty-Ninth Street in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles,
discovered a gruesome murder scene. The severely mutilated remains of a nude
young woman lay in a vacant lot. Severed at the waist, the body had been
completely drained of blood. The face had been slashed from the corners of the
mouth toward the ears, and the body had been posed with hands over the head,
elbows bent. Unsolved to date, the heinous murder was highly publicized by the
press and Marilyn’s friend, Joseph, Jasgur, photographed the crime scene. The
victim, Elizabeth Short (1924-1947), who had arrived in Los Angeles in July of
the previous year with hopes of breaking into films, was nicknamed “The Black
Dahlia.” It did not take long for every starlet on the Fox lot and every resident of
the Hollywood Studio Club to hear the horrific news about a psychopathic
murderer on the loose in Los Angeles, and suddenly fear for her safety.
Newspapers followed the manhunt for Short’s killer on a daily basis, but
lighter news emerged on January 30, when Harry Brand, Fox’s lead publicist,
published a story in the Los Angeles Times. Accompanied by a picture of
Marilyn, the article offered a fictitious account about her discovery by a talent
scout while she worked as a baby-sitter. The studio had photographed Marilyn
wearing a pinafore and caring for two infant twins as “evidence” of her humble
beginnings. The studio’s publicity team shaved two years off her age and
fabricated a biography with details of Marilyn’s early life as an orphan in West
Los Angeles. Throughout childhood, Norma Jeane had heard other people advise
her that it was better to forget about her mother. When she asked about her
mother’s whereabouts, they told her, “Don’t think about it; she’s dead.” Having
never spoken out against references to Gladys’ supposed death, Marilyn readily
endorsed Brand’s blatant lie.
It is believed that Marilyn appeared in a bit part as a switchboard operator in
an inserted montage for the Technicolor musical The Shocking Miss Pilgrim
(1947), filmed after the production ended. The film, starring Betty Grable, was
set during the 1870s and concentrated on women’s equal rights to employment.
In February, Fox extended Marilyn’s contract for another six months, and she
might have been an extra in other productions filmed early in 1947: The
Challenge, You Were Meant for Me, Deep Waters, and Green Grass of Wyoming.
 In ongoing grooming, the studio sent Marilyn to the Actors Lab on Crescent
Heights Boulevard for drama lessons. A West Coast outpost of the Group
Theatre in New York founded by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee
Strasberg, the Lab produced plays with social commentary about the working
class, under the leadership of Morris Carnovsky and his wife, Phoebe Brand.
The couple also operated the Workshop, an acting class offered to studio contract
players. In 1950, both the theater and its workshop closed because Senator Jack
Tenney of the House Committee on Un-American Activities charged its plays
were subversive.
Marilyn’s celebrated film career began with the first documented assignment
of a speaking role in a vehicle for Fox’s blonde alternative to Alice Faye and
Betty Grable, June Haver (1926-2005), a Technicolor production of Scudda
Hoo! Scudda Hay! The strange title means “giddy-up.” Directed by F. High
Herbert, the film was released in the United Kingdom as Summer Lightning.
The plot centers around Snug, played by Lon McCallister (1923-2005),
unhappily working on the family farm with his stepmother and stepbrother after
his father goes off to sea. He lands a job as a farm hand and purchases two mules
from his boss. Stepbrother Stretch (Robert Karnes), Snug’s rival for girlfriend,
Rad (June Haver), causes him to get fired and unable to make payments on the
mules. Stretch also tries to cripple the mules. When Snug’s father dies at sea and
bequeaths him the farm, he ousts Stretch and his stepmother. Snug and Rad
marry and live happily ever after with the mules.
Marilyn’s brief appearance can be missed if one blinks. As Haver and child
actress Natalie Wood speak on the steps of a church, parishioners exit behind
them. With a blue ribbon in her hair and wearing a blue pinafore, a wholesome
Marilyn says, “Hi, Rad.” Haver replies, “Hi, Betty.” In a cast and crew
photograph dated April 26, Marilyn sits directly behind Haver on the steps of the
facade of a church. Additional still photographs exist of Marilyn’s appearance in
outdoor scenes cut from the film’s final print. In one scene, Marilyn, in a print
one-piece bathing suit, and another girl, actress Colleen Townsend, row a canoe
toward a dock where handsome Robert Karnes (1917-1979) sits threading his
fishing pole. “Hi, Stretch,” Betty says. She and the other girl ask if they can dive
off his dock, but Stretch refuses and kicks the tip of the canoe, causing them to
drift away. A long distance shot of Marilyn and Townsend in the canoe remain in
the final print. “She was a very sweet person, a very loving person,” Townsend
told Richard Buskin.
“I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything, actually, during the year that I
was there,” Marilyn recalled of her early experience on the Fox lot, “except for a
part in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! and I was cut out of it, so you can’t exactly
call that a chance to do anything.” Apparently, Marilyn overlooked her role in
another Fox’s black and white B-movie about juvenile delinquency, Dangerous
Years, produced by Sol M. Wurtzel, written by the husband and wife team of
Phoebe and Henry Ephron, and directed by Arthur Pierson. The plot involved a
scandal about a prominent man’s children having lived in an orphanage, a
scenario well known to Marilyn.
Marilyn filmed three short sequences for Dangerous Years during one week
in June. As Eve, a waitress in uniform at a jukebox diner, the Gopher Hole,
where the youth congregate, she is both beautiful with hair down to her
shoulders, and a bit acerbic. Marilyn interacts with former child actor Dickie
Moore (born 1925) from Hal Roach’s Our Gang (or The Little Rascals) film
series. When Moore, as Gene, greets Eve, she retorts, “Hi, small change.” Gene
tells her that he actually has money for a tip and asks if he will see her later in
the evening. Only if she isn’t feeling tired, Eve responds, since the tray she
carries weighs a ton. Later when Gene orders, Eve expresses doubt about his
ability to pay. He boasts about having enough money.
“And now you’re blowing it on two cokes,” she snaps. As Eve delivers the
beverages to Gene’s table, she demands a ten-cent tip. Later, when actor Donald
Curtis enters the diner, Eve admires him and, in a provocative gender role
reversal, whistles as he walks passed her.
Marilyn’s two roles at Fox had been only walk-on parts, but during the
productions, she experienced the tedious stop-and-start process of filmmaking,
which required performers to memorize only a few lines for each camera set-up.
The work was not easy. Shooting lasted between ten to twelve hours per day, six
days per week. In July, Fox announced disinterest in renewing Marilyn’s
contract, and Harry Lipton had the unfortunate task of breaking the news.
Initially, Marilyn burst into tears but quickly composed herself. “It really doesn’t
matter,” she said, wiping away her tears with a handkerchief. “After all, it’s a
case of supply and demand.”
Marilyn thought her termination was a mistake and made a personal visit to
Darryl Zanuck’s office for clarification. His secretary informed her that the
mogul was in Sun Valley. Marilyn returned a few days later, only to be told he
remained away on vacation. Having committed to perform in the studio’s annual
show held on the lot, she continued to rehearse along with the ensemble, mostly
secretaries, mailroom clerks, and a few other contract players. Co-workers raved
about Marilyn singing “I Never Took a Lesson in My Life,” but her performance
did not sway the studio brass from their decision to drop her. Fox’s last paycheck
to Marilyn Monroe was dated August 31, 1947, for the sum of $104.13.
With dwindling finances, Marilyn temporarily stayed in a small residence at
4215 Rowland Street in Burbank, near the Warner Brothers Studios, in exchange
for watching the house while its owners left for an extended vacation. She also
resumed modeling. Bill Purcel maintained contact with Marilyn, even though he
was away at University of Nevada. He saw no evidence of the later preposterous
allegations that Marilyn resorted to working as a call girl and no manifestation of
the lifestyle afforded by such an occupation. According to Fred Lawrence
Guiles, she sometimes survived on thirty cents per day by consuming only hot
dogs and coffee. Purcel also denied rumors that Marilyn had become pregnant
during this period, had a child, and offered it for adoption. Moreover, Marilyn’s
active modeling during this period indicated no physical signs of advancing
pregnancy. In the May 1956 issue of Motion Picture, Harry Lipton discussed
having attended a party during this period and observing a powerful male
executive offer Marilyn gifts in exchange for sexual favors. Lipton recalled her
horrified reaction and request for him to drive her home. While riding in his car,
a distressed Marilyn asked, “What can I say to men like that, Harry?”
“There was one woman who helped me a great deal in my early Hollywood
days,” Marilyn cryptically wrote in her autobiography. “She gave me money and
let me live in her home and wear her gowns and furs. She did this because she
sincerely liked me and believed I had talent and would become a star someday.
I’ll call her Della and so be able to write about her without embarrassing her.”
Marilyn only identified the woman as married to a motion picture actor.
Marilyn met “Della” two weeks before her contract with Fox was scheduled
to expire. The studio had sent her to the Cheviot Hills Country Club’s annual
golf tournament, where the event organizers invited male celebrities such as
Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Tyrone Power, and hired attractive young
starlets from the studio nearby to serve as their caddies. Marilyn was assigned to
carry the golf bag of forty-one year-old actor and singer John Carroll (1906-
1979), whose good looks and pencil-thin mustache made him resemble Clark
Gable and George Brent. He had co-starred with the Marx Brothers in Go West
(1940) and with John Wayne in Flying Tigers (1942). With paternal concern,
Carroll brought his caddie home to his top-floor flat at El Palacio Apartments on
the corner of Fountain Avenue and La Cienega Boulevard to meet his wife.
“Please take good care of this hungry little kitten,” he said. “She’ll be going
places someday, but at present she needs our help.”
Carroll had recently married Garnett Lucille Ryman (1905-2002), an
executive in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio’s talent department since 1941, who
helped young actresses such as Lana Turner, June Allyson, and Janet Leigh.
Formerly, a Broadway actress, Ryman understood the struggles of breaking into
the entertainment industry. Together with her new husband, they served as
patrons of the arts and both morally and financially supported local young
performers with promise. Lucille, as she was called, recognized Marilyn would
not be selected at MGM, given studio head Louis B. Mayer’s penchant for high-
class actresses with perfect elocution. The Carrolls invited Marilyn to dinner at
their apartment at El Palacio, an elegant Spanish-style building, and listened to
her professional and financial struggles. Most of her savings were spent on
drama, singing, and dancing lessons.
During this period, Marilyn rented a room on the third floor of a house
owned by a family in Burbank. Driving home late one evening, she was stopped
by a uniformed police officer for speeding. He examined her driver’s license and
let her go with a verbal warning. Having memorized her address, the officer later
intruded into her residence while off duty. Marilyn’s screams brought the
neighbors to her rescue, and the incident was reported in the Hollywood Citizen-
News. The Carrolls began receiving calls from a panicked Marilyn at all hours of
the day and night. She claimed a peeping tom was spying on her through the
window. With the loss of her contract, she reported considering to walk Sunset
Boulevard and trade sex for food. The truth behind the voyeur and her desperate
impulse to improve her financial situation is unknown. Whether based on reality,
embellished, or merely fabricated, the apparent manipulation worked in
conjunction with fresh memories of the Black Dahlia murder.
Gauging their protégé’s vulnerability in the callous film industry they knew
only too well, the Carrolls agreed to open their apartment to Marilyn and pay her
a small allowance. Since the couple spent most of their time at their ranch in
Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley, the apartment in West Hollywood
often remained vacant. Marilyn stayed in the apartment for about five months.
On December 4, she entered into a contract with John Carroll, who agreed to pay
her a weekly salary of $100 in exchange for a percentage of her earnings as an
actress. Carroll agreed to represent her from December 1947 until February of
the following year and to pay Harry Lipton ten percent of the remuneration. [The
original contract sold at auction at Bonhams for $3,660.]
Lucille Ryman introduced Marilyn to Lila Bliss and Harry Hayden, owners
of the Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theater at 245 Robertson Boulevard. The couple
cast her in the role of Lady Bonnie Towyn in the play, Glamour Preferred, which
ran from October 12 until November 2. From August to September 1948,
Marilyn appeared in the theater’s production of Edna Ferber and George S.
Kaufman’s Stage Door about several aspiring Broadway actress living in a
boarding house in New York, one of whom becomes a great star and another
who takes her own life.
“She could have played anything,” Lela Bliss told James Haspiel. “We never
had any struggle about parts with her, and she was always so happy to play what
you cast her in. And when Mr. Billy Grady, the casting director at MGM, saw
her, he thought she was a bet, and he had her come out to the studio, and she got
her first job there. I saw it; she was very lovely in it.” Bliss did not typecast
Marilyn as a siren, as Fox eventually did. “They tried to sell her as a sex
symbol,” she said, “[but] she wasn’t a sexy girl, really. I don’t mean that she
didn’t have appeal, but she was a nice little girl.”
In early December, Dangerous Years premiered with Marilyn’s screen debut.
Although her second film performance, it was released before Scudda Hoo!
Scudda Hay! Thanks to this first screening, Marilyn Monroe’s career had
commenced. “My illusions didn’t have anything to do with being a fine actress,”
she wrote. “I knew how third rate I was. With the arc lights on me and the
camera pointed at me, I suddenly knew myself.” Marilyn identified herself as a
clumsy and uncultured orphan with minimal talent who wore cheap clothing.
“But my God, how I wanted to learn! To change! To improve!” she declared. “I
didn’t want anything else. Not men, not money, not love, but the ability to act!”
Chapter Nine
 1948: Ladies of the Chorus

According to Hollywood lore, one late afternoon, Marilyn walked across the
Fox lot as Joseph Schenck’s limousine passed. She smiled at the studio’s co-
founder, seated behind his chauffeur. Many beautiful starlets smiled at Schenck,
but this time his customarily stoic expression broke into a grin. He ordered his
driver to stop and rolled down the window. Marilyn approached the sleek, black
car. Schenck presented his business card and invited her to his home for dinner.
“It’s an open house,” he said, urging her to eat all she wanted.
Russian-born emigrant Joseph Schenck (1878-1961) rose from meager
beginnings as a factory worker to a powerful motion picture studio executive.
Although he had resigned as chairman of Fox upon his conviction of income tax
evasion, he returned as production chief and held the position until he resigned
in 1953. With holdings in real estate, the Federal Trust & Savings Bank in
Hollywood and a directorship in the Bank of America, Schenck was one of the
wealthiest men in Los Angeles for the remainder of his life.
Another more likely version of their meeting through a common
acquaintance appeared in recent biographies. During a party in February 1948,
John Carroll allegedly introduced Marilyn to Pasquale “Pat” De Cicco (1909-
1978), a handsome talent agent and businessman who successfully marketed
Bon-Bons candies to cinemas around the world. De Cicco had been married to
actress Thelma Todd, whose death from carbon monoxide poisoning in 1935
remains clouded by rumors of murder. At six foot one, two hundred seventy-five
pounds, De Cicco was cocky and intimidating. He counted billionaire Howard
Hughes and Joseph M. Schenck among his most powerful friends.
De Cicco possessed none of the qualities Marilyn admired in a man, but with
an endorsement by John and Lucille Carroll, she consented to a date. He
escorted her to Owlwood, Schenck’s sprawling twelve-thousand-square-foot,
sparsely furnished Italian Renaissance mansion located behind gilded gates at
141 South Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills. Rather than clutter the cavernous
estates with art and collectibles, Schenck filled it with beautiful starlets and
Hollywood luminaries when he hosted lavish formal dinner parties and all-male
poker games. Built in 1932, Owlwood was the future home of actor Tony Curtis,
who sold it to Sonny and Cher in the early 1970s.
In an elegant outfit borrowed from Lucille, Marilyn shyly sat beside De
Cicco and pretended to avoid her host’s frequent stares and smiles. Making small
talk, she announced having recently earned the crown as the Artichoke Queen of
Salinas, California. Schenck and his other guests roared with laughter.
Schenck extended a dinner invitation to Marilyn for the following evening
and sent a chauffeured limousine to the Hollywood Studio Club to bring her to
Owlwood for the second of many visits to come. Schenck’s guest list usually
included Gloria and Michael Romanoff, owners of a Beverly Hills restaurant;
Lee Siegel, Fox studio’s physician, and his wife, Noreen Nash; and columnist
Louella Parsons. Like a proper lady, Marilyn typically wore a hat and gloves to
Schenck’s dinners. She charmed the other guests with her innocent, offbeat
naïveté, and endeared herself to Parsons by telling her that Gladys and Grace had
taught her to read using Parsons’ gossip columns rather than a book.
The true nature of Marilyn’s relationship with Schenck remains uncertain due
to differing accounts. Indeed, Marilyn accepted Schenck’s invitations to his
Saturday evening poker parties, which were attended by Hollywood tycoons and
young starlets; the latter serving as hostesses by filling the men’s champagne
glasses and emptying the ashtrays. Offering no evidence, biographers refer to the
card games as stag parties and to Marilyn and the other hostesses as “gin-rummy
girls,” accusing them of readily granting sexual favors to the powerful men in
exchange for hopes of a studio contract. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli,
Marilyn allegedly told undocumented confidantes that she felt as though she had
no choice but to sexually submit to Schenck’s advances. He quotes her
description of the experience as “tawdry” and her feeling “terrible,” as if she had
relinquished her soul. However, biographer Lois Banner’s interviews with
surviving guests of the poker parties revealed a non-sexual relationship.
Marion Marshall, who poured drinks beside Marilyn, denied the rumors and
reframed Schenck as merely a lonely man in declining health. To biographer
Donald H. Wolfe, Marshall described Schenck as a paternal figure, a father
confessor, and a wise, elderly man. When the evening ended, a limousine drove
Marshall home, and as far as she knew, Marilyn also went home. Richard Buskin
published an interview with David Wayne in which the actor recounted a
conversation with Marilyn when she arrived late to the set of As Young as You
Feel. She blamed her tardiness on staying up late to comfort Mr. Schenck.
Wayne remarked that he didn’t think “the old bastard” was still physically
capable of engaging in sex.
“Perhaps not,” Marilyn replied, “since he never approached me for that.”
Albert Broccoli, De Cicco’s cousin and the future producer of the James
Bond film series, discussed Schenck’s affinity for Marilyn in an interview with
Lois Banner: “He just wanted to have this sweet and giving creature as a friend.
Many times I’d see his face light up when she walked into the room; just to hear
her laughter was a tonic to him.”
“I know the word around Hollywood was I was Joe Schenck’s girlfriend,”
Marilyn told Maurice Zolotow, “but that’s a lie.” She admitted asking Schenck
for only one favor after her stardom; a private dressing room. Marilyn remained
on friendly terms with the elderly, ailing man and visited him as he lay dying in
1960. Her relationship with Schenck afforded no special accommodation from
Fox, suggesting the likelihood that she had not surrendered her body to the
mogul. In fact, during this lean period, Marilyn earned a documented living by
posing for Earl Morgan’s illustrations.
According to Marilyn, she enjoyed listening to Schenck’s stories of
Hollywood’s history as if she were hearing a grandfather’s nostalgic memories
of the past. After all, he had been a pioneer during the motion picture industry’s
infancy, when Gladys and Grace worked in the film laboratories. When Marilyn
looked at Schenck’s craggy, weathered face, she saw the history of her
hometown. Pragmatically, she also enjoyed eating Schenck’s scrumptious food
and rated his chef as superior to the cooks at the Hollywood Studio Club.
“She used to come here quite often for dinner,” Schenck told journalist Ezra
Goodman, corroborating Marilyn’s account. “I think she liked to eat. We have
good food here. No, I never had any romantic thoughts about Marilyn and she
never had any such thoughts about me.”
Aside from eventually procuring a suitable dressing room for Marilyn,
Schenck contacted Harry Cohn (1891-1958), president of Columbia Studios, and
recommended offering her a contract. Cohn ruled his studio like a ruthless and
vulgar dictator, yelling and cursing at employees; instilling fear as a means of
maintaining control. He had been widely quoted as saying, “I don’t have ulcers; I
give them!” Writer Ben Hecht called him “White Fang.” Moe Howard of the
Three Stooges, who worked for Columbia for twenty-three years, described
Cohn as a “Jekyll-and-Hyde.” After Cohn’s death, Hedda Hopper penned, “You
had to stand in line to hate him.” Cohn arranged for Marilyn’s interview with his
casting director Max Arnow, who discovered Ronald Reagan and Jack Lemmon.
At Arnow’s recommendation, Columbia hired Marilyn for six months effective
March 9 and paid her $125 weekly.
The studio evaluated Marilyn’s physical appearance and assembled a team to
conduct a makeover. Stylists modified her hairline with electrolysis, keeping her
striking widow’s peak, and lightened her ash blonde hair with peroxide to
achieve a platinum hue. Cohn had previously discovered an obscure dancer
named Margarita Cansino, whom he groomed into Rita Hayworth (1918-1987),
and who starred in a string of successes for the studio during the 1940s. She later
referred to Cohn as a monster and claimed the mogul resented her for refusing
his sexual advances.
In early March, Max Arnow entrusted Marilyn to Natasha Lytess (1913-
1964), Columbia’s German-born drama teacher and follower of the deceased
Austrian director Max Reinhardt. During the rise of the Nazi Third Reich in the
1930s, Lytess fled Europe with her lover, novelist Bruno Frank. When Frank
died in 1945, she found employment in a leadership role in Columbia’s drama
department. Natasha and Barbara, her young daughter by Frank, lived in a
Spanish-style apartment building on Harper Avenue in West Hollywood. Lytess
would coach Marilyn over the next six years in twenty-two films, teaching her
the nuances of gesture, movement, and elocution.
Lytess’ initial impression of Marilyn was that of a girl dressed in a “trollop’s
outfit” who was “unable to take refuge in her own insignificance.” Regardless,
the drama coach detected a raw talent in the model and recognized an
opportunity to mold her into actress. In Natasha, Marilyn saw a rather
intimidating woman with Slavic features who spoke harshly in a German accent
and looked unhealthily thin.
Natasha was eager to mold a student with potential, and Marilyn was seeking
a competent teacher to teach her the skills necessary to achieve her goal. It was
the perfect pairing of teacher and student, with both fulfilling each other’s
professional needs. Personally, both women were emotionally vulnerable.
Marilyn would soon lose Aunt Ana, and Natasha grieved the recent death of her
longtime partner. “Miss Lytess made me feel free,” Marilyn told photographer
Anthony Beauchamp, who was married to Sarah Churchill, daughter of British
statesman Winston Churchill. “She gave me inner balance and made me
understand life. I owe everything to her.” Aside from molding her into an
actress, Natasha introduced Marilyn to art, literature, and design; initiated her
into collecting antiques, brought her to museums, and instructed her to read a list
of about two hundred books. Marilyn, an avid student, read them all.
Natasha quickly diagnosed speech deficits in her new, unpolished student.
“Marilyn was inhibited and cramped, and she could not say a word freely, the
tutor wrote. “Her habit of barely moving her lips when she spoke was
unnatural.” While speaking, Marilyn tried to cover her front teeth and gum-line,
a modeling trick taught by Emmeline Snively, which did not transcend to
speaking lines in motions pictures. At first, Natasha found Marilyn’s voice so
annoying, she told her “not to speak unnecessarily until we [have] progressed.”
During this era in filmmaking, actresses learned proper elocution, which
eliminated regional accents and created a formal style of speech that may seem
affected today. Natasha’s efforts to overcome Marilyn’s speech idiosyncrasies
eventually led to an artificial articulation and breathy voice, effective in
comedies but unnatural in dramas. Unlike other inexperienced actresses Natasha
had coached, Marilyn openly discussed her limitations and accepted critical
feedback without defensiveness.
As an exacting mentor entered Marilyn’s life, a gentler maternal figure
departed. Ana Lower died of cardiac arrest on March 14 at the age of sixty-eight.
This death was the first Marilyn had experienced. She would later tell her
husband, Arthur Miller, of finding comfort by lying on Ana’s bed and resting her
head on the pillow shortly after she had died. Marilyn also went to the cemetery
as a group of men were digging a grave for another burial and asked if she could
use their ladder to go down into the grave. They granted Marilyn’s request, and
she lay on the cold ground and looked up to the sky, reflecting on the painful
loss. Marilyn attended Ana’s wake and burial at Westwood Village Memorial
Park, on Glendon Avenue near Wilshire Boulevard, arranged by Grace and Doc
Goddard.
Exactly one month after Ana’s death, Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! opened in
Los Angeles, but Marilyn’s name was absent from the credits and the longer of
her two brief scenes had been edited. She moved back to the Hollywood Studio
Club for nine months, occupying a private room, number 334, at fifty dollars per
month. In July, Natasha Lytess recommended Marilyn to Harry Romm, who was
casting Ladies of the Chorus, a backstage musical to be directed by Phil Karlson
and choreographed by Jack Boyle. Marilyn auditioned by singing one of three
songs designated to the second female lead. Romm found her irresistible and
sent her to Columbia’s director of music and vocal instructor, Fred Karger, for
refining.
According to Harry Cohn’s biographer Bob Thomas, the mogul sent Karger
to collect Marilyn at home and return her to his office for an evaluation of her
musical capabilities. Karger played the piano as Marilyn sang. Cohn interrupted
twice to criticize her low volume, and Karger reminded him the microphone
would amplify her voice for the soundtrack. As Cohn approached Marilyn, he
accidently brushed against a folder she was holding, and an issue of Christian
Science Monitor fell to the floor. The mogul’s wife, Rose, had been a practitioner
of Christian Science, and the connection softened him.
Handsome, dapper thirty-two-year-old Fred Karger (1916-1979) had been
recently divorced from actress Patti Sacks and was granted full custody of his
six-year-old daughter, Terry. Karger and Terry lived with his mother, divorced
sister, and his sister’s children on Harper Avenue, in close proximity to Natasha
Lytess. Fred’s mother, Anne Karger (1886-1975), came to the United States from
Ireland. She and her sister, Effie, had been members of a theater company named
The Conley Sisters. Anne left show business to marry Maxwell Karger (1879-
1922), personal manager to Rudolph Valentino and one of the founders of Metro
Studios, later MGM. Valentino had chosen Anne to be in the wedding parties for
both of his marriages, and the Great Lover was interred in a crypt near
Maxwell’s. Fred’s sister, Mary Karger Short D’Aubrey, had also recently
divorced and returned to her mother’s home with her young children, Anne and
Bennett.
Fred brought Marilyn home to meet his family, and they quickly fell in love
with her. Anne became a strong maternal figure for Marilyn, who called her
“Nana.” To Anne, Marilyn was “Maril. The friendship between the women
would last until Marilyn’s death, long after the love affair with Fred fizzled.
Marilyn affectionately called Mary “Buddynuts.” Before she left the Karger
house upon her first visit, Marilyn asked to see Mary’s children while they slept.
Fred’s niece, Anne, told Anthony Summers that Marilyn organized her birthday
party and sat on the floor playing games with the children, which caused Mary’s
children to love her deeply.
Marilyn spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Kargers and lavished
Anne with gifts on Mother’s Day until her own death. Fred’s daughter, Terry,
and Mary’s children adored Marilyn and enjoyed playing tag with her; Terry was
especially close to Marilyn, who took her along to Christian Science services
even after the romance ended. Marilyn fell quickly and deeply in love with
Karger and later referred to him as her first true love. “I had always been
attracted to men who wore glasses,” she wrote, alluding to her strong attraction
to him. When Karger put on his corrective lenses, she experienced an
overwhelming arousal.
Karger scheduled Marilyn an appointment with Dr. Walter Taylor,
orthodontist to film stars, and the entire Karger family pooled money to pay to
have her teeth bleached and to obtain a retainer to correct her slight overbite.
Taylor’s worsening alcoholism cost him the practice, and Marilyn called him
regularly during his decline. She visited the orthodontist at the veteran’s hospital
as he lay dying of complications from the addiction and may have been present
when he died.
With photographer Bruno Bernard by her side as a protective escort, Marilyn
researched her role in Ladies of the Chorus by studying the work of Lili St. Cyr
(1918-1999), an elegant and creative burlesque dancer who performed in Los
Angeles. St. Cyr created a sensation with a bubble bath striptease played in a
transparent glass tub. While grieving Aunt Ana’s death, falling deeply in love
with Karger, and attaching to his family, Marilyn reported to Columbia’s
soundstage for the ten-day production. “It was really dreadful,” Marilyn
confessed to Georges Belmont in 1960. “I was supposed to be the daughter of a
burlesque dancer some guy from Boston falls in love with. It was a terrible story
and terribly, badly photographed; everything was awful about it. So [Columbia]
dropped me. But you learn from everything.”
Marilyn’s debut as a musical comedy performer was far from dreadful in the
succinct, trite B-movie. She portrayed Peggy Martin, a burlesque chorus dancer
with an overprotective mother, May (Adele Jergens), another dancer in the
troupe. When headliner Bubbles LaRue quits, the stage manager asks May to
take her place, but she concedes to her daughter. Peggy’s performance is classy,
and the audience loves her. Randy Carroll (Rand Brooks), a wealthy young man
in the audience, is especially smitten and anonymously sends Peggy orchids by
the dozens. They begin dating, and Randy proposes. May likes Randy, but fears
his wealthy mother will reject Peggy based on her work as a dancer. Many years
before, when May was a young chorus girl, she married a wealthy young man
from her audience who had fallen in love with her. After Peggy’s birth, the
marriage was annulled because May’s mother-in-law rejected her.
Hoping to spare her daughter from the pain she experienced in the past, May
urges Randy to inform his mother of Peggy’s profession before introducing
them. Randy cannot bring himself to do this, and his mother, Mrs. Carroll, hosts
an engagement party and invites Peggy and May. Entertainers invited to the
event recognize the mother and daughter, and May is forced to disclose their
profession to the guests, who all pass judgment. Mrs. Carroll wholeheartedly
accepts the mother and daughter and performs a song. She delivers a bombshell
by informing her guests that she, too, had been a chorus girl, but this is a tale
told to soften her guests. In the end, Peggy and Randy proceed with marriage
plans, and May settles down with her longtime boyfriend, the stage manager of
her burlesque show.
Named “Miss World’s Fairest” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Adele
Jergens (1917-2002) had been a Rockette at Radio City Musical Hall and
understudied for burlesque’s Queen of Striptease, Gypsy Rose Lee. Jergens
instinctively felt protective toward Marilyn, but thought she was bright and
probably capable of taking care of herself. Having played Charles Hamilton,
Scarlett O’Hara’s first husband in Gone With the Wind, Rand Brooks (1918-
2003), in the role of Randy, had the distinction of giving Marilyn her first screen
kiss. This must have been thrilling for Norma Jeane Baker who had seen the
celebrated film at age thirteen. Brooks had a recurring role the Hopalong
Cassidy series of film westerns and later made appearances on television in The
Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Lone Ranger, and Maverick. Brooks’ agent had
instructed him not to make sexual advances toward Marilyn. Recognizing her as
a naïve young girl, the actor complied.
Marilyn performed three songs by Allan Roberts and Lester Lee. As part of a
chorus, she sang “Ladies of the Chorus” in the film’s opening. She also
performed a solo, “Anyone Can See I Love You,” on the burlesque stage and in a
reprise montage with Brooks. Finally, Marilyn sang “Every Baby Needs a Da-
Da-Daddy.” In the second number, she stepped out of a giant picture album on
the stage wearing a gown with a tight, spangled bodice and flowing white
chiffon skirt. Poised and graceful, Marilyn glowed with promise as a future
romantic lead.
In the third number, Marilyn had a breakout solo. Standing in front of a
stylized set depicting a jewelry store with a neon sign in the shape of a diamond
ring, she sang an introduction mentioning Tiffany’s. Marilyn’s long, sparkling
gown with a slit up its side foreshadowed a costume in Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes, and the song’s reference to Tiffany’s prophesized her iconic number,
“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” The chorus girls danced with baby dolls
that they made walk and perform dance kicks. With her flowing, silky hair styled
like Rita Hayworth’s and graceful moves, Marilyn was reminiscent of Hayworth
in the “Put the Blame on Mame” number from Columbia’s Gilda (1946).
However, Marilyn’s performance was far more innocent, and the studio was
clearly marketing her as a somewhat wholesome clone of its principal female
star and a far cry from the siren image Fox would invent.
In Ladies of the Chorus, Marilyn demonstrated star quality. She played
comedic and dramatic scenes with equal believability and spoke in her natural
voice; it had not yet been replaced by a more breathy, artificial one. The
backstory of Marilyn’s affair with Karger was reflected in the plot by the lovers’
class differences. When a florist, unaware of Peggy’s identity, disapproves of
Randy sending orchids to a burlesque star, Peggy plays along with a sneer.
On September 9, production ended, and Marilyn’s contract neared its
expiration. Unfortunately, Columbia chose not to renew it. She immediately
consulted with a Christian Science practitioner and went to Cohn’s office in an
attempt to persuade him to extend the contact, but this time, she brought along
Fred Karger for protection. Cohn stood by his decision. It is generally believed
Cohn had summoned Marilyn to his office shortly before the ending of the
contract to “negotiate” an extension but she refused his advances. In My Story,
Marilyn recounted the incident without specifically naming Cohn. He showed
her a framed picture of his yacht and said, “Will you come along on my yacht?
I’m not inviting anyone else but you.”
“I’d love to join you and your wife on the yacht, Mr. Cohn,” Marilyn replied.
“Leave my wife out of this,” he snapped. Insulted, Marilyn backed away.
“You can drop the virgin act, baby,” Cohn shouted, in the version of the story
Marilyn related to Maurice Zolotow. “You are nothing more than just another
dame to me.”
The incident motivated Marilyn to deliver a sarcastic message to him when
she achieved superstardom in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by mailing an
autographed portrait inscribed, “To my great benefactor, Harry Cohn.” Perhaps
attempting to claim discovery of Marilyn, Columbia Studios recycled Marilyn’s
“Every Baby Needs a Da-Da-Daddy” number in Okinawa (1952).
Columbia Studios released Ladies of the Chorus on October 22, and Marilyn
received her first reviews. All were positive. “One of the bright spots is Miss
Monroe’s singing,” proclaimed Tibor Krekes in Motion Picture Herald. “She is
pretty and, with her pleasing voice and style, shows promise.” Variety magazine
announced: “Enough musical numbers are inserted, topped with nifty warbling
of Marilyn Monroe. Miss Monroe presents a nice personality in her portrayal of
the burly singer.” The Hollywood Reporter declared, “Marilyn Monroe is cute
and properly naïve.” Accompanied by the Karger family, Marilyn discreetly
attended a public viewing of the film at the Carmel Theatre on Santa Monica
Boulevard in West Hollywood. She wore an oversized coat and dark glasses to
maintain her anonymity.
After the critics’ and audience’s reactions to Marilyn Monroe, Harry Cohn
may have regretted dismissing her in his knee-jerk reaction to his bruised ego.
Perhaps Marilyn felt vindicated by her successes, but her mind was on
recognition by those in her more distant past. “I kept driving past the theatre
with my name of the marquee,” she wrote. “Was I excited! I wished they were
using ‘Norma Jeane’ so that all the kids at the home and schools who never
noticed me could see it.”
In Tracy and Hepburn, Garson Kanin wrote of Marilyn’s filming a screen test
for the role Billie Dawn in Columbia’s film adaptation of Born Yesterday prior to
the expiration of her contract. “Those who saw it thought it was excellent,” the
screenwriter recalled. “But Harry Cohn, the head of the studio, did not trouble to
take the six steps from his desk to his projection room to look at her.” The part
would have offered Marilyn an acting challenge: A boorish, uncouth tycoon
visits Washington, D.C., to bribe congressmen and brings along his younger
mistress, an uneducated former showgirl. The tycoon enlists a reporter to refine
his mistress so that she can be introduced to the capital city’s high society.
Enthralled by United States history, the mistress becomes liberated, and realizes
her boyfriend is corrupt. In the end, she falls in love with her tutor. Judy
Holliday landed the part and won a Best Actress Oscar, defeating screen legends
Gloria Swanson and Bette Davis.
Ann Karger invited Marilyn to stay with the family on Harper Avenue for
three weeks before she returned to the Studio Club. Meanwhile, Marilyn
auditioned unsuccessfully for the Benny Goodman Band. In 1995, an
anonymous seller auctioned a twelve-inch acetate disc containing a recording of
Marilyn singing a plaintive ballad, “How Wrong Can I Be?” with a handwritten
notation of Karger on the piano and Manny Klein on trumpet. Her recognizable
voice is on pitch, with an occasional jazz inflection.
Soon enough, Fred Karger started showing his true colors. Under the veneer
of his refined gentility, polished appearance, dedicated father image, and good
breeding, he could be demeaning and emotionally abusive. Karger gradually
targeted Marilyn with condescension. He lashed out at her for crying too easily
and disdainfully accused her of “floating” through life rather than making
careful plans. “Your mind isn’t developed,” Karger told her. “Compared to your
breasts, it’s embryonic.” Marilyn felt humiliated; her emotional wounds
deepened when she had to ask Fred to define “embryonic” in order to
comprehend the complete meaning of his insult. Anne and Mary worried that
Fred would eventually dispose of Marilyn and crush her spirit.
En route to an audition, and likely preoccupied with Karger’s contempt,
Marilyn crashed her 1948 Ford convertible into the rear of another car in front of
La Rue Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. A crowd immediately gathered, mostly
due to Marilyn’s tight polka-dot sundress. Among the crowd of onlookers was
Tom Kelley (1914 -1984), a former photographer for the Associated Press and
Town & Country magazine. Marilyn fretted about being late for an audition. He
gave her five dollars for a taxi and his business card. Their meeting would
eventually prove fortuitous for both.
As the Christmas holidays approached, Karger seriously contemplated
marrying Marilyn, but worried about her raising his young daughter in the event
of his death. “I don’t want her being raised by a woman like you,” he sadistically
told the woman he claimed to love. “It wouldn’t be fair to her.”
Bravely, Marilyn drew a line in the sand for the behavior she would no longer
tolerate. She later alluded to being the one to walk away, as he would have
continued a sexual relationship with no intention of marriage. “He didn’t love
me,” she realized. “A man can’t love a woman for whom he feels half contempt.
He can’t love her if his mind is ashamed of her.”
Karger’s constant denigration combined with his desire to make Marilyn over
with vocal coaching and orthodontic intervention demonstrated his conditional
love. Others like Emmeline Snively and Natasha Lytess had worked on refining
both Marilyn’s appearance and her talent, resulting in a positive impact on her
self-esteem. However, Karger’s emotional unavailability and rejecting nature
had an opposite effect. His daughter, Terry, told biographer Lois Banner he
would never have married Marilyn, as he preferred females with domineering
personalities.
Still in love, Marilyn purchased a wristwatch for five hundred dollars and
presented it to Karger as a Christmas gift and memento of their relationship. The
engraving excluded her name and read merely, “12-25-48.” Marilyn realized
Karger would soon have another girlfriend who might not approve of him
wearing a gift bearing her name. She knew the relationship must end and wanted
him to wear the gift long beyond the twenty-four months it would take to make
its payments.
Eventually regretting his decision or second-guessing his resistance to
marrying Marilyn, Karger allegedly came to her door and begged her to take him
back. Marilyn met him outside, and they walked together as Fred expressed his
love and wish to reconcile. However, when he touched her arm, Marilyn realized
she was no longer in love with him. He had disillusioned her, and she felt deeply
hurt.
Fred Karger and actress Jane Wyman married in 1952, divorced, and
remarried for a brief period. In 1955, Karger arranged to meet Marilyn in New
York, but when he called her suite to confirm his arrival, she sounded heavily
sedated and incapable of hosting him. During the same period, Marilyn arrived
uninvited to Fred and Jane’s wedding reception to congratulate them. Columnist
and friend Sidney Skolsky later wrote it was the “only bitchy thing” he had ever
seen Marilyn do. Marilyn had also befriended Karger’s first wife, Patti, and the
two woman pranked Fred by placing a life-size cardboard of Marilyn’s image
from The Seven Year Itch on the front lawn of the married couple’s home in
Hollywood shortly after their wedding. In later years, Karger called Patti to
report that Marilyn had come to him in a dream. He died on the seventeenth
anniversary of Marilyn’s death.

Long after Marilyn’s demise, biographers speculated about her being

bisexual, based upon a remark written in her autobiography, ghostwritten by Ben
Hecht and frequently used out of context. In describing her indifference toward
sex in early adulthood, a result of early childhood sexual trauma, Marilyn wrote:

I ran into the words “frigid,” “rejected,” and “lesbian.” I wondered if

I was all three of those things. A man who had kissed me once said it
was very possible I was a lesbian because I apparently had no
response to males — meaning him…There were times even when I
didn’t feel human and times when all I could think of was dying. There
was also the sinister fact that a well-made woman had always thrilled
me to look at.

An unidentified and seemingly narcissistic male suggested to Marilyn that

she might be gay because she was sexually unresponsive to his advances. Two
paragraphs later, in recounting her relationship with an unnamed man, obviously
Fred Karger, Marilyn concluded: “Now, having fallen in love, I knew what I
was. It wasn’t a lesbian. The world and its excitement over sex didn’t seem
crazy. In fact, it didn’t seem crazy enough.” Many biographers who speculated
about Marilyn’s sexual orientation omitted her final explication.

Before the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1948, Marilyn met Johnny
Hyde.
There are three versions of Marilyn’s introduction to the man who would
facilitate her rise to stardom. In one, Austrian-born producer Sam Spiegel hosted
a New Year’s Eve party at his home in Beverly Hills and invited directors Otto
Preminger, William Wyler, John Huston, Henry Hathaway, and Jean Negulesco.
His guest list also included the most beautiful ingénues in Hollywood to serve as
holiday ornaments, Marilyn Monroe among them, and Russian-born talent agent
and vice president of the William Morris Agency, Johnny Hyde. Born Ivan
Haidabura (1895-1950), Hyde stood five-foot three inches and sported a toned
jockey’s build. Three decades older than Marilyn, his clients included Lana
Turner and Rita Hayworth.
In Bruno Bernard’s differing version of the fateful meeting, he had hired
Marilyn as a model for a commissioned cover story at his favorite retreat, the
Palms Springs Racquet Club on Indian Canyon Boulevard. While Bernard
photographed her in a blue two-piece swimsuit on the diving board of the
resort’s swimming pool, Hyde emerged from his bungalow and stopped in
amazement. He raced back to his bungalow and returned with a camera and
telephoto lenses. Bernard watched the former circus acrobat crouch on his belly
and fire away.
A third account of the meeting, Marilyn’s version told to Maurice Zolotow,
follows Bernard’s. She recalled meeting Hyde as one of many strangers in Palm
Springs in early 1949 while she was in a swimming pool. One thing is certain,
whether Hyde saw Marilyn in an evening gown standing across the room at
Spiegel’s mansion at the stroke of midnight, posed in a body-hugging bathing
suit and four-inch cork heels on the diving board of a resort, or wading in a
swimming pool in Palm Springs, he instinctively recognized her as movie star
material.
No man had treated her with such kindness, Marilyn wrote in My Story. Not
only did Johnny Hyde take the time to know Marilyn, he empathized with the
pain and desperation experienced by Norma Jeane. Furthermore, when he
professed his love, she believed him. However, the love Johnny had hoped
Marilyn would reciprocate never sparked even though she tried desperately to
fall in love with him. She compared the depth of Johnny’s love to the love of an
entire family. Johnny begged Marilyn to marry him. Fully aware of his fatal
cardiac condition, he wanted to die knowing she would be secure with an
inheritance. He had allegedly been earning $250,000 per year. Even Joseph
Schenck advised her to marry him. “I don’t love you, Johnny,” Marilyn insisted,
“So it wouldn’t be fair.” She feared that if she married Johnny, she might meet
and fall in love with another man closer to her own age, and dreaded hurting
Johnny.
Marilyn’s integrity prevented her from accepting a monetary gift of millions
guaranteed to provide her with autonomy, sanctuary, and power. For a girl with
an impoverished background who lived from paycheck to paycheck and often
skipped meals for lack of food, this unwavering decision paints her true
character and dispels any myth of her resembling the gold-digging blondes she
portrayed on the screen; Marilyn would marry only for love.
Despite her refusal to marry Johnny, Marilyn pledged fidelity. She did not
date other men while seeing him, “not seriously,” she qualified. Speaking with
Maurice Zolotow, Marilyn noted the irony of having loved and not being loved
in return, and now being loved and being unable to love in kind. In respect for
Johnny’s kindness, she was faithful to him. Marilyn experienced a karmic role-
reversal, which may have engendered some forgiveness toward the man who had
recently broken her heart.
Marilyn had a rather skewed perception of a man’s kindness; like Freddy
Karger, Johnny had a dark side. He commonly referred to women as “broads” or
“tramps,” and in public, he called Marilyn a “chump.” He was reputed to be a
womanizer during all three of his tumultuous marriages, and left a trail of broken
hearts. His first wife, Florence Harper, bore two him sons, Jay and Donald,
before they divorced. In 1928, Johnny married a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl,
Anne, and divorced her twelve years later, gaining legal custody of their children
by accusing her of suffering from mental illness and alcohol addiction. After a
brief acting career at Columbia Studios and a stint as his secretary, twenty-four-
year-old Mozelle Cravens became the last Mrs. Hyde. In 1945, she accused
Johnny of slapping her across the face and threatening to use a kitchen knife to
cut her throat and carve out her heart. A year after the birth of a son, she filed for
divorce but soon took Johnny back.
Marilyn’s experience with males set her on a trajectory of unhealthy
relationships with men, emotional abuse, and sexual exploitation. When Stanley
Gifford abandoned Marilyn before birth, she grew up blaming herself for his
disinterest and lack of love. This betrayal led to a pattern of mistrust in
relationships and the belief that any relationship would fail and the other person
would eventually reject and abandon her. The constant sexual harassment she
received from family members and others throughout her adolescence only
reinforced her distorted views of expected or acceptable behavior from the men
in her life.
James Dougherty was the healthiest and most loving man to enter Marilyn’s
life, but his decision to enlist in an army certain to deploy him overseas against
her wishes inadvertently recapitulated her father’s abandonment. Fred Karger
was willing to engage in a sexual relationship with Marilyn, but found her
unsuitable as a wife and mother and targeted her with contempt and criticism.
Without a father to love and validate her nonsexual worth, and especially due to
her father’s rejection, Marilyn was prone to low self-esteem, depression, and
loneliness.
Chapter Ten
1949: Love Happy, A Ticket to Tomahawk, & The Ashpalt
Jungle

Johnny Hyde made two advantageous moves early in the year to propel
Marilyn’s career. First, he purchased her contract with the National Concerts
Artists Corporation’s agent Harry Lipton, leaving him a lowly two-percent of her
income from film appearances. Second, he introduced Marilyn to Lester Cowan,
who was co-producing Love Happy for United Artists, owned by silent screen
star Mary Pickford.
Love Happy was a vehicle to restart the declining career of the Marx
Brothers. The 1949 madcap comedy premiered in San Francisco in October, but
financial challenges delayed its general release across the nation until March
1950. In order to boost the depleted production budget, director David Miller
implemented inventive product placement with a rooftop chase sequence that
enabled his cameras to capture the advertising billboards of major American
corporations. Unfortunately, even with built-in commercials, Love Happy is
regarded as the Marx Brothers’ least successful movie.
The Marx Brothers were a Vaudeville, Broadway, and film comedy team of
three brothers: Chico, Harpo and Groucho. Five of their thirteen feature films
were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy
films; Duck Soup (1933) and A Night at the Opera (1935) rank among the top
twelve. Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx (1890-1977) was a quick-witted, iconic
comedian of the twentieth century. His impromptu delivery of innuendos led to a
successful solo career, including the long-running radio and television game
show, You Bet Your Life, during the 1940s and 1950s. His exaggerated,
Vaudevillian features included a stooped posture, cigar, thick glasses, artificial
greasepaint eyebrows, and mustache. His appearance inspired the novelty mask
known as “Groucho Glasses,” horn-rimmed plastic glasses attached to a large
nose with bushy eyebrows and a mustache.
Groucho Marx satirically described Love Happy in the March 8, 1950
episode of his game show: “Harpo, Chico, and I tell a few jokes and do some
acting. It’s very educational.” On Dave Garroway’s Today Show aired on
November 8, 1963, Marx called it a “terrible movie,” and fondly summarized his
lasting impression of Marilyn: “Wonderful girl…A very nice girl.”
The simple plot follows Marx as private detective Sam Grunion, who narrates
his cracking the case of the missing Romanoff diamonds. A band of rehearsing
actors unwittingly become involved in the plot to smuggle the jewels into the
country though sardine cans. Kleptomaniac Harpo Marx, the curly-haired
brother whose on-screen character is a mime-like mute, communicating through
gestures and a honking horn, unknowingly steals the diamonds, which were
hidden in the sardines he stole to feed the members of his troupe. The heist’s
mastermind, Madame Egilichi, pursues him at the theater on opening night and
chases him up to the roof, where he evades her minions by dashing around and
flashing neon signs.
Co-producer Lester Cowan arranged for Groucho to audition three girls for a
minor part of a beautiful, unnamed girl. After Cowan introduced the actresses,
Groucho warmly greeted them and eased their tension by providing motivation
for the part. He told them of his need “for a young lady who can walk by me in
such a manner as to arouse my elderly libido.” One by one, each girl walked past
Groucho. In turn, he instructed them to walk in such a way as to make smoke
billow out of his ears like in an animated cartoon. Marilyn auditioned last.
“Which one do you like the best?” Cowan asked Groucho.
“You’re kidding aren’t you?” he responded. “How can you take anybody
except that last girl? The whole room revolved when she walked.” He described
Marilyn as “Mae West, Theda Bara, and Bo Peep rolled into one!” and told
others she was the most beautiful girl he had seen in his life.
The screen credits announced: “Introducing Marilyn Monroe” in a walk-on
part in a brief scene. Marilyn sashays into Grunion’s office wearing a tight,
strapless gown and fur stole, her curled blonde hair down to her shoulders. She
grasps his shoulder and with all seriousness, requests his help. The detective’s
eyes light up as he inquires about Marilyn’s problem. “Some men are following
me,” she replies, undulating away from him and dragging her fur behind her.
“Really?” Grunion retorts, rolling his eyes with glee, “I can’t understand why.” It
was a short joke shot at RKO Studios in one afternoon.
Marilyn earned five hundred dollars and an additional fee of three hundred
dollars for promotional still photography. Additionally, United Artists sent her
on a publicity tour of New York and Chicago at one hundred dollars per week
plus allowances, and provided the money to purchase a sophisticated wardrobe.
Marilyn purchased high-necked wool suits, jackets, and sweaters, only to
experience an unseasonal heat wave in the northeast. She posed with for
photographers with plastic ice cream cones to suggest the need for cool
refreshments in the sweltering temperatures.
In the spring, Hyde left his wife and children. Determined to make Marilyn
the fourth Mrs. Hyde, he convinced her to leave the Studio Club and live with
him in a mansion he rented at 718 North Palm Drive, Beverly Hills, down the
street from Jean Harlow’s final home at 512. Marilyn called Hyde’s mansion her
“little Romanoff’s,” in reference to a restaurant where Johnny often took her to
lunch. In a loving gesture, he had the dining room redesigned to resemble the
famous restaurant, with a wood dance floor and white leather banquettes.
For propriety, Marilyn maintained a studio at the ultra-modern Beverly
Carlton Hotel on Olympic Boulevard, where fellow neighbors Mae West, Lucille
Ball, and Desi Arnaz lounged beside the kidney-shaped pool. Her earnings from
Love Happy afforded a few months of rent payments and some personal
expenses, and Johnny escorted her around town, paying for meals, luxurious
gifts, and clothing from Sak’s. He hired hair stylists to regularly straighten and
bleach her hair platinum.
Hyde’s biggest investment in Marilyn, aside from his love, was a series of
minor cosmetic surgery procedures. In May, he took Marilyn to the private
practice of Dr. Michael Gurdin (1910-1993), who taught plastic surgery at
UCLA, for removal of a small bump of cartilage on her nose and the insertion of
a crescent-shaped prosthetic chin implant. Norman Leaf, M.D., who took over
Gurdin’s practice, claimed to have discovered notes from 1950 describing the
chin implant, but found no record of rhinoplasty. Leaf reported that Gurdin told
him about the nose surgery, performed with his former partner, Dr. John
Pangman. Comparison of photographs of Marilyn before and after the surgery
shows possible evidence of a narrowing of the bridge of her nose.
The man who had given Marilyn his business card when she was involved in
an auto collision in 1948 was shooting an ad for Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. When
his model abruptly left town, photographer Tom Kelley called the Blue Book
Modeling Agency. Marilyn reported to his studio at 736 Seward Street. Natalie,
Kelley’s wife and assistant, led Marilyn to a private room where she retouched
her make-up, and handed her a one piece bathing suit and multi-colored beach
ball to model.
“I found Marilyn an extremely warm person with a strong desire to do good
work and make a career for herself in the entertainment industry,” Tom Kelley
said. “I considered her a friend.” After relocating from New York to California
in 1935 and establishing a photography studio in Hollywood, Kelley was hired
by David O. Selznick and Samuel Goldwyn to take promotional photographs of
their stars. Later, Kelley transitioned to commercial and advertising photography.
On May 25, Kelley called Marilyn with news that the Baumgarth calendar
manufacturer in Chicago had commissioned an artistic nude portrait.
“Nude?” she asked.
“Completely nude,” Kelley replied. The pictures would be tasteful, not
vulgar, he explained. An unrecognizable model was necessary. Although
Marilyn had appeared on the covers of several national magazines and had a
starring role in a minor B-movie and walk-on parts in other films, she was
largely unknown.
The only reason Marilyn accepted the fifty-dollar job was because she was
behind on rent payments to the Hollywood Studio Club and facing eviction, or
behind in car payments and facing repossession. Perhaps she was actually behind
on both and did not want to accept money from Hyde.
“I was very hungry, four weeks behind in my rent, and needed money
desperately,” she told Georges Belmont in 1960. In contrast, in her 1954
autobiography, Marilyn wrote of awaking one morning to the theft of her car, on
which she was making monthly payments of fifty dollars. She soon learned it
was not a theft; however, as the car had been repossessed and payment of fifty
dollars was needed to reclaim it. On any given weekday, she drove to over a
dozen agent offices in the greater Los Angeles area in search of work, and
without a car, faced long term unemployment.
Marilyn made a call to Kelley. He told her the work would be easy and that
she would earn fifty dollars, the exact amount of her debt. The opportunity
seemed preordained.
“Well, only if you shoot at night and don’t have any assistants with you,”
Marilyn said. “I don’t want to expose myself to all your crew.” She also insisted
his wife must be present.
“Just Natalie and me,” Kelley agreed. “I promise.”
On May 27, Marilyn reported to Kelley’s studio but required further
reassurance that she would be unrecognizable in the photographs. Further
distancing herself, she signed her name as “Mona Monroe” on the Tom Kelley
Studio contract. She returned the next day, Saturday, for a session that would last
three hours.
“I felt shy about it, but they were real delicate about the whole situation,”
Marilyn recalled. “They just spread out some red velvet and had me lie down on
it. And it was all very simple, and drafty, and I was able to pay the rent and buy
myself something to eat.”
Having not eaten properly in several days, Marilyn sported a washboard
stomach ideal for the nude poses. Natalie played a recording of Artie Shaw’s
“Begin to Beguine” for ambient mood and inspiration. While posing on the
velvet, Marilyn grew anxious and wondered aloud about the consequence of
becoming an actress and being recognized in the photograph. Kelley promised
her anonymity.
Kelley took twenty-four frames of film, but only two were published on
calendars: a nude profile titled, A New Wrinkle, and a bust titled, Golden
Dreams. In the first, Marilyn lays in profile on her left side diagonally across the
red velvet. Her right leg extends backwards while her left arm extends outward,
both aligned with her torso. Her right arm frames her face, visible in a three-
quarter turn toward camera, her hair cascading across the velvet. The pose is
symmetrical and can be displayed at any rotation of the photograph.
In the second pose, Marilyn is seated against a backdrop of red velvet. A
ledge allowing her to sit on her buttocks is not visible. Marilyn’s legs are turned
to her side, her feet tucked under her buttocks. She poses nearly in profile, with
her left side and left leg prominent. Her left arm is arched behind her head,
exposing a smooth underarm, and her right arm is stretched downward. Only the
right side of Marilyn’s face is visible; her arm covers her left eye. The left breast
is completely exposed, and the right breast is in profile. Marilyn’s golden hair
flows behind her left shoulder. She was four days away from her twenty-third
birthday; her body was thin and toned. She received fifty dollars, and Kelley
sold the copyright on both photographs to the Baumgarth Company for five
hundred dollars.

On June 1, Marilyn’s twenty-third birthday, Joseph Schenck presented her

with an adorable female Chihuahua, which she promptly named Josefina in
honor of the studio’s elderly chairman. A few weeks later, Marilyn crossed the
country by train on a junket to promote Love Happy. In Rockford, Illinois,
publicists grew alarmed when she lingered several hours more than scheduled
during her visit to the Children’s Home of Rockford because of her insistence
upon meeting every child in the state orphanage and all the patients of its clinic
for the disabled. Hal Nelson of the Rockford Morning Star wrote of her
authenticity: “We liked Marilyn. She wasn’t just another Hollywood beauty. She
had a fresh charm about her. She acted as though she really liked us, too.
Newspaper people can usually tell.”
Marilyn arrived on time at the State Theatre for an advance screening of the
film, and went for a walk in the rain with Harpo Marx’s double. Nelson noted
she nearly wore out her fingers signing autographs for long lines of families.
Marilyn thanked the local press for the kind words printed about her.
“It’s tough to get to the top in Hollywood,” she explained while shaking their
hands.
“You’ll make it,” more than one reporter assured her.
Adele Fletcher, editor of Photoplay, invited Marilyn to Warrenburg, New
York to present the key to the winner of the magazine’s “Dream House” contest.
Actors Donald Buka, Lon McCallister, and Don DeFore, later well known for his
role in the 1960s television series Hazel, also participated. Local radio station
WWSC set up a microphone to broadcast the event, and photographers for
Photoplay provided coverage for an article in the next issue. The winner of the
house, Virginia MacAllister, attended on crutches due to injuries sustained from
a skiing accident. Marilyn guided the woman and her five year-old son on a tour
of their new home.
Back at in her room on the fourteenth floor of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in
Manhattan, Marilyn received a call from Andre de Dienes. He was also in town
and suggested a modeling session on Tobey Beach, Long Island. In a one-piece
strapless white bathing suit and carrying a polka-dot parasol, Marilyn gracefully
and playfully pranced on the shore before traveling home to Los Angeles.
Johnny Hyde brokered Marilyn’s return to Fox for a small part as Clara in the
Technicolor musical A Ticket to Tomahawk starring Dan Dailey, Anne Baxter,
and Rory Calhoun. Playing one of Madame Adelaide’s four showgirls in 1876
Western period costume and performing in a musical number, Marilyn hoped
that Fox would offer her another long-term contract.
Written by director Richard Sale and his wife, novelist Mary Loos, the plot
was simple. To eliminate competition, stagecoach line owner Colonel Dawson
(Mauritz Hugo) attempts to prevent the inaugural run of Tomahawk and Western
Railroad’s Engine One, a locomotive train named Emma Sweeney, from
traveling through the Colorado Rockies and reaching its destination of
Tomahawk, Colorado on time. He hires Dakota, a gunman played by Calhoun, to
upset the train’s progress as U.S. Marshall Dodge (Will Wright) plans to
welcome it to Tomahawk, along with his rugged grand-daughter, Kit (Baxter).
Traveling salesman Johnny “Behind-the-Deuces” Jameson (Dailey) is the train’s
sole passenger until he is joined by a Chinese launderer, Madame Adelaide
(Connie Gilchrist), her four beautiful, young showgirls (Marilyn joined by
Marion Marshall, Joyce Mackenzie, and Barbara Smith) and their pianist, Velvet
Fingers (Harry Seymour). Johnny joins the girls in singing “Oh, What a Forward
Young Man You Are,” in which Marilyn stands out in the end position in the
chorus line.
Production took place in Durango, Colorado in the Rocky Mountains for five
weeks, with Fox paying the Rio Grande and Western Railroad for the use of its
track and train, running from Durango to Silverton, Colorado. In the film,
Silverton doubled as the fictional town of Tomahawk. In one scene shot on
location in the old National Hall in Silverton, Marilyn and the other showgirls
stood on a balcony and waved at the train as it pulled into town. Her costumes,
designed by Charles LeMaire and Rene Hubert, included a yellow showgirl
costume adorned with ribbons and bows and accessorized with a plumed period
bonnet, another yellow period dress with jacket, and a nightgown with a high
neckline. The city of Denver, Colorado, hosted the film’s world premiere on
April 18, 1950.

John Huston (1906-1987) was nominated for fifteen Oscars over the course
of his five-decade career and won the Best Director and Best Screenplay
statuettes for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). In the fall of 1949, he
directed a film noir produced by Arthur Hornblow at MGM titled The Asphalt
Jungle. Huston was a Renaissance man. Before he was one of Hollywood’s most
acclaimed directors, he had worked as an amateur boxer, reporter, short-story
writer, portrait artist, and a documentary filmmaker. A successful screenwriter
for Warner Brothers, Huston transitioned to directing with The Maltese Falcon
(1941), followed by classics such as Key Largo (1948) and The African Queen
(1951).
Huston and Ben Maddow adapted The Asphalt Jungle from W.R. Burnett’s
novel. The plot centered on a corrupt lawyer, Alonzo D. “Uncle Lon” Emmerich
(Louis Calhern), who fronts an elaborate jewel heist executed by criminal
mastermind Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) and a team of experienced
thieves; Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), Gus Ninissi (James Whitmore), and
Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso). While the robbery is precisely designed, a
series of mishaps, including Emmerich’s betrayal, thwarts its success.
Ultimately, each criminal succumbs to his inner weakness and faces prison or
death.
Angela Phinlay, Emmerich’s much-younger mistress, was a small but
featured role in a major film with a veteran cast delivering strong performances.
The character was significant in both the film’s plot and theme and had the
potential to push Marilyn into the limelight. Marilyn nearly lost the opportunity
to portray Angela when Huston chose Lola Albright (born 1925), instead.
Lucille Ryman, Marilyn’s benefactor and, serendipitously, the casting director at
the MGM, reminded Huston of Albright’s recent success in the acclaimed
Champion (1940) with Kirk Douglas and the actress’ resulting increased weekly
fee. When Huston paused, Ryman recommended Marilyn as a more affordable
and equally effective alternative. Coincidentally, Huston’s gambling debts
prevented him from paying his eighteen thousand dollar bill for the boarding and
training of his twenty-three horses at Lucille and John’s ranch. Allegedly, Ryman
agreed to a payment plan contingent upon Marilyn’s audition for the role.
Marilyn rehearsed with Natasha for three days and three nights, exploring the
character’s inner psychology and relationship to the plot.
“I played a vacuous, rich man’s darling attempting to carry herself in a
sophisticated manner in keeping with her plush surroundings,” Marilyn told
columnist Dorothy Kilgallen. “I saw her as walking with a rather self-conscious
slither and played it accordingly.”
With Marilyn’s performance honed, Ryman called on Sydney Guilaroff, the
studio’s official hairstylist, to lend his expertise.
“I trimmed her hair carefully,” Guilaroff wrote in his memoir, “curling it
under in the beginnings of a pageboy, but leaving it free to move and shift with
Marilyn’s motions. It was an original style, much shorter than the standard
length at that time and structured to follow the contours of her face. It was the
look that would help make her famous and become her trademark.” Ryman next
called Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio, to tell him that an important
audition would take place the next Wednesday.
The audition scene was the character’s introduction twenty minutes into the
film. Emmerich stands above his young mistress as she naps on a sofa in an
elegant striped pants suit, his expression a mixture of admiration and contempt.
Her posture in repose evokes the nude calendar pose.
“What’s the big idea standing there staring at me, Uncle Lon?” Angela asks.
He instructs her stop calling him “Uncle.” Sitting up, Angela seeks his approval
by reporting she ordered the delivery of salt mackerel because he enjoys it for
breakfast.
“Some sweet kid,” Emmerich remarks in a soft voice. Angela stretches and
yawns. He mentions the late hour and suggests she go to bed. Angela leans over
to kiss Emmerich goodnight, and he takes her in his arms, pulls her down onto
his armchair, and kisses her passionately. Angela gently pushes him away and
lowers her eyes from his. Her expression suggests the melancholy of a young
woman being kept by an older man for whom she feels no passion. Angela slinks
off the chair, pats his hand, and slowly walks across the room. The camera cuts
to a long shot of Angela walking down the hall to her room and slowly closing
the door as she shyly smiles at Emmerich. “Some sweet kid,” he repeats.
Marilyn recalled trembling with fear when she auditioned for Huston. She
had studied her lines the previous evening but couldn’t relax. He invited her to
sit on one of the straight-backed chairs in the room, but she asked to lie on the
floor. Hoping to increase her comfort, she also asked permission to remove her
shoes. Having been told Marilyn was unusual, the request did not surprise
Huston.
“When it was over,” he recalled, “Marilyn looked very insecure about the
whole thing and asked to do it over. I agreed. But I had already decided on the
first take. The part of Angela was hers.” She impressed him more off screen than
on. “There was something touching and appealing about her,” the director
remarked in The Legend of Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn was convinced her reading was “awful,” but before she could
apologize, Huston smiled and announced she had earned the part. He told she
would probably develop into a very good actress, the goal to which she aspired.
When Marilyn actually filmed the scene in the fall of 1950, she looked over
Huston’s shoulder for Natasha’s approval. In the finished film, as she walks
across the living room and off camera, Marilyn can be seen glancing toward her
coach. Marilyn played most of her scenes with fifty-five year-old actor Louis
Calhern (1895-1956) who portrayed Emmerich. Before World War I, Calhern
had been a matinee idol on stage before transitioning to silent films. In 1950, his
career peaked with three exceptional performances: as Buffalo Bill in the
musical Annie Get Your Gun, as Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent
Yankee, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and as Marilyn’s sugar-daddy
in The Asphalt Jungle. Calhern had been married to eccentric Natalie Schafer,
best known as Mrs. Howell in the 1960s television situation comedy, Gilligan’s
Island.

In her second scene, Marilyn wears a tight black dress with off-the-shoulder
straps designed by Otto Kottke, a diamond necklace, and bracelet. Uncle Lon
tells her that he will be busy with cases and offers to send her on a trip. With
girlish delight, Angela darts to her bedroom to retrieve a magazine advertisement
for a vacation in Cuba, and rests her head on his lap. She makes the most of a
few lines, which now appear dated by slang interjections of the era:
 Imagine me on this beach with my green bathing suit. Yipes! I almost
bought a white one, but it wasn’t quite extreme enough. Don’t get me
wrong. If I’d gone in for extreme-extreme, I’d have bought the French
one.

A pounding on the door interrupts her excitement. She becomes frightened by

the disturbance at such a late hour and asks Uncle Lon to see who is calling.
Marilyn completed the scene in one take.
Her acting ability shines in the final sequence. The police commissioner and
detectives have arrived at Emmerich’s home to present the signed confession of
his accomplice and arrest him. One of the detectives knocks on Angela’s
bedroom door. When she opens the door, Marilyn speaks in a natural voice.
“Haven’t you bothered me enough, you big banana-head?” she booms
angrily. “Just try breaking my door and Mr. Emmerich will throw you out of the
house.” Her posture is bold and determined. When the detective announces the
commissioner is ready to interrogate her, Angela’s anger turns to little-girl fear
as her shoulders cave and she clings to the doorknob. In a slight, tremulous
voice, she asks if she can talk to the detective instead. He gently advises her to
comply by telling the truth.
The policeman leads Angela by the arm into the living room, where the
commissioner stands over Emmerich as he calmly reads his accomplice’s
confession. The commissioner interrogates Angela, who has provided her lover
with an alibi, and threatens her with a jail sentence for perjury. She looks
pleadingly at Emmerich, who directs her to tell the truth. Breaking down in to
tears, Angela buries her face in her hands; the policeman leads her away to sign
a statement. Marilyn satisfied Huston on the second take.
Angela apologizes through tears as she grabs Emmerich’s hand. He assures
that, all things considered, she did well. She asks about the status of their trip to
Cuba. “Don’t worry about the trip baby,” Emmerich responds. “You’ll have
plenty of trips.” Marilyn would cite her experience of working in The Asphalt
Jungle as one of the most rewarding of her career. “I don’t know what I did, but I
do know it felt wonderful,” she told Natasha, as told to Jane Wilkie in an
unpublished manuscript.
When the film premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on May 23, 1950,
Los Angeles police officer James Dougherty served with a squad of other
officers to restrain the crowds. He looked at the posters advertising the film and
saw the image of his former wife, but she was not in attendance. Photoplay
lauded Marilyn’s enormous screen presence: “There’s a beautiful blonde, too,
name of Marilyn Monroe, who plays Calhern’s girlfriend, and makes the most of
her footage.” New York Herald-Tribune acknowledged Marilyn’s performance as
lending “a documentary effect to a lurid exposition.” Cinematographer Harold
Rosson, who had been Jean Harlow’s last husband, lighted and filmed Marilyn
beautifully.
The next spring The Asphalt Jungle won four Academy Awards: Best Actor
in a Supporting Role, Sam Jaffe; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White,
Harold Rosson; Best Director, John Huston; and Best Screenplay, Ben Maddow
and John Huston.

As the West Coast editor of Look magazine, Rupert Allan conducted one of
his first interviews with Marilyn in the fall of 1949. The encounter sparked a
lasting friendship. Born in St. Louis and educated at Oxford in Great Britain,
thirty-six-year-old Allan (1912-1991) was tall, cultured, witty, and attractive. He
had served as a lieutenant commander for intelligence in the United States Navy
during World War II and transitioned to a career in journalism, working for the
St. Louis Dispatch. Within a few years, he would leave Look and work as a
publicist for Arthur P. Jacobs Company. Allan’s clients included Bette Davis,
Gregory Peck, and Grace Kelly. He ultimately served as consul general of
Monaco when Kelly became the principality’s Princess by marriage. Allan
remained one of Marilyn’s lifelong confidantes.
Allan and his life partner, Frank McCarthy (1912-1986), often invited
Marilyn to dinner parties in their tasteful house at 1455 Seabright Place.
McCarthy maintained a separate, grander home next door in order to hide the
true nature of their relationship from the press. Having served as a military
secretary to General George C. Marshall, McCarthy had been groomed for a
cabinet position in President Harry S. Truman’s administration but abruptly
withdrew his name from consideration, possibly due to his closeted sexual
identity. However, Truman appointed him Assistant Secretary of State in 1945.
After the war, McCarthy moved to Hollywood, became an executive producer
for Fox, and met Allan. McCarthy spent nearly twenty years developing a
biographical film of Patton, finally brought to fruition with George C. Scott in
the role of the outspoken, profanity-spewing leader. As the film’s executive
producer, McCarthy accepted the Best Picture Oscar.
 Marilyn accepted an invitation from Allan and McCarthy to a reception
welcoming a team of young photographers from New York, assigned by Look to
a photographic essay on Hollywood starlets. She immediately connected with
Milton H. Greene (1922-1985), a talented twenty-seven-year-old photographer
professionally dubbed “Color Photography’s Wonder Boy.” Born Milton
Hawthorne Greenholtz in New York, Greene served an apprenticeship to
photojournalist Elliot Elisofen and became an assistant to the distinguished
fashion photographer, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, known for her innovative work for
Harper’s Bazaar.
Greene left Los Angeles without taking a photograph of Marilyn. She wrote
him a charming poem in a Western Union telegram, now part of the Scott
Fortner Collection, dated September 14 and addressed to “Milton (Hot Shutter)
Greene” in New York:

Milton Greene/I love you dearly/And not for your “house” and
hospitality merely/It’s that I think you are superb/And that, my dear, is
not just a blurb/Love, Marilyn

The work of photographer Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) appeared in Look,

Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Paris-Match, and Life. Born in Latvia, he
studied engineering in Dresden before moving to Paris. With assistance from
Albert Einstein, a friend of his sister’s, Halsman escaped Hitler’s invasion of
France and obtained permission to enter the United States, where he achieved
success as a magazine portrait photographer.
For his photographic essay, “Eight Girls Interpret Different Emotions,”
published in the October 10 issue of Life, Halsman asked each starlet to
pantomime specific acting scenarios: seeing a monster, hearing a funny story,
tasting a favorite drink, feeling a deep and emotional pain, and embracing a
lover. By far, Marilyn is the most natural and photogenic of his group of
ingénues. In her rendition of emotional pain, she clutches the sheets on a bed.
Halsman placed her front and center in a group portrait where, sitting crossed-
legged on the floor in a black skirt and white silk blouse, hands folded in front,
Marilyn seems to radiate light.
The magazine solicited its readers to write with feedback on the starlet’s
“screen tests” to determine who demonstrated the most talent. Mrs. M.
Sakakeeny of Cambridge, Massachusetts agreed with Halsman when she made a
prediction in a letter to the editor published in the October 31 issue: “Marilyn
Monroe is not only the most beautiful, but the one who will no doubt make a
name for herself in Hollywood.”

Between the fall and spring, celebrities made the ninety minute drive from
Los Angeles to Palm Springs to relax, swim, and play tennis at luxurious desert
resorts. They also caroused at the famous Bamboo Room Lounge, where the
Bloody Mary cocktail was purportedly first concocted as a remedy for hangovers
from excessive drinking.
The Palm Springs Racquet Club Hotel was Hyde’s favorite weekend escape
destination, and he took Marilyn there for the New Year celebration on a
Saturday night. Marilyn towered over him in flat shoes and a pink dress with full
skirt. During the weekend, they were photographed lounging by the Racquet
Club’s pool: Marilyn in the white strapless bathing suit from de Dienes’ portraits
of her on Tobey Beach in Long Island; Johnny wore swimming trunks and
sandals, and looked acutely frail.
The couple personified the characters in David O. Selznick’s A Star is Born
(1937). Like unpolished Esther Blodgett who is groomed into the luminous
screen star Vicky Lester, Marilyn was the young and vibrant starlet; and like
Norman Maine, Johnny was the aging and declining Hollywood great who
accelerated her rise to fame before his own demise. At the stroke of midnight
amid the sounds of noisy revelers in the Racquet Club’s ballroom and
accompanied by the orchestra’s “Auld Lang Syne,” the couple toasted to 1950.
The New Year would bring Marilyn two roles that would launch her stardom;
but it would also mark Johnny’s death. They had twelve remaining months
together.


Part III
Rising Star
Chapter Eleven
 1950: The Fireball, Right Cross, Hometown Story, & All
About Eve

1950 harkened the decade Marilyn would eventually symbolize. Radio

airwaves played Patti Page’s “The Tennessee Waltz,” Nat King Cole’s “Mona
Lisa,” and Gordon Jenkins’ “My Foolish Heart.” L. Ron Hubbard’s self-
improvement book, Dianetics, a thesis of the principals of the Scientology cult
religion, sold over 150,000 copies, and Doubleday published Ray Bradbury’s
science fiction novel, The Martian Chronicles, about humans fleeing the atomic
bombing of Earth and colonizing Mars.
Young adults starting families had been children during the Great Depression
and enjoyed the post-war economic prosperity and a significantly expanded
middle class. Americans married younger and had more children than in
previous generations, causing what would be known as the Baby Boom. In 1950,
3,632,000 babies were born, over one million more than in 1930; and the birth
rate continued to rise, peaking in 1954 and 1957.
Since the end of World War II, the United States and Soviet Union
experienced mutual mistrust, referred to as the Cold War, and Americans feared
a worldwide spread of Communism. North Korea’s invasion of South Korea
brought about the United Nations’ declaration of a “breach of the peace,” and
President Harry S. Truman committed American forces under the command of
General Douglas MacArthur in a police action to fight the Communist
aggressors. After Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb,
homeowners invested in underground bomb shelters and stocked them with
provisions to last through a nuclear fall-out. Schools conducted nuclear air raid
drills in which children were taught to “duck and cover” under their desks.
Americans owned six million television sets and watched programming on
four networks. On Sunday nights, NBC’s Your Show of Shows offered ninety
minutes of comic sketches written by Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, and Neil
Simon, and starring Cid Caesar and Imogene Coco. Husband and wife film stars
Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball formed Desilu Productions, and introduced a multi-
camera process used to film television shows in front of a live studio audience,
rather than the prevailing custom of broadcasting live without recording the
action.
1950 was also the year Marilyn appeared in The Fireball, a minor Fox film
about Johnny Cazar (Mickey Rooney), an orphan who runs away to become a
roller skating champion. The plot was a fictionalized account of the life of Eddie
Cazar, a professional roller derby star. Marilyn portrayed Polly, a rather snobbish
but elegant young socialite who attends the competitive sports events on the arm
of her boyfriend, played by James Brown. The couple befriends Cazar only
because he is a sports star and joins their snobbish friends in mocking him
behind his back. Cazar’s ego inflates with his popularity and he becomes
involved with several women, including Polly, who are attracted only to his
sports fame. After contracting polio, his loyal friend Mary (Beverly Tyler) and
Father O’Hara (Pat O’Brien), the priest who operates the orphanage, nurse him
to recovery and a successful comeback on the rink.
Rooney (1920 — 2014) was a tremendous box office draw in the late 1930s,
when he made a series of films as the character Andy Hardy, the comical teen
son of a conservative judge. While Marilyn was living with the Goddards and
Aunt Ana, Rooney and Judy Garland co-starred in youth-oriented musicals such
as Babes in Arms (1939) and Girl Crazy (1943), films that followed the formula
of a small town teen couple who put on a show in the barn.
During the production, Marilyn met Fox’s hairstylist, Agnes Flanagan, who
made a special effort to increase the volume and length of her hair by lending her
a blonde hairpiece. “Oh, gee, I wish I really looked like that,” Marilyn told the
hairdresser. They became immediate friends, and Flanagan remained loyal to
Marilyn, working with her on The Misfits, Let’s Make Love, and Something’s Got
to Give.
Hyde assisted Marilyn in landing the first of two small parts in films at
MGM. The first was Right Cross, about Latin prize-boxer Johnny Monterez
(Ricardo Montalban), who dates Pat (June Allyson), the daughter of his
promoter Sean O’Malley (Lionel Barrymore of the Barrymore family acting
dynasty).
Handsome Mexican-born Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009) starred as a
bullfighter in Fiesta (1947). He became popular a generation later as suave Mr.
Roarke in the 1970s television series Fantasy Island and in television
commercials for Chrysler’s Cordoba, in which he famously rolled his r’s when
describing the sedan’s “rich Corinthian leather.” In a costume that revealed his
impressive physique and massive pectoral muscles at age sixty-two, Montalban
portrayed the villain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
In Right Cross Marilyn was uncredited as model Dusky LeDoux, and played
her brief scene in a restaurant with Dick Powell in the role of Rick Gavery,
Johnny Monterez’s heavy-drinking sportswriter friend. Rick flirts with Dusky,
employing double entendre, before Johnny interrupts. Rick describes a dinner
menu of spaghetti with mushroom sauce, a salad, garlic bread, and bottle of
wine. Dusky, suspicious, asks where the meal would take place. “My
apartment,” he replies; “Spaghetti a la Rick. Best you ever flopped your lips
over. Make it myself.” If she is good, he teases, he’ll tell her the recipe.
Skeptically, Dusky asserts she is well aware of the ingredients.
MGM’s June Allyson (1917-2006), portraying Pat O’Malley, was married to
Dick Powell until his death in 1963. Allyson shared her memories of Marilyn on
Larry King Live in 2001:

You are not going to believe this, but she was the sweetest, most
delightful person I ever met. I remember when Richard [Powell] was
doing a film with her; he thought she had a lot of talent and someday
somebody would find it. She was so sweet. Such a good person. You
know, if you said to Marilyn, I love that blouse you are wearing; she
would give it to you. She was that kind of person.

Hyde also landed Marilyn a part in MGM’s Hometown Story, a propaganda

film for the post-war American industry financed by General Motors to promote
the virtues of big corporations, which was written and directed by Arthur Pierson
of Dangerous Years. Jeffrey Lynn plays Blake Washburn, a politician defeated in
an election to the state legislature by the son of a wealthy industrialist, John
MacFarlane. He returns to his job as editor of a small town newspaper in an
attempt to expose the evils of big industry, and publishes investigations of
MacFarlane’s manufacturing plant allegedly dumping refuse in the local river.
MacFarlane, an immigrant, meets with Washburn to discuss the positive
contributions big businesses have made to America, including aiding the war
effort; and explains that customers profit from big business in their use of the
products manufactured. When Washburn’s eight-year-old sister is trapped in a
collapsed mine tunnel during a school field trip, MacFarlane uses his resources
to rescue her, changing the editor’s mind about big corporations.
Marilyn portrays Iris Martin, the newspaper office’s sharp and efficient
secretary, in several scenes with newspaper reporter Slim Haskin, played by
Alan Hale Junior. He tries to flirt with Iris, who fends off his advances by
formally punctuating all her remarks with “Mr. Haskins.” “How long do you
have to work around before stop calling me Mr. Haskins?” Slim asks.
 “I always treat men with respect,” she replies, “then they treat me with
respect, Mr. Haskins.”
Obviously, Marilyn provided her own wardrobe, wearing the sweater-dress
from Fireball in the first scene. Her co-star, Alan Hale Junior (1921-1991), is
best remembered as the Skipper in CBS’ Gilligan’s Island (1964-1967), a
situation comedy about seven people shipwrecked on a deserted isle, including a
sexy movie star, Ginger Grant, played in a characterization of Marilyn Monroe
by Tina Louise.
Having represented Marilyn for a year without a legal agreement, Hyde
officially became her agent on March 2, when she signed a standard contract
with the William Morris Agency for a term of three years, with authorization by
the Screen Actors Guild. The timing was perfect. Marilyn unknowingly stood on
the edge of fame.

Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won the Academy Award for Best
Screenplay for A Letter to Three Wives (1949), was casting an A-film produced
by Zanuck at Fox. The story, originally titled Best Performance, centered on a
fortyish grande dame of the Broadway stage, Margo Channing (Bette Davis),
and her young stand-in and rival, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Eve, seemingly
a down-on-her-luck star struck ingénue, insidiously ingratiates herself to the
actress and becomes her personal assistant and later, her understudy. Slowly, Eve
is revealed as a calculating opportunist who arranges for Margo’s absence in
order to perform her role, attract the attention of New York critics, and
eventually replace her.
Mankiewicz’s brilliant and textured screenplay, adapted from Mary Orr’s
short story, The Wisdom of Eve, twists and turns in plot and contains sharp,
snarky dialogue and memorable lines. It is a smart exploration of the
backstabbing competition between egotistical actresses and the dynamics and
politics of the theater, written by a heterosexual man with a gay man’s
sensibility. The American Film Institute ranked the film as twenty-eighth among
the Greatest American Films of All Time, and it was the only one of Marilyn’s
films to win a Best Picture Academy Award.
According to Sam Staggs, author of All About “All About Eve”: The
Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made, an actual
Margo and Eve existed. In 1943, Viennese actress Elisabeth Bergner performed
in the play The Two Mrs. Carrolls, directed by Reginald Denham, Orr’s future
husband. After each performance, a young waif stood outside the stage door for
a glimpse of Bergner. In sympathy for the girl, the actress invited her into her
dressing room and later hired her as secretary. The girl displayed gratitude by
attempting to take over Bergner’s career and to steal her husband, director Paul
Czinner.
The American Film Institute ranked the film’s star, Bette Davis (1908-1989),
as second among the greatest actresses in the history of motion pictures. Only
four-time Oscar-winner Katharine Hepburn surpassed her. With a strong-willed
character, clipped New England diction, large eyes, and idiosyncratic
mannerisms, Bette Davis swept across the screen as a force of nature in over one
hundred films over the course of six decades. She earned two Best Actress
trophies for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938), and received a total of ten
Academy Award nominations, including one unofficial write-in nomination for
Of Human Bondage (1934). Davis was not afraid to play older, unattractive
characters, but their common denominator was ferocious strength and
independence. By 1950, her twenty-year career was in a slump after leaving
Warner Brothers, where she peaked in Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940),
The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942). The comeback role of
formidable Margo Channing seemed to define her both professionally and
personally at age forty-two, although she played it as a near parody of over-the-
top actress Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968).
Davis and Marilyn had little in common aside from their dislike of Zanuck.
Davis had not set foot on the Fox lot, nor had she spoken to the mogul since the
two had a major falling out during the time she served as the first woman
president of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“You’ll never work in Hollywood again,” Zanuck told Davis, but she proved
indomitable. Indeed, she was not Mankiewicz or Zanuck’s first choice for Margo
Channing. Only after Claudette Colbert injured her spine filming a rape scene in
Three Came Home and could not perform did Zanuck pick up the phone, make
amends, and offer Davis the role. With this history of bad blood, Davis might
have taken delight in reciting Mankiewicz’s line to Gary Merrill, whose
character disregards her with talk of his negotiations with Zanuck to leave
Broadway to direct a film in Hollywood: “Zanuck! Zanuck! Zanuck! What? Are
you two lovers?”
Gary Merrill (1915-1990) portrayed Bill Sampson, Margo’s younger
boyfriend, whom she agrees to marry in the end when she chooses to focus on
her personal life rather than her stage career. He had only completed four films,
including Twelve O’Clock High (1949), before playing opposite the diva of all
screen divas. All About Eve brought Merrill and Davis together in an
impassioned affair while each awaited a divorce from respective spouses. They
married shortly after filming ended, but the tumultuous union ended in divorce
in 1960.
As Karen Richards, Margo’s best friend and the wife of her playwright,
Celeste Holm (1917-2012) outlived all of her co-stars and appeared in several
documentary films about Marilyn’s life. Holm signed with Fox in 1946 and won
a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the studio’s groundbreaking film about anti-
Semitism, Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). She was nominated in the same
category for her performance in Come to the Stable (1949) and as sympathetic
Karen Richards. As the subdued playwright of Margo’s successful show, Lloyd
Richards, Hugh Marlowe (1911-1982) delivered the proper toned-down
stereotype of a writer. Like Marilyn, he was no stranger to studio rejection.
Marlowe had been dropped twice from MGM, hired by Fox in 1948, and had
starred in Twelve O’Clock High (1949) and Night and the City (1950).
Acid-tongued Broadway critic Addison DeWitt, described as a “venomous
fish-wife,” was splendidly portrayed by George Sanders (1906-1972), who
embodied suave and snobbish onscreen. Eleven years after his film debut,
Sanders won the Best Supporting Actor trophy for the The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1945). He committed suicide in Castelldefels, Spain, by an overdose of
the contents of five vials of the barbiturate Nembutal, and left a suicide note:
“Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I
am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”
Appearing with Marilyn in the first of three films together, Thelma Ritter
(1902-1969) played the crusty former Vaudevillian entertainer, Birdie Coonan,
working as Margo’s maid and companion and intuitively suspicious of Eve from
the start. Notorious for stealing scenes, Ritter, with her Brooklyn accent,
responded to Eve’s sob story with the comical line, “What a story! Everything
but the blood hounds snappin’ at her rear end.”
The role of Miss Claudia Caswell in All About Eve was an important
assignment for Marilyn in a significant film starring several of Hollywood’s
veteran actors. When a supporting actress in Margo’s antebellum play becomes
pregnant and requires replacement, Miss Caswell vies for the role with the
support of her benefactor, critic Addison DeWitt. We learn of Miss Caswell’s
lack of professional acting experience when Addison describes her as “a
graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art,” implying she had been one
of the famous Latin-themed New York nightclub’s showgirls.
 Margo agrees to read lines with Miss Caswell during the audition since “she
looks like she could burn down a plantation.” However, due to Margo’s
egocentric tardiness, Eve reads lines with Miss Caswell, steals the scene, and
impresses the director, playwright, and critic. Ultimately, Miss Caswell is sent
back to the Copacabana and has no more screen time, but Eve is hired as
Margo’s understudy.
The casting director’s short list for the actress who looked like she could
torch the Southern mansion included Joi Lansing, Adele Jergens, Zsa Zsa Gabor,
Angela Lansbury, Marilyn Maxwell, and Marilyn Monroe. After having
interviewed about ten actresses, “I felt Marilyn had edge,” he recalled. “There
was breathlessness about her and sort of glued-on innocence about her that I
found appealing.” Marilyn had prepared for the role with Natasha, creating a
performance out of a handful of lines and only minutes of screen time. She
didn’t play Miss Caswell like Peggy Martin, Angela Phinlay, or Iris Martin. She
has none of Peggy’s sweetness, Angela’s vulnerability, or Iris’ assertiveness.
Instead, Marilyn played her with humor, as vacuous but ambitious. Serious about
her craft, Marilyn put her soul into menial parts as if they were leading roles. On
March 27, she signed a contract with Fox for five hundred dollars per week for a
one-week guarantee, and returned to the studio lot from which she had once been
dismissed, for costume fittings and publicity portraits.
Principal photography began in April on location in the lobby and main hall
of the Curran Theatre on Geary Street in San Francisco for Marilyn’s third scene
and the following sequence. Built in 1922 a few blocks from Union Square and
available for use between stage shows, the theater posed as a classic Broadway
playhouse.
While Mankiewicz and Davis were registered in suites at the luxurious St.
Francis Hotel in Union Square, Sanders, Merrill, Marlowe, and Marilyn stayed
at the Fairmont on Mason Street atop Nob Hill. Gary Merrill described in his
autobiography a memory of a dinner party Davis hosted the night before she,
Marilyn, and Sanders shot their scene. “The party went on quite late,” he wrote,
“but Marilyn excused herself early because she had to work the next morning.
We all knew the scene Marilyn had to work on was really Bette’s scene and that
Marilyn had only a few lines…Bette had more, but she was an experienced
actress and accomplished the scene with little bother.”
To film her brief scene, Marilyn arrived in the lobby of the theatre without
Natasha and provided her own sweater-dress, worn in Fireball and Hometown
Story. Wardrobe attendants draped a fur chain of lynx pelts over her shoulders.
Mankiewicz blocked the movements. Davis, as Margo, arrives at the theater late
to Miss Caswell’s audition as Addison sits in the lobby waiting for Miss
Caswell, who is in the ladies’ restroom being “violently ill to her tummy.” He
tells Margo that Eve’s performance was filled with “fire and music” and that Bill
and Max hired Eve as her understudy. Margo conceals her fury. As Miss Caswell
exits the ladies’ room, Addison asks how she is feeling.
“Like I just swam the English channel,” Miss Caswell replies as she
undulates across the lobby. Addison suggests her next option is television.
When Miss Caswell inquires if producers hold auditions for television, he
explains that television is “nothing but auditions.” The exchange is a joke
demeaning the perceived inferior medium competing with both theater and film,
but the mood on the set was far from good-humored.
Bette Davis could have been a beneficial role model for Marilyn, had the
former been gracious and Marilyn not so petrified of her. However, Davis would
not spare Marilyn her wrath. “That poor Monroe child, Marilyn, was terrified of
Bette Davis!” George Sanders recalled in 1970. “During one scene in a theater
involving Marilyn, Bette Davis, and me, Bette whispered after a shot, within
poor Marilyn’s hearing, ‘That little blonde slut can’t act her way out of a paper
bag! She thinks if she wiggles her ass and coos, she can carry her scene. Well,
she can’t.’ ” Unnerved, Marilyn required ten takes. Celeste Holm also described
an equally offensive start. She stopped speaking to Davis after she mocked
Holm’s politeness on the first morning of shooting.
Without Natasha or Hyde to protect her, Marilyn retreated to solitude. “I
thought of her as the loneliest person I had ever known,” Mankiewicz wrote.
“Throughout our location period in San Francisco, Marilyn would be spotted at
one restaurant or another dining alone. Or drinking alone. We’d always ask her
to join us, and she would, and seemed pleased, but somehow she never
understood or accepted our unspoken assumption that she was one of us. She
remained alone. She was not a loner. She was just plain alone.”
Back at the Fox lot in Soundstage nine dressed as Margo’s sprawling
brownstone townhouse in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mankiewicz filmed the
legendary cocktail party in which Margo Channing delivers the film’s most
memorable line, “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” and
sashays passed her guests toward the second floor landing to her living room.
Miss Caswell ascends the stairs with Addison DeWitt and meets the hostess on
the landing. Marilyn looked arresting in a white ermine coat over a strapless
white brocade gown with a sweetheart bodice and white tulle bouffant skirt,
designed by Charles LeMaire. Her hair was pulled back on each side of her face
and pinned up in the back in curls. Her widow’s peak was prominent, and a wave
of hair casually touched her forehead. For the first time, Allan Snyder had
darkened the small mole on Marilyn’s left cheek between her nose and mouth.
The “beauty mark” was her signature makeup trick for the rest of her life.
During a brief rehearsal before the first take on the brownstone set, Davis
allegedly told Marilyn, “I know and you know everyone knows that kitten voice
of yours is goddamned lousy, and it’s lousy because you never trained it as a real
actress does!” Marilyn ran offset crying and vomited. She would still be
processing the incident five years later in the Fox commissary with Joan Collins,
who was then appearing with Davis in The Virgin Queen (1955).
“That woman hates every female who can walk,” Marilyn told the younger
actress. “She made me feel so nervous. She didn’t talk to me at all, just sort of
swept around the set, nose and cigarette in the air.”
Marilyn recovered well enough from the vicious attack to effectively steal the
scene from Davis with an adorable, girlish air, and perfectly timed delivery of
Mankiewicz’s sparkling dialogue. In the scene, Miss Caswell meets Margo,
much like the way Marilyn had met Davis. The characters paralleled the
actresses’ actual status in Hollywood at the time. Like Miss Caswell, Marilyn
was a fledgling actress, whose beauty outshone her developing skill, and who
benefitted from the mentorship of an older male backer. Margo, like Davis, was
a pompous grande dame with decades of acting experience and success behind
her.
When Addison asks Margo if she remembers Miss Caswell, the older actress
emphatically states she does not. With a sweet smile, Miss Caswell explains the
reason is because they have never met. Addison makes the introduction, and
when Eve joins them, Margo presents her to Addison and Miss Caswell. Until
now, he tells Eve, they have only met “in passing.”
“That’s how you met me,” Miss Caswell reminds Addison.
Margo introduces Miss Caswell to Eve as “an old friend of Mr. DeWitt’s
mother.”
When Margo suggests Eve and Addison have a long talk about their mutual
interest in the theater, Eve remarks that he will find her boring. With wide-eyed
honesty, Miss Caswell says Eve won’t bore Addison because it is unlikely that
he will give her an opportunity to talk. Addison pulls Miss Caswell aside and
points to Max Fabien, the producer. While removing the ermine coat from her
shoulders, Addison advises her to “go do yourself some good.”
 She asks him why producers always look like “unhappy rabbits.” He tells her
that is exactly what producers are and suggests she advance her career by
making this one happy.
Whenever Marilyn appeared on the screen, she commanded the audience’s
complete attention, no matter who else inhabited the camera’s frame, or even if
she remained silent. In the cocktail party scene, all eyes are on Marilyn, and she
upstaged the Hollywood veterans. Davis was not amused.
Marilyn appreciated Sanders’ kindness in San Francisco and felt safe working
with him on the lot. They started having lunch together at the studio’s Café de
Paris. Sanders said she was “very inquiring and unsure; humble, punctual and
untemperamental. She wanted people to like her, her conversation had
unexpected depth. She showed an interest in intellectual subjects which was, to
say the least, disconcerting. In her presence it was hard to concentrate.”
During the production, Sanders was married to the second of his four wives,
the tempestuous Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor (born 1917). In her memoir,
One Lifetime is Enough, Zsa Zsa admitted to suspicions about her husband’s
choice to sit at a table with Marilyn in the commissary and confronted him with
jealous rage. The dining hall was crowded, Sanders explained, and they often
had no choice but to sit together. Besides, he told his wife, Marilyn wrote good
poetry and shared it with him. “Poetry!” Zsa Zsa exclaimed, “How can I fight
her poetry?”
Sanders grabbed his green-eyed wife and made passionate love to her. Since
fiery sex was not his style, Zsa Zsa accused her husband of fantasizing about
Marilyn. Outraged by the allegation, Sanders picked Zsa Zsa up, carried her
through the French doors to their back yard, and threw her in the swimming
pool.
The next workday, Sanders sat beside Marilyn in the commissary and told her
that he was famished. He ordered chicken salad, and they chatted until their
meals arrived. Before Sanders could take a bite, a server called him to the
telephone. When the actor returned, he excused himself without finishing lunch.
Marilyn asked if he had suddenly taken ill and offered to drive him back to the
soundstage. Sanders denied feeling ill, paid his check, and dashed off. Worried,
Marilyn trotted after him, but he walked away briskly. Soon after, Sanders’ polite
and debonair stand-in advised Marilyn to greet the actor only from a distance.
“Mr. Sanders’ wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor, obviously had a spy on the set,” Marilyn
wrote, “and this spy had flashed the news to her that he was sitting at a table
with me, and Miss Gabor had telephoned him immediately and given him a full
list of instructions.” The Hungarian actress’ mistrust of her husband may not
have been completely unfounded; after their divorce, he married her sister,
Magda Gabor.
George Sanders was not the only male on the set that found Marilyn
intelligent and complex. Mankiewicz drew the same conclusion after he saw her
carrying a copy of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and asked if
someone had recommended it to her. “No,” Marilyn explained, “You see, in my
whole life I haven’t read hardly anything at all. I don’t know how to catch up. I
don’t know where to begin. So what I do is, every now and then I go into the
Pickwick and just look around. I leaf through some books, and when I read
something that interests me, I buy the book. Last night, I bought this one.”
Mankiewicz told her it was a good way to select reading material, and she
smiled. A few days later, Marilyn sent him a copy of the book.
Later, the director noticed Marilyn reading Lincoln Steffen’s autobiography
and warned her of the danger of being perceived as radical for reading the
memoirs of the controversial journalist, who supported communistic ideals and
shed light on government corruption in urban American cities. “It was the first
book I’d read that seemed to tell the truth about people and life,” Marilyn wrote.
“It was bitter but strong. Lincoln Steffens knew all about poor people and about
injustice. He knew about the lies people used to get ahead, and how smug rich
people sometimes were; it was almost as if he’d lived the way I’d lived.”
Marilyn completed her final scene, in which Margo’s cocktail party winds
down. Miss Caswell sits on the stairs with the film’s stars and Gregory Ratoff, as
Max Fabien. Marilyn was playing in the big league with an all-star cast, and her
anxiety skyrocketed. According to Celeste Holm, she kept her co-stars waiting
as she vomited off-stage, just as her character had at the Curran Theatre.
“Thees girl ees going to be a beeg star!” Ratoff correctly predicted in his
thick Russian accent.
In his autobiography published in 1960, Memoirs of a Professional Cad,
Sanders wrote affectionately of his co-star: “Even then, on the set of All About
Eve, Marilyn struck me as a character in search of an author and I am delighted
she found Mr. Miller eventually.” Celeste Holm also saw more in Marilyn than
Bette Davis had.
“She was a very strange girl, full of the unexpected,” Holm recalled. “She
wanted so much to amount to something. Poor little thing.”
Mankiewicz’s film editor Barbara McLean joined director Henry King in
viewing Marilyn’s screen test for Wait ’til the Sun Shines Nellie (1952) when
production on Eve had ended, and agreed with Ratoff’s estimation. “That girl’s
going to be a big star,” she told King, according to Sam Staggs. “I’d sure take
her if I was directing the picture.”
Others on the Fox lot agreed with McLean. With Sanders off-limits as a
dining companion, Marilyn was attracting attention in the commissary with
costume designer William Travilla. “I can still see us walking in there, and here’s
Bette Davis, Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward with their forks frozen halfway to
their mouths as they gaped at her,” he remembered. “All these stars with their
press people and agents and all the background of a studio going on, and it all
just stopped dead when Marilyn appeared. It was awesome, and she wasn’t even
trying.”
Author Sam Staggs noted that among her All About Eve veteran co-stars,
Marilyn’s career was the only one to ascend. For the others, this film was the
peak. In the final scene, Eve wins the fictitious Sarah Siddens Award as Best
Actress and returns to her apartment to find a young woman, Phoebe (played by
Barbara Bates), who had snuck inside. The woman identifies herself as the
president of the Eve Harrington Fan Club and ingratiates herself. Later, she
answers the door for Addison, who delivers the award Eve left in the taxicab.
She quietly slips on Eve’s satin cape, clutches the award, admires herself in a
four-mirrored cheval, and repeatedly bows, echoing an early scene in which Eve
had bowed before a mirror while holding Margo’s costume close to her body.
Phoebe’s infinite reflections represent multiple ambitious ingénues poised in the
wings to replace aging actresses. Sadly, Monroe, Sanders, and Bates all died by
suicide.
Like Eve and Phoebe, Marilyn was poised in the wings and equally ambitious
for a successful acting career, but not at the expense or exploitation of another
established performer. Similar to Eve, she was willing to sacrifice a personal life
to achieve the goal of stardom and endeared herself to those who could assist
her. Nearly everyone who met Marilyn felt compassion toward her softness and
helplessness, and wanted to help her.

Thirst, literal thirst, brought Marilyn together with one man who wanted to
help her. During the production of All About Eve, she leaned over a water
fountain in a corridor in Fox’s administration building and drank a large quantity
of water. A thirsty man stood nearby, waiting to drink from the fountain and
watching her shapely body from behind. He was a short, stocky forty-five year-
old man with thick, horn-rimmed glasses, who boasted about his uncanny ability
to identify raw talent. When Marilyn finished and turned around, the man asked,
“Are you a camel or something?” When the man drank from the fountain, she
smiled and asked him the same question. He laughed, and they immediately
connected. The man introduced himself as Sidney Skolsky and invited her to
take a seat in his nearby office. They chatted for a long time. “From then on we
were friends,” Skolsky wrote long after her death, “seeing each other frequently
and talking almost daily.”
Sidney Skolsky (1905-1983) claimed to have originated the name “Oscar” for
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Award of Merit. Born in New
York City, he graduated from New York University, worked as a Broadway press
agent, and became an entertainment critic with caustic humor for the Daily News
and the New York Post. In 1932, Skolsky relocated to Los Angeles and used the
counter at Schwab’s Drug Store on Sunset Boulevard as his headquarters to
gather information for his nationally syndicated column, heavy on cinema facts
and light on gossip. He also wrote articles for Photoplay magazine under the
title, “Sidney Skolsky Sounds Off, From a Stool at Schwab’s.” Skolsky knew the
top brass at Fox, including publicists Harry Brand and Roy Craft. Whimsical,
unpredictable, and neurotic, he suffered from depressive episodes,
hypochondriasis, and phobias of water, cats, and dogs.
Skolsky did not drive, nor did he own a car. Instead, he enlisted friends to
chauffer him around Los Angeles. Marilyn became his frequent chauffeur, and
he became her frequent escort. She towered over his slight stature, and they
seemed an unlikely match. Marilyn sought Skolsky’s advice, and he discovered
her far wiser than she presented. “She was not the ordinary blond actress-starlet
that you could find by the gross at any major studio,” the columnist wrote. “And
gross is a good word to describe what Marilyn wasn’t. She appeared kind, soft,
and helpless. Almost everybody on meeting Marilyn wanted to help her.
Marilyn’s supposed helplessness was her greatest strength.” Skolsky served as
Marilyn’s confidante more often than her escort and observed a drive and
determination in her to become an actress, not a movie star.

The all-star premiere of All About Eve was held at Grauman’s Chinese
Theatre on November 9. Across Hollywood Boulevard, the management of the
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel darkened fifteen of the eighteen letters in the lighted
sign, leaving only “eve” illuminated. Marilyn attended on the arm of Johnny
Hyde. It seemed all of Hollywood’s royalty were in attendance: Kirk Douglas,
Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, Richard Conte, George Sanders
and Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hugh Marlowe, Anne Baxter, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Bette
Davis and her mother, Ruthie. Fox hosted an after-party at Ciro’s nightclub.
When the Oscar nominations were announced in 1951, All About Eve set a
record with fourteen nominations, not to be equaled until Titanic in 1998.
Nominations included: Best Picture; Best Director (Mankiewicz); Best
Screenplay (Mankiewicz); Best Supporting Actor (Sanders); Best Supporting
Actress (Holm and Ritter); Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (Edith Head
and Charles LeMaire); Best Dramatic or Musical Score (Alfred Newman); Best
Sound Recording (Thomas T. Moulton); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
(Milton Krasner); Best Film Editing (Barbara McLean); Best Art Direction,
Black-and-White (Lyle Wheeler, George Davis, Thomas Little, and Walter M.
Scott); and, for the first time in Academy history, two nominations for Best
Actress (Davis and Baxter). The film won six golden statuettes, and although
Davis did not win, the role of Margo Channing is considered her greatest career
performance and signature role.
Sidney Skolsky nicknamed Marilyn “Miss Caswell,” the role she played
when they met. For the remainder of her life, she would use “Miss Caswell” as a
moniker in telephone messages and notes addressed to him.

Awaiting Fox’s offer of a long-term contract for having proven her ability and
mesmerizing screen presence in All About Eve, Hyde arranged for Marilyn to
appear in a twenty-five minute television commercial for Royal Triton motor oil,
a product with a distinctive purple color. She portrays a pretty girl behind the
wheel of her convertible that has run out of gas. Four men push the car into a gas
station as she steers. “This is the first car I ever owned,” she proudly announces
to the men and gas station attendant. “I call her Cynthia.” In a close-up, Marilyn
says with conviction, “She’s going to have the best care a car ever had. Pour
Royal Triton into Cynthia’s little tummy.”
“Right, lady,” the attendant says. In an extreme close-up, Marilyn seductively
purrs, “Cynthia will just love that Royal Triton.”

Marilyn’s life changed on May 2, when she received a sixteen-page standard

yearlong contract with Fox commencing at five hundred dollars per week with
an option for renewal, and a graduating weekly salary capping at $3,500 per
week in 1956. Two additional pages titled “Synopsis of Employment Contract”
dated thirteen days later contained special provisions. One rider required
Marilyn to have any dental work deemed necessary by a producer at her own
expense within sixty days of the demand. Another obligated her to “furnish all
shoes, hosiery, and under-clothing, and any other suitable wearing apparel she
may possess,” while the producer would furnish all costumes.
On a cloudy afternoon in May, photographer Earl Leaf arrived at Johnny
Hyde’s house to photograph Marilyn to promote Fox’s “new” starlet. In a
sundress, she posed with poise and perfect posture on the patio reading a script.
Leaf completed a roll of film as Marilyn changed into elegant attire to pose
inside selecting books from a shelf in the library and descending the curvaceous
staircase. When satisfied with the session and the amount of usable shots, Leaf
prepared to leave, but Marilyn read his brevity as a sign of her having failed and
implored him to stay longer. “I can climb trees, do handstands, cartwheels,
anything you like!” she pleaded.
Leaf continued shooting, and Marilyn posed for another twenty minutes,
changing her clothes three times. In a shorts outfit and a bathing suit, she played
in the backyard with Josefina and attended to the garden. In another outfit, she
again read the script. “That was her first attempt on record to ask the media and
the studios to take her seriously,” Leaf would recall. “I can think of no other
early photograph of Marilyn in which her intelligence is so evident. This is a
face of experience and intent.”
With the money she earned from the commercial and the promise of a steady
weekly income, on July 1 Marilyn purchased a new navy blue Pontiac Chieftain
Club Coupe with whitewalls tires. During the summer, Rupert Allan
accompanied her to the Pickwick Bookshop, where she purchased art books. She
tore out copies of classic paintings by Botticelli and Fra Angelico, and taped
them to the walls of the studio apartment she maintained at the Beverly Carlton
Hotel. Marilyn also framed a portrait of Eleonora Duse (1858-1924), the Italian
actress lauded by Natasha who achieved fame in Italian versions of roles made
famous by Sarah Bernhardt. More introverted than Bernhardt, she rarely granted
interviews and remained an enigma who mentored younger actors in the early
stages of their careers. Duse earned the honor of being the first woman on the
cover of Time.
As The Asphalt Jungle premiered, Hyde arranged for a screen test at Fox for
a crime drama titled Cold Shoulder. Natasha helped Marilyn prepare for the role
of the girlfriend of a small-time gangster played by Richard Conte. Conte (1910-
1975) had originally signed with Fox in 1942 and appeared in films during the
war, including the drama A Walk in the Sun (1945). His stern appearance led to
tough-guy roles in film noir such as Call Northside 777 (1948) before he moved
to the rival studio.
Marilyn wore her favorite clinging sweater-dress from Fireball, Hometown
Story, and All About Eve and delivered the fever pitch of a scene fraught with
tension. During the nighttime action, Marilyn stands before a fireplace speaking
in an agitated manner to Conte, who sits facing her on a sofa, his back toward
the camera:

BENNY: What did you come here for?

GIRL: To tell you, you can’t stay here. If those gorillas find you here,
what happens to them?

(She gestures to a closed door indicating others are behind it)

Nothing? They’re just gonna leave them alone? What’s the matter with
you, Benny? You can’t take such a chance.

BENNY: How did you find out about this?

GIRL: Two guys came calling on me, looking for you.

BENNY: Who were they?

GIRL: I never saw them before.

BENNY: Well, when did they come?

GIRL: About four o’clock.

(Benny crosses the room and looks out the front door’s window into the
night, looking for a group of men hunting him. The girl joins him at the
door.)
 BENNY: You dumb broad! You stupid, little…

GIRL: What’s the matter?

BENNY: They followed you here. Or did you bring them with you. I
oughta…

(He raises his hand to strike her)

GIRL: Go ahead. It won’t be the first time I’ve been worked over today.
I’m getting used to it.

(Benny puts on a jacket and prepares to leave.)

GIRL: Where are you going? (Grabbling his arm) Benny…

(Benny exits as the girl wilts in rejection)

Marilyn speaks in a bold, strong voice with her idiosyncratic manner of over-
pronunciation of T’s, resulting in somewhat exaggerated lip movements, but she
is effective as the panicked moll. Strong and convincing, her performance
foreshadowed the confrontation scene with Eli Wallach in The Misfits a decade
later.
On July 19, Louella Parson’s column announced Marilyn was cast in the
gangster-themed film produced by George Jessel and compared her to a young
Lana Turner. The columnist also described her as “one of the nicest girls in this
town” and added that all of Hollywood rooted for this girl, once brought up in an
orphanage. Cold Shoulder was never filmed, but Zanuck liked the screen test
enough to offer Marilyn a small comic role as a secretary in As Young As You
Feel, scheduled to begin production in January.
In an interview with Ronald Davis, Joseph Newman took credit for directing
the screen test which led to Marilyn’s second Fox contract while he was working
on a production starring Linda Darnell, most likely the audition scene for Cold
Shoulder. “[Marilyn] wasn’t quite right for this part and didn’t have the
experience yet,” he opined, “but you could see the spark. Zanuck signed Monroe
to a contract, and later I made a picture with her.”
In August, Ed Clark of Life received a call from a publicist at Fox about
photographing the studio’s “hot tomato.” Marilyn arrived for the shoot in
Griffith Park in shorts and a crepe blouse bearing her embroidered initials and
buttoned to her neck. She read poetry books and a script and then removed the
sedate blouse, revealing a bikini top. Clark sent several rolls of film to the
magazine’s headquarters in Manhattan, and the response was: “Who the hell is
Marilyn Monroe?”
Editors failed to recognize her from Philippe Halsman’s photographic essay
the previous year. Considered overdeveloped, the prints were filed away and
forgotten until staff of the magazine’s archives began the overwhelming task of
digitally recording every photographic negative on file. Life finally released
them in 2012.
By autumn, Marilyn frequently slept on the living room floor of Natasha’s
flat at the Romanesque Villa Apartments, located at 1309 North Harper Avenue
at the intersection of Fountain Avenue. She brought along Josefina, her
Chihuahua, whom she indulged with expensive calf’s liver and a quilt blanket,
and took care of Barbara, Natasha’s daughter. In the evenings, Natasha and
Marilyn worked on acting scenes and created a language through hand signals so
that Natasha could convey messages to Marilyn on set in the presence of a
director without the director’s awareness. Standing off-set, Natasha could
execute a simple gesture to communicate to Marilyn when she needed to modify
the tone of her voice or vary her facial expression.
With The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, Hollywood was buzzing about
the beautiful blonde, but equated her with the one-dimensional roles she had
performed. In reality, she was becoming a skilled character actress in the role of
sirens and nitwits. Studio representatives told Zanuck that his beautiful newly
signed contract player might someday turn into an actress, but Zanuck believed
her physical appearance worked against this possibility. Zanuck never perceived
her as an actress with star quality, Marilyn told Maurice Zolotow. She had
learned through another studio executive that Zanuck considered her a freak and
did not want to waste his valuable time developing her. Marilyn would have
nightmares about the mogul and believed she had to somehow impress him and
convince him of her potential. She made several attempts to see Zanuck in his
mammoth sixty-foot long office during the early days of her employment, but
was denied an audience.
As his physical condition deteriorated, Johnny Hyde instinctively knew he
would soon die and Marilyn would be left alone without his protection. He
complained of pain radiating throughout his body and required his strapping
chauffeur to carry him up the curving staircase to the second-story bedroom. As
winter approached, Johnny had discussions with his attorney about modifying
his will to leave Marilyn a third of his estate.
On Saturday, December 16, Hyde drove to Palm Springs for a retreat at the
Racquet Club Resort with his secretary, Dona Holloway, and was joined later by
Marilyn. The next day, he suffered a massive heart attack and was transported by
ambulance to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles with Marilyn racing
behind in her Pontiac. Hyde’s last words to Holloway were reputedly, “Be sure
that Marilyn is treated as one of the family.” He died on December 18, leaving
Marilyn devastated. Holloway had no power to carry out his final wishes. Hyde
had not actually revised his will, so Marilyn received nothing. His wife, Mozelle,
evicted Marilyn from the home on North Palm Drive and allegedly confiscated
all of the jewelry and clothes he had given her. Mrs. Hyde also attempted to bar
her from the funeral at Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.
Nothing and no one would stop Marilyn from paying respects to the man who
believed in her and assisted her professionally and personally. Sedated by a
physician at Natasha’s home to end her uncontrollable sobbing, Marilyn dressed
in a black suit purchased from I. Magnin’s for $146.61. Sam Berke, Dona
Holloway, and Holloway’s husband arrived to accompany her to the funeral.
Hyde’s youngest son, James, recalled Marilyn screaming his father’s name in a
manner that unnerved and disturbed the other mourners.
After the family and other mourners departed, Marilyn approached the grave
and plucked a white rose from the floral spray on the casket to preserve between
the pages of her Bible. According to some accounts, she threw herself on the
casket and cried, “Johnny, Johnny!” A few days later, Joseph Schenck called a
grieving Marilyn to offer condolences and the use of his guesthouse, but she
declined. Instead, she alternated between her Beverly Carlton apartment and
Natasha’s living room sofa at 1309 North Harper. There were good days and bad
days, but mostly bad days. At Christmas, gifts from Johnny arrived
posthumously at Marilyn’s apartment. She opened one large box and found a
mink coat inside; she burst into tears. Johnny’s love and generosity had
transcended his death.
During the holidays, Natasha arrived home earlier than anticipated to her
apartment and found a note on the door. “I leave my car and my mink coat to
Natasha,” it read in Marilyn’s handwriting. Natasha scrambled to fit her key in
the keyhole and entered the apartment in a panic. She found another note taped
to the bedroom door instructing her daughter, Barbara, not to enter. In the
unlocked bedroom, Natasha discovered Marilyn unconscious and noticed
liquefied purple gelatin from partially dissolved medication capsules in the
corner of her mouth. Opening Marilyn’s mouth, Natasha discovered about thirty
pills from a nearby vial with a label from Schwab’s Pharmacy. According to
Natasha, Marilyn had not swallowed the pills, but they had dissolved and were
trickling down her throat. Knowing Marilyn had expected her to return in five
hours, a worried Natasha pondered the overdose as an intentional act to end her
life or a cry for help. Whenever Marilyn explained something, her right hand
darted forward, weaving to the left and right like a serpent. “It was a gesture of
evasiveness and survival through expediency,” the acting coach said.
Marilyn survived the nonfatal overdose, her first documented instance of a
suicide gesture. Most likely, she did not intend to end her life. Indeed, if Marilyn
were developing Borderline Personality Disorder, a theory supported by her
future behavior and emotional states, this act would have been consistent with
the diagnosis. Individuals with the disorder may engage in self-harming
behaviors during dissociative experiences or when they feel numbness,
emptiness, or excruciating emotional pain. Hyde’s sudden death would have
been a trigger for such an act. Sometimes, the individual sets up the suicide
attempt in a manner in which she may be rescued, indicating a desire to seek
support or comfort. In the weeks following Hyde’s death, Marilyn was clearly in
crisis.
As Marilyn recovered from Hyde’s passing, she presented Natasha with a
cameo brooch inscribed, “I just want you to know that I owe you much more
than my life.”
Chapter Twelve
 1951: As Young As You Feel, Love Nest, & Let’s Make It
Legal

The January 1951 issue of Life contained an article titled “Apprentice

Goddesses,” featuring photographs of Eleanor Parker, Marilyn Monroe, June
Haver, Phyllis Kirk, Debra Paget, and other beautiful ladies. The caption under a
glossy portrait of Marilyn in a black gown with black gloves referred to her as a
“Busty Bernhardt.” Marilyn’s performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About
Eve thrust her into the public eye even more, especially when Life spotlighted
her uniqueness. “Just standing still and breathing she can bring men running
from all directions,” the magazine noted, “and after small but pungent roles…her
studio is convinced she will be a fine dramatic actress too.”
With Johnny Hyde gone, no one believed more in Marilyn’s potential for
drama than Natasha Lytess. In return, Marilyn grew increasingly dependent upon
her. When the lease on Natasha’s apartment on Harper Avenue expired in early
January, she placed a sales contract on a modest home at 611 North Crescent
Drive, where she hoped to raise her daughter, Barbara. However, Natasha was
short on cash for the down payment. Marilyn altruistically sold her most
valuable and sentimental possession, the mink coat from Johnny Hyde, and gave
Natasha money toward the purchase.
Coping with grief, and desiring increased privacy and autonomy, Marilyn
returned to her studio apartment at the Beverly Carlton Hotel near the Fox lot.
Designed by architect Sam Reisbord and modern-style graphic and interior
designer Alvin Lustig, the boomerang-shaped luxury residential hotel opened in
1948 and featured a kidney-shaped swimming pool. Marilyn had her walls
painted in oyster, gray, and burgundy. On the full-length mirror mounted on the
closet door, she wrote in lipstick the Latin word nunc (“now”) as an affirmation
of living in the present. Unusual for a female of the era, even a starlet or model,
Marilyn exercised with weights to keep her breasts firm and jogged through the
neighborhood alleys to stay in shape.
The Beverly Carlton Hotel would not permit Marilyn to retain her
Chihuahua, Josefina, on the premises so, in addition to the loss of Johnny, she
experienced the loss of her pet, remindful of her childhood trauma of Tippy’s
violent death. Photographs and letters sold at Heritage Auctions revealed that
Marilyn arranged the pet’s adoption by a middle-aged woman and her young
children, and maintained contact with them for a period of time.
 Ensconced at a swanky Hollywood address, Marilyn sought self-
improvement and education by enrolling in noncredit evening courses,
Renaissance Art and Background of Literature, at UCLA. Instructors and fellow
students had no idea she was an ambitious actress until a classmate recognized
her from a picture in a movie magazine and brought it to class. Professor Claire
Seay told Collier’s magazine, “Marilyn was so attentive, so modest, and so
humble that she could have been some girl who had just come from a convent.”
Marilyn considered this an immense compliment. She would tell Georges
Belmont about feeling fortunate to sit next to an “absolutely brilliant” African-
American boy. “He worked for the post office,” Marilyn added. “Now he’s head
of the Los Angeles Post Office.”

In their last days together, Johnny and Marilyn discussed the irony of the title
As Young As You Feel, a film in which he arranged for her to play Harriet, an
attractive and competent secretary. Indeed, Marilyn made Johnny feel more
youthful than his fifty-three years, but now that he had succumbed to a heart
condition, she approached her work without his support and guidance.
Zanuck no longer received persuasive phone calls from Marilyn’s lover and
agent, but he did peruse the abundance of fan mail pouring into the studio
mailroom in response to the success of her performance in All About Eve.
Audience members requested autographed glossy portraits and information
about Marilyn Monroe’s next film. Screenwriter Lamar Trotti, who based As
Young As You Feel on Paddy Chayefsky’s unpublished short story The Great
American Hoax, expanded the role of Harriet for her at Zanuck’s demand.
The plot of As Young As You Feel was simple. John Hodges (Monty
Woolley), a sixty-five year-old employee of Acme Printing Services, opposes his
company-forced retirement due to a biased policy against experienced but aged
workers. He lives with his son (Allyn Joslyn), daughter-in-law (Thelma Ritter)
and granddaughter (Jean Peters) engaged to Joe (David Wayne).
In a scheme to reclaim his job, Hodges darkens his white hair and poses as
Harold P. Cleveland, the president of Acme’s parent company, Consolidated
Motors. He confronts his former boss, Mr. McKinley (Albert Dekker), and
revokes the policy, reinstating those retired. Meanwhile, McKinley has a crush
on his cool and efficient secretary, Harriet (Monroe), who deflects his advances.
Believed to be Cleveland, Hodges is invited to the Chamber of Commerce and
delivers an inspirational speech on his view of American business. When the
press publishes his stirring words, Hodges becomes a national hero and causes
the company’s stock to rise.
McKinley invites Hodges to dine with him and his overlooked wife, Lucille
(Constance Bennett), who falls in love with Hodges’ youthful spirit and expertise
rumba dancing skills. An outraged Mr. McKinley displaces his anger toward
Harriet, the object of his unreciprocated amorous interest. A personnel clerk who
once dated Hodges’ granddaughter tries to convince the family that the elder is
posing as the company’s president. The real Mr. Cleveland calls on Hodges to
praise his stand on the value of loyal and experienced workers and validates
every word of his celebrated speech. All is resolved, and Hodges resumes his old
job.
Harriet is a sexy secretary, but she is also a smart woman. She is efficient and
organized in her job, and takes dictation with a pencil and pad. Her boss leans on
her for trivial information, and she knows every fact and detail he asks. Marilyn
appears in several scenes and various costumes. She is memorable in a solid
white dress with plunging neckline, and her wrist is adorned with dangling
bracelets. She speaks in her natural voice, and the part offered opportunities to
play anger and frustration. Marilyn’s hair is short, no longer styled in Sydney
Guilaroff’s pageboy.
Marilyn made positive impressions on her co-stars of separate generations.
Constance Bennett (1904-1965), a sleek and stylish blonde whose combination
of sophistication and wisecracking humor made her a star in the 1930s, approved
of Marilyn’s body by commenting, “There’s a broad with a future behind her.”
Jean Peters went on to co-star with Marilyn in another two films, and David
Wayne earned the title of the actor who appeared in the most films with Marilyn,
a total of four.

Director Elia Kazan had been prowling the Fox lot for Marilyn. They had met
at a reception at actor Danny Kaye’s home the previous summer, welcoming
Vivien Leigh to Hollywood to film A Streetcar Named Desire under Kazan’s
direction. At the time, Kazan was married to playwright Molly Thatcher, the
mother of his children, and Marilyn was on the arm of Johnny Hyde. Now that
her benefactor was deceased, she seemed rudderless, available, and vulnerable.
Kazan was still married, but this did not stop him from pursuing another woman.
He was not classically handsome, but with a thick mane of black hair, intense
and piercing dark eyes, Kazan could be described as having a Mediterranean
attractiveness.
Kazan (1909-2003), the immigrant child of a Greek rug merchant in
Constantinople, had studied acting at Yale University and acted professionally
for nearly a decade before joining the Group Theatre in New York in 1932, and
co-founding the Actors Studio in 1947. Kazan directed the Broadway production
of A Streetcar Named Desire and won an Academy Award for directing Fox’s
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947).
Under the pretense of visiting Harmon Jones, Kazan came to the soundstage
while the director worked with Marilyn. After the scene ended, her expression
changed from her character’s to her own melancholy one. Accompanying Kazan
was a tall, thin man with an angular face, sunken cheeks, and a receding hairline.
Kazan approached Marilyn and introduced his companion as Arthur Miller, the
playwright. Kazan had directed the stage version of his recent plays, All My Sons
and Death of a Salesman.
As Miller took her hand in greeting, Marilyn immediately thought he
resembled Abraham Lincoln, one of her idols. “When we shook hands the shock
of her body’s motion sped through me,” Miller wrote, “a sensation at odds with
her sadness amid all this glamour.” Kazan and Miller had just come from Darryl
Zanuck’s office, where they had peddled Miller’s screenplay, The Hook. Kazan
offered Marilyn condolences and asked her to dinner, but she declined. Both
Kazan’s and Miller’s wives remained at home back East.
The two men went to the studio cafeteria for lunch and later discovered
Marilyn weeping in studio storage room among discarded sets and papier-mâché
gargoyles, an appropriate backdrop to her gloom. She sobbed to Kazan about
Hyde’s passing, his calling for her from his deathbed, and his family preventing
her from entering the room during his final hours. Marilyn’s profound grief
distracted her from noticing Miller’s empathy.
Kazan and Miller were houseguests of Marilyn’s future agent, Charles
Feldman, away in New York. Feldman had produced the film version of A
Streetcar Named Desire. Marilyn was soon sharing Kazan’s bed in the agent’s
house on Coldwater Canyon Drive while Miller sat at his typewriter set on a
table beside the pool. They spoke to Marilyn about their upcoming appointment
at Columbia Studios to hawk Miller’s script to Harry Cohn, the mogul who had
fired her for refusing a private invitation to his yacht during the absence of his
wife. Marilyn told Miller about standing up to Cohn and refusing to compromise
her values at the cost of her future with the studio. For fun, the men invited her
along to pose as their secretary and have the last laugh. After all, Marilyn was
rather convincingly portraying a secretary in her current film and could fake
shorthand.
 When the two men collected Marilyn at her apartment, she had prepared for
her role with a steno pad and several sharpened pencils for note taking. Arriving
at Cohn’s office, Kazan introduced her as their secretary, Miss Bauer. The studio
mogul starred at Marilyn, wondering where he had seen her. His face turned
bright red when he remembered her rebuff. Miller and Kazan joined in Marilyn’s
vindication.
Columbia refused to consider the script unless Miller made anticommunism
the overall theme. Unwilling to compromise, he withdrew, and Marilyn admired
this. She and Miller now bonded over their respective principles and shared
ability to defy the formidable Harry Cohn. Afterward, the trio browsed through a
bookstore, where Marilyn sought to purchase Miller’s play. Wandering away
from Kazan, the two headed toward the poetry aisle. Miller introduced Marilyn
to the work of E.E. Cummings, whom she found amusing. She kept repeating a
particularly funny line and laughed all the way back to the car.
Discovering more interests in common, Miller and Marilyn went on picnics
together. Marilyn was twenty-four and Miller was thirty-five, and unlike most of
the men she had met since divorcing Dougherty, Miller was a gentleman who
respected her boundaries and did not make sexual advances toward her. When
Feldman returned home, he resumed his routine hosting of a cocktail party each
evening and held one in honor of Miller. Kazan invited Marilyn as his date.
By the time of the reception, Kazan canceled with Marilyn in order to meet
another girl and sent Miller as her escort to mitigate the rejection. John Huston’s
former wife, actress Evelyn Keyes, was a witness to the Miller-Monroe date at
Feldman’s house and chatted with the couple for some time. Keyes noticed the
other wives and single women resent Marilyn’s attractiveness, while the men
swarmed around her now that Hyde was gone. Keyes perceived Marilyn as too
thin-skinned to survive unprotected in Hollywood and told Miller, “They’ll eat
her alive.” Marilyn’s memory of the evening involved sitting with Miller on a
sofa and engrossed in conversation. He reached out and gently held her toe,
exposed in a high-heeled sandal. The touch felt safe and nonsexual.
Kazan arrived late and alone. When he saw Miller and Marilyn dancing
closely together, he asked Miller to drive her home. Miller refrained from
making a pass at Marilyn as he walked her to the door of her apartment, and
Marilyn perceived this as a sign of respect. “It was like running into a tree!” she
told Natasha. “You know, like a cool drink when you’ve got a fever. You see my
toe, this toe? Well he sat and held my toe and we just looked into each other’s
eyes almost all evening.”
 Miller returned to New York to his wife, Mary, and their children. For days
afterward, Marilyn told Natasha she had not slept with Miller and that he was
definitely a man with whom she could fall in love. Marilyn started writing him
letters about how most young women admire their fathers, but she, without a
father, had no one to admire. He had now become a man she could admire.
Miller wrote back redirecting her to admire Lincoln and recommending Carl
Sandburg’s biography of the sixteenth president. Remembering Evelyn Keyes’
premonition, Miller added: “Bewitch them with this image they ask for, but I
hope and almost pray you won’t be hurt in this game, nor ever change…”
Following the end of World War II, playwrights such as Tennessee Williams,
Eugene O’Neill, and Arthur Miller transformed American theater. Influenced by
the Depression and the war, Miller expressed the feelings of dissatisfaction and
unrest within the American culture. Arthur Asher Miller was born on October
17, 1915 in Manhattan to Isidore and Augusta Miller. His father had emigrated
from Poland at age six, and his mother was a first-generation American whose
parents had emigrated from Poland, as well. Illiterate but wealthy, Isidore owned
a garment manufacturing business, Miltex Coat and Suit Company, which
employed eight hundred workers. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the
business failed, and the Miller family relocated to Brooklyn. Isidore never
completely recovered emotionally and economically from the misfortune and
served as the inspiration for his son’s future protagonists.
Arthur graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School and worked several
menial jobs to earn tuition for college. In 1934, he enrolled in the University of
Michigan, where he majored in English and worked at the Michigan Daily.
During his sophomore year, Miller met his first non-Jewish girlfriend, Mary
Grace Slattery, the daughter of an Irish insurance salesman from Ohio. They
shared liberal political beliefs and sympathized with the growing Communist
cause among the working classes. His first play, No Villain, was based largely on
his father’s financial collapse when the economy crashed during the coat
manufacturers’ strike, and earned Miller a scholarship from the Theatre Guild, a
theatrical society that produced non-commercial plays with societal messages.
After graduating from college, Miller joined the Federal Theatre Project,
which later closed due to suspicions of Communist infiltration. He married Mary
in 1940 and they had two children, Jane and Robert. Miller’s first Broadway
play, All My Sons, earned him a Tony Award for Best Author.
In 1948, Miller built a studio behind his farmhouse in Connecticut, where he
wrote the first act of his greatest play in two days and fleshed it out in six weeks.
Directed by Elia Kazan, Death of a Salesman opened in1949 and starred Lee J.
Cobb as the tragic Willy Loman. The play focused on a failed businessman as he
tries to remember and reconstruct his life, but eventually kills himself to leave
his sons insurance money. It ran for 742 performances and won a Tony Award, a
Pulitzer Prize, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and a Theatre Club
Award. Death of a Salesman established Miller’s reputation for realism and
expressionism.
When As Young As You Feel was released in August, Miller took his wife to
see it. He had paid attention to Fox’s publicity campaign touting Marilyn as “the
azure-eyed, honey-tressed actress with the most provocative chassis to reach the
screen since Jean Harlow.” He knew first hand that this was not false advertising,
and he enjoyed the trick they had played on Harry Cohn.
Unlike Miller, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther noticed Marilyn for
the very first time. “Marilyn Monroe is superb as [a] secretary,” his review
announced. Thrilled with positive notices and billing above the film’s title,
Marilyn stood on a ladder, and proudly posed for Fox photographers under a
billboard advertisement featuring a glamorous likeness of her and her name
beside Constance Bennett’s, a famous blonde of the previous generation.
Kazan had also returned to New York but came back to Los Angeles to film
Viva Zapata! (1952), a dramatic account of the life of Mexican revolutionary
Emiliano Zapata played by Marlon Brando. Marilyn frequently visited her lover
during the location production in northern Mexico and hoped he would cast her
in the film. Marilyn’s on-again, off-again affair with Kazan during the first half
of the year temporarily filled the void left by the death of Johnny Hyde but
resulted in heartbreak when he ended the liaison through a typed letter and
returned to his wife in New York. The letter was auctioned on Ebay.com and
posted on Ephemera.typepad.com websites. Obviously struck by her intelligence
and vulnerability, Kazan composed his break-up letter with advice for her career
and personal survival: He advises her against dating “Pat de C” and other men
like him whom she “despises.”
Instead, Kazan instructs her to set her standard higher, for young writers and
directors rather than actors and producers. He praises Marilyn as “honest and
perceptive” and continues with a directive for her to be proud of herself and self-
reliant. He also recommends reading Ralph Waldo Emerson and going to college
with a demand to “do it next week” rather than delay. Kazan praises her
“naturally excellent” taste and encourages her to consider various points of view,
but to avoid “[taking] shit from anyone.” He ends with a poetic phrase, “No
night will ever be the same.”
The last page of Marilyn’s gracious response to Kazan on Twentieth Century-
Fox stationery survives, having been restored and published on the Internet on
the website Restorepaper.com. In the discolored and creased letter, she thanks
Kazan for both his time and effort in advising her, asserts neither was “wasted,”
and promises to “cherish” the memory of their relationship. While
acknowledging the need in life to sometimes make compromises, Marilyn
asserts she will not compromise “certain” things, at least not at this point in her
life. Oddly, she mentions burning a shirt, and in the postscript, communicates
wounded feelings through a politely phrased request that Kazan refrain from
ever contacting her again.
A decade later, Marilyn described the relationship with Kazan in a letter to
her psychiatrist: “He loved me for one year and once rocked me to sleep on night
when I was in great anguish.”

Hollywood folklore credits Marilyn’s self-promotional display of her

beautiful body and sensual allure as a shrewd means of catapulting into the
awareness of studio executives and procuring roles to cast her spell over
audiences and establish footing for her future film career. However, during her
struggling years as an actress in her early twenties, Marilyn arguably
masterminded her ascent to stardom by capitalizing on more than sex appeal.
She may not have realized the strength of her screen presence, but, having only
appeared onscreen for less than a total of sixty minutes, how could she? Very
quickly, though, her presence would become widely known and popularize her
for years to come.
Marilyn recognized her own strengths of possessing a charismatic
personality, enormous presence, and natural charm, God-given qualities that
make a small group of individuals great stars; and used them to her advantage.
The option on Marilyn’s contract would come due in May. After securing a
second contract after Fox passed on the option the first time, she had to boldly
guarantee continued employment by dismissing the marketing of agents and
instead taking matters into her own hands. If she had relied upon the casting
couch, she would not have felt the need to self-promote n the manner executed
on one cool evening at the studio’s Café de Paris commissary. The event took
place when Spyros Skouras, Joseph Schenck, and Darryl Zanuck had rolled out
the red carpet for visiting film exhibitors by hosting a formal dinner and
presenting their most bankable stars: Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Anne
Baxter, June Haver, and Don Dailey.
Theater operators and film salesmen gathered in the elegant dining hall
located behind the Art Deco administration building, where contract players and
stars feasted on French cuisine for lunch and dinner during the long work days.
With nothing to lose, Marilyn executed a brilliant tactic. Waiting until all invited
took their seats for an evening of dining and speeches, Marilyn left the wardrobe
building in a spectacular black, strapless gown with sweetheart bodice to
showcase her curves without detracting from her face and beauty. She sauntered
down the dimly lit studio street for a fashionably late entrance that ensured
certain notice in the crowded dining hall. Attendants opened the door, and
Marilyn stepped onto the gleaming wood floors and walked toward the center of
the room amid the roar of conversation and clanking utensils. All eyes turned to
the captivating young blonde as voices suddenly muted. Servers scrambled to
find her an open seat.
From the head table, Skouras watched Marilyn work her magic in the room.
The visiting exhibitors buzzed about the striking woman in the black gown. Who
was she? What films had she made? What was her next role? How soon could it
be booked in their theaters? Audiences would surely leave the comfort of their
living rooms and convenience of their black and white televisions to see her in
Technicolor twenty feet tall on a movie screen. No one could answer their
questions, so the exhibitors asked Marilyn herself about her next role. “You’ll
have to ask Mr. Zanuck or Mr. Skouras,” she innocently replied, flashing her
bright blue eyes and displaying gracious poise and self-confidence.
Skouras knew it was time to act. He left the table of power and crossed the
room, parting the crowd mobbing his contract player like she was a modern day
Moses. Skouras chivalrously took her by the arm and led her back to his table,
honoring her with the chair at his right side, vacated by a dispensable executive.
Marilyn had wielded her power.
Some of the stars seated for dinner had witnessed or heard about Marilyn’s
recent exploit a few weeks earlier on the lot. Scheduled for a portrait session in
the studio gallery, she donned a diaphanous negligee over lace panties as
instructed on her call sheet and left the wardrobe building without a wrap. In
broad daylight, Marilyn promenaded through the small studio village of offices,
soundstages, and production specialty departments. With the help of couriers,
grips, and workmen, word spread across the lot, and crowds gathered on the
streets before she reached the gallery. By the time Marilyn completed the session
and made the long walk back to the wardrobe building, men lined the streets and
second and third story railings to cheer and whistle. Validated by the affect she
had on others, Marilyn now knew her power, and a seed had been planted. The
little girl who had never been told she was pretty and who bathed in the dirty
water left behind by others now commanded attention. There was no turning
back.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited Marilyn to serve
as a presenter at the twenty-third Academy Awards Ceremony on March 29 at
the RKO Pantages Theater at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard. The Fox wardrobe
department loaned her a black gown with a fitted, low-cut sweetheart bodice and
short, off-the-shoulder cowl cape of tulle. The full-skirted gown was layered in
black tulle and adorned with sporadic silver beading.
According to Sam Staggs, Marilyn grew petrified as her cue approached and
burst into tears upon discovering a tear in a layer of tulle. Fellow presenters
Gloria DeHaven, Debra Paget, and Jane Greet consoled her as a wardrobe
attendant mended the rip. “I was frozen with fear,” Marilyn said. “I prayed I
wouldn’t trip and fall and that my voice wouldn’t disappear when I had to say
my two lines.”
As Marilyn stepped onto the stage and approached the podium, the orchestra
played “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.”
“Her voice was steady as she presented the award for Best Sound Recording
[to Thomas Moulton for All About Eve],” wrote Sam Staggs. “Like other
presenters, she seldom glanced up from the podium while reading her notecards,
though she displayed great poise and showed not a sign of the nerves that must
have terrified her. Unfortunately, she never presented another Oscar.”
Nominated for a record fourteen Academy Awards, All About Eve won
eleven, beating Born Yesterday, Father of the Bride, King Solomon’s Mines, and
Sunset Boulevard. It would become the most decorated of all Marilyn’s films.
One of the hottest Oscar races for Best Actress occurred in 1950; with two
legends, two established actresses, and one young dark horse vying for the title.
Bette Davis was the favorite as an upstaged, aging, megalomaniac Broadway
star in All About Eve, followed by former silent screen diva, Gloria Swanson, as
a faded silent screen star attempting a come-back in Billy Wilder’s film noir
satire on the motion picture industry, Sunset Boulevard. Anne Baxter, as the
manipulative and deceiving understudy in All About Eve, cancelled out Eleanor
Parker, as a young widow embittered by exposure to hardened criminals and
guards while serving a sentence in a women’s prison in Caged. Judy Holliday
was the surprise upstart winner for her comic performance as a gangster’s dumb
blonde girlfriend who transforms when she visits the nation’s capital and learns
about American history in Born Yesterday.
Holliday’s Oscar win demonstrated the industry’s ability to recognize the
talent behind a youthful comedienne’s performance in even an archetypal dumb
blonde role, and Marilyn must have felt a renewed hope for success as an
accomplished actress despite her previous typecasting in frivolous blonde roles.
Her dreams progressed closer to reality when Fox offered her a seven-year
contract with an exclusive clause linking her to the studio until 1957. She would
receive a starting a salary of five hundred dollars per week, whether she worked
or not, and increased each year; but the studio reserved the right to renew the
contract the following year. Marilyn’s salary would rise to $1500 the fourth year
and cap at $3,500 in the contract’s seventh year.
On the downside, Fox had the option of dismissing her at the end of each
year without explanation and forbade her the right to choose her screenplays or
roles. Additionally, Fox could loan her to another studio at a higher price but
continue to pay her the salary specified on the contract and prohibit her from
working independently in television, the theater, or vocal recording, even if she
were not working on a Fox production. It was a typical studio “slave contract,”
but it was the achievement of the goal she had created with Johnny Hyde,
coming shortly after his death.
Hyde’s associates at the William Morris Agency lackadaisically negotiated
Marilyn’s contract with Fox as they resented his devotion to her as his girlfriend
at the cost of his having neglected their other clients. However, the associates
successfully retained Marilyn’s one stipulation: the studio was to hire Natasha
Lytess as her acting coach at the weekly salary of five hundred dollars. Marilyn
personally paid her a weekly fee of $250 for private lessons. Therefore, during
Marilyn’s first year of employment at Fox, she earned less than Natasha. Marilyn
signed the fourteen-page contract on April 11, 1951, and it took effect thirty days
later. The original document with Marilyn’s signature in black ink failed to sell
at Heritage Auctions in April 2007.
Having met Charles Feldman through Elia Kazan, Marilyn considered his
Famous Artists Agency for her representation. Feldman and his associate, Hugh
French, represented her for the next three years, sharing their commissions with
the William Morris Agency. Marilyn did not officially enter into a contract with
Famous Artists until 1954.
 On the replica of a New York street on the Fox lot, Marilyn exited a taxicab
and stepped on the sidewalk in front of a facade of a brownstone apartment
building. She wore a tailored suit with white gloves and a stylish hat with a veil
covering her face, and carried a makeup case made of alligator. Marilyn
approached another young woman, wearing a kerchief and an apron over her
dress as she swept the front stoop. “Pardon me,” Marilyn said, delivering her
line. “Are you the janitor’s wife?” Director Joseph Newman (1906-2006) yelled,
“Cut!”
Six years earlier, the woman in the apron, June Haver, was the star of Scudda
Hoo! Scudda Hay! in which Marilyn, in a blue pinafore, greeted her on the steps
of a church. Marilyn had now advanced from a walk-on part to a featured role as
a glamorous model in Love Nest. Since the actresses’ last film together, Darryl
Zanuck loaned Haver to Warner Brothers for four films but subsequently
suspended her for turning down two films at her home studio. She refused one
film due to what she considered objectionable elements in the story. Haver’s
spiritual and religious convictions guided her to retire from films and enter a
convent in Kansas as a novice nun. She returned to Los Angeles and married
actor Fred MacMurray. Zanuck had promoted Haver in anticipation of her
replacing Betty Grable; the attention granted to Marilyn in her small, supporting
role suggested to Haver that perhaps Zanuck now intended to replace her.
Cast as Haver’s husband, Jim, William Lundigan (1914-1975) had appeared
in Dodge City (1939), The Fighting 69th (1940), The Sea Hawk (1940), and
Santa Fe Trail (1940). In 1951, Fox released two other Fox films starring
Lundigan: The House on Telegraph Hill and I’d Climb the Highest Mountain.
The screenplay by I. A. Diamond, who would pen Marilyn’s greatest
commercial hit, Some Like It Hot, was based upon W. Scott Corbett’s novel The
Reluctant Landlord and had originally been titled A WAC in His Life. Protagonist
Jim Scott (William Lundigan) returns from serving overseas in the army to his
enterprising wife, Connie (June Haver), who has purchased an old brownstone in
New York. They plan to live in one of the apartments and collect rent from their
tenants so that Jim, an aspiring writer, may write a great novel. However, leaky
pipes and falling plaster ceilings prevent Jim from writing.
Jim tells Connie about Corporeal Bobbie Stevens, an old army buddy from
Paris who convinced their colonel to arrange his early discharge. In appreciation,
Jim has rented one of the vacant apartments to Bobbie. Enter Roberta “Bobbie”
Stevens, a former member of the Women’s Army Corps. Now a civilian, she is a
provocative fashion model who initially mistakes Connie for the building
janitor’s wife. “You wouldn’t discriminate against a veteran just because of sex,
would you?” Jim asks his jealous wife. The role of Bobbie had originally been
suggested for Lauren Bacall or Lucille Ball.
In a scene in which Bobbie delivers her first rent check to the Scotts, she tells
Connie that while overseas, all Jim did was talk about his wife. Connie modestly
replies that she must have found the conversation dull. “Jim can make anything
interesting,” Bobbie insists. Jim chokes on his cocktail, but his wisecracking
friend, Ed Forbes (Jack Paar), is immediately enamored of Bobbie, who is
amused by, but deflects his flirtations.
The Scotts rent a vacant apartment to a charming, aging womanizer Charley
Patterson (Frank Fay), who courts another tenant, under-privileged widow Eadie
Gaynor (Leatrice Joy). After Charley announces that he is leaving town on
business, Connie and Jim see him at a nightclub dining with another woman.
Meanwhile, a government building inspector informs the couple that their
brownstone’s exposed wiring violates code and must be repaired within two
weeks or the building will be condemned.
Charley and Eadie joyfully announce their engagement, and Jim learns that
the enormous expense of the repairs will force him to sell the building. Charley
lends Jim the money for the repairs, but the couple argue about what to do with
the building and Connie’s jealousy of Bobbie.
Jim storms out to sleep in a hammock in the back yard. Since he knows
Bobbie is away on a modeling assignment, he sleeps in her empty apartment,
instead. The next morning, Bobbie returns home, and Connie assumes that Jim
has spent the night with her. Connie’s angry reaction is interrupted by a
newspaper story exposing Charley as an “elderly Casanova” who swindled rich
widows of their fortunes in several states. Jim and Connie confront Charley, but
he admits that the charges are true, assures them he is retired from his nefarious
career, and is truly in love with Eadie. Charley further justifies his past behavior
by claiming to have given the widows romance in exchange for their money.
Ultimately, Charley is arrested, and Jim writes a novel about Charley’s
shenanigans, which becomes a bestseller. Times passes, and Charley is released
from prison and reunites with Eadie. Jim and Connie have used the royalties
from the novel to improve the building. The story ends with Charley and Eadie
taking the Scotts’ newborn twin daughters for a walk in their carriage.
The advent of sound film had an opposite impact on the careers of co-stars
Frank Fay (1891 — 1961), as Charley, and Leatrice Joy, as Eadie. Fay, one of
Vaudeville’s highest-paid headliners in the 1920s, successfully transitioned from
silent to talking films at Warner Brothers Studio. Contrariwise, the career of
Leatrice Joy (1893 — 1985) waned, possibly because audiences perceived her
heavy southern accent as passé in comparison to the cultivated diction of East
Coast actresses.
Cast as Ed Forbes, cherub-faced Jack Paar (1918 — 2004) would become the
original host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962 before the reign of Johnny
Carson. “Looking back, I guess I should have been excited, but I found her
pretty tiresome,” he recalled of Marilyn. “She used to carry around books by
Marcel Proust with their titles facing out, but I never saw her read one. She was
always holding up shooting by talking on the phone. Judging from what’s
happened, though, I guess she had the right number.”
Sidney Skolsky publicized Marilyn’s performance in Love Nest in his
column, mentioning a scene in which she undresses and takes a shower. On the
day she filmed the sequences, the set was crowded and quiet with silent and
gawking studio employees assigned to other productions. The electric energy she
emitted was palpable. Notorious for sometimes faltering on the first few words
of her lines, having an audience boosted Marilyn’s confidence and ability to find
her performance. June Haver observed Marilyn warming up with a few takes in
front of the gathered crew and undergoing a complete metamorphosis.
In a memorable scene, Bobbie sunbathes in the back yard of the building in a
polka-dot bikini bathing suit with ruffles as she sips Coca-Cola out of a bottle.
The swimsuit is modest by modern standards, even covering her navel, but
considered racy in its day. “[Marilyn] became so uninhibited in her movements,
the way she sat in that chair, so gracefully, naturally graceful, and seductive at
the same time, Haver told Carl Rollyson. “Suddenly, she seemed to shine like the
sun.” The Coca-Cola Company later used the scene in a 1953 Coke soda
commercial, and Marilyn posed in the bikini, showing off her washboard
abdominal muscles.
Designer Renie Conley (1901 — 1992) designed several elegant outfits for
Marilyn aside from the fetching bikini. Over the course of her career, Conley
was nominated for a total of four Oscars for Best Costume Design and won for
Cleopatra (1963). She and Marilyn shared a background in Christian Science
and a kinship. A costume test photograph of Marilyn posing demurely in a black
cocktail dress, her hand on her hip, beside a blackboard with notations about
Conley sold at auction in 2009. In green ink, Marilyn had inscribed a personal
message to her designer: “To Renie — Someone with ‘feeling,’ I’m more grateful
than words can express, Love and thanks, Marilyn.”
 “She was a difficult person because she wasn’t sure of herself,” director
Joseph Newman recalled of Marilyn at age twenty-five. “I don’t think she ever
got to be sure of herself. That was her major difficulty. She had exceptional
ability and this childish charm coupled with great sexual attraction. She had a
great natural talent, but I don’t think she ever realized it. She was always
insecure. Instead of just being satisfied with her native talent, she tried to
develop into a great dramatic actress. When I worked with her, though, she was
basically a nice, naïve girl.”
Fox’s trailer for Love Nest clearly defines the purpose of Marilyn’s casting as
window-dressing. It contained a brief excerpt of her pulling off her blouse to
reveal a sexy black slip. “Wait a minute!” exclaims the male narrator. “What’s
coming off here?” The scene is shown in reverse motion as if she is dressing,
and the narrator demands: “Get back into those things, young lady, while we take
a better look at the inmates of this hilarious house.” Additional scenes of
Marilyn seated on a bed and pulling on stockings while Jim sleeps on her sofa
and her stepping out of the shower in a towel were meant to entice male
members of the audience. Marilyn realized this, but the director and co-stars
observed her pouring out her heart and soul in playing even a minor part as if it
were a leading Shakespearian role.
Reviews noticed Marilyn’s more obvious charm. “Marilyn Monroe’s shapely
figure and blonde beauty make her part of the temptress a standout,” touted
Hollywood Reporter. “Leatrice Joy…gives mature warmth to the proceeding,”
declared Film Daily, “Marilyn Monroe has that other quality.” Variety simply
reported, “Marilyn Monroe is tossed in to cause jealousy between the landlords.”

Marilyn left the Beverly Carlton Hotel and briefly shared an apartment with
actress Shelley Winters (1920-2006), whom she had met at the Actors Lab, at
8573 Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, where actor Sal Mineo was murdered
in 1976. Winters, a brassy blonde bombshell under contract at Universal Studios,
had recently shed her image for a role in the Elizabeth Taylor-Montgomery Clift
classic A Place in the Sun (1951). She earned Oscars for performances in
supporting roles in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), A Patch of Blue (1965), and
would be remembered in Irwin Allen’s disaster film The Poseidon Adventure
(1972) when she was older and heavier. On Saturday mornings, Marilyn and
Winters played classical records and read the accompanying booklets about
composers.
In April, Winters attended a dinner party hosted by gay author Christopher
Isherwood (1904-1986), who had traveled to South America with his partner,
photographer William Caskey. The couple combined their respective passions of
writing and photography and documented their journey in the book The Condor
and the Cows (1949). In 2009, designer Tom Ford directed a film adaptation of
Isherwood’s finest work, A Single Man (1964), about a middle-aged gay
professor in Southern Los Angeles in 1962.
Seated beside Winters was Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), whose
most popular poems include “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and
“And Death Shall Have No Dominion.” His themes focused on the cycle of life
and death. Winters asked Thomas what lured him to Hollywood. “To touch the
[breasts] of a beautiful blonde starlet and to meet Charlie Chaplin,” he
responded. Like a genie, Winters promised to grant both wishes. After dessert
and brandy, she permitted Thomas to touch each of her breasts with one index
finger and agreed to take him to Chaplin’s home on Sunday, when the actor
hosted an open house. Winters invited Thomas and Isherwood to an early
Sunday dinner at her shared apartment, and to visit Chaplin’s home after the
meal.
The two women spent the day cleaning and preparing a dinner of roasted loin
of pork. Marilyn made applesauce with Cointreau and orange peel and stirred a
pitcher of gin Martinis. She had also invited Sidney Skolsky. When the male
guests arrived, the women each had a drink. Skolsky abstained, and Thomas
drank the rest of the contents of the pitcher. It soon became apparent that the
guest of honor had a serious drinking problem. Although Thomas teased Winters
with his bawdy humor, he was gentle and respectful to Marilyn. “He was
obviously a horny Welshman,” Winters wrote, “but he never made any kind of
pass at Marilyn. Not even a verbal one. I think this poet sensed that she very
badly needed not to be thought of as just a cutie.” Although Marilyn and Thomas
seemed to hit it off, she declined to join the group at Chaplin’s house and instead
drove Skolsky home to his wife and family.

On a crowded Fox soundstage, Marilyn and Robert Wagner tested a love

scene together, he seated in a club chair, she in a white strapless dress and seated
on his lap. “I thought [Marilyn] was great,” Wagner told Larry King on
television in 1997. “I thought she was absolutely wonderful. She had a great
sense of humor…She was so fresh and so honest and so direct…really a
wonderful, wonderful girl.” Marilyn and Wagner’s dramatic love scene landed
them roles in Fox’s comedy Let’s Make It Legal, directed by Richard Sale, but
not as a couple in the film. As the six-month term of Marilyn’s contract was
expiring, the screen test guaranteed its extension for another seven years,
beginning on May 11.
Let’s Make It Legal, created by screenwriter I. A. L. Diamond, follows the
lives of Hugh and Miriam Halsworth (Macdonald Carey and Claudette Colbert),
whose divorce after twenty years of marriage will finalize at midnight. Miriam is
intolerant of Hugh’s gambling on horse races, but he still loves her. Miriam still
lives in the couple’s home with their dependent daughter, Barbara (Barbara
Bates); son-in law, Jerry (Wagner), who works with Hugh; and the young
couple’s newborn baby, Annabelle. Hugh accepts the approaching divorce until
wealthy industrialist Victor MacFarland (Zachary Scott) checks into the posh
hotel where Hugh works as a publicist. Hugh and Victor competed for Miriam in
high school, but the latter had mysteriously left town. Upon learning that
MacFarland still carries a torch for Miriam, High is suddenly motivated to save
his marriage before the stroke of midnight. Barbara wishes for her parents’
reconciliation while Jerry roots for Victor to win Miriam’s heart to break his
wife’s dependence on her mother. Unfortunately, Hugh’s plan is thwarted, and
the divorce becomes final.
Victor pursues Miriam as Hugh attempts to sabotage their relationship by
introducing Annabelle as their granddaughter and courting model Joyce
Mannering (Monroe) to make Miriam jealous. Regardless, Victor proposes
marriage and Miriam accepts. The day before the wedding, Victor accepts a
political appointment in Washington and cautions her to avoid any scandal that
might threaten his career. An intoxicated Hugh returns to the family home and
explains to Miriam that he had played dice with Victor when they were in high
school with an agreement that the loser leave town so that the winner could
marry her. Aghast that Hugh had gambled their future, Miriam allows the police
to arrest him for trespassing. When Miriam bails Hugh out of jail, reporters
photograph them, and the paper prints a scandalous story about Victor’s fiancée
and her former husband. The news irritates Victor, and Miriam breaks their
engagement. In the end, Hugh shows Miriam the loaded dice he used to ensure
his winning roll, and she forgives him. The couple reconciles.
Instead of giving Marilyn the role of Barbara, producer Robert Bassler cast
her as Joyce Mannering, the winner of a beauty contest and holder of the title of
Miss Cucamonga, a city in San Bernardino County, California. Joyce’s modeling
career rises as she poses for cheesecake photographs advertising a luxurious
resort hotel. With considerably less screen time than Barbara, Joyce was a
featured part and a more likeable character with comic lines suitable for
Marilyn’s exceptional skill of timing.
Let’s Make It Legal was also the last comedy in the long career of Claudette
Colbert. As one of Marilyn’s favorite childhood actresses, the Parisian with a
round face and trademark curled bangs received the Best Actress Oscar for her
performance as the wisecracking socialite opposite Clark Gable in Frank Capra’s
It Happened One Night (1934) and starred in Cleopatra the same year. In a
string of romantic comedies, she also played maids who masquerade as
aristocratic ladies and vice versa: The Gilded Lily (1935), She Married Her Boss
(1935), Tovarich (1937), and Midnight (1939). Colbert nearly worked with
Marilyn when she was originally cast as Margo Channing in All About Eve but
was replaced by Bette Davis due to a serious spine injury.
Macdonald Carey (1913-1994), in the role of Hugh Halsworth, had appeared
in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and The Great Gatsby (1949). He would also
portray patriarch Dr. Tom Horton in NBC’s long-running daytime soap opera,
Days of Our Lives. Carey’s voiceover opened the weekday drama with the line,
“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” Shortly before
his death, Carey told Richard Buskin that Fox sent a limousine to the makeup
department to deliver Marilyn to the set while a jeep was sent for him.
Warner Brothers Studio star Zachary Scott (1914-1965), who played Victor
MacFarland, is best known in the role of Joan Crawford’s handsome but corrupt
lover, Monte Beragon, in Mildred Pierce (1945). The film noir opens with
Beragon reacting to being shot and murmuring the name “Mildred” as he
collapses and dies. Under police interrogation, Mildred narrates the events
leading to his murder as the film relates the story in a flashback. Slender,
debonair, and usually sporting a mustache on screen, he played attractive
scoundrels and co-starred again with Crawford in Flamingo Road (1949).
Cheesecake modeling propelled Barbara Bates (1925-1969), cast as Barbara,
from magazine covers to an acting contract with Warner Brothers Studio in
1947. The following year, she had small parts in Johnny Belinda with Jane
Wyman and June Bride with Bette Davis. The studio terminated Bates’ contract
when she refused to travel to New York to promote The Inspector General
(1949), starring Danny Kaye. Fox quickly signed her to a contract and cast her as
scheming Phoebe in the final sequence in All About Eve and in two films with
Clifton Webb, Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel Belles on Their Toes
(1952).
In 1960, when Bates’ husband, Cecil Coan, was diagnosed with cancer, she
experienced a major depressive episode and attempted suicide by slashing her
wrists. After his death seven years later, she experienced a reoccurrence of the
depressive episode and became suicidal. Bates relocated to Denver where she
worked as a secretary in the field of health care and married a childhood friend,
sportscaster William Reed. When the depressive symptoms exacerbated, Bates
completed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in a car in her mother’s
garage.
By coincidence or design, Marilyn’s brief but featured role of Joyce in Let’s
Make It Legal is extraordinarily biographical. She is an ambitious cheesecake
model promoted by Hugh and poses in advertisements for the hotel where he
works, remindful of Johnny Hyde discovering Marilyn at the Palm Springs
Racquet Club Resort. Later, Joyce admires the powerful Victor MacFarland on a
golf course, shades of Marilyn and John Carroll, and purrs, “My motor’s been
racing since I first laid eyes on him.” In her final scene, Joyce embodies Marilyn
as one of the starlets at Joseph Schenck’s card games at Owlwood Estate. She
stands behind Hugh as he plays poker with a group of men, relays his drink order
to the female bartender, and plays his hand when he takes a telephone call,
winning the game.
Let’s Make It Legal marked Marilyn’s first display of tardiness during a film
production. According to the research of Richard Buskin, when director Richard
Sale confronted her on an emerging pattern of arriving late, Marilyn snapped that
if he didn’t like it, he should talk to Mr. Schenck. Sale retorted, “No, I’ll call Mr.
Zanuck.” She stormed away but later returned to the set, apologized, and
thanked him for the constructive criticism. The trailer for Let’s Make It Legal
played in theatres nationwide during the late summer. “It’s 10% improper!” Fox
advertised. “It’s 40% illegal! It’s 100% hilarious!”
Reviews singled out Marilyn with superlatives. “The picture’s cast includes
two very engaging babies,” announced the Los Angeles Examiner, “one is a
darling little tot who is as cute as ever sat in a high chair. The other is Marilyn
Monroe in a small but showy role. She’s definitely not of the Pablum set.” The
Hollywood Reporter noted Marilyn as “voluptuously amusing as a girl on a
husband hunt.” “Gorgeous Marilyn Monroe’s in it, flittingly,” proclaimed the
Los Angeles Times. “First time I’ve noticed her diction. It’s execrable.” On the
East Coast, film critics had no complaints with Marilyn’s appearance. New York
Daily Mirror said, “Marilyn Monroe parades her shapely chassis for incidental
excitement.” New York Daily News noticed her comic flair: “Marilyn Monroe is
amusing in a brief role as a beautiful shapely blonde who has her eye on Zachary
Scott and his millions.”

To promote Let’s Make It Legal, Fox assigned Marilyn to host a reception in

the honor of Michael Gaszynski, a Polish diplomat celebrating attainment of
American citizenship, at a bakery in the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax Avenue.
Having only recently been named “Miss Cheesecake 1952” by Stars and Stripes
magazine, she was dressed in a skimpy white outfit and a baker’s cap. As Miss
Cheesecake, Marilyn presented the representative with a five-tiered cheesecake
and cut it with a sword.
Actor Jack Palance (1919-2006) kept in touch with Marilyn since they had
met while he was filming his film debut in Panic in the Streets (1950) at Fox.
Now filming Sudden Fear with Joan Crawford at RKO, Palance recommended
that she attend drama lessons with his Russian-born tutor, actor and acting
instructor Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), who had studied under Constantine
Stanislavski at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre.
Stanislavski (1863-1938) authored An Actor Prepares and An Actor’s Work
on a Role, outlining his systematic technique of acting. Aside from study in
concentration, voice, and physical skills, Stanislavski encouraged actors to use
their own memories to personally experience the part they were portraying
(affective memory) in order to authentically manifest and express emotions on
stage, but became alarmed when some of his students underwent psychological
breakdowns when delving into their own psyches. He quickly recommended use
of the imagination rather than personal, and often painful, memories. Chekhov,
considered by Stanislavski as his most brilliant student, had experienced such a
mental and emotional crisis.
When Marilyn met Chekhov, he was riding the wave of an Oscar nomination
for his role as the psychoanalyst in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) and editing
his manuscript To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting. Impressed with her
natural talent, Chekhov took a paternal approach while fostering her confidence,
providing a corrective experience for her mistreatment from men in the past.
They worked together two days per week on Shakespearian scenes. Marilyn
played Cordelia opposite Chekhov’s King Lear and considered his performance
the greatest she had ever seen.
“You must strive for expressing complete harmony between body and
psychology,” Chekhov advised, challenging Marilyn to broaden her interests in
order to better understand the range of characters she would play. He also
encouraged her to develop the skill of expression through body movement by
studying mime with Lotte Goslar and reading Mabel Elsworth Todd’s The
Thinking Body. Marilyn implemented the feedback with good results.
While performing a scene with Charles Chaplin, Jr. at the Actors Lab,
Marilyn demonstrated Todd’s method, to his amazement. For the first time, she
mastered an acting related topic and made a bet with Chaplin that she now knew
more about anatomy and physiology of the human skeleton than he did. He
confirmed he thought the thighbone connected on the outside of the hip in the
manner depicted in cartoons of Halloween skeletons, and Marilyn proved him
wrong with a diagram in Todd’s book. “It is childish,” she later admitted to
friend Ralph Roberts, “but you’d be surprised at the number and stature of
people through the years I’ve won bets from, with this bit of information.”
During her studies with Michael Chekhov, acting became less of a profession
to Marilyn and “sort of a religion.” He inspired her in ways Natasha had not.
Once, while performing a scene from The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov stopped
Marilyn and told her that she gave off “sex vibrations” that must distract studio
bosses and audiences. “I want to be an artist, not an erotic freak,” she said. “I
don’t want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisiac.”
Chekhov was instrumental in Marilyn’s command of her body and the
physical space in which she acted. One of her greatest abilities was to fully
occupy the frame of film. She made herself visibly interesting and drew attention
away from the others performers. Even critics and historians who minimize
Marilyn’s classical acting talent concede that audiences cannot keep their eyes
off her, even when other actors are speaking. Marilyn’s tardiness often
aggravated Chekhov, and she once sent him a note reading, “Please don’t give
me up yet — I know (painfully so) that I try your patience. I need the work and
your friendship desperately.”
Michael and Xenia Chekhov dearly loved Marilyn, and she demonstrated her
love for them with gifts. In 1952, she gave him an engraving of Abraham
Lincoln inscribed, “Lincoln was the man I admired most all through school.
Now that man is you.” For the last Christmas of his life in 1954, Marilyn gave
Chekhov a religious icon of St. Nicholas, and at Thanksgiving 1961, she gave
his widow an audio tape recorder.
Marilyn compensated for her lack of parental support by endearing herself to
both motherly and fatherly figures, who could help her attain her dream of
becoming an actress. Through these mentors, she grew both personally and
professionally, expanding her understanding of herself and the world, which had
previously been limited by the adverse circumstances of her early life. In
gratitude for their guidance and kindness, Marilyn lavished her mentors with
gifts and acts of kindness. Acting had now become more of a religious calling to
Marilyn, and like spirituality, it provided her with purpose and meaning.
Chapter Thirteen
 Clash By Night

Sidney Skolsky persuaded producer Jerry Wald (1911 — 1962) to cast

Marilyn in a relatively important supporting role in director Fritz Lang’s
adaption of Clifford Odets’ play Clash By Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul
Douglas, and Robert Ryan. Originally performed in 1941 as a neo-realist
Broadway play with Tallulah Bankhead in the starring role, the plot involved a
restless, disillusioned woman’s struggle between settling for the love of a stable
but dull fisherman and risking all for a sexual thrill with an embittered film
projectionist.
Wald was casting the role of Peggy, a vigorous girl engaged to the heroine’s
brother and who worked in a sardine cannery. Peggy is warm-natured and
compassionate and struggles with accepting the subordinate role as wife. Wald
wanted a younger actress with sex appeal to attract a teen audience since the
film’s principals were established, middle-aged stars. Sidney Skolsky convinced
Wald to interview Marilyn over lunch. Hungry to depart from the role of a
secretary or showgirl and have her name above the title in the credits, she
planned to dress in character. Well aware of Marilyn’s limited wardrobe, Skolsky
advised her to wear a pair of clinging black and white checkerboard petal
pushers with a silk blouse.
Marilyn appeared at Lucy’s on Melrose Boulevard in the sexy outfit, her
blouse unbuttoned with a rose strategically placed in her cleavage. Wald took
one look of her seated across from him at the table and thought she looked about
sixteen. After the meal, he contacted Lew Schreiber at Fox and requested a loan
of Marilyn for six weeks of work at RKO Studios beginning in August.
Schreiber demanded a mere three thousand dollars.
Fast-talking and with a Brooklyn accent, Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)
portrayed strong, self-assured, no-nonsense dames with a tinge of vulnerability
in both comedies and dramas. She equally excelled as a femme fatale in the
wacky The Lady Eve (1941), the selfless mother in the tearjerker Stella Dallas
(1937), and as a murderous vixen in Double Indemnity (1944). Stanwyck was the
obvious first choice for the role of hard-boiled Mae Doyle.
Paul Douglas (1907-1959) transitioned from stage to films in 1949 and made
two baseball comedy movies, It Happens Every Spring (1949) and Angels in the
Outfield (1951). Although he was effective as tough guys in Panic in the Streets
and Born Yesterday, Douglas could play vulnerable and awkward men like
fisherman Jerry D’Amato.
In the role of Earl Pfeiffer, the cad who betrays his best friend by sleeping
with his wife, Robert Ryan (1909-1973) had a solid career playing hyper-
masculine, hardened cops and cold-blooded villains. Having served in the United
States Marines as a drill sergeant and having won a boxing championship,
Ryan’s brand of toughness suited both film noir and western genres. He garnered
good reviews as an anti-Semitic bully in Crossfire (1947) and as a declining
boxer who refuses to take a fall in The Set-Up (1949). Ryan later joined political
efforts against racial discrimination. He would live in The Dakota, Manhattan’s
famed luxury apartment house, and sublet his unit to musicians John Lennon and
Yoko Ono. “This sexy blonde really has something,” Ryan said upon meeting
Marilyn.
Clash By Night introduced newcomer Keith Andes (1920-2005) as Marilyn’s
love interest. He remembered her attracting local and media attention while on
location in Monterey. Servicemen from a nearby military base flocked around
her, along with reporters and photographers. Paul Douglas complained about
Marilyn stealing the spotlight. “She’s younger and more beautiful than any of
us,” Stanwyck matter-of-factly explained.
Austrian-American filmmaker Fritz Lang (1890-1976) originated from the
German school of Expressionism and was dubbed the “Master of Darkness.” His
most famous works were the groundbreaking German films Metropolis (1927)
and M (1931) before he immigrated to the United States. Lang graciously
permitted Lytess on the set on the condition she didn’t coach Marilyn at home, as
he wanted his supporting actress pliable to his direction. Marilyn was so terrified
of Lang’s direction before a scene, her skin broke out in red blotches and she
vomited.
To prepare for the role, Marilyn rode a bus all through the night three
hundred miles north to Monterey, where she spoke with boat owners and
cannery workers before filming at a cannery in addition to exterior scenes on
location. Interior scenes were filmed on the RKO Studio lot, whose tower young
Norma Jeane could see from the window of the orphanage. Before production
ended, she made an effort to revisit the nearby institution, where she had lived
for twenty-one months.
Marilyn’s thirteenth film opened with a dramatic soundtrack as waves
crashed against coastal rocks, Lang’s metaphor for the sexual tension to follow.
Worldly but weary Mae Doyle (Stanwyck) returns home to a small fishing
village after a ten year absence and reunites with her younger brother Joe
(Andes), who works for Jerry (Douglas), the skipper of a trawler who lives alone
with his elderly father. Mae admits defeat in having had “big ideas,” but “small
results” and laments about having made a mistake by becoming involved with an
older man who turned out to be married. Joe introduces Mae to his girlfriend,
Peggy (Marilyn), who works at the local sardine cannery. Peggy admires Mae’s
sophistication and confides her own longing for excitement, as Mae had in
youth, and desire not to be controlled by a man. When Peggy asks what brought
Mae back home, Mae responds, “Home is where you come when you run out of
places.”
Mae is flattered by the interest of kind and simple Jerry, who is infatuated
with her. During their first date at a local movie theater, Jerry introduces Mae to
his best friend, projectionist Earl. Mae is attracted to the brutish and cynical Earl,
but is offended by his misogynistic rant about his burlesque dancer wife. Mae
and Earl are both hardened and world-weary. Deep down, Mae desires a man
who can make her feel confident and alive, a man like Earl. Eventually, Jerry
proposes marriage and Mae declines, stating she is not the “wife type,” but after
a drunken flirtation with Earl, she sacrifices a chance at excitement for the
promise of security and agrees to marry Jerry. Over time, Earl senses Mae has
resigned herself to a dull life with a man for whom she feels no passion and
questions her about the stability of her marriage. Mae rebuffs his advances at
first, and a joyous Peggy stops by to announce her recent engagement to Joe.
After Peggy rushes off to Joe, since diamonds make her suddenly “punctual,”
Earl seduces Mae.
From the moment Marilyn appears on screen in a pair of jeans and a sweater,
it is clear she is playing a strong girl, the strongest of her career, who is
exploring the limited options for a woman in the 1950s. When Joe meets Peggy
outside the cannery after work as she eats a candy bar, he warns, “You’ll
spread.” Without vanity, she affirms the possibility and changes the subject to a
coworker who was recently beaten by her husband. Joe justifies the man’s
behavior based upon his role of husband. Peggy snaps back that he would beat
her, too, if they were married. Joe tries to kiss her, and the couple playfully
scraps. “When I want you to kiss me,” Peggy says while kicking his shins, “I’ll
let you know…by special messenger.”
In another scene, Peggy and Joe dry off after a swim in the ocean and join
Mae and Jerry at a waterfront dance hall. Earls makes a scene, and Peggy
admires his brutish energy. “He’s kind of exciting, and attractive,” she tells Joe.
Jealous, he wraps a towel around her neck and pulls her close to him.
 “Who’s attractive?” Joe demands while playacting strangulation.
“You are,” Peggy says as she struggles to loosen his grip. She then punches
Joe in the mouth. In Marilyn’s rare acting depiction of intoxication, Peggy gets
drunk at Mae and Jerry’s wedding reception and stands on a table to make a
toast. She grabs a sandwich off a tray, takes a bite, and throws the remaining
sandwich on the floor. Never before and never again would Marilyn portray such
an earthy character.
A pivotal scene gave Marilyn an opportunity for dramatic acting. When Joe
condemns his sister’s transgression, Peggy offers sympathy and understanding.
“You don’t have the right to judge,” she tells her fiancé. Joe questions Peggy’s
commitment and announces that he will not tolerate being used until someone
better comes along. This is a wake-up call to Peggy, and Marilyn effectively
conveys her character’s sudden realization of her deep love and fidelity. Peggy
embraces Joe with strong emotion.
Using Michael Chekhov’s techniques and seeking realism in her role,
Marilyn rejected the costume jewelry engagement ring the wardrobe department
gave her to wear, and instead borrowed the diamond ring belonging to wardrobe
attendant Marjorie Pletcher. At a preview in Pasadena’s Crown Theatre, Marilyn
received “terrific applause,” and the audience’s preview cards raved about her.
“Before going on any further with a report on Clash By Night, perhaps we
should mention the first full-length glimpse the picture gives us of Marilyn
Monroe as an actress,” Alton Cook wrote in the New York World Telegram and
Sun. “The verdict is gratifyingly good. This girl has a refreshing exuberance, an
abundance of girlish high spirits. She is a forceful actress, too, when crisis comes
along. She has definitely stamped herself as a gifted new star, worthy of all that
fantastic press…Her role is not very big, but she makes it dominant.”
“As for Miss Pash-pie of 1952, otherwise Marilyn Monroe, the calendar girl,
clad in dungarees,” began the Los Angeles Examiner, “she proves she can also
act and can hold her own with top performers.”
Variety couldn’t get enough of her: “While Marilyn Monroe is reduced to
what is tantamount to a bit role, despite her star billing, she does manage to get
over her blonde sexiness in one or two scenes, and the film could have used
more of her.”
The New York Daily News announced, “Marilyn Monroe…manages to look
alluring in blue jeans…she and young Andes make their marks on the screen
against the stiff competition given them by the three principals.”
The New Yorker offered a dissenting opinion by describing Andes and
Marilyn as “handsome,” but declaring “neither can act.”
In early October, Fox released Love Nest, and Marilyn posed in dresses for
Saks Fifth Avenue’s clothing catalogue. A month later, Let’s Make It Legal
appeared in theatres nationwide. “There was a sort of magic about her which we
all recognized at once,” Barbara Stanwyck recalled of Marilyn during this
period. “She seemed just a carefree kid, and she owned the world.” Conscious of
the power of her rising fame, Marilyn may have fantasized about her father
suddenly recognizing her on the screen and wanting a place in her life or
allowing her a place in his. Perhaps if she sought out her father and he saw that
she had succeeded in motion pictures, she would earn his love, he would claim
her, and they could have a relationship. Hoping to make her dreams a reality,
Marilyn found Stanley Gifford’s address and phone number through painstaking
research.
Meanwhile, in July 1950, Gifford and his wife Mary purchased a ranch in
Hemet, a city in the San Jacinto Valley in Riverside County between Los
Angeles and Palm Springs. The ranch boasted five acres, two dozen cows, and
over one hundred apricot trees. Gifford converted it into the Red Rock Dairy,
named after the Rhode Island Red and Plymouth Rock chickens that occupied
the property. Within a short time, the couple purchased about one hundred cows
and operated a retail dairy with three routes, and a combination ice-cream shop
and bakery with a tourist-drawing resident monkey.
With Natasha at her side for support, Marilyn drove her Pontiac toward
Hemet to meet her father for the first time at his sprawling, bucolic dairy.
Feeling an urge to inform the unsuspecting man of her plan or possibly testing
his willingness to see her before setting foot on his doorstep, Marilyn pulled off
to a payphone at a gas station and called the ranch. Gifford’s wife answered the
phone.
“This is Marilyn,” she said with a shaky voice. “Gladys Baker’s daughter.
He’s sure to know who I am.” Natasha watched Marilyn as Mary Gifford relayed
the message to her husband. Marilyn closed her eyes and threw her head back in
emotional turmoil. After all these years, what would be his reaction?
“He doesn’t want to see you,” Mary advised. “He suggests you contact his
lawyer in Los Angeles if you have a complaint. Do you have a pencil?”
Emotionally devastated, Marilyn walked back to the car and collapsed on the
steering wheel, tears streaming down her face. Natasha silently stroked her hair.
No words could bring comfort to an adult child of an abandoning father.
According to Donald H. Wolfe, Gifford’s stepdaughters, Susan and Lorraine,
corroborated Natasha’s recollection of the call and acknowledged Gifford’s
paternity.
Sidney Skolsky recounted a similar sequence of events as an observer to
Marilyn’s efforts to initiate a relationship with her father. She collected him in
her car from Schwab’s and drove to Hemet. Arriving in the town, Marilyn first
stopped at a drug store and purchased a copy of Examiner, which contained an
article about her. Armed with proof of her professional accomplishments to gain
her father’s approval, she parked on the road in front of his ranch, walked to his
front door, and disappeared into the house.
Skolsky waited in the passenger seat of the car for about fifteen minutes until
Marilyn returned. Silent and pensive, she started the ignition and headed back
toward Los Angeles. After a few miles, she told him of her father’s reaction to
meeting her in person for the first time.
“Listen, Marilyn, I’m married, I have children,” Gifford allegedly said. “I
don’t want you to start trouble for me now, like your mother did years ago.” As a
result, Marilyn did not attempt to contact her father again. Stanley Gifford died
on June 27, 1965 at the age of sixty-six, and was buried at San Jacinto Cemetery
in Hemet.
“All I really wanted from him was to let me call him my father,” Marilyn told
George Barris during the last weeks of her life. “But he wouldn’t give me the
satisfaction of knowing him. He didn’t want the world to know I was his love
child, his mistake.”

Robert Cahn interviewed Marilyn for Collier’s in her first serious story for a
prominent national magazine. The article, playfully titled “Hollywood’s 1951
Model Blonde,” was published in the September 8 issue, as the American auto
industry released the new car models for 1952. John Florea’s large color
photograph of a demure Marilyn dressed for her appearance at the Academy
Award ceremony mirrored the serious tone of the piece, capturing the soul of the
girl the public championed.
“Only once in a producer’s blue moon does there appear a blonde who brings
to the screen a special indelible vitality, and not simply the empty prettiness that
the audience forgets as it leaves the theater,” Cahn wrote. “Marilyn Monroe is
not a girl anyone quickly forgets. While Hollywood blondes are generally
considered the industry’s most expendable item, Miss Monroe’s value during the
past year has risen faster than the cost of living.” He clocked her total screen
time at only an estimated fifty minutes, and went on to identify more than the
obvious reasons she had captured the attention of audiences and received over
three thousand fan letters each week.
Cahn peeled away the dumb blonde, glamour girl veneer and described a
young woman of substance who overcame a childhood spent with twelve
families before the age of sixteen. He wrote that Marilyn “was told that her
father had been killed in an automobile accident before she was born, and that
her mother had become too ill to take care of her.” Interestingly, rather than
report these details as fact, he framed them as information she was told, which
would become significant later when the truth about Marilyn’s illegitimacy and
mother’s mental illness were discovered by the press. Cahn noted a three-tier
bookcase above the bed in her modest apartment that contained an “an
impressive array of well-thumbed volumes” by Whitman, Rilke, Schweitzer,
Tolstoy, and Emerson, and mentioned her enrollment at UCLA.
Cahn described Marilyn as making friends easily but reported she had only
two close friends, Natasha Lytess and Lucille Ryman. “[Marilyn] is rarely seen
at night clubs,” he wrote, “and her refusal to follow the approved starlet custom
of being seen with as many different men as often as possible has puzzled even
the usually clairvoyant columnists.”
The piece closed by describing Marilyn as a free spirit correcting the negative
experiences of her childhood: “Someday I want to have a house of my own with
trees and grass and hedges all around, but never trim them at all — just let them
grow any old way they want.”
Marilyn’s friend Rupert Allan, the West Coast editor of Look, interviewed her
for what would become her first major cover article in a national magazine.
Titled “Marilyn Monroe…A Serious Blonde Who Can Act,” the piece appeared
in the October 23 issue, accompanied by fourteen pictures, and called her “the
most promising star among all the blondes since Lana Turner.” By the end of
1951, Marilyn received an average of five thousand fan letters each week, even
though her handful of scenes in each movie released that year lasted less than an
hour.
Not only did Marilyn receive accolades for being a rising star, her stature as
the favorite pin-up girl earned decorations by the United States Armed Forces. In
1951, she was awarded numerous military honors, and due to the enthusiasm
reflected in serviceman’s letters to Fox requesting photographs and posters, the
studio sent Marilyn aboard the USS Benham in Long Beach. Aboard the
decommissioned Navy destroyer, she attended a public showing of The
Frogmen, starring her next leading man, Richard Widmark.
Chapter Fourteen
 Don’t Bother To Knock

After shooting Clash By Night at RKO, Marilyn returned to her home studio
and received a screenplay titled, Night Without Sleep, adapted from Charlotte
Armstrong’s 1950 novel, Mischief. Another studio’s interest in her as a dramatic
actress made Fox executives reconsider the full potential of the contracted player
they had relegated to minor, decorative parts such as secretaries and sirens. In
fact, Fox made an about-face by considering Marilyn for the substantial dramatic
leading role of Nell Forbes, a psychotic babysitter who teeters on the edge of
madness and eventually terrorizes the child in her charge.
To Marilyn, Night Without Sleep offered an opportunity to prove to Darryl
Zanuck that she had a wider range than supportive roles of beautiful girls in
bathing suits. However, Zanuck demanded she do a screen test before he would
cast her in the drama. Early considerations for this starring role included
Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Peters, and Anne Baxter. With Natasha’s help, Marilyn
prepared day and night — although she needed more emotional encouragement
than technical assistance — and passed her boss’s trial.
On December 6, Marilyn was told to report to the costume department for
fittings for the newly retitled Don’t Bother to Knock. For the first time, she
worked with William Travilla (1920-1990), professionally known by his last
name, who worked under Charles LeMaire at Fox and earned an Oscar in 1949
for dressing the swashbuckler Errol Flynn in Warner Brothers’ The Adventures of
Don Juan. The Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles had accepted Travilla, a
prodigy, at age eight, where he studied beside adults. By age sixteen, he was
selling his sketches of showgirl costumes for five dollars each to headliners at
burlesque clubs. Travilla considered his friendship with Marilyn as one of the
greatest gifts of his life, and compared her to a combination of a baby and a
sensuous woman. This melding, he said, made people fall in love with her.
The success of the World War II-themed Morning Departure (1950) drew
international attention to the film’s British director, Roy Baker (1916-2010), as
well as an invitation from Zanuck to join the team at Fox. Assigned to the new
Monroe production, Baker filmed in real time; the duration of the fictional action
equaling the run time of the film, both ninety minutes. He also set a tight twenty-
eight day shooting schedule involving two weeks of rehearsals, and filmed
scenes in the exact sequence they appeared in the film; a process Marilyn would
only repeat in The Misfits. Busting the myth that Marilyn required numerous
retakes, Roy Baker printed the first take.
The suspenseful plot of Don’t Bother to Knock followed an airline pilot who
is dumped by his girlfriend at a hotel and pursues another guest, a beautiful
young woman babysitting a child for a couple in town for an award ceremony.
The babysitter becomes psychotic, confusing the man for her boyfriend — also a
pilot — who was killed in the war.
In the leading male role of pilot Jed Towers, Fox considered Montgomery
Clift, Joseph Cotten, and Victor Mature before selecting Richard Widmark
(1914-2008). In his screen debut in Kiss of Death (1947), Widmark earned an
Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Tommy Udo, a sociopath with a
sinister giggle who pushes a wheelchair-bound woman (Mildred Dunnock) down
a flight of stairs to her death. In 1950, he starred in the film noir classics, Panic
in the Streets and Night and the City. That same year, he starred with Sidney
Poitier in the racial drama No Way Out. Widmark became Marilyn’s neighbor
after she married Arthur Miller and lived in Roxbury, Connecticut.
Fifteen years before her iconic role as Mrs. Robinson — the unhappily
married older woman who seduces a much younger family friend (Dustin
Hoffman) in The Graduate (1967) — Anne Bancroft made her screen debut
beside Marilyn Monroe. She played Jed’s girlfriend, Lyn Lesley, a hotel lounge
singer. Bancroft (1931-2005) earned five Oscar award nominations in the course
of her illustrious career. She won the best actress Oscar of 1962 for her portrayal
of teacher Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker, a biography of young Helen
Keller, who overcame blindness and deafness in infancy to become an author
and political activist. In The Slender Thread (1965), Bancroft portrayed a woman
who calls a crisis hotline after taking a lethal overdose of pills.
Before playing James Dean’s father in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and the
shipwrecked pompous millionaire, Thurston Howell III, in the 1960s television
series Gilligan’s Island, Jim Backus (1913-1989) worked as a radio announcer
and actor. He was also the voice of a near-sighted retiree, Mr. Magoo, who gets
into comical situations, in a series of animated cartoons beginning in 1949.
Shortly before his casting as Peter Jones, the father who hires the babysitter,
Backus appeared in his first significant screen role with Spencer Tracy and
Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike (1952). During the production, Marilyn
invited him into her dressing room and begged, “Do Mr. Magoo!”
Dubbed The First Lady of Radio, Lurene Tuttle (1907-1986) appeared in
fifteen broadcasts per week before transitioning to film and television in roles of
wives and mothers. Shortly before portraying Ruth Jones, she played the matron
of an orphanage who successfully arranges the adoption of an abused and
abandoned teenaged girl with Cary Grant in Room for One More.
Elisha Vanslyck Cook, Jr. (1903-1995) portrayed Eddie, Nell’s uncle who
works at the hotel and obtains the babysitting position for her. He had played
neurotic characters and villains such as Wilmer, who tries to threaten Sam Spade
(Humphrey Bogart), in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the doomed informant in
the adaption of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1946) with Bogart and
Lauren Bacall.
Verna Felton (1890-1966) had a small role as Mrs. Bellew, a nosey neighbor
who spies on the suspicious activity in the hotel suite. The actress lent her husky
voice to animated characters in Walt Disney’s classics such as Mrs. Jumbo in
Dumbo (1941), the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (1950), the Queen of Hearts
in Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp (1955).
Felton also provided the voice of Pearl Slaghoople, Fred Flintstone’s mother-in-
law in Hanna-Barbera’s animated television series The Flintstones (1960-1966).
The screenplay by Daniel Taradash (later awarded the 1953 Oscar for writing
From Here To Eternity) provides a suspenseful character reveal, as we discover
that Nell isn’t just a pathetic waif, but a psychotic woman, in classic film noir
style and dialogue. Four years before she set foot into the Actors Studio, Marilyn
gave a Method Acting performance.
Don’t Bother to Knock opens with main titles appearing over the Manhattan
skyline and a jazzy score. All the action takes place in the McKinley Hotel, a
residential hotel with a combination of tenants and visitors from out of town. Jed
Tower (Widmark) is a cocky, cynical airline pilot from Chicago, who has been
dating Lyn Lesley (Bancroft), a singer in the hotel’s cowboy-themed lounge.
Their time together has been on the weekends when Jed flies into town, which is
not good enough for Lyn anymore. Jed is emotionally detached, with clear
intimacy issues, and Lyn doesn’t appreciate his snarky wise cracks and his
contemptuous treatment of others. “You don’t have what I need,” Lyn tells him
in the breakup. “You lack an understanding heart.”
Upstairs in room 803, Peter and Ruth Jones (Backus and Tuttle) prepare to
attend an award ceremony in the hotel’s ballroom. Eddie (Cook Jr.), the elevator
attendant, has arranged for his niece, Nell (Monroe), newly in town from
Oregon, to babysit their young daughter, Bunny (played by nine year old Donna
Corcoran). Nell enters the hotel’s revolving door in a simple cotton dress, low
heels, a black sweater, and a beret. From behind, we see her outfit is wrinkled as
if she had been sitting on the subway for a long time. Apparently, Marilyn
bought the dress at a discount store in place of wearing a costume designed by
Fox’s wardrobe department.
Nell’s backstory is cloaked, and Marilyn builds the character through use of
her body in a manner studied with Checkhov. She moves with hesitancy and
scans her environment in a way that suggests she has not been in public for a
long time. In her popular blog The Sheila Variations, Sheila O’Malley describes
Marilyn’s entrance:

She walks across the hotel lobby, and her arms look stiff and unusable,
she is vaguely unsteady on her feet, as though she is learning to walk
all over again, her face is wet with tears, and she blinks up at the lights
of the lobby, alarmed, squinting at the glare. She goes down the steps,
one step, two step, her body slack and yet also rigid, she cannot move
easily. Her psychic pain emanates not just from her face, the ending is
not done in close-up, it’s a full-body shot…and her physicality is
eloquent. It tells the whole story. Her pain is in her pinky finger, her
waist, her calves…It surges through her and makes it difficult to even
walk. You know who plays a scene that well and with that much
specificity and abandon? A real actress does, that’s who.

Nell meets her Uncle Eddie who introduces her to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and
Bunny. After Eddie and the couple leave and Bunny is tucked in bed, Nell
restlessly wanders the suite. Alone, her mask is removed, and her expression
exudes deep pathos and despondency. She rifles through Mrs. Jones’ jewelry and
clothing and tries on a negligée, earrings, and a bracelet. Slowly, Nell transforms
from an introverted waif to into a glamorous woman, much in the way Norma
Jeane metamorphosed into Marilyn Monroe.
After her uncle leaves, Nell entertains Jed in the suite and is stunned to learn
he is a pilot. Her fingers nervously trace the scar on her wrist as she becomes
delusional and believes Jed is her deceased boyfriend, a pilot who died in the
war. “You were rescued!” she cries while embracing him. “You came back!”
Bunny unexpectedly enters the room and reveals Nell is her babysitter. Nell
sends the child back to bed, and Jed expresses concern when he hears her crying
in the other room. Nell reveals her own background of neglect when she coldly
remarks, “If you don’t pay attention to them, they stop.” At Jed’s insistence, Nell
goes to Bunny. “Don’t utter a sound,” she harshly orders the child. “Then we’ll
all live happily ever after.” The effect is chilling and demonstrates Marilyn’s
talent at this early stage in her career.
After Jed leaves in frustration, Eddie checks on Nell and admonishes her for
wearing Mrs. Jones’ clothes. “Now stop it, all of you!” Nell shouts with
terrifying rage, her eyes wide and crazed. She reaches for an object to throw at
him but gains control. Enraged, she hits him over the head with ashtray. Not until
The Misfits will Marilyn again have an opportunity to emote such anger and
aggression in a role.
According to Anne Bancroft, Marilyn disagreed with both Baker and Natasha
on how to play the final scene, and ignored their advice. “The talent inside that
girl was unquestionable,” Bancroft told John Gilmore. “She did it her way and
this got right inside me, actually floored me emotionally.” Nell Forbes is a
fragmented personality with a blank expression. Sadness, fear and rage register
in Marilyn’s face with credibility. She fluctuates from an introverted waif to
someone who seems ruthless, even dangerous. Having worked with Michael
Chekhov, Marilyn learned to delve deep into her own reservoir of painful
memories, and accessed her own natural talent for portraying vulnerability and
madness. Employing Chekhov’s technique of physicality, she frequently held her
waist as if the character were preventing herself from succumbing to madness.
Perhaps Gladys served as inspiration.
Marilyn gives a stunning, riveting performance as a damaged woman, and
suggests an alternative path her career might have taken if her physical beauty
had not dictated the roles Fox gave her. Indeed, her comic performances were
gems, which ultimately led to her legendary status, but what heights might she
have achieved had she been allowed to experiment with more dramatic roles
earlier in her career? Sadly, the film is rarely emphasized as a part of her body of
work.
“It was a remarkable experience!” Anne Bancroft said of her work with
Marilyn. “Because it was one of those very rare times in Hollywood when I felt
the give and take that can only happen when you are working with good actors…
There was just this scene of one woman seeing another who was helpless and in
pain. It was so real, I responded. I really reacted to her. She moved me so that
tears came into my eyes. Believe me, such moments happened rarely, if ever
again, in the early things I was doing out there.” Likewise, Marilyn was so
captivated by Bancroft’s acting that she visited the set to watch her co-star film
scenes. Retrospectively, Don’t Bother to Knock offers chilling biographical
elements from Marilyn’s life. Like Marilyn, Nell is both vulnerable and sexy. Jed
lusts after her, unaware of her damaged psyche, just as the public celebrated
Marilyn’s beauty while knowing nothing of her mental illness and suicide
attempts.
Fox capitalized on Marilyn’s sexy image and the sexual tension between the
leading characters for the film’s advertising. Lobby posters promoted sex appeal
by featuring a pin-up style rendering of Marilyn in a strapless red dress beside
copy describing her as “a wicked sensation as the lonely girl in room 803.” The
trailer touted Marilyn as “America’s most exciting personality” and “the most
talked about actress of 1952…every inch a woman…every inch an actress!”
With obvious allusions to sex, Richard Widmark is “the guy who didn’t knock,”
and Marilyn is “the girl who didn’t care.”
Don’t Bother to Knock opened in New York on July 18, 1952. Twelve days
later, accompanied by Richard Widmark, Marilyn attended the Los Angeles
premiere in a strapless gown of sheer black lace over red taffeta, black gloves,
and mink stole. The next morning, Marilyn awoke to mixed reviews. Variety
announced she “gives an excellent account of herself in a strictly dramatic role
which commands certain attention…the studio has an upcoming dramatic star in
Miss Monroe.”
Manny Farber, film critic for The Nation, wrote that Marilyn “lulls you into
always believing the girl is more normal than she is.” In his 1952 essay “Blame
the Audience,” he pointed to the film as one of the ten best of the year: “Monroe
takes her character through several successive changes of mood and makes her
transitions from lethargy to seductiveness to sadness to desperation very
compelling.”
Charlotte Armstrong, whose novel inspired the film, publicly praised Richard
Widmark and offhandedly commented, “The Monroe wasn’t bad either.”
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times disagreed: “It requires a good deal to
play a person who is strangely jangled in the head. And unfortunately, all the
equipment that Miss Monroe has to handle the job are a childishly blank
expression and a provokingly feeble voice.”
In contrast, Newsweek hailed Marilyn: “All the performances are competent,
but Marilyn Monroe — hitherto typed as a glamour girl — easily comes off best
with a surprisingly effective impersonation of a mousy maniac.”
Unbiased by some of Marilyn’s contemporaneous critics who saw her as an
actress with a feeble voice who only challenged societal norms, future critics
would generally hail her acting chops. Arguably, Marilyn effectively channeled
her mentally ill mother and gave a believable performance as a vaguely written
character in a script without any description of her personality. Marilyn later told
friend Hedda Rosten that Don’t Bother to Knock was one of her favorite films
and Nell was her strongest performance.
Chapter Fifteen
 January-February 1952: We’re Not Married & Monkey
Business

1952 was an amazing year for Marilyn. Her picture was on the cover of every
serious national magazine, she appeared in no less than five films, and was
exposed — literally — as having posed for a nude calendar. Marilyn had gone
global. On January 26, she was invited to attend the Foreign Press Association of
Hollywood’s First Annual International Film Festival at the Club Del Mar, Santa
Monica. Marilyn had been nominated for the Henrietta Award, presented to the
Best Young Box Office Personality, along with fellow-nominees Virginia
Gibson, Mitzi Gaynor, Leslie Caron, Tony Curtis, and John Derek.
Determined to draw attention, Marilyn borrowed her gown from the studio
wardrobe department. She selected a structured, low-cut clinging red velvet
dress with a mermaid flare at the bottom designed by Oleg Cassini for Gene
Tierney. Its plunging, sweetheart bodice with velvet-on-velvet latticework
covering the breasts accentuated the cleavage. An asymmetrical off-the-shoulder
strap was adorned with ropes of long, looped velvet. Dressed like Cinderella in
second-hand clothing and escorted by Harry Brand, Marilyn was the belle of the
ball. Handsome actors such as Richard Basehart and Charles Chaplin, Jr.
competed to sit beside her. Predictably, the master of ceremonies announced
Marilyn’s name as the winner, and she accepted the rather obtusely large award,
a sculpture of a nude female resembling a feminine version of the Oscar.
Some members of the press denounced Marilyn’s borrowed attire as obscene
even though Tierney hadn’t stirred such a hullabaloo when she donned the
stunning gown. In a brilliant move, Brand and his publicity crew at Fox arranged
for Earl Theisen to photograph Marilyn in a custom-made dress designed by
William Travilla from a burlap bag emblazoned with the words: “U.S. No. 1
Idaho Potatoes.” Over four hundred newspapers carried the photo with caption:
“Marilyn Monroe is sexy even when she wears an Idaho potato sack.” By now,
any magazine that featured her on the cover enjoyed a documented average sales
increase of thirty-nine per cent.
Having sparked controversy and hailed triumphant, Marilyn borrowed the
same gown to attend the Junior-Senior prom at her alma mater, UCLA, in
February. Representatives from a fraternity presented her with an orchid corsage.
This time, no one criticized her attire.
Fox sent Marilyn and Robert Wagner on an arranged date to Romanoff’s
restaurant on February 8, for a dinner party in honor of John Huston’s The
African Queen, which received four Academy Award nominations. Humphrey
Bogart won the Best Actor trophy, while Katharine Hepburn lost to Vivien
Leigh. Hepburn eventually won a total of four Best Actress Oscars and set the
unmatched record for all performers.

While Marilyn was on loan portraying a serious role at RKO, Fox prepared a
lightweight episodic comedy titled We’re Not Married with an all-star ensemble
cast and directed by Edmund Goulding, who had presided over the star-studded
Grand Hotel (1932).
Based upon the unpublished work If I Could Remarry by Gina Kaus and Jay
Dratler, the plot involved five couples who unexpectedly encounter an
opportunity to change their lives upon discovering their marriages are invalid.
The scandalous situation is created when an elderly man, Melvin Bush (Victor
Moore), is appointed justice of the peace and starts marrying couples on
Christmas Eve. Two and a half years later, the state governor informs Melvin
that he married six couples during the week before his appointment became
official. Melvin’s error was discovered when one of the couples attempted to
divorce and learned their marriage was bogus. The governor sends each of the
remaining couples a letter informing them of the glitch and offering suggestions
of how to resolve the matter. Cast in the small role of Mrs. Bush, Jane Darwell
(1879-1967) received the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance as
the matriarch of the struggling migrant family in Darryl Zanuck’s The Grapes of
Wrath (1940).
Zanuck demanded that writer-producer Nunnally Johnson cast Marilyn in one
of the female roles, and that she wear a bathing suit. Johnson modified his script
to include the role of Annabel Norris, described by the Justice of the Peace as a
“cute, shy little girl” at her wedding ceremony who “blushed about everything.”
She is married to Jeff, “a jerk of a fellow” who had “foolish ideas about who was
going to be boss of the house.” Marilyn played a sexy wife and mother for the
first time. The episode opens with Annabel on a runway as she wins the title of
“Mrs. Senatobia” in a bathing beauty contest. In the audience, her prideful
husband, Jeff (David Wayne), holds their toddler son, Bitsy. Jeff asks another
man if he likes her, and the man affirms with enthusiastic applause. “My wife,”
Jeff declares with a beaming smile. The man stops clapping, lowers his eyes, and
apologizes. Jeff gives him permission to keep looking.
When Jeff smugly reads the letter announcing the invalidity of their union,
Annabel appears stunned. “It means…we’re not married?” she asks. With
Marilyn’s masterful control of facial expression and timing, Annabel’s face
transforms from apparent dismay to thrill as she embraces her husband and
exclaims, “Darling! How wonderful!” The remainder of the film focuses on the
other couples impacted by the justice of the peace’s legal mishap. Adhering to
the Hollywood formula, Annabel and Jeff remarry, and Marilyn wears a wedding
dress onscreen for the first time. Standing five-foot seven-inches and dwarfed by
Marilyn wearing heels, David Wayne was an unlikely match for her, but together
they had screen chemistry.
By the time she was cast in We’re Not Married, Marilyn had developed fully
into the iconic image for which she is remembered. Her hair was styled in a
flattering and timeless fashion. In bathing suits and smart day dresses designed
by Elois Jenssen (1922-2004), Marilyn was slim and curvaceous. Moonlighting
at Desilu Studios, Jenssen also created Lucille Ball’s stylish costumes for the
popular I Love Lucy television series.
After the film’s July 11 release, Variety deemed the “Monroe-Wayne
sequence” as “pretty lightweight, but shows off the Monroe form to full
advantage in a bathing suit, offering certain exploitation for film.”
The New York Herald Tribune described Marilyn as looking “like she has
been carved out of cake by Michelangelo.”

On March 1, Marilyn consulted Dr. Elliott Corday for abdominal pains and a
persistent temperature. Corday diagnosed appendicitis and recommended
surgery. Marilyn begged him to postpone the operation until production of her
next film ended. The doctor sent her by ambulance to Cedars of Lebanon
Hospital for a few days of treatment with intravenous antibiotics to decrease the
inflammation so that she could return to work.
Marilyn hastily went from the set of We’re Not Married to Monkey Business,
in production from March 5 to April 30, but the latter film was released shortly
after the first. The part of Miss Lois Laurel was her last secretary role and the
only sane character in the story, a revival of 1930s screwball comedies. Cary
Grant stars as absent-minded scientist, Dr. Barnaby Fulton, who labors to create
a formula to reverse the aging process. Esther — his laboratory chimpanzee —
escapes from a cage, mixes together a concoction of chemicals, and pours them
into a water cooler. When Barnaby drinks from the cooler, he regresses and
behaves like a college freshman. Ginger Rogers co-stars as Barnaby’s wife,
Edwina, and Charles Coburn portrays his boss, Mr. Oliver Oxley.
 Cary Grant, born Archibald Alexander Leach (1904-1986) in England, was
the quintessential strikingly handsome and debonair leading man of Hollywood.
He possessed a slight accent, idiosyncratic style of speech, and abundant charm.
The American Film Institute named him the second Greatest Male Star of All
Time in 1999, surpassed only by Humphrey Bogart. “I pretended to be
somebody I wanted to be,” Grant said, summarizing the link between his screen
role and personal life, “and, finally, I became that person. Or he became me.”
Spanning over forty years, his career included exceptional work in drama
and, contrary to his dashing looks and sophistication, screwball and romantic
comedies. His classic comedies include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up
Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), and
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). He was equally adept in dramas such as Gunga
Din (1939), Notorious (1946), To Catch A Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember
(1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963). Grant’s onscreen
pairings included three generations of leading ladies, including Mae West,
Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Doris Day, and Audrey Hepburn. In later
years, he remained suitable for romantic leading male roles, becoming even
more handsome as his hair turned silver.
Ginger Rogers (1911-1995) and Marilyn had co-starred in We’re Not Married
but had never played scenes together. Rogers is best remembered as Fred
Astaire’s foremost dance partner in thirty-three magnificent dance numbers
showcased in ten classic musicals, including Top Hat (1935), Shall We Dance
(1937), Swing Time (1936), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), and
Barkleys of Broadway (1949). She could do everything that her legendary dance
partner could do, the old Hollywood saying went, but she did it backwards and
in high heels. Rogers’ career took off like lightning in the musicals 42nd Street
and Gold Diggers of 1933. In 1941, she received the Academy Award for Best
Actress for her role in Kitty Foyle (1940). She also starred in Roxie Hart (1942),
the story on which the musical Chicago is based.
One of Hollywood’s most beloved character actors, Charles Coburn (1877-
1961), started a film career at the ripe age of fifty-six, playing monocle wearing,
cigar smoking, and cantankerous but sympathetic paternal roles. He had worked
as a theater manager at age seventeen before transitioning to stage acting. After
debuting on Broadway in 1901, Coburn established an acting company with his
wife, Ivah, and relocated to Los Angeles after her death. Coburn made notable
screen appearances in The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), The Lady Eve (1941),
Kings Row (1942), and Heaven Can Wait (1943). In the 1940s, Coburn served as
vice-president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American
Ideals, a right-wing group that supported blacklisting anyone in the industry with
a connection to Communism. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for
The More the Merrier (1943).
Director Howard Hawks (1896-1977) set the benchmark for gangster films
through his work in Scarface (1932), but also directed often-imitated screwball
comedies: Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940) starring Cary
Grant, and Twentieth Century (1934) with Carole Lombard. In the film noir
classic To Have and Have Not (1944), Hawks introduced the brilliant coupling of
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and repeated their success with The Big
Sleep (1946). For Hawks, Monkey Business was a re-working of Bringing Up
Baby, with a chimpanzee replacing the leopard. “Marilyn Monroe was the most
frightened little girl, who had no confidence in her ability…” Hawks said. “I was
lucky to work with her early, before she became frightened…I had an easy time
compared to other directors who worked with her later. The more important she
became the more frightened she became.”
Grant and Marilyn’s on-screen chemistry is aided by the sparkling dialogue
of I.A.L. Diamond, with collaboration by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer.
Barnaby greets Miss Laurel and comments on her arriving early to work. “Mr.
Oxley’s been complaining about my punctuation,” she explains. Later, Miss
Laurel lifts one leg onto the seat of a chair and raises the hem of her dress. “Isn’t
it wonderful?” she beams. “The new non-rip plastic stockings you invented!”
When Mr. Oxley enters, Barnaby explains Miss Laurel was “just showing me
her acetates.”
Mr. Oxley hands Miss Laurel some pages she has typed and instructs her to
“find someone to type this.” She implores him to allow her to try again. It’s an
important document, he explains, so someone else had better type it. Turning to
Barnaby, Oxley shrugs: “Anybody can type.”
Named Cupidone in the original script, youth formula B-4 was an
aphrodisiac, and Edwina’s motivation for experimenting with it was to arouse
her husband’s romantic interests in her. Likewise, Mr. Oxley’s interest in funding
the research was to seduce Miss Laurel. Censors axed this premise, but several
examples of sexy double entendre eluded omission. For example, when Fulton
jumps into a convertible sports car alongside Miss Laurel, she asks, “Is your
motor running?” He replies, “Is yours?”
Marilyn plays “straight” man to Grant’s antics and speaks in a natural, less
whispery voice. Hers is the only main character that never drinks the tainted
water. During production, designer William Travilla found her in a corner of the
set crying. She bemoaned feeling inadequate and believing that she was
disappointing everyone. The designer assured Marilyn that audiences wouldn’t
agree, and she quickly brightened.
Aside from the one-piece bathing suit, Travilla’s costumes for Marilyn were
uncharacteristically modest. She wears a solid-color dress with short sleeves
adorned with pom-pom fringe, and a high-necked tan jersey dress with a full,
pleated skirt accessorized by a neck scarf fastened with two large safety pins.
Having applied Marilyn’s makeup for her first screen test for Fox in 1946 and
for All About Eve, Allan “Whitey” Snyder reunited with Marilyn on the set of
Monkey Business. He served as both her professional and personal makeup artist
for all of her subsequent films and remained a lifelong friend. Snyder began his
career in 1937 as a studio messenger at RKO and later transferred to the makeup
department to earn twenty dollars per week. In 1942, Fox hired him.
In the original script, titled The Fountain of Youth, only Cary Grant’s
character consumes the formula; but Ginger Rogers demanded an opportunity to
play broad physical comedy, which included demonstrating her ability to dance
while balancing a glass of water on her head. “She wanted to do it and I had to
let her do it,” Howard Hawks later complained. “I thought it was lousy and it
made her play badly throughout the whole picture.” Grant, having preferred
thirty year-old Ava Gardner as co-star, resented being cast opposite a forty-one
year old actress and impertinently addressed Rogers by her real name, Virginia,
during the production.
The exterior of the Oxley Chemical Company was actually the Executive
Administrative Building on the Fox lot. While filming Monkey Business,
Marilyn marched into the structure to personally negotiate a two-year contract
for Natasha as Fox’s chief drama coach, guaranteeing Lytess a steady income
and benefits.
In promotional photographs, Marilyn posed reading the script with the
chimpanzee, along with embracing the animal. She wasn’t the only screen
legend to co-star with a monkey, and chimps were all the rage in early 1950s
entertainment. Ronald Reagan had recently starred opposite a chimp in
Universal Pictures’ comedic Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), and its sequel, Bonzo
Goes to College, was released the same year as Monkey Business. On television,
NBC’s Today show featured Dave Garroway and his diaper-wearing simian
sidekick, Muggs, who had also appeared on CBS’ Perry Como Show.
When Monkey Business was released in early September, Marilyn was
singled out in all of the reviews for her sex appeal. “Not having seen Miss
Monroe before, I know now what that’s all about, and I’ve no dissenting
opinions to offer,” wrote a critic in New York Herald Tribune, “She disproves
more than adequately the efficacy of the old stage rule about not turning one’s
back to the audience.”
New York Post highlighted similar feedback. “Marilyn Monroe…poses and
walks in a manner that must be called suggestive,” asserted the newspaper.
“What she suggests is something that this picture seems to have on its mind
much of the time, with or without the rejuvenation.” But not all critics
overlooked her comic timing. “Marilyn Monroe garners laughs and whistles,
bouncing on and out as a secretary that can’t type,” opined Photoplay. “Typing
skill, however, in the only attribute which the lady appears to be lacking…”
Chapter Sixteen
 March-June 1952

Joe DiMaggio, the greatest living professional baseball player, had been
fantasizing for months about a beautiful blonde he had seen in a photograph
published in a local newspaper. Wearing white shorts, a snug sweater, high heels,
and a baseball cap, she posed in batting stance at home plate, holding a baseball
bat. Showing the shapely blonde how to hold a bat, professional baseball player
Gus Zernial of the Philadelphia A’s stood behind her, his arms wrapped around
her waist.
DiMaggio read the blonde’s name in the caption below the photograph and
imagined his own arms wrapped around her. A few months later, when he saw
Zernial at a charity game, DiMaggio asked how he met the pretty blonde starlet
with the baseball bat in the photograph. Zernial referred him to David March, a
financial and business manager, who knew the blonde and assisted in the shoot.
Wasting no time, DiMaggio contacted March and requested a formal
introduction. March agreed to bring the great baseball player together with the
beautiful, rising starlet, Marilyn Monroe.
Unfamiliar with the artificiality of publicity, DiMaggio thought Marilyn was
a true baseball fan who really liked baseball players. In reality, before posing for
the picture, she had never attended a baseball game. As a publicity event during
the previous spring, Roy Craft sent Marilyn to Brookside Park baseball field in
Pasadena, where the Chicago White Sox were in training. David March
participated in staging the event for Fox. While vying to make Marilyn his
client, March visited with her, asking questions about her goals and values. He
never made romantic advances toward her and wanted her only as a client. After
the revelation of her nude calendar, Marilyn gave March an autographed copy
inscribed: “To David — do you still want my business?”
In Marilyn’s many conversations with March, she philosophically explored
the meaning of life and the key to happiness. The more practical of the two,
March advised her to simply find a handsome, good guy and settle down.
Marilyn didn’t care for a good-looking man. Instead, she was interested in an
honest, intelligent man with character and told March, “I’d rather be lonely by
myself than lonely with a man who has nothing to offer.”
March had recently assisted Marilyn in locating a small frame house to rent
at 1121 Hilldale Avenue and became concerned about her increasing melancholy.
She seemed bored, withdrawn, and socially isolated. Although she was the most
beautiful, young actress in Hollywood and attracted national attention, she
stayed home at night, dateless, and read books.
The timing of DiMaggio’s call to David March could not have been more
serendipitous. Already troubled by Marilyn’s loneliness, he was only too happy
to serve as matchmaker, and what better match for America’s sweetheart than
America’s hero? March immediately approached Marilyn about agreeing to a
blind date, and to quell her anticipated trepidation, he offered to serve as a
chaperone along with his girlfriend, Peggy Rabe. Her date would be Joe
DiMaggio.
When Marilyn asked who he was, March was amazed that she had never
heard of him. She mumbled something about hearing he might have been a
baseball or football player.
Aghast, March exclaimed that DiMaggio was one of the greatest baseball
players since Babe Ruth.
“Babe who?” Marilyn asked.
Rolling his eyes, March told her Ruth was the greatest baseball player until
DiMaggio.
Marilyn felt ambivalence. She didn’t like loud, crude, egotistical athletes. He
might even get fresh with her. She had no interest in sports. They’d have nothing
in common. March tried to convince her that DiMaggio was different. He was a
shy, modest, and dignified gentleman. Besides, the blind date would be
chaperoned. Marilyn wouldn’t be alone with him. March and his girlfriend
would join them. What did she have to lose? Begrudgingly, Marilyn consented.
For the location of the introduction, March suggested the quiet, romantic
Italian restaurant, Villa Nova, at 9015 Sunset Strip (now the Rainbow Bar and
Grill). Owned by director Vincente Minnelli, the Tudor-style building had served
as the location for his proposal to Judy Garland in 1945. March made a
reservation for six-thirty in the evening and requested a secluded booth in the far
left corner of the restaurant, far from the entrance and facing a large fireplace.
DiMaggio was already waiting when March and Rabe arrived. Impeccably
dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and blue polka dot tie, DiMaggio smoked a
cigarette and sipped sweet vermouth. At six foot one inch and one hundred
ninety pounds, he was a striking, if not handsome, man with broad shoulders,
large hands, and powerful arms. At age thirty-seven, DiMaggio’s hair was
graying slightly. He had a prominent, pointed nose, flaring nostrils, and a mild
overbite.
When an hour passed and Marilyn had not yet arrived, March excused
himself form the table and called her at home to see if she were still coming. “I
don’t like men in loud clothes, with checkered suits, and big muscles, and pink
ties,” she said, still weary from her recent hospitalization. March insisted
DiMaggio was different from the stereotype and successfully coaxed her out of
the apartment.
Marilyn swept in two hours late in a blue suit and white shantung blouse. She
later wrote about expecting to meet a “loud, sporty fellow,” but instead
discovered “a reserved gentleman” whom she would have guessed “was either a
steel magnate or a congressman.” In My Story, Marilyn documented their
conversation.
“I’m glad to meet you,” DiMaggio mustered.
“There’s a blue polka dot exactly in the middle of your tie knot,” Marilyn
said. “Did it take you long to fix it like that?”
A man of few words, DiMaggio simply shook his head. To break the ice,
March engaged Marilyn in some small talk about her current film with Gary
Grant and Ginger Rogers. After that brief conversation, she and DiMaggio fell
into a silence that lasted throughout the meal.
A few male patrons of the restaurant who had made their mark in Hollywood
noticed the famous athlete and approached the table to talk baseball. Painfully
unacquainted with the sport and used to being the focus of all the attention,
Marilyn sat back and quietly observed her dinner companion in the limelight. “I
had never met a man in Hollywood who got so much respect and attention at a
dinner table,” Marilyn wrote. “Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next
to a peacock with its tail spread…”
Leaving his dinner companions at another table, actor Mickey Rooney came
over to the booth, took a seat, and gregariously relived DiMaggio’s greatest
moments on the field. Rooney had enjoyed great box office success in the late
1930s, when he made a series of films as the character Andy Hardy. While
Marilyn was living with the Goddards and Aunt Ana, Rooney and Judy Garland
co-starred in youth-oriented musicals that followed the formula of a spirited
small town teen couple who staged shows in backyard barns. Marilyn had also
worked with Rooney in The Fireball. Oblivious to DiMaggio and March’s social
cues to leave the foursome alone, Rooney lingered with enthusiastic
reminiscences of the former’s record-breaking streak in 1941 and comeback in
1949.
DiMaggio did not try to impress Marilyn with his plethora of
accomplishments and underplayed the accolades and backslapping from the men
who stopped at the booth to venerate him. This modesty, a rare trait in men in the
entertainment industry, attracted Marilyn. Suddenly, she found him “the most
exciting man at the table,” but feared he was disinterested in her.
The server cleared away the plates and glasses, and Marilyn rose from her
seat, excusing herself for an early studio call with Cary Grant in the morning.
DiMaggio jumped to feet and offered to escort her to the car. In the parking lot,
he told her he was staying at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood and had no
transportation.
“Would you mind dropping me off at my hotel?” he asked. Marilyn politely
agreed. After some small talk and pleasantries, she pulled up to the curb in front
of the hotel on Ivar Street.
DiMaggio stated he did not feel tired and asked Marilyn if she minded
driving him around the city. She told him it was a lovely night for a drive, and
the couple drove around Hollywood for three hours. Finally able to attain peace
and privacy since meeting, they shared personal information and experienced a
rare chemistry.
Marilyn apologized for not knowing baseball. DiMaggio discussed meeting
many girls, going out with each of them on a date, but rarely desiring a second
one. He explained that when he tired of the girls, his friend, George Solotaire,
assisted him in prying them loose.
“I hope I won’t be too hard for Mr. Solotaire to pry loose.”
“I won’t have any use for George this trip,” DiMaggio announced with a
smile.
George Solotaire, a theater ticket broker and owner of the Adlehi Theater
Ticket Service, was DiMaggio’s closest friend and acted as an unpaid personal
assistant. Solotaire ran DiMaggio’s errands, collected his dry cleaning, and sat
up all night talking with him until the early morning hours. Solotaire had an
uncanny ability to predict the length of a play’s run and, in his theater seat, wrote
brief reviews in rhymed couplets that were published by the Hollywood
Reporter.
Implying his interest in Marilyn, DiMaggio asked if she were interested in
Zernial.
Marilyn denied any interest in the man and explained the photo shoot had
been a publicity stunt. “You must have posed with celebrities,” she said, hoping
DiMaggio could relate.
“The best I ever got was Ethel Barrymore and General MacArthur,” he said.
“You’re prettier.” Marilyn had heard many men remark on her beauty, but this
was the first time her “heart jumped to hear it.” When she took DiMaggio back
to the Knickerbocker Hotel, he invited her to his suite, but she declined.
DiMaggio attempted to embrace her, but she deflected his advances by wishing
him a good night.
The telephone was ringing when Marilyn returned home. David March had
been calling to learn the details. Marilyn demurely told him the slugger had
struck out, but she liked him. Over the course of the last three hours, she had
learned about the man born as Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio in Martinez, California
on November 25, 1914.
Joseph Paul DiMaggio was eighth of nine children born to Sicilian
immigrants Guiseppe and Rosalie DiMaggio. His parents immigrated to America
in 1898 from Isola delle Femmine off the coast of Sicily, where the DiMaggios
had been fishermen for generations. The couple and their children moved to San
Francisco, where Guiseppe fished and docked his boat, Rosalie, named in honor
of his wife, on the shore at North Beach, an Italian neighborhood near
Fisherman’s Wharf. They settled in an apartment on the corner of Taylor and
Valparaiso Streets.
To his father’s chagrin, Joe didn’t like fishing or the stench of dead fish and
had no interest in the family business. Guiseppe considered his son lazy and
good for nothing. At fourteen, Joe played shortstop in the Boys Club League. A
chronic truant, he dropped out of Galileo High School in tenth grade and worked
in an orange juice plant to help support his family. In 1936, Joe made his debut
in the major league with the Yankees, hit twenty-nine home runs in his first year,
and batted ahead of Lou Gehrig. In large part due to Joe’s help, the Yankees won
four consecutive World Series games.
During the Great Depression, Joe DiMaggio became a popular sports hero
and cultural icon when America needed inspiration and hope. He symbolized the
American Dream and excited the nation with his style and grace on the baseball
field. DiMaggio’s salary surpassed President Roosevelt’s and his picture
appeared on the cover of Life.
DiMaggio played in ten World Series games and earned $100,000 annually.
He holds the record as the only baseball player in history to have been selected
for the All-Star game in every season he played. Over the course of a thirteen
year career, “Joltin’ Joe” hit three hundred sixty-one home runs and lost
opportunities for many more during the three seasons he missed due to World
War II. He accomplished this despite the deep dimensions of his home stadium’s
left and center fields. While Yankee Stadium’s right field favored Babe Ruth’s
left-handed hitters, its left field — known as “Death Valley” — made home runs
nearly impossible for right-handed batters.
Suffering from foot and shoulder injuries, DiMaggio retired with financial
security in September 1951 and returned to his family home on Beach Street. He
derived income as a product spokesperson and hosted a television show in New
York. Divorced from blonde actress Dorothy Arnold, DiMaggio remained
suspicious of others, especially women, and kept a cool emotional distance in his
relationships. His only child, Joe Junior, lived with Arnold in New York.
On this balmy evening in March, Joe was thirty-seven and Marilyn was
twenty-five. His career had ended and hers was just beginning. DiMaggio was
neat, orderly, and good with finances. Raised in a traditional Italian-Catholic
family, he believed in rigid gender roles. He wanted a wife who would be a
homemaker and mother to his future children. Aspiring to the success DiMaggio
had already tasted, Marilyn was hungry to make her mark on the world. They
would become an iconic couple of the Twentieth Century whose marriage lasted
only nine months, but their love endured until her death. DiMaggio never
remarried and carried a torch for Marilyn until his death.

DiMaggio invited Marilyn to watch him play a baseball game on March 17

for the Kiwanis Club as a benefit for a children’s charity. The Hollywood Stars, a
minor league team, played against the Major League All Stars at Gilmore Field.
It was her first baseball game, and he hit a home run. The press approached
DiMaggio about the nature of his relationship with Marilyn, and he downplayed
their attachment: “It’s just a matter of two people meeting and something
clicks.” Marilyn told a reporter, “A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up
with it on a cold night.”
DiMaggio visited Marilyn on the set of Monkey Business and posed standing
between her and Cary Grant for photographers. When the photograph splashed
across the nation, Grant was conveniently cropped. Sidney Skolsky’s column
announced that the couple was dating. Marilyn reserved her evenings for
DiMaggio during the remainder of his visit in Los Angeles and introduced him
to Natasha, who immediately disliked him. “He is a man with a closed, vapid
look,” the bitter acting coach wrote.
The feeling was mutual. DiMaggio disapproved of most of Marilyn’s
Hollywood friends. Makeup man Whitey Snyder and Inez Melson were two
exceptions. The couple went boating off the coast of Malibu with Snyder and his
wife and also spent time with Vic “Chic” Masi and his wife in Ensenada. Masi,
DiMaggio’s friend originally from San Francisco, taught Marilyn to golf and
roller skate, a skill she would perform in Monkey Business. She enjoyed the
company of his young daughter, Delores Hope, and brushed the girl’s hair while
they sat on the sofa watching the television show, Hopalong Cassidy. “Someday
I will have a little girl just like you,” Marilyn whispered.
Watching television was a pastime to which Marilyn would need to grow
accustomed if she desired to remain Joe’s girl. He was notoriously content to
stay home and lounge on the sofa while watching a marathon of television
shows. Joe typically ate dinner in front of the television, beginning with the
evening news and staying up to watch old movies on The Late Show.
Marilyn preferred older, paternal, and protective males. DiMaggio dated
many Hollywood actresses but swiftly fell in love with Marilyn’s inner beauty as
well as her external package. He found her softer than Dorothy Arnold, who had
been ambitious and left him to pursue fame. As Joe’s time in Los Angeles drew
to a close in April, he dreaded leaving his new girlfriend and wanted to take her
back to New York, where he would resume work as a sports commentator in the
Yankee Stadium broadcast booth. Before and after each Yankee game, he
delivered a quarter hour of commentary. In June, Marilyn traveled to Niagara
Falls on the border of New York and Ontario for her next film assignment and
saw him again.
On April 4, Marilyn performed for ten thousand Marines at Camp Pendleton
in a snug sweater and pencil skirt. “I don’t know why you boys are always
getting so excited about sweater girls,” she said referencing the fashion look
made popular by Lana Turner and Jane Russell wearing conical shaped bras
under clinging pullovers. “Take away their sweaters and what have they got?”
The soldiers exploded in wolf whistles and created a near riot. She also sang
“Somebody to Love You” and “Do It Again;” the latter was written during a
piano improvisation session by composer George Gershwin and lyricist B.G.
DeSylva. When Gershwin performed the seductive song at a party, it caught the
ear of Broadway star Irene Bordoni, who incorporated it into her musical
comedy, The French Doll, which opened in 1922. Fox recorded Marilyn’s
version, performed with a sultry Gallic accent, but it remained unreleased during
her lifetime.

The high demand for the John Baumgarth Company’s 1951 “Golden
Dreams” calendar with the beautiful nude blonde led to its reprinting for 1952. It
was displayed in men’s public restrooms, men’s clubs, gas stations, gym locker
rooms, and army barracks. Since Marilyn’s face was splashed across the big
screen in a string of films released in that year, Miss Golden Dreams would soon
be recognized as Fox’s foremost starlet.
Shortly before Marilyn’s blind date with DiMaggio, Fox received a
bombshell telephone call from a man who claimed to have evidence of Marilyn
having posed nude. In the history of Hollywood, no other actress had posed nude
for a mass-produced image. The blackmailer demanded ten thousand dollars for
his silence. Researching the allegation, Jerry Wald obtained a copy.
Marilyn was called into the studio’s administrative offices and asked if,
indeed, she was Miss Golden Dreams. Without hesitation or shame, Marilyn
affirmed the allegation and clarified, “Although I really thought that Tom
[Kelley] didn’t capture my best angle.” At RKO, producer Norman Krasna
welcomed a scandal coinciding with the upcoming release of Clash by Night,
and suggested the studio be the first to expose the truth as part of a marketing
strategy.
Perry Lieber, Head of Publicity at RKO, contacted Aline Mosby of United
Press International, who called Harry Brand with a request to interview Marilyn.
Mosby had compared the face of the girl on the calendar to portraits of Marilyn,
and noticed the resemblance. At first, Brand told Marilyn to deny the charge and
reminded her about the morals clause in her contract. She panicked and burst
into tears.
In crisis, Marilyn turned to Sidney Skolsky for support. He asked her how
she really felt about posing nude. Marilyn admitted feeling no shame and
believed she had not done anything morally wrong. She needed the money. Why
would anyone condemn her for the choice she made in the particular
circumstances or for admitting the truth? Skolsky credited Marilyn for resolving
her own dilemma without the help of a public relations expert and told her to
repeat to the press what she had just told him.
Before the interview commenced, Marilyn invited Mosby into the Fox ladies’
restroom and confided in her:

Aline, I have a problem, and I don’t know what to do. A few years ago,
when I had no money for food for rent, a photographer I knew asked
me to pose nude for an art calendar. His wife was there, they were both
so nice, and I earned fifty dollars I needed very bad. That wasn’t a
terrible thing to do, was it? I never thought anybody would recognize
me, and now they say it will ruin my career. I need your advice. They
 want me to deny it’s me, but I can’t lie. What shall I do?

Marilyn stretched the truth slightly by substituting the need for cash to make
her rent payment at the Hollywood Studio Club for the payment on her 1950
Pontiac convertible. She would later write a more accurate account in her
autobiography, co-authored with Ben Hecht.
The exclusive interview was published in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner
on March 13th, five days after Marilyn met DiMaggio. Like wildfire, the story
spread to every magazine and newspaper in the United States and all across
Europe. When journalists asked Marilyn if it were true that she posed with
nothing on, she replied with wide-eyed innocence, “Oh, no, I had the radio on.”
Although jealous of other men’s attraction to Marilyn, DiMaggio did not
seem bothered by the nude calendar and accepted her gift of color prints of the
various poses Kelley had taken during the session. Ironically, a full-frontal nude
photograph of a smiling DiMaggio in the shower after a baseball game in the
Yankee club-house shower in 1939 surfaced at an art gallery in San Francisco in
2009. Despite allegations of it being a fake, the image sold at auction two years
later. Quite possibly, DiMaggio’s own experience with nudity allowed him to
sympathize with Marilyn’s latest revelation. Marilyn’s authenticity and plea for
public sympathy transformed a potential career suicide into a public relations
coup. Her openness and honesty earned her first of many covers of Life in the
magazine’s April 7th issue, with a portrait by Philippe Halsman and the headline,
“The Talk of Hollywood.”
Arriving with an assistant at her suite at the Beverly Carlton Hotel for the
photo session, Halsman found Marilyn more extraverted than during their last
session in 1949. Scanning the environment, he noticed evidence of obvious
efforts toward self-improvement: a framed portrait of Eleonora Duse; serious
books by George Bernard Shaw, Steinbeck, Ibsen, Wilde, Zola, and various
Russian novelists; and framed prints of art by Goya, Botticelli, and Da Vinci.
The public who watched Marilyn on screen in dumb blonde roles as secretaries
and showgirls would have not expected her bookshelf to contain worn copies of
The Negro in American Literature and The Story of Fabian Socialism. In
evidence of a desire to balance both mind and body, dumbbells sat on the floor
next to a weight-training bench she used to maintain her physical attributes.
Halsman took hundreds of portraits of Marilyn in a variety of guises: wearing
a negligee while reading and listening to classical music records; dressed
casually while working out with her weights; and strolling down a residential
street, looking over her shoulder and into his camera lens. He took her to a drive-
in restaurant and captured her taking a bite into a juicy hamburger, and had her
act out an audition in front of a studio executive.
In the iconic cover shot, Halsman posed Marilyn in the corner of her
bedroom between her mauve closet doors and a wall. She wore a white off-the-
shoulder dress with horizontal ruching and a rhinestone brooch strategically
pinned in the cleavage. “I was facing her with my camera, the Life reporter and
my assistant at my sides,” Halsman wrote in Sight and Insight. “Marilyn was
cornered and she flirted with all three of us. And such was her talent that each
one of us felt that if only the other two would leave, something incredible would
happen. Her sex-appeal was not a put-on — it was her weapon and her defense.”
Smiling in a corner with her shoulders shrugged seductively, Marilyn appears
fragile, vulnerable, and sensual.
The accompanying article, titled “Hollywood Topic A-Plus,” captured
Marilyn’s wit, draconian childhood, and serious aspirations. Life published
Andre de Dienes’ photograph of a casual Marilyn at home wearing Capris and
lounging dreamily in a chair with her bare feet on an ottoman as she listened to
classical records. The caption asserts her musical tastes are “distinctly highbrow,
running to composers like the Hungarian modernist Bela Bartok.” Juxtaposed
with this image of Marilyn lost in thoughts is a small reproduction of the nude
calendar picture. “Marilyn never finished high school but she is devoted to the
intellectual life,” Life announced. “She sprinkles her conversation with lines
from Thomas Wolfe and Browning, with the same candid simplicity she uses in
describing her dumbbell exercises.” Life concluded Marilyn was “naïve and
guileless,” but shrewd in her ability to succeed in the “cutthroat” entertainment
industry.
In Life, for the first time, Marilyn referenced reporters’ frequent question of
what she wore to bed. “I only wear a few drops of Chanel No. 5,” she told them,
but they refrained from publishing a response that implied sleeping nude. It
marked the first of her unsolicited endorsement of fashion designer Coco
Chanel’s perfume, named after spiritual numerology. Like Marilyn, Chanel had
lived as a child in an orphanage, but the couturier was placed at Aubazine in
central France, operated by the Cistercian order of nuns who practiced
numerology. They believed the number five to be holy and pure, and the path
leading Chanel to the cathedral for daily prayer was designed in patterns
repeating the number. For an article in Modern Screen in 1953, Marilyn was
photographed apparently nude under the sheets with a bottle of the perfume
visible on her bedside table. Milton Greene would also take an iconic
photograph of Marilyn holding a bottle of Chanel No. 5 and sensuously applying
it to her cleavage with her fingers. Reporters would frequently return to the
question of Marilyn’s sleepwear, and she confirmed the truthful basis to her
reply to Georges Belmont in 1960.
By the middle of April, Fox renewed its option on Marilyn by lengthening
her contract and raising her salary to $750 per week. She had not officially
signed with Charles Feldman and his Famous Artists Agency, and her status at
the William Morris Agency was still nebulous. Fox consented to her request to
contract Natasha Lytess as its acting instructor for a period of two years.
In an interview with journalist Jim Henaghan for Redbook, titled “So Far Go
Alone,” Marilyn discussed her childhood as an orphan. The timing could not
have been worse. Erskine Johnson of Hollywood Reporter discovered Marilyn’s
mother was very much alive and released from Agnew State Institution. In fact,
Gladys had been discharged from the hospital seven years earlier and was
working as an aide at Homestead Lodge, a private nursing facility in Eagle
Rock, near Pasadena.
On April 23, Gladys’s second husband, John Stewart Eley, died of a heart
attack at age sixty-two. She had married him during an extended pass from the
hospital in 1949. However, she left the marriage and lived with Grace Goddard
until she moved into Ida Bolender’s house. Gladys was beginning to disclose to
co-workers at Homestead that the famous and beautiful blonde in films and on
magazine covers was her younger daughter. In an effort to protect Gladys from
the press, Marilyn and Grace had long ago decided it was best to make the press
believe she had died.
Erskine Johnson contacted Fox with the revelation. Once again, Marilyn was
summoned to the administrative office. She had been suffering weeks of
intermittent pain, diagnosed as combination of the symptoms of appendicitis and
endometriosis, and arrived with severe throbbing in her lower abdomen. When
confronted with the journalist’s allegation, Marilyn simply admitted that her
mother was alive and had been institutionalized.
When Marilyn’s pain worsened, the studio physician ordered no further delay
of surgery. She entered Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on April 28 for an
appendectomy. Marilyn’s gynecologist, Dr. Leon Krohn, assisted the surgeon,
Dr. Marcus Rabin, during the procedure to concurrently address her
excruciatingly painful and chronic endometriosis. A stout nurse marched into
Marilyn’s private room and growled, “Hell — what’s so menacing about you?”
Other nurses discussed Marilyn and her screen persona, remarking she looked no
older than sixteen.
Before the surgery, Marilyn taped a handwritten note to her abdomen,
pleading that the surgeon avoid making her infertile. It has been published in
books and on the Internet:

Dr. Rabin — most important to read before operation!

Dear Dr. Rabin,

Cut as little as possible. I know it seems vain but that doesn’t really
enter into it. The fact that I’m a woman is important and means much
to me. Save please (I can’t ask you enough) what you can — I’m in
your hands. You have children and you must know what it means —
please Dr. Rabin — I know some-how you will! Thank you — thank
you — thank you. For God’s sake Dear Doctor No ovaries removed —
please again do what-ever you can to prevent large scars. Thanking
you with all my heart.

Marilyn awoke from anesthesia to learn the procedure was a success and her
ability to conceive a child had not been compromised. A vase with two dozen
red roses sent by DiMaggio stood beside her bed. Two days later, Allan
“Whitey” Snyder arrived at the hospital to prepare Marilyn for the studio’s
photographers, who were dispatched to take pictures of her in bed, surrounded
by floral tributes and mailbags filled with get well cards, letters, and telegrams.
Jokingly, Marilyn had asked Whitey to prepare her for viewing if she died before
him. Snyder told her to be sure the body was delivered to him still warm. She
gave him a fourteen-karat gold engraved money clip from Tiffany & Company
with the inscription, “Whitey Dear, While I’m still warm, Love, Marilyn.”
While Marilyn recovered, Fox granted Erskine Johnson’s request for an
exclusive interview. She accepted the journalist’s call from her hospital bed. On
May 3, the Los Angeles Daily News published the story. “Marilyn Monroe —
Hollywood’s confessin’ glamour doll who made recent headlines with the
admission that she was a nude calendar cutie — confessed again today,” the
article lead before reporting her account. “Unbeknown to me as a child, my
mother spent many years as an invalid in a state hospital,” Marilyn revealed for
the first time. “Through the Los Angeles County, my guardian placed me in
several foster families, and I spent more than a year at the Los Angeles
Orphanage. I haven’t known my mother intimately, and since I’m an adult, and
able to help her, I have contacted her. Now I help her and I want to keep helping
her as long as she needs me.”
Embarrassed, Marilyn called Jim Henaghan at Redbook to apologize for
being deceitful during the earlier interview and followed up by writing to the
editor, published in “Letters to the Editors” column in the July issue:

I frankly did not feel wrong in withholding from you the fact that my
mother is still alive…I have tried to respect my mother’s wish to
remain anonymous…We have never known each other intimately and
have never enjoyed the normal relationship of mother and daughter. If
I have erred in concealing these facts, please accept my deepest
apologies and please believe that my motive was one of consideration
of a person for whom I feel a great obligation.

As Gladys continued telling residents of Homestead that the Marilyn Monroe

on the covers of the magazines was actually her daughter, they did not believe
her. Co-workers and supervisors thought the aide was delusional. Seeing the
published images of Norma Jeane prompted Gladys to write a note to her
daughter. Its tone was rather paranoid:

Please dear child, I’d like to receive a letter from you. Things are very
annoying around here and I’d like to move away as soon as possible.
I’d like to have my child’s love instead of hatred.

On June 1, Marilyn celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday at the Bel Air Hotel
in Los Angeles and learned that she had been cast as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, scheduled to begin production in October. Clash By Night
opened in New York and Los Angeles in mid-June, and Don’t Bother to Knock
premiered in July. Later in the month, Marilyn testified in the court of Judge
Kenneth Holaday in the trial against Jerry Kaupman and Morie Kaplen, accused
of selling pornography through mail order. They had bogusly claimed one of the
models, Arline Hunter, was Marilyn. The two men were found guilty, but it
would not be the last time Marilyn was confused with Arline Hunter.
Chapter Seventeen
 Niagara

Fox intended Niagara to be a vehicle to propel Marilyn Monroe into

overnight international stardom by introducing her as a titillating leading lady of
high budget, A-class films. When summoned to a conference about the film,
Marilyn learned of her role as an adulterous wife plotting her husband’s murder
with her lover amid the backdrop of Niagara Falls. As she read the script’s
description of the villainous character as a beautiful girl “with clear eyes and
untroubled expression of a girl with no moral restraints whatever,” she faced a
dilemma in her relationship with DiMaggio. During many sleepless nights,
Marilyn debated this opportunity to portray a murderous seductress at the risk of
her partner’s objection to a role so unsavory and sexualized.
Niagara was written and produced by Charles Brackett, who re-tooled an old
treatment by Walter Reisch and Richard Breen. Beginning in 1950, Brackett
obsessed about the idea of a suspense film set in Niagara Falls, subconsciously
inspired by a Currier and Ives print of the cascading falls in the men’s restroom
of his office. Brackett had not made the connection until a woman who worked
at the office enlightened him at a dinner party she was hosting. After the film
was completed, the woman presented Brackett with the print, and he proudly
displayed it in his office.
Brackett had collaborated with Billy Wilder, Marilyn’s future director, on
another film noir classic, Sunset Boulevard (1950). The son of a New York
legislator, Brackett was born in Saratoga Springs and graduated from Williams
College and Harvard Law School. He had been a drama critic for The New
Yorker magazine in the 1920s. Sam Staggs described Brackett as a “polished
Republican” whose respectable lifestyle earned his Hollywood reputation of
being a conservative aristocrat. Perhaps these values reflect in Niagara’s plot
involving sexual infidelity leading to murder and an overtly sexual, dangerous,
and morally bankrupt woman.
The film’s perspective is from the point of view of a young honeymoon
couple, Ray and Polly Cutler. The polarity of the loving newlyweds and George
and Rose Loomis — a dysfunctional pair consumed by jealousy, adultery, and
revenge — is explored throughout the film. Niagara Falls symbolizes
uncontrolled passion, and the possibility that it can result in disaster and death.
The message for 1950s America was that sex must be contained and restrained.
Fox approved the script for shooting at the time Marilyn began Monkey
Business.
According to William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen, Brackett maintained both
a heterosexual marriage and a same-gender relationship with the young man to
whom he arranged to marry his daughter. Interestingly, one of Brackett’s early
novels, American Colony (1929), depicts a gay male character living among
upper-crust straight friends. If, indeed, Brackett immersed himself in
conservatism in an attempt to deny or reject his true sexual orientation, perhaps
Rose Loomis’ adulterous nature stemmed from his own alleged double life.
Niagara is a rare Technicolor film noir that employs the genre’s traditional
use of stark camera angles, dramatic shadows, contrast images, and low-key
lighting. The main exception is its use of Technicolor rather than monochromatic
film. In true film noir style, Niagara’s protagonist, George Loomis, has character
flaws leading him to ruin. He is suffering from post-traumatic stress from
combat in the Korean War, failure in business, and a suggested inability to
satisfy his wife sexually. This initially sympathetic character becomes tainted by
aggression and madness and is ultimately sent to his doom. This protagonist is
betrayed by another staple of film noir, the femme fatale, in the form of his
diabolical wife.
Rose Loomis is the ultimate femme fatale. She is a cruel and dishonest
woman who drives her husband toward madness with her brazen sexuality, in
hope to begin a new life with her paramour. Niagara was Marilyn’s only
opportunity to portray a villainous, narcissistic woman with virtually no
redeeming qualities, who conspires with her lover to murder her husband. The
strict Production Code diluted the sex and violence by requiring the film’s
couples to sleep in twin beds and the infidelity scene to play out in an
uncomfortable public place, the shelter beneath the thundering falls. “All the
adultery was hosed down by torrents of water with the lovers encased in chaste
slickers,” writes Fred Lawrence Guiles.
Studio memos reveal that Anne Francis, Anne Bancroft, and Jeanne Crain
were the main contenders for the role of Polly, while the husband, Ray, seemed
suited for Scott Brady, Dale Robertson, or Tony Curtis. Darryl Zanuck wanted
Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Smith, and Louis Jordan in the leads. Anne Baxter,
Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardener, and Maureen Stapleton were first considered for
the role of Rose, and James Mason was considered for George. “If the people
are believable enough,” wrote Zanuck, “I think the audience will accept all the
hokum we can pour into it. A story of this type using this particular background
must have hokum.”
 Rose’s femme fatale is balanced with a pure and virtuous woman who is
sympathetic and helpful to the protagonist. Jean Peters (1926-2000) was cast in
the role of Polly Cutler, the newlywed who soothes George’s agitation.
Interestingly, director Samuel Fuller chose Peters over Marilyn for the part of
Candy in Pickup on South Street (1953). Ironically, he believed that Peters had
the right blend of sex appeal and the tough-talking, streetwise qualities he
sought, while Monroe seemed too innocent for the role.
Jean Peters had a less interesting role but felt she was on equal par with the
film’s leading lady as her salary was one thousand dollars per week, double
Marilyn’s. She didn’t perceive the film as a Monroe vehicle, but her opinion
changed after its release. In fact, Niagara was Fox’s attempt to feature a
burgeoning Marilyn Monroe. The studio may have purposely misled Peters when
offering her the role. Public interest in Marilyn ensured a healthy financial
return, and she received top billing over the other leading co-stars, her name
auspiciously placed over the film’s title.
Anne Baxter, three years older than Marilyn, had originally been cast as Polly
Cutler but withdrew upon learning Marilyn’s role would be more powerful. Just
two years before, Baxter commanded a leading role over Marilyn’s walk-on part
in All About Eve. Baxter may have still been reeling from Marilyn having stolen
scenes from seasoned co-stars with her brief but charming performance.
According to George Bailey, Marilyn was originally cast at Polly. Given the
differences in the actresses’ ages, it seems possible that Baxter may have first
been considered her for Rose, before Marilyn’s increasing popularity swayed the
studio. Based upon her fresh characterizations in Clash By Night and We’re Not
Married, one can imagine Marilyn as the guileless newlywed. However,
Zanuck’s image of Marilyn as a sex symbol likely cemented her fate as — in the
words of the film’s marketing — the “tantalizing temptress whose kisses fired
men’s souls.” If Fox had cast Marilyn as Polly, the studio would have been
challenged to find an actress whose allure could compete with Marilyn’s
magnetism, let alone whose sexual appeal could overshadow her, as was
required by the plot. Marilyn was Fox’s best and sexiest choice to pry the public
from television sets and into theaters.
Marilyn remained under a stock contract and earned a lesser weekly salary
than makeup artist Allan Snyder. After paying ten per cent to the William Morris
Agency and two hundred dollars per week for drama diction and singing lessons,
Marilyn netted five hundred dollars of a gross salary of $750 per week. Of
course, her expenses also included rent, a car payment, automobile insurance,
and financial support for her mother.
Niagara would later be described as a stylized film in the directorial vein of
Alfred Hitchcock. The film also suggested how he may have used Marilyn as
one of his signature icy blond leading ladies: Grace Kelly in Rear Window
(1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955), Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958), Eva Marie
Saint in North By Northwest (1959), and Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963) and
Marnie (1964). One can imagine Marilyn in all of these roles.
Fox engaged Henry Hathaway (1898- 1985) as director. His film noir classics
included The House on 92nd Street (1945), Kiss of Death (1947), and Call
Northside 777 (1948). Hathaway’s reputation was that of a tyrant who belittled
and cursed his actors. “To be a good director,” said Hathaway, “you’ve got to be
a bastard. I’m a bastard and I know it.”
Hathaway could be really mean, recalled co-star Jean Peters decades later.
However, he took an immediate liking to Marilyn, or perhaps she melted his icy
exterior. Hathaway considered Marilyn’s opinion when editing the daily rushes
and allowed her input to the selection of takes chosen for the finished film.
Hathaway found Marilyn “marvelous to work with, very easy to direct and
terrifically ambitious to do better. And bright, really bright. She may not have
had an education, but she was just naturally bright. But always being trampled
on by bums. I don’t think anyone every treated her on her own level.”
Hathaway expressed horror at Marilyn appearing so vulnerable and alone in
her personal life. Worried that she drove herself too hard by granting requests for
interviews and publicity photographs, he protectively empowered his star to take
better care of herself by setting limits with Fox’s publicity department.
Predicting that Niagara would catapult Marilyn to fame on a wild roller coaster
ride, Hathaway encouraged her to secure proper management, as he surmised
she did not possess the ability to face the enormous approaching success.
Contrary to the studio executives in Los Angeles who perceived Marilyn as a
commercial product on an assembly line, the financial moguls at Fox’s New
York corporate offices respected her earning power. Studio President Spyros
Skouras sent memos to the West Coast demanding preferential treatment for
their top-grossing star.
Joseph Cotten (1905-1994), whose film debut was in Orson Welles’ classic
Citizen Kane (1941), was finally cast as George Loomis. Welles had also
directed him in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Third Man (1949).
In Alfred Hitchcock’s film noir, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Cotten attracted
attention as the menacing uncle who confirms his young niece’s suspicion that
he is a serial killer. The dual nature of this role would be repeated with George,
who is both victimized by his scheming wife and capable of violence against her.
Cotten’s memory of Marilyn was tender: “If you wanted to talk about yourself,
she listened. If you wanted to talk about her, she blushed. If you wanted to sing,
she joined the chorus…A rather lost little girl, I found her to be.”
Max Showalter (1917-2000), known by his stage name Casey Adams, was
cast as the gregarious, somewhat “square” newlywed, Ray Cutler. “It was magic
when it came out,” Showalter remembered about Marilyn’s charisma and
performance, “and sometimes I wondered if she really knew which was the
magical moment. On the set I personally felt that she couldn’t even compete
with the talent of Jean Peters had, but there was a glow about Marilyn and what
came across was incredible.”
Hathaway consulted Marilyn about the casting of her character’s lover, Ted
Patrick. When he suggested a particular Fox contract player, Marilyn hesitantly
responded, “Well, I don’t think he’ll do the love scenes right.” After he pressed
her to be more direct, she revealed the actor was gay. Hathaway researched and
confirmed Marilyn’s suspicion. Richard Allan (1923-1999) was eventually cast
in the role and shared a powerful on-screen chemistry with Marilyn.
Assuming Marilyn’s personal life equaled the stereotype of her public image,
Hathaway asked her to wear her own clothes for the character’s sexy costumes.
In fact, Marilyn’s personal wardrobe contained only slacks, skirts, sweaters and a
black suit worn for Johnny Hyde’s funeral in 1950. “I have to borrow clothes
from the studio when I go out,” she confessed to him as they searched the closet
in her modest apartment. “I don’t have any of my own.”
Marilyn met DiMaggio in Manhattan before flying to Buffalo. He took her to
Bernard “Toots” Shor’s saloon, introducing her to his masculine world of sports-
obsessed cronies, cigarette and cigar smoke, heavy drinking, and boisterousness.
Shor had managed a few speakeasies for mobster Lucky Luciano before opening
his own legendary establishment where famous athletes, politicians and
Broadway stars — Yogi Berra, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemmingway, and Jackie
Gleason — hosed down the place with testosterone. Big, charming and
cantankerous, Shor bragged about making Charlie Chaplin wait for a table.
DiMaggio was a champion with class who could walk into the joint and cause
everything to stop. Now with Marilyn on his arm, the modest DiMaggio beamed
with pride. His adoring cronies crowded around the couple, slapping DiMaggio
on the back. “I’m just with her,” he said. Toots, who discouraged his patrons
from bringing their “broads” to his all-male establishment, did anything to
accommodate Marilyn.
Marilyn also met DiMaggio’s longtime friend, George Solotaire, proprietor
of the Adelphi Theatre Ticket Agency. Married with a family and a home, the
older Solotaire fetched DiMaggio’s sandwiches, collected his clothes from the
tailors, provided companionship for him during lonely nights, and shared meals
with him in silence at restaurants. In the words of biographer Richard Ben
Cramer, DiMaggio was “more than a pal — he was a devotion.” Marilyn took an
immediate liking to Solotaire, recognizing his loyalty to DiMaggio; Solotaire
quickly considered Marilyn a daughter.
While Marilyn stepped into DiMaggio’s New York territory, her world of
making films was in full swing on location in Canada. According to Niagara
Falls historian George Bailey, location production lasted from June 2 to 18.
Donald Henshaw, a liaison between the Ontario Government and Twentieth
Century-Fox, correctly predicted the film would boost tourism and offered the
use of Provincial Police vehicles for a chase scene along the upper Niagara
River. The Niagara Park Commission approved use of Queen Victoria Park and
construction of a short road to the Inspiration Pointe stone shelter (an
observation point opposite American Falls), a fake motel, and a temporary dock
in nearby Chippawa. Mayor Ernest M. Hawkins expressed concern about
whether the murdered body would be found on the Canadian or American side
of the river.
Since none of the area’s existing motels and cabins could be photographed
with the Falls as a background, Fox’s unit manager, Abe Steinberg, hired a local
contractor to build the façade of a five-unit motel on the edge of the Niagara
River opposite American Falls in Queen Victoria Park. Jolley Construction
Company employed twenty-five carpenters in building the “Rainbow Cabins,” as
described in the script. The completed cabins and sign appeared so authentic that
many local residents protested the erection of the motel on public property. An
identical set was created at the Fox soundstages in Los Angeles for additional
scenes requiring more technical control.
On Monday June 2, production began in the sweltering heat. The entire
eighth floor of the Hotel General Brock became home to the actors, director, and
designers. Twenty-eight rooms at Gray Griffon Inn on Victoria Avenue were
reserved for the twenty-six technical crewmembers. Three days later, Marilyn
arrived amid a flurry of interest and excitement. Her suite at the Brock, number
801, was at the end of a wing near the stairwell and at a distance from the
elevators and landing. It faced the city without a view of the falls. In the years to
follow, the General Brock was later renamed the Skyline Brock, Sheraton Brock,
and Brock Plaza Hotel. Guests requested Marilyn’s room; her portrait with the
falls as a backdrop graced the lobby; and a nearby casino offered a “Marilyn
Penthouse Lounge and Bistro,” decorated with photographs from the film.
Joseph Cotten hosted a cocktail party for the cast and crew in his hotel room,
and Marilyn, wearing a terrycloth robe, accepted a glass of orange juice and sat
on the floor. When another guest jokingly pointed out “Sherry Netherlands
Hotel, New York” embroidered on the back, Marilyn laughed, “Oh, that. I
thought I had stolen this robe, until I paid my bill.” Forty years later, Cotten
wrote, “She was a pretty clown, beguiling and theatrically disarming.” Socially,
he found her “outgoing and charming.”
Emanuel Bailey, who briefly appeared in film on the gangplank of the Maid
of the Mist sightseeing boat, remembered Marilyn arriving at the deck. She was
being driven down to the dock in a sleek limousine, but when the driver could
not make the sharp curve, Marilyn got out of the car and began walking down
the steep road. Suddenly, a strong gust of wind from the gorge blew her skirt up
in the air. (This image presaged Marilyn’s iconic pose in The Seven Year Itch).
Eddie Joseph, radio host for WHLD in Niagara Falls who secured a ten o’clock
in the morning interview with Marilyn, shared a similar impression. He admired
her flawless complexion and noted she asked more questions than he did.
DiMaggio visited Marilyn at the Hotel General Brock, and the couple spent
some time together on weekends when Marilyn was not working. They drove the
Niagara Parkway to nearby Niagara-on-the-Lake, where they enjoyed a cruise on
Lake Ontario, dined, and stayed at the historic Prince Charles Hotel. When
Marilyn returned to the set, she delved into her part, surprising many with the
depth of her performance in the suspense-thriller.

Niagara opens with newlyweds Ray and Polly Cutler arriving in Niagara
Falls for a belated honeymoon, after Ray was awarded the trip for his winning
slogan in an advertising competition for his employer, a shredded wheat
company in Ohio. Their idyll is disrupted when the couple occupying their
reserved cabin overlooking the falls fails to vacate. The wife, a siren, apologizes
for her husband’s precarious mental state and explains that he was recently
released from a military psychiatric hospital, following battle fatigue from the
Korean War. The sympathetic newlyweds graciously accept another cabin with a
less impressive view.
Marilyn’s Rose Loomis is introduced pensively lounging in bed, smoking a
cigarette, having just awakened. She is obviously nude under the white sheets,
one leg bent at the knee. Her legs are clearly and provocatively spread. A memo
to Fox by Production Code Administration Director Joseph Breen stipulated no
suggestion of Rose sleeping nude in the scene, but the suggestion of nudity
prevailed, nonetheless. When George returns to the cabin, Rose crushes the
cigarette in an ashtray beside the bed and pretends to be asleep. She does not
respond when he attempts to rouse her. Defeated, George rests in the twin bed
beside his wife. Rose opens her eyes, smirks with contempt and rolls over.
As the Cutlers tour the scenic tunnels behind the falls, Polly observes Rose
locked in an amorous embrace and kissing another man. The lover wears a black
rubber slicker, and Rose wears a bright yellow slicker. Even in the awkward,
moisture-resistant gear, Marilyn appears luminous and desirable. Richard Allan,
portraying the lover, remembered multiple takes of the scene due to his and
Marilyn’s giggling fits. Aware of Hathaway’s desire for him to kiss Marilyn
appropriately for the camera, Allan purposefully kissed her too passionately for
the Production Code. Afterward, Allan jokingly apologized to Hathaway for
taking so long to shoot an appropriate kiss.
While young couples dance to records in the courtyard between the cabins,
Rose emerges from her cabin in a scarlet red sheath with a white scarf draped
over her shoulders. Contrastingly, Polly is dressed in white lace (Marilyn was
likely fitted for the white lace dress when she was originally cast as Polly; she
wore this costume in Illinois in 1955 and was photographed by Eve Arnold.)
Cotten’s character refers to Rose’s dress as “cut down so low in front you could
see her kneecaps.” When Ray asks his wife why she doesn’t wear such an outfit,
she responds: “For a dress like that, you’ve got to start laying plans at about
thirteen.” This scene illustrates the Madonna/whore split in the film’s female
characters, common in the film noir genre.
Rose asks one of the young men to play her record on the phonograph. As the
song “Kiss” is played, Rose appears dreamy and retreats into her own thoughts,
seemingly oblivious to those around her. She caresses herself in time to the
music as she sings along with the male vocalists. Titillated, Ray Cutler
comments Rose’s fascination with the song. “There isn’t any other song,” she
replies.
The script intended for Rose to sing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” but an
original song, “Kiss,” was composed and written by Lionel Newman and Haven
Gillespie. The new melody served as the lovers’ theme throughout the film, and
this change necessitated modification of several lines of dialogue. An alternate
structured version of the song — complete with strings orchestration, a male
chorus, and Marilyn’s velvet voice — was released and sold well. “Thrill me,
thrill me,” Marilyn croons. “With your charms/Take me, take me/In your
arms/And make my life — mmm — perfection.” The lyrics rhythmically build to
an erotic crescendo. George storms from the cabin, crosses to the phonograph,
and breaks the record with his bare hands, cutting himself and bleeding. Having
staged the scene in the presence of witnesses to cement George’s deranged
reputation, Rose leers and smirks at him mockingly.
Less fearful of George’s mental state, Polly enters the Loomis cabin and
dresses George’s wounds. She’s pretty, Polly soothes the jealous husband, so
why should she hide it?
“She’d like to wear that dress where everyone can see her,” snaps George.
“Right in the middle of the Yankee Stadium.” One can hear Joe DiMaggio
uttering the same line.
George discloses his initial attraction to his wife when she worked as a
waitress (“I guess it was the way she put the beer on the table.”), the couple’s
tumultuous life together, and his suspicions of her having an affair. Ray enters
the cabin and is introduced uncomfortably to George. The shadows of Venetian
blinds are dramatically cast upon the actor’s faces, an iconic film noir visual
repeated throughout the film. A telephone call, in the next scene, establishes that
Rose and her lover are scheming George’s murder.
The next morning, Rose and George snuggle in Rose’s bed (the Code
required George’s feet to be grounded on the floor), after an evening of
passionate lovemaking. Rose squeals with delight and reinforces her husband’s
altered mood. When they fight and make up, George gushes that he never wants
to leave her side.
When George steps into the kitchen to pour a class of orange juice, Rose
returns to her contempt for him. As she dresses, George becomes suspicious. She
tells him that she plans to make reservations for their return bus ride. In a harsh
confrontation, George accuses her of planning to meet her lover; the lover to
whom she sings. There are no traces of a baby-doll, whispery voice as Marilyn
delivers a sarcastic speech: “Sure, I’m meeting somebody. Anybody handy…as
long as he’s a man. How about the ticket seller himself or one of the kids with
the phonograph? Anybody suits me. Take your pick!”
Rose is purposely eliciting suspicion so that George follows her to the bus
terminal. With her husband following behind, she walks to Table Rock House, a
souvenir shop, where her lover awaits their arrival and plans to kill George and
dispose of his body in the Falls. Rose covertly communicates with her lover by
his writing a message on a post card, stating the bell tower will play their song if
all goes well. He promises to meet her back in Chicago. George enters an
elevator to experience the Scenic Tunnel behind the falls, and Rose’s lover
follows him.
A police detective meets Rose and the Cutlers at the scenic tunnel preparation
room, where George’s shoes are the only pair that were left behind when the
tourist attraction closed. When Rose sees them, she becomes alarmed. “Do
something!” she shouts. “Find him!” She abruptly controls herself.
As Rose enters the Cutlers’ car, the Carillon Tower chimes the melody of
“Kiss.” Believing the song is a message from her lover communicating that he
successfully killed her husband, Rose begs off the ride home and walks in the
direction of the tower, flashing a smile as she dashes off to meet him. Her
costume is a red bolero jacket, tight black skirt, and high-heel sandals with ankle
straps. In this scene, Marilyn created her first iconic image; a walk lasting nearly
twenty seconds on screen and comprising one hundred sixteen feet of film. It
was the longest and most luxurious walk in cinema history, and the film’s
biggest gimmick. Hathaway’s stationary camera focuses on the exaggerated,
horizontal sway of Marilyn’s buttocks as she walks, her back to the camera,
toward the tower. He audaciously allows the audience a voyeuristic moment in a
style later synonymous with Alfred Hitchcock.
While some view the walk as sexually suggestive, biographer Sandra Shevey
observed Marilyn walking with “a dancer’s grace.” The exaggeration of the walk
may have been scripted by the author, the result of Hathaway’s direction, or
Marilyn’s interpretation of her role. “Mr. Hathaway told me I swerved too
much,” recalled Marilyn. “Those damned cobblestones are hell to walk on in
high heels.”
A detective accompanies Rose to the mortuary, where she is asked to identify
the body, found in the Niagara River and believed to be her husband’s. Hathaway
asked Marilyn to wear her own black suit for this scene, and she wore the one
she had purchased for Johnny Hyde’s funeral. When the detective uncovers the
face, Rose gasps in shock and faints. A subsequent scene reveals that the body
was that of Rose’s lover. She is taken to a hospital and sedated.
In an effective scene, Rose is shown in close-up, writhing, sedated, and
mumbling incoherently. Without lines, Marilyn plays the scene with
consummate skills. As “Kiss” resonates from the bell tower through her open
window, Rose thrashes about the bed in a drug-induced stupor. Her hands twitch,
and her body convulses. As the music crescendos, Rose fights against the effects
of the sedation. The camera moves in for an extreme close up. Rose’s eyes
suddenly open, and Marilyn, the actress, conveys her character’s realization that
her lover is now dead, and that her husband will come to revengefully kill her.
She flees the hospital.
Wearing the clothing of Rose’s lover, George finds Polly and confides that he
killed Rose’s lover in self-defense. He begs her to keep his survival a secret from
the police so that he can start a new life with a new identity. Later, Polly notifies
the police, and a massive search for George and Rose ensues. Rose attempts to
escape by bus but faces the obstacles of a police search of all public
transportation leaving the area. She panics and begins to cross Rainbow Bridge
into the United States by foot, carrying her suitcase, clear purse, and red scarf.
Rose stumbles upon George, who snuffs out his cigarette with her lover’s two-
toned shoe, foreshadowing her impending murder. The bell tower chimes, and he
growls, “Too bad they can’t play it for you now, Rose.”
Rose quickly retreats to the Carillon Tower, an obvious phallic allusion to her
illicit affair, as George slowly pursues her. She frantically pushes the elevator
button and pounds on its locked doors with her fists. Dumping the contents of
her purse, she searches for coins and uses a disconnected public telephone to call
the police. With few options remaining, she frantically ascends the stairs. George
takes her discarded red scarf and follows her up the stairwell to each floor.
Marilyn portrays terror and desperation as her character becomes trapped in the
tower.
Finally, George corners Rose in the belfry and twists the red scarf around her
neck. Rose is killed by the scarlet representation of her carnality. The
strangulation occurs off screen. Following an artistic montage of shots of the
bells from various angles, George releases his hold on Rose’s neck, and her
lifeless body falls to the floor. A shadow of window louvers casts against Rose’s
sprawled body. She rests both in light and darkness, symbolizing the character’s
dual nature of vulnerability and amorality. Carl Rollyson observed: “[Rose] is
bound to die, eventually, because her sexual energies go beyond the bounds of
what people can tolerate or the screen can show.”
In true film noir fashion, the femme fatale is eventually destroyed after a
betrayal or double-cross against the protagonist. This misogynistic device served
World War II era films, when women gained independence and economic power
through employment in the homeland workforce and men served overseas.
Locked overnight in the tower, George finds his wife’s red lipstick and returns to
her body. Softened by grief and regret, he says, “I loved you, Rose.” Fox’s
advertising posters depicted this scene, spoiling Rose’s demise before the
audience saw the film.
Despite an action-packed second climax and denouement, Niagara never
seems to recover from Marilyn’s exit. There are scenes of Polly and George
aboard a boat in the river rapids headed toward the falls; George’s inevitable
demise as he goes over the falls; Polly’s escape from the boat onto a rock, rescue
by helicopter, and safe return to her husband. None of this drama compensates
for Marilyn’s absence.

Production on Niagara continued as hundreds of honeymooning couples

visited the falls during the month of June, popular for weddings. One couple,
Hartley and Mary Lou Vidler from Erieau, Ontario, appeared in the film. Henry
Hathaway cast the nineteen-year-old fisherman and his sixteen-year-old bride as
sightseers in several scenes. The cast and crew presented them with a wedding
gift when their brief work ended. Barbara Thompson, whose husband had a bit
part as a sailor admiring Marilyn at the bus depot, spoke with her between takes
on a bench at bus terminal. “I have to go and be sexy,” Marilyn joked with a
joyous laugh before returning to the cameras.
“Marilyn was blessed with a healthy appetite for laughter,” wrote Joseph
Cotten, remembering her resiliency. “She was aware of her sense of humor about
herself and she called on it to rescue her from that grey outer space to which she
sometimes fluttered.”
Despite Marilyn’s frequent moments of laughter, Hathaway believed she was
lacked confidence in her ability and was afraid to appear on set. “I had an easy
time compared to other directors who worked with her late,” he said. “The more
important she became the more frightened she became.” Hathaway’s empathy
seemed reserved only for Marilyn, to whom he directed more civil expressions
of impatience. He unleashed angry tirades of profanity toward the other
performers. “[Hathaway] always had to have his whipping boy,” recalled Max
Showalter to Richard Buskin. “He was cruel to people, yet he was a hell of a
good director.” Hathaway usually spared Marilyn from this wrath.
“There was a quality about [Marilyn] that made you want to help her, and I
really loved her and felt sorry for her,” Showalter said. “In the middle of the
night…she came in and jumped on my bed and said, ‘Please don’t do anything to
me but just hold me.’ ” He claimed Marilyn told him never to lock the door
between their rooms, apart from when DiMaggio was visiting.
 Jean Peters and Richard Buskin discussed the filming of the scene in which
Marilyn asks the honeymooning couple if they have seen her missing husband.
“She didn’t look at me,” recalled Peters, “so it was almost like playing with a
blind lady.” Allegedly, Marilyn would watch Natasha Lytess, who was mouthing
the lines exactly as she was delivering them.
“Don’t ask me to look in your eyes,” Marilyn purportedly told Peters, “or I’ll
forget my lines.” This is not evident in the final version of the scene. Marilyn,
standing between Showalter and Peters, clearly looks down into a seated Peters’
eyes and looks above into Showalter’s eyes. At no time does she look off stage
toward her acting coach.
Some of Marilyn’s best scenes occur when she is free from spoken lines and
relies upon her talent to convey emotion and meaning through nonverbal acting.
She honed these gifts through the study of pantomime and movement with Lotte
Goslar at the Hollywood Turnabout Theatre.
Throughout the film, Rose’s wide-eyed concern for her husband while in the
presence of others is replaced with cynical rudeness and sarcasm when they are
alone. Marilyn’s delivery also fluctuates; she uses a vulnerable, baby voice while
feigning alarm about her husband’s condition, a harsh natural voice while
arguing with him, and a sultry tone during sexualized scenes with both her
husband and lover.
With the Technicolor cinematography of Joe MacDonald and editing by
Barbara McLean, Marilyn had never before appeared so perfectly and ethereally
beautiful onscreen. By this time, Allan Snyder and Marilyn had perfected her
cinematic look, and Snyder exclusively applied her make-up. Marilyn’s platinum
blonde hair was darkened to a golden honey shade, and a high-gloss red lipstick
accentuated her mouth.
Oscar-winner Dorothy Jeakins (1907-1995) designed Marilyn’s costumes.
The outfits included a tight powder-blue two-piece suit, a red bolero jacket and
tight black skirt, a camisole slip with ruffled-hem, and an iconic magenta
cocktail sheath. The magenta dress had a low, scooped neckline that tied into a
small bow at the cleavage; the bodice exposed a small area below the cleavage
and above the abdomen. The costume was daring by 1952 standards. A similarly
styled sheath was originally designed for Marilyn’s singing scene, and she
modeled it in pre-production costumes tests and still photographs. Marilyn also
wore her own black suit with a French tam hat in later scenes.
Sydney Guilaroff styled Marilyn’s hair but received no screen credit as her
hairdresser. “I designed slightly unruly blond curls that gave her a seductive, yet
somewhat menacing appearance,” he wrote in his autobiography Crowning
Glories, “beautiful but troubled. This was the first of what became a new wave
of cinematic looks that I created for Marilyn’s films.”

During the production, Marilyn stumbled upon a journalist and fan visiting
from Ohio. After an unsuccessful attempt at screen writing in Hollywood in the
1940s, the fan drifted back to Ohio, where he wrote for the Columbus Dispatch.
According to Donald Spoto, Marilyn’s gracious response to his request that she
pose for photographs with him unknowingly provided this seeming opportunist
with the means to fabricate claims long after her death.
Robert Slatzer manipulated this casual meeting, the few photographs, and an
autograph into a career of exploiting Marilyn for his own fame and profit. On the
tenth anniversary of Marilyn’s death, following a successful retrospective
photographic exhibition and the release of Norman Mailer’s biography, Slatzer
capitalized on his meeting with Marilyn amid the resurgence of public and media
interest in her. He preposterously claimed to have met Marilyn at Fox in 1946,
married her, and to have maintained the relationship for the remainder of her life.
On August 28, 1952, Dorothy Kilgallen’s “The Voice of Broadway” column
reported: “A dark horse in the Marilyn Monroe romance derby is Bob Slatzer,
from Columbus Ohio, literary critic. He’s been wooing her by phone and mail
and improving her mind with gifts of the world’s greatest books.” Slatzer,
arguably a stalker by today’s standards, likely planted the item for his own gain,
as he had an association with the gossip columnist.
While Kilgallen was on vacation in September, Slatzer temporarily penned
her column and wrote of his own alleged connection with Marilyn. “It is strictly
of the mind,” he wrote of the relationship and went on to claim he met Marilyn
at Fox in 1946 and had no contact with her again until meeting on the set of
Niagara. By this time, he was reviewing books for a newspaper in Ohio, and
Marilyn was sharing with him both her love for reading and literary knowledge.
In the column, Slatzer claimed he told Marilyn: “Some books are to be tasted,
others swallowed, and a few chewed and digested.” She replied, “Send me some
for the main course when you get back to Columbus.” When Slatzer returned
home, he mailed — perhaps in care of Fox Studios — copies of Look Homeward
Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe.
Slatzer’s only proof of an association with Marilyn was the few photographs
taken with her at the falls, later published in his controversial books. In some of
the photographs, she is wearing a costume from the film. The truth emanates
from Marilyn on celluloid as her poses are pure “Marilyn Monroe” the movie
star. Slatzer cuddles her from behind, looking like an adoring fan. Marilyn’s
wide-open smiling mouth, heavy lidded eyes and model-like demeanor suggest
that she is projecting her screen persona for a fan or an admiring member of the
press. She does not appear so artificial in photographs taken during the height of
her fame with her husbands or others intimately associated with her.
One of Slatzer’s published snapshots with Marilyn is autographed, but the
inscription is typical of how she signed photos for fans: “To Bob, Luck & Love,
Marilyn.” There is no personalization or protestation of affection or thanks,
typical in Marilyn’s inscriptions to her half-sister, brother-in-law, and others.
Slatzer’s version of the meeting at Niagara Falls goes like this: co-star Jean
Peters, once a fellow undergraduate student from Ohio State University, wrote
him a letter inviting him to visit her on location at the General Brock Hotel, and
Fox publicist Frank Neill pulled a few strings to reserve him a room.
According to Donald Spoto, Slatzer approached journalist Will Fowler in
1972 for publication of an incomplete article speculating that Marilyn’s death
was part of a political conspiracy involving the John and Robert Kennedy.
Norman Mailer’s biography, Marilyn, had been released and introduced the
conspiracy theory to the media. Fowler passed on the article and quipped, “Too
bad you weren’t married to Monroe. That would really make a good book.”
Slatzer’s next step was shamelessly predictable; he returned to Fowler and
claimed to have married her. “Slatzer made a career of being a pretender,”
Fowler told Spoto, “selling gullible talk show producers who don’t do their
research very well with the deception that he was married to Marilyn. He was
never married to her. He met the star only once, in Niagara Falls…He never met
Marilyn before or since.”
In his memoir, Inside Marilyn Monroe, actor John Gilmore accounts his
representation by the Shepherd Literary Agency in the 1970s and his interactions
with both Will Flower and Slatzer, then both clients of the agency. Gilmore
alleges Fowler acted as ghostwriter for Slatzer’s book and had pressed him to
provide evidence of an actual association with Marilyn. At the time, Slatzer was
claiming he married her in San Diego, but this location would imply a marriage
license had been legally issued in the United States.
According to Gilmore, co-star Richard Allan remembered Slatzer hounding
the set “like a vulture” and claiming to be writing for the Hollywood Citizen
News. Slatzer coaxed Allan into taking a photograph with him while pumping
the actor for personal information about Marilyn. “He keeps asking questions
and I don’t want to be rude,” Marilyn told Allan. “Be rude,” Allan advised. “Tell
him to take a canoe down the Falls.”
In 1974, Pinnacle Books published Slatzer’s manuscript under the title The
Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe. It reads like a treatment for a 1970s
television biography, composed mostly of dialogue between the author and his
subject. To those who doubt Slatzer’s ability to quote Marilyn nearly thirty years
after claiming to meet her, his author’s note concedes, “…It is difficult to
remember word for word our many conversations over the course of sixteen
years we were friends. But since I knew Marilyn so well and was so familiar
with her speech patterns and her way of thinking, the quotations attributed to her
in this book are quite accurate.”
Long after Marilyn died, when Slatzer wrote his claims of having served as
her trusted friend and confidante, he gambled on the possibility that reviewers
would not gain access to his tawdry claims, published in the May 1957 issue of
Confidential in an article titled, “The Ordinary Joe Sure Made Time On That
Couch with Marilyn Monroe!” Slatzer accepted payment for the interview and
discussed intimate details of an alleged affair during the time Marilyn dated
DiMaggio. In the article, Slatzer makes no claim of marriage. His subsequent
book alleged that he maintained a friendship until her death. However, any
arguable friendship or casual association would likely not have survived
following the publication of this article.
Although Slatzer’s career as a writer may have led to a casual association
with Marilyn, his claims to have been both present at all of Marilyn’s major life
events and privy to her most intimate thoughts and feelings seem less based on
reality and more on a need for structural continuity in his exploitative book. Kay
Eicher, married to Slatzer from 1954 to 1956, told Donald Spoto that her former
husband met Marilyn only once in Niagara Falls when she posed with him for
the impromptu photos. “It’s the one photo he’s always using to tell his story,” she
confirmed “He’s been fooling people too long.” In Spoto’s interviews with
Marilyn’s intimates, none of them had ever heard of Slatzer during her life or
before the release of his book.
More damaging to Slatzer’s credibility is his claim to have secretly married
Marilyn for three days in October 1952. He wrote of driving with her to Tijuana,
Mexico, the couple drinking champagne to excess with a toreador, and marrying
on October 4, 1952. Donald Spoto unmasked Slatzer as a fraud with the
discovery of a Bank of America check signed and dated by Marilyn to Jax, a
retail store on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, in the amount of $313.13. The
date, in Marilyn’s own handwriting, is the alleged wedding day. Marilyn could
not have been simultaneously shopping in California and drunkenly marrying
Slatzer in Mexico. Furthermore, there is no documentation of the marriage that
Slatzer claimed they chose to annul after sobering up; Slatzer alleged that he
failed to pay the fee for its official recording. He conveniently and incredibly
explained that the attorney who conducted the wedding burned the original
certificate.
Further suspect is the absence of Slatzer’s name, address, and telephone
number in Marilyn’s personal telephone and address books, which were
examined by Donald Spoto. In 2005, Julien’s of West Hollywood auctioned
Marilyn’s address book from 1962. In the auction catalogue’s photograph, the
book was turned to the “S” page; Frank Sinatra’s contact information is present,
but Slatzer’s is nonexistent. Despite his dubious authenticity, Slatzer’s claims
have unfortunately been used as the source material for most subsequently
released biographies and film and television documentaries on Marilyn Monroe.
Slatzer died in March 2005.

During the location filming in Niagara Falls, another one of Marilyn’s

involvements with the media was more accurately documented. Canadian
photojournalist Jock Carroll was assigned to a picture spread titled “Marilyn’s
Not So Menacing,” for the Weekend Magazine. Published posthumously in 1996,
Falling For Marilyn: The Lost Niagara Collection recounted Carroll’s
experience, when he snapped four hundred photographs of her during the film’s
production. His encounter with her also inspired him to write a novel, The Shy
Photographer, about a movie queen who meets a tragic end because of the
pressures in her life, told through the eyes of a young magazine photographer.
Publicist Frank Neill arranged for Carroll to have lunch with Marilyn at the
Rainbow Room atop the General Brock Hotel, where the photographer had spent
his honeymoon less than a month before. “When she smiled, tiny laughter lines
formed at the corners of her eyes,” recalled Carroll. “When she looked directly
at you, it made you feel as though the two of you were sharing some naughty
secret. The effect on me was cataclysmic.”
Carroll’s memoir is peppered with quotes from Marilyn that seem to
foreshadow her demise, such as: “I look forward to the day when I’ll be free of
all this. And perhaps free from depression.” If Carroll’s story is true, they
discussed the books she was reading: The Thinking Body by Mabel Ellsworth
Todd, Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke, and works by Walt
Whitman and Thomas Wolfe. When Carroll criticized Wolfe as undisciplined for
submitting lengthy manuscripts requiring major editing, Marilyn recommended
he read Wolfe’s How to Write a Novel to better understand the author’s style.
After determining that Carroll was DiMaggio’s shape and size, she cajoled
him into trying on cashmere sweaters for her to send to Joe. She even asked him
to take her to the airport in New York at ten o’clock in the evening to ship her
gifts to Joe so that she might avoid customs and ensure the package’s next-day
delivery. The pair was stopped by customs at Rainbow Bridge, when Carroll
panicked over a forgotten case of beer in the trunk of car and feared arrest for
trying to smuggle a case of beer or DiMaggio’s sweater. “We’ll just consider
your beer and Miss Monroe as free goods,” teased the Customs Agent.
According to Carroll, they also discussed Marilyn’s religious explorations,
including her experience attending a Yoga church. “They teach complete
relaxation,” she explained, “and there are a lot of good things in it. But I don’t go
for complete nirvana. They finally reach a state of desired nothing. I hope to
reach that stage when I’m old, maybe.”
Carroll accompanied Marilyn on a sightseeing excursion into the whirlpools
beneath the falls aboard one of the Maid of Mist passenger boats. The captain
offered her a fancy white oilskin for protection against the spray and explained it
was typically used for royalty. Marilyn begged him not to bother, and took a
yellow slicker off the rack. When she asked the captain if people kill themselves
by jumping into falls, he told her about the recent recovery of the body of a man
who had disappeared from the Rainbow Room. According to Carroll, on June 11
the body of a Detroit salesman was recovered from the falls. The man had
abruptly left his family while dining at the Rainbow Room and disappeared.
“Imagine how unhappy he must have been to do a thing like that,” Marilyn
said, upon hearing the news. “That’s an awful way to die.” Carroll’s memoir has
Marilyn foreshadowing her own demise by saying, “Sleeping pills are much
better.”

With the location work completed on June 25, 1952, the cast and crew
returned to the Twentieth Century-Fox soundstages to film the remaining scenes.
Henry Hathaway was pleased with Marilyn’s performance in the rough cut and
praised her to the press, but Darryl Zanuck insisted on cutting several of
Marilyn’s most important and effective scenes. “She’s the best natural actress
I’ve directed,” Hathaway told columnist Sidney Skolsky in July 1952. “And I go
back. I worked with Barbara LaMar, Jean Harlow, Rene Adoree — right up to
today. And she’s the greatest natural talent. Wait ‘til you see her in the picture.”
Conversely, Zanuck seemed invested in exploiting Marilyn’s sexuality for profit
while sabotaging her talent and effort to develop into as a serious actress.
In Fox’s black and white trailer for Niagara, the voice-over narrator says
Marilyn’s character “sang of love just as she lived for love, like a Lorelei
flaunting her charms as she lured men on and on to their eternal destruction…”
A close-up of Marilyn is superimposed on the footage of the cascading falls.
“When a man took her loveliness in his arms,” the stilted voice continues, “she
took his life in her hands.” Marilyn, the actress, is described as “skyrocketing to
new dramatic heights.”
Promotional posters featured a rendering of a colossal Marilyn lounging
across the falls, emblazoned with slogans such as, “Marilyn Monroe and Niagara
are a raging torrent of emotion that even nature can’t control!”
“For sheer power…for sheer magnetism…” read another advertisement, “the
show Marilyn Monroe puts on is as electric and spectacular as Niagara itself.”
The film’s world premiere was held simultaneously in Niagara Falls, Ontario,
and Niagara Falls, New York on January 28, 1953, respectively at the Seneca
Theatre and Cataract Theatre. Marilyn did not attend, and Fox sent Debra Paget
and Dale Robertson instead.
The film established each of the twin cities as Honeymoon Capital of the
World. Niagara Parks Commission General Manager, Maxim T. Gray, reported
that one hundred thousand more vehicles entered Queen Victoria Park in June of
1953 than during the same month in the previous year. Long after the film’s
release and subsequent repeated broadcasts on television, the Niagara Falls
Chamber of Commerce continued to receive many requests for information
about vacancies at the dismantled, fictional Rainbow Cabins.
An advertisement in the February 14, 1953 edition of Motion Picture Herald
touted Marilyn as ‘Sweetheart of the Industry’ and boasted the film’s enormously
positive reception: “3 big weeks, Roxy, NY! Powerhouse in Buffalo! Torrid in
Philadelphia! Socko in Los Angeles! Mighty in San Diego!” Across the Atlantic
Ocean, Marilyn’s performance inspired audiences in Rome to shout,
“Bravissima! Bravissima!”
American reviews fluctuated between praising Marilyn as a competent
actress and mocking her unique vocal articulation. Most critics seemed
distracted by Marilyn’s attractiveness and some seemed invested in degrading
her as an actress because of her physical appeal and sexualized role. Apparently,
mid-century American critics struggled with accepting the notion that acting
ability and sexual appeal could coexist in one woman. However, Time hailed its
full-bodied assertion, “What lifts the film above the commonplace is its star,
Marilyn Monroe.” In the second of her starring roles in major films, Marilyn had
impressed the critics of two prominent magazines.
“Miss Monroe plays the kind of wife whose dress, in the words of the script,
‘is cut so low you can see her knees,’ ” wrote Otis Guernsey of New York Herald
Tribune. “The dress is red; the actress has very nice knees, and under
Hathaway’s direction she gives the kind of serpentine performance that makes
the audience hate her while admiring her, which is proper for the story.” For the
first time, Marilyn was hailed for precision in her acting.
“Two of nature’s greatest phenomena, Niagara Falls and Marilyn Monroe, get
together in Niagara and the result is the sexiest, tingling-est, suspenseful-est film
in lo, these many months…” opined a reviewer in the Los Angeles Examiner.
“Here is the greatest natural star since Jean Harlow. She has more intelligence
than Harlow. She out-lures Lana [Turner]. She makes any other glamour girl you
care to name look house-wifely.” Marilyn was not only compared to her
childhood idol, she was also applauded as being more cerebral.
“Obviously ignoring the idea that there are Seven Wonders of the World,
Twentieth Century-Fox has discovered two more and enhanced them with
Technicolor in Niagara…” announced the New York Times. “For the producers
are making full use of both the grandeur of the Falls and its adjacent areas as
well as the grandeur that is Marilyn Monroe. The scenic effects in both cases are
superb.”
The New Yorker objected to Marilyn’s pedantic enunciation, tutored by acting
coach Natasha Lytess. “Marilyn Monroe,” they went on to say, “whom
Hollywood has been ballyhooing as a new-day Lillian Russell, takes a fling at
big-league melodrama in Niagara and demonstrates a wide assortment of curves
and a tendency to read her lines as if they were written in a tongue she is not
entirely familiar with.”
Gavin Lambert in Evening Standard Great Britain astutely evaluated Marilyn
as unique and inconsistent with her press as a sex symbol: “[She] does not fit
into any of the cinema’s established categories of blondes…Her acting can best
be described as reluctant. She is too passive to be a vamp; she is no menace
because she is easily frightened, and she is certainly no bombshell, for she never
bursts…For all the wolf-calls, there is something oddly mournful about Miss
Monroe. She doesn’t look happy.” Of course, there was hardly anything joyous
about the role of a woman conspiring with a lover to murder her husband.
 In Niagara, Marilyn equally enchanted and repulsed American audiences. An
article in a February 11, 1953 issue of Variety reported on organized groups and
some concerned females “deploring the effect Miss Monroe’s frank
characterization has had upon their children, husbands or sweethearts…” This
strong reaction of some audience members demonstrated Marilyn’s cultural and
psychological impact. Many other actresses portrayed the femme fatale or vamps
in films since the silent era (Theda Bara, Barbara Stanwyck, and Marlene
Dietrich) without condemnation from audiences; but somehow, Marilyn had
become more threatening.
Conservative members of Marilyn’s audience had difficulty differentiating
the actress from her roles. They blamed Marilyn for her role, the plot, her
costumes, and for the director’s emphasis on her sexuality. Detractors did not
direct their letters to the studio, directors or writers, but to the actress whose job
involved delivering scripted lines and following direction. The shower scene,
tame and family-friendly by today’s standards, stirred controversy in some states
and was edited in prints shown in Italy.
“That scene was in the very best of taste,” asserted Hathaway in a press
release by Fox. “You would have seen more of Marilyn if she had been wearing
a bathing suit. This scene was filmed on the premise that expectation and
anticipation usually are more startling than the real thing.”
Marilyn, too, responded to the controversy surrounding the film by justifying
her overtly sexy performance and denying an attempt to corrupt her audience.
“The girl I played in that was an amoral type whose plot to kill her husband was
attempted with no apparent cost to her conscience,” wrote Marilyn insightfully
in a letter published by columnist Dorothy Kilgallen in the New York American
Journal. “She had been picked out of a beer parlor, she entirely lacked the social
graces and she was overdressed, over made-up, and completely wanton. The
uninhibited deportment in the motel room and the walk seemed normal facets of
such a character’s portrayal. I honestly believe such a girl would behave in that
manner.”
Marilyn’s response and her annotated film scripts, discovered after her death,
reveal the depth of her research into preparing for a role. Long before her study
of the Method Acting technique, Marilyn painstakingly fleshed out even her
least complex roles. She wrote detailed notes to herself with motivation and
backstories for her characters and ideas for facial expression and physical
movement.
The iconic “longest walk” scene sparked a less serious debate about how
Marilyn’s walk originated. Movie magazines speculated whether the “horizontal
walk” was innate or acquired. Photographer Philippe Halsman described
Marilyn’s gait as “turbinoid undulations.” Natasha Lytess claimed she invented
it. Modeling executive Emmeline Snively insisted it was the result of weak
ankles or double-jointed knees. Columnist Jimmy Starr believed Marilyn shaved
a bit off one high heel of her shoe to achieve the undulation.
“I don’t know where they get these things,” retorted an amazed Marilyn.
“I’ve never been double-jointed. I’ve never had an accident. I walk the way I’ve
always walked. I’ve walked this way since I was eleven or twelve.” Years later,
Marilyn made a similar remark to Pete Martin, “I just walk. I’ve never wiggled
deliberately in my life, but all my life I’ve had trouble with people who say I
do…I learned to walk when I was ten months old and I’ve been walking this
way ever since.”
Biographer Maurice Zolotow believed Marilyn’s walk was contrived for her
public and screen image, the result of her brilliant artistic ingenuity. “By denying
it,” he surmised, “she enhances the mystery.”
In his autobiography, Timebends, Arthur Miller referenced the “swiveling of
her hips, a motion fluid enough to seem comic.” He verified it as Marilyn’s
natural walk: “Her footprints on a beach would be in a straight line, the heel
descending exactly before the last toe print, throwing her pelvis into motion.”
At the request of Harry Brand, Fox’s lead publicist, Roy Craft approached
Marilyn in her dressing room about letters from Parent Teacher Associations,
women’s groups, and church groups complaining about her provocative remarks
to the press and overt sexuality in Niagara. By accident, Craft had handed
Marilyn a bundle of obscene letters that had been stored in the Fox mailroom in
the event she wished to prosecute the senders with the Postal Service. She read
one letter that contained a crude sketch of a male and a female engaged in a
sexual act and the caption, “Is this the way you and Joe DiMaggio look?”
“This is the PTA?” Marilyn asked with widened eyes. She read another letter
crudely commenting on her breasts and gasped, “This is the Methodist Church?”
Regardless of Marilyn’s good humor, some of the reactions to this sexy bad-
girl role disturbed her, leading biographer Carl Rollyson to conclude, “This
venal employment of sex deeply disturbed some members of Monroe’s audience,
and she never attempted anything like the role of Rose Loomis again.” Fox
intended to release a single of “Kiss” through MGM Records. Lionel Newman
envisioned an imprint of Marilyn’s lips on the label in the center of the record.
The spindle would penetrate through the hole in the center and seemingly
between the lips in the imprinted image. The design was provocative for the era,
but the record company was enthusiastic and Marilyn approved. In the end, the
recording executives chose against taking a risk and offending consumers.
Today, their concept would be considered tame.
In the final analysis, Marilyn served Fox well. Niagara cost $1,250,000 and
returned $6,000,000 in its first release. She had achieved global stardom. More
than a half-century after its release, Niagara retains its nail-biting suspense,
showcases Marilyn’s dramatic talents, and illustrates its leading lady’s
transcending sexual appeal and charisma. She had personified the culture’s
standard for beauty and sensuality.
Chapter Eighteen
 July-November 1952

As the production of Niagara ended in the summer, RKO and Fox released
three of Marilyn’s films: Clash By Night, We’re Not Married, and Don’t Bother
to Knock. In the autumn, Monkey Business and O. Henry’s Full House would be
on cinema screens across the nation. Marilyn Monroe was everywhere — on
magazine covers and the radio, in newspapers and newsreels. It had been a long
journey for the twenty-seven-year-old, a veteran of nineteen films over the
course of six years.
Taking a well-deserved respite, Marilyn relaxed and lounged by the pool at
the Bel Air Hotel with Joe DiMaggio and his ten-year-old son, nicknamed
Butch. The boy was on summer vacation from the Black-Foxe Military Institute
in Hollywood. A newspaper photographer took their picture, and all hell broke
loose.
DiMaggio’s former wife, Dorothy Arnold, learned through the press that her
son was being seen in public with his father’s girlfriend. Perturbed, Dorothy
petitioned a Los Angeles court to limit DiMaggio’s visitation rights. “I’m trying
to make a better father of Joe,” she told reporters. “Joe has never really exercised
his privilege to see the child. When he did, he never spent more than a few
minutes with him.”
Represented by attorney Lloyd Wright Jr., DiMaggio sought full custody.
DiMaggio was paying Dorothy alimony, child support, tuition, and fees for
summer camp. He had even sent the boy a piano, but Dorothy had sold it.
Recently, she had told Joe that her financial woes necessitated the sale of a fur
coat he had given her, and so DiMaggio sent his ex-wife two thousand dollars.
Fox’s publicist Frank Neill, soliciting the promotion of Niagara, tried to
persuade Marilyn to appear on Hy Gardner’s nationally broadcast radio show,
Hy Gardner Calling, along with Vice President Alben William Barkley, to talk
about DiMaggio. Fiercely protective, Marilyn demanded the interview questions
in advance and forbade any questions about Joe Senior or Joe Junior.
As Neill spoke into the phone, Marilyn leaned forward and pressed her head
against his cheek to listen. When Gardner asked permission to question her
about little Butch, Marilyn put her hand to her forehead. “Why does he want to
drag the child into this?” she cried in despair. “Doesn’t he understand? Joe’s wife
has already named me in a legal action. It’s completely unfair to everybody. My
personal relationships are important to me. I don’t care if it’s a coast-to-coast
show!”
Dorothy’s case backfired. Judge Elmer D. Doyle chastised her for divorcing
the Yankee Clipper and remarked, “It’s too bad we don’t have more men like this
coming to this court trying to make good American citizens of their boys.” The
judge ruled joint custody, and Butch would spend vacations from school with his
father and Marilyn after their marriage. Marilyn always spoke to the boy as an
equal, and his father was always kinder and more patient in her presence. Butch
loved her.
In Marilyn’s absence, DiMaggio barraged his son with questions about his
grades at school and accomplishments in sports. The boy feared falling short of
his father’s expectations, disappointing him, and making him angry. It was even
worse when Butch was in the presence of both his father and mother. Then,
DiMaggio interrogated the boy with more questions while Dorothy smothered
him with embraces in an attempt to compete with her former husband over their
son’s affection.
According to Richard Ben Cramer, having Marilyn as a stepmother was one
of the few advantages that fulfilled Butch’s expectations of his famous name.
They shared a special connection until her death; Butch was one of the last
people to speak with Marilyn before she died.

On August 3, Marilyn made a jaw-dropping entrance by helicopter at a

poolside party organized by Fox at the Sherman Oaks home of big band
conductor Ray Anthony in the San Fernando Valley. The event celebrated the
release of Anthony’s new song written in her honor, “Marilyn,” by Ervin Drake
and Jimmy Shirl. “An angel in lace/A fabulous face/That’s no
exaggeration/That’s my Marilyn,” the lyrics began. Anthony (born in 1922) and
his orchestra recorded the music, and a male vocal lead with a harmonizing
chorus sang the lyrics. Anthony had recorded novelty dance songs (“The Bunny
Hop” and “Hokey Pokey”) as well as the theme music from the long-running
television drama Dragnet. At the time, he was on the Hit Parade for remaking
Glenn Miller’s “At Last.” Marilyn wore the magenta dress from Niagara and
delighted the guests by playing percussion under Mickey Rooney’s direction, as
well as attempting a few notes on Anthony’s trumpet. Anthony, members of his
orchestra, and Rooney posed with Marilyn against an enormous reproduction of
the sheet music.
Later in the month, Marilyn played a murderess in an episode of NBC
Radio’s thirty-minute dramatic anthology program, Hollywood Star Playhouse.
The story, “Statement in Full,” borrowed from her recent performances as
villains in Don’t Bother to Knock and Niagara. Baritone-voiced character actor
Carleton Young (1905-1994), who appeared in Reefer Madness (1936), The Day
the Earth Stood Still (1951), and FromHere to Eternity (1953), co-starred.
“Monroe, famous for her sexy charm, rates well-deserved praise from critics for
her expert acting,” announced a review in the January 1953 issue of Filmland.
Fox prepared a promotional roadshow for Monkey Business and a premiere in
Atlantic City, New Jersey to coincide with the city’s annual Miss America
Beauty Contest. The tie-in was brilliant publicity. Who better to represent
American beauty than Marilyn Monroe? In a high-collared sleeveless dress from
We’re Not Married and short dark gloves, Marilyn arrived at the Atlantic City
airport and was greeted by the mayor who presented her with a large bouquet of
flowers and pinned an honorary medallion on her dress. Sitting atop the backseat
of an open convertible draped with advertisement for the premiere, Marilyn rode
to the Claridge Hotel in a motorcade led by a marching band. As hordes of
young people followed, she pulled flowers from her large bouquet and handed
them to those walking beside her slow moving vehicle. Flack Jones, a Fox
publicity man accompanying Marilyn, told columnist Pete Martin that she
looked like Charles Lindberg riding down Broadway in a tickertape parade on
his return flight from Paris in 1927.
After the premiere, Marilyn reached back to her own roots by visiting a local
orphanage and the Betty Bacharach Home for Afflicted Children in Atlantic
City. The latter was founded by two powerful brothers, United States
Congressman Isaac Bacharach and Harry Bacharach, Mayor of Atlantic City,
and named in honor of their mother. The facility opened on Mother’s Day in
1924 and by the mid-1940s attained national recognition as a convalescent
center for children. Caring for over one hundred twenty-five children, Bacharach
Home was considered one of the best-equipped institutions in the east for
treatment and care of youth diagnosed with infantile paralysis. The building on
Atlantic Avenue served as Longport borough’s children’s hospital until 1990,
when Longport took it over to begin its restoration as the historic Borough Hall.
Newsreel photographers captured a brightly smiling Marilyn as she squatted
down in her tight dress to embrace a group of African-American boys at the
orphanage. Holding them close to her, she related to the grim reality of a
virtually impossible adoption of an older child, especially a black child in the
1950s. Cameramen followed Marilyn to the children’s hospital, where young
patients had been wheeled in their beds outside so that they could enjoy the
sunshine. She visited with every child and handed out lollipops. Reaching over
the high bars of a protective bed, Marilyn patted a sleeping ill child and signed
autographs for those who were awake. None of these children could further her
career, but self-promotion was not on Marilyn’s mind; she found it important to
personally connect with each ailing child.
On September 2, Monkey Business premiered at the Venice-themed Stanley
Theater on Atlantic City’s famous boardwalk, with a replica of the Rialto Bridge
spanning the stage. Flanked by a team of Fox publicity escorts, Marilyn arrived
wearing an off-the-shoulder scarlet gown with a purple sash and flowing train
designed by Oleg Cassini for Gene Tierney in On The Riviera (1952).
Marilyn also took part in a press conference for the Miss America Beauty
Pageant and posed with the contestants from each state. Gaining publicity for
both the film and the pageant, Marilyn was honored as the Grand Marshall for
the Miss America parade; the first time the event would be led by a woman. She
wore the honorary badge a few days before the parade when a government
department asked her to pose with a group of uniformed servicewomen, the “real
Miss Americas,” sent by the Pentagon in an effort to recruit more females for the
armed forces.
Wearing a low-cut, full-skirted white dress with a polka-dot pattern, Marilyn
appeared incongruent with a WAF, WAC, female Marine, and a WAVE. When the
army photographer stood on a chair to take the photographs, the angle made
Marilyn’s décolletage appear provocative and unsuitable. An Army PIO officer
wired an order to stop publication of the picture. Due to the military’s ban, wire
services across the nation chose to run the controversial picture in the
newspapers of major cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
Exhausted, Marilyn went to bed in her suite at the Claridge Hotel and was
awakened in the early morning hours by a phone call from a studio publicist
seeking her apology for the revealing photograph. “I wasn’t aware of any
objectionable décolletage on my part,” Marilyn said innocently. “I’d noticed
people looking at me all day, but I thought they were looking at my Grand
Marshal’s badge.” The dress was designed to be viewed at eye-level, Marilyn
insisted, not from atop a chair. The statement was widely quoted, and Flack
Jones later credited Marilyn as a consummate ad-lib artist responsible for her
own witty material.
Marilyn was creating herself as a public figure in performance art, and her
witty responses to sometimes-inane media questions appealed to her audience
and prompted her critics to attribute them to the Fox publicity team. When
columnist Earl Wilson asked Marilyn if she had a bedroom voice, she replied, “I
don’t talk in the bedroom, Earl.” She then qualified the remark by adding rather
innocently, “Because I live alone.”
For the Miss America parade, Fox’s wardrobe department arranged for
Marilyn to wear a not-so-innocent navy gown with plunging halter-top and white
collar. The plunge dipped just above her navel, daring for the era. She wore the
dress in Eugene Korman’s promotional photos for Niagara, and pop artist Andy
Warhol used one of the poses for his series of Marilyn Monroe Diptych shortly
after her death. In an open Ford convertible, Marilyn waved and blew kisses to
the crowds lining the streets. The Miss America Pageant took place at the
Atlantic City Convention Hall in New Jersey on September 6.
Sid Ross from Parade interviewed Marilyn in her suite at the Claridge Hotel
overlooking Brighton Park for an article titled “How Marilyn Monroe Sees
Herself,” published in the October 12 issue. He focused on her troubled
perceptions during a time, he concluded, when she should have been happy
about the degree of her success. Although he mentioned her preference to sleep
in “only Chanel No. 5,” Ross depicted Marilyn as introspective and soulful,
rather than as a frivolous movie star.
Lamenting about the public’s perception of her as “either a tart or a dumb
blonde,” Marilyn told Ross that she was “neither” and admitted to feeling lonely.
For the first time, she disclosed the negative aspects of her newfound fame and
found irony in the fact that encouragement and validation occurred in adulthood
rather than earlier in life, “when I really needed them.” Marilyn expressed
feeling shy and apprehensive of her publicity, believing people might have high,
unrealistic expectations of her “when I’ve only really started acting.”
“I’m beginning to feel like a piece of statuary that people are inspecting with
a magnifying glass,” Marilyn candidly confided, “looking for imperfections —
taking apart my dress, my voice, my figure, my acting — everything about me.”
She referenced the critical reaction to Don’t Bother To Knock, along with those
who said, “’Leave the dramatics to Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. Keep
Marilyn Monroe in a tight dress and let her drip sex.’ It kind of gets me…but
then along comes one who is a human being and who says I’m not setting the
world on fire, but that I have promise.”
Marilyn insightfully suggested that the downfall of marriages in Hollywood
stemmed from competition between husbands and wives working in the same
field, and envisioned a traditional marriage in her future. “For me, marriage and
career won’t mix permanently,” she said. “I think a man and a woman should be
interested in each other basically, with no outside force coming in between.”
Marilyn added, “I want something more than this sort of success — something
more real, more tangible. Any woman wants another kind of life with a man;
marriage, a home, children…I’m no exception.”
Marilyn’s self-penned cover story for the September issue of Pageant
magazine, titled “How I Stay in Shape,” revealed more secrets about her,
including her diet, wardrobe and exercise routine. The article was illustrated
with Andre de Dienes’ provocative photos of Marilyn eating breakfast in bed,
exercising on the patio of her apartment, wrapped in a towel after a bath, and
enjoying a sundae at Wil Wright’s ice cream parlor. According to Jack Flack, a
publicist ghostwrote the story largely based on an interview with Marilyn, but
padded it with fictitious information about her avoidance of suntans.
When Marilyn proofed the rough draft, she blackened out the statement about
suntans. Fearing her deletions would make the piece too short, Flack insisted she
replace it with something else. Marilyn impulsively jotted an original Monroe
witticism in the margin, “I do not suntan because I like to feel blonde all over.”
For those wondering about Marilyn’s diet, the article divulged it was strictly
high-protein during this period in her life. Her breakfast consisted of a cup of
warm milk whipped with two raw eggs and a multi-vitamin supplement. For
dinner, she ate broiled steak, lamb, or liver with raw carrots. “I must be part
rabbit,” she said.
Returning to Los Angeles, Marilyn unpacked her luggage in a house at 2393
Castilian Drive she and DiMaggio untraditionally rented together. On October
1st, Joe conceded his preference for San Francisco and officially moved into the
stucco home with red tile roof in Hollywood Heights with Marilyn.
Before Joe settled in, Marilyn attended two benefits during a weekend in
September. The first was the “I Am an American” patriotic fundraiser at the
Hollywood Bowl, in which she wore the magenta dress from Niagara once more
and was joined by entertainers Jack Carson and Danny Thomas. The second,
“Out of This World Series Charity Baseball Game” at Gilmore Field Stadium,
involved Mickey Rooney, Dale Robertson, and the boxer, Art Aragon. While
other starlets in attendance wore shorts, Marilyn donned a tight lavender dress
with halter-top that had been cut from the wardrobe for Niagara and took a turn
on the pitcher’s mound.
Despite Marilyn’s signed and dated personal check written to Jax in Los
Angeles, and DiMaggio’s move to the Castillian Drive house three days earlier,
journalist Robert Slatzer claimed he married Marilyn in Tijuana on October 4.
The Bank of America check written to Jax, a ladies’ sportswear shop in Los
Angeles — and dated October 4 — sold at auction long after Marilyn’s death,
proving her whereabouts and discrediting Slatzer’s allegation.
Fox released O. Henry’s Full House on October 16th. Although she received
top billing, Marilyn’s cameo appearance lasted no longer than sixty seconds and
required only one day’s work. The anthology film was based on five short stories
by O. Henry, the pseudonym of writer William Sidney Porter, and narrated by
John Steinbeck. Marilyn played opposite British-born actor Charles Laughton
(1899-1962) in the first tale, “The Cop and the Anthem.” Henry Koster directed
Marilyn’s segment, which also featured David Wayne. A parade of Fox’s
contract players starred in the other four tales, each helmed by a different
director. The all-star line-up included Fred Allen, Anne Baxter, Jeannie Crain,
Farley Granger, Oscar Levant, Jean Peters, Gregory Ratoff, Dale Robinson, and
Richard Widmark.
Marilyn had attended Laughton’s drama study group at his home, shared with
his wife, Elsa Lanchester (1902-1986), who was remembered best for her title
role in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He had attended the British Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art before starring in The Private Life of Henry VIII
(1933), Les Miserables (1935), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Long after his
death, rumors persisted that the overweight Laughton was gay, and Lanchester
confirmed this in her autobiography released in 1983.
Published in 1904, “The Cop and the Anthem” follows a homeless
protagonist named Soapy who, during the late autumn, executes various foiled
attempts to be arrested and jailed in a safe, warm shelter for the winter. Marilyn
plays an elegant turn-of-the-century streetwalker whom Soapy accosts in view of
a policeman. Soapy greets the girl, asks if she feels lonely window-shopping all
by herself, and invites her to play in his backyard. Marilyn’s nameless character
wheedles him to buy her a drink. At the end of their brief interaction, Soapy
presents her with his valuable walking cane, calling her “a charming and
delightful young lady.” As he walks off, the policeman approaches the
streetwalker and asks what happened. “He called me a lady,” Marilyn replies
with a sniff, tears filling her eyes.
On October 18, Marilyn taped an episode of CBS Studio’s popular weekly
radio program The Charlie McCarthy Show, sponsored by Coca-Cola.
Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903-1978) manipulated Charlie, a puppet of a
wisecracking teenager dressed in a monocle, top hat, and eveningwear, who
usually flirted with female guest stars. The comic plot involved a wedding
between Marilyn and the puppet. When Christie’s auctioned Marilyn’s copy of
the script in 2002, a human-sized bite mark was discovered on the left-side
margin of the entire script, possibly an in-joke during the taping of the segment,
which aired on October 26.
Before her next film assignment, Marilyn competed to acquire historic
theatrical memorabilia when Natasha learned the widow of her former lover,
Max Reinhardt, planned to auction personal property from his estate. Although
Natasha could not afford them, she wished to claim the one hundred seventy-
eight personally annotated production notebooks or Regiebucher, a moment-by-
moment record of a play’s production. Somehow she convinced Marilyn of the
value of using her newly increased salary to bid on these relics. Marilyn sat
beside Natasha in the Goldenberg Galleries in Beverly Hills and raised a bidding
paddle above her head as she engaged in a bidding war with book dealer Jake
Zeitin, representing the University of Southern California. Although the
notebooks would further supplement the university’s extensive Reinhardt
Collection in its Doheney Library, Marilyn’s budget exceeded theirs, and she
won the collection for over $1,300.
Hoping to appeal to Marilyn’s sense of good will to higher education, the
university’s librarian told the press he hoped she would donate the material to
UCLA. So, the alleged dumb blonde of Hollywood responded to the press that
she realized the value of the notebooks and wished to make them available to
many students of drama. Reinhardt’s son, Gottfried, contacted Marilyn and urged
her to sell his father’s personal property to him. Having not yet paid the gallery
or collected the coveted notebooks, Marilyn graciously agreed to Gottfried’s
making payment and collecting his father’s work.
Shortly thereafter, Marilyn heard that Gottfried sold the annotated notebooks
to the university at a profit, and became suspicious of Natasha having possibly
manipulated her and sharing a portion of the profit with her former lover’s son.
After settling the controversy over the coveted ownership of scholarly
documentation of Russian theater, Marilyn reported to Fox for costumes fittings
in preparation for her upcoming quintessential role of a loveable dumb blonde in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.


Part IV
Goddess
Chapter Nineteen
 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes signified an ideal pairing of star and role,

catapulting Marilyn into superstardom, endearing her to the public, and
cementing her comedic and musical talents. According to Sarah Churchwell, the
breakout role of Lorelei Lee remains Marilyn’s iconic role “because she so
closely approximates the cultural fictions about Marilyn herself.”
Fox competed with several studios for the rights to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and paid $500,000 to secure the property for a first rate, Technicolor spectacular
comparable to MGM’s Golden Era musicals. Based upon Anita Loos’ original
1925 novel, serialized in Harper’s Bazaar magazine, the material inspired a
silent film in 1928 with Alice White and Ruth Taylor. Loos and Joseph Fields
collaborated on adapting the book as a musical comedy for the stage. Opening at
the Ziegfeld Theatre in 1949, the play starred delightfully wide-eyed, gravel-
voiced Carol Channing in the role of gold-digging blonde bombshell, Lorelei
Lee, and featured her raspy rendition of its most popular song, “Diamonds Are a
Girl’s Best Friend.”
The plot involves gold-digging, diamond-obsessed showgirl Lorelei Lee and
her loyal sidekick Dorothy Shaw. Lorelei is described as a girl “who can stand
on stage with a spotlight in her eye and still see a diamond inside a man’s
pocket.” She is focused solely on marrying for money. Lorelei’s fiancé, Gus
Esmond, sends her to Paris with Dorothy to test her fidelity. Esmond’s father
employs a private detective to spy on the women and report back any suspicious
behavior. The entire United States Olympic team of muscular male gymnasts is
also sailing to Europe aboard the same ocean liner.
During the transatlantic cruise, Dorothy and the private detective fall in love
while Lorelei befriends a married diamond merchant, Sir Beekman, and
convinces him to give her his wife’s diamond tiara. Beekman covers his tracks
by feigning theft of the tiara and retreats to Africa. When Esmond learns of
Lorelei’s escapades, he cuts off her line of credit. She is eventually charged with
grand larceny. Dorothy poses as her friend in a court hearing and straightens out
the mess. The film ends with a double wedding.
Charles Lederer, actress Marion Davies’ nephew, wrote the screenplay,
assessed by Zanuck as containing “some of the best dialogue I have ever read in
any script.” In the screenplay’s first version, the film opened with Lorelei and
Dorothy in their fifties, reminiscing about their trip to Paris during the 1924
Olympic Games. Lederer updated the script to present time, with Marilyn’s
lavish “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number immediately following the
main titles. He later opted to open with Lorelei and Dorothy singing a duet,
“Two Little Girls from Little Rock.”
Zanuck tapped Howard Hawks as director. Having directed Marilyn in
Monkey Business, Hawks was known for a wide range of films including
dramas, Scarface (1932) and The Big Sleep (1942), as well as screwball
comedies such as Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), both
starring Cary Grant. “We purposely made the picture as loud and bright as we
could,” Hawks said about Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, “and completely vulgar in
costumes and everything.”
Darryl Zanuck needed “loud and bright” name recognition for box office
draw and passed on Carol Channing. He considered Betty Grable, the leading
blonde in a string of the studio’s musicals, who was ten years older than Marilyn.
Zanuck envisioned Marilyn with her hair dyed brown as Dorothy, but after
hearing a recording of her singing “Do It Again” for U.S. Marines at Camp
Pendleton, he decided — with some coaxing from Hawks — that Marilyn would
remain blonde as the perfect Lorelei Lee. Zanuck was also getting a bargain. The
second year of Marilyn’s contract stipulated her salary of $750 per week,
compared to Grable’s $150,000 per film.
In an early script conference, Zanuck realized the necessity of the audience’s
belief that Dorothy felt genuine affection for Lorelei. This bond motivates
Dorothy to defend her friend in the courtroom scene near the end of the film.
Ultimately, Fox appropriately cast Jane Russell (1924-2011) to deliver Dorothy’s
acerbic wisecracks.
With Marilyn earning about nine thousand dollars (some sources say fifteen
thousand) and Russell earning ten times more, columnist Earl Wilson predicted
“The Battle of the Bulges.” The real life disparity in pay risked the onscreen
rapport required for the storyline. However, the two enjoyed a splendid
chemistry on the set and off, and became close friends. Their pairing was
perfect, and Fox would have been wise to cast them together again in another
film.
“We got along great together,” Russell said of Marilyn. “[She] was very shy
and very sweet and far more intelligent than people gave her credit for.”
Like Marilyn, Russell’s talents as a dramatic actress and musical performer
were given significantly less attention than her voluptuous figure. She displayed
a knack for delivering wisecrack lines and singing. Teamed with comic Bob
Hope in The Paleface (1948) and with Robert Mitchum in His Kind of Woman
(1951), Russell also satirized her sexualized screen image.
Russell was five years older than Marilyn and assumed the role of her big
sister during the production. Russell survived two assaults in childhood and a
botched abortion at nineteen, resulting in her inability to conceive a child. She
graduated from Van Nuys High School (Marilyn’s alma mater) and married her
high school sweetheart, future professional football player Bob Waterfield.
Coincidently, James Dougherty was Russell’s classmate. Russell and her
husband had also met Norma Jeane at a dance with Dougherty in the early
1940s. “I looked up from the table and saw a little thing with ash-brown hair and
a very sweet smile,” Russell recalled. “We waved hi.”
Howard Hughes launched Russell’s film career in the controversial B-
Western, The Outlaw, a scorching account of the romance between Billy the Kid
and a wanton woman named Rio. Filmed in 1941, it had a limited release two
years later but was re-edited and re-shot for the next three years. (Censorship
issues and Hughes’ obsessive-compulsive illness pulled the film from theaters in
1943.) Meanwhile, Hughes prevented Russell from appearing in other films until
the picture could be released. His skilled publicity campaign provided Russell
with national exposure and created a fetish of her publicity portrait, a seductive
pose against a haystack. During World War II she joined Betty Grable and Rita
Hayworth as popular pinup models.
By the time The Outlaw was finally released in 1946, Russell had become a
star known largely for her statuesque physique rather than her acting abilities.
Hughes’ fixation with her figure would culminate in his casting her in The
French Line (1954), marked by leering angles of Russell’s chest filmed in the 3-
D process.
As Lorelei’s fiancé, Gus Esmond, Fox considered David Wayne, Tom Ewell,
and Eddie Bracken before deciding upon the often-bespectacled Tommy Noonan
(1921-1968). Elliott Reid (1920-2013) was cast as Ernie Malone. Reid
performed in radio drama and would go on to appear in Inherit the Wind (1960),
The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and in television.
Marilyn was again joined by swag-bellied Charles Coburn, her co-star in
Monkey Business, as Sir Francis Beekman; and British-born Norma Varden
(1898-1989) was cast as Lady Beekman. Once a child prodigy, concert pianist,
and stage actress in Great Britain, Varden had roles in Casablanca (1942) and
Strangers on a Train (1951). She later appeared in Witness for the Prosecution
(1957), The Sound of Music (1965), and as a nosy neighbor in the 1960s
television series, Hazel. Taylor Holmes (1878-1959) portrayed Gus Esmond
Senior, the father of Lorelei’s fiancé. George “Foghorn” Winslow (born 1946), a
six-year-old with a stentorian voice and deadpan delivery, portrayed Henry
Spoffard III. A child with the voice of a man, Winslow contrasted with Marilyn,
a woman with the voice of a child.
Since the supporting characters included the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team,
Fox’s casting agents sought Los Angeles’ leading male physique muscle models
to join the studio’s stable of lean and defined male dancers. John Weidemann, a
stunningly handsome and well-built 1950s physique model, was heavily featured
in close-ups with Jane Russell in “Bye Bye Baby” and “Ain’t There Anyone
Here for Love?” He had also appeared with Betty Grable in No Talent Joe and
The Desert Fox (both 1951) and would soon leave Hollywood for Broadway to
appear in the long-running musical Kismet.
Ed Fury, a contender for the Mr. Muscle Beach title in the early 1950s, also
portrayed an Olympian in Russell’s number. He had been the subject of male
physique photographs for Bruce of LA and the Athletic Model Guild, and would
appear in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) with Victor Mature. Bodybuilder
Chuck Hicks was featured as a boxer with a punching bag, while musclemen
Steve Reeves and Robert Fuller served as beefy eye-candy. Sporting more
graceful, toned bodies, Matt Mattox, Ron Nyman, and George Chakiris rounded
out the cast as chorus boys. Finally, two young brothers, James and Freddie
Moultrie, were cast as boys who danced alongside Monroe and Russell in
“When Love Goes Wrong.”
No expense was spared for the leading ladies’ multiple wardrobe changes,
and Fox tapped a young, talented designer on its roster for the opportunity to
dress the sexiest actresses on the lot. Joan Crawford had Adrian, Audrey
Hepburn had Givenchy, Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth had Jean Louis, and
Marilyn had William Travilla. He perfected her signature image in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes. Travilla’s quintessential Monroe design was a hand sewn
metallic gold tissue lamé gown with painstakingly created sunburst pleating,
halter-top, and plunging neckline.
Fox wardrobe seamstresses literally had to sew Marilyn into the dress.
Admiring its snug fit as a second skin, she loved the dress and later wore it to the
Photoplay Awards when she received the title of ‘Fastest Rising Star of 1952.’
Betty Grable would also don the frock in the television show Shower of Stars in
1952. Fox’s dramatic studio portrait of Marilyn in the gown with her hands
resting on her hips is globally recognized and iconic in its own right. The 1996
United States Postage Stamp of Marilyn also depicted her posed in this costume.
Between October 21 and November 8, Marilyn posed for costume, make-up,
and hair tests, donning over a dozen outfits for Lorelei’s showgirl costumes,
evening wear, sports clothes, and suits. The most memorable outfits included a
dark suit with leopard collar and muff, a lavender sheath, an indigo gown with
bolero jacket, a tangerine chiffon gown, and a Dior-inspired lace wedding dress.
For the opening “Little Girls from Little Rock” number, Travilla designed an
iconic gown of silk crepe adorned with hand-sewn red sequins spiraling in all
directions to catch the light at all angles. The neckline plunged down to the waist
and satisfied censors by being filled with body-toned fabric, giving the illusion
of nudity. Equally risqué, a deep split to high above the thigh ended with an
opulent rhinestone brooch. The gown was complemented by a red and white
plumed headdress. Actress Debbie Reynolds acquired this costume at Fox’s
auction in 1970 and sold it at auction in June 2011 for $1,200,000. Marilyn wore
many of these costumes in publicity photos and public events throughout the
next two years.
The production, beginning in November 1952 and ending in February 1953,
recycled ocean liner sets used for Titanic (1953), and required weeks of grueling
pre-production rehearsal and sound recording.
Of the eighteen songs in the stage version, few would survive the film’s final
cut. Lorelei Lee’s numbers “It’s Delightful Down in Chile,” “Homesick Blues,”
“Button Up with Esmond,” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” were never
recorded for the film. Instead, Fox planned two duets for the stars, “Two Little
Girls from Little Rock,” by Jule Styne and Leo Robin, and “When Love Goes
Wrong,” by Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson. Only the first originated
from the musical. Marilyn had a featured solo in the large ensemble production
number “Bye, Bye Baby.” Her major production number was “Diamonds Are a
Girl’s Best Friend” and Jane Russell would sing “Ain’t There Anyone Here for
Love?” Both ladies were supported by a troupe of male dancers.
As Fox’s musical director, Lionel Newman (1916-1989) worked closely with
Marilyn on the pre-recording of songs that she would lip synch to playback
during the filming. “We all had a mutual respect for each other,” Newman told
Lawrence Crown about Marilyn’s relationship with the musicians. “Maybe that’s
why it went so well…She loved music, she loved to be around musicians and we
had a good time with her on the [recording] stage…” She would request him as
musical director for the remainder of her musical films at Fox. After serving an
apprenticeship conducting and orchestrating live shows, Newman joined Fox as
a rehearsal pianist under the guidance of his brother, Alfred Newman. Lionel
earned an Academy Awards for Best Musical Score in Hello, Dolly (1969).
According to Lionel Newman, Marilyn enjoyed the musical portions of the
film and worked diligently on their success. She was always punctual for
rehearsals, often arriving long before they started. Marilyn was courteous and
friendly to the men in the orchestra, and they all loved her. She made a special
point to personally thank everyone who worked with her. Although Marilyn had
a definite idea of what she wished to accomplish vocally, Newman saw no signs
of a temperamental diva. In fact, he found her to be the most professionally
insecure person he had ever met in the film industry.
Marilyn received Newman’s blessing upon her first attempt at recording
“Diamonds,” a particularly challenging playback because of its length. “Gee,
one take,” Newman said, “Wonderful! Only Sinatra does that.” Marilyn looked
through Newman and shook her head negatively. Turning around, he saw
Natasha Lytess also shaking her head. Marilyn recorded eleven takes. At the end,
she led Newman to the podium where she apologized to him and the orchestra.
She announced that he was correct and requested to use the first take.
Hawks also felt usurped by Lytess. “When I say cut,” he barked at Marilyn,
“I want you to look at me, not at Natasha.” Marilyn avoided confrontational
behavior on the set; her modus operandi was to look blankly, retire to her
dressing room, cry, develop headaches, and vomit.
Fox paid Lytess $175 per week for her support of Marilyn. Taking advantage
of Marilyn’s dependence and vulnerability, Lytess demanded that Marilyn ask
Zanuck for a raise in pay or compensate the wage with her own money;
otherwise, the coach would quit and abandon her. Marilyn panicked and begged
agent Charlie Feldman to negotiate these demands. Zanuck agreed to pay Lytess
$500 per week, just $250 less than what Marilyn earned.
Two weeks into filming, Darryl Zanuck sat in the Fox screening room to
view a compilation of rushes. “If anyone has ever had any doubts as to the future
of Marilyn Monroe, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is the answer,” he concluded.
“Just as a top star can never turn a bad story into a box-office success, so will
Blondes prove that the best talents in story-telling and star appearances are still a
combination that can’t be beaten.” Zanuck had become a believer in Marilyn, but
she had no respect for his judgment.
Chekhov and Lytess already thought she was more than a dumb blonde.
Zanuck, now converted, still didn’t believe his star was singing her own songs in
the rushes. “Who dubbed Marilyn’s voice?” he asked.
 “That’s her voice,” Lionel Newman replied. “Her voice is something you
can’t dub.”
Zanuck actually summoned Marilyn to his office to sing privately for him as
proof. He was proud of Marilyn, and whenever he would screen the number, he
would boast to the audience, “That’s her singing every single note.”
Although Marilyn’s voice is clearly on the soundtrack, she was challenged to
hit some high notes only in “Diamonds” and required minor assistance. Enter
Marni Nixon (born 1930), a soprano who earned the sobriquets “The Ghostess
with the Mostess” and “The Voice of Hollywood.” She forged a career dubbing
for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and
Natalie Wood (and some notes for Rita Moreno) in West Side Story. Nixon
finally sang for herself on screen as a nun in the The Sound of Music. She was a
member of the nun chorus in “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”
Nixon provided vocals for Marilyn’s highest notes, in the lyrics “Are a girl’s
best…best friend,” and sang the song’s operatic prelude. “I don’t even know
why they wanted to re-dub her voice,” Nixon said, confident of Marilyn’s
rendition. “Thank goodness they let her sing in her own way. That breathless,
sexy sound suited her screen persona perfectly, even if she did need a little help
on the high notes.” When Fox released “Diamonds” for radio broadcast, the
studio accompanied the recording with a statement signed by Zanuck and a
notary public validating that it was Marilyn’s voice and not that of a studio
vocalist.
Hawks deferred direction of the musical numbers to choreographer Jack
Cole. Marilyn loved Cole and he became her favorite choreographer. His distinct
style and perfectionism suited her splendidly.
Jack Cole (1911-1974), the volatile, New Jersey-born pioneer of theatrical
jazz dance, sported the look of an exotic cat with his angular face, sharp nose,
and one lopsided eye. On Broadway and in supper clubs in New York, he infused
Indian dance in his jazz dance act, appealing to the postwar beatnik culture. Cole
was a regular at the Rainbow Room on the East Coast and Ciro’s on the West
Coast. Hired by the Hollywood studios, he choreographed for Mitzi Gaynor and
Ann-Margret. Cole was responsible for Rita Hayworth’s iconic song and dance
number “Put the Blame on Mame” in Gilda (1946). He terrorized his dance
students with foul language and was reputed to have dragged a female dance
student across the floor while threatening to hurl another out a second-story
window. Once, when a chatty nightclub customer interrupted his class, Cole
reputedly chased the man down Wilshire Boulevard bare chested, wearing Indian
swami harem pants and wielding a knife.
“Jack changed musical theater,” asserted Gwen Verdon, who spent weeks as
Cole’s assistant on the film, blocking out the dance routines. “He is responsible
for what we call jazz today. He introduced ethnic dance. He influenced all the
choreographers who followed, from Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, Bob
Fosse…”
Marilyn was the first to arrive on the set each morning and worked on the
routines for an hour or two after Russell went home in exhaustion. She begged
for extra coaching to allay her insecurity, but her dancing needed no
improvement. “If you were willing to work like an animal,” Verdon said, “he
wasn’t so difficult.”
Verdon’s son, James Heneghan, age ten at the time, later said, “My mom
liked both Marilyn and Jane, but Marilyn especially displayed a tough work
ethic that was a big deal with my mother.” Jane Russell recalled Marilyn gritting
her teeth and not allowing herself to grow tired.
“With Cole, Monroe felt a rare sense of confidence, something few of her
directors could inspire,” wrote William J. Mann in Behind the Screen,
referencing Cole’s sexual orientation as a gay man. “There was no sexual
tension, and besides, Cole had no loyalty to the studios in the way her directors
might: he loathed them and all they stood for, and so could afford to be fully
present and attentive to Monroe’s insecurities.” Cole lived with his longtime
partner, David Gray, in a mansion on Kew Drive in the Hollywood Hills. The
Cole-Monroe partnership created magic, and Marilyn would collaborate with
him on five additional films.
For Marilyn’s big production number, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,”
Fox spared no expense to showcase her talents for what would become,
according to Richard Buskin, “probably the single most identifiable film
sequence to the career of Marilyn Monroe.” Shot in long takes requiring few
edits, the number’s perfect blend of dramatic art design and superb choreography
is forever enshrined as an iconic film scene and aided by Marilyn’s incomparable
execution.
“As it would be impossible to imagine a better musical role for her entrée
into the genre,” wrote Cindy De La Hoz, “it was as though Marilyn and Fox had
been waiting for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to be ready for the screen again.
Marilyn performed with confidence and a style that belied the fact that it was her
first ever solo production number. With pink ballerinas flitting about and men
falling at her feet, this often-imitated scene became Marilyn’s signature musical
routine and the song is inextricably linked with the star.” Upon Marilyn’s death,
television network news shows aired the number, and Fox made it the finale of
the posthumous compilation of her film performances in Marilyn (1963). In
1985, Madonna’s “Material Girl” video paid homage to Marilyn by using a
similar set, costumes, male dancers, and dance moves. Along with the skirt-
blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch, the number would endure for
generations.
“The setting, the costumes, the jewelry, the makeup; Monroe herself are
designed to be thoroughly dazzling,” biographer Carl Rollyson asserted. “Every
move she makes sparkles and glitters; her voice and the accompanying music are
amplified and modulated to project both the raucous response of unrepressed
sexuality and her soft, mellow, caressing tones. ‘Diamonds’ is a scene that in
every possible way has been arranged for Monroe, so that by the end of the
number, she has moved in every direction and filled in every corner of the movie
frame. As a result, the frame is transformed into her vehicle of self-
incorporation.”
George Chakiris, then age nineteen, was a member of the number’s chorus of
male dancers, and went on to receive a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for West
Side Story (1961). He directly observed Marilyn’s work ethic as they shot the
iconic number during three weeks of rehearsals and three shooting days. Unlike
a diva, whenever the choreographer shouted, “Cut!” Marilyn went back to her
starting position along with the male dancers.
In the play, the song advances the plot, but in the film, it is a staged number
that Lorelei performs as part of her nightclub act in Paris after her benefactor
terminates her income. At one point, a few strands of Marilyn’s hair are caught
in a dancer’s costume. As she pulls away, the strands fly away, mussing her
hairstyle. It is a refreshingly natural moment in an otherwise precisely staged
sequence. Cole isolates Marilyn with the beam of a single spotlight as she is
surrounded by a chorus of men on their knees with arms uplifted. The chorus’
vocalizations coincide with her side-to-side hip movements.
“The part where she bumps and grinds, sensually naming famous jewelers,
Tiffany’s, Cartier, Black Starr [& Frost-Gorham, Harry Winston] — that’s not in
the [Jule Styne/Leo Robin] original,” Verdon told Cole’s biographer. “That’s
Jack’s material. He wrote it. Then he taught Marilyn how to move on it.”
Joseph C. Wright’s original art direction called for Marilyn in black against a
black background, an Empire bed with pink sheets emblazoned with black satin
Napoleonic emblems, and a mahogany tub. Travilla’s original costume for the
number was excessively revealing. It was comprised of a pair of black fishnet
hose attached to a leotard that came up to a bodice of nude fabric. A necklace of
rhinestones covered the breasts, giving the illusion of diamonds over skin, while
another necklace adorned the hips. A large rhinestone brooch in front pulled
back on each side and around the back into a cascading floor length tail of black
velvet and rhinestones. Accessories included a rhinestone choker, tiara, large
black fan of feathers, and black opera gloves.
In the wake of the nude calendar scandal, Zanuck called Travilla and ordered
him to “cover her up.” The designer went to work on a new design and returned
the original costume to the Fox wardrobe department until Betty Grable
resurrected it for her Las Vegas act. The costume’s replacement was an elegant,
straight-line, strapless gown of shocking pink peau de soie with satin weave and
lustered finish; an upholstery-quality fabric, cinched at the waist with a belt and
sporting a large pink bow on the derriere. The peau de soie was lined with felt
for extra body and increased modesty. Marilyn wore matching pink opera gloves
and black, high-heeled sandals. She wore Travilla’s white version of the gown to
three events in 1953, including the premiere of Ethel Merman’s Call Me Madam.
Wright substituted a bright red background to complement the pink costume.
The fawning young male dancers wore black and white tuxedos, their hair
grayed at the temples to suggest older, wealthy suitors. The female dancers, in
Dior-style flared ballerina-length dresses of pink tulle, donned floral headpieces
of black tulle that covered their faces. Black chandeliers hung above, with
female models entwined in them. The set itself, a stage for a production number
within a film, was multi-leveled.
Marilyn’s delivery was fresh and innocent while Carol Channing’s had been
emasculating. It is a cynical song in which Lorelei advises young beauties to
accept gifts of diamonds from rich beaus for financial security before their
beauty fades. The lyrics advise that men grow cold, girls lose their charms and
figures, men will eventually discard the aging women, but diamonds never lose
their shape or value. Although the number would serve as Marilyn’s defining
musical production, its theme couldn’t be farther from her true identity.
“Diamonds were never of interest to Marilyn,” Jane Russell told Maurice
Zolotow. “She would rather collect and read a library of good books.”
While Marilyn mesmerized the crew with her solo number, Russell was
doing the same in another soundstage. The premise for “Ain’t There Anyone
Here for Love?” is Russell seeking the attention of the Olympian gymnasts while
they exercise, none breaking concentration to notice her. The humor exists in the
subtext. Many of the male dancers were gay, and in real life on the set, were
disinterested in her. The number is hugely homoerotic. The men wear flesh toned
short swimming trunks, simulating a nude appearance if not for the black band
on the leg openings. The gymnasts spar with each other, engaging in male-to-
male physical activity while Russell seductively dances around them.
Cole coordinated the body-builders’ exercise routines to music. “The
resulting images could have come straight out of the then-popular gay-subculture
magazine Physique Pictorial,” writes William J. Mann, “with muscle men
posing, stretching, and kicking; every now and then a gymnast leaps through the
frame. It is a male-only space, with the women secured in a roped-off area.
Russell is the lone intruder, and the men pay no attention to her as she looks in
vain for love. At one point — in a scene that would never have passed the more
vigilant censors of the 1930s and early 1940s — the bodybuilders bend over and
begin pumping their buttocks up and down in rhythm, an outrageous simulation
of gay sex.” Hawks gave John Weidemann a prime close-up with Russell
gawking at his bulging biceps, as he flexes, and saying, “Honey, you’ll hurt
yourself.”
While filming the number, Russell bent down at the edge of swimming pool
so that the male dancers could dive over her and into the water. One of the
dancers accidently clipped her on the head, taking her down into the pool with
him. The mishap created a different, comedic ending in which two dancers lift a
drenched Russell out of water in time to lip synch to the play back of the last line
of lyric. Allegedly, Ed Fury was responsible for Russell’s unscripted plunge and
insisted on screen credit for co-choreography. Hawks reshot the scene but
preferred the take with the unscripted comedic ending.
Hawks yelled “Cut!” when Marilyn, cuddled up against Tommy Noonan,
filmed her sequence in the “Bye Bye Baby” number. Both Hawks and Cole were
satisfied with first take, but she wanted another ten. Dancer Ron Nyman recalled
that Marilyn was always preoccupied with how she looked and acted and less
aware of what was going on with the other performers.
“My Conversation” was to have been Russell’s second solo number, but
Hawks cut it. Marilyn was also slated for two other solo numbers cut from the
final film, “When the Wild, Wild Women Go Swimmin’ Down in the Bimini
Bay” and “Down Boy.” Marilyn performed the latter in the gold tissue lamé
halter gown with plunging neckline forever linked to her image through
publicity photographs. An audio recording of the “Down Boy” number surfaced
in 2006, but film footage remains lost. The only glimpse of her wearing the
gown onscreen is a brief longshot of Lorelei dancing with Lord Beekman, seen
from the perspective of Dorothy and Malone watching through a window.
Marilyn’s exposed back and undulating rear are visible in the metallic dress.
“Four French Dances,” a quartet of orchestral arrangements, was another
musical number edited just before the film’s release. Wearing yellow-trimmed
bustiers and Napoleon-style hats, Lorelei and Dorothy performed the act while
suspended on a quarter-moon and climbing down an ornate ladder onto a set
with the Eiffel Tower. The number also included a French language version of
“Two Little Girls from Little Rock.” Although the sequence appeared in
promotional trailers released while Blondes was still in production, the film’s
final version includes only a brief scene that followed, with the leading ladies
wearing the costumes. Zanuck thought the musical offered too many songs, and
cut the film down to ninety-one minutes.
Marilyn’s insecurities emerged on the set during this film, and most of her
delays and disruptions involved Natasha Lytess usurping Hawks’ authority.
Marilyn took her direction from her coach, often looking past Hawks for Lytess’
expression of approval or disapproval. If Lytess disapproved, Marilyn begged
Hawks for another take. Hawks temporarily barred Lytess from the set to make a
point.
On one occasion, symptoms of mental illness caused Marilyn’s delays. When
Charles Coburn recited lines in Swahili, her anxiety skyrocketed. She began
having racing thoughts of the foreign speech and couldn’t redirect from them.
Marilyn locked herself in her dressing room and wouldn’t speak with anyone but
Lytess. Jane Russell observed Marilyn’s challenges in daily coping and
perceived her as “dreamy” and likely to arrive on the set wearing two different
colored shoes. When they took a late morning break from production, Jane
would learn Marilyn hadn’t eaten breakfast and completely forgot about her
hunger until reminded. Fox hired a full-time secretary-maid to organize
Marilyn’s chaotic lifestyle, but her disorder overwhelmed and eventually
consumed the secretary. Russell watched her co-star wait on the secretary instead
of vice versa.
When the studio brass asked Hawks for recommendations to speed the
production, he sarcastically suggested: “Replace Marilyn, rewrite the script and
make it shorter, get a new director.” Hawks appreciated Marilyn’s gift for
comedy and natural sense of timing after having difficulty directing Katharine
Hepburn’s deadpan humor in his preceding screwball comedies. He admired
Marilyn’s ability to act as though she had no idea she was funny: “She radiated
complete innocence of how wonderfully funny she was.”
Marilyn and Russell enjoyed a sisterhood and camaraderie disappointing to
the gossip columnists hell-bent on unearthing any evidence of rivalry. Russell
discovered insecurity and fear in her co-star when she noticed Marilyn arriving
early to the studio, sitting for hours in her dressing room ruminating, and afraid
to face the cameras. “I’d stand in her doorway and say, ‘C’mon, Blondie, let’s
go,’ ” Russell recalled, “and she’d say, ‘Oh! Okay,’ in her whispery voice, and
we’d go on together.” Russell’s heartfelt efforts to provide support seemed to
work miracles with her co-star, but future directors and co-stars would not be as
patient or willing to do the same. Marilyn was simply scared, Russell would
assert, but future co-stars and directors perceived Marilyn’s delays as arrogance,
rather than fear.
A decade later, Marilyn still appreciated Russell’s kindness in an interview
with journalist Richard Meryman: “She was quite wonderful to me.” During a
moment of admiration on the set, Russell created a pencil sketch of Marilyn in a
costume from the film and lovingly presented it to her co-star. Her empathy and
kindness quickly earned Marilyn’s trust. Confused and bewildered about her
developing relationship with DiMaggio, Marilyn turned to Russell for advice.
She asked Russell many questions about being married to an athlete. “Well,
they’re birds of a feather and you’ll get to know lots of other athletes,” Russell
said, “otherwise it’s great.’ ”
During breaks between scenes, Marilyn read excerpts from Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet to her brunette friend. One line haunted Marilyn: “And stand
together, yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and
the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
“Is it true?” Marilyn asked her co-star. “I mean do you have to keep yourself
apart? I mean if a woman loves a man, does she have to give up her own
individuality? Do we have to give our own identity up?”
Russell explained that couples could be happy together without surrendering
identities. She coached Marilyn on managing a household, and being a wife and
mother while maintaining a career. Russell also provided living proof of
compatibility with a partner whose interests were different than her own.
In the 1980s, Russell told Anthony Summers that she encouraged Marilyn to
balance her time with DiMaggio by socializing with her own friends, with whom
she discussed literature, poetry, and the arts. Marilyn felt a part of her was dying
because she failed to create opportunities to express it. At the advice of her co-
star, Marilyn moved out of the Bel Air Hotel and rented a house. The
arrangement did not last long, and she checked into Beverly Hills Hotel.
After Fox’s annual holiday party on Christmas Eve 1952, Marilyn arrived
home to find a Christmas tree in the corner of her living room along with a large,
unsigned card. Unexpectedly, DiMaggio emerged from the closet. “You didn’t
forget me,” Marilyn cried. “That’s the sweetest thing anybody has ever done for
me in my life, Joe, in my whole life. Joe, the sweetest thing.”
Jane Russell was an evangelical Christian. She, her mother, and her Christian
friends hosted spiritual retreats at their homes in the San Fernando Valley. One
weekend, Russell invited Marilyn along. “Jane, who is deeply religious, tried to
convert me to her religion and I tried to introduce her to Freud,” Marilyn said.
“Neither of us won.” However, Marilyn told Sidney Skolsky how much she
appreciated the invitation.
“If you raised your voice at her or were too harsh, she’d cry,” Russell said.
“Marilyn could get terribly hurt. She simply could not understand people being
mean. She was super-sensitive — and with good reason, considering her
rudderless past and unsure future.”

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was originally filmed in the 3-D process,

providing the viewer with the three dimensional illusion that characters or
objects project off the screen. The leading ladies’ ample breasts risked poor taste
in the use of this new photographic application. Several scenes displayed
specific staging for the visual gimmick: Lorelei tossing a rope of diamonds to
her fiancé, dancers carrying and thrusting her forward as if to catapult her into
the laps of the film’s audience, and Lorelei jutting forward when she gets caught
exiting a stateroom through its porthole. Lucille Ball copied the porthole scene
in 1954 episode of the I Love Lucy television show when her character, Lucy
Ricardo, crosses the Atlantic on an ocean liner.
The golden age of 3-D commenced with Bwana Devil (1952). Audiences
wore disposable cardboard glasses with one blue and one red lens produced
earlier for use with comic books. By spring 1953, studios used the 3-D process
primarily for horror films such as House of Wax with Vincent Price and science
fiction films such as It Came from Outer Space. Fox released its only 3-D
feature, Inferno, with Rhonda Fleming. Zanuck’s interests lay in premiering the
new widescreen process of CinemaScope.
The gimmick declined by the early summer of 1953 due to its technological
deficits and cause of headaches and eyestrain in audiences. It resurged in 1954
with The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for
Murder, the latter featuring Grace Kelly lying across a desk as she is being
strangled and reaching toward the audience for a pair of scissors to plunge into
the back of her assailant. Fox decided Monroe and Russell’s finished product
needed no faddish gimmick and released Blondes in two-dimension.
Marilyn’s interpretation of the role of Lorelei — with affected speech,
exaggerated lip and eye movements, and deadpan delivery — provided fodder
for impersonators for generations to come. The role was a perfect embodiment
of the Marilyn Monroe persona and became the screen image that the public and
critics would equate with the actress for the remainder of her career. Yet, what
Marilyn made look so natural and effortless on screen was actually a well-
crafted performance. Comedy acting is often underrated, and even Marilyn
herself minimized the comedic skills she had honed since Love Happy. “My
great ambition is to have people comment on my fine dramatic performances,”
she said during this period, “[but] I also intend to concentrate on singing and
comedy parts.”
To Zanuck, Marilyn had found her niche and lured the public away from the
television sets in their homes and into theaters; but on the other hand, she felt
trapped by Zanuck’s typecasting. “I had to get out, I just had to,” she said later.
“The danger was, I began to believe this was all I could do — all I was — all
any woman was. Natasha and everybody else [were] talking about how
convincing [I was], how much of me must have been in this role, or how much
of the role was in me. I knew there was more I could do, and more that I was.
Nobody was listening to me.” In a rare professional moment when someone
listened to her, Marilyn seized the power to amend the script, creating a line that
was near autobiographical: “I can be smart when it’s important, but most men
don’t like it.”
Marilyn’s empowerment did not end with alterations to the script; she
advocated for her dedicated space on the lot. “I couldn’t even get a dressing
room,” she told Life magazine. “Finally I said, ‘Look, after all, I am the blonde
and it is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Because still they always kept saying,
‘Remember, you are not a star.’ I said, ‘Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!’ ”
Marilyn had warranted only a cubicle in the studio’s changing room. Now,
Fox offered her Betty Grable’s plush dressing room, but the gesture was intended
more to dethrone Fox’s former blonde champion than to coronate its current one.
It sent a strong message to Grable that her star was fading as Marilyn’s was
rising. “They tried to take me into her dressing room as if I were taking over,”
Marilyn said. “I couldn’t do that.” Instead, Fox gave Marilyn a large dressing
room next to Russell’s.
Fox may have thrown Marilyn a bone, but Travilla observed the studio’s
rather shabby treatment of her, nonetheless: “As far as I am concerned they kept
Monroe from being a star for as long as they could, until they were stuck with
her.” Jack Cole agreed: “They were all rather evil to [Marilyn]…But she was
never bitchy…” According Sandra Shevey’s research, when David Conover
visited the set, he remarked to the cast and crew that they were fortunate to have
been working with a star as important as Marilyn.
“And so beautiful,” Jane Russell added.
Lytess joined in by asserting, “And so talented.”
On June 26, 1953, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre invited Marilyn and Jane
Russell to make impressions of their signatures, hands, and high-heeled shoes in
the theater’s famed cement forecourt. The co-stars arrived in complementary
white summer dresses. Theater manager George Bauzer escorted the women to a
raised platform on which they could kneel to autograph the wet cement. As they
simultaneously made imprints of their hands, Marilyn turned to Russell and
asked excitedly, “This is for all time, isn’t it?” Then they shook hands.
As the women held hands and stepped into the wet cement, the newsreel
cameras recorded the event and described them as “friendly as sorority sisters.”
Marilyn’s cement was tinted yellow, and the “i” in Marilyn was dotted with a
rhinestone that would be repeatedly pried out by fans and replaced.
The little girl who once fit her hands and feet in the prints of her film idols
had now achieved success and joined their ranks. “I sure knew what it really
meant to me,” Marilyn sentimentally reflected about the moment she pressed her
foot into the wet cement. “Anything’s possible, almost.” When she reminisced to
a French reporter about visiting the Chinese Theatre as a child, Marilyn
recognized the inspiration she offered the next generation: “It’s funny to think
that my footprints are there now, and that other little girls are trying to do the
same thing I did.” The event gained more newspaper coverage than Queen
Elizabeth II’s coronation on June 2 in London.
When Charlton Heston left his imprints in the cement slab above theirs, he
remarked, “There I was, right on top of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. How
many men can say that?”
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes premiered in Atlantic City on July 1 and opened in
New York two weeks later. The publicity campaign for the film’s Los Angeles
opening at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre included raven-haired models in bathing
suits staging a demonstration, with picket signs bearing messages boycotting the
film in defense of brunettes. At the same time, Fox released a double record
album of the soundtrack.
The Chinese Theatre’s immortalization of Marilyn was symbolic. Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes cemented Marilyn Monroe’s legacy as a superstar. The
performance elevated her beyond the restraints of her pin-up persona and
showed her as a full-fledged and multifaceted actress. The four minutes of
Marilyn’s flawless breakout solo number established her as an actress with no
formal training who could sing and dance superbly in a musical comedy. Zanuck
now had a formula for his star.
“In her own class is Marilyn Monroe,” announced Motion Picture Herald.
“Golden, slick, melting, aggressive, kittenish, dumb, shrewd, mercenary,
charming, exciting sex implicit…Miss Monroe is going to become part of the
American fable, the dizzy blonde, the simple, mercenary nitwit, with charm to
excuse it all.” Other reviews were equally positive.
“There is the amazing, wonderful vitality and down-to-earth Jane Russell…
AND — there is Marilyn Monroe!” lauded the LA Examiner. “Zounds, boys,
what a personality this one is! Send up a happy flare. At last, she is beautifully
gowned, beautifully coiffed, and a wonderful crazy humor flashes from those
sleepy eyes of her…Her natural attributes are so great, it’s like a triple scoop of
ice cream on a hot August day, to realize she is also an actress — but, by golly,
and Howard Hawks, she is…She’ll do more for 20th Century-Fox than their
discovery of oil on the front lot.”
Aside from her noteworthy box office promise, Marilyn earned compliments
for her unexpected singing ability. The Los Angeles Citizen News announced:
“As Lorelei Lee, Marilyn looks as delectable as a ripe peach. She also surprises
with a remarkably stylish voice piping ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ in a
lavish production number.” Her study with Fred Karger had provided a strong
qualification for musicals.
More than one critic fixated on the leading stars’ obvious physical attributes.
In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote tongue-in-cheek: “…There is that
about Miss Russell and Miss Monroe that keeps you looking at them even when
they have little or nothing to do. Call it inherent magnetism, call it luxurious
coquetry. Call it whatever you fancy. It’s what makes this a, well, buoyant
show.”
Amidst commentary about their figures, another review raved about the stars’
mastery of musical numbers. “Putting those two buxom pin-up girls in the same
movie is merely giving two-to-one odds on a sure thing, and the payoff is big in
a rousing musical…” gushed the New York Herald Tribune. “Singing, dancing or
just staring at diamonds, these girls are irresistible and their musical is as lively
as a string of firecrackers on the Fourth of July…”
The combination of Monroe and Russell was a delightful partnership begging
for a sequel. Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., New York Herald Tribune stated, “As usual,
Miss Monroe looks as though she would glow in the dark, and her version of the
baby-faced blonde whose eyes open for diamonds and close for kisses is always
amusing as well as alluring. Miss Russell is a Juno with nylon trimmings, and
she has the knack of snapping out gags with deadpan sarcasm. They work well
together in the songs and in the chase. Miss Russell walks through the show with
a long-legged stride and Miss Monroe limits herself down to a lazy amble, but
somehow they always seem to come out even.” Unfortunately, the film was their
first and last on-screen pairing.
However, one critic was unimpressed. A reviewer at The New Yorker wrote,
“The pneumatic aspects of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell are examined
extensively in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and while it is plain that both ladies
are pleasantly configured, it is also apparent that neither of them has more than a
glancing acquaintance with the business of acting.” This reaction was clearly an
outlier.
Marilyn engendered the audience’s sympathy by effectively projecting a
perfect balance of kindheartedness and materialism. She also mastered the art of
gaining laughs by pretending to be ignorant while endearing herself to the
audience. Neither is an easy feat for any actress. In one of her final scenes,
Marilyn skillfully delivered a thoughtful speech:

Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You
might not marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness,
doesn’t it help? And if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you want her to
have the most wonderful things in the world? Then why is it wrong for
me to want those things?

Blondes would become one of the most revived films of the 1950s and the
decade’s most successful musical, ahead of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
Oklahoma (1955), Carousel (1956), The King and I (1956), and South Pacific
(1958). “Diamonds” would become the quintessential musical number of
Marilyn’s career, and the American Film Institute would rank the song twelfth
among of the most important movie songs of all time.
Aside from the honor of immortalization in the cement forecourt at a
Hollywood landmark, Marilyn’s status elevated at Fox. In the reception room of
the studio’s administration building, her portrait now hung alongside those of
Betty Grable, Dan Dailey, Susan Hayward, Tyrone Power, Clifton Webb, Jean
Peters, Victor Mature, and Robert Wagner. She and Russell even appeared
together gowned in red sequins on the cover of the May 25, 1953 issue of Life.
Jane Russell’s career also received a boost. She and her husband launched
their own production company, Russ-Field Productions, and oversaw three of her
own pictures between 1955 and 1957, including a sequel to Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes called Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955). The couple adopted two
children and Russell campaigned for the Federal Adoption Amendment of 1953,
which allowed children fathered by American servicemen overseas to be adopted
by families in the United States. Russell also founded the World Adoption
International Fund (WAIF), which found permanent families for over fifty
thousand children.
In the wake of her film career in the 1970s, Russell appeared on television
and in print advertising as the maturely attractive spokesperson for the Playtex
“Cross Your Heart” Bra, designed for “full-figured gals.” In her 1985
autobiography, Russell disclosed struggles with alcohol abuse and episodes of
infidelity that ended her first marriage. When she reflected on working with
Marilyn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she said it was the best film both of them
ever made.
Chapter Twenty
 January-March 1952

In January, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower told Today’s Woman magazine that
women’s lives should revolve around their men, and being a wife was the best
career for a woman. During the Great Depression, women had entered the work
force out of necessity, and during World War II they were encouraged to work
outside the home in previously male jobs as part of the war effort. Now that men
had returned from combat oversees, women were expected to return to the
kitchen, and the strong economic prosperity of post-war America supported this
delineation of gender roles.
The new year also began with Marilyn feeling committed to a man. On
Christmas Eve 1952, she had returned home to her apartment and found a
decorated Christmas tree, champagne in ice bucket, a roaring fire, and Joe
DiMaggio seated on her sofa. On New Year’s Day, he made a rare Hollywood
appearance by escorting Marilyn to Fox’s CinemaScope party at the Cocoanut
Grove.
As Joe surprised Marilyn by accompanying her to an event in the spotlight,
Gladys made a surprise visit to Berniece in Florida, calling from the airport.
Berniece and Marilyn could not imagine how their mother independently made
traveling arrangements. Berniece and Paris were unable to manage Gladys in
their home due to her exacerbated symptoms of Schizophrenia, and placed her in
a nearby apartment financed by Marilyn. Gladys refused the arrangement.
In Los Angeles, Marilyn and Grace toured psychiatric residential programs
for a potential placement for Gladys. Marilyn paid for Gladys’ return train ticket
and mailed it to her half-sister. The tours triggered Marilyn’s memories of
visiting Gladys as a young girl in another institution. During this period, she
recounted to friends a sensory overload of horrors: psychotic patients restrained
in beds in the hallways, the sounds of screams, and the pungent odors of urine
and feces. Residents of the facility appeared dazed on powerful medications.
Haunted by these disturbing experiences and thoughts of her mother warehoused
in such a place, Marilyn experienced recurring nightmares and flashbacks of her
own stay in the orphanage. All she wanted to do was to rescue her mother. Now
that Marilyn had a decent income, the last thing she wanted was to place her
mother in a dreadful situation.
The long train ride from Florida proved disastrous. By the time Gladys
arrived by taxicab at Grace Goddard’s home, she was agitated and screaming.
Grace and Doc pretended they were not at home and immediately called Marilyn
for assistance. When a concerned neighbor responded to Gladys’ hysterics, she
became paranoid and asked if he owned Los Angeles. “Is this your air I’m
breathing, too?” she demanded. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli, Grace’s call
interrupted Marilyn’s meeting with Wesley Miller, of Wright, Wright, Green and
Wright law firm. She went to a police station and requested law enforcement
intervention. Two officers permitted her to ride along with them, and she hid in
the backseat of a patrol car. By the time Marilyn arrived at the Goddard home,
an ambulance was on the scene; its attendants intervened and transported Gladys
to a psychiatric unit.
Marilyn took control of her mother’s care and transferred financial and
emotional responsibility from Berniece. “She’s got a family,” Marilyn allegedly
said. “I don’t. I never have had one. So, let her live her life. I’m forced to live
mine, and my mother is my burden.”
In February, Marilyn arranged for Gladys to enter a comfortable private
psychiatric institution, Rockhaven Sanitarium, at 2713 Honolulu Avenue in La
Crescenta Valley’s town of Montrose, near Glendale. Built by Agnes Richards in
1923 after she returned from World War I and saw the maltreatment of those
institutionalized for mental illness, the Mexican-style complex of several
buildings and cottages was secluded behind a stone wall and ornate iron gates on
four lushly landscaped acres. Residents had included actress Frances Farmer,
diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder with Psychotic Features, and Billie Burke —
who had appeared in Dinner at Eight and as Glenda the Good Witch in The
Wizard of Oz — when she developed dementia in later life. Marilyn paid $250
each month for Gladys’ care.
At two o’clock in the morning, Andre de Dienes awoke to a phone call from
Marilyn sounding depressed and despondent. She begged him to photograph the
despair she wished to express against a darkened street. He dressed, grabbed his
camera, and collected her in his car. Marilyn was disheveled, wearing no
makeup, her hair uncombed and unruly. They drove to a dingy back alley in
Beverly Hills, where she posed in a long black coat, leaning against a telephone
pole, a garbage can at her side, and leaning on a gate. De Dienes used his car’s
headlights to illuminate the shots. Marilyn looks anxious and anguished. She
told him to title the session, “The End of Everything.”
Judy Garland also observed Marilyn’s distress and desperation at a party on
Rexford Drive at the home of Clifton Webb and his mother, Maybelle. “I knew
Marilyn Monroe and loved her dearly,” Garland told The Ladies Home Journal.
“She asked me for help. Me! I didn’t know what to tell her. One night, at a party
at Clifton Webb’s house, Marilyn followed me from room to room. ‘I don’t want
to get too far away from you,’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’ I told her, “We’re all
scared. I’m scared too.’ That beautiful girl was scared of loneliness…”
On February 9, Marilyn pushed aside the stressor of dealing with her
mother’s crisis to accept the honor of “Fastest Rising Star of 1952” at Photoplay
magazine’s award ceremony in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Funnyman Jerry Lewis, of the Martin and Lewis comedy duo, served as Master
of Ceremonies.
Since Joe resisted public appearances, Sidney Skolsky escorted Marilyn.
Wearing the gold lamé gown designed by Travilla for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
Marilyn again created a sensation as she entered the room and took tiny steps in
her tight dress to her table. Nearly every male in the room broke into whistles
and wolf calls, and comic Jerry Lewis stood on a table to get a better look,
allegedly imitating an aroused gorilla.
Demurely, Marilyn accepted the award and sashayed back to her seat.
Reporter Florabel Muir of the Los Angeles Mirror wrote the gown seemed to
have been painted on her. “With one little twist of her derriere, Marilyn Monroe
stole the show…The assembled guests broke into wild applause, [while] two
other screen stars, Joan Crawford and Lana Turner, got only casual attention.
After Marilyn, every other girl appeared dull by contrast.”
Jerry Lewis met Marilyn for the first time that evening and found her
irresistible. “God, she was magnificent — perfect physically and in every other
way,” he wrote decades later. “She was someone any one would just love to be
with, not only for the obvious reasons but for her energy and perseverance and,
yes, focus. She had the capacity to make you feel that she was totally engaged
with whatever you were talking about. She was kind, she was good, she was
beautiful, and the press took shots at her that she didn’t deserve. They got on her
case from day one — a textbook example of celebrity-bashing.”
On March 2, Joan Crawford (1905-1977), the grande dame of Hollywood,
publicly bashed Marilyn in an interview published by journalist Bob Thomas in
the Hollywood Citizen-News. Crawford denounced her “burlesque show,” and
asserted “the public likes provocative feminine personalities, but it also likes to
know that, underneath, the actresses are ladies…Kids don’t like [Marilyn]. Sex
plays a growingly important part in their lives, too; and they don’t like to see it
exploited. And don’t forget the women. They’re the ones who pick out the movie
entertainment in the family. They won’t pick anything that won’t be suitable for
their husband and children.”
Crawford’s illustrious film career spanned eighty films over forty-five years.
She had survived a childhood of poverty and was discovered in a chorus line by
a talent scout from MGM Studios in 1925. She propelled to stardom frenziedly
dancing the Charleston, in a daringly short skirt, atop a table in the silent film
Our Dancing Daughters (1928). Leaving Jazz Age flapper roles behind, she
portrayed working girls and steadfast, strong women struggling for love or
battling a male-dominated world to achieve a career. Crawford starred in a string
of commercial hits for MGM, including Grand Hotel (1932), The Women (1939)
and A Woman’s Face (1941).
By 1944, Crawford had been labeled “Box Office Poison” and left MGM for
Warner Brothers. She rose again in intelligent, powerful, and often ruthless roles
in a series of film noir successes, Mildred Pierce (1945) — for which she
received an Academy Award — Humoresque (1946), and Possessed (1947).
During this period, Crawford’s look capitalized her structured face, full mouth,
thick eyebrows, and broad shoulders — accentuated by the shoulder pads of
1940s fashion.
After another lull in her remarkable career that seemingly had nine lives,
Crawford parted ways with Warner Brothers and free-lanced. The year before
the Photoplay award ceremony, she soared again in RKO’s Sudden Fear. Now
entering menopause, Crawford’s thick eyebrows and short hairstyles — popular
with mature women of the 1950s — made her appear somewhat hard and
masculine. At forty-eight, she personified both “old Hollywood” and the
archetype of strong women of the Great Depression and World War II eras. At
twenty-six, Marilyn symbolized the Post-War, ultra-feminine ideal of “new
Hollywood.”
Having worked long and hard for notice, Crawford resented what she
perceived as Marilyn receiving enormous attention after only a short
apprenticeship in films. What Crawford failed to acknowledge was Marilyn’s
seven-year climb to fame. Perhaps she was most put off by Marilyn’s
vulnerability. As a survivor of a tough childhood, Crawford prided her discipline
and strength. In interviews, she spoke of the world as a dangerous place “where
unless you are self-sufficient and strong, you can be destroyed.”
Crawford’s harsh criticism of Marilyn seemed sanctimonious and
hypocritical. While she was married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford
allegedly had a long-term affair with Clark Gable. Similarly, she was allegedly
unfaithful to her next husband, Franchot Tone, with Spencer Tracy. Crawford
was also rumored to have slept with many of her directors and had a long,
stormy affair with Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer. When reminiscing about
Gable on a television talk show in the early 1970s, she cupped her hands and
said, “Balls, he had them!”
Marilyn diplomatically and keenly chose to avoid engagement in a battle and
elected to politely respond to Crawford’s tirade in the column of her ally, Louella
Parsons, in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner: “The thing that hit me the hardest
about Miss Crawford’s remarks is that I’ve always admired her to be such a
wonderful mother — for taking four children and giving them a fine home. Who,
better than I, knows what it means to homeless little ones?” Once again, Marilyn
triumphed by eliciting sympathy, a coping mechanism she employed when faced
with a personal or professional crisis. She also slyly took aim at Crawford for
her rumored mistreatment of the children she had adopted.
After Marilyn’s death, Joan clarified the source of her frustration, indicating
that Marilyn triggered her own personal issues about rising from low
socioeconomic status. “The girl had talent, and her death at such an early age
was a tragedy,” Joan would say, “but my God she was just so totally common. I
certainly come from humble beginnings, but I think it’s everyone’s duty to try to
rise above those beginnings. With her cheap behavior, it was like Marilyn was
trying to bring everyone down to her own level instead of rising above to
everyone else’s.” Crawford’s own legacy would be bashed shortly following her
death. Christina, one of her adopted daughters, portrayed her as a physically and
emotionally abusive parent in a scornful memoir, Mommie Dearest.
Wearing a pure white copy of the gown donned for “Diamonds Are A Girl’s
Best Friend,” matching opera gloves, and a white fur, Marilyn attended the
premiere of Fox’s musical Call Me Madam on March 4. The film starred Ethel
Merman and Donald O’Connor. Entertainer Ken Murray, whose weekly variety
show aired on CBS from 1950-53, interviewed Marilyn for television cameras in
the lobby of the theater.
“Tell the audience how we met,” Murray said.
“Once you almost gave me a job,” Marilyn sweetly responded.

Marilyn relocated to apartment number three in a modern, austere building

had been constructed the previous year at 882 Doheny Drive. At the corner of
Cynthia Drive, the property bordered West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The
snug apartment comprised only 648 square feet and featured a fireplace and
bookcases.
 Jane Russell had encouraged her not to renew her lease at the Beverly
Carlton Hotel and secure a more permanent address in preparation for beginning
a life with DiMaggio. “It will give you a nice feeling of security to be in your
own home, with your own furniture and things,” her friend advised. “You’ve got
to get used to managing your own home now, before you are married. Every
woman should have her own home. Hotel life is no kind of life for a woman.”
Russell even recommended decorator Thomas Lane of Newport Beach.
Marilyn installed a mirrored wall and furnished the apartment around an
inspiration piece: the retrieved white baby grand piano that Gladys had
purchased during the brief period mother and daughter lived together. The
unearthing of a receipt implies that Ana Lower had purchased the instrument
from Gladys after her institutionalization, but it was likely sold again after Ana’s
death. In My Story, Marilyn writes of diligently searching for the piano once she
started earning a sizable income and retrieving it at an auction house. “I have it
in my home now in Hollywood,” she writes. “It’s been painted a lovely white,
and it has new strings and plays as wonderfully as any piano in the world.” She
moved the piano to each new address as a touchstone of her only happy
childhood memory of Gladys, and it provided continuity to her roving lifestyle.
One afternoon, Marilyn arrived home from shopping to find Grace Goddard’s
car parked outside her home. Grace came out and warmly greeted Marilyn with a
tight embrace. Marilyn intuitively suspected something was amiss as she walked
her into the apartment. Grace accepted a cup of tea and announced her diagnosis
of uterine cancer. As a follower of Christian Science, she rejected treatment, but
Marilyn convinced her to seek western medicine. The women conspired to
consult with physician to explore medical treatment without Doc’s knowledge.
Immediately, Marilyn scheduled examinations with countless physicians in Los
Angeles, but Grace ultimately declined chemotherapy. Following Marilyn’s
death, checks written to Mrs. G. Goddard in May and June for $851.04 and
$300.00 intrigued biographers. Dismissing the probability that Marilyn defrayed
the cost of her former guardian’s medical treatment, many biographers
speculated the checks were evidence of Marilyn having an abortion. “Marilyn
never dropped Grace,” Berniece wrote. “Marilyn loved her until the day she
died.”
On the patio of the Doheney Drive apartment, Marilyn posed barefoot in a
tight black turtleneck sweater and white Capris for Life photojournalist Alfred
Eisenstaedt (1898-1995). The German-born American was perhaps best known
for his iconic photograph of an American sailor kissing a young nurse during the
celebration of V-J Day in Times Square, after Japan surrendered and ended
World War II.
Eisenstaedt, known by his colleagues as Elsie, became a fulltime
photographer in 1929 and soon after captured on film a historic meeting between
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Italy. Due to the rise of Hitler’s opposition
against Jews, Eisenstaedt immigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked
for Life from 1936 to 1972. The magazine featured his innovative work on
ninety of its covers, and President George Bush presented him with the Medal of
Arts in 1989.
Eisenstaedt also shot Marilyn curled on her sofa writing in her diary. He
crowned his assignment with a traditional last shot: a self-portrait posed with his
subject. Affectionately entwined together, Marilyn and Eisenstaedt clowned for
an assistant’s lens. She sent him a copy of her favorite of the poses inscribed,
“You made a palace out of my patio.”
Just as Marilyn’s signed photo arrived in Eisenstaedt’s mailbox, a Fox currier
delivered a script to her Doheny Drive apartment, titled How to Marry a
Millionaire. Marilyn sought Michael Chekhov’s assistance in preparing for the
comedic role of Pola, and Lotte Goslar tutored her in pantomime at the
Turnabout Theatre for the broad physical humor involved in portrayed a near-
sighted fashion model whose vanity prevents her from wearing eyeglasses. The
film would fortify Marilyn’s status as a superb comedienne.
Chapter Twenty-One
 How To Marry a Millionaire

“People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night,” Darryl
Zanuck predicted of television in 1946. He could not have been more wrong. By
1953, cinema attendance dropped to 45,900,000 per week, a decrease of nearly
fifty percent from its peak of ninety million per week in 1946-48. Communism
was not Hollywood’s greatest growing menace; it was the exponentially growing
television industry. In 1953, twenty million American families, half of all
households, owned a television set. Television offered Americans the option of
purchasing a receiver that plugged into an electric socket in the living room and
offered free entertainment for the cost of an initial investment and the
inconvenience of commercial interruptions that sold the products of corporations
sponsoring the programming. To make matters worse for Hollywood, even these
advertisements were designed as entertainment.
Audiences no longer needed to leave the home, stand in line, and sit beside
strangers in silence to enjoy comedy or drama. Entertainment was now available
twelve to fifteen hours per day. John Wayne’s westerns and Gene Kelly’s
musicals were replaced by weekly television shows such as I Love Lucy, Texaco
Star Theatre, Your Show of Shows, Dragnet, Colgate Comedy Hour, and The
Jack Benny Show. To entice the public from the small monochromatic screens in
their homes, the motion picture industry introduced spectacular novelties only
available in theaters: simulated three-dimensional effects, stereophonic sound,
and — the piece de resistance — wide screen projection.
Fox’s Spyros Skouras purchased the anamorphic lenses developed by Henri
Chretien in France and expanded the audience’s peripheral vision by creating a
panoramic, curved screen triple the size of a conventional screen. Fox
announced all films would be made in this new process, called CinemaScope,
similar to the IMAX we have today. Fox now owned two weapons to combat the
threat of television: CinemaScope and Marilyn Monroe. Zanuck wasted no time
in employing both. In fact, he arranged for Marilyn to be photographed in a
bathing suit handling anamorphic lenses while he searched for a property
suitable for her and the expansive screen.
Fox’s biblical epic, The Robe, had already been in production in the standard
process but offered a plot ripe with pomp and circumstance well suited for
CinemaScope. Richard Burton, starring as a Roman centurion, participates in the
crucifixion of Christ and later converts to Christianity. The character had to
convert twice as the film was later re-shot frame-for-frame in the new
widescreen process. Beneath the 12-Mile Reef and How to Marry a Millionaire
were concurrently in production in CinemaScope. The latter would be completed
first but would not earn the distinction of the first CinemaScope film. Fox
delayed its release in order to flaunt the new process with the exotic on-location
scenery, cast of thousands, and pious religious theme contained in the Burton
“sand and sandals” epic.
Even though the public had not had a chance to fall in love with her most
recent character, Lorelei in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Zanuck rushed Marilyn to
the set of How to Marry a Millionaire without adequate rest from the grueling
eighteen-week production. Producer Nunnally Johnson also wrote the screenplay
and slanted the characters to match the leading actresses’ screen personas.
Basing the plot on the play Loco by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert, Johnson
heavily borrowed from Zoe Akins’ play, The Greeks Had a Word For It, and
Sam Goldwyn’s 1932 film version, titled The Greeks Had a Word for Them, with
Joan Blondell, Ina Claire, and Madge Evans. Millionaire was also derivative of
several films about a female trio scheming to snag millionaires: Three Blind
Mice (1938), Moon Over Miami (1941), and Three Little Girls in Blue (1946).
Johnson had earned an Oscar nomination in 1940 writing the film adaptation of
John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
In How to Marry a Millionaire, Johnson’s gold-diggers are Manhattan haute
couture fashion models and friends who pool resources to rent a Sutton Place
penthouse from its tax-dodging owner to bait millionaires for marriage. After a
cold and unproductive winter, they begin pawning the owner’s furniture for the
cash needed to live extravagantly and to mingle with wealthy bachelors. Schatze
Page, the brains of the operation, takes interest in an older cattle baron, J.D.
Hanley, while fighting her attraction to a younger man, Tom Brookman, whom
she believes is poor. Loco Dempsey accompanies a married man, Waldo
Brewster, to a private lodge in Maine, which she thinks is an Elks Lodge filled
with eligible men. After catching measles, she falls in love with a forest ranger,
Eben, whom she mistakenly believes owns the acreage he protects. Myopic Pola
Debevoise avoids wearing her glasses in fear that they will make her unattractive
to men. Stewart Merrill, a phony oil tycoon, pursues her and invites her to meet
his mother in Kansas. Without her glasses, Pola accidently boards a plane to
Atlantic City, meets and falls in love with the owner of the penthouse, Freddie
Denmark.
The film’s Romanian-born director, Jean Negulesco (1900-1993), had been
Oscar-nominated for Johnny Belinda (1948) with Jayne Wyman as a deaf-mute
rape victim. Wyman’s character is tried for killing her assailant when he attempts
to take the child he fathered through the assault. At the age of twelve, Negulesco
ran away from home to Paris, where he washed dishes and learned to paint
before immigrating to California, where he was hired as a sketch artist for
Paramount Studios. Negulesco made considerable effort to build a rapport with
Marilyn by showing her his paintings and pencil sketches and discussing his love
for modern art. He even asked her to pose for him and sketched her portrait in
brown ink. “She’s the girl you’d like to double-cross your wife with,” Negulesco
told Maurice Zolotow. The director remarked about a man having to be deceased
not to respond to Marilyn’s charms.
In the role of Schatze, Zanuck proposed Jane Wyman or Anne Baxter. As
Loco, Fox considered Marilyn, Jane Russell, Lizabeth Scott, and Shelley
Winters. Gloria DeHaven, Gloria Graham, Jean Arthur, Jean Peters, Veronica
Lake, Ann Sothern, and Ann Sheridan were contenders for Pola. Loco’s
character resonated with Marilyn. She liked the role’s snappy lines and lengthy
screen time.
The studio finally chose Lauren Bacall as Schatze and Betty Grable as Loco.
Marilyn was cast as Pola, the beautiful, near-sighted model who is insecure
about her appearance and avoids wearing her eyeglasses — horn-rimmed, cat-
eye shaped spectacles of the 1950s. Pola’s screen time was less than the other
roles, but the character offered a splendid challenge in physical comedy and
pantomime. She regularly walks into walls, boards the wrong plane, bumps into
people, holds a book upside-down, and trips on the modeling runway. Lacking
confidence in her comedic skills, Marilyn protested the role. Negulesco
convinced her that Pola offered her an opportunity to showcase her skills at
deadpan comedy. “Marilyn, don’t try to sell this sex,” he advised. “You are sex.
You are the institution of sex. The only motivation you need for this part is the
fact that in the movie you are blind as a bat without glasses.”
Serendipitously, at the recommendation of Michael Chekov, Marilyn had
already enrolled in warm-hearted Lotte Goslar’s pantomime class at the
Turnabout Theatre to hone her skills for physical comedy. “She wore no makeup
except for a little lipstick,” Goslar remembered. “At first she was shy in
performing before the others, but soon she didn’t mind being observed and
criticized once I set up a project for them to become infants and work out a
character and behavior for that baby, then progress to childhood, youth, maturity
and finally old age with the same character in mind. Marilyn was terribly good at
it and everyone was much impressed.”
Goslar (1907-1997) fled Germany in 1933 when the Nazis rose to power.
Goslar’s signature piece “Grandma Always Danced” surveyed the life span, and
“Life of a Flower” depicted a bloom fighting its way to survive the constantly
changing weather conditions. According to Horst Koegler who penned her
obituary in Dance Magazine in 1998, Goslar’s cabaret work explored “the
oddities of the human condition in vignettes and sketches which stressed the
vagaries and caprices of man and his environment.”
Co-star Lauren Bacall (1924 — 2014) modeled for Harper’s Bazaar
magazine at age seventeen. She perfected what the press referred to as “The
Look,” derived from her unique style of posing with her chin tilted down toward
her chest and her head slightly angled to one side. Bacall’s modeling career
opened a door to Hollywood, and she debuted opposite Humphrey Bogart (1899-
1957) in To Have and Have Not (1944) as Slim. Her classic line in the film
remains iconic: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have
to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just
whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips
together and…blow.”
With sultry looks, a husky voice, and acting chops, Bacall was a sudden hit
with the public and critics alike, and Warner Brothers Studio paired her with
Bogart in a string of film noir classics: The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage
(1947), and John Huston’s Key Largo (1948). In 1945, she married Bogart,
twenty-five years her senior, and the couple settled in a large house in the
exclusive Holmby Hills section of Beverly Hills and had two children. In
response to Bogart’s negative publicity resulting from his appearance before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, the couple traveled to Washington,
DC, in 1947 along with other Hollywood stars in a group that called itself the
Committee for the First Amendment. Frustrated with the studio typecasting her
in roles she found limiting, Bacall rebelled by refusing to perform, leading to
twelve suspensions from her studio contract. Johnson’s script offered her an
opportunity to play comedy for the first time.
Betty Grable (1916-1973), the leading blonde pin-up girl of World War II,
posed for an iconic 1943 bathing suit photo taken by Fox studio photographer
Frank Powolny and made history. With her back toward the camera, head turned
over her shoulder, and hands on her hips, Grable inspired tens of thousands of
U.S. soldiers who tacked copies of the photo on the walls of their barracks. Life
magazine hailed it as one of the hundred photos that “changed the world.”
Grable was widely known to have the most beautiful legs in Hollywood, and Fox
insured them for one million dollars with Lloyd’s of London. In fact, Grable
pressed one of her legs in the wet cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with the
assistance of two handsome GIs in uniform.
Rising to fame in the musical Down Argentine Way (1940), Grable acted,
sang, and danced alongside Victor Mature, Cesar Romero and Dan Dailey in I
Wake Up Screaming (1941), Coney Island (1943), and Mother Wore Tights
(1947). On Fox’s set of the latter film, a young Norma Jeane Dougherty
performed her first screen test.
Grable’s reign as the industry’s box office queen of Technicolor musicals and
comedies peaked in 1947-48, when she earned about $208,000 annually and her
films brought Fox about five million dollars per year. By 1953, Marilyn was
emerging as a contender for Grable’s crown as her recent films had grossed one
million dollars in just three months, suggesting a more youthful and profitable
commodity was on the horizon. In Fox’s advantage, Marilyn earned only about
$26,000 annually. Marilyn’s lesser body of work as a leading star in just a
handful of films earned the studio $250,000,000 by her death in 1962. In 1940,
Fox had groomed a twenty-four-year-old Grable to replace another blonde, Alice
Faye, when Faye’s box office dividends slipped. Now at age thirty-six, Grable
felt humiliated by the karmic kickback of Zanuck’s casting her How to Marry a
Millionaire beside her obviously younger replacement. In her personal life,
Grable was married to Big Band leader and trumpeter Harry James (1916-1983)
and raising two young daughters.
Playing for laughs, Johnson’s script mentioned the men in the lives of Grable
and Bacall. Loco wrongly argues that music on the radio is played by trumpeter-
bandleader Harry James, Grable’s husband. Schatze persuades Hanley that she is
attracted to older men by saying: “Look at Roosevelt, look at Churchill, look at
that old fellow, what’s-his-name, in The African Queen.” Bogart and Katharine
Hepburn had starred in John Huston’s 1951 Academy Award winning classic.
Johnson made no reference, however, to Marilyn’s beau, DiMaggio. Instead, he
scripted Pola reading a book titled Murder by Strangulation, alluding to
Marilyn’s role in Niagara. In the fashion show sequence, Pola models a red
bathing suit and jacket adorned with rhinestones as an announcer says,
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. And this is our proof of it.” Originally, she
was slated to model an outfit called Double Frozen Daiquiris, an obvious double
entendre.
The script pairs each of the actresses with two men, the millionaire each
aspires to marry, and the man each ultimately grows to love. The role of
Schatze’s beau, J.D. Hanley, required an older actor with an established image of
sophistication. Fox appropriately cast William Powell (1892-1985). At age sixty-
three, Powell had been a major star at MGM Studios and was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actor three times; for The Thin Man (1934), My Man
Godfrey (1936), and Life with Father (1947). Powell had been paired with
Myrna Loy in fourteen films, including the popular Thin Man series, in which
they played Nick and Nora Charles, sleuths who solved crimes.
As a young man, Powell lived with his family in Kansas City, Missouri, a
few blocks away from the Carpenters, whose daughter Harlean was Norma
Jeane’s idol, Jean Harlow. Powell met Harlow for the first time after she had
become a star, and the two became intimately involved following the death of
her significantly older husband, Paul Bern. Their May-December romance ended
abruptly with Harlow’s sudden death. She was buried holding a single white
gardenia with an unsigned note, presumed to have been penned by Powell,
reading, “Good night, my dearest darling.” He also paid $25,000 for her
elaborate final resting place, a large private room resplendent with imported
marble in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Norma Jeane had read
all the details in Grace’s movie magazines and envisioned a similar funeral for
herself.
Cast as Tom Brookman, the man Schatze truly loves, Cameron Mitchell
(1918-1994) was one of the founding members of Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio
in New York City. He served as a bombardier in World War II and portrayed
Happy in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a
Salesman in 1949. Three years later, Mitchell recreated the role for the film
version.
As the cantankerous Waldo Brewster, the married man paired with Loco,
Fred Clark (1914-1968) appeared in Flamingo Road (1949), White Heat (1949),
Sunset Boulevard (1950), and A Place in the Sun (1951). Bald and sporting a
pencil-thin mustache, Clark is a familiar-faced character actor who usually
played dour, short-tempered roles. He also appeared in How to Be Very, Very
Popular (1955) and Auntie Mame (1958).
Alex D’Arcy (1908-1996), an Egyptian actor in international films whose
roles were mostly suave gentlemen or rogues, played the swarthy Stewart
Merrill, Pola’s millionaire suitor. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Champagne
(1928) in Great Britain before immigrating to Hollywood, and he played
supporting roles in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Stolen Holiday (1937) and
The Awful Truth (1937). D’Arcy had featured roles in Abdulla the Great and
Soldier of Fortune, both in 1955. Marilyn was earning seven hundred dollars per
week, equal to Darcy’s pay for a supporting role.
Rory Calhoun (1922-1999) had Lana Turner to thank for launching his
career; not his agent. When Calhoun escorted Turner to the premiere of Alfred
Hitchcock’s Spellbound in 1945, he caught the attention of paparazzi, and photos
of the couple were splashed in magazines and newspapers. His career
skyrocketed. In 1952, Calhoun appeared in With a Song in My Heart, Fox’s tear-
jerking musical based on the life of singer Jane Froman and starring Susan
Hayward. He was no stranger to Marilyn, who had worked with him in A Ticket
to Tomahawk. Now Calhoun was paired with Betty Grable as Eben, a forest
ranger in Maine.
The film marked David Wayne’s last of four appearances opposite Marilyn.
He played Freddie Denmark, the owner of the penthouse, who loves Pola even
with eyeglasses firmly perched on the bridge of her nose. Wayne (1914-1995)
earned the first ever Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his
first major Broadway role as the leprechaun in Finian’s Rainbow in 1948. Later
that year, he was one of fifty applicants — out of nearly seven hundred —
granted memberships in the newly formed Actors Studio. In 1949, he played a
charming cad opposite Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam’s Rib
(1949).
After becoming friends with Marilyn on the set of As Young As You Feel,
Wayne challenged her on refusing a role. “I’ve been in this business a long time
and I know what’s good for you,” he snarled. “I’ve been in this business a very
short time,” Marilyn retorted, “and I know what’s good for me better than you
do.” Wayne told Earl Wilson that instinctive wisdom came out of Marilyn’s
pretty mouth. “I adore her,” he added.

When the three female stars assembled on the soundstage for the first time,
the press awaited a mushroom cloud of conflict and cattiness or, at least,
Grable’s bitter resentment of Marilyn. However, Grable immediately embraced
Marilyn and ceremoniously told her, “Honey, I’ve had mine. Go get yours. It’s
your turn now.” In response to Bacall grumbling about Marilyn’s tardiness,
Grable said, “Honey, give it to her. Let’s listen to records until she gets here. It’s
her time now. Let her have fun.” Before long, Bacall found herself also feeling
protective of Marilyn.
Alex D’Arcy and his wife, actress Arleen Whelan, felt compassion toward
Marilyn when they took her to dinner one evening. “I looked into those famous
eyes and saw only a little scared child,” D’Arcy confessed. “I had to avert my
gaze to hide the tinge of pity I felt.” Grable didn’t feel sorry for Marilyn, though,
and this allowed her to enjoy poking fun at the latter’s emerging celebrity,
especially since Marilyn seemed to be taking everything seriously during this
period. Marilyn would call Grable and say in her recognizably whispery voice,
“Hello, this is Marilyn.” “Marilyn who?” Grable would ask, fully knowing there
was only one Marilyn. Grable, who possessed an enormous sense of humor, also
teased her about wearing long white gloves to a dinner event and not taking them
off to eat corn on the cob.
As the production progressed, Marilyn showed Grable a special kindness that
the latter would remember. “[We] were very close,” Grable recounted. “Once…I
got a call on the set. My younger daughter had had a fall. I ran home. And the
one person to call was Marilyn.”
As Negulesco prepared to film an early scene on the penthouse terrace, with
his leading ladies chatting and having a lunch of hot dogs and champagne, and
sitting in chaise lounges, Grable called a time-out. “You can’t appear in front of
the cameras looking like that,” she told Marilyn. Grable had noticed that
Marilyn’s unkempt toenails would be visible in the shot. Negulesco and the crew
waited as a nurturing Grable took Marilyn into the dressing room and gave her a
complete pedicure.
Marilyn’s work ethic and stamina in toiling for long hours impressed
Negulesco. She labored nonstop for twelve hours each day, he told Maurice
Zolotow, and focused only on her work. When greeted in the morning and asked
how she was feeling, Marilyn would reply with a related line from Johnson’s
script. When Negulesco saw Marilyn reading Tolstoy on break, he warned her
someone might think she was a Communist.
Aside from giving Marilyn advice about her reading list, Negulesco also
praised her comedic talents: “She had such a right sense of knowing the
character she was playing — the way to enter a scene, to hold singular attention
as the scene developed, the way to end a scene — so that no other actor existed
around her.” He had criticized the legendary Katharine Hepburn’s comedic
delivery, as Hepburn regularly paused after the punch line in anticipation of the
laugh. In contrast, he appreciated Marilyn’s natural comedic timing and ability to
act as if she wasn’t aware she was being funny.
“If a director is willing to take the trouble to feel out her tempo and go at her
pace, she will give you a superb performance,” Negulesco said of Marilyn.
David Wayne observed the director’s appropriate handling of his fragile star.
“I also recall Marilyn being quite capable in her scenes with [Bacall and
Grable],” Wayne said, “but I’d sit next to Negulesco and watch the three of them
work, and by that time I thought that Marilyn had got a little technique under her
belt.” She would have modestly disagreed.
“Marilyn was frightened, insecure — trusted only her coach and was always
late,” Lauren Bacall wrote. “During our scenes she’d look at my forehead
instead of my eyes; at the end of the take, look to [Natasha Lytess], standing
behind Jean Negulesco, for approval. If the headshake was no, she’d insisted on
another take. A scene often went to fifteen or more takes, which meant I’d have
to be as good in all of them as no one knew which one would be used. Not
easy — often irritating.”
Initially, Negulesco took no offense to Lytess’ interference. In fact, he found
Marilyn’s reliance upon her humorous. Eventually, though, Lytess wore out her
welcome with the director, and on April 13, he banned her from the set. Marilyn
panicked and contacted Charles Feldman for help. “Monroe cannot do a picture
without her,” Feldman pleaded to Zanuck. “The coach threatens to quit unless
she is compensated in a substantial manner.” Without flinching, Zanuck brought
Lytess back and increased her weekly wage to five hundred dollars.
This drama did not hurt Marilyn’s relationships with her co-stars. “I couldn’t
dislike Marilyn,” Bacall wrote. “She had no meanness in her — no bitchery. She
just had to concentrate on herself and the people who were there only for her.”
Marilyn appreciated Bacall’s patience and sought her out to speak privately.
“There’s nobody else I can talk to,” Marilyn told her.
“There was something sad about her — wanting to reach out — afraid to
trust — uncomfortable,” Bacall wrote. She invited Marilyn to the Bogart
mansion in Holmby Hills for an evening of dinner and conversation. Humphrey
remembered meeting Marilyn with Johnny Hyde in 1950 at Romanoff’s and at
the premiere after-party for The African Queen. Harboring his own contempt for
studio hierarchy, Bogart listened to her woes about typecasting and Zanuck’s
insensitivity, and took an immediate liking to her. Bacall spoke about her own
troubles at Warner Brothers Studio and told her guest, “Don’t let them push you
around…I’m a little rebel too. And I know that when you stand up to them, the
bastards back off.” Marilyn seemed envious of the Bogarts’ domestic life with
their children and talked about, in Bacall’s words, “want[ing] to be in San
Francisco with Joe DiMaggio in some spaghetti joint.”
During production, Fox’s Movie Tone newsreel cameramen crowded on the
set to capture Lauren Bacall presenting Marilyn with Look magazine’s
Achievement Award for “Most Promising Female Newcomer” for 1952. Stanley
Gordon, the magazine’s West Coast editor, also presented Marilyn with a copy of
the June issue, featuring a cover photo of her with her co-stars.

The new widescreen process presented a challenge to the motion picture

industry long before it perplexed television editors, who later had to broadcast
these films within the proportions of a square television screen. Directors filmed
longer scenes and several pages of dialogue without a cut or close-up, giving the
appearance of a filmed play. Actors, accustomed to memorizing a few lines for
brief shots that would be spliced with others to create a sequence, were now
required to memorize entire scenes. Additionally, actors or objects toward the
left and right edges of the lens appeared to bulge, adding weight to the actors and
giving new credence to the adage “the camera adds ten pounds”. To compensate
for this effect, Marilyn and her co-stars shed weight for the film.
The anamorphic lenses suited epic films with casts of hundreds and action,
but for Millionaire’s small cast and small sets, Negulesco and cinematographer
Joe MacDonald kept the screen filled by making the actors move or by spreading
them across the sweeping horizontal scope of the screen. When formatted to fit
television screens, nearly half the CinemaScope film is cropped. For example,
the final shot in Millionaire contained all six of the main characters seated at a
diner counter and conversing. The camera remains stationary, as all the speaking
characters are visible on the wide screen. When modified for television or
videotape cassette, only three characters are visible. This is corrected by the “pan
and scan” technique, whereby an editor pans and scans across the widescreen to
keep the action in the middle of the screen, capturing the actor or actors who are
speaking. The effect suggests that the original CinemaScope camera panned,
although it remained stationary. In later DVD versions of the film, the wide
screen ratio is preserved with black bars visible on the top and bottom, a
technique called letterboxing.
David Wayne found filming in the new process unyieldingly tedious. When
shooting the scene inside the plane, the width of the CinemaScope camera lens
required the crew to remove the entire side of the plane. This forced all of the
extras to remain seated inside of the plane, take after take. Marilyn and Wayne
went thirty-eight takes, and everyone in the scene was drenched in sweat from
the bright lights. It was a tormenting workday, Wayne remarked to Richard
Buskin, but the resultant flawless scene was delightful.
 Despite the cumbersome set and blazing lights, Marilyn’s performance was
impeccable. “Monroe plays Pola’s reactions perfectly,” wrote Carl Rollyson.
“Waves of panic move across Pola’s face as she tentatively puts her glasses on.
Denmark’s response is immediate, positive, and decisive. He tells her the glasses
give her a ‘certain difference of distinction,’ and Pola glows with a happy idea of
importance she has never felt before. She is directed to a sense of self-worth, just
as Monroe sometimes depended on the sensitive guidance of others to achieve a
belief in her own strength.”
Marilyn’s comedic talent inspired Negulesco to remark: “In the end I adored
her, because she was a pure child who had this ‘something’ that God had given
her, [which] we still can’t define or understand. It’s the things that made her a
star. We did not know whether she’d been good or bad, and then when we put
the picture together, there was one person on the screen who was a great
actress — Marilyn.”
At first, Grable had top billing, but she left Fox prior to the film’s release;
therefore, Marilyn’s name appeared first in advertisements. The film’s trailer
announced “the grand and glorious adventures of three fascinating females, who
pool their beauty in the greatest plot against mankind since Helen of Troy, Marie
Antoinette, and Venus de Milo!” Posters exclaimed: “The Most Glamorous
Entertainment of your lifetime in CinemaScope. You see it without glasses, Big-
Time, Grand-Time, Great-Time Show of All Time!” In New York, the theater’s
billboard featured an image of Marilyn in a bathing suit standing nearly three
stories tall, towering over smaller images of Grable and Bacall.
On May 11, Zanuck raised Marilyn’s weekly salary from $750 to $1200. “I
liked the raise I finally received to twelve hundred a week,” she wrote in My
Story. “Even after all the deductions were taken from my salary it remained more
money a week than I had once been able to make in six months. I had clothes,
fame, money, a future, all the publicity I could dream of. I even had a few
friends. And there was always a romance in the air. But instead of being happy
over all these fairytale things that had happened to me, I grew depressed and
finally desperate. My life suddenly seemed as wrong and unbearable to me as it
had in the days of my early despairs.” The money couldn’t buy her happiness.
How to Marry a Millionaire opened in New York on October 29, 1953, but
its Hollywood premiere took place on November 4, kicking off the national
release. The fairytale now required the princess to dress up and attend the ball.
On the morning of the premiere, Marilyn’s anxiety hit the roof. As the afternoon
approached, she became nauseous and vomited. She pulled herself together,
dressed in beige slacks, a Hawaiian blouse and loafers, and drove her car from
Doheny Drive to the studio on Pico Boulevard. “I want to be all platinum and
white tonight,” Marilyn requested when she arrived in the dressing room for
Gladys Rasmussen (1915-1987) — whom Marilyn affectionately called
“Gladness” — and Allan Snyder to prepare her. Having worked with William
Powell, Marilyn had experienced a touchstone to her screen idol, Jean Harlow,
and wanted to mimic the deceased star’s signature colors.
The transformation lasted a total of six hours. Rasmussen colored, curled and
styled Marilyn’s hair, worn longer than usual. Snyder applied face and body
makeup. William Travilla was on hand to sew her into a gown from the studio
wardrobe department. Marilyn selected a strapless gown with a heart-shaped
bodice made of white lace over flesh-colored crepe de Chine and embroidered
with sequins. It cascaded into a long white velvet train. She previously wore the
gown on The Jack Benny Show. Except for her panties and white fox fur stole
and muff, the studio loaned Marilyn the outfit: slippers, evening dress, long
white gloves, and jewelry. A messenger delivered diamond earrings, as Marilyn
owned no diamonds or precious jewels.
As the sun began to set, Roy Craft visited Marilyn’s dressing room, wished
her luck, and informed her that the town of Monroe, New York changed its name
for one day to Marilyn Monroe, New York. Then the phone rang. Having refused
to escort Marilyn on this auspicious evening, DiMaggio now called to wish her
well. He wanted no part of the Hollywood ballyhoo. “Give my regards to George
Solotaire,” Marilyn said with a chill in her voice. She had refused a male escort
from the Fox stables and accepted an invitation to join Bacall, Bogart, Nunnally
Johnson and his wife.
The studio limousine drove Marilyn from the Fox lot to the Johnson home,
where a buffet dinner was served. When Marilyn arrived, Johnson gave her a
glass of bourbon and soda while Bacall and Bogart warmly greeted her. Bogart
had recently returned from Italy where he had filmed Beat the Devil. Bacall wore
a Norman Norell sapphire sequined gown, long white gloves, and a sable stole.
Grable was not in attendance. The dinner turned chaotic when the Johnson
children and servants swarmed around Marilyn for most of the evening.
Outwardly, Marilyn appeared joyous, witty, and charming. Inside, she was
nervous and accepted two more glasses of bourbon before the party climbed into
a studio limousine en route to the five-thousand-seat Fox Wilshire Theater on
Wilshire Boulevard and La Cienega Avenue. During the drive, Bogart
lightheartedly coached Marilyn on what to tell reporters: “Tell them you came to
see how you loused up the picture.”
The surrounding five blocks of traffic had been re-routed, and the theater was
encased with police barriers. Huge circling searchlights illuminated the sky and
could be seen for miles. The newsreel cameras focused on the celebrities
arriving for the premiere: Cecil B. DeMille, Mitzi Gaynor, Jeffrey Hunter,
Debbie Reynolds, Shelley Winters, Michael Rennie, Clifton Webb, Robert
Mitchum, Terry Moore and Rock Hudson.
When the limousine arrived, Marilyn and Bacall stepped onto the red carpet
as the crowds shouted, “Marilyn! Marilyn!” Bacall opened her arms in a gesture
of presenting the new star. “This is just about the happiest night of my life,”
Marilyn said into the radio microphones. “I am so thrilled being at my first big
premiere that I could almost cry!” Bacall, Bogart, Marilyn, and Johnson linked
arms and posed for the cameras.
Young people sitting in bleachers erected outside the theater shouted her
name and held out their autograph books. Marilyn walked past the police
barricades and reporters to greet the young people, pose with them for
photographers, and sign some of their books. Bundled in a coat, a young boy
who resembled Joe DiMaggio Junior stepped forward, and Marilyn put her
gloved arm around his neck and rested her head against his as photographers
took their picture.
Inside the theater, established stars stood on their seats to catch a glimpse of
Marilyn. In an April 1954 issue of Movie Spotlight, Earl Leaf described the
scene: “On some feminine faces you could see a look of green envy, or
something that passed for supercilious contempt, but the collective face that
turned toward Marilyn Monroe was tinged more with swoonery [sic] than
snobbery.”
Now intoxicated from the three glasses of bourbon and water, Marilyn
needed assistance to use the restroom of the Fox Wilshire Theatre. Dorris
Johnson accompanied her into the stall and out of the dress. It was an arduous
ordeal to urinate. Johnson commented that women who drink should not be sewn
into their clothes. Marilyn sat beside Bogart, and Bacall sat beside her husband.
When the lights rose at the end, the audience burst into thunderous applause. The
film was a triumph.
Marilyn returned to studio after midnight, where a wardrobe woman waited.
The woman undressed her and took back the gown, gloves, slippers, and
earrings. Marilyn put on her slacks, Hawaiian shirt, and loafers. She placed her
stole and muff in a box and a messenger arrived to collect the diamond earrings.
A guard walked Marilyn to her Cadillac.
Overwhelmed and little hung over, Marilyn wasn’t quite ready to go home.
Instead, she drove along the Pacific Coast Highway. Once back at her apartment,
Marilyn drank a glass of orange juice and took two Seconal tablets. The next
morning, she called Johnson to thank his wife for dinner and for assisting her in
the ladies restroom. Marilyn apologized for getting intoxicated; she had never
drunk so heavily. Johnson dismissed Marilyn’s apology with his southern charm.
Absolved, she sat down to read the reviews.
“The big question, ‘How does Marilyn Monroe look stretched across a broad
screen?’ is easily answered,” announced Otis L. Guernsey Jr. of the New York
Herald Tribune. “If you insisted on sitting in the front row, you would probably
feel as though you were being smothered in Baked Alaska. From any normal
vantage point, though, her magnificent proportions are as appealing as ever, and
her stint as a deadpan comedienne is as nifty as her looks. Playing a near-sighted
charmer who won’t wear glasses when men are around, she bumps into the
furniture and reads books upside down with a limpid guile that nearly melts the
screen.”
Newsweek was similarly overwhelmed: “In particular there is one fashion
show in which Marilyn wears a bathing suit calculated to fetch almost any sort
of fetishist,” its critic proclaimed, “and another powder room scene in which she
appears in a purple-satin ball gown in multiple, thanks to a whole series of
mirrors. The general Monroe effect is thereby raised to something like the nth
power.” CinemaScope had effectively showcased her natural charm.
Overall, critics underscored Marilyn’s comedic skills in addition to her
beauty. “Monroe is a comparative innocent who smiles at anything in hopes it
might be masculine,” wrote Archer Winsten of the New York Post: “Since she
doesn’t want to be seen wearing glasses, she can never be sure. But her shape,
which does not seem to be deteriorating in any way, is sufficient guarantee that a
goodly percentage of human beings in her vicinity will turn out to be male and
virile…It is particularly noteworthy that Miss Monroe has developed more than
a small amount of comedy polish of the foot-in-the-mouth type.”
The ordinarily stringent Bosley Crowther of the New York Times also cracked
a smile. “The baby-faced mugging of the famously shaped Miss Monroe does
compensate in some measure for the truculence of Miss Bacall,” he observed in
the November 11, 1953 issue. “Her natural reluctance to wear glasses when she
is spreading the glamour accounts for some funny farce business of missing
signals and walking into walls.” Marilyn’s proficiency in pantomime created a
standout performance.
Kate Cameron of New York Daily News highlighted the ensemble’s combined
skills. “The picture, in Technicolor, is adorned by a beauteous trio of feminine
stars who play their roles so smartly and ingratiatingly that they keep the
audience in a state of hilarity all through the running of the comedy,” she wrote.
“[Grable, Bacall and Monroe] give off the quips and cracks, generously supplied
by Nunnally Johnson, with a naturalness that adds to their strikingly humorous
effect, making the film the funniest comedy of the year.” Both Marilyn and the
film were a hit.
In its first release, the film earned over nine million dollars, becoming the
second highest-grossing film of 1953 behind Oscar-winner From Here to
Eternity. Marilyn endeared herself to the public with self-depreciating humor.
She successfully played comedy while remaining sexy, like the late Carole
Lombard. Unlike Lombard, Marilyn radiated naïveté and innocence, qualities
that would become her hallmark. “It was the first time that Marilyn was not self-
consciously the sex symbol,” Nunnally Johnson remarked. “The character had a
measure of modesty.”
In July 1953, Betty Grable met with Darryl Zanuck in his green and gold
office in the administrative building on the Fox lot. He suspended her for the
third time in two years when she refused to be loaned out to Columbia Pictures.
Grable stood up from her chair with her legendarily gorgeous legs, and tore up
her contract with five years remaining. She then walked off the lot, vacating her
dressing room. Zanuck swiftly gave it to Marilyn who immediately began
obsessing about when the day would arrive when he would do the same to her.
According to Sidney Skolsky, Zanuck’s treatment of Grable haunted Marilyn
during the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes a few days later. When Grable
eventually returned to Fox as a freelance actress for one last Fox film, How to Be
Very, Very Popular (1955), the studio was grooming Sheree North for the role
Marilyn refused. “Marilyn’s the biggest thing that’s happened to Hollywood in
years,” Grable told columnist Aline Mosby. “The movies were just sort of going
along, and all of a sudden — zowie! — there was Marilyn. She’s a shot in the
arm for Hollywood!”
For decades after Millionaire, Bacall joined Marilyn on lists as legendary
actresses who had never been nominated for an Academy Award. This footnote
ended when she earned a nomination for her Golden Globe winning performance
as Barbra Streisand’s vain and narcissistic mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces
(1996). As the favored nominee and expected winner, Bacall herself seemed
surprised along with everyone else when the statue was presented to Juliette
Binoche for The English Patient. Jean Negulesco went on to direct the
successful Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and retired to Spain, where he
collected art and invested in real estate. William Travilla’s costumes earned him
an Oscar nomination, but he lost to Charles LeMaire for The Robe.
How to Marry a Millionaire successfully distracted the public from
television, so Fox did the small screen a favor by selling the rights for adaptation
into a television series in 1957. The series aired for three seasons, starring
Barbara Eden in the Pola character, now called Loco. Eden was later known as
the sexy blonde genie whose costume of harem pants and a bare midriff
challenged television censorship in the 1960s situation comedy, I Dream of
Jeannie.
Chapter Twenty-Two
 Spring & Summer 1953

In the spring of 1953, the national magazine Redbook awarded Marilyn “Best
Young Box Office Personality” at a ceremony attended by other recipients;
actress and singer Leslie Caron and the comedy duo of Dean Martin and Jerry
Lewis. Marilyn wore a plum-colored dress and matching bolero jacket, which
she later donned during her USO tour in Korea.
Handsome crooner Martin played straight man to Lewis’ childlike goofball
comic character in over a dozen films for Paramount Studios, and the two turned
the awards presentation into a comedy sketch for the newsreel cameras. Marilyn
giggled at their antics. “To my vast regret, the one actress we never performed
with was Marilyn Monroe — and how great she would have been in a Martin
and Lewis picture,” Lewis wrote in his autobiography in 2005.
At the end of their respective workdays, Martin and Lewis routinely invited
Marilyn to dinner at the Nate’n Al Delicatessen of Beverly Hills and Perino’s
Restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. According to Lewis, a lonely Marilyn would
call them at two o’clock in the morning when she battled insomnia and returned
the invitation to all-night diners. “She had a delicious sense of humor,” Lewis
would write, “an ability not only to appreciate what was funny but to see the
absurdity in things in general.”
In the wake of Marilyn’s salary increase, DiMaggio encouraged her to hire a
business manager to assist in paying bills and managing day-to-day finances, and
recommended Inez Melson. His attorney shared a secretary with Melson, whose
office was located on Sunset Boulevard. A business manager would require
Marilyn to itemize her spending and assume some level of control in her life,
and she agreed to this micromanagement contingent upon personally liking the
woman.
Melson arrived on time to the apartment on Doheny Drive, but Marilyn was
tardy. She had contacted Melson’s husband and explained being delayed by
costume fittings for River of No Return. “I loved her the moment I met her
because she was so sweet and so concerned about the fact that she was late,”
Melson told Barry Norman in an interview for the BBC’s documentary, The
Hollywood Greats, in 1979. Marilyn served her a cup of tea and decided quickly
that she could trust and work with Inez Melson.
Marilyn appointed Melson legal guardianship over Gladys, whose needs now
required fulltime attention that she could no longer devote due to the demands of
her career. Marilyn required Melson to visit her mother every Saturday at
Rockhaven and take her on outings. According to Melson, Marilyn avoided
personal visits because of Gladys’ recent extreme negative response to them.
Religious preoccupation had been a major symptom of Gladys’ mental illness
and an indication of the worsening of her condition. During episodes of
psychosis, she spoke of show business as evil. Therefore, anyone involved in the
industry was also evil and to be shunned.
Melson admired Marilyn’s loyalty and dedication to a mother whose serious
illness robbed them of having a normal parent-child attachment. The business
manager was aware of California law that absolved an adult child from financial
responsibility for an indigent or infirmed parent if that parent had abandoned the
child as a minor. Melson regularly communicated with Marilyn about her
mother’s condition and remained committed to Gladys until 1966.
On June 17, Marilyn sat at a dais along with Jane Russell, actor Ronald
Reagan, and his wife, actress Nancy Davis, for Charles Coburn’s birthday
celebration. Reagan and Davis had married the previous year and shared an avid
interest in conservative politics. Reagan served two terms as governor of
California and another two terms as fortieth president of the United States.
In anticipation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes opening at Grauman’s Chinese
Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, the theater’s owner invited Marilyn and Jane
Russell to cast their signatures, hand and footprints in wet cement in the
forecourt on June 26.
Marilyn and Jane appeared at the ceremony in summer frocks. Marilyn wore
a body-clinging white eyelet dress sporting a sweetheart bodice and thin halter
straps. A red satin bow with flowing tail extended from the left side of her waist.
Jane’s polka dot white dress had a full skirt and plunging halter neckline.
Together, they sat on a small platform to write their names in the wet cement
slabs set side-by-side. Marilyn imprinted the title of the film across both. Arm in
arm, they stepped into the cement with their high-heeled shoes. Comedian and
television actor Danny Thomas, popular in ABC’s Make Room for Daddy, was
on hand to congratulate the ladies’ monument.
DiMaggio declined to attend the event but joined Marilyn and Jane afterward
for dinner at Chasen’s in West Hollywood. In the middle of the night, Marilyn
returned to the theater to see her imprints, now cast permanently in the solidified
cement. “It did mean a lot of sentimental ballyhoo to me at the time,” Marilyn
said near the end of her life.
In another honor associated with the film, the Jewelry Academy presented
Marilyn with an award for “The Best Friend a Diamond Ever Had.” Ironically,
she rarely wore diamonds and her personal collection consisted of mostly
costume jewelry.
Chapter Twenty-Three
 River of No Return

“I’m really eager to do something else,” Marilyn announced in 1953.

“Squeezing yourself to ooze out the last ounce of sex allure is terribly hard. I’d
like to do roles like Julie in Bury the Dead, Gretchen in Faust, and Teresa in
Cradle Song. I don’t want to be a comedienne forever.”
Zanuck didn’t fulfill Marilyn’s aspirations by casting her in film version of
plays by Irwin Shaw, Goethe, or Gregory Martinez Sierra, but he did offer her
the western drama, River of No Return. She was displeased with the assignment.
“I think I deserve better than a grade-Z cowboy movie in which the acting
finished second to the scenery and the CinemaScope process,” she said. Co-star
Robert Mitchum disdainfully called it “the picture of no return.”
Marilyn coveted the role of seductive Nefer in The Egyptian, and pleaded for
an opportunity to audition for it, willing to accept Zanuck’s verdict upon seeing
her screen test. Unfortunately, Marilyn couldn’t compete with Zanuck’s Polish
mistress, Bella Darvi. Born Bayla Wegier, Darvi was discovered in Paris by
Zanuck’s wife, Virginia. He signed the exotic beauty to a contract and
incestuously changed her name to a combination of his and his wife’s first
names. No surprise, Darvi played Nefer in the widescreen extravaganza.
Ultimately, Zanuck left Virginia for Darvi in 1956, but bolted when he
discovered she was bisexual. Sadly, Darvi committed suicide by opening the gas
taps on the cooking stove in her Monte Carlo hotel room in 1971.
Screenwriter Frank Fenton set River of No Return during the Northwest Gold
Rush of 1875. After serving a prison sentence for killing a man in self-defense,
widower Matt Calder arrives in a tent city populated by prospectors and miners
to collect his nine-year-old son, Mark, and return to his farm. The man paid to
bring Mark to the meeting place abandoned the boy, and he was looked after by
a beautiful saloon singer, Kay, and her scheming, cardsharp boyfriend, Harry
Weston. Calder thanks the singer for her kindness before leaving with Mark. Kay
and Weston travel down the river on a raft and are attacked by Indians while
passing the Calder farm. Calder rescues them, but Weston steals his horse and
gun, leaving the father and son unable to protect themselves from Indian attacks.
Aghast by her lover’s ingratitude, kind-hearted Kay stays behind. When Indians
set fire to the farmhouse, the three escape on the raft down the river toward
Council City. Kay defends her lover and confronts Calder on having shot a man
in the back. Overhearing this, Mark condemns his father’s action.
 Calder, Mark, and Kay survive the perilous rapids, attacks by Indians and a
mountain lion, and two drifters who attempt to kill Calder and rape Kay. Along
the way, Kay finds joy in caring for the boy, and Calder’s opinion of Kay shifts
from tramp to stepmother for his son. Once reaching Council City, Kay is
horrified when Weston shoots at Calder. Mark is forced to shoot Weston in the
back to protect his father, engendering both understanding and reconciliation
between father and son. Now alone, Kay retreats to a saloon to support herself as
an entertainer. In the finale, sometime later, Calder storms into the saloon while
Kay sings, tosses her over his shoulder, and carries her to his wagon in which
Mark is waiting. As the three ride back to Calder’s new home, Kay tosses out her
red shoes, the last vestige link to her shaded past.
The plot was an American version of Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief,
producer Stanley Rubin told Sandra Shevey, with the protagonist pursuing his
stolen horse and gun. Without them, he and his son will die. In De Sica’s 1948
classic Italian, a desperate man searches the streets for his stolen bicycle that he
needs to get to work and support his family.
Rubin’s challenge was to convince Marilyn that the role of Kay would be a
steppingstone to her goal of becoming a dramatic actress rather than a musical
comedy queen. Five years earlier, he had auditioned her for the television series
Your Show Time, a dramatization of short stories, but selected another actress.
Tables turned, and now Rubin was pursuing Marilyn. His secret weapon was a
recording of three songs with lyrics by Ken Darby and music by Lionel
Newman, slated for Kay. It worked, as Marilyn’s main motivation for accepting
the role was its requirement that she sing.
The earthy role of Kay offered Marilyn a departure from glamour and
elegance. Kay holds her own with rugged prospectors, yet has a kind heart and
an attachment to the child. She maintains loyalty to a man who disappoints her,
while resisting her attraction to a decent man. In the film, Marilyn sang in a
lower register with less breathiness of tone, but she still chose not to speak in her
natural voice.
The saloon scenes provided opportunities for Marilyn to wear William
Travilla’s nineteenth century velvet costumes with corsets, plumes, and bustles,
but she spends most of the film in skin-tight jeans and snug cotton blouses.
Unfortunately, the studio’s hairdressing department missed the mark in matching
Marilyn’s hair extensions to the shade of her natural tresses, making them appear
glaringly artificial throughout the film.
In the final scene, Marilyn wears a gown of gold charmeuse covered with
bugle beading, red fringe accents, and a gold velvet train with red netting.
Travilla recycled this costume donned by Betty Grable during the “Cuddle Up a
Little Closer” number in Coney Island (1953), adding gold silk covered in tiny
gold bugle beads. The dress is trimmed in swirled patterns of red beaded tassels,
and the left shoulder features silk flowers. Actress Debbie Reynolds sold the
gown at auction for $510,000.
“I thought River of No Return could be a lovely piece of Americana,” Rubin
said. He advised Zanuck to hire ‘Wild’ Bill Wellman or Raoul Walsh to direct it.
Zanuck disagreed, as Fox had contracted Otto Preminger for $65,000, and
Zanuck wanted his money’s worth. Rubin opposed the director. Preminger
consented only with financial motivation.
Notoriously rude and domineering, Otto Preminger (1906-1986) was an
Austrian Jew who had been offered a cultural position with the Nazis contingent
upon his conversion to Catholicism. He rebuffed the opportunity and fled to the
United States to serve as an assistant to German stage producer Max Reinhardt
before transitioning to film direction. Preminger became notorious for
controversial films that explored subjects taboo in midcentury American culture.
Released without Production Code approval, The Moon is Blue (1952) was the
first film to use the words “virgin” and “pregnant.” The Man With The Golden
Arm (1957), starring Frank Sinatra, was the first major Hollywood film to deal
with the subject of intravenous drug addiction. The courtroom drama, Anatomy
of a Murder (1959), contained graphic descriptions of a rape. Preminger
eventually turned to acting, and his severe features and Viennese accent
permitted screen roles as villainous Nazis as in Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953).
From the onset, Zanuck had a clear vision of the cast. His memo dated April
1953 advised, “Unless we get a cast that is the equivalent of Robert Mitchum,
Marilyn Monroe, and Rory Calhoun, we should not make this picture as it is
basically a character and personality story. It will come alive only if hot
personalities like Mitchum and Monroe meet head on — then you will have
fireworks but otherwise it will lay an egg in spite of the suspense, excitement
and scenery.” Zanuck paired Marilyn with two male stars with bad boy images
and more jail time served than any of her other co-stars, past or present.
Rugged Robert Mitchum (1917-1997), cast a Mark Calder, shared Marilyn’s
heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes. His Dickensian childhood rivaled Marilyn’s, with the
addition of flagrant juvenile delinquency. Mitchum’s father died in a rail yard
accident when he was an infant. His mother couldn’t manage his defiance, so she
sent him to live with grandparents. After Mitchum was expelled from middle
school for assaulting the principal, he was sent to live with his adult sister in
Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Bad went to worse, and Mitchum was expelled from
high school, but this time there would be no relatives charged to provide
discipline or structure. Mitchum emancipated himself by traveling the country
on railroad cars, supporting himself by digging ditches and professional boxing.
Life on the run ended at age fourteen, when Mitchum was arrested in Savannah
for vagrancy and sentenced to a chain gang.
Once released, Mitchum hitched the rails one last time to California where
his sister, Julie, encouraged him to join a community theater. He also created
material for Julie’s nightclub act, displaying a natural talent for composing music
and writing lyrics. Mitchum eventually married, had a child, and held a steady
job as a machine operator at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Coincidently, he
took lunch breaks with co-worker and buddy, James Dougherty, who shared
photographs of his young wife, Norma Jeane. Mitchum complimented her
beauty and figure, not knowing he would be working with her on a movie set in
less than a decade. Mitchum’s period of stability ended when job-related stress
triggered a psychiatric breakdown manifested by temporary hysterical blindness.
Unlike Marilyn, Mitchum was no-nonsense and professed no method to his
acting. “Look, I have two kinds of acting,” he said later in life. “One on a horse
and one off a horse.” In an interview for the BBC with Barry Norman, Mitchum
defined the role of an actor as to “show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks,
and go home.” In Beyond the Legend, an elderly Mitchum speaks of Marilyn as
“a very special girl with an enormous feeling for people.”
Zanuck chose Rory Calhoun, born Francis Timothy McCown (1922-1999) as
Harry Weston. Like Marilyn, Calhoun was born in Los Angeles. Also like
Marilyn, he was raised without a father. Calhoun’s died when he was only nine
months old. Calhoun’s bad boy screen image proved that art sometimes imitates
life. In adolescence, he racked up a rap sheet nearly as long as his future
filmography. At thirteen, Calhoun’s theft of a revolver brought him to the
California Youth Authority’s Preston School of Industry reformatory. After
escaping, he went on a crime spree, robbing jewelry stores, stealing a car and
driving it across the state line. While Marilyn spent her adolescence in foster
homes, Calhoun spent his in the California criminal justice system. By the age of
twenty-one, he served a three-year incarceration in a federal penitentiary in
Missouri, a sentence in San Quentin Prison, and parole. Calhoun’s good looks
afforded him a life in front of the camera instead of behind bars.
Henry Willson, an agent famous for representing attractive actors heavy in
beefcake and light in talent, signed Calhoun to a motion picture contract and
originally named him Troy Donahue. Several years later, Willson bestowed that
name to Merle Johnson Jr., a former journalism student at Columbia University,
and arranged a contract for him with Universal Studios. Troy Donahue went on
to receive an average of seven thousand letters a week from teenaged female
fans from around the world as he appeared in A Summer Place (1959), Imitation
of Life (1959), and Rome Adventure (1962). Meanwhile, Willson groomed
Calhoun into a charmer with impeccable social skills. Willson also betrayed his
client by blabbing his criminal history to Confidential magazine in 1955 to
prevent the publishing of an exposé about another client’s homosexuality; the
other client was Rock Hudson. The bombshell only served to enhance Calhoun’s
career.
Cast as Mark, Tommy Rettig (1941-1996) was a child star and played Jeff
Miller from 1954 to 1957 in the CBS television series Lassie about a boy and his
loyal Collie. At age six, Rettig appeared onstage with Mary Martin in Annie Get
Your Gun. Unlike Marilyn, he landed a role in The Egyptian.
With casting in place, filming began in late July 1953 on location in Banff
National Park and Lake Louise in British Columbia on the United States —
Canada border. Fox arranged for the cast and crew to travel by train to many of
the sites inaccessible by roads. Handsome Royal Canadian Mounted Police in
distinctive red serge tunics and Stetson hats greeted Marilyn upon her arrival in
Vancouver on July 25 before she continued to Jasper, Alberta. She stayed at
Becker’s Bungalows on the Athabasca River and at the Mount Royal Hotel in
Banff National Park, overlooking the Rocky Mountains.
Almost immediately, Marilyn realized she entered one of the toughest
productions of her career thus far. She faced a rabid director, her own stunts on
the river rapids, and a near drowning. “Otto Preminger, never having been
known for his patience…was terrorizing Marilyn into total immobility…”
Shelley Winters wrote in her autobiography. “She was terrified of not knowing
her lines the next day, and she was convinced that Preminger hadn’t wanted her
in the picture…and that he was secretly planning to do away with her while she
was going over some rapids in a raft, then claiming it was an accident. These
difficult stunts were usually done at the end of the picture by stunt people, but
for some strange reason Preminger was doing them at the beginning and not with
the stunt people.”
Marilyn sounds paranoid in Winters’ account, perhaps in response to
Preminger’s tyranny and recklessness. He informed the cast that the camera
would be close to the raft while it crashed down the rapids of the Athabasca
River, requiring the principal actors — rather than the stunt doubles — to shoot
the dangerous scenes in the violent waters.
As Marilyn, Mitchum, and Rettig sailed on the raft down the river, one of the
ropes broke, and the raft nearly got away from its off-camera handlers. The two
boats standing by with lifeguards set off to rescue the actors, but one broke
down. Marilyn and Rettig clung to each other and a post on the raft, but
Mitchum was thrown into the water and rescued several hundred yards
downstream. Later, the actors learned that their doubles had refused to do the
stunt because of its dangerousness; Preminger had fabricated needing the stars
because of intended close-ups.
“On location Marilyn and I are a lot alike,” Mitchum said. “There’s not a
single day when we can do one single thing completely gracefully. We’re always
in the soup.” Marilyn surpassed his clumsiness on August 19 when she fell off
the raft onto the rocks and sprained her ankle. Shelley Winters alleged that
Marilyn faked her injury to solicit sympathy from Preminger. Winters went so
far as to claim she went out dancing with Mitchum and Marilyn who “forgot”
about her sprained ankle. According to the producer and crew, Marilyn was
really injured and delayed the production several days.
Allan Snyder vouched for Marilyn’s injury. “I carried her out of the river,” he
told Sandra Shevey. “She had slipped. She went out to get the raft, stood on a
rock and slipped. There was a sprain. The doctor put a cast on it. I carried her on
the shoulders for the next week or two.” Photographs show Marilyn ambulating
on crutches and getting piggyback rides from crewmembers. Home movies
reveal that she later played a few rounds of golf with her leg bandaged.
“We put [Marilyn] through a lot on that film,” special effects expert Eric
Wurtzel told Donald Spoto, “and there was never one complaint.” She
instinctively knew the picture required action, hit her marks, and executed stunts
like a pro. The entire crew adored her. Preminger’s adoration of Marilyn,
however, was scant. “He was a Nazi,” recalled Snyder. “He didn’t like people to
say anything to him or argue with him or anything else.” He badgered Marilyn,
making her feel anxious and insecure. Stanley Rubin recalled that Preminger
openly and inappropriately criticized Marilyn’s performances and line reading in
front of the entire crew.
Preminger’s treatment of Marilyn tracked with that of many of her other early
directors. Snyder observed major stars in collaborative discussions with their
directors, analyzing the best way to film a scene, but Marilyn was never afforded
this privilege. “They never respected her for having any brains, power or talent,”
he said. While directors catered to Grable and Gable, Marilyn was treated as an
“outsider.”
Rubin didn’t believe Preminger was getting under the surface with Marilyn in
establishing her motivation in the scenes, and he battled with the director over
this issue. Marilyn’s style meshed with Rubin’s, but even the producer could not
get the director to budge. Instead, Preminger grew infuriated with Marilyn’s
questions about motivation for her character. The director ineffectually explained
Kay’s gradual understanding and bonding with Matt.
Under the guise of camping and hunting with his buddy, DiMaggio arrived
with George Solotaire to support and protect his girlfriend from Preminger’s
wrath. According to Richard Ben Cramer, the closest Solotaire came to camping
was checking into a hotel outside of New York, and the wildest thing he hunted
was corned beef on rye. DiMaggio remained with Marilyn until filming wrapped
and accompanied her back to Los Angeles.
Look magazine dispatched John Vachon to Alberta to photograph Marilyn for
a feature in the magazine’s October issue. The pictures captured a svelte Marilyn
in a black bikini and only one pump — since her left ankle was bandaged — as
she teetered on crutches and conversed with children swimming in indoor and
outdoor pools. Wearing an ecru sweater and pencil skirt, Marilyn posed by the
“Welcome to Banff” sign, beside a taxidermied black bear, with a stoic Canadian
Mounty, and taking photographs with her own camera. Vachon also captured
cozy portraits of her and DiMaggio casually dressed and seated on a windowsill,
a sweeping view of the mountains behind them. Look published only three
photographs, but one hundred were released in the book entitled August 1953:
The Lost LOOK Photos.
While filming in the Rocky Mountains, Marilyn became acutely aware of a
deepening coldness in little Tommy Rettig despite her frequent attempts to
befriend him. She seemed resolved in being unable to win over Preminger, but
she wouldn’t allow the same to happen with her child co-star.
“Tommy, may I speak to you?” Marilyn finally asked. “You seem to be
avoiding me. We’ve never met before, so I couldn’t have done anything to hurt
you. What’s wrong?”
Rettig explained that a priest advised keeping a distance from her. “My priest
told me I could work with a woman like you, and it would be all right,” the boy
said. Marilyn was crushed. However, once Rettig saw Marilyn with DiMaggio,
he warmed to her, and the three went fishing together. Rettig told Richard
Buskin that he got along great with Marilyn. When they filmed on the Bow
River, she invited only him into her private train car. They took turns visiting
each other’s cabins at night and rehearsing lines. Marilyn kept a distance from
the adults, but preferred the company of the eleven-year-old boy.
Battles ensued between director and star when Natasha Lytess crossed
boundaries with Preminger, although they had connections to theater and film
director Max Reinhardt in common. Lytess studied with him, and Preminger had
served as Reinhardt’s assistant, but the memory of this deceased mutual mentor
offered no amiable association between them.
To begin, Preminger directed Marilyn to use her natural way of speaking and
not her exaggerated elocution. Although charming in comedies, it was
inappropriate for a western. Lytess disagreed. “Natasha had a theory that
Marilyn shouldn’t speak in the soft, slurred voice that was so much a part of the
unique image she projected on the screen,” the director would recall. “She
wanted her to enunciate every syllable distinctly. Marilyn didn’t question
Natasha’s judgment. She rehearsed her lines with such grave ar-tic-yew-lay-shun
that her violent lip movements and facial contortions made it impossible to
photographer her. Natasha applauded her on her marvelous pronunciation, which
inspired Marilyn to exaggerate even more. I pleaded with her to relax and speak
naturally…”
Mitchum swatted Marilyn on the buttocks and told her to lose the affected
diction. In one scene, when he tried to kiss her, Mitchum complained to
Preminger: “How can I aim when she’s undulating that way?” Conversely, actor
Marlon Brando irritated directors at another studio by mumbling his lines.
“Marilyn’s ambition was to become a great dramatic actress,” Preminger said.
“She underrated her natural magic in front of the camera. As a result she always
employed a coach…Marilyn clung to these coaches and accepted blindly any
advice they gave her, most of which was bad.”
Natasha finally burned her bridge with Preminger when she counseled
Tommy Rettig. When the child wouldn’t stop crying, Preminger sought out his
mother to determine the source of the problem. She explained that Lytess told
the boy that all child actors lose their talent by the age of fourteen unless they
“take lessons and learn to use their instrument. “Without lessons,” Lytess
supposedly said, “they will lose their talent.” Preminger was furious. He stormed
over to Lytess while she was seated next to Marilyn in a folding director’s chair.
“Get up from that chair and just disappear,” he demanded. After a series of
frantic long-distance phone calls from Marilyn and Charles Feldman, Zanuck
intervened, and Lytess returned to the set.
In retrospect, Lytess imparted wisdom, albeit inappropriately, to the child
star. Wikipedia quotes Rettig in adulthood: “Producers had this general
impression that whatever talents and gifts you had learned how to use as a kid, as
soon as you were twenty-one, dried up. That was for boys. Girls were a different
story. They can go from cute to gorgeous.” Either Lytess’ advice stayed with him
or he experienced its truth.
Standing at the rear of a caboose on a train transporting them to a location
shoot, Marilyn and Allan Snyder marveled at the awesome scenery. Sighing, she
confessed a fantasy to get off the train, disappear from public scrutiny, and never
be heard from again.
Snyder gestured to the vast Canadian Rockies and suggested she and Joe
escape into the mountains, set up housekeeping together, have some children,
and spend the rest of their lives there. After all, Joe disapproved of the film
industry. “I just can’t,” she said without elaboration, her eyes welling with tears
as she linked her arm in Snyder’s.

“K-Day” arrived on August 20, when magazines and newspapers were

permitted to print their stories on the results of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey’s long-term
study of female sexual behavior. At the Indiana University, zoologist Kinsey and
his research team had been studying human sexual behavior since 1938, and
their groundbreaking report on male sexual behavior had been published in
1948. As difficult it as might be to believe this today, the topic of human
sexuality was taboo in American culture in the 1950s. The most controversial
finding was that women enjoyed sex. The nation was abuzz with Kinsey’s
findings on female libido, challenging the public to re-examine its adolescent
attitudes about sexuality.
The previous generation’s Puritan and Victorian attitudes about sexuality
persisted after World War II. The Madonna-Whore complex, a widely held
cultural belief during this period, revolved around the dichotomy of women as
sexual beings falling into the two extremes: the virginal Madonna, disinterested
in sex other than for the purpose of procreation, or the Whore, interested in sex
for pleasure with multiple partners and without remorse. Marilyn Monroe’s
image represented a new, post-war archetype for female sexuality more consist
with Kinsey’s research.
Not everyone was open to Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Reverend
Billy Graham denounced the publication, citing Kinsey “certainly could not have
interviewed any of the millions of born-again Christian women in this country
who put the highest price on virtue, decency, and modesty.” Phil Max may have
welcomed Kinsey’s results, but he faced serious consequences for his celebration
of the female body. The small business owner was arrested in September for
displaying copies of Marilyn’s nude calendar for sale in window of his camera
shop on Wilshire Avenue.
The frenzy surrounding Kinsey trickled down to the Fox soundstages on Pico
Boulevard, where the production returned to film interior photography and
retakes in November and December. Mitchum’s stand-in jokingly asked Marilyn
to have a “round robin,” a 1950s term for group sex. Anthony Summers offers
the following conversation:
Marilyn asked the stand-in to define “round robin.”
“You, me, and Mitchum,” the man replied.
“That would kill me,” Marilyn protested. The stand-in asserted no one had
been known to die from it. They do, she insisted, but the newspapers report the
death from “natural causes.” Perhaps inspired by the recent Kinsey report,
Zanuck scripted two additional scenes to ignite sexual chemistry between
Monroe and Mitchum, which they filmed at Fox.
Having braved the hazards of the Canadian Rockies, Preminger’s tantrums,
and Lytess’ interference, the cast and crew returned to Los Angeles, where
special effects that could not be achieved on location would be created in a
soundstage.
Before computer generated imagery gave audiences lifelike dinosaurs in
Jurassic Park (1993) and blue giants in Avatar (2009), special effects were
created by talented artists instead of by computers. Marilyn, Mitchum, and
Rettig climbed onto a raft in a water tank with a cyclorama providing the sky as
wave makers produced rough waters and spinners turned the water white. The
special effects crew dropped thousands of gallons of water onto them to simulate
the white water rapids.
Mitchum stood on an oak raft in front of a process shot of the raging river
while special effects experts used projectors to shoot steel-headed arrows around
him and between his feet. The forceful projectors drove the arrows deep into the
oak, requiring heavy tongs to remove them. Preminger repeated the action half a
dozen times until he was satisfied with the shot.
Soaked with water and targeted with real arrowheads, Mitchum quickly lost
patience with Preminger and the special effects crew, but Marilyn never lost her
empathy for crewmembers. She directed Mitchum’s attention to a crewmember
in the water tank, who was blasting them with a fire hose. “Look at that poor
man,” Marilyn whimpered. “He’s freezing and turning blue.” She fretted about
him during the entire scene, which resulted in the man’s lingering longer in the
cold water and Marilyn demanding that Preminger relieve him. “Any girl with
that much guts is a really great dame,” Mitchum later said.
Violent rapids and attacks by Native Americans were not enough for Zanuck.
He believed the film lacked an edgy sexual tension and advised the inclusion of
sex and more violence. First, he scripted an entire scene to bring his stars
together in intimate physical contact, while complying with the Production
Code. After surviving the rapids, Marilyn shivers in a cave. Mitchum lights a
fire, helps her out of her boots, and massages her over a blanket. “But at least
we, the audience, know that she is naked under the blanket,” Zanuck dictated in
a memo, “and that they are close together…”
Apparently, the massage sequence fell short of Zanuck’s expectations. In
another memo dated December 2, he choreographed an attempted rape scene that
he predicted “will give us an amazing change of pace to the picture; it will give
us a different kind of scene and it can be loaded with sex and showmanship.” He
believed audiences expect this in a film featuring Monroe and Mitchum. Zanuck
wanted “violent, aggressive” predatory behavior in Mitchum and outlined the
action of the assault and Marilyn’s resistance. He wanted the audience to feel
“she is utterly exhausted and that he actually would have raped her if the boy
had not cried out.”
The macho male atmosphere on the set, with Marilyn the only significant
female among the cast except for a few female extras in the tent city scenes,
created an atmosphere of sophomoric sexual humor. A few members of the crew
interviewed by J. Randy Taraborrelli recounted a joke they played on a
seventeen year-old production assistant by instructing him to deliver Marilyn a
message in her dressing room. They instructed the youth not to knock, just walk
in. Once inside, the assistant stumbled upon Marilyn lying nude on her stomach,
waiting for a masseuse. Immediately aware of the prank on a naïve youth, she
asked, “Did those men set you up?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the assistant stuttered.
“Well, then, you’ll have the last laugh,” Marilyn said. “Please close the door,
take as seat, and stay with me for about twenty minutes. The joke will be on
them.”
“[Marilyn] thought that this whole lark of being a sex goddess or glamour
queen was just that,” Mitchum said. “She would play it, if that’s what they
wanted. As a matter of fact, she burlesqued it, really, because she thought the
whole thing was very, very funny.”
Marilyn was excited to sing four songs in musical numbers choreographed by
Jack Cole. Her most vibrant song, “I’m Gonna File My Claim,” sold 75,000
copies in three weeks, and Fox executives hoped it would land on the Hit Parade,
the 1950s version of the Top 40. “This shouldn’t be hard to do,” assistant Molly
Mandaville told Zanuck, “judging by the fact that the current hit parade
champion is something revolting called ‘How Much is that Doggie in the
Window?’ ” As Marilyn lip-synched to her recording of “One Silver Dollar,” she
simulated playing the guitar. The serious ballad tells the story of the many hands
and circumstances through which money passes. “Down in the Meadow,” the
film’s recurring lullaby sung by Kay to Mark, reflects her maternal feelings
toward the boy. “River of No Return” is a mournful song about a lover lost to the
river performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford during the main titles and reprised by
Marilyn at the film’s ending.
Fox’s music director Lionel Newman composed the songs and coached
Marilyn’s vocals, and Kenneth Darby (1909-1992) wrote the lyrics for all of her
songs. Darby had served as Marilyn’s vocal coach for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and would also coach her on There’s No Business Like Show Business. Adapting
a Civil War melody already in the public domain, Darby would also compose
Elvis Presley’s first hit “Love Me Tender” for the Fox movie of the same name.
In a royalty agreement, Darby gave credit to his wife, Vera Matson, whose name
appears as co-lyricist and co-composer along with Presley. Darby would also
receive Academy Awards for scoring The King and I, Porgy and Bess, and
Camelot.
Filming wrapped before the Christmas holidays with no further incident.
Stanley Rubin said, “I thought Marilyn behaved very nicely on the picture and I
adored her.”
“CinemaScope flames to furious new heights of drama and emotion when
Monroe meets Mitchum,” the trailer for River of No Return announced. “Only
the screen’s most exciting stars…could bring this flaming love story to life!”
Fox ignited the flame by holding the world premiere of River of No Return’s
in Denver, Colorado on April 29, 1954. It premiered in New York the next day
and in Los Angeles on May 5. Cinematographer Joseph LaShelle’s breathtaking
footage of the Canadian Rockies garnered most of the critical acclaim. The New
York Times offered Marilyn’s only accolade: “It is a toss-up whether the scenery
or the adornment of Marilyn Monroe is the feature of greater attraction in River
of No Return…The mountainous scenery is spectacular, but so, in her own way,
is Miss Monroe.”
Others reviewers found little spectacular in Marilyn as a dramatic actress.
“There’s no doubt that Miss Monroe means every bit of business that she’s
required to do in the adventure yarn,” proclaimed the Los Angeles Herald-
Examiner, “but the heavily dramatic elements of the film are just a little too
much for her at this point in her acting career. Never let it be said, however, that
she isn’t an eyeful, a dish, a doll and a dolly-heart.”
“If River proves anything at all, it is that Marilyn Monroe should stick to
musicals and the type of entertainment that made her such a box office lure,”
announced the Hollywood Reporter. “If the film fails to bring in smash returns,
20th-Fox can attribute it to Marilyn’s inability to handle a heavy acting role.
Most of her genuine values are lost here.”
“Mr. Mitchum and the other males seem at home among the mountains and
trees, and that leaves only Miss Monroe as the picture’s vibrant question mark,”
observed the New York Post. “There is something at once incongruous and
strangely stimulating in Miss Monroe’s dazzled and dazzling antics in the
surroundings of nature. She herself is a leading representative of the natural
instinct mentioned previously, and she is also, by reason of the artificial aspect of
her coloring and makeup, in opposition to nature. This creates a kind of tension,
not too clearly defined, but very easily translated into publicity, popularity, and
public interest.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
 Autumn 1953

When the British avant-garde poet Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) visited
the United States in 1953, she announced an objection to Beat poets with body
odor and a fondness for Marilyn Monroe. “She was like a sad ghost,” the
eccentric poet said, finding her grossly mistreated. Life had commissioned the
poet to write an article about her visit to Hollywood and arranged for an
introduction with Marilyn, suspecting the two women would have nothing in
common but the details of their meeting would make interesting reading.
Photographed together by George Silk, the two women made an unlikely pair
but experienced a connection while discussing poetry. With a crooked beak of a
nose and a penchant for dressing in medieval-style brocade gowns, turbans, and
many rings, Sitwell was a visual contrast to Marilyn. In Silk’s photo, Marilyn
sits with perfect posture on the sofa, facing Sitwell. She wears a modest dress,
gloves, and pumps. Her right leg is tucked under her left in ladylike fashion.
Marilyn smiles vibrantly as she looks into Sitwell’s eyes. In a long, Old World
gown and turban, Sitwell slouches with her back against the arm of the sofa. Her
elbow rests on the back of the sofa, and her hand touches her face. She smiles
with apparent delight and looks into Marilyn’s eyes. “We talked mainly, as far as
I remember, about Rudolf Steiner, whose works she had just been reading,”
Sitwell recalled in her autobiography, Taken Care Of.
Cast aside by unloving parents and raised by a governess, Sitwell related to
Marilyn’s vulnerability. Unlike Marilyn, the poet never married but had a close
attachment to the gay Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. A trailblazer in literary
circles, she rebelled against traditional prose and wrote groundbreaking verse in
the rhythms of modern jazz. Sitwell’s most popular work, Still Falls the Rain,
was about the London blitz. She also edited Wheels, a journal of poetry.
Marilyn made an indelible impression on Sitwell, who would describe her as
extremely sensitive, “quiet, with great natural dignity and extremely intelligent”
and compare her to a beautiful flower. “On the occasion of our meeting she wore
a green dress,” Sitwell wrote, “and, with her yellow hair, looked like a daffodil.”
Before the encounter ended, Marilyn received an invitation to join the poet for
lunch if she ever visited London.
To promote the latest Monroe film in release, Fox allowed Marilyn’s
television debut in the season opening episode of The Jack Benny Show
broadcast by the CBS network and filmed at the Shrine Auditorium. She played
herself, or rather her affected onscreen persona a la Lorelei Lee, in a sketch titled
“Honolulu Trip.” In a dream sequence aboard a luxury ocean liner, Benny
awakens on a deckchair to find Marilyn Monroe lounging beside him in an
evening gown, the same one she would wear to the premiere of Millionaire.
They engage in a comic routine ending with Marilyn singing live, “Bye Bye
Baby.” When Benny emerges from his dream-state, he is disenchanted to see that
Marilyn has transformed into a large, unattractive passenger. With equal
disappointment, the course woman quips, “You’re no Errol Flynn.” Marilyn is
letter-perfect in delivery and singing in the live broadcast on September 13,
dispelling the urban legend that she needed multiple takes on delivering the
shortest line. After the sketch, she engages in a comic exchange with Benny
about his poorly received film, The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945).
“I believe if that had been made in CinemaScope, it would have been a huge
success,” Benny says.
“You know, CinemaScope is very complicated,” Marilyn explains, setting up
Benny’s next punch line. “In order to put the big screen in all the theaters, they
have to take out a lot of seats.”
Benny rolls his eyes and says, “Well, in my picture they could have taken out
all of the seats!”
Benny thanked Fox for loaning Marilyn and expressed feeling honored and
flattered to host her small-screen debut. “She was superb,” he recalled. “She
knew the hard-to-learn secret of reading comedy lines as if they were in a drama
and letting the humor speak for itself.”
Comic Jack Benny (1894-1974) was a notable radio, film, and early
television star and accomplished violinist. He and his wife, Mary Livingston,
enjoyed success in a long-running radio comedy and were personal friends of
Marilyn. His on-air and on-screen entertainment persona was somewhat
effeminate. Benny’s comedy played on a vanity about his blue eyes and age (his
famous line was about perpetually being thirty-nine), his hand and arm gestures,
catty one-liners, and springy walk. The research of Alexander Doty recounts an
anecdote about Marilyn demonstrating her famous wiggling walk for Benny and
the crew during a rehearsal of the show. “I don’t know why everyone raves about
Marilyn,” Benny kidded. “I’ve got a pretty attractive ass myself.”
Although the Fox contract prohibited Marilyn from accepting financial
payment for a television performance, the studio allowed her to accept a 1954
black convertible Cadillac Eldorado coupe with red leather interior as a gift from
Jack Benny. The front bumper sported artillery shell shaped chrome styling
elements commonly referred to as “Dagmars,” named after Dagmar (1921-
2001), an ample-bosomed television personality.

At three o’clock in the morning on September 28, Doc Goddard found his
fifty-nine year-old wife, Grace, dead in their bed in their small bungalow on
Odessa Drive in Van Nuys. An empty vial of medication was on the nightstand.
An autopsy revealed Grace’s cause of death as an overdose of the barbiturate
phenobarbital and detected a fatty metamorphosis of the liver, the latter caused
by years of alcohol abuse. According to Berniece, Doc allowed Marilyn to
believe Grace had died of cancer, and Marilyn complained he should have
encouraged his wife to undergo surgery. When Marilyn informed Gladys of the
death of her loyal long-time friend, the paranoid woman responded by stating
that if Grace had not died of cancer — or an overdose — someone would have
killed her.
Grace’s burial took place on October 1st at Westwood Village Memorial Park
Cemetery near the home of her sister, Enid. After the service, Marilyn
approached Doc and offered him anything he needed, including money. She
acknowledged his and Grace’s support during her childhood and expressed a
desire to support him in his hour of need. Putting aside Doc’s alleged sexual
advances toward her as a minor, Marilyn encouraged him to call her. “Grace’s
death seemed terribly sad and needless to Marilyn and me,” Berniece wrote,
“and we never got over it.”
A letter to Doc Goddard from Inez Melson dated November 23, 1953, implies
Marilyn funded Grace’s funeral or perhaps helped the widower of her childhood
guardian. “During a conversation with her on Saturday morning she asked me to
send the enclosed check to you today,” Melson wrote. “Miss Monroe mentioned
that she was going to call you about the above mentioned check…I thought it
best to write a note with the check so you would know that it was in accordance
with her instructions that we are sending it.” Marilyn also gave Doc her bedroom
furniture, including an antique vanity table. In December 1972, Ervin “Doc”
Goddard died in an automobile accident in Ventura along with his fourth wife,
Annie Rundle.
Shortly after Grace’s death, Marilyn reached out to the Bolenders by calling
their home on Rhode Island Avenue — renamed East 134th Street — in
Hawthorn, where they raised her until age eight. Albert Wayne answered, and
she expressed interest in their wellbeing. Never knowing Marilyn as a famous
actress, he called her Norma Jeane and extended an invitation to visit when Ida
was home. Marilyn would never take him up on the offer or make contact with
the couple again. Albert died on May 3, 1974, nearly two years to the day after
Ida’s death.

Twenty-odd guests boisterously played charades at a party hosted by actor-

dancer Gene Kelly (1912-1996) and his wife, Betsy Blair, in their home on
North Rodeo Drive, the last original farmhouse existing in Beverly Hills. The
two teams shouted out guesses as each guest mimed a book or film title, word or
phrase. Physically nimble and facially expressive, Kelly was at the top of both
this game and his musical film career but Marilyn was also talented at
pantomime and trained in the art by Lotte Goslar, so she got her team to
correctly guess based upon her precise and clever gestures. She had arrived late
on crutches, still recovering from the ankle injury in Canada.
Marilyn was especially exuberant on this evening and had recently decided to
marry DiMaggio early the next year. She gravitated to Milton Greene, visiting
from New York, with whom she had connected four years earlier at a dinner
party at the home of Rupert Allan. Earlier in the week, Greene had photographed
individual portraits of Marilyn, Kelly, and Frank Sinatra on the Fox lot for
covers of Look magazine. This evening, newlywed Milton was accompanied by
his bride, Amy Franco (born 1929), a former model of photographer Richard
Avedon, now employed as a fashion advisor. The couple had wed in September,
and this work-related trip to Los Angeles to photograph designer Rudi
Gernreicht’s collection of gowns served as their honeymoon. Marilyn had sent
them five dozen roses as a wedding gift. “That was class,” Amy said at a
memorial service held on the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn’s death.
More than wedding plans prompted Marilyn’s exuberance. Milton had
proposed partnering with her to form an independent production company so
that they may choose scripts, directors, and take total control of her career. This
bright and creative photographer shared Marilyn’s vision for dramatic roles in
high quality, artistic films and offered deliverance from Fox’s narrow plans.
Milton’s eagerness to help orchestrate her future based upon her own designs
seemed a promising and pivotal next step after Johnny Hyde’s launch of her
stardom. His limited experience did not concern her. “Producing a movie isn’t all
that different from what I’m doing now,” Milton told Marilyn. “I have half a
dozen assistants in my studio back in New York. I’m forced to job out a lot of
my work, so in a sense, I’m already a producer.”
Most of Milton’s photographic sessions with Marilyn that fall took place in
natural settings or in the homes of her friends. He captured her looking like the
girl next door in a simple white blouse and full floral skirt as she lounged on the
limb of a tree in Laurel Canyon. Posed with hairdresser Sidney Guilaroff’s
Pekinese dogs or leaning on the carved statue in Joseph Schenck’s living room,
Marilyn appeared casual and natural, a stark contrast from the traditional formal
glamour poses produced at Fox. Milton tapped into Marilyn’s soul in ways
unlike other photographers. She looks earthy and somewhat mournful in
corduroy capris and a matching top seated on bales of hay on a farm, and
displays a refreshing beauty juxtaposed against the rugged backdrop of a rocky
terrain. Even Milton’s studio images of Marilyn in a black and white silk and
lace negligée and playing a balalaika produced an interesting series of
compositions. Look chose one of the latter poses for its cover, but cropped the
Russian string instrument.
With an excitement in her heart and racing thoughts of having control over
her work, Marilyn joined DiMaggio in San Francisco, where they cohabitated in
his house on Beach Street. His widowed sister, Marie, taught her how to prepare
tomato sauce for pasta and other traditional Italian cuisine. Marilyn might
actually be able to have it all: marriage, family, and career — not a combination
First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and most of America would approve.
In an effort to balance her career with quality time spent with the man she
loved, Marilyn joined DiMaggio for a fishing excursion in his boat, The Yankee
Clipper, in Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco. Dario Lodigiani (1916-2008), a
retired baseball player for the Philadelphia Athletics who now scouted for the
Chicago White Sox, accepted an invitation from Joe to join him and Marilyn
with his fishing pole. Interviewed at age ninety-one by journalist Ed Attanasio,
Lodigiani recalled motoring in the bay without a bite on their hooks until
Marilyn hooked a big striper that swam off with her fishing line.
“Hold on!” Lodigiani told her. “When the fish lets up, that’s when you reel
him in a little.”
Marilyn followed his instructions and struggled to clutch the pole against the
strength of the fish.
Lodigiani begged DiMaggio to help her.
“She hooked it,” Joe said. “Let her bring it in.”
Marilyn jammed the pole under her left arm and used her right to reel. The
pole pressed hard against her breasts.
“Joe, you better take that pole,” Lodigiani ordered. “She’s going to pop one
of those things!’ ” They all laughed, and Marilyn reeled the fish in on her own.
 Joe DiMaggio, Junior, who turned twelve on October 23, also joined his
father and Marilyn on fishing trips and other excursions. Joe Senior was already
absent from Little Butch’s early childhood memories, and Marilyn made it her
mission to change all that. In her divorce petition, Dorothy Arnold stated that she
had hoped the birth of their son would have made her husband “realize his
responsibilities as a married man” but “even the baby’s arrival did not change
him.”
When the boy was three, DiMaggio and Arnold officially divorced, and he
was sent to live in military schools such as Black Foxe Military Institute, near
Paramount Studios in Los Angeles; he also lived at various summer camps.
Arnold resided in Los Angeles, and DiMaggio alternated between San Francisco
and New York. One would imagine DiMaggio playing catch with his son during
their visits, but instead — according to Joe Junior’s former wife — the boy
allegedly entertained himself by riding up and down the elevator of the hotels
where his father stayed. When Sport magazine requested a photo of father and
son for its 1949 cover, a limousine collected Joe Junior wearing his baseball
uniform and whisked him to a photographic studio. They took the picture
together, and the boy was driven back home. “My father and I didn’t say two
words,” Joe Junior told Richard Ben Cramer.
Sadly, Joe Junior believed he either made his stern and distant father mad, or
that he disappointed him. However, when Marilyn spent time with them, his
father was warmer and acted nicer. No stranger to childhood emotional neglect,
Marilyn intuitively felt the boy’s pain and made a concerted effort to connect
with him and serve as a bridge to facilitate a bond between father and son. She
developed a close relationship with the boy that would last until her death. In
fact, Joe Junior borrowed a large sum of cash from Marilyn shortly before she
died.
Once Dorothy learned the extent of her son’s attachment to Marilyn, she
petitioned the court to limit DiMaggio’s visitation rights, claiming he was
exposing the boy to adult conversations and situations. The wise judge spoke to
the boy privately in chambers and dismissed the case. In later life, Joe Junior
considered the time he spent with his father and Marilyn during their courtship
and nine-month marriage to have been the most stable he had experienced in
childhood. After their divorce in 1954, father and son became estranged once
again. Joe Junior attended Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, where he played
football, and although DiMaggio lived in nearby New York, he allegedly spent
little time with his son and never attended his football games.
 On November 4, Marilyn returned without DiMaggio to Los Angeles for the
triumphant premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire. Nunnally Johnson served as
her escort. “It was the most beautiful party of my life,” she exclaimed. “It was
like when I was a child and I dreamt that wonderful things happened to me. But
it’s weird how the success can attract the people’s hate on you. I wish that it
wouldn’t happen. It would be terrific to take advantage of success without seeing
jealousy in the eyes of the people surrounding you.”
Milton’s cover image of Marilyn with her hand resting on her face and a
cigarette uncharacteristically held between her fingers appeared on the
November 17 issue of Look. In an expression of gratitude, she sent a dozen roses
to his apartment in New York.
A promotional copywriter at Esquire magazine’s Chicago office borrowed
one thousand dollars from his mother and created the first issue of Playboy
magazine in the kitchen of his modest home. Released in December 1953, the
undated issue featured Marilyn waving in the dress with the plunging neckline
from the Miss America Parade, but Hugh Hefner had doubts about his ability to
produce a second issue. He featured the most famous of Tom Kelley’s nudes of
Marilyn in the magazine’s centerfold, titled “Sweetheart of the Month.” There
would be many more issues of Playboy, but each subsequent centerfold model
would be titled “Playmate of the Month.” Hefner’s exploitation of Kelley’s
classic pose ensured the magazine’s overnight success, and he credited Marilyn
in part for the magazine’s rise to popularity and his resulting fortuitous empire.
Hefner showed his gratitude to Marilyn by purchasing the crypt beside hers for
his final resting place. Mint condition copies of the first issue of Playboy sold for
over five thousand dollars in 2002.
As issues of Playboy sold at newsstands, Marilyn returned to the Fox lot for
ten days of retakes for River of No Return, and learned her next assignment was
Pink Tights. According to varying sources, the film was either an adaptation of
an upcoming Broadway musical, The Girl in Pink Tights, or a remake of Betty
Grable’s 1943 musical, Coney Island. Marilyn shuddered at the title and its
obvious implication of another stereotyped showgirl role. Despite the allure of
Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra as co-star, she felt shackled by the studio’s limited
perception of her abilities and complained to Charles Feldman. He issued a
memo to the studio’s management parroting Marilyn’s objection.
When Marilyn read the script, she was mortified. The musical followed a
virtuous schoolteacher who works as a burlesque dancer in the Bowery to earn
money to pay for her fiancé’s medical college tuition. There was no point in
being a movie star if she had to play parts which made her feel ashamed,
Marilyn thought, shuddering at a mental vision of Joe frowning at her image on
the theater screen.
DiMaggio arrived in Los Angeles to battle for the honor of his future wife.
He contacted attorney Lloyd Wright to avert Marilyn’s obligation to appear in
another film until her contract could be renegotiated. Wright conveyed these
demands to Charles Feldman — now in Switzerland to support his former wife,
actress Jean Howard — who was undergoing surgery.
As the Thanksgiving holiday approached, the couple drove north in
DiMaggio’s blue Cadillac to San Francisco to spend time with his extended
family. The festivities were interrupted by calls from Feldman and Wright using
code names so that Joe’s widowed sister, Marie, would put the calls through to
Marilyn.

On December 5, Fox’s casting director summoned Marilyn to the lot for

rehearsals. She was a no show again two days later. Darryl Zanuck intervened by
ordering her to the studio for retakes on River of No Return. Marilyn refused.
Zanuck instructed Natasha Lytess to place pressure on his recalcitrant star, but
when the coach contacted her by telephone, protective Joe screened the call and
redirected her to Wright. To stay on as her coach, Natasha demanded five
thousand dollars from Marilyn in order to continue payment on two mortgages in
the event the studio terminated her services along with its star’s. Marilyn felt
betrayed and joined others in perceiving Natasha as a manipulating opportunist.
In his next line of defense, Zanuck appointed Roy Craft from the studio’s
publicity department to visit Marilyn’s apartment, but Joe prevented him from
entering. Fox could not penetrate DiMaggio’s effective safeguarding.
Fox’s attorney Frank Ferguson drafted an official document demanding
Marilyn’s cooperation and threatening breach of contract, and Zanuck sent
Feldman a transatlantic telegram warning him of the potential destruction of
Marilyn’s career. The mogul refused to give his star script approval. Backing
down, Feldman’s agency issued Marilyn written notice of her obligation to
report to work.
Marilyn’s fate was negotiated at the Plaza Athénée in Paris, where Charles
Feldman met with the President of Fox, Spyros Skouras, and discussed her
demands. Feldman advocated for Marilyn’s less frequent appearances in films,
believing overexposure would diminish public interest. In his opinion, she had
too many films in release in 1952 and 1953. Additionally, Feldman advocated
for her control over the choice of scripts, directors, and cinematographers.
Skouras listened and agreed to present the demands to the Fox board of directors
in New York City.
Fearful of being suspended and having no income or significant savings to
support herself and her mother, Marilyn arrived at the studio on December 11
and worked on retakes for River of No Return until the Christmas holiday. In the
evenings after work, she participated in the Toys for Tots Campaign sponsored
by the U.S. Marines Corps, a charity that collected toys as holiday gifts for
underprivileged children.
With a ticket under the name of Miss Norma Dougherty, Marilyn boarded a
Western Airlines plane en route to San Francisco at 11:45 pm on December 23 to
spend the holidays with DiMaggio and his family. Joe’s sister, Marie, hosted
Christmas Eve dinner and cooked a large traditional holiday meal of seven
fishes. At midnight, the family exchanged gifts. Joe reached under the decorated
tree and pulled out a large box in shiny giftwrap and handed it to Marilyn. She
lifted up the top and pulled out a glistening mink coat from Maximillian, a
replacement for the fur she sold to help Natasha make a down payment on a
house.
Eartha Kitt’s recent release of “Santa Baby” played on the radio during the
Christmas holiday of 1953. Lorelei Lee could have sung the lyrics, written by a
female, as they depict a woman requesting sables, yachts, and “decorations”
from Tiffany’s from a Sugar Daddy Santa Claus. Madonna also released a cover
of the song in 1987, and Marilyn was incorrectly identified as the vocalist of
both versions of the tune on the Internet.
Before leaving Los Angeles, Marilyn’s studio call sheet specified Pink Tights
would start on Monday, January 4, 1954. Instead of getting angry, she felt sad.
“When the rest of the world was looking at someone called Marilyn Monroe,”
she wrote, “Mr. Zanuck in whose hands my future rested, was able to see only
Norma Jeane — and treat me as Norma Jeane had been treated.”


Part V
Mrs. Joe DiMaggio
Chapter Twenty-Five
 January-May 1954

The Christmas and New Year’s holidays with the extended DiMaggio family
were the best of Marilyn’s life. The house was filled with laughter, warmth,
food, gifts, and happy children. The experience provided a taste of what life
might be like if she married into this Italian-American family. Joe had been
talking about marriage for months. She and Joe acknowledged their challenges
as a couple but could not give each other up. They could not go on living apart in
parallel lives in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and believed marriage was the
only solution to their problem. In Marilyn’s version of the proposal, Joe queried,
“You’re having all this trouble with the studio and not working so why don’t we
get married now?” It made sense to her, and she said yes.
Joe planned to take Marilyn with him to Japan, where he was scheduled to a
twenty-four day promotional tour to train the six teams in the Japan Central
League for the 1954 season. The event, organized by Yomiuri Shimbun (a leading
Japanese newspaper), could also serve as their overseas honeymoon. Joe was
practical, Marilyn thought. He possibly hoped Marilyn’s battle with the studio
might signal the end of her career, and perhaps if she were married, she would be
less motivated to salvage it. Moreover, being a wife and mother might fulfill her
more than the caliber of work Fox was offering. Being chosen as a wife by a
national hero provided validation to Marilyn. She had never imagined being the
wife of a great man, and she also recognized Joe had never imagined marrying a
woman who was “eighty per cent publicity.” Their New Year’s Eve kiss sealed
the plan.
On New Year’s Day, the Motion Picture Herald named Marilyn as recipient
of the Award of Achievement for her high-ranking position as one of the “Top
Ten Money-making Stars of 1953.” Three days later, Fox placed her on
suspension for not reporting to the set of Pink Tights. “I take pride in my work,
and I’m a human being…” Marilyn told Marie Torre of New York Herald-
Tribune Television and Radio. “If I keep on with parts like the ones [the studio]
has been giving me, the public will soon tire of me.” Fox turned to Judy Garland,
a star not under contract, as Marilyn’s replacement, but even she declined the
role.
At Tom DiMaggio’s birthday party on January 12, Joe stole some of the
spotlight from his brother by announcing his plans to wed Marilyn. Everyone
was overjoyed. Marilyn was embraced, kissed, and welcomed into the fold. The
next day, UCLA graduate Doreen Provost, an assistant buyer in the bridal
department at I. Magnin Company in San Francisco, was called to assist a couple
getting married at City Hall in San Francisco. She entered the designer salon and
found Marilyn and DiMaggio waiting for her. America’s most famous engaged
couple explained plans for a traditional wedding, even though Archbishop John
Mitty refused their request to be married in DiMaggio’s place of worship, Saints
Peter and Paul Catholic Church in the North Beach neighborhood, based upon
their previous divorces.
“Marilyn was sweet, shy and very quiet,” recalled Provost, who assisted in
accessorizing her selection of a conservative chocolate suit with high ermine
collar. [After the DiMaggio divorce, Marilyn gave the suit to Amy Greene who,
in turn, gave it to her mother.] Provost ensured that Marilyn followed the
traditional custom by wearing something old (a pair of earrings), something new
(the suit), something borrowed (the saleswoman’s handkerchief), and something
blue (a garter from the ladies’ department.) Marilyn thanked Provost profusely
before she left with her purchases on DiMaggio’s arm. “What I learned that day
was that beauty, fame, money and a charismatic husband cannot overcome
feelings of insecurity,” the former saleswoman told BurkePatch.com fifty years
after Marilyn’s death. “The waste of that sweet young woman still haunts me.”
While the DiMaggios shopped on Stockton Street in Union Square, Joe’s
former teammate from the San Francisco Seals, Reno Barsocchini, contacted a
friend, Judge Charles S. Perry, City Officer, to make arrangements for a discreet
civil wedding at the San Francisco Town Hall on Howard Street.
At ten minutes to noon on Thursday, January 14, Marilyn made a long
distance call to Harry Brand at Fox to announce her wedding would take place
within the next hour. Despite all the secrecy, more than one hundred journalists
and photographers invaded the lobby and corridors of the town hall, rebuilt after
the earthquake of 1906.
Marilyn and Joe arrived with Joe’s friends and members of his family
including Frank “Lefty” O’Doul and his wife, Tom DiMaggio and his wife, and
George Solotaire. Reno Barsocchini was best man. Marilyn held three orchids,
and Joe wore a dark blue suit with blue and white polka-dot tie, the one he wore
during their blind date nearly two years earlier. A carnation was pinned to his
lapel. None of Marilyn’s family or friends attended. The wedding party and
guests climbed the majestic stairs to the Ceremonial Rotunda.
Joe signed the marriage certificate and listed his age as thirty-nine. Marilyn
signed her legal name, Norma Jeane Mortensen Dougherty, but sliced two years
off her age. Joe’s brother and Barsocchini signed as witnesses. Judge Perry
permitted only the couple and their guests into his chambers, leaving the
journalists to peek through the window in the door and the transom overhead.
The ceremony started at 1:48 p.m. and ended three minutes later with the
word “obey” deleted from the vows. Marilyn placed a gold wedding band on
Joe’s finger, and he placed on hers a platinum eternity ring with thirty-five
baguette diamonds. Privately, he promised that if she predeceased him, he would
send flowers to her grave just like William Powell had for Jean Harlow.
After Judge Perry pronounced Joe and Marilyn man and wife, they held a
brief press conference surrounded by shelves of legal books. As photographers
snapped their shutters, Joe gave his bride a passionate kiss and smeared her
lipstick. When asked how many children they wanted, Marilyn responded, “I’d
like to have six,” as Joe simultaneously replied, “One.” Had they discussed this
issue in private? Marilyn said she “couldn’t be happier,” but would “continue to
work” even though she was “looking forward to being a housewife, too.”
Surrounded by Joe’s family and friends, the newlyweds exited the judge’s
chambers and fought their way through the crowd of press, only to wind up at
the dead-end of a third floor corridor. They turned around and moved through
the crowd for a second time before reaching an elevator. Joe exchanged heated
words with a member of the press, who accused him of dodging loyal fans.
Stepping into the elevator, Marilyn realized she had forgotten her coat in Judge
Perry’s chambers. They decided not to go back. Arriving on the first floor, the
elevator doors opened to another mob, and Joe hit the button to proceed to the
basement. When the elevator doors opened again, another crowd stood waiting.
Holding hands and smiling, Marilyn and Joe rushed through a gauntlet of two
hundred reporters and a mob of about three hundred fans, exited the building on
McAllister Street, and darted into Joe’s sleek Cadillac. Marilyn waved as Joe
pressed his foot on the accelerator and speed off. Judge Perry sighed bleakly as
he told reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, “I forgot to kiss the bride.”
The couple met family members with cameras at Saints Peter and Paul
Church on Washington Square to pose for photographs on the church steps
before heading south on the highway. They stopped in Monterey for lunch and
then got back on the highway. At eight o’clock that evening, a weary DiMaggio
pulled into the Clifton Motel on First and Springs Streets in Paso Robles, near
San Luis Obispo (now the Clifton Apartments), and requested a room with a
television. The proprietor, Ernest Shape, asked if the couple preferred twin beds.
“Oh, boy,” DiMaggio snapped as he paid the tariff of four dollars. “I’ll say not.”
They hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on their doorknob and emerged fifteen hours
later.
Without a sip of coffee or a bite of breakfast, the newlyweds checked out at
one o’clock in the afternoon, and drove off. Their destination was a house owned
by Lloyd Wright outside Idyllwild, near Palm Springs, where they would spend
the next two weeks on a proper honeymoon. As a wedding gift, Marilyn
presented her husband with unpublished nude portraits taken by Tom Kelley in
1949.
In the warmer climate of the desert, Marilyn called Lloyd Wright from the
patio of his weekend home for an update on the status of her standing at Fox.
Wright explained the global news of the marriage of the century had softened the
executives. Zanuck had lifted her suspension. He had no choice. The court of
public opinion would have denounced him for punishing a baseball hero’s
blushing bride. In the days following marriage, however, Marilyn felt hurt that
the studio overlooked sending a congratulatory telegram or a gift. “We haven’t
lost a star,” a Fox executive allegedly said. “We’ve gained a center fielder.”
Wright told Marilyn she had instructions to report to work on January 25 for
rehearsals and preproduction for Pink Tights. When Marilyn ended the
conversation and told Joe the news, he scoffed. No wife of his was going to play
a trashy role in a dull movie. When the honeymoon ended, Joe traveled to New
York for business related to his television show, and Marilyn returned to Los
Angeles to start packing warm clothing in her suitcases. She failed to report to
Fox and was immediately suspended once again.
On January 29, Marilyn and Joe boarded Pan American World Airlines flight
831 en route to Tokyo, via Honolulu, accompanied by Lefty O’Doul and his
wife, Jean. O’Doul was manager of the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast
League, had been the manager of the San Francisco Seals and remained one of
Joe’s best friends. Marilyn wore a black suit with leopard collar. Reporters asked
why her right thumb was bandaged with a splint. “I just bumped it,” Marilyn
explained with a smile. “I have a witness. Joe was there. He heard it crack.”
Allegedly, while at the house on Beach Street, Marilyn came up from behind Joe
and put her arms around his waist. Sensitive about being touched, he reflexively
pushed her hand back and injured it.
The Honolulu International Airport was overrun with a horde of cheering
fans when the DiMaggios and O’Douls arrived for a stopover. Police escorted
the foursome to a private lounge, where hula girls in grass skirts welcomed them
and presented them with leis. Both couples spent the night the Royal Hawaiian
Hotel on Waikiki Beach before boarding another plane for the fatiguing ten-hour
flight to Tokyo.
Their Pan American World Airways Boeing Stratocruiser touched down on
the runway at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo on February 2 at 5:45 p.m.
The flight’s delay of a total of five hours and the chilling winter night did
nothing to discourage the welcoming masses on the ground. US Air Force
military police were called to reinforce the police lines holding back the crowds.
Overwhelmed by five thousand fans storming the tarmac, Marilyn and Joe
remained in the plane for forty-five minutes before stepping onto the landing
platform in the freezing high winds to greet the two hundred photographers.
While the MPs subdued the crowds, the exhausted couple went back inside the
plane and discreetly exited through the cargo hatch to an awaiting car. “If she
had tried to get through that mob, they would have probably torn all her clothes
off,” a Japanese police officer told the International News Service.
A cavalcade of open convertibles was scheduled to escort the couple to the
Imperial Hotel, but police and military forces rerouted them in a closed vehicle,
escorted by a phalanx of Japanese police Jeeps. This exit strategy disappointed
the thousands who had lined the streets many hours earlier to catch a glimpse of
the woman whom the Japanese media called the “Honorable Buttocks-Swinging
Madam.”
The sedan arrived in Meiji Mura under the cedar-framed porte-cochère of the
extravagant Imperial Hotel, designed with Ancient Mayan features by Frank
Lloyd Wright and built in 1923. Marilyn and Joe were escorted into the grand
two-story lobby embellished with hand-painted peacock designs and sparkling
gold leaf. The hotel had been unscathed by an earthquake on its opening day and
survived American bombings during World War II, but sustained damage by the
melee caused by Marilyn Monroe’s arrival. Despite the management’s proactive
arrangement for two hundred policemen to guard the doors and maintain order, a
riot ensued when fans damaged the hotel’s revolving doors, crashed through a
plate glass window, and fell into koi ponds. The DiMaggios were forced to make
an appearance on the balcony to satisfy the wild crowds and prevent further
destruction. In a reference to Mussolini, Marilyn waved from the balcony while
telling her husband, “They’re mad! I feel like I’m a dictator!” The mob below
chanted, “Mon-chan” (sweet little girl). Finally settling in their suite, DiMaggio
presented his new bride with a single strand necklace of Akoya pearls designed
by Mikimoto, which was later inaccurately identified as a gift from the Emperor
of Japan.
 The next day, the DiMaggios held a press conference in the hotel. Marilyn
wore a skin-tight, flaming red wool suit with a high, black collar and large bow,
and black pumps. She carried gloves and a fur. When she crossed her legs, the
photographers noticed a glimpse of a lace slip under her skirt. Marilyn had
privately promised Joe to wear more conservative clothing in public,
exemplified by undergarments and high-collared suits. Marilyn answered most
of the questions as Joe sat beside her and smiled. “We’re all overwhelmed at
this,” she told one hundred fifty reporters and cameramen, as documented by
Don Towles in Stars and Stripes. Asked if she would visit Korea, Marilyn said
“If I could get a piano player I might sing some songs in the hospitals there.”
The reporters directed most of their questions to Marilyn. She provided vague
answers to questions about the number of children the couple planned.
DiMaggio smiled and interrupted, “Why don’t you ask me that question?” When
a reporter asked Marilyn if a family life and career could mix, Joe jumped in
again: “It’s going on every day.” What kind of an elegant fur was she carrying?
“A fox,” Marilyn quipped. “And not the Twentieth Century kind.” Yes, she
enjoyed working with all the actors the reporters asked about. Then she wrapped
her arm around Joe and said, “But this is my favorite man.” When a reporter
asked if Marilyn would continue her custom of not sleeping in lingerie, she
retorted, “I’m planning on getting a Japanese kimono.” The mob scene at the
airport and press conference served as the first moments Joe realized the true
measure of Marilyn’s fame and, to his surprise, it surpassed his. He suddenly
became sullen.
On February 5, Marilyn visited the Tokyo Army Hospital. Japanese
newspapers called her “the greatest cure since penicillin.” Suffering from
symptoms of chronic endometriosis, Marilyn writhed in pain and needed a
remedy of her own. Tokujiro Namikoshi, the founding father of modern shiatsu
massage, was called to her suite to offer an eastern medicine remedy. The
treatment proved effective, and Marilyn was able to tour Mount Fuji, Osaka
Kobe, Yokohama, and the Izu Peninsula.
General Charles Wilkes Christenberry (1895-1963), Assistant Chief of Staff
of the Headquarters of the Far East and President of the American-Korean
Foundation, stood before Marilyn and Joe and asked if she would be interested
in entertaining American soldiers stationed in Korea. When Joe replied that they
wouldn’t have time during the trip, the general clarified that he was addressing
Mrs. DiMaggio. Marilyn’s eyes brightened. Christenberry relayed the invitation
extended by General John E. Hull (1895-1975), Commander in Chief of the Far
East Command who ran the Far East Headquarters. The fact that she didn’t have
an act or an orchestra didn’t seem relevant. Marilyn was the act. The United
States military would build an act around her. When Marilyn turned to Joe for
permission, and he told her that she could spend her honeymoon any way she
wanted. He would be busy coaching the Japanese baseball league, and besides, if
the Army drafts you, go you. By February 8, the Department of Defense issued
Marilyn the service number 129278 and a photo identification card designating
her title as USO Entertainer Norma Jean DiMaggio.
On the eighth, the DiMaggios and O’Douls left for Fukuoka, Japan’s oldest
city, to tour an ancient castle. Arriving by plane at Itazuke Airport, they sped
away to the Kokusai Hotel, and the newspapers announced, “Marilyn hits
Hakata like an H-Bomb!” (Hakata is one of the seven wards of Fukuoka).
Marilyn also managed to squeeze in a visit to the US base at Gannosu and made
an appearance at the American Center.
While Joe coached the Hiroshima Carp professional baseball team in
Hiroshima, Marilyn visited the ballpark and eclipsed the game. The crowd of
five thousand went wild, storming the field to get a glimpse of her behind the net
in a VIP box. Joe DiMaggio, whose popularity in the country had been likened
to that of a baseball deity, was swept aside by what the newspapers called the
“Monroe Hurricane.” After the DiMaggios checked out of the hotel, the local
newspaper interviewed a bellboy, who revealed that Marilyn washed her own
underwear in the sink while Joe coached the team. “She was not like the usual
foreign visitors who leave a mess,” the bellboy reported, “but was very tidy and
punctual, in fact the tidiest visitor we have ever had.”
After a stop in Hyogo Prefecture, where DiMaggio and O’Doul trained the
Hanshin Tigers at Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Marilyn left for Osaka with
Jean O’Doul to begin rehearsals for her tour. North Korea and South Korea had
signed a cease-fire armistice in July of 1953, but she was scheduled to perform
close to the front lines, which remained dangerous. Taking the risk was the least
she could do, Marilyn insisted. The servicemen were her fans. They had written
letters to Fox requesting autographs, photographs, and her casting in more films.
Marilyn credited her fans with her career and fame. Without them, the studio
executives would never have given her a chance on the screen.
The USO assigned Marilyn a band and male chorus made up of eleven
servicemen, called Anything Goes. Pianist, Albert Guastafeste, admired her
modesty and down-to-earth quality during the weeklong rehearsal period.
“Someone ought to go up to her and tell her she is Marilyn Monroe,” he said.
“She doesn’t seem to realize it. When you make a goof she tells you she’s sorry.
When she goofs, she apologizes to me!” The act included some banter and
songs, among them “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” “Bye, Bye, Baby,”
“Somebody Loves Me,” “Do It Again,” and Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”
During rehearsals, the military brass cautioned Marilyn about the
suggestiveness of lyrics in “Do It Again,” a song she had recorded in 1953. The
troops might not be able to contain themselves. Marilyn replied that it was a
Gershwin standard that she sang as a wistful love song. She proposed changing
the line to “Kiss Me Again.” Footage of Marilyn performing the song shows the
crowd booming when she crooned the risqué lyrics, “You won’t forget it/Come
and get it.” “People had a habit of looking at me as if I was some kind of a
mirror instead of a person,” Marilyn wrote of this experience of censorship.
“They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts. Then they white-masked
themselves by calling me the lewd one.”
Marilyn arrived in Seoul, Korea on February 16 to begin her four-day
whirlwind USO tour of the country, consisting of ten shows in sub-zero
temperatures. She wore a skin-tight, low-cut, plum-colored crepe cocktail dress
with a vermicular pattern of bugle beads and thin spaghetti straps, designed by
Ceil Chapman, and gold high-heeled strappy sandals. The outfit had a matching,
long-sleeve bolero jacket, but she never wore the jacket while entertaining. She
accessorized with a diamond brooch borrowed from Jean O’Doul, Joe’s pearls
doubled round her wrist as a bracelet, and hoop earrings.
Over the course of four days, Marilyn performed over a dozen times both day
and night in ten camps for over one hundred thousand soldiers and thirteen
thousand Marines. Accompanied by the officer in charge of the Army
entertainment, Walter Bouillet, the Anything Goes Band, and Jean O’Doul,
Marilyn traveled through the country by plane, helicopter, and jeep. The men
warmly and appreciatively welcomed her with deafening cheers, standing
ovations, and pandemonium. During her tour, she also visited hospitals in Japan,
where wounded servicemen lay bandaged in beds. In newsreels, she talked to
each patient, shook hands, gave hugs and kisses, signed autographs, and posed
with all who asked for pictures. Her consideration extended to the men who
backed her up onstage. Band member Don Obermeyer recalled that during the
flight to the first gig, “She excused herself from the brass in the front of the
plane and sat down with each one in the show group and asked about where we
lived, before going into service and about our lives growing up.”
Marilyn’s first stop was the mountainside tent camp of the First Marine
Division. The helicopter transporting Marilyn circled low across an open field of
cheering soldiers. The sight of adoring fans exhilarated the abandoned little girl
inside her and inspired a risky idea; the helicopter door slid open and with two
soldiers holding her legs, Marilyn laid on her belly and dangled midair out of the
chopper, blowing kisses and waving. After a safe landing, she changed from her
flight jacket and combat boots into her plum-colored cocktail dress and stepped
onto a makeshift stage of plywood.
The actress who feared facing the camera on the Fox lot, who often broke out
into red splotches and frequently vomited before filming a scene, transformed
into a confident performer. Between songs, she stood at the edge of the stage and
bantered with the crowd. It started snowing but Marilyn felt warm, as if she were
standing in the sun. “I’ve always been frightened by an audience,” she said. “My
stomach pounds, my head gets dizzy and I’m sure my voice has left me. But
standing in the snowfall facing these seventeen thousand yelling soldiers, I felt
for the first time in my life no fear of anything. I felt only happy…I felt at
home.” In newsreel footage, Marilyn demurely squats down to sign autographs
and assist a serviceman with a jammed camera. In one instance, she helpfully
removed the lens cover for one overzealous shutterbug. After each show, she
returned to the stage with a posse of MPS to pose for a selected group of well-
behaved servicemen with cameras.
Within just two days, Marilyn performed for the 3rd, 7th, 24th and 15th US
Army troops divisions, a total of sixty thousand men, most of whom had never
seen any of her films as they had enlisted before her stardom. One member of
the Army Corps of Engineers was amazed by her commitment and stamina: “Of
all the performers who came to us in Korea — and there were a half dozen or
so — she was the best. It was bitter cold, but she was in no hurry to leave.
Marilyn was a great entertainer. She made thousands of GIs feel she really
cared.”
Marilyn played her fifth front-line performance for a rowdy audience of
thirteen thousand troops of the Twenty-Fifth Division. The 160th Regiment
changed the name of the show site, Grenadier Valley, by posting signs that
announced “Welcome to Monroe Valley” in honor of her lightning tour across
Korea. Brigadier General William Bradley greeted Marilyn at the helicopter strip
along with two dozen handpicked enlisted men, and escorted her to a luncheon.
Later, Marilyn stood at the microphone outside the cover at the edge of the stage
and performed in the freezing rain. Members of the crowd pushed through the
MP chains and stormed the stage midway through performance, halting her song.
The Division’s commander, Colonel John G. Kelly, rose from his front row seat
and walked onto the stage to order the crowd to move back. Harold E. Stassen
(1907-2001), who had been a candidate for presidential nomination in three
elections, was also visiting and reportedly stated that in his entire career he had
never been up against such harsh competition. Similarly, Marilyn seemed to
draw a bigger turnout than Dwight D. Eisenhower during his pre-inaugural tour.
Major General Charles D. W. Canham welcomed Marilyn to the Third
Division before her morning show for an audience that included Greek and
Belgian troops. She ended the concert by telling the troops, “This was the best
thing that ever happened to me…Come see us in San Francisco.” At the 2nd
Division, Major General William Barriger greeted Marilyn and escorted her to
the enlisted men’s mess hall for a meal. Like one of the soldiers, she accepted a
steel tray, washed it in a pot of boiling water, and stood in line behind the
soldiers to have her food served to her.
Covering more than two hundred miles of snow-covered Korea, Marilyn
ended her tour with what Stars and Stripes described as a “stampede” at the 45th
Division Camp. She toured the camp in an open jeep and was escorted by
Brigadier General John C. Oaks, division commander, to meet the 27th and 35th
Regiments and 90th Field Artillery. Marilyn stopped to converse with thousands
of soldiers who lined the roads to see her. “I’ll never forget my honeymoon…
with the 45th Division,” she said later with a laugh.
Following an early afternoon performance at K-47, Marilyn performed a
farewell act at the Taegu Air Force Open Air Theatre in what Stars and Stripes
described as a morale-boosting performance that “electrified” the audience of
over nine thousand. Soldiers had camped out in sub-zero temperatures for seven
hours for a good seat. A mob of six thousand stormed the roped barricades and
forced the Special Services opening act to skip a number and bring Marilyn on
stage. One soldier was injured and taken away in an ambulance. As the soldiers
watched the show huddled in blankets, Marilyn braved the cold with bare
shoulders covered by only thin spaghetti straps.
She delivered an emotional farewell speech to the cheering servicemen. The
Signal Corps arranged for a telephone connection between Marilyn and Joe and
broadcast the conversation on a public address system. “Do you still love me,
Joe?” Marilyn asked. “Do you miss me?” In a stiff voice, DiMaggio affirmed his
love for his wife, but inwardly resented being dragged into her show. “Now I’m
flying back to the most important thing in my life…Joe,” Marilyn told the
audience. “And I want to start a family. A family comes first.” She boarded a
military plane en route to Itami, where DiMaggio waited for her to resume their
honeymoon.
Back in Tokyo, Marilyn ran toward Joe like an excited girl. Their alleged
conversation is documented in many accounts but was originally quoted by
Maurice Zolotow:
“It was wonderful, Joe,” Marilyn gushed. “You never heard such cheering.”
“Yes, I have,” he replied. “Don’t let it go to your head. Just miss the ball
once. You’ll see they can boo as loud as they can cheer.”
The honeymoon was a learning experience for both of them. For the first
time, Marilyn realized her effect on others, and considered the tour a personal
triumph, calling it the “highlight” of her life as late as 1961. She belonged to her
fans in a manner she could never belong to a husband. DiMaggio also realized
his wife’s immense status for the first time, as well as the limits of his control
over her fame.
After the tour had ended, Marilyn ran a high fever and experienced a sore
throat, cough, and sniffles. A doctor was summoned to the Imperial Hotel and
diagnosed a bad case of pneumonia. Prescribed high doses of antibiotics,
Marilyn boarded a plan with her husband and friends and headed to San
Francisco after a stopover in Honolulu.
The Far East Command presented Marilyn with a silver medallion for her
USO tour and visits to military hospitals. In June, she would be presented with a
large trophy engraved, “In commemoration of her unselfish service rendered to
the armed forces in Korea, June 19, 1954.” On October 8, 1961, NBC aired
footage of the tour, narrated by Marilyn, in a television special titled USO
Wherever They Go!
On February 23, the DiMaggios arrived home to Beach Street. A few days
later, at Marilyn’s request, Clifton Webb scheduled a nine p.m. appointment for
her with psychic Kenny Kingston. She arrived at his home breathless, and he
asked if she were all right. Marilyn explained, “I took a cab to your area but
walked the last few blocks. The story broke in today’s paper that I am
undergoing psychiatric therapy and I didn’t want your reputation ruined.” This
endeared her to Kingston, with whom she would maintain intermittent secretive
communication. “Hello, You,” Marilyn would say in code. “It’s Me.” According
to Kingston, when Marilyn returned to the United States, she was plagued with
agoraphobia. “I worked with her, using meditation and affirmations but it was an
ongoing struggle for her,” he said. “She’d say to me tearfully, ‘Kenny, I really
want to be on time. I try to get ready but sometimes I’m almost paralyzed with
fear. I spend hours getting ready because I’m afraid to go out. I sometimes just
can’t face people.’ ”
Returning to Los Angeles, the DiMaggios moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel
while they searched for a rental property in Beverly Hills. On March 8, Joe
stayed in the suite watching television while Sidney Skolsky escorted Marilyn
downstairs to the Crystal Room to accept the Photoplay magazine award as Most
Popular Actress of 1953. She wore a metallic silver lamé gown with spaghetti
straps, designed by Travilla, a rhinestone brooch at her waist, cascading
rhinestone earrings, her white fox stole and muff, and silver glitter in her styled
hair. Skolsky stood loyally at Marilyn’s side during her acceptance speech.
Darryl Zanuck sat uncomfortably at the dais a few chairs down from the star he
had placed on suspension. “I have no idea when the suspension may be lifted,”
Marilyn told reporters within earshot of her boss, “and consequently can give no
definite answer about my return to pictures.” Having starred in the classic
western Shane, Alan Ladd accepted the Most Popular Actor award that evening.
With no word from Fox about the status of Marilyn’s contract negotiations,
the DiMaggios channeled their energies into establishing a secondary home in
Los Angeles. They leased an English Tudor at 508 North Palm Drive in Beverly
Hills for $750 per month from interior and fashion designer Barbara Barondess
MacLean (1907-2000). The eight-room house, featuring a pool, outdoor brick
barbeque, patio, and a proper guest room for Joe Junior, is still commonly known
as the “DiMaggio Honeymoon House” on tourist maps of stars’ homes. The
house stands in proximity to three other residences in Marilyn’s life: Charles
Feldman lived directly across the street; Jean Harlow’s last residence was
number 512, and the house Marilyn shared with Johnny Hyde is number 718. At
first, Marilyn was disgusted by the unsanitary condition of the kitchen and
worried about its effect on Joe’s ulcers. She scrubbed the drawers and lined the
cabinets with Inez Melson’s assistance before serving the first dinner in the
house to her husband and helpful friend.
One needed only to examine the Cadillac sedans parked in the driveway to
have discerned the differences between Joe and Marilyn. Joe parked his straight,
and its interior was meticulously neat in accordance to his approach to
housekeeping and business. Marilyn careened hers into the driveway and usually
parked crookedly. The rear seat was covered with clothing, gloves, shoes,
parking tickets, dog-eared books, and receipts from Jax and Pickwick’s. He
preferred a quiet, semi-retired life in San Francisco; she needed the excitement
of Los Angeles, where her career beckoned. Joe was content watching long
hours of television; Marilyn read epic tomes and listened to classical music and
jazz.
Although husband and wife were both tenth grade dropouts, Marilyn aspired
to a more intellectual lifestyle. She tried to interest Joe in reading Mickey
Spillane and Jules Verne and viewing art in museums, but his preferred
diversions were television and baseball. As a wedding gift, Marilyn had
presented Joe with a gold watch inscribed with quote from Antoine de Saint-
Exupery’s The Little Prince: “True love is visible not to the eyes, but to the
heart, for eyes may be deceived.” Joe read it and snapped, “What the hell does
that mean?” Opposites may attract, but incompatibility does not make for a
successful marriage. Within a few months, the newlyweds’ inability to resolve
conflict destroyed their marriage.
On the afternoon of May 21, Marilyn was driving her car with Joe riding
beside her in the passenger seat. It isn’t known if Marilyn was distracted by her
battle with Fox, if they were arguing, or if she just took her eyes off the road, but
the Cadillac crashed into the vehicle driven by physical education instructor Bart
Antinora at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Drive. Taking advantage
of their celebrity status and wealth, Antinora sued the couple for five thousand
dollars in damages, but a judge reduced the judgment to a more realistic five
hundred.
The incident made the couple aware of Marilyn’s vulnerability as a target for
those who wished to exploit her financially. Unfortunately, another schemer
marred Marilyn’s next project. Her remarkable life story would be published —
conservatively — in over six hundred books. The first, The Marilyn Monroe
Story, was written by Joe Franklin, a radio and television host, and Laurie
Palmer, and published by Rudolph Field Company in 1953. The sixty-three-page
biography sold in paperback for one dollar and hardcover for two dollars. With
Marilyn’s participation, Sidney Skolsky penned The Marilyn Monroe Story
published by Dell in 1954. Marilyn wished to capitalize on her own account of
her life and teamed with a ghostwriter, Ben Hecht (1894-1964), a prolific
journalist and Oscar-winning screenwriter, who was known to complete complex
screenplays in two weeks.
On March 16, Hecht signed a contract stipulating he would ghostwrite the
story based upon interviews Marilyn would provide for publication in a three-
part serialized article for Ladies Home Journal. The contract adamantly
prohibited the publication of any book. In a letter to Ken McCormack of
Doubleday in the early spring of 1954; Hecht wrote, “This Monroe hitch has
turned into an unexpected headache. It’s only last week that I got the go-ahead
from our ex-orphan.” He seemed to be competing with DiMaggio for Marilyn’s
attention and sarcastically stated he needed to meet with her at a ballpark. When
Hecht eventually pinned Marilyn down for several interview sessions, she cried
while recounting painful memories of her past. He cranked out the two hundred-
page manuscript within a few weeks and read it to her aloud in the presence of
several other people. Marilyn wept again and approved the prose.
With Marilyn’s support, Hecht assigned his literary agent, Jacques
Chambrun, to sell the story to the Ladies’ Home Journal. The magazine passed,
but Doubleday purchased it for publication in Collier’s and issued a check to
Hecht in advance for the sum of five thousand dollars. On May 19, Hecht
contacted Lloyd Wright, Jr., of Wright, Wright, Green and Wright, to report that
Marilyn’s autobiography had been sold contingent upon editing and her final
approval.
Without Marilyn and Hecht’s permission, Chambrun sold the work to London
Empire News, a British tabloid, setting off a barrage of acrimonious
communications. In a telegram to Chambrum, Hecht demanded the cessation of
the serialization and the return of the paper’s payment for the story. Hecht
instructed Chambrum to destroy the manuscript and further chastised him for
actions that both implicated him and jeopardized his own reputation. On June 1,
Lloyd Wright sent letters of demand to Chambrun and Hecht to return all copies
of manuscript published without Marilyn’s authorization and to discontinue the
serialization in the British periodical. Feeling betrayed, Marilyn withdrew from
negotiations with Doubleday, and Hecht returned his advance. The ghostwritten
autobiography returned to the shelf, where it remained for two decades.
In 1974, Stein and Day Publishers paid $25,000 for a manuscript titled My
Story, containing text identical to the excerpt published in the London Empire
News. Milton Greene claimed ownership, declaring that Marilyn entrusted him
to share it with the world. The New York Post contacted Hecht’s widow, Rose
Caylor Hecht, to confirm her legal consent for Greene to publish it. She invited
reporters into her Central Park West apartment, showed them the yellowed
copies of her deceased husband’s manuscript and explained that Marilyn’s
consent had been conveyed verbally and not in writing. Rose took objection to a
passage in Stein and Day’s edition in which Marilyn predicted her own death by
an overdose, as this did not appear in her husband’s text. She did not want
readers attributing this morbid premonition to her late husband. Hecht was not
credited for his co-authorship until the book’s third printing. After careful
examination of My Story, biographer Donald Spoto concluded that Marilyn had
likely authored its first sixty pages and Hecht composed the remainder.
With the autobiography axed, Marilyn took on another project. Joe’s fortieth
birthday would arrive on November 25, and she started to plan an elaborate
celebration. Orchestrating an unforgettable and amusing surprise, Marilyn
contacted as co-conspirator Irish-born red-head Maureen O’Hara (born 1920),
also contracted with Fox and considered one of the most beautiful actresses of
Hollywood’s Golden Era. In 1947, O’Hara recounted the scheme in her 2004
autobiography ‘Tis Herself:

Apparently, Joe was a fan of mine and always teased Marilyn about
how attracted to me he was. She was sick and tired of hearing her
husband talk about me and I don’t blame her. She asked me if I would
mind being wrapped in a big box with a ribbon tied in a bow around it,
to be her gift to Joe on his birthday. The huge box would be on large
table, and right before he opened it, she was going to say, “Now Joe,
after I give you this, I don’t ever want to hear about Maureen O’Hara
again.” Then as he pulled the bow and ribbon off, I was supposed to
pop out of the box while the crowd shouted, “Surprise!” I thought it
would be great fun, but, sadly, they separated just before it could be
done.

The woman who planned a joyous surprise for her husband sounded like an
average 1950s wife in interviews with columnists and journalists. “Joe doesn’t
have to move a muscle,” she said. “Treat a husband this way and he’ll enjoy you
twice as much. I like to iron Joe’s shirts, but often I haven’t the time. I like to
look at Joe in a shirt I ironed. A man should never have to think about his
clothes. A wife should see to it that his shoes and suits are sent out to be
cleaned.”
Despite her satisfaction in attending to her husband’s needs, Marilyn could
arguably be considered an early feminist unwilling to completely surrender her
career and embrace the role of a full-time housewife. Joe observed evidence of
this since their honeymoon in Korea and did not like it. The couple quarreled,
normal for any marriage, but voices rose on a regular basis in the house on North
Palm Drive only to be followed by periods of complete silence. As Marilyn
would tell Amy Greene, she and Joe were sexually compatible, so these frequent
cycles of conflict and detachment were followed by passionate lovemaking.
“You can’t outlaw human nature,” Marilyn rationalized. “Marriage is something
you learn about while you live it.” Even though they made up after their bouts of
arguing, Marilyn was slowly learning about her new husband’s dark, controlling
side.
Brad Dexter, Marilyn’s co-star in The Asphalt Jungle, told Anthony Summers
about Marilyn contacting him for help as Joe began isolating her from friends.
She asked Dexter to bond with Joe over masculine interests and to influence him
to join her in socializing with other couples. When Dexter made an attempt, Joe
became suspicious of his intentions and accused him of sexually pursuing
Marilyn.
Marilyn wanted a father figure, a protector, and a knight in shining armor.
She fell in love with a first generation American with Old World Sicilian values
regarding gender roles, and who wanted a housewife and mother to his children.
Joe had achieved the pinnacle of his sports career and was semi-retired, using the
vestiges of his celebrity as continuing earning power. As a trophy wife and the
most desirable woman in the world, Marilyn validated him as a hero and he liked
seeing himself through her loving and adoring eyes. Joe was also enormously
attracted to Marilyn and responded to her vulnerability, wanting to provide her
with strength and protection. He enjoyed Marilyn’s sexy appearance and
demeanor while they courted, but after the wedding, he wanted to hide her from
the world and control her. Joe became increasingly jealous and possessive of his
wife. While Joltin’ Joe was shy, guarded, and private, Marilyn basked in the
global spotlight. Her continued success was contingent upon a relationship with
her adoring public and the press.
Likewise, Marilyn and the abused child inside her felt validated by the love
of Joe DiMaggio. He made her feel worthy and clean. However, his love seemed
conditional. Joe wanted Marilyn to change. He wanted her to give up her career,
wear more modest attire, and inhibit her high-spiritedness. While they courted,
Marilyn was willing to appease him in return for love and belonging. She had
leaned toward relinquishing her career for a family with the man who loved her,
but the overwhelming validation of thousands in Korea offered the promise of an
opportunity to someday prove herself as an actress. The abused and neglected
little girl had risen from obscurity to mass adulation. She had worked too hard
and sacrificed too much to suddenly give it all up. As much as she wanted,
Marilyn could not forsake her career to become a housewife; not even Joltin’ Joe
DiMaggio’s housewife.
 Marilyn’s desperation to please DiMaggio is no more evident than in a letter
written to him — addressed “My Dad” — after an undocumented separation
possibly caused by an altercation over her career. Marilyn added “Di” before the
script M on her stationery before she poured out her heart in black ink, and wrote
how much she missed and loved him. She apologized for always being late and
promised to someday make him proud of her as a person, wife, and mother of his
children. Marilyn begged him never to leave her again and expressed longing for
him to hold and cuddle her to sleep.
Cherished by DiMaggio until his death at age eighty-four, the letter from
Marilyn was auctioned in 2006 along with another Marilyn had scribbled on the
back of a receipt from a dry cleaner after a quarrel. The latter broke into four
pieces when pulled from the last wallet he carried, the paper on which it had
been written weakened from having been unfolded and refolded many times
since her death. Marilyn admitted she was wrong and didn’t mean what she had
said to him; she explained having felt hurt and having retaliated. She went on to
admonish herself for acting hurt, as his behavior had not warranted her reaction.
“Please accept my apology and don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t be angry with your
baby — she loves you.” Marilyn ends the letter: “Lovingly, your wife (for life).”
Marital counseling was not commonplace in the 1950s, and the divorce rate
in 1954 was over two per one thousand residents, according to the Vital Statistics
of the United States. Over two decades later, the research of John Gottman
identified the precursors to divorce, coined the Four Horseman of the
Apocalypse: contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness, and criticism. All four
contributed to the DiMaggios’ breakup, along with the alleged inclusion of
domestic violence.
The DiMaggios likely experienced what is now known as the cycle of
domestic violence. It began with poor communication during a tension-building
phase, during which Marilyn feared causing Joe’s anger outbursts. She tried to
calm him and avoid confrontation. This may have been followed by a violent
episode, which may have involved him dominating her by instilling fear through
threats, withholding or blocking resources for maintaining independence, and
even physical assault. Domestic violence includes holding, shoving, slapping,
pushing, biting, hitting, punching, attack with weapons, and rape. In the
honeymoon phase, the abuser feels remorse, expresses contrition, and may lavish
the victim with affection. If indeed this occurred, Marilyn would have been
moved by Joe’s sorrow and relieved by his loving behavior.
Friends started noticing bruises on Marilyn’s body, and when they questioned
her, she explained that she often bit herself while sleeping. Curiously, no one
observed teeth-marks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
 May 1954

Marilyn’s suspension from Fox lasted from January to April. Although not
formally contracted as her agent, Charles Feldman advocated for some of
Marilyn’s demands and succeeded in securing her casting in the leading role in
Fox’s film adaptation of playwright George Axelrod’s hit play, The Seven Year
Itch, which he co-produced and prestigious Billy Wilder directed. In return, Fox
dropped its demand for her to appear in Pink Tights but refused to increase her
contracted salary or cater to her demands.
Fox also conceded by offering Marilyn a verbal agreement of a $100,000
bonus for The Seven Year Itch while enforcing her suspension, and thus, delayed
the new contract until August. The first draft of the new contract excluded
Marilyn’s control over scripts, directors, or cinematographers. She was granted
only the choice of drama coach and choreographer. The concessions were too
much for her to bear; she believed that she had worked too hard and for too long
to be treated this way. Suddenly, Marilyn felt sold out by Feldman in his desire
to ascertain her performance in the film he would co-produce. His studio ties
made him an ally to their power and not an advocate for her professional vision.
Marilyn turned to her husband for support, but he seemed unsympathetic; Joe
did not approve of her career in the first place, but a bonus for a film offered him
financial compensation for the irritation of a working wife. He encouraged her to
hold out for more money.
Even with Feldman’s semi-backing, Fox never acceded to Marilyn’s demands
or treated her like an equal. Realizing that her only means of having control over
work and choice of material or director would be through an independent
production company, Marilyn turned to a more reliable resource, Milton Greene.
Through the winter and spring, she schemed with Greene to create Marilyn
Monroe Productions. Lloyd Wright, her attorney in Los Angeles, negotiated with
Frank Delaney, Greene’s attorney in New York, to bring this dream to fruition.
Back at Fox, Marilyn was ensconced in the most luxurious dressing rooms,
formerly Betty Grable’s, in a two story building with round windows, a few
steps away from the commissary and Zanuck’s screening room. Her reception
room was decorated with gray walls, mauve furniture, draperies with a gold and
red leaf design, and a mirrored fireplace. The walls were festooned with Raoul
Dufy’s French impressionistic racetrack prints and a pair of velvet-matted
comedy and tragedy masks. The light green walls of Marilyn’s personal living-
dressing room contrasted with a yellow sofa, side chairs, and a chair upholstered
in aqua. The mirrored make-up table had overhead and side fluorescent lighting
and an accompanying coral leather make-up chair. A framed portrait of Joe
DiMaggio was prominently displayed on the table beside bottles of Chanel No.
5. Racks for shoes, hats, and purses covered one wall beside a mirrored
wardrobe closet. Watercolors of French scenes by George de Bouttillier
decorated the other walls. Marilyn’s personal items such as a stuffed toy panda
and stacks of record albums cluttered the radio-phonograph.
In late May, Greene arrived in Los Angeles and visited Marilyn at Fox, where
they collaborated on a photographic session using props and garments from the
wardrobe department and the sprawling back lot as a backdrop. Marilyn found
the short jacket, long peasant skirt, thick stockings, and wooden shoes Jennifer
Jones wore in The Song of Bernadette (1943) and wore them as a costume when
she posed for Milton in the French village façade built for the silent World War I
drama What a Price Glory? (1926). Costumed like the peasant girl who becomes
a saint in Jones’ film, Marilyn cleverly used her ability to project unglamorous
drama. Inspired by a storefront window with painted signage advertising
“Palmist” and “Readings 5c,” she donned a gypsy blouse, colorful beaded
necklace and loud print skirt, and posed the behind the smudged glass. These
studies suggest Marilyn in screen roles in an alternative universe far from the
casting office at Fox.
Weak from contracting bronchial pneumonia in Korea and subsequently
being diagnosed with anemia, Marilyn collapsed at the studio. She was admitted
to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and treated by Dr. Robert Rosenfeld. The press
speculated about a possible pregnancy, but Marilyn denied the rumors and
clarified her intention to have “lots of little DiMaggios.” Zanuck and Skouras
feared she might get pregnant as a tactic to avoid working for the remainder of
the contract. This was exactly Marilyn’s back-up plan if negotiations yielded an
unsatisfactory result. In a press conference in the office of Fox producer Sol C.
Siegel, Marilyn applied leverage by announcing, “We want children as soon as
possible.” Before she could start a family, Fox executives had another film for
Marilyn to make; and to work with the director of her choice, she would have to
pay the price of playing the role of an ambitious hat check girl who becomes a
Broadway star.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
 There’s No Business Like Show Business

Throughout the lengthy and passionate negotiations with Fox, Marilyn’s coup
was securing the leading role in the film adaptation of George Axelrod’s first-
rate play, The Seven Year Itch, under the direction of a prominent director, Billy
Wilder. The production was scheduled in the fall after Wilder completed Sabrina
with Audrey Hepburn. In the interim, Fox scrambled to cast Marilyn in another
musical comedy designed to capitalize on her established screen persona and
film genre.
The sentimental story of There’s No Business Like Show Business follows the
Vaudeville team of Molly and Terry Donahue, whose three children expand their
act to the Five Donahues as they perform in circuits throughout the country with
the hope of making it to Broadway. The show business family ultimately
headlines at the famous New York Hippodrome. The plot enabled producer Sol
C. Siegel and director Walter Lang to showcase fourteen songs by prolific
composer Irving Berlin in lavish production numbers performed by six leading
stars in sixty-seven sets augmented by mammoth CinemaScope with DeLuxe
color. The title song from Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun was an anthem for the
entertainment industry and was featured during the film’s grand finale.
There’s No Business Like Show Business was Fox’s tribute to Russian-born
Irving Berlin (1888-1989), a Jewish-American composer and lyricist who
remains the nation’s greatest songwriter. In 1911, during the Gilded Age, he
penned “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and introduced the sound of syncopated
Ragtime, sparking a new style of dancing. The Victorian Era’s sound of lush
violins and gliding, demure waltzes was now replaced by snappy tunes and a
dance craze with rapid moves.
During his six-decade career, Berlin wrote approximately one thousand five
hundred songs, including the scores for nineteen Broadway musicals and
eighteen motion pictures. His ballads with vernacular lyrics — such as “Blue
Skies, “Always,” “Cheek to Cheek,” and “What’ll I Do” — have become
standards and have been recorded by the leading vocalists of each subsequent
era. Berlin’s “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” remain popular holiday
classics.
Fox assembled the upper echelon of Hollywood’s musical comedy stars,
leading singers, and dancers to portray the Five Donahues: Ethel Merman, Dan
Dailey, Donald O’Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, and Johnnie Ray. The quintet was
supported by a cast of three hundred chorus singers and dancers but lacked a
surefire audience-drawing movie star. The studio boasted a production crew
consisting of the recipients of ninety-seven Academy Award nominations and
twenty-one Oscar wins and even hired Berlin as an advisor.
The marital team of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, parents of the prolific
screenwriter Nora Ephron, wrote the screenplay from an original story by Lamar
Trotti, who died in 1952. The couple quickly inserted a character mirroring
Marilyn’s public persona into the finished script: ambitious Vicky Hoffman, a
hat check girl at a nightclub who aspires to become a musical star and evolves
into a successful, sexy entertainer — Vicky Parker — and steals the heart of the
Donahue’s youngest son. Avid for self-improvement, she is mocked for her
pretensions. She studies with a vocal coach who teaches proper elocution and
argues with costume designers because she has a clear vision of what she wants
and will settle for nothing less. Just as the Ephrons allowed biographical
elements of Marilyn to seep into her role, they inserted aspects of her co-stars
into their characters.
Working with six assistants, Robert Alton (1906-1957), received screen
credit as choreographer. His Broadway experience included four Ziegfeld Follies
shows, Anything Goes, and Pal Joey, but he is best remembered for discovering
Gene Kelly. Alton successfully collaborated with legendary dancer Fred Astaire
and choreographed sequences for Hollywood’s hit musicals such as Show Boat
(1951), The Harvey Girls (1946), and White Christmas (1954).
The film’s cinematographer Leon Shamroy (1901-1974) boasted the
crowning accomplishment of having received a kiss from Darryl Zanuck in front
of the cheering crew when the overjoyed mogul viewed his footage of the
restaged 1912 Democratic Convention in Wilson (1944), a film biography of the
twenty-eighth president. The innovative cameraman had shot in natural interiors
rather than on a set in soundstage.
At the helm was Walter Lang (1896-1972). During the 1940s, he directed
spectacular colorful musicals for Fox starring Betty Grable. More recently, he
had directed Susan Hayward portraying singer Jane Froman in With A Song in
My Heart and Ethel Merman as socialite Elsa Maxwell in Call Me Madam. Lang
would be nominated for an Oscar for his direction of The King and I (1956).
Vocally untrained Ethel Merman (1908-1984) had a powerful, belting mezzo-
soprano voice with perfect pitch. Able to hold a note for sixteen bars of music,
she is considered the undisputed First Lady of the American musical comedy
stage. Among the many standards Merman introduced on Broadway are “I Get a
Kick Out of You,” “It’s De-Lovely,” and “Anything Goes.” In the 1946 stage
production of Annie Get Your Gun, she introduced Berlin’s “There’s No
Business Like Show Business,” which became her signature song. “She’s the
best,” Irving Berlin said of her. “You give her a bad song, and she’ll make it
sound good. Give her a good song, and she’ll make it sound great. And you’d
better write her a good lyric. The guy in the last row of the second balcony is
going to hear every syllable.”
A veteran of eleven Broadway shows and nine films, forty-six-year-old
Merman expressed excitement in her first role as a mother, Molly Donahue,
before production began in an interview: “I never before had a chance to do
anything as serious as some aspects of this role…” she said. “It’s a serious
family story as well as a musical extravaganza. And I get Marilyn Monroe as a
daughter-in-law, to boot. How can it miss! I’ve had nothing but good
opportunities all my life, but this is the best yet.” Utterly self-confident and
brassy, Merman was Marilyn’s opposite. She was tough and outspoken. But like
Marilyn, she had an iconic performance style all her own.
Dan Dailey (1915-1978) was perfectly cast for the role of Molly’s husband,
Terry Donahue, when he signed a new contract with Fox in 1954. As a show
business veteran, he had sung in a minstrel show at the tender young age of six,
followed by performances in Vaudeville. After working as a social director at a
lodge in the Jewish resort villages in the Catskill Mountains, Dailey appeared in
twenty plays in what was commonly called the “Borscht Circuit” and made his
Broadway debut in Babes in Arms (1937).
In 1940, Dailey was contracted by MGM Studios and starred in musicals
before recording four songs with the popular Andrews Sisters vocal act. After
appearing with Marilyn in Ticket To Tomahawk (1950), he portrayed baseball
player Jerome Herman “Dizzy” Dean in Pride of St. Louis (1952). While
working with Marilyn, he often went to Del Mar Racetrack to watch his
thoroughbred horses run.
The role of the Donahues’ youngest son, Tim, was nearly autobiographical
for impish, baby-faced Donald O’Connor (1925-2003), who was born to
Vaudevillian entertainers and subjected early to the challenging realities of show
business. He joined the family act at age one, traveled the country, and never
attended public school. By age thirteen, O’Connor survived his father, sister, and
brother. He landed a contract with Universal Studios as a minor and earned two
hundred dollars per week to help support his mother, and starred in a series of
films about a talking mule named Francis who befriends a young soldier.
O’Connor’s claim to fame was an acrobatic “Make ’Em Laugh” solo in Singin’
in the Rain (1952), lauded as one of films’ finest dance sequences. More
recently, he had co-starred with Merman in Fox’s musical Call Me Madam
(1953).
There’s No Business Like Show Business was the ninth film for vocalist and
dancer Mitzi Gaynor (born 1931), who signed with Fox in 1950 at age
seventeen. Until her casting as Katy, Gaynor had played adolescent girls in
mostly musicals such as My Blue Heaven and Down Among the Sheltering
Palms. She had previously worked with Marilyn in We’re Not Married. In
November, following the end of production, she married Jack Bean, a talent
agent and public relations executive for MCA.
Gaynor later reached heights in the film musicals Anything Goes (1956), Les
Girls (1957), and South Pacific (1958). The film would be her last for Fox under
a contract that had already expired. The twenty-three-year-old actress told the
press that she was happy to play Donald O’Connor’s older sister, get out of
pigtails, and wear sophisticated costumes.
As the Donahues’ eldest son, Steven, Fox cast teen idol Johnny Ray (1927-
1990), who had achieved international acclaim with his 1952 recording, “Cry,”
complete with the sounds of tears in his voice. The emotionally expressive
singer’s live performances often included his pounding on the piano and
writhing on the floor in a suit, rousing the press to dub him “The Master of
Misery,” “The Squealer’s Delight,” and the “Cry Guy.” Ray’s one solo number
in Fox’s production was the spiritual, “If You Believe.” Steven Donahue,
sensitive and quiet, seemed to disappoint his parents by becoming a priest rather
than marrying and raising a family. Ray infused an apparently unintended air of
homosexuality in his characterization. At the time of production, he was married
to a woman who was aware of his alleged bisexual or homosexual orientation
and who believed she could change him. Ray later divorced his wife and
romantically partnered with his manager, Bill Franklin.
Given the impressive roster of singing and dancing giants, Marilyn was a
natural addition to the cast with her musical performances in Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes and River of No Return. However, with minimal musical training, she
felt insecure and inferior. Returning to the Fox lot after an absence of six
months, she reported feeling like “when I was going to a new foster home and
had to go to a new school and try to make friends again.”
Determined to measure up to the audience’s expectations for her singing and
dancing, Marilyn campaigned for a team of professionals to prepare her for
sharing the screen with the veteran musical comedy queen commonly called
“The Merm.” Although Fox assigned Charles LeMaire and Miles White to
costume design, Marilyn requested and was granted the talents of her favorite
stylist and designer, William Travilla. Even with Robert Alton slated as
choreographer, Fox catered to Marilyn’s desire for Jack Cole to teach her the
dance routines and choreograph a razzle-dazzle production number with a team
of chorus boys to compare with “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” The
studio allowed Natasha Lytess on the set, and Marilyn was permitted the pick of
her favorite makeup artist, Allan “Whitey” Snyder, and hairdresser Gladys
Rasmussen. The team effort effectively yielded a Marilyn in total command of
herself.
Berlin recycled three of his less successful songs for Marilyn: “After You Get
What You Want, You Don’t Want It” (1920), “Heat Wave” (1933), and “Lazy”
(1924). African-American singer Ethel Waters first sang “Heat Wave” in As
Thousands Cheer, a 1933 musical revue that featured Marilyn’s namesake,
Marilyn Miller, in her last stage appearance.
Father and son team Alfred and Lionel Newman supervised and conducted
the musical numbers while Fox’s vocal arranger and songwriter Ken Darby
honored Marilyn’s appeal to receive vocal coaching by a member of his team,
Hal Schaefer. This handsome, thin man with thick black hair and a bright smile
had gently and patiently provided vocal tutoring for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and River of No Return.
Schaefer explained to Marilyn that he would be her guide through the journey
of developing into a polished vocalist and advised her to emulate the sound of
her favorite singer, Ella Fitzgerald. The journey would commence with listening
to the phrasing and pitch of who they both agreed was the best female singer
alive. “I told her to buy Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of Gershwin songs,” he told
the New York Times in 2011. “And I ordered her to listen to it a hundred times.”
Marilyn dutifully purchased Ellis Larkins’ Ella Sings Gershwin.”
Gary Giddins, modern jazz critic and biographer of Bing Crosby, assessed
Marilyn’s musical ability for the Times article on Schaefer’s influence and was
impressed. “She had the same problem as Fred Astaire,” Giddins asserted. “They
were both wonderful singers, but you don’t think of them as singers. So much of
Monroe is the way she sells the song. You expect her to be second rate, but she
never is.”
During pre-production, Marilyn arrived in Schaefer’s bungalow on the studio
lot at nine o’clock in the morning, and the vocal coach guided her through
exercises to expand her vocal range and breath-control. Learning to breathe from
her diaphragm rather than chest, Marilyn hit a D-flat in her high range. “About
fifty percent of what she became as a singer she had to begin with,” Schaefer
said. “Her intonation was good, and her tone was good.”
Robert Cahn from Collier’s visited Marilyn and Schaefer while they
rehearsed. Photographers captured her in an orange knit dress with a cinch belt,
singing into a microphone as Schaefer accompanied her on the piano. When
Marilyn hit an exceptionally challenging note, she asked Schaefer, “Have I been
there today?”
“Yes,” he replied. “And it was a good trip.” They played back the recordings
and dissected her performance.
“I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at
me,” Marilyn told Cahn, who described her as a “worrier and worker.” Collier’s
published the article in its July 9 issue, aptly titled, “Marilyn Monroe Hits a New
High.”
Schaefer persuaded executives at RCA Victor to record her singing two songs
arranged by him and accompanied by live musicians. The session produced a
feisty jazz arrangement of the sarcastic love song “A Fine Romance,” by Jerome
Kern and Dorothy Shields, completed in two takes with seventeen performers.
Mastering the lower portion of her vocal range, Marilyn sounds remarkably like
Ella Fitzgerald, emulating her singing idol’s phrasing. “She Acts Like a Woman
Should” was recorded as the B-side and shows Marilyn’s command of bold
phrasing and a lack of the breathy, sexy styling that characterized most of her
recordings for Fox.
“If you hear the record now…” Schaefer told the New York Times fifty-seven
years after the session, “she’s a real singer with a big band in a studio, not some
movie star they’re trying to pass off as a singer.”
RCA executive Joe Carlton praised Marilyn’s hushed tones to Robert Cahn
and compared her to a female Nat King Cole. The RCA recordings were released
after her death, and may have been intended for, but were deleted from the film.
When Marilyn recorded the soundtrack in pre-production of her songs for lip-
synching during the filming, Ken Darby discovered that Schaefer’s impact on
her voice avoided the need for intercutting, overdubbing or editing. In
appreciation of Schaefer’s help, Marilyn demanded that Fox give him onscreen
credit.
Irving Berlin was equally impressed with Marilyn’s vocal talents and initially
couldn’t believe she did her own singing. After hearing her rendition of “After
You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It,” the composer turned to director
Walter Lang and said, “This is the way it should be sung. If it had been sung that
way in 1920 when I wrote it, it would have been a hit song but I saw it as a slow
ballad. It took Marilyn’s interpretation to make me see how sexy it was, even I
didn’t know how sexy it was.” Berlin predicted Marilyn’s versions of his old
songs would become contemporary hits again because of her sensual, modern
style.
As Schaefer shaped Marilyn’s voice, Jack Cole’s choreography toned her
body. The strenuous dance routines reduced her weight from one hundred
twenty-two pounds to one hundred thirteen. As a result, William Travilla was
required to alter her wardrobe. In addition to the character’s sexy showgirl
costumes, he designed elegant ensembles such as a romantic cocktail dress of
white mousseline de soie with a fitted bodice of appliqued fuchsias. The narrow
pink shoulder straps tied under the bust, and the flared skirt featured appliques
over pink taffeta. Travilla created two modest outfits with no hint of cleavage: a
sophisticated cowl necked beige suit accessorized by a beige fur and gloves, and
a baby-blue sheath with bow ties on the short sleeves.
On the first day of filming, Ethel Merman told Mitzi Gaynor a dirty joke, and
despite their twenty-three-year age gap, the two women became fast friends and
usually ate lunch together in the Café de Paris commissary. “[We would] dish
dirt about everybody,” Gaynor later said. “We’d cut everybody up and put ’em
[sic] back together again.” Accompanied by William Travilla, Marilyn also ate in
the studio commissary. They typically avoided the Gold Room reserved for the
big stars and the front tables filled by those who wished to be seen. Instead, the
two headed to the far end, where the extras and technicians dined.
Mitzi Gaynor’s playfulness made Marilyn and the designer avoid the Café de
Paris and go to the nearby Apple Pan diner on Pico Boulevard. Thrusting her
chest forward, opening her mouth in a wide smile, and swaying her hips, Gaynor
would enter the commissary doing a playful imitation of Marilyn. Amused,
Merman would join in the antics by imitating Gaynor doing an imitation of
Marilyn. The shenanigans triggered Marilyn’s memories of the mean girls in the
school cafeteria making fun of her worn, ill-fitting clothes and status as an
orphan. She expressed her hurt feelings years later to members of her entourage
and performed for them a retaliatory imitation of Mitzi Gaynor dancing. Gaynor,
a youthful twenty-two-year-old at the time, apparently meant no harm or ill will.
During Marilyn’s funeral, she and her husband arrived at the cemetery gates to
pay final respects, but were barred by Joe DiMaggio.
 In her first screen number on the $85,000 set dressed as Gallagher’s Rooftop
Nightclub, Marilyn wore Travilla’s $3,500 of chalk white leaf-and-flower
beaded illusion net over flesh-toned crepe with a plumed headdress and
additional plumes on her left hip. The designer effectively created a memorable,
hugging costume based on the script’s specific description of a “high-necked,
long-sleeved, slit long-skirted evening gown of white illusion net over flesh
crepe, with white-beaded lace appliques embroidered in strategic places.”
Resembling an exotic bird, the feathered costume reveals nothing except
Marilyn’s legs, hands, face and neck. Iconic images of Marilyn in the gown
depict her with arms extended upward and hands turned toward each other,
framing her recognizable open-mouthed smile. The number is upbeat. Marilyn’s
moves are smooth and precise. Her voice is on pitch. She beams. In hindsight,
the lyrics accurately reveal the shaky state of her real-life fledgling marriage.
“Although I sit upon your knee/You’ll grow tired of me,” Vicky sings. “After you
get what you want/You don’t want what you wanted at all.”
During production, cameraman Leon Shamroy observed Marilyn and
DiMaggio sitting in a booth at Bruce Wong’s on La Cienega Boulevard eating a
Chinese dinner in total silence for over two hours, which only hinted at their
continuous problems. In a mere seven months, the marriage of the century
seemed to be limping. Marilyn allegedly confessed feelings of unhappiness to
Natasha. Both Natasha and Schaefer alleged that DiMaggio beat Marilyn at this
early point. According to Natasha’s unpublished manuscript, Marilyn called her
at night for comfort when Joe became violent, and Hal Schafer asserted that she
found solace with him during their work together. Indeed, Marilyn had married a
man who had a low appraisal of her. Joe didn’t believe in her as an actress and
wanted her to quit films and become a wife and mother. Marilyn would not
surrender, however, not even to the great Joe DiMaggio.
In the evenings on North Palm Drive, Marilyn memorized lines with Natasha
in the study while Joe watched television. She knew the lines verbatim by the
time Natasha left, but forgot them the next morning in front of the camera. In
contrast, she had fewer problems with the musical numbers and effortlessly lip-
synched the lyrics she had recorded when they were played back during filming.
Fortunately, Marilyn’s screen time was comprised of mostly singing and
dancing.
The movie’s plot tells us that Marilyn’s steamy “Heat Wave” number belongs
to the headlining Five Donahues, but Tim lets Vicky perform it, to his mother’s
chagrin. Consequently, Merman’s character later refers to her as “that girl who
steals everybody’s material.” The script originally included Merman responding
to Vicky’s sexy rendition of the song by belting “Anything You Can Do I Can
Do Better” (from Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun), but it was cut from the film.
Travilla’s original costume for the tropical Brazilian-themed number
performed with a team of male dancers was created from layers of hot pink
chiffon. When the choreography changed, he sketched a design of Marilyn as a
blonde version of Carmen Miranda, an iconic Latin musical film star who wore
layers of ruffles and towering headdresses adorned with fruit. In homage to
Miranda, Travilla created the design from inspiration for the headdress. He
attached a large straw hat with raw ends that allowed movement to a black
skullcap, and affixed silk flowers. Later, he added flowers that hung around
Marilyn’s face and swayed with her dance moves.
Auctioned in 2011 for $615,000 by actress Debbie Reynolds, the two-piece
costume is comprised of a black halter-top and a full skirt slit in the front. The
bikini-like top is made of black silk tied in the middle by a pink and black
chiffon scarf that crosses the chest and drapes down the back. The top of the
skirt consists of a hugging black silk that encircles the waist in a deep plunging
V below the navel, which is covered by a narrow strip of the black silk. The silk
waistband flares into a voluminous skirt in a hand-printed tropical floral print of
black and white. The skirt covers the back and opens in the front in a sexy slit
that reveals the legs and black panties worn underneath. The exposed interior of
the split skirt is made of the same fabric as the scarf; plain pink chiffon gathered
and attached in layers and adorned with opaque sequins. The costume was
designed for dance moves involving holding open the two sides of the open skirt
to reveal its lining and, provocatively, the black panties worn underneath.
The lyrics allowed for a parody of Marilyn’s hip swinging, buttocks shaking
onscreen walk from Niagara. “I started a heat wave,” she sings, “By letting my
seat wave/The temperature’s rising/It isn’t surprising.” At the time of
production, the Cuban Mambo dance craze was sweeping the nation with its hip
swinging Cha-cha moves. Marilyn’s famous wiggling walk inspired Perez Prado
and his orchestra’s release of “Marilyn Monroe Mambo,” which played on the
radio throughout 1954, with its male chorus chanting her name at rhythmic
intervals over the Latin beat.
Marilyn recorded two versions of “Heat Wave,” one in a low range with a
strong voice and an alternate in a higher range with a breathy, baby-doll voice
more consistent with her screen persona. The first was used in the film and the
second was released in the soundtrack. Similarly, two versions of the dance
routine were designed. According to actor-dancer George Chakiris, Robert Alton
staged the number with a female studio dancer and a chorus of male dancers
pounding on tom-toms, and presented it to Marilyn for approval. She thought it
lacked sufficient movement. Instead, Jack Cole choreographed an exotic, jazzy
routine with pelvic gyrations to accentuate breaks in lyrics and constant manual
manipulation of the flouncing skirt and ruffles. Chakiris preferred Cole’s number
since it was sexier and modern.
On August 27, Marilyn filmed the number on soundstage nine, where
columnist Hedda Hopper counted fifty-two visitors on the set. “Some were on
business,” she wrote, “but most of the visitors came to ogle Marilyn.” It was the
only time Joe came to watch Marilyn work, so the studio organized an open
house and allowed Marilyn to send out invitations.
Sidney Skolsky brought along his seventeen-year-old daughter, Steffi, and
Susan Strasberg, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Method Acting gurus Lee and
Paula Strasberg of the Actors Studio in New York. “She seemed to flicker like a
flame giving off a nimbus of light,” Susan later wrote of her first impression of
Marilyn. “I thought it was trick lighting until I stood next to her.”
Marilyn extended an invitation to Emmeline Snively from the Blue Book
Modeling Agency in gratitude for her having believed in her abilities a decade
earlier. “Marilyn was a very serious and apt pupil…” Snively told the press.
“Everyone I sent her to liked her and asked for her again…[She] never quibbled
about overtime, either. I’m very proud of her success. She worked hard to
deserve it.” Script supervisor Rose Steinberg agreed and told biographer Edwin
Hoyt that Marilyn was hardest working actress on the lot with an ambitious drive
that depleted her resource of internal energy. According to Steinberg, Marilyn
was handicapped by surrounding herself with those who focused on her
weaknesses and failed to build on her strengths.

The number took place in the fictional Tropical Room in Miami Beach. Four
barefoot, shirtless, and sweaty male dancers in tight matador pants wheeled
Vicky in a primitive, canopied wagon onto a stage illuminated in red and pink
lights and dressed as an abstract jungle. Smoke and flames arose from scorched
trees. “You haven’t heard ‘Heat Wave’ until you watch Marilyn sing it,”
columnist Hedda Hopper reported.
When Joe entered the set accompanied by George Solotaire, Marilyn
immediately rushed up — her hoop earrings, ruffles, and dangling flowers a-
swinging — and embraced him. He coolly withdrew from her. Already plagued
with insecurity and worried about his reaction, Marilyn’s heart sank and she
began to panic. The exhibition did not further Marilyn’s constant attempts to
reconcile her husband’s image of her with her screen image.
In the song’s introduction, Marilyn snatched a newspaper and presented an
erotic weather report to the lustful male dancers: “Moderately high barometric
pressure will cover the north, east, and Deep South,” punctuated with a bump of
her pelvis. “Small danger of fruit frost.” Another bump. “Hot and humid nights
can be expected.” The adoring male chorus sang, “Gee, her anatomy/Makes the
mercury/ Rise to ninety-three.”
Steffi and Susan were mesmerized, but Joe didn’t like it. Adept at looking
beyond her director, the crew, and the bright lights, Marilyn spotted disapproval,
maybe disgust, in her husband’s facial expression and body language.
Devastated, she lost focus. “She was obviously trying desperately to do it right,
pouring sweat under the hot klieg lights,” young Susan noted. “Her thick
pancake [makeup] had tear runs of perspiration.” After several set-ups and takes,
Marilyn lost her balance, slipped, and fell. Along with a group of grips, Sidney
Skolsky came to her rescue. Walter Lang yelled, “Cut!” and called for a break.
Marilyn felt embarrassed by her lack of grace. Susan felt an enormous wave of
empathy for her as a big star who looked embarrassed and dazed. When Marilyn
approached her husband for comfort, he resembled an “Italian marble statue.”
Dejected, Marilyn walked toward Skolsky and the two young girls. She
nervously greeted them and began to stutter and stammer. Acutely aware of
DiMaggio’s displeasure, Susan couldn’t understand his reaction. Marilyn invited
the trio back to her dressing room, where she told Susan of her dream to
someday work with her father, Lee Strasberg, at the Actors Studio. When the
break ended, Marilyn got through the production number, but Joe had left. There
were others to greet; and many who wanted to shake her hand, pose for a
photograph with her, and obtain her autograph.
Keith MacIvor, a graduate student and assistant teacher of geology at UCLA,
won a bet by taking a photograph with Marilyn on the set of There’s No Business
Like Show Business. Three years earlier, MacIvor was shopping for a new suit in
a tailor’s shop in Kansas. As he paged through an issue of Esquire magazine
featuring a photo essay on Marilyn, he told the proprietor that he could not
afford the suit due to the expense of relocating, and relayed his wish to someday
meet Marilyn Monroe. The proprietor agreed to send MacIvor the suit for free if
he, indeed, met Marilyn and sent a picture to prove it.
After settling in Hollywood, Maclvor befriended a motion picture reporter
living next door and recounted the wager made in the tailor’s shop. The
journalist took MacIvor to soundstage nine on the Fox lot, where he met Marilyn
and was photographed with her. After sending the tailor a copy of the picture,
MacIvor received a telegram promising that the suit would be shipped to him at
no charge. “Meeting Marilyn and finding her as sweet and friendly as she is
beautifully stacked, made me glad I made that bet,” he told reporters. “I was able
to spend the day on the set and I was stunned at how Hollywood worked. It was
the best day of my life.”
Fourteen-year-old Jane Lawrence, the daughter of the head of RKO Studio’s
legal department, collected four thousand photos of Marilyn and started a fan
club. She also stood in line behind MacIvor to pose for a photograph with her
idol. Lawrence waited for fifty years after Marilyn’s death before she sold her
story to a publisher. Ghostwriter Tony Jerris wrote a shocking book in
Lawrence’s voice when Marilyn could no longer defend herself, and after most
of her loyal protectors had also died.
Aside from Hal Schaefer, Marilyn appreciated sound mixer Ken Darby for
treating her like a human being and not a movie star. Darby accompanied her to
Jax and assisted in critiquing each outfit she tried on. Pleased with his opinion of
her clothing selections, Marilyn asked him to help her purchase a refrigerator.
Darby contacted a kitchen appliance wholesaler, who opened his showroom for
her after normal business hours. Marilyn admired the many gleaming models
and their new features, which included revolving shelves, a two-way door
opening from either side, and enough storage for a week’s worth of groceries, as
Darby helped her select one for the kitchen in the house on North Palm Drive.
Marilyn could also depend upon Marlon Brando for support. In costume as
Napoleon Bonaparte, he strolled from the nearby soundstage where he was
filming Desiree with Jean Simmons, and visited Marilyn while she filmed
“When a Man Chases a Girl” with O’Connor. They discussed her strong desire
to co-star with him and Frank Sinatra in the musical Guys and Dolls for MGM.
Marilyn believed she could prove herself in the role of Miss Adelaide, who
wants her fiancé, an unlicensed gambling organizer, to marry her and live a
lawful life, if Fox were to loan her to the rival studio. “I’d rather do it than
breathe!” she told MGM mogul Sam Goldwyn in a conference arranged by
Charles Feldman.
Drew Pearson invited Marilyn and Ethel Merman as guest writers for his
syndicated column, “The Washington Merry-Go-Round,” during his vacation on
August 30. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve been lucky and a lot of my fellow
Americans have cheered from the side-lines as a little girl without much
background found success and happiness the hard way,” Marilyn eloquently
wrote. “Being neither a natural-born actress, singer, nor dancer, I still pinch
myself as I drive to work on the lot in a very nice automobile and go into
singing, dancing, and dramatic routine…”
Marilyn needed extra pinching on the day she filmed the “Lazy” number with
O’Connor and Gaynor, but once Natasha advised her to “act like a bubble and
just burst,” she was able to complete the complicated dance sequence in only
two takes. In a black, V-necked body suit, matador pants, and periwinkle blue
satin sash, Marilyn reclined on a tufted chaise lounge beside a telephone resting
on a small table. As Tim and Katy dance around her, Vicky receives calls from
suitors and begs off requests for dates with the excuse of being “languid,”
“supine,” and “comatose.” Marilyn’s slow ballad is juxtaposed with O’Connor
and Gaynor’s performance of a jazzy tap routine. Marilyn interrupts her rest to
rise and dance with them until she is overcome with yawns and slithers back to
the chaise.
Walter Lang wanted Donald O’Connor to appear much taller than Marilyn in
their scenes together, but the director avoided asking her to take off her high-
heeled shoes. Instead, he asked O’Connor to stand on a crate during a scene.
Feeling foolish with this direction, O’Connor simply approached Marilyn about
the director’s fear and asked her to remove her shoes. She immediately
consented and referred to Lang as “nuts.”
At the memorial service held on the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn’s death,
George Chakiris recalled an occurrence that exemplified Marilyn’s characteristic
good manners and respect of interpersonal boundaries on the set. Chakiris’
female dance partner in the chorus wanted to ask Marilyn to kiss him on the
cheek, but he felt embarrassed and pleaded her not to approach Marilyn.
Dismissing his modesty, the partner approached Marilyn and made the request.
From afar, a mortified Chakiris watched Marilyn look in his direction and say,
“But I don’t know him.” Chakiris recalled, “I thought this was very sweet and
meaningful because she knew it was inappropriate to kiss me.”
Fox equipped its soundstage with hydraulic lifts and fifteen levels used for
the three-ring-circus-like grand finale of the title song, “There’s No Business
Like Show Business.” The six leading stars were joined by three hundred
dancers dressed as circus acrobats, ballet dancers, and in costumes depicting
various styles of dance. According to producer Sol Siegel, it was the most
expensive musical number staged at the studio and rivaled Gene Kelly’s
extended and costly An American in Paris ballet. Travilla dressed Marilyn in a
fitted, spangled blue chiffon sleeveless gown with a ruffle that extended from the
hem upward to her left hip. Merman wore a white strapless gown with an
accentuated bust, and Gaynor looked remindful of Marilyn in “Diamonds” in a
strapless, red satin gown with matching opera gloves. At the final fade-out, the
sextet marched in place arm-in-arm on a towering Roman column, surrounded
by extras costumed in every color of the rainbow and waving long, flowing flags
in coordinating hues.
Despite the chaos in her marriage, Marilyn behaved as a consummate
professional during the filming of There’s No Business Like Show Business and
displayed only one documented outburst, according to Lionel Newman. She
chastised Newman during pre-production for failing to introduce Hal Schaeffer
to Irving Berlin when the composer visited the recording stage to hear the
numbers. Newman explained it was unrealistic to expect him to introduce the
composer to everyone involved with the musical production. Berlin met
Schaeffer the next day, and Marilyn later apologized to Newman. “She was very
loyal, ridiculously loyal — too loyal,” he told Lawrence Crown.
The illness and accidents of all six stars disrupted the production, but director
Walter Lang effectively compensated for the multiple absences and finished the
film on schedule. Merman’s appendicitis put her out of work for a week. Ray
stepped barefoot on a toothpick at a Las Vegas resort and required the assistance
of crutches. Gaynor was hospitalized for a week due to a sprained ankle, and
O’Connor was injured from a punch during a scene with Dailey. Influenza and
respiratory viruses also swept the set. Marilyn had three absences due to bouts of
virus, O’Connor couldn’t work due to influenza, and Dailey stayed at home with
laryngitis and bronchitis. Gaynor was hospitalized again for ten days with a
virus. Lang was beginning to think his cast had been cursed.
The most serious casualty was Marilyn’s vocal coach. On July 27, Hal
Schaefer never showed for an appointment with singer Sheila Stuart at home of
studio lyricist Harry Giventer. Fox security guards found Schaefer early the next
morning sprawled on floor of his bungalow on the lot, and an ambulance rushed
him to Santa Monica Hospital. Schaefer had intentionally overdosed on
Benzedrine and Nembutal and consumed typewriter-cleaning fluid. Accordingly,
Louella Parsons reported DiMaggio’s disapproval of Marilyn’s many visits to
Schaefer’s hospital room and jealously of Natasha, whom he allegedly ordered
out of the home on North Palm Drive.
Before production wrapped, the film practically garnered a presidential
endorsement when Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Irving Berlin to Washington to
receive a Congressional Medal in recognition of his outstanding body of
uniquely American work. The composer was especially honored for composing
the patriotic “God Bless America,” preferred by many over the national anthem,
“The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The film’s budget of $4,200,000 didn’t stay on track like its tight production
schedule and cost the studio $5,150,000. Despite Marilyn’s small part, she was
billed third lead and heavily promoted in advertising. Ethel Merman’s attorneys
took issue with both Marilyn’s name preceding their client’s in advertisements
and Berlin’s appearing in larger font. Marilyn skipped both the New York
premiere at the Roxy Theatre on December 16 to attend a benefit for the Actors
Fund, and the Los Angeles premiere on December 25 to celebrate the Christmas
holiday.
“Special accolades must be reserved for Marilyn Monroe,” wrote a trade
magazine. “Her performance in this picture cinches her position as the most
unusual personality to reach the screen in modern times. The way she sings
‘Heat Wave,’ ‘Lazy,’ and ‘After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It’
will send you. She’s truly the Blonde Bombshell, with a sensuous and torrid
style all her own.”
One reviewer was equally enthused about her acting skills. “You’ll see a new
Marilyn Monroe in this picture,” proclaimed the Hollywood Reporter, “…the kid
has learned to act…And she has learned to read comedy lines as though she
knew what they meant.” In the role of a hatcheck girl, Marilyn had emerged as a
musical comedy talent.
Another critic was less impressed with Marilyn’s singing: “Miss Monroe’s…
treatment of her vocal chords must be seen to be appreciated,” opined Weekly
Variety. “It’s not going to chase ’em [sic] away. On the other hand, as a song
salesgirl, per se, she’ll never have to worry Miss Merman. She’s more
competitive to Mae West in her delineating.” Reading this review did nothing to
boost Marilyn’s self-esteem or alleviate her belief that she was inferior to her
female co-stars.
Some critics denounced Marilyn’s dance moves as simply offensive. “The
‘Heat Wave’ number is frankly dirty,” television host Ed Sullivan wrote, “easily
one of the most flagrant violations of good taste this observer has ever
witnessed…” He went on to report that Marilyn had “worn the welcome off this
observer’s mat…”
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times agreed: “When it comes to spreading
talent, Miss Gaynor has the jump on Miss Monroe, whose wriggling and
squirming to ‘Heat Wave’ and ‘Lazy’ are embarrassing to behold.” Today,
Marilyn’s moves appear tame in comparison to Lady Gaga.
There’s No Business Like Show Business also signified the passing of old
Hollywood to new Hollywood, and the widening generational gap. Older critics
preferred Merman, Dailey, and O’Connor (youthful, but a veteran of films) and
panned Marilyn and Ray. However, the younger audience preferred Gaynor,
Monroe, and Ray to Merman and Dailey. When the film was released on DVD
and Blu-Ray as part of Marilyn Monroe collections, merchandising focused on
her name and image on the cover. Merman’s Broadway success never
transcended into films, and Marilyn was the reigning queen of the motion picture
industry.
The musical was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Writing for a
Motion Picture Story (Lamar Trotti), Best Color Costume Design, (Charles
LeMaire, Travilla, and Miles White) and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture
(Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman). Its competition consisted of three strong
musicals of 1954: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, A Star is Born, and
Brigadoon. The Writers Guild of America also nominated Henry and Phoebe
Ephron for Best Written American Musical.
Marilyn personally liked O’Connor but agreed with Ethel Merman that their
casting as a couple was preposterous. He was short and had a baby-face, and
Marilyn looked like his mother. “I never saw anybody work so hard,” noted
Mitzi Gaynor. “She did such a good job and personally, I think she stole the
whole damn show.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
 The Seven Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch gave the Goddess of Love an iconic image that would
grant her immortality. Her character innocently stands over a subway grate as a
train passes beneath, generating a gust of wind that raises her pleated skirt above
her waist, revealing her lace panties. As much as Marilyn delighted in filming
this scene on location, the image contributed to the end of her marriage and
defined her public persona for future generations. Based upon her remarks to Eli
Wallach upon seeing a fifty-two foot cutout of her own image in this pose,
Marilyn was appalled by its indelible representation of her, as it was the very
image she was battling to escape.
The Seven Year Itch, George Axelrod’s adultery-themed comedy, opened on
November 20, 1952 at the Fulton Theatre and ran for 1141 performances. It
starred Tom Ewell as Richard Sherman, a middle-aged Manhattan book editor
whose wife and son depart for the country for a summer vacation, leaving him
alone in their apartment with a beautiful model subletting the apartment upstairs.
“It went on about sex in its most specific possible aspect,” wrote New Yorker
critic Wolcott Gibb. “That is, with an adultery that takes place as nearly in full
view of the hopeful audience as the rules of decorum and the ordinances of
Manhattan will permit.”
Originally played by Vanessa Brown (1928-1999) in the stage production, the
model is every red-blooded heterosexual man’s fantasy — albeit an objectified
woman — a character who Axelrod does not give a name. In the script, she is
simply “The Girl.” Axelrod later wrote, “The truth of the matter is that I could
never think of a name for her that seemed exactly right, that really fit the girl I
had in mind.” After a protracted comedic internal struggle, summer-bachelor
Sherman has an affair with the model.
The play’s title refers to a documented 1950s statistic, according to the US
Census Bureau, regarding when a married couple is likely to divorce. Social
scientists theorized that after seven years of monogamy, an average couple has
raised an average of one to two children through infancy, grown apart, and feel
an “itch” to seek out another sexual partner. The role of the tempting model in
the film adaptation seemed ideal for Marilyn Monroe. Her screen persona
embodied the character. The script might well have spelled out that Marilyn
Monroe was subletting the apartment upstairs from Richard Sherman. She was
the public figure with whom many married men fantasized about having an
affair. Zanuck recognized this, as evidenced by a memo dictated early in the
production’s development: “In spite of the enormous success of this play on the
stage it would not be, in my opinion, fifty percent of the picture it will be with
Marilyn Monroe. She is an absolute must for this story.”
“The Seven Year Itch is a promotion of several controversies: temptation,
infidelity, and, predominantly, sex,” wrote Rumsey Taylor. “However, it is not
Monroe’s character’s intention to encourage these traits — she is amiable,
fashionable, and oblivious to the torment she elicits in men.”
One of Marilyn’s strongest desires was to work with Billy Wilder (1906-
2002), one of Hollywood’s greatest directors. His grave, near Marilyn’s crypt at
Pierce Brothers Cemetery, bears the inscription: “I’m a writer/but then/Nobody’s
Perfect.” The epitaph summarizes his life’s work as a screenwriter who became
a director in an effort to protect his scripts from further misinterpretation by
inept directors, and echoes the last line from his masterpiece, Some Like It Hot; a
film he wrote and directed, starring Marilyn in their second pairing.
Distinguished among typical commercial films of the era, Wilder’s prolific work
contained impressive dialogue, sharp wit, and cynicism.
Born in Austria, Wilder was raised in a Jewish family and dropped out of the
University of Vienna to work as a journalist for Die Stunde, a tabloid. At age
twenty, he moved to Berlin and transitioned to screenwriting but allegedly
supplemented his income by working as a male taxi dancer and gigolo. In 1933,
Wilder fled Germany after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and settled for a short
time in Paris, where he directed his first film before settling in Hollywood.
Indeed, Wilder’s body of work serves as a sampling of the most
commercially and critically successful films of Hollywood’s Golden Era. He
wrote and directed five films on the list of the American Film Institute’s
Funniest American Films and four on its list of Greatest American Films of All
Time. Wilder rose to international attention with his writing and direction of
Double Indemnity (1944), cited as the unsurpassed example of the film noir
genre. The plot involved an unscrupulous insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray)
drawn into an affair with a manipulative married woman (Barbara Stanwyck)
and entangled in a conspiracy to murder her wealthy husband for the insurance
money. Sunset Boulevard (1950), arguably Wilder’s most celebrated work, was
nominated for eleven Oscars and won Best Screenplay. It also contained the
classic line uttered by a deranged faded silent screen actress Norma Desmond:
“Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
Marilyn was thankful to be working with a director whose recent World War
II drama, Stalag 17 (1953), set in a prisoner camp, had been hailed as one of the
best war films ever made. As The Seven Year Itch began production, it was
expected that Wilder would again be nominated for Best Director and Best
Screenplay for the romantic comedy, Sabrina (1954), starring Audrey Hepburn
as the daughter of a wealthy couple’s chauffeur who attracts the attention of both
sons (William Holden and Humphrey Bogart).
As early as December 1952, the Hollywood Reporter mentioned MGM’s
interest in obtaining the film rights for Itch and casting June Allyson and Van
Johnson. The next year, Wilder negotiated with George Axelrod (1922-2003)
and Paramount Pictures for the film rights with the intent to simultaneously
direct three versions of the movie for release in the United States, France, and
Spain. While Marilyn would star in the English-language film, French comedian
Fernandel (1903-1971) would star as Richard Sherman in the French version,
and Mexican star Cantinflas would play the male lead in the Spanish version.
In May 1954, agent Charles Feldman acquired the film rights for $250,000
and partnered with Wilder as director, granting him a share of the gross profits.
Wilder convinced him to distribute the film through Fox in order to acquire the
studio’s biggest star, who he believed was the only qualified to play The Girl.
Zanuck was in agreement. Feldman hired Axelrod to adapt his script into the
screenplay with Monroe embellishments, but when the playwright arrived with
the script in hand to use as a guide at Wilder’s office, the director briskly tossed
it on the floor and sardonically suggested using it as a doorstop.
The censorship of the era threatened to reduce The Seven Year Itch to an
unrecognizable story. The plot centered on adultery, but the strict Production
Code Administration enforced the forbiddance of adultery as the subject of a
comedy. Much of Axelrod’s funniest dialogue would be eliminated for its racy
tone, but Wilder was a master at repartee that had already passed the censors.
However, could the story be told without Richard Sherman weakening to his
arousal and seducing the model?
The play derives laughs from Sherman’s consequent guilty feelings and
farfetched imagined repercussions for having metaphorically scratched his itch.
In the absence of the affair, there is little cause for his remorse and neurotic
ruminations. Axelrod would have to modify the character’s contrition as
stemming from mere thoughts and fantasies of an affair, which was appropriate
for the 1950s but would date the film for future generations. Wilder bargained
for a subtle reference to an affair by inserting a brief scene in which the maid
finds a lady’s hairpin in Sherman’s bed, but Zanuck and Feldman balked.
Axelrod unsuccessfully campaigned to retain Sherman’s “son-of-a-bitch” and
“God-damned” expletives that were permitted in Ewell’s screen test.
Director and screenwriter lost the battle with censorship but won Marilyn
Monroe. Without her, the film would simply have not made sense. Marilyn’s
sexy screen presence communicated visually much of what could not be implied
by plot or verbalized through lines. Her unparalleled sizzle compensated for all
dialogue and plot turns the censors had excised. Marilyn quickly accepted the
role and would be paid $100,000, but the search for an ordinary-looking leading
man continued. Actor Walter Matthau was Wilder’s original choice for the role
of Richard Sherman. The DVD release of the film contains Matthau’s screen
test, directed by Wilder in June 1954 and co-starring Gena Rowlands.
“He was so funny I just screamed with laughter,” Wilder said. “I thought I
must have this guy because he’s so interesting…” Since Matthau was virtually
unknown at the time and lacked audience-drawing power, Wilder agreed with
Zanuck’s preference for Gary Cooper, William Holden, or James Stewart.
Feldman and Zanuck agreed on casting Tom Ewell, billed onscreen as
Tommy Ewell, but Wilder was unconvinced and considered Jack Lemmon, who
had recently made a comic splash with Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You
(1954). In a memorandum to Feldman and Wilder, Zanuck pressed his point,
asserting that he could think of no other actor to better play the role. Wilder
consented, and Ewell received $25,000. Zanuck wanted an ordinary-looking
leading man but suggested pulling the camera away so that Ewell wasn’t
revealed as too average.
“In medium shots he is very likeable and attractive, in a strange sort of way,”
the mogul wrote in a memo. “When we get too close to him, he sort of loses
something.” Casting the leading male role with a middle-aged actor without
obvious attractiveness played to the sexual fantasies of the demographic of
Marilyn’s male audience and implied that every guy had a chance.
Tom Ewell (1909-1994) studied at University of Wisconsin before he acted
professionally in a string of insignificant Broadway plays, and finally scored a
hit in John Loves Mary in 1947. Having appeared in some films, his first screen
success was as Judy Holliday’s philandering husband in Adam’s Rib (1949). His
everyman image made him hardly the romantic lead type, and so he returned to
Broadway and earned a Tony Award for Itch. He played a variation on the
Richard Sherman role in films such as The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956) and
The Girl Can’t Help It (1956).
The next generation knew Ewell in the recurring role of a retired veteran
policeman in the 1970s television series Baretta, starring Robert Blake as a
detective. Ewell told Good Morning America in 1982 that he “adored” Marilyn
who was “such a lovely person to work with.” For the supporting role of
Sherman’s wife, Helen, Fox selected Marilyn and Feldman’s friend, Evelyn
Keyes (1916-2008), formerly John Huston’s wife and Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in
Gone With the Wind. Completing the family, child actor Butch Bernard played
their son, Ricky, in his film debut.
Fox cast blonde-haired blue-eyed hunk Sonny Tufts (1911-1970) as Tom
MacKenzie, the man who spends the summer with Helen and Ricky in the
country. Tufts played football before graduating from Yale University and
pursuing a career in opera, eventually auditioning with the Metropolitan Opera
in New York. Sadly, he struggled with alcohol addiction and made the covers of
tabloids for substance-induced behaviors. In 1949, Tufts was found intoxicated
on a sidewalk in Hollywood. The following year, he was sued by two women for
allegedly biting each of them, and in 1951, his wife had him jailed for
drunkenness.
Playing against type, gravel-voiced, bug-eyed Robert Strauss (1913-1975)
portrayed the building janitor Mr. Krahulik, who catches Richard entertaining
the Girl. Strauss was a Shakespearian actor on Broadway who had played
Stanislas “Animal” Kasava in the original stage production of Stalag 17 and
reprised the role for Wilder’s 1953 film adaptation, for which he was nominated
for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
With his strong Slavic accent, stocky build, and bushy eyebrows, Austrian
film and theater actor Oscar Homolka (1898-1978) was a perfect fit as the
Sigmund Freud-type Dr. Ludwig Brubaker, who diagnoses Richard’s case of the
“Seven Year Itch.” Cast as Miss Morris, Marguerite Chapman (1918-1999)
worked as a telephone switchboard operator in White Plains, New York before
securing a contract with the prestigious John Robert Powers Agency. Her
modeling career led to a film contract with Fox.
For two actors, The Seven Year Itch would be their last film appearance. As
Mr. Brady, Richard’s boss, Donald MacBride (1889-1957) had played in over
twenty films, including several Marx Brothers comedies. Victor Moore (1876-
1962), who played the plumber, died a few days before Marilyn’s death. The
veteran actor of fifty films and two dozen stage plays debuted on Broadway in
1896 and performed with George M. Cohan. Moore debuted on the screen in
1915 and made three films that year, including two that were directed by Cecil
B. DeMille. He also acted with Ethel Merman in the 1934 production of
Anything Goes. Moore also played in a perennial Christmas classic, It Happened
on 5th Avenue (1947), and with Marilyn in We’re Not Married (1952).
Cast as Miss Finch, a nurse in a hospital dream sequence, Carolyn Jones
(1930-1983) had signed with Paramount Pictures and debuted in films in 1952.
In 1953, Jones married a then-struggling film and television producer, Aaron
Spelling, whose future wealth was estimated at $300,000,000 by Forbes
magazine. Jones appeared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The
Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) before being nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957). She became
iconic to the next generation in a long black wig and tight black gown in her role
of Vampira-like Morticia Addams in the 1960s television comedy series The
Addams Family.
In a small, humorous part as the waitress in a vegetarian restaurant who
preaches to Sherman about the advantage of a nudist lifestyle, character actress
Doro Merande (1892-1975) was a comedic gem. Resembling Margaret
Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, Merande was cast
in many roles as plain women on stage, film, and television. She had no scenes
with Marilyn, but likely could have related to her childhood, having been
orphaned at an early age.
Although Marilyn’s contract did not grant her approval of cinematographer,
she was pleased with Zanuck’s assignment of Milton Krasner (1904-1988).
Krasner began his career behind the camera as a teen in 1917, working for the
Vitagraph and Biograph studios in New York City. He was promoted to camera
operator before achieving success at Fox, where he photographed lavish
Technicolor epics such as Désirée (1954). He won the Academy Award for
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) shortly before The Seven Year Itch was
released.
William Travilla designed ten costumes for Marilyn during the course of a
weekend before leaving for a vacation in Mexico. She donned them for costume
tests in August during the filming of There’s No Business Like Show Business.
Travilla’s designs oozed sex appeal: a white sheath with tiny blue polka dots; a
two-piece casual ensemble of a pink top with plunging neckline and matching
matador slacks; a white crepe sheath adorned with a pattern of crystal bugle
beads and crisscrossed spaghetti straps; a plain white robe over a white satin and
lace slip; and a short baby-doll teddy. Travilla also designed three whimsical
costumes for dream sequences: a strapless magenta sequined pants-outfit with a
satin magenta sash and matching shawl; a gown with a marabou bodice; and a
black and orange tiger stripe gown with strapless sweetheart bodice, tulle tail,
and black sequined opera gloves.
Travilla’s sunburst-pleated ivory summer dress of rayon-acetate crepe with
halter-top was aerodynamically designed to catch a gust of wind from a subway
sidewalk grating, and became the globally iconic and most recognizable motion
picture costume in the history of cinema. According to Maureen Reilly, Travilla
created a dress to make Marilyn’s character “look clean, talcum-powdered, and
adorable.” The halter bodice created a plunging neckline and exposed the
shoulders and back. A narrow belt crisscrossed around the torso and tied into a
small bow on the left side of the waist.
A part of actress Debbie Reynolds’ large collection of Hollywood costumes,
the famous dress, ecru with age, was auctioned in 2011 by Profiles in History.
Reynolds had hoped to display the collection in a museum but the project never
came to fruition, and financial hardships forced her to divest herself of her
treasures. She was in tears as bidding on Marilyn’s dress closed at more than
$5,600,000, a record, and sold to an unidentified telephone bidder. Subtle
differences in the width of pleats, length, and bow from the dress photographed
in the film, as cited by Scott Fortner’s blog, suggest it might actually have been a
copy worn by Roxanne Arlen in Fox’s Bachelor Flat (1962). Another possibility
is that it was an altered version of several worn by Marilyn on the West Coast
soundstage and on location on the East Coast. Reynolds would not have been
aware of these differences when she originally purchased the dress and countless
other film costumes and props in 1971.

Marilyn’s work on the The Seven Year Itch overlapped the production of
There’s No Business Like Show Business, and Fox refused her request for
rehearsal and rest between films in order to finish production by the
Thanksgiving holiday. On September 8, she took a late evening flight from Los
Angeles and arrived at New York’s Idlewild Airport shortly after 8 o’clock in the
morning for a six-day on-location shooting schedule. DiMaggio had
begrudgingly agreed to accompany her to the airport, but stayed in the car when
Marilyn stopped at Hedda Hopper’s house for a brief interview. At the Los
Angeles Airport, he kissed her publicly for the benefit of photographers to allay
rumors of tension in the marriage. The couple had made few public appearances
together since they had wed in January.
Harry Brand at Fox alerted all airport employees of Marilyn’s traveling
schedule and drew a welcoming crowd of five hundred whistling and cheering
airplane mechanics, baggage handlers, other male workers, and fans to Idlewild.
Marilyn exited the plane wearing an elegant beige wool ensemble from her last
film and sat demurely with her legs crossed on a ledge of the moveable stairs
while she blew kisses with her gloved hand to the press, fans, and male airline
employees. Walking arm in arm with police escorts, she crossed the tarmac and
entered the terminal where she posed for more photographs in the lounge,
yawning. “MARILYN WIGGLES IN,” proclaimed the front-page headline of the New
York World Telegram.
The local television broadcast was interrupted for Marilyn’s interview at the
airport. The television host referenced River of No Return as her last film in
release, and Marilyn smiled and said pointedly, “But we won’t talk about that.”
He also predicted she would be stopping traffic on Saturday night to film the
skirt-blowing scene, indicating the press was notified far in advance of the
planned spectacle.
“Well you brought your hairdresser and your drama coach and four men from
Fox,” the interviewer observed after small talk about the approaching World
Series. “All this and no Joe, huh?”
Marilyn responded with a laugh, “Isn’t that a shame?”
Hugh French, Charles Feldman’s partner in the Famous Artists Agency,
served as her traveling escort, along with photographer Sam Shaw (1912-1999),
hired by Feldman to photograph the entire production. The photographer had
struck a friendship with Joe when he collaborated with Jimmy Cannon on a
documentary film on the Yankee Clipper. Born and raised on New York’s Lower
East Side, Shaw made his living as a painter and sculptor before discovering his
passion for photography. He worked as a traveling photojournalist for Collier’s
Weekly in the 1940s, and by the next decade, his photographs appeared on the
covers of Life and Look. Shaw’s celebrity portraits were naturalistic in style
during an era when Hollywood photographers produced artificial glamour.
French and Shaw accompanied an exhausted Marilyn in the taxicab as she
headed to the Hampshire House Hotel on Central Park South, where Shaw also
photographed her having breakfast in her suite and lying on the bed as she took a
call from DiMaggio.
“Marilyn, when I’m shooting you, I don’t want to shoot a pretty girl,” Shaw
told her. “I want to shoot a star at work…I want to show how a picture is
made — with sweat, struggle, disarrayed hair…to show the evolution of the
professional beauty, the professional actress.” Hearing this explanation, she
immediately liked him and his style. They were interrupted when Marilyn
received another call from Joe Mankiewicz, who informed her of his having cast
the role she wanted in Guys and Dolls. Feldman had helped her in winning over
Sam Goldwyn but could not influence the film’s director. With the MGM
musical lost, there was no rush to sign a new contract with Fox; instead, she
could wait for a better offer from Milton Greene.
The next day, Marilyn fulfilled her obligation to promote the film by
attending a press conference in a strapless cocktail dress with Tom Ewell at the
St. Regis Hotel on East Fifty-Fifth Street, before networking in the city.
Afterward, Milton escorted her to a performance of the Tony-winning musical,
Pajama Game, choreographed by Fob Fosse, at the St. James Theatre. She went
backstage to meet the cast and chatted with star Carol Haney (1924-1964). After
the show, Greene and David Wayne escorted Marilyn under a balcony adorned
by a line of painted cast iron lawn jockey statues and through the entrance of 21
Club, a former prohibition-era speakeasy at 21 West Fifty-Second Street. Its
owner, Pete Kriendler, gave her a tour and stopped at his trophy case before the
group had dinner. The trio hopped over to the Little Club at 70 East Fifty-Fifth
Street owned by ex-Vaudeville entertainer and dancer Billy Reed.
Before production began, Marilyn posed for Milton in his cathedral-ceilinged
penthouse studio at 480 Lexington Avenue in what would be called the famous
“ballerina sitting.” In reality, she was not costumed as a ballerina. Marilyn
arrived in an azure version of the pink blouse and matching matador pants
ensemble designed by Travilla, and posed sitting in a wicker peacock chair.
Milton asked her to change into a white satin dress he had ordered from designer
Anne Klein; it had a fitted bodice and tulle crinoline under-layer that gave the
skirt a flared shape. When Marilyn tried on the dress without stockings or shoes,
she discovered it was two sizes small and could not be fastened with the side
zipper. Improvising, she held the garment against her as Milton started shooting.
Her expression is both beautifully serene and vulnerable.
Milton instructed Marilyn to sit on a wicker chair against a black backdrop
with what appears to be a ballet bar extending horizontally. As she leaned
forward in the chair, the skirt rose, and its tulle crinoline under layers spread
across her lap, flowed over her legs, and appeared as a ballerina’s tutu. Marilyn’s
legs are visible through the tulle, and her bare feet with painted red toenails are
turned inward, facing each other, in a childlike pose. Her left arm is pressed
across her abdomen, holding the bodice of her dress against her breasts.
Marilyn’s right arm rests on her lap with her index finger demurely pointing
upward and touching her chin. In the classic pose of the session, Marilyn’s
shoulders are rounded as she leans forward with her right hand lifted and resting
on her chest.
Milton seemed to capture the soul behind Marilyn’s almost sad eyes. Her
mouth is slightly open, but not seductively as in Fox studio poses. She is
stunningly gorgeous, but her blue eyes reflect emotional pain. In one pose,
Marilyn leaned all the way forward, her face resting in her lap so that only the
top of her head was visible to Milton as he snapped the picture. It appears to
convey total despair. To many photography critics, these “ballerina” poses evoke
Degas’ paintings of dancers. Time-Life hailed this iconic study as one of three
most popular portraits of twentieth century, along with Philippe Halsman’s
Albert Einstein and Yousuf Karsh’s Winston Churchill.
When DiMaggio arrived on September 11, Marilyn left the Hampshire House
to stay with him in a suite on the eleventh floor of the St. Regis Hotel. The next
day, he picked up the phone and called the Greene apartment at 127 East
Seventy-Eighth Street, inviting Milton and Amy to El Morocco, a famous supper
club in blue zebra-stripe motif at 154 East Fifty-Fourth Street. During dinner,
Marilyn and Milton were engrossed in conversation about her grievances against
Fox and their plans to form a production company while Amy and Joe talked
about baseball. Even though she had promised her husband to wear more modest
clothes, Marilyn wore a black suit with a plunging neckline, but displayed a silk
red rose in her cleavage.
On September 13, the DiMaggios attended a performance of Teahouse of the
August Moon, starring Marilyn’s former co-star, David Wayne, in an Asian role,
at the Martin Beck Theatre. Afterward, the couple visited with Wayne in his
dressing room.
The day before, Natasha Lytess had appeared on the popular television show
What’s My Line? at CBS Studios. The format involved celebrity panelists
probing contestants with questions eliciting yes or no answers in order to
determine their occupations. Wearing a simple sweater blouse and flared skirt,
Natasha printed the pseudonym “Tala Forman” on a board, sat next to the host,
John Charles Daly, and faced the panelists. The viewers at home and live
audience saw her title as “Marilyn Monroe’s Dramatic Coach.” The panelists
consisted of columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, publisher Bennett Cerf, actress Arlene
Francis, and radio and television personality Robert Q. Lewis.
Natasha’s occupation of drama coach was correctly guessed in the first round
of questions, and the host challenged the panelists to identify the special reason
why she was invited. Lewis acknowledged that Marilyn Monroe’s visit to the
city was in all the headlines and surmised Lytess may be associated with her.
Cerf stated that her face looked familiar and asked if, indeed, she coached
Marilyn. Francis jokingly asked if she were teaching Marilyn to pitch ball. Daly
revealed Natasha’s true name, and she was awarded thirty-five dollars.
Production began with The Seven Year Itch’s final exterior scene shot at a
townhouse at 164 East Sixty-First Street between Third and Lexington Avenues.
In the sequence, Sherman dashes out of the apartment shoeless and holding his
son’s oar, to join his family. The Girl, wearing his white terry cloth robe, calls
from the second-story window, throws his shoes one by one, and waves. Wilder
also shot a scene earlier in the script in which the Girl appears at the window
wearing a white silk and lace slip and blow-dries her hair as Sherman walks
home from the subway station. Barricades blocked the street for four hours, and
the Daily News reported on a “roadblock named Marilyn Monroe” who
delivered seven words: “Hey! Hi! I just washed my hair.”
Crowds of mostly teens gathered for a glimpse of Marilyn but saw stand-in
Gloria Mosolino leaning over the windowsill as electricians adjusted the lighting
and Wilder reviewed the camera set-ups with Milton Krasna. The impatient
youths began shouting and chanting for Marilyn. When Wilder was ready,
Mosolino stepped away, and Marilyn assumed the position.
Sam Shaw photographed her from behind as she leaned out the window with
the prop. Hearing the noise of his camera’s shutter, Marilyn twirled around and
jokingly asked to take a dozen copies of the picture. She loved the dreamy
portrait Shaw took of her in a white robe at the window, which captured her with
a peaceful expression on her face and her head resting in her hand. When she
included it in a scrapbook she made for Shaw’s family, she wrote a caption in
crayon: “This one is my favorite.” After hours of tedious on-location work to
shoot a few lines of dialogue that required dubbing at the studio, Marilyn, still
dressed in the white robe, came out to the steps of the townhouse to accept a
glass of water offered by the bachelor who lived in the apartment.
At one o’clock in the morning on September 15, Marilyn and Ewell arrived at
the Trans Lux Theatre near the intersection of Fifty-Second Street and Lexington
Avenue. Police closed traffic on the entire city block and erected barricades. A
track was laid on the street beside the curb so that the CinemaScope camera
could track Marilyn and Ewell strolling down the street.
An estimated fifteen hundred onlookers gathered amid klieg lights,
production trailers, crew, and Billy Wilder in a suit and hat to observe Fox’s
brilliant marketing strategy. John Graham, Fox’s East Coast production manager,
orchestrated the complex logistics while Harry Brand fed the press what to write.
“There won’t be any admission charge when Marilyn appears…” announced
the Journal-American. “[Her] costume is expected to be more revealing than the
one she wore yesterday to stop the traffic.”
Travilla’s pleated white summer frock itself was not revealing; it was the
special effects crew’s manipulation of the aerodynamically designed garment
that would expose Marilyn’s flesh. The idea is credited to Sam Shaw and was
based upon a shot from a photographic session of sailors and their girlfriends at
Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, taken for the August 1941 cover of Our Navy
magazine. Shaw suggested that Feldman include an image that recalled a striking
one of a sailor and his girlfriend whose skirt was held aloft by a draft on wind.
Accordingly, Axelrod cleverly incorporated the recycled idea of the blowing
skirt into the film.
Shaw had no idea that his idea would confer iconic immortality onto his
beautiful new photographic subject and friend, nor that it would contribute to the
end of her marriage. A crewmember operated a large fan under the grate to
simulate the gust from a subway, and Marilyn and Ewell strolled along the
sidewalk from the entrance of the Trans Lux Theatre, passing between Henry
Steig’s modernist silver jewelry workshop and Wright’s Food. As Marilyn
stepped onto the subway grating implanted into the concrete, the fan generated a
robust updraft. She held the front of her skirt down as it billowed like a
parachute around her waist. The scene could easily have been shot in a studio,
but filming a spectacle in New York City gave Fox unparalleled publicity.
On a hot summer night, Sherman and the Girl go to the cinema together and
see The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Universal Studio’s
contemporary film in 3-D featuring a menacing amphibious monster that abducts
a beautiful girl. Walking out of the theater, the Girl spontaneously straddles a
sidewalk subway grate to feel a blast of cool air generated by a train speeding
under the city, and her pleated skirt rises above her knees. With girlish delight,
she holds her dress down and squeals, “Do you feel the breeze from the subway?
Isn’t it delicious?” In the preceding dialogue, the Girl expresses empathy for the
monster. Although “scary-looking,” it wasn’t “all bad.” The Girl theorizes the
monster merely craved affection and “a sense of being loved and needed and
wanted.” In describing the monster’s motivation, in effect, she also describes
Richard’s.
Elliot Erwitt of Magnum, Ed Feingersh, and Sam Shaw snapped photographs
of what columnist Irving Hoffman called “the shot seen around the world,”
referencing a line in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem about the cannon blast that
began the American Revolutionary War in 1775, the “shot heard around the
world.” In reality, Hoffman was not referring to one photographer’s picture; it
was a plethora of pictures by several photographers covering nearly every
conceivable angle.
Twenty-five year-old George Zimbel of PIX photo agency recalled the
historic cinematic moment as one of the most important photo-ops of his career,
aside from President George W. Bush landing on a battleship. He observed
Marilyn’s professionalism as he shot four rolls of film. She consulted with
Natasha and Wilder. “When the filming began, she did her work,” Zimbel told
Dean Brierly as reported in the Internet blog Photographers Speak. “Before the
filming began, she played to the still photographers; that was also her work and
she knew how to do it par excellence.” His images of Marilyn were exhibited in
nine major museums.
Wilder rehearsed his stars repeatedly through the scene, and then filmed take
after take, for hours. Marilyn hit her mark each time. Neither she nor Ewell
flubbed a line. Natasha did not frown when Wilder yelled, “Cut!” Marilyn
wasn’t dissatisfied and didn’t ask, “Can we try it again?” Numerous shots were
not required for the film; however, they were a calculated necessity to excite the
crowd and produce photographs for magazines and newspapers for the purpose
of promotion. This was a staged publicity stunt by Fox with Marilyn’s
complicity. “I hope this is for your private collection,” Marilyn warned Wilder
about the yards of film exposing her thighs and panties. Marilyn, Wilder, and
Zanuck knew the photographs would be distributed across the globe and show
more risqué poses than could actually appear in the film.
“More…more, Marilyn,” loud masculine voices boomed from the crowd.
“Let’s see more!” Others shouted, “Higher! Higher!” Marilyn played to the fans
and photographers. She stepped out of the scene as the Girl and became Marilyn
the movie star on display. With her legs and feet together, she twisted her waist
and squatted down demurely, holding the top of her skirt down over her panties
with her right hand and lifting her left hand behind her left ear, her pinky
pointing upward to the evening stars in a ladylike fashion. Sam Shaw snapped
the picture.
At a time in history when women wore structured undergarments such as
stockings and garters, panties, girdles, slips, and crinoline petticoats, Marilyn
wore only two pairs of lace underwear to prevent the visibility of pubic hair
illuminated by the bright klieg lights.
 The subway grate scene on Lexington Avenue captures the Girl in a
spontaneous, nonsexual moment of joy — at least this is how Marilyn played it.
Richard Sherman becomes the aroused voyeuristic male. The crowd of
onlookers and the audience become voyeuristic as well. Still, what was going
through Marilyn’s head? She clearly knew the sexual implication. In true
Monroe fashion, she played the scene like an innocent child, seemingly unaware
of the sexual allure she creates. This was not a challenge to a woman who was
sexualized in childhood, as there was no sexual pleasure for the character in the
scenario, but she created sexual pleasure for those observing.
The scene became an iconic one in film history, along with Julie Andrews
twirling on the top of a mountain in the opening of The Sound of Music, the alien
and boy touching index fingers in ET: The Extraterrestrial, and a windblown
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet with their arms outstretched like wings on
the bow of the ill-fated ship in Titanic. The scene can also be argued as both an
example of objectification of a woman; exactly what Marilyn battled Fox
against, or a demonstration of a woman executing her own sexual power.
Marilyn’s complicity is often labeled as an act of exhibitionism or self-
abasement. But was she really colluding in her own objectification? Marilyn was
a hard worker who tried her best to bring reality and art to any project in which
she was involved. She never expressed shame in portraying the Girl and may
have justified the scene as the price of working with the esteemed Billy Wilder.
Wilder admitted the spectacle could have been offensive and distasteful, but
Marilyn performed with naïveté. He asserted the act was “the finest instance of a
Monroe’s character’s ability to suggest simultaneously both childlike pleasure
and sexual delight.” In fact, her casting had been a calculated effort to include
tasteful sexuality over obscenity. “She had a natural instinct for how to read a
comic line and how to give it something extra, something special,” Wilder said
in tribute to Marilyn. “She was never vulgar in a role that could have become
vulgar, and somehow you felt good when you saw her on the screen. To put it
briefly, she had a quality no one else ever had on the screen except Garbo. No
one.”
According to many accounts now accepted as truth, DiMaggio was nearby at
Toots Shor’s on Fifty-First Street with George Solotaire and Jimmy Cannon.
Despite Joe’s protestations that his presence on the scene would make Marilyn
nervous and would make him nervous, too, columnist Walter Winchell
anticipated a good story and persuaded Joe to join him at the shoot. Within
minutes, a taxicab dropped the two men off in the midst of the commotion, and
they pushed through the crowd of boisterously loud and aroused males before
reaching a vantage point. Joe saw what he believed was his wife flaunting
herself to strangers and heard sexualized, rude comments each time the fan
under the subway grate lifted her skirt. Joe’s reaction to the hysteria on
Lexington Avenue provided Winchell with the story he had slyly orchestrated.
Simply put, Joe was horrified. He felt disgraced as a husband and mortified by
his wife’s display.
Photographs taken that evening inside the Trans Lux Theatre suggest this
might not have been the actual course of events. With Winchell and DiMaggio
beside her in the lobby, Marilyn cut a two-tiered cake celebrating the one-year
anniversary of CinemaScope. In other photographs, Marilyn rested in a theater
seat with her legs stretched across the seat in front of her while Wilder, Winchell,
and DiMaggio stood in the aisle. The photos prove Joe was present earlier in the
evening for the cake-cutting photo opportunity and while Marilyn took a break
before or during the filming process. However, the photographs do not contradict
the many eyewitness reports of Joe’s disapproval and disgust.
“I saw [Joe’s] face, he became like a crazy Italian,” Amy Greene recalled.
“He was seething.” George Zimbel got a shot of him, but the expression is
unclear. Wilder described it as the “look of death.” Joe stormed off in fury, and
Winchell got his story.
Unaware of Joe’s wrath, Marilyn took several breaks inside the Trans Lux
Theatre, where Wilder introduced her to Gina Lollobrigida (born 1927). The
Italian actress had made her American film debut with Humphrey Bogart in Beat
the Devil (1953), and the two women were photographed together. Lollobrigida’s
website states she found Marilyn “a very sensitive and vulnerable woman” and
was “very fond” of her. Allegedly, Bogart said Lollobrigida made Marilyn
Monroe “look like Shirley Temple.” The New York Herald Tribune reported
Marilyn left the location at a quarter past four in the morning.
The story played on Lexington Avenue presumably contained less drama than
the reality played out in the luxurious suite on the eleventh floor of the St. Regis
Hotel three blocks north and further west. DiMaggio was enraged. Guests on the
eleventh floor awoke from sounds of shouting and hysterical crying. Some even
called the front desk in alarm. Milton Krasner told Anthony Summers he heard
the sounds of a violent fight through the wall of his adjacent suite.
Without malice, Allan Snyder told Fred Lawrence Guiles that DiMaggio
“slapped [Marilyn] around sometimes” and described the marriage as marked by
episodic domestic violence. Guiles quoted a corroborating unnamed publicist:
“Joe wasn’t any great hero in Marilyn’s life. He was vicious. He couldn’t have
treated her worse. He’d beat the hell out of her and she was terrified. He
continued bothering her months after their divorce.” When pressed for an
example of vicious behavior, the publicist recounted having received a call from
a frightened Marilyn at the Waldorf Astoria the following year. Allegedly, she
reported having allowed Joe inside, and he battered her; she ran to the bedroom
and locked the door. The publicist alleged having heard Joe banging on the door
in the background while Marilyn went mute with fear.
Several witnesses reported seeing physical evidence of Joe’s violence. In
Milton’s Marilyn, Amy Greene remembered visiting with Marilyn in the
bedroom as she dressed for a dinner engagement. Marilyn self-consciously
observed Amy’s eyes dart toward the bruises on her body. Amy asked, “Joe?”
Marilyn simply replied, “Yes.” Reportedly, the issue was dropped with no further
discussion at dinner. Similarly, Fox hairdresser Gladys Rasmussen told Donald
Spoto that DiMaggio “beat [Marilyn] up” and left bruises on her shoulders that
required extensive coverage with makeup.
In his memoir, Sydney Guilaroff quoted Marilyn’s admission over dinner at
Trader Vic’s: “Joe slapped me around the hotel room until I screamed, ‘That’s
it!’ You know, Sydney, the first time a man beats you up, it makes you angry.
When it happens a second time, you’d have to be crazy to stay. So I left him. I
don’t know what makes a man beat a woman. I just don’t understand it.”
As the DiMaggios traveled together from New York to Los Angeles on
September 18, they were all smiles. Marilyn wore sunglasses to mask her eyes,
which were swollen from hours of crying. Typical in the cycle of violence, after
an explosive, abusive episode, the batterer feels sorry and pleads for another
chance at redemption. Joe most likely promised not to demean her or pass
judgment about her career and may have agreed to see a psychiatrist. “Don’t
ever do that again,” Marilyn bravely told him. “I was abused as a child, and I’m
not going to stand for it.”
With only four brief exterior scenes in the can, including establishing shots of
Penn Station and a sequence shot at Yankee Stadium that would be cut, Wilder
and company returned to Fox to film the interior scenes. By this time, Marilyn’s
emotional state had deteriorated. She fluffed lines and required numerous takes.
“I would have been tough if you hadn’t liked her,” Ewell said, unaware of the
upheaval in her personal life.
When Marilyn arrived several hours late and apologized for forgetting her
way to the studio, Wilder could not comprehend how she got lost finding her
place of employment for the last eight years. “I didn’t realize what a
disorganized person this was until I looked in the back of her car,” he would tell
James Thomas of the London Daily Express. “It was like she threw everything in
helter-skelter because there was a foreign invasion and the enemy armies were
already in Pasadena. There were blouses lying there, and slacks, and dresses,
girdles, old shoes, old plane tickets, old lovers for all I know.”
On a soundstage recreation of Lexington Avenue, Wilder directed a tame re-
enactment of the subway grate scene, with Marilyn’s skirt never rising above the
knees, to splice with the footage filmed in New York. The completed sequence
began with images from New York filmed by the camera trolleying as Ewell and
Marilyn walk from the theater down the street. The lens was positioned at head-
level, shooting downward to catch the dress as it blew for the first time. Wilder
then cut to a studio dialogue shot, followed by another studio shot from a
different angle; as the camera pans at knee level, the hem of the Girl’s dress
begins to rise, but the blast of air exposes only her knees. In the versions shot at
the two locations, her hairstyle slightly varies.
Joe returned to New York on September 27 to serve as commentator for
television coverage of the World Series between the New York Giants and
Cleveland Indians starting two days later at the Polo Grounds. He stayed with
George Solotaire at the Madison Hotel before traveling to Ohio for two games
played at the Cleveland Stadium on October 1 and 2. During the separation,
Marilyn confided in Mary Karger Short, Fred Karger’s sister, about the
implosion of the DiMaggio marriage.
Delightful and effervescent onscreen, Marilyn presented no indication of the
turbulence and violence occurring in her personal life. In the ensuing years, she
was bashed for requiring numerous retakes during the production — in one
instance, as many as seventy. She delivered her best work in the late afternoon
when her co-stars began to tire. Marilyn’s delightful performance and the plot’s
comedy contrasted with her personal pain as the turbulent marriage ended and
DiMaggio allegedly targeted her with domestic violence. Friends, wardrobe
mistresses, and body make-up artists noticed bruises on Marilyn’s body, which
she dismissed with implausible explanations.
Marilyn completed some scenes in one take, such as the one in which she and
Ewell play “Chopsticks” on the piano. Overjoyed with the work, Wilder
embraced her.
“Marilyn you’re absolutely wonderful,” he roared. “You remind me of a little
girl at a birthday party.”
 “I wouldn’t know,” Marilyn replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve never had a
birthday party.”
Domestic violence is often a guarded secret for the offender, victim, and
those aware of it. Billy Wilder may not have known what went on behind the
doors of Marilyn’s suite at the St. Regis Hotel or her home on North Palm Drive,
and the silent work of her makeup artist Allan Snyder hid all evidence of
bruising on her body. The director offered an assessment of Marilyn to Michel
Ciment of Positif, the French film magazine, excluding the underlying basis of
her personal problems:

I had no problems with Monroe. It was Monroe who had problems

with Monroe. She had trouble concentrating — there was always
something bothering her. Directing her was like pulling teeth. But
when you finished with her, when you had made it through forty or
fifty takes and put up with her delays, you found yourself with
something unique and inimitable. When the film was finished, you
forgot your troubles with her. It’s not that she was mean. It’s just that
she had no sense of time or conscience that three hundred people had
been waiting hours for her. However, she had a great sense of timing
herself. At times she could do three pages of text without making a
mistake. At other times she had real mental blocks. She needed the
best psychoanalyst or a team of psychoanalysts to figure out what was
going on in her head.

According to Maurice Zolotow, after DiMaggio returned home one evening,

neighbors saw Marilyn crying while walking down the street at one o’clock in
the morning. Mrs. John C. Medley suspected violence and saw a man leave the
house through the service entrance and walk along the street for hours. The next
day, Allan Snyder allegedly covered Marilyn’s fresh bruises with body makeup
and as she contacted Jerry Giesler (1886-1962), the first president of the
Criminal Courts Bar Association in Los Angeles and one of the country’s
highest-paid attorneys. He had won acquittals of Errol Flynn on charges of
statutory rape and director Busby Berkeley on charges of murder. Most
famously, Giesler successfully defended fourteen-year-old Cheryl Crane, Lana
Turner’s daughter, who was accused of fatally stabbing gangster Johnny
Stompanato, her mother’s abusive lover, in the family home in Beverly Hills in
1958.
On the morning of October 4, Marilyn called Wilder to announce her
inability to report to work due to the requirements of the process of divorcing.
Afterwards, she called Harry Brand in the publicity department, who alerted the
media with an official statement. During breakfast downstairs with Sidney
Skolsky, Marilyn informed Joe that she intended to end their marriage of eight
months and roughly two weeks, and that she had already contacted her lawyer to
begin the divorce proceedings. She had also disclosed her plans to Darryl
Zanuck, who forbade Joe’s entry on the studio lot. With Milton Greene at her
side for support, Marilyn arrived at the studio later that evening to watch a
screening of There’s No Business Like Show Business along with Irving Berlin,
Bing Crosby, Olivia de Havilland, Judy Garland, Joseph Mankiewicz, Donald
O’Connor, and Joan Collins.
In the early morning hours of the next day, the DiMaggio Honeymoon House
on North Palm Drive house was surrounded by hundreds of reporters and
photographers. The morning edition of the New York Times published Brand’s
announcement under the headline “Marilyn Monroe to Divorce DiMaggio; She
cites ‘Conflicting Career Demands.’ ” The article reported the divorce was by
mutual consent. “There is no chance at reconciliation,” Brand stated, “I
discussed the possibility with her. The break up is not sudden, but has been
brewing for a long time.”
In the second floor master bedroom, Jerry Gielser sat on the edge of
Marilyn’s bed, where she lay under the effect of calming sedative drugs,
administered by friend and gynecologist Dr. Leon Krohn. Giesler handed her a
two-page legal document petitioning the court for divorce, citing “serious
anxiety and moral suffering” after nine months of marriage. After Marilyn
signed it, Giesler went downstairs and handed it to Joe with an explanation of his
right to contest the request within ten days. Joe placed the document in his suit
jacket pocket and continued watching television.
DiMaggio did not want to end the marriage but respected Marilyn’s wishes
by leaving the home. At ten o’clock, Reno Barsocchini, best man at the
DiMaggio-Monroe wedding, arrived to assist Joe in moving his luggage and golf
bag from the house and into the trunk of his blue Cadillac. In response to a
reporter’s question about his destination, DiMaggio said, “I’m going to San
Francisco.” When asked if he would return to the couple’s home again, he said,
“San Francisco’s my home. It’s always been my home. I’ll never come back
here.”
 Before driving home to his house on Beach Street, DiMaggio spent a few
days at the home of Dr. Leon Krohn’s home on North Roxbury Drive. Marilyn’s
gynecologist had grown attached to the couple and apparently served as a
mediator in the last days of the marriage and at the point of separation. Although
officially parted, Marilyn called Joe at Krohn’s home every night before going to
bed. She still loved him, although she could not remain his wife.
About an hour later, after recuperating from the effects of her medication,
Marilyn exited her front door on the arm of Giesler. She wore a black sweater
with a high turtleneck, black pencil skirt, black leather belt, and black pumps.
They stood at a cluster of microphones in front of the home, facing newsreel
cameras, reporters, and photographers. Marilyn’s eyes were swollen, and her
expression was anguished. Sydney Skolsky came to her side and spoke into the
microphone: “There is no other man.”
Giesler instantly took the lead: “Miss Monroe will have nothing to say this
morning. All I can say, as her attorney, is this is what we would say is a conflict
of careers. Regrettable as it may be, it will have to be presented in the proper
place at the proper time.”
Weeping, Marilyn mustered, “I can’t say anything.” She wiped her tears with
a white handkerchief and stumbled. Giesler steadied her. When reporters shouted
questions and pushed handheld microphones into Marilyn’s face, she broke
down. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed into the microphones. “I’m so sorry.”
Marilyn got into the passenger seat of Giesler’s sedan, and he drove her to
Krohn’s home to allow for the press to disband before delivering her back home.
She climbed the stairs and got into bed.
In a press conference without Marilyn, Giesler explained: “Miss Marilyn
Monroe and Mr. Joseph DiMaggio are presently having differences which have
brought about a separation. Miss Monroe has decided to file an action for
divorce…on the usual and ordinary grounds of mental cruelty. There will be no
property or financial disputes between these parties. Both of them regret the
necessity of the action but they feel it is inevitable at this time.”
The next day in San Francisco, Joe held a short press conference and said, “I
can’t understand what happened. I hope she’ll see the light.”
At seven o’clock that same morning, Marilyn had driven through the gate of
Fox and reported to her dressing room. Gladys Rasmussen styled her hair, and
Snyder applied her makeup. Later, when Wilder greeted Marilyn on the set, she
told him that she had enjoyed a good night’s sleep and felt alive for the first time
in days. Marilyn performed her first take with bright eyes, focus, and
concentration. She knew her lines word for word. Wilder was able to print on the
third take, and Natasha felt relieved.
“Now she does everything better,” Natasha told the press, happy Joe would
now be out of Marilyn’s life for good. “She’s much easier to work with.
Sometimes now with one word I will make her know what Mr. Wilder wants
from her.” Natasha believed the marriage had been a mistake and that Marilyn
had become aware of this shortly after exchanging vows. “Things like this just
don’t happen overnight,” Natasha said. “Now at last it will be possible for
Marilyn to develop her talent to the fullest. In this girl we have a potential great
dramatic star. Her recent experience was a handicap to fulfillment of this goal.”
Amid all the drama, there was a sexy comedy to film. Monsignor Biddle
from the National Legion of Decency consulted on the set to catch any material
deemed unsuitable for the morals of the American audience. Fox had no choice
but to pander to the organization’s representative. Clergy across the nation could
denounce the film in Sunday sermons and call for a boycott by their
congregations. Unlike Otto Preminger, Wilder felt far more upstaged by the
religious spies than by Natasha’s attempts at back-seat direction.
One line the Legion permitted was the Girl’s response to Sherman’s
invitation to visit his apartment: “Let me just go and put something on. I’ll go
into the kitchen to get dressed…When it’s hot like this, you know what I do? I
keep my undies in the ice box.”
Wilder cut a scene filmed on October 15 when Fox’s casting director, Ben
Lyon, visited his former discovery on the set. It was a dream meant to precede
the last scene in which Strauss is dressed as a mobster and Marilyn as his moll,
Tiger Lil. Sherman awakes on the sofa and discovers the Girl is not sleeping in
his bed. His guilt-riddled and paranoid conscience concludes she and the janitor
have conspired to snoop through his bank deposit box with a plan to blackmail
him. In reality, the Girl is merely showering.
Marilyn’s most challenging and pivotal scene in the film appears close to the
end, when Sherman tells the Girl no attractive woman would want him; she
would want Gregory Peck. She delivers a heartfelt response as Alfred Newman’s
“The Girl Upstairs” musical theme sentimentally is played by violins. Since it
was a long speech, Wilder and the crew assumed it would require multiple takes
and many hours to film. Surprising to all, Marilyn completed it in a single take
and everyone on set applauded. “She told me later she was able to do the scene
because she believed every word of what she was saying,” George Axelrod
would recall, “and because it seemed to her like the story of her own life.”
 Charles Feldman wrote a two-page memorandum to Zanuck on October 22
updating him on Marilyn’s work since her marital separation. “There have been
tough days…the 18-takes have only happened on rare occasions with the girl…
for the last two weeks this girl has worked as hard as anyone I have known in
my life.”

On October 26, Joe made a final attempt to reconcile with Marilyn before the
hearing for her divorce petition, scheduled for the following day. He called
Sidney Skolsky to his room at the Knickerbocker Hotel to come to serve as a
mediator and convince Marilyn to change her mind.
At first, Skolsky felt afraid when Joe pointed for him to sit on the bed as he
pulled a chair close to him. Joe took a deep breath, acknowledged Skolsky’s role
as Marilyn’s confidante, and asked if there was another man. Skolsky denied this
but would not offer any other explanation for her desire to end the marriage.
Deep down, he believed Marilyn felt bored and unfulfilled by her life with Joe,
but did not have the heart to reveal this to her pained husband. “His life-style
added up to beer, TV, and the old lady,” Skolsky wrote. “The wife who ran third
to Gunsmoke or The Late Show and a can of beer, night after night after night.
She couldn’t settle for that — not even with an All-American hero.”
The next day, Skolsky accompanied Marilyn to the Santa Monica Court. She
appeared solemn and moved in slow motion past the gathered mob of paparazzi.
Wearing a sedate black suit, white gloves, and matronly hat, Marilyn looked
every bit like the proper lady Joe expected her to be. The suit’s wide, low collar
seemed purposeful to accentuate the string of pearls he had presented to her on
their honeymoon. Their prominent display demonstrated a possible ambivalence
in her decision or a symbolic gesture to soften her rejection of Joe, who had not
hired an attorney to represent him. Judge Orlando H. Rhodes called Marilyn to
the stand. DiMaggio listened and remembered the testimony of his first wife,
Dorothy Arnold, a decade earlier. Arnold had cited his “cold indifference,” “ill-
temper,” and refusal to talk to her for days at a time. Off the stand and in front of
reporters, Arnold had barked: “He may have been the idol of the baseball field,
but as a husband he was strictly .000.” Marilyn’s testimony was transmitted and
translated by newspapers around the world and parroted Arnold’s:

Your Honor, my husband would get in moods where he wouldn’t speak

to me for five to seven days at a time — sometimes longer, ten days. I
 would ask him what was wrong. He wouldn’t answer, or he would say,
“Stop nagging me!” I was permitted to have visitors no more than
three times in the nine months we were married. On one occasion, it
was when I was sick. Then he did allow someone to come and see me.
I hoped to have out of my marriage love, warmth affection, and
understanding but the relationship was mostly one of coldness and
indifference.

As Marilyn’s witness, Inez Melson took the stand next and testified: “Mr.
DiMaggio was completely indifferent and not concerned with Mrs. DiMaggio’s
happiness. I have seen him push her away and tell her not to bother him.” Judge
Rhodes granted a temporary divorce effective a year later based on mental
cruelty.
Florabel Muir’s column in the October 28, 1954 issue of the Los Angeles
Daily News quoted DiMaggio’s rebuttal under the headline “Marilyn is Free;
Love Caught Cold from Joe”: “I regret it, but I cannot help it.”
Marilyn worked fifteen consecutive days in compensation for her
unavailability during the divorce proceedings, but had contracted an upper
respiratory infection and required in excess of twenty takes in simple scenes.
Feldman defended her to Zanuck, arguing that twenty takes was typical of most
directors on Wilder’s par. “[Marilyn] was wonderful,” Tom Ewell told Richard
Buskin. “Oh my God, she was great; so professional and so polite.”
Production wrapped on November 4, extended from thirty-five to forty-eight
days and $150,000 over budget. Fox paid Axelrod an additional bonus of
$175,000 to release the film while the play’s run continued on Broadway. Fox
executives had no problems with shelling out additional expenses, as they had a
guaranteed hit on their hands.
Wilder and Feldman were ecstatic with Marilyn’s performance and co-hosted
a wrap party in her honor at Romanoff’s as an official welcome into their
exclusive inner circle. Life published Sam Shaw’s photographs of the event in its
November 29, 1954 issue in an article titled, “Life Goes to a Party.”
“Marilyn did not have, when I knew her, a single friend,” Tom Ewell said on
Good Morning America in 1982. “She was friendless.” He overheard her
inability to name a single friend for the invitation list when Wilder and Feldman
approached her. “I have no friends,” she allegedly told them. This would soon
change.
Studio moguls Darryl Zanuck, Jack Warner, and Sam Goldwyn accepted
invitations to the formal candlelight dinner of Chateaubriand and champagne
followed by dancing to a live orchestra. Hollywood’s established stars turned out
to welcome Marilyn into the fold: Gary Cooper, William Holden, James Stewart,
Doris Day, Claudette Colbert, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Groucho
Marx, George Burns, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Clifton Webb, Tom
Ewell, Loretta Young, and Feldman’s former wife, Jean Howard. The guest who
most impressed Marilyn was her childhood idol, Clark Gable, accompanied by
his wife, Kay. Waiting for Marilyn’s arrival, Hollywood royalty stood in line to
sign an oversized studio portrait of her in the velvet gown she wore to premiere
of Monkey Business, to serve as a souvenir of the evening. The signed photo was
auctioned in 1999.
The ladies employed in Fox’s wardrobe department dressed Marilyn in a
crimson red, strapless chiffon gown previously worn by Mitzi Gaynor in the
grand finale of There’s No Business Like Show Business, and Gladys Rasmussen
styled her hair. Since Marilyn owned mostly costume jewelry, Anne Karger
loaned her diamond earrings from the bygone days when she had attended
Hollywood soirees. According to Ewell, Marilyn arrived an hour late when her
Cadillac ran out of gasoline on Wilshire Boulevard, and she was forced to walk
eleven blocks to a gas station. He considered Marilyn’s tardy entrance as the
greatest since Mae West played Catherine the Great. In a rented tuxedo and
oversized patent leather shoes from Western Costume, Shaw alternated between
serving as Marilyn’s escort and as a commissioned photographer.
Clifton Webb spun Marilyn on the dance floor until Bogart cut in, followed
by Tom Ewell. Marilyn was the belle of the ball. After waltzing with Feldman,
she joined Wilder’s wife, Audrey, in singing a duet of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do
It.”
“Billy’s a wonderful director,” Marilyn told a reporter. “I want him to direct
me again but he’s doing the Lindbergh story next and he won’t let me play
Lindbergh.”
The highlight of Marilyn’s evening was dancing with Gable, who held her
tightly against him. Photographs show them engrossed in conversation while
dancing a foxtrot, and Gable seated at Marilyn’s table of honor. She told him
about her childhood fantasy that he was her secret father and her strong desire to
work with him in a film someday. With mutual admiration, Gable told her he had
privately screened Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and told his agent that she had
magic, and he wanted to work with her, too. They agreed to be on the lookout for
suitable material. Before the end of the evening, she asked the King of
Hollywood for the one autograph she had craved since age twelve. Later,
Marilyn told Shaw she felt like Cinderella who had gone to the ball and danced
with the prince.

Fox’s orchestra assembled in a soundstage to provide the soundtrack for The

Seven Year Itch during post-production. Alfred Newman had composed “The
Girl Upstairs,” recycled from A Letter to Three Wives (1949), as the instrumental
theme whenever Marilyn appeared on the screen. Violins played its lilting,
sentimental melody, juxtaposed with a muted trumpet playing a sultry refrain.
Sammy Cahn was assigned to write lyrics for Newman’s lush, jazz-influenced
orchestration; however, the completed film contained no song with vocals.
The Charles Feldman Archives reference Cahn and Jule Styne having written
a song titled “The Seven Year Itch,” for Marilyn to sing at the movie’s end and
to be released on a record. However, Marilyn left Los Angeles for New York
shortly after production, before she could record it. She returned for retakes in
early January. Newman also used excerpts from Rachmaninoff’s dramatic Piano
Concerto No. 2 in the seduction scene and in dream sequences of Sherman’s
lustful fantasies of the Girl. This classical piece, with its low, rhythmic piano and
lush strings, was used in Wilder’s drama Brief Encounter (1945), with a familiar
theme of a woman tempted to cheat on her husband with a stranger she meets at
a railway station.
The Production Code Administration could not object to the completed film’s
theme as one of adultery, as no marital infidelity occurs. Instead, the
organization issued a MPAA certificate contingent upon a few edits. They
included references to “glands” in the dream sequence of Helen and Richard on
the patio; shortening of the hayride sequence with Helen and Tom; and
elimination of one of three shots of the Girl’s skirt blowing in the subway
breeze.
Despite these changes, after the film’s release, the National Catholic Legion
of Decency threatened a “C”, or condemned rating. The legion protested three
scenes. The first was the implication that the Girl appeared nude in the
photograph published in U.S. Camera. The second was the scene where the
elderly plumber drops his wrench into the Girl’s bubble bath and reaches into the
water to retrieve it while she continues bathing. The final objection was to the
line in the skirt-blowing scene in which the Girl expresses pity that Richard must
wear “those hot pants.” Fox edited prints already distributed to theaters,
including the insertion of a black and white photograph of Marilyn wearing a
bikini to dismiss the implication of nudity, resulting in a less detrimental “B”
rating for treating marital infidelity “in a flippant and farcical manner.”
However, copies of the film distributed aboard remained unaltered.
Wilder eluded Monsignor Biddle’s suppression of a few blatant sexual
references and double entendre. Upon meeting Richard, the Girl enters the
duplex’s foyer carrying a grocery bag and a portable electric fan. When she
notices the fan’s power cord stuck in the closed door, she asks Sherman to press
the remote button to electronically open the door. “My fan’s caught in the door,”
she explains. The censors also permitted mention of the word for an appliance,
which is slang for buttocks. Richard refers to “two guys on the top floor” who
are “interior decorators or something,” alluding to their homosexual relationship.
The psychiatrist diagnoses Richard’s “Seven Year Itch” by examining his
twitching thumb, a phallic symbol; and the Girl compliment’s his thumbs as
“powerful” when he uses them to uncork a bottle of champagne. When Richard
pops the cork, the champagne spews from the bottle in an ejaculatory eruption.
The Seven Year Itch also contains numerous inside jokes and parodies
evoking other popular films in its various fantasy sequences. In the first, Helen
tells Richard that he imagines things “in CinemaScope with stereophonic
sound.” Richard kisses a blonde on the beach in a manner similar to swimsuit-
clad Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr passionately necking in the surf in From
Here to Eternity. Later, the Girl interrupts her toothpaste live-television
commercial by warning the nation of Sherman’s lecherous behavior and
compares him to the monster in The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Finally,
after being kissed by his secretary, whose unbridled desire results in her ripping
open his shirt, Sherman runs off half-dressed like William Holden in Picnic.
During the spring, the advertising trailer for the film opened with a wolf
whistle. “It’s coming at last!” read the titles. “The howling stage hit that kept
Broadway roaring for three great years. It tickles! It tantalizes! Now it will
sweep the nation with an epidemic of laughs!” Promotion of The Seven Year Itch
included a four-story cutout of Marilyn with her skirt billowing, erected above
the marquee of Loew’s State Theatre marquee for the premiere in New York
City. The Legion of Decency objected to the cutout based upon a perception that
its facial expression appeared to suggest an orgasm, so Fox replaced it with a
fifty-two foot alternative cutout of Marilyn with her eyes closed and the front of
her dress lifting but the back hanging down. Reportedly, Fox supplied some
newspapers with artwork of Marilyn waving from the apartment window when
they refused to print ads featuring artwork of her windswept skirt pose.
 On June 1, 1955, the film premiered on Marilyn’s twenty-ninth birthday. A
three-tiered birthday cake with a rather tall, phallic candle greeted her in the
lobby as she arrived on DiMaggio’s arm, despite the divorce decree, twenty
minutes into the film during Ewell’s lengthy soliloquy. Costing Fox about five
million dollars, The Seven Year Itch became the biggest box office hit of the
summer, and earned fifteen million dollars by the end of its initial run.
“I have seen at least twenty different actresses play the part of the Girl in my
play…” George Axelrod said. “But only one has ever come really close to
playing the part exactly the way I imagined it when I first wrote it. Marilyn
Monroe doesn’t just play the Girl. She is the Girl.” So mesmerizing is Marilyn’s
presence that when she is not on-screen, the audience impatiently waits for her,
agonized by Ewell’s overlong soliloquies.
Marilyn’s comic timing was flawless and her reviews were generally
positive, with a few exceptions by conservative critics seemingly jaded by the
sexualized nature of her role rather than her actual performance. “The Seven
Year Itch is as merry a romp as ever screened — up to a point,” wrote the Los
Angeles Examiner. “Never has Marilyn the Marvelous been so well
photographed, wonderfully dressed, nor presented as such an understanding
young comedienne. She is truly a knockout. And that’s the trouble, even as in the
film. Because, excellent and funny actor though he is, Tom Ewell, next to her,
presents all the sex appeal of a wet sandwich.”
“This is the picture every red-blooded American male has been awaiting ever
since the publication of the tease photos showing the wind lifting MM’s skirt
above her shapely gams,” wrote the New York Daily Mirror. “It was worth
waiting for. The Seven Year Itch is another example of cinema ingenuity in
transplanting a stage success to celluloid. Tom Ewell, who reaped critical
acclaim in the legit show and won over other contenders for the role in the
movie, and La Monroe deserve most of the credit for carrying off the comedy
coup. [Monroe’s] pouting delivery, puckered lips — the personification of this
decade’s glamour — make her one of Hollywood’s top attractions.”
Time proclaimed that, “Marilyn Monroe’s eye-catching gait is more tortile
and wambling than ever, she also displays a nice comedy touch, reminiscent of a
baby-talk Judy Holliday.”
“Marilyn is just about perfect in the role of the pleasantly vacuous and even
more pleasantly curved heroine,” extolled the Hollywood Reporter, referring to
the film as “Lust Weekend” in reference to Wilder’s The Lost Weekend. “…The
film version seems subdued and understated after one has become accustomed to
the plethora of poses available in the photographs. In the film, the forced air lifts
her dress rather sedately above her knees, although in a second shot the camera
fastens on and moves along the surface of the subway grating as if tracking the
gust of air shooting up from a speeding train, and simulating the rush of feeling
exemplified in The Girl’s lifted spirits and skirt.”
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times offered acknowledgment of
Marilyn’s effort but failed to see what history confirms as Marilyn’s cinematic
gift:

The undisguised performance of Miss Monroe, while it may lack

depth, gives the show a caloric content that will not lose her any
faithful fans. We merely commend her diligence when we say it leaves
much — very much — to be desired.

“[The Seven Year Itch] offered stimulating views of Marilyn Monroe as a

substitute for the comedy George Axelrod shot into the original version of this
trifle,” announced the New Yorker. “There are occasions when Tom Ewell evokes
a laugh or two, but when Marilyn Monroe turns up as a young lady too
substantial for dreams, the picture is reduced to the level of a burlesque show.”
While several critics disapproved of Marilyn’s sexiness or described her as
“incandescent” and “luminous” on the screen, accolades for her comedic skills
now overshadowed her rare screen presence.
“She was an absolute genius as a comic actress, with an extraordinary sense
of comic dialogue,” Billy Wilder asserted. “Nobody else is in that orbit;
everyone is earthbound by comparison.”
Axelrod and Wilder also blurred Marilyn with her nameless screen character.
When the Girl recites her lines in the Dazzledent toothpaste commercial to
Sherman, Marilyn strikes a pose remarkably similar to her own studio publicity
photos in an obvious self-parody.
Near the end, when Sherman brags about having a blonde in his kitchen, Tom
McKenzie asks, “What blonde in the kitchen?”
Sherman snaps, “Wouldn’t you like to know? Maybe it’s Marilyn Monroe!”

A 26-foot, 34,000 pound sculpture of Marilyn in the skirt-blowing pose by

Seward Johnson, octogenarian and Johnson & Johnson heir, was displayed in
Chicago in 2011 and Palm Springs on the fiftieth anniversary of her death in
2012. The monument celebrates her rise from obscurity to superstar status to
cultural icon. (Requests for the sculpture’s display also came from Madrid,
Tokyo, and throughout Brazil.)
Those who watched the unveiling of Johnson’s sculpture titled, “Forever
Marilyn,” may not have appreciated Marilyn’s battle for better roles and against
censorship, objectification, and personal demons; all they saw was the iconic star
who had quickly changed the film industry one film at a time. Named one of the
nation’s top ten examples of bad public art by VirtualTourist.com when first
displayed, the piece elicited controversy fifty-seven years after Marilyn straddled
the subway grate on Lexington Avenue. It was even vandalized several times,
once splattered with red paint that ran down the leg. The woman behind the
iconic image seemed forgotten by critics who condemned the sculpture and those
who defaced it.
“Mystery,” Tom Ewell would respond when asked on Good Morning
America what quality Marilyn had that continued to captivate the public on the
twentieth anniversary of her death in 1982. “I think the fact that no matter who
talks about her, it’s like looking at the facets of a prism of a person…everyone
sees something different in her…I was very fond of her, extremely fond of her. I
grew to admire her because I knew she put up a terrific battle to do what she did.
Oh, boy she was a street fighter. She had to be. She had a miserable, miserable
early life.”
Marilyn was nominated for Best Foreign Actress by the British Academy of
Film and Television Arts Awards, and the film received a nomination for Best
Written American Comedy for the Screen by the Writers Guild of America. Tom
Ewell won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, and the film
was ranked fifty-first on the American Film Institute’s List of 100 Best
Comedies.
“Marilyn was a fighter,” Tom Ewell articulated as her legacy, honoring an
overlooked attribute. “Everything she got, she fought for. She really was a
wonderful person. There’s never been anyone like her.”


Part VI
The Actress
Chapter Twenty-Nine
 November-December 1954

The party at Romanoff’s on November 4 seemed like Marilyn’s induction

into the rank of Fox’s most valued stars, but her hope for being taken seriously
and receiving better roles soon turned to disappointment. Her next assignment
was a musical titled How to Be Very, Very Popular, written by Nunnally Johnson,
borrowing from the previous film he had authored for Marilyn. She had dodged
The Girl in Pink Tights, but now this? She wasn’t pleased with Fox’s vision for
her career.
On Friday, November 5, Marilyn allegedly accepted a dinner invitation from
Hal Schaefer’s student, Sheila Stuart, who lived in a second story apartment in a
triplex at 8122 Waring Avenue in West Hollywood, on the southeast corner of
the intersection of Waring and Kilkea Avenues. Stuart was one of two friends
who had found the vocal coach unconscious in July during the production of
There’s No Business Like Show Business. Schaefer was her other guest for the
evening and Marilyn had been spending time with him since filing for a divorce.
The divorce only intensified Joe’s insane jealousy, an ongoing battle in the
marriage, and which Marilyn considered to be psychological confinement. He
was convinced Marilyn had left him for Hal Schaefer, and suspected Sheila
Stuart was allowing them to use her apartment as a location for their rendezvous.
DiMaggio commiserated with his fellow Italian crony, Frank Sinatra, who
harbored suspicions of his own wife’s infidelities. Sinatra had married actress
Ava Gardner three years earlier, and their marriage was tumultuous, to say the
least. Prone to episodes of deep depression and manic elation, Sinatra openly
discussed his diagnosis of what is now known as Bipolar Disorder. Sinatra and
Gardner experienced cycles of brawling followed by passionate sex. The singer
reportedly made suicide threats during conflicts with Ava, especially when he
learned of her affairs with other men. She allegedly had two illegal abortions
during the marriage.
“I hated Frankie so much,” Ava allegedly told a friend, “I wanted that baby to
go unborn.” The couple separated in 1953, but Sinatra continued to obsess over
his wife and goaded DiMaggio’s distrust of Marilyn.
At Sinatra’s suggestion, DiMaggio hired retired New York City policeman
Barney Ruditsky (1898-1962), owner of the City Detective and Guard Service
agency, to track Marilyn’s movements. DiMaggio wished to obtain evidence of
the affair to disprove her grounds for the pending divorce action and attempt to
reconcile before it could be finalized the following year. Fronting the money for
DiMaggio, Sinatra wrote a personal check to the agency for surveillance
services.
In early October, Ruditsky had assigned Philip Irwin, a young private
detective working for his agency, to tail Marilyn. On the evening of November 5,
he sat in his car parked outside the Tudor on North Palm Avenue, and watched
her exit the house and get into her Cadillac. He followed Marilyn several blocks
northeast and parked several yards behind her on Waring Avenue in front of a
triplex, where he had surveilled her several times before.
DiMaggio and Sinatra had been dining and drinking at Villa Capri at 6735
Yucca Street when they were interrupted by a call from Ruditsky. Convinced that
Irwin had caught Marilyn with her lover, Ruditsky instructed DiMaggio to meet
him and several other men on the street outside the apartment building to stage a
raid in order to obtain compromising photographs of Marilyn with Schaefer.
Within an hour, DiMaggio and Sinatra arrived at the address. The owner of
the building, Virginia Blasgen, saw two men through the window. “A tall one
and a short one,” she later told a grand jury. “The tall one was mad and walking
up and down. The little one was jumping up and down and looking at me,
smiling. They seemed so familiar and so well dressed. They looked out of place
in the neighborhood.”
The tall man and short man met up with a group of men, whose identities
would never be confirmed, on the corner of Waring and Kilkea Avenues along
with Ruditsky, Irwin, and — peculiarly — their wives. The gang supposedly
included Villa Capri’s owner, Pasquale D’Amore, Billy Karen, the restaurant’s
maître d, John Seminola, Sinatra’s friend, and manager, Henry Sanicola. Their
conversation focused on which apartment was the correct one to raid. Two units,
8120 and 8122, faced Waring, and the third, on the building’s east side, was at
754 Kilkea. Irwin briefed the men on his surveillance of a disguised Marilyn
having visited one of the apartments, where he believed she had been meeting
Schaefer. The men speculated which door to break down; there was a one in
three chance.
At approximately 11:30 that night, thirty-seven year old secretary Florence
Kotz awoke from a sound sleep to the sound of an axe splintering her door and
shattering its window. Before she could get out of bed and before her eyes
adjusted to the darkness, men surrounded Kotz’s bed she was blinded by a bright
light. “I was terrified,” she recalled. “The place was full of men. They were
making a lot of noise and lights flashed on. I saw one of them holding something
up toward me, and I thought it was a weapon.”
The weapon turned out to be Irwin’s camera and its huge flash. The woman
in bed was not a naked Marilyn in the arms of Schaefer; she was an older woman
in hair curlers. Kotz was horrified and screamed for help. The men were
shocked, and a deep voice boomed, “We’ve got the wrong apartment!” Hence,
the blunder was eventually called “The Wrong Door Raid.”
In a panic, the men scrambled in the direction from which they entered,
breaking glass in the kitchen as they hastily retreated. Sheila Stuart reported that
she and Marilyn heard the loud noises and escaped. The fact that Marilyn was in
a woman’s apartment led future biographers to infer that DiMaggio had
suspected a lesbian affair. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Los Angeles Police Department investigated the incident as a home
invasion and attempted burglary, and it received wide press coverage over the
weekend. Since Klotz’s bedroom was dark and she had been blinded by the
camera’s flash, she was unable to identify the suspects. There were no arrests,
and the fiasco was forgotten.
Almost a year would pass until Confidential, the tabloid magazine, published
a story about the scandal in its September 1955 issue and introduced the nations
to what it coined, “The Wrong Door Raid,” with photos of the three celebrities
involved. The cover featured a photograph of Marilyn looking surprised with the
headline, “The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce from Joe DiMaggio.”
The story came to the attention of California’s Special State Senate Interim
Committee on Collections Agencies, Private Investigators, and Adjusters,
informally known as the Kraft Committee, in honor of its chairman, Republican
Senator Fred Kraft of San Diego. The committee investigated private detectives
suspected of unethically leaking gossip to tabloid magazines about the clients
who hired them.
In a milder version of Florence Kotz’s wake-up call, Sinatra was awakened in
the bedroom of his home in Palm Springs at four o’clock in the morning on
February 15, 1957 to be served with a subpoena to testify in the Kraft
Committee’s hearings. His canceled check payable to the Ruditsky’s detective
agency proved his complicity. Furious, Sinatra accused LAPD Chief William
Parker of violating his civil rights.
As the hearings began on February 27 in Los Angeles, a grand jury convened
to further investigate the matter. No longer categorized as a burglary, Sinatra,
DiMaggio, Ruditsky, and Irwin faced possible charges of conspiracy to commit
malicious mischief. Meanwhile, California Attorney General Pat Brown, the
state’s future governor, headed another investigation that led to a criminal libel
trial against representatives of Confidential magazine in August 1957. The
purpose of interrogating the alleged raiders was to identify and prosecute the
person or persons who sold the story to the tabloid.
Sinatra testified that he and DiMaggio remained in a car parked at the curb
and never entered Kotz’s apartment. Ruditsky and DiMaggio corroborated this
account, but neither testified under oath. When Sinatra’s story changed several
times throughout the investigation, he was threatened with charges of perjury.
Phillip Irwin, who had begun working for another detective agency, had no
loyalty to the others implicated, and his version of the events contradicted
Sinatra’s. “Almost all of Mr. Sinatra’s statements were false,” Irwin testified
under oath. According to his account, the only people who stayed in the car were
his wife and Ruditsky’s wife.
“I was the first one in [Kotz’s bedroom] because I had the camera,” Irwin
further testified. “I saw a bed in the dark. I took a picture of it. Everyone had
come in. Sinatra turned on the light…There were only four people alive who
knew all about the details of the raid that appeared in Confidential. That was me,
Ruditsky, Sinatra, and DiMaggio. I didn’t tell and Sinatra and DiMaggio
wouldn’t. That leaves Ruditsky.” Barney Ruditsky simply denied his agency’s
involvement.
The testimony of Virginia Blagsen, the building’s owner, supported Irwin’s.
She told the grand jury she was “reasonably certain” of the identities of two men
as the gang retreated from Kotz’s apartment. “Frank Sinatra was the smaller man
and Joe DiMaggio was the taller one.”
As for the target’s actual whereabouts, Sheila Stuart Renour swore under oath
that Marilyn was upstairs in her apartment. “Marilyn had come up to my place
for dinner,” Renour testified. “She was sitting in the living room and I was
washing dishes when it all happened.”
Jurors deliberated for fourteen days but could not agree on a verdict, and the
state decided not to retry the case. Florence Kotz, who had married a man with
the surname Ross since the incident, sued DiMaggio, Sinatra, and the other men
involved for a whopping $200,000, the equivalent of about $1,500,000 today, but
settled out of court for $7,500.
Decades later, Hal Schaefer told E! Entertainment Network of having
received a civil invitation from DiMaggio to talk man-to-man. “He did
physically abuse her,” the vocal coach asserted, “and that’s what enraged me so
much that I was willing to confront him.” However, Marilyn stopped him from
accepting DiMaggio’s invitation.
“She was such a good soul,” Schaefer told E! Entertainment News,
acknowledging his love for Marilyn. “[And as an] unsettled soul, she could
never come to rest.” He later admitted having been with Marilyn in Stuart’s
apartment and preparing to engage in sexual relations with her, but she had a
sixth sense and went to the window. Schaefer joined her and saw the group
congregating on the corner. Moments later, they heard the din of the home
invasion, which sounded like an explosion, and fled unnoticed from the rear of
the building.

On the evening of Monday, November 8, 1954, Lucille Ball sashayed across

America’s television screens in the CBS situation comedy, I Love Lucy, wearing
a velvet gown created by Fox’s designer, Eloise Jenssen, a blonde wig, and a
beauty mark. The live studio audience roared with laughter. In the episode titled
“Ricky’s Movie Offer,” Lucy’s character impersonates Marilyn when her
husband, Ricky Ricardo — a Cuban-born bandleader and nightclub owner — is
cast in a Hollywood film with a “Marilyn Monroe-type” actress. The reason
behind Lucy’s impression is to land the role of her husband’s co-star and prevent
him from acting with a beautiful actress.
With her mouth open in a smile, batting her eyes, and a hand on a curvaceous
and wiggling hip, master of physical comedy Lucille Ball paid homage to
Marilyn’s presence in popular culture. Considered the first and best television
comedy of all time, the Emmy Award-winning I Love Lucy (1951-57) offered
hilarious escapades of red-haired Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), her husband
Ricky (Ball’s real life husband, Desi Arnaz), and their landlords, former
Vaudeville entertainers Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian
Vance). The series’ premise involved Lucy’s unrelenting ambition for stardom
despite her uproarious lack of talent, and the storylines generally involved her
causing trouble whenever she tried to break into show business.

Two days after “The Wrong Door Raid,” Joe drove Marilyn to Cedars of
Lebanon Hospital, where she underwent surgery to correct her condition of
chronic endometriosis, end her agonizing menstrual pain, and increase her
chance of carrying a fetus to term. A United Press article flashed across the
country with a vague description of “minor corrective surgery” by Dr. Leon
Krohn, citing him as a gynecologist — leaving not even the nature of the
operation confidential — and publishing his estimation of her anticipated
discharge date.
Marilyn and Joe’s cooperation during this medical procedure merely one
month after their separation and less than two weeks after their divorce began
what would become Marilyn’s pattern of turning to him in times of need and
Joe’s pattern of caretaking. He visited her fifth-floor private room after the
successful surgery with a gift of Chanel No. 5 and the hope of reconciliation.
A nurse informed the couple of the press’s invasion of the ground-floor
lobby, and Marilyn asked Joe to go down and make a short statement. “She’s
looking wonderful,” he said, “but I guess she’s having kind of a rough time.”
Intrigued by a minor gynecological operation, the reporters quizzed Joe about a
possible reconciliation, but he deflected further questions and protected
Marilyn’s remaining privacy.
When Dr. Krohn discharged Marilyn on November 12, Joe was unable to
protect her from pursuit by the relentless reporters and photographers who
waited for her on the hospital floor as he parked his Cadillac at the hospital exit.
They caught Marilyn disheveled, without makeup, her hair unwashed and
uncombed, a mink coat thrown over a casual shirt and slacks. The cameramen
followed her down the corridor as a female nurse carried her personal
possessions. Marilyn tried to hide behind the nurse and walked close to the wall,
held up the collar of her coat to hide her face, and looked down to avoid the
bright lights. A newsreel cameraman walked backwards in front of Marilyn with
no regard for her privacy within the confines of the hospital.
Cornered by photographers in the hospital floor’s lobby as she waited for the
elevator, Marilyn turned her face to the wall and held her coat’s collar against
her cheek. She looked visibly weak, unsteady on her feet, and vulnerable from
the surgical procedure. The invasion of privacy exacerbated the aftereffects of
anesthesia and her physical discomfort. The newsreel cameraman took another
elevator and caught Marilyn at the curb outside the hospital as the nurse helped
her get into the passenger side of DiMaggio’s Cadillac. This footage is often
used in documentaries to incorrectly depict her discharge from a psychiatric
hospital in 1961.
“Everybody is always tugging at you,” Marilyn later elaborated, describing a
disadvantage of fame. “They’d all like sort of a chunk of you. They kind of take
pieces out of you. I don’t think they realize it…But you do want to stay intact —
intact and on two feet.”
A week later, Marilyn fulfilled a promise and went to the Tiffany Club to see
Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) perform. The women had developed a sisterhood
when Marilyn persuaded Charles Morrison, owner of the Mocambo nightclub in
Los Angeles, to lift its policy against booking African-American performers by
hiring Fitzgerald. The caption under a published photograph of the singer talking
with a smiling Marilyn wearing her mink coat over a black dress described the
latter as well groomed after her recent hospitalization.
Honored with the title “The First Lady of Song,” Fitzgerald was the premiere
American female jazz singer for over five decades, selling over forty million
albums, earning thirteen Grammy Awards, and demonstrating the unique ability
to vocally imitate every instrument in an orchestra. Marilyn especially admired
the Ella Sings Gershwin album released in 1950, along with the more recent
Songs in a Mellow Mood.
Fitzgerald’s flawless voice and elegant presence did not shield her from
racism and discrimination. While in Dallas on the “Jazz at the Philharmonic”
tour with her Caucasian producer and manager Norman Granz, a police squad
barged into Fitzgerald’s dressing room to harass the performer and arrested
everyone because band members Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were
playing dice. When the singer was booked at the police station, the officers had
the audacity to ask for an autograph.
Ella Fitzgerald acknowledged Marilyn for strengthening her career:

I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt…she personally called the owner of

the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if
he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told
him — and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status — that the
press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front
table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to
play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman — a little
ahead of her times and she didn’t know it.

Along with updates about the DiMaggio marriage, the issue of civil rights
dominated national news throughout 1954 when the United States Supreme
Court heard the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education. Handing down a
unanimous decision on May 17, the court declared state laws establishing that
separate public schools for African-American and white students violated the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution,
overturning the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Separate facilities were
now deemed unequal, opening the door for an integrated nation and a civil rights
movement.
A few days later, Marilyn stopped at Charles Feldman’s house across from
her former residence on North Palm Drive and disclosed plans to leave Los
Angeles and relocate to New York. While she was there, he presented her a copy
of Terence Rattigan’s play, The Sleeping Prince, performed in London by
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, with the intent of purchasing the property
and producing it with Marilyn and British actor Richard Burton (1925-1984) in
the starring roles. Marilyn was intrigued by the sophisticated comic dialogue and
by her proposed co-star.
Marilyn filed away Feldman’s project and joined DiMaggio for dinner at the
Villa Capri restaurant to celebrate his fortieth birthday on November 25. She had
abandoned plans for a surprise party with Maureen O’Hara rising out of a giant
cake, and instead presented her former husband with a gold watch. Joe wore the
watch until it was crushed in a minor automobile accident.
On the week of Thanksgiving, Marilyn arrived at Frank Ferguson’s office in
the administration building at Fox and asked for a copy of her contract. Ferguson
provided the document, and she thanked him and left. Suspicious, he contacted
Lloyd Wright for additional information about her motive for requesting
documentation of her agreement with the studio. Marilyn drove directly to a
local post office and mailed the copy to Milton’s attorney, Frank Delaney.
In New York, Delaney studied the document and discovered a loophole. Fox
failed to add the length of Marilyn’s time of suspension, as well as
miscalculating the time the studio had to wait before renewing the contract.
According to Delaney, this technicality rendered the 1951 contract invalid before
she had begun The Seven Year Itch. Ferguson’s interpretation made the document
Marilyn’s Declaration of Independence. Legally, she was now a free agent.
At Marilyn and Milton’s request, Delaney drafted legal and financial
documents establishing Marilyn Monroe Productions, and Milton traveled to Los
Angeles to hand deliver them to her. Marilyn already envisioned her first
independent film as a biography of Jean Harlow and wanted to portray her
childhood role model. Marilyn and Milton also deliberated with Lew
Wasserman, president of Music Corporation of America, to represent her.
Without committing Marilyn by contract, he entrusted her to his east coast
colleagues, Jay Kanter and Mort Viner.
Ending the lease on her Beverly Hills home, Marilyn went into hiding by
moving in with Anna Karger at the Voltaire Apartments, a three-story building in
French Normandy style, at 8336 De Longpre Avenue between Sunset Boulevard
and Fountain Avenue. Seated on the floor and surrounded by newspapers with
headlines such as “Where is Marilyn?” Marilyn burst into her high-pitched laugh
at the mystery she had created. What would the press wonder, she asked Anna,
once she went East to live with the Greenes in Connecticut?
Marilyn and Milton attended singer Sammy Davis Junior’s appearance at the
Crescendo Club on Sunset Boulevard on December 2. The African-American
singer had become an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance in
1951 and had nearly died in a recent automobile accident in San Bernardino as
he was returning from a gig in Las Vegas. As a result, Davis lost his left eye and
wore an eye patch until he was fitted for a prosthetic. Jess Rand, Davis’ publicist,
hosted a casual celebratory dinner after this, Davis’ first performance since the
injury, and invited several other celebrities, including Judy Garland and actor
Jeff Chandler. Actor Tony Curtis, singer Mel Torme, and Milton Greene wore
eye patches to support Davis.
With mussed hair and no makeup, Marilyn visited the Palm Springs Racquet
Club with Milton on December 4 to discuss business with Charles Feldman and
his business partner, Charlie Farrell. Only five years before, she had been
modeling at the hotel and tennis complex when she met Johnny Hyde. Having
amassed her own power, Marilyn was privately conspiring to disengage from her
current agent and strike out on her own. A week after this visit, Feldman and
Lloyd Wright were informed in writing of the termination of their representation.
Marilyn and Milton rushed back to the Hollywood Hills above Sunset
Boulevard on December 8 to attend Sammy Davis Junior’s twenty-ninth
birthday celebration. Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Curtis also gathered
at the singer’s home at 8850 Evanview Drive. After several rounds of drinks, the
group went to the Crescendo Club to watch a performance by pop-jazz singer
Mel Torme (1925-1999), nicknamed the Velvet Fog for his smooth vocal timbre,
who was preparing for a live recording at the venue the following week. An
altercation ensued between an intoxicated Sinatra and the club’s publicity
director, and Sinatra punched him. Marilyn, Milton, and Davis fled to the
Mocambo nightclub before ending their evening of excessive revelry.
Spending time with Milton only fortified Marilyn’s trust in him. Although
inexperienced as a producer, the photographer’s inventive style, sensitivity, and
introspective nature made him a kindred spirit and ally in her quest for
independence. Empowered, Marilyn informed Fox of the termination of her
obligation to the studio based upon her contract’s invalidity, and redirected the
studio to her new attorney, Frank Delaney, for any negotiation. The subsequent
release and negative reviews of There’s No Business Like Show Business
validated her decision.
With an airline ticket registered under the pseudonym Zelda Zonk and
wearing a brunette wig, a brave Marilyn turned her back on Hollywood.
Accompanied by Milton Greene, she boarded a plane headed to La Guardia
Airport in Queens, New York. Effectively evading the press, Marilyn told only
DiMaggio, Natasha, and Anna Karger of her plans.
Marilyn explained the reason for leaving Fox to journalist Pete Martin for the
Saturday Evening Post: “I disappeared because if people don’t listen to you,
there’s no point in talking to people. You’re just banging your head against a
wall. If you can’t do what they want you to do, the thing is to leave. I never got a
chance to learn anything in Hollywood. They worked me too fast. They rushed
me from one picture into another.” She felt unchallenged in playing the same
roles and frustrated by having no input in her films, stifling her growth both as a
person and an actress.
The press camped in cold temperatures outside Milton’s studio on Lexington
Avenue, his pied-a-terre on East Seventy-Eighth Street, and in the driveway of
his home on Fanton Hill Road in Weston, Connecticut, for a glimpse of the
missing movie star. Amy Greene collected her husband and Marilyn at the
airport and headed home to Weston. When Amy drove past the paparazzi and
pulled into the garage, only she and Milton were visible in the driver and
passenger seats. They had smuggled Marilyn in the trunk with the luggage.
Evading publicity, Marilyn accepted an invitation to spend a few days at the
nearby home of Fleur Fenton Cowles (1908-2009), a journalist, socialite, editor
of Look, and friend of Milton Greene. No stranger to risk-taking and personal
enterprise, Cowles had launched her own short-lived but innovative and lavishly
produced magazine, Flair, with foldouts and pop-ups on fashion, decorating, and
art. Cowles’ creativity, pioneering spirit, and fearlessness inspired Marilyn. “I’ve
worked hard, and I’ve made a fortune, and I did it in a man’s world,” Cowles
told Time in 1949 and likely repeated to her blonde houseguest, “but always,
ruthlessly, and with a kind of cruel insistence, I have tried to keep feminine.”
Cowles traveled the world, meeting and interviewing Winston Churchill and
Eva Peron, and was a master at social networking. She was the best friend of the
Queen Mother and also counted the Shah of Persia and Cary Grant as close
chums. President Harry Truman appointed Cowles a special consultant on the
Famine Emergency Committee, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
administration named her a special envoy to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth
II.
Along with hosting Marilyn, Cowles had also opened her house to Bertha
Spafford Vester (1878-1968), who was visiting the United States to raise funds
for her children’s hospital in Jerusalem, and had recently been received by
President Eisenhower. Vester’s parents led a small American contingent to
Jerusalem to form a Christian utopian society known as the “American Colony,”
whose members engaged in charitable work among the Muslim, Jewish and
Christian communities. During World War I, she had dodged bullets during the
Western armies’ battle with Turkey in the Holy Land.
According to Cowles’ memoirs, Vester faced meeting Marilyn as more
frightening than facing shells and gunfire, but soon adored the casual movie star,
curled in a chair in a flannel shirt and slacks, as she had adored the deprived
children in her hospital. “How could a movie star be so cuddly?” Vester asked
her hostess after their initial encounter, and Marilyn was equally enchanted with
the older woman’s sensitivity and altruism. “I must do good for the world in
some way,” Marilyn vowed after hearing Vester’s account of her philanthropic
work with children. “I promise you I will never waste my life again!” In the
course of the cold Connecticut weekend, Vester nurtured Marilyn while Cowles
bolstered her courage. If Marilyn had any doubts about embarking on the
journey of establishing her own production company, her late night discussions
with these two older female mavericks alleviated them.
When the reporters and cameramen scattered from the driveway of their
home, the Greenes settled Marilyn in a ground floor guest room. On eleven
acres, the renovated eighteenth century barn featured a two-story living room
with fireplace, a country kitchen, and photography studio. A second story
balcony overlooked a trout stream. In the weeks before Christmas, Marilyn took
long walks in the snow with the Greenes’ two dogs, an English Setter and a
Kerry Blue Terrier. She had never seen a tree in the winter without leaves and
loved the crunching sound her feet made in the snow. Marilyn could be private
with Milton and Amy and loved the sense of security in their home, something
she never had. She rose naturally in the morning and contributed to the
household, making her own bed, washing her own dishes, and taking care of
little Joshua, the Greenes’ young son. Marilyn became part of the Greene family
as she had with the Goddards, Doughertys, Kargers, and DiMaggios, but they
provided something entirely new: a structured and organized household routine.
 In 1954, Cuban-born Amy Franco Greene was a beautiful, petite twenty-five-
year-old former model with a dancer’s body, a naturally perfect nose, and an
enormous sense of humor. After her parents’ divorce, Amy was educated in a
convent school and as a teen lived with her mother on Manhattan’s upper west
side. She loved films and worked as an usher at the Shubert Theatre before a
brief stint as a cover model for fashion photographer Richard Avedon. While
working as a buyer for Lord & Taylor, Amy met Milton during a date with
another man. She was twenty, he was thirty, and it was love at first sight. By the
next year, Amy had become pregnant.
Amy’s exceptional fashion sense and good taste served Marilyn well.
Although Amy was three years younger, she took Marilyn under her wing as a
big sister. The two women went into the city to shop at Bonwit Teller &
Company on Fifth Avenue, and consulted with designers Norman Norell and
John Moore, who dressed Marilyn elegantly. Amy told Maurice Zolotow that she
and Marilyn became as close at roommates in a college dormitory. They giggled
over silly things, shared secrets, and thought of each other as real friends. Amy
was flattered by Marilyn’s declaration of her being the only friend Marilyn had
ever had in her entire life.
“Milton and Marilyn spoke their own language,” Amy declared in the
documentary Marilyn in Manhattan. “You could have been sitting at a table with
them and somehow the connection was so strong. There was instant trust.” At
age twenty-eight and thirty-two, respectively, Marilyn and Milton shared the
same wavelength as they brainstormed ideas on the living room sofa and Amy
lounged beside them in an armchair.
Milton Greene and Marilyn had parallel aims and ideas, and she eloquently
praised his capability, talent, and artistry to Maurice Zolotow. To Marilyn,
Milton was “a genius” who knew more about cinematography, color, and
lighting than most of the experienced technicians she had met in Hollywood. She
also recognized his ease in extracting the best from her with apparent minimal
effort and didn’t feel they were exploiting each other. It was the perfect meeting
of two minds.
Milton, married to a confident and outspoken woman with a tough skin, had
never before experienced the level of kindness and softness he found in Marilyn.
She cried at the sight of a dead dog on the road and was hypersensitive to a
raised voice; Milton soon learned to monitor his vocal tone with her. Marilyn
also bonded with Kitty and Clyde Owens, the African-American couple who
maintained the Greenes’ home. She especially enjoyed spending time in the
kitchen with Kitty, helping to snap string beans and peel potatoes.
Having never experienced quality time with a mother figure in childhood,
such as preparing meals in the kitchen while talking, Marilyn poured her heart
out to the maternal housekeeper and cook, confiding memories of childhood
abuse and neglect. She also spoke of a strong desire to have children of her own
and to adopt children of various nationalities and races. According to Kitty,
Marilyn believed she would someday have a son and indeed, Marilyn miscarried
a male fetus during her marriage to Arthur Miller.
Marilyn told Kitty that a mother should frequently envelope her child with an
embrace and say, “I love you.” She also spoke of her admiration for Abraham
Lincoln, who had abolished slavery, as a father figure, and wished that he were
still alive so that she could sit on his lap. In Hollywood, Milton had captured
Marilyn’s affinity for the sixteenth president in a picture he took of her snuggling
Lincoln’s framed portrait while seated in her open Cadillac.
When Marilyn confided her fear of becoming mentally ill like other members
of her family, Kitty reassured her. These fears returned when the Greenes’
friends, Jay Kanter — an agent at MCA — and his wife, Judy, visited with their
newborn child. Marilyn was fascinated when Judy bottle-fed the baby. When
Judy invited Marilyn to hold and feed the infant, she hesitated. Judy assured her
she wouldn’t drop the baby. “If I hold her,” Marilyn said, “maybe she will be
like I am.” A few weeks of caring for Joshua was all Marilyn needed to gain
confidence with a small child.
“One of the things that she would do is babysit me,” Joshua reported as a
middle-aged man in Marilyn in Manhattan. “I was lucky. What can I say? So it’s
really childhood memories of being tickled, pillow fights, bubble-baths…a child
being taken care of by a loving person.” On New Year’s Eve, Milton and Amy
went out, and the world’s leading sex symbol had a date babysitting a toddler
named Joshua Greene.
Between Amy and Kitty, Marilyn received motherly love and passed it along
to Joshua as she nurtured him. “She was like a child when it came to stories,”
Amy recalled. “She said nobody had told her stories in her childhood, so when
anybody told her a story, she was hooked.” Women in history who had
succeeded against odds enthralled Marilyn. She read books on Amy’s shelf about
Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife, Josephine de Beauharnais, and Lord Nelson’s
mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton. Amy told her about Isadora Duncan, the creator
of modern dance, who died from accidental strangulation when her long, silk
scarf became entangled around the rear axle of an open automobile in which she
was a passenger.
During their partnership in Marilyn Monroe Productions and after the
dissolution of their professional association, whispers of an affair between
Marilyn and Milton swirled in New York and Los Angeles. They were young,
attractive, and shared a common creativity and passion. Milton looked into
Marilyn’s eyes and saw directly into her soul, and his photographs demonstrated
his tenderness and compassion toward her. Through his eyes and camera lens,
Milton saw Marilyn in the way she wished to be seen, and she was captivated by
his vision of her. Together, they took on Hollywood power, like David facing
Goliath, and won. They bonded in the fight and in the triumph.
As an accomplice in their scheme and a witness to their relationship, Amy
vehemently denied the possibility of an affair. “Milton never had an affair with
Marilyn ever, because I trusted Marilyn,” she insisted in Marilyn in Manhattan.
“Every woman in America will understand what I’m saying. She, as my friend,
was so moral that she no more would have gone to bed with Milton Greene than
the Cat in the Moon.”
On Christmas morning, Marilyn, Milton, Amy, and little Joshua gathered
around a decorated live tree in the Greenes’ two-story living room, joined by
Amy’s mother and the Owens. Nat King Cole’s recording of “The Christmas
Song” played on the turntable. “It was a moment in all our lives that we were
David and Goliath,” Amy declared. “And everybody knew it, and we were all
having a very good time, and she loved every minute of it.” Milton snapped a
picture of Marilyn, thrilled like a little girl, opening her present of a nightgown.
In leaving her hometown and making a geographical relocation, an
empowered Marilyn experienced a rebirth. She bravely asserted her
independence and renegotiated her place in the world and in her career as she
embarked on a journey of personal growth. It was like going off to college, but a
decade later than when most young people make the same transition.
Chapter Thirty
 January 1955

1955 was a watershed year in Marilyn’s life. She entered the elite world of
culture and the arts where she was lionized as an innately creative spirit and
nonconformist. On the evening of Friday, January 7, eighty journalists crowded
into the book-shelf lined townhouse of Frank Delaney on East Sixty-Fourth
Street for a reception and cocktail party to formally announce Marilyn Monroe
Productions and attract investors. The guests included composer, Richard
Rodgers; actor couple, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis; columnist and professional
hostess, Elsa Maxwell; dramatist, Sidney Kingsley; and actress, Marlene
Dietrich.
Cocktails were served at five o’clock, and Marilyn arrived an hour later, a
shimmering vision in white on a cold winter evening. She wore a fitted white
satin dress with spaghetti straps designed by Norman Norell, white pumps, white
stockings purchased from a nursing uniform store, long white gloves, and a
white ermine coat. She described her new hair color as “subdued platinum.” For
the first time, Marilyn wore real diamonds, borrowed from Van Cleef & Arpels.
Through this outfit, reminiscent of her childhood idol, Jean Harlow, Marilyn
previewed her intention to produce and star in a film biography of the deceased
platinum blonde actress of the 1930s whose signature fashion motif was white.
“We will go into all fields of entertainment,” Marilyn told reporters, “but I
am tired of the same old sex roles. I want to do better things. I want to expand, to
get into other fields, to broaden my scope…People have scope, you know, they
really do.” Delaney announced Marilyn’s contract with Fox was now invalid. As
president of her own corporation, Marilyn wielded power by holding fifty-one
percent of its stock; as vice president, Greene held forty-nine. “I don’t like some
of my pictures,” she said and referenced River of No Return and There’s No
Business Like Show Business as her least favorites. “It’s no temptation for me to
do the same thing over and over,” Marilyn continued. “I want to keep growing as
a person and as an actress…in Hollywood they never ask me my opinion. They
just tell me what time to come to work.”
“Do you want to play The Brothers Karamazov?” asked a member of the
press, referring to Marilyn’s vocalized desire to someday play the female role in
a film adaption of Russian novelist Fyodor Doestoevsky’s great nineteenth
century work. “I don’t want to play the brothers,” she quipped. “I want to play
Grushenka. She’s a girl.”
 The press ridiculed this aspiration as ludicrous for the next few years.
However, the part wasn’t much of a stretch from Marilyn’s previous roles. She
understood the role because she had read the book, but members of the press had
not. Grushenka is a fallen woman seduced by a lustful man, and she transforms
as her love for his son deepens. “Marilyn knows what she’s doing,” Billy Wilder
said, coming to her defense. “She could play a good Grushenka. People think
this is a log-hair, very thick, very literary book. But there’s nothing long-hair
about Grushenka. At heart, she is a whore.”
Later that evening, Marilyn suggested to the Greenes that they celebrate by
going to the Copacabana nightclub to see Frank Sinatra perform. Amy told her
the show had been sold out. Aware of her influence, Marilyn winked and
instructed them to follow her lead. When a taxicab delivered them to 10 East
Sixtieth Street, Marilyn led the Greenes through the back door where she
approached the maître d’. He immediately arranged for a team of waiters to
place an additional table and three chairs onto the dance floor for La Monroe and
her guests.
Upstaged but amused, Sinatra stopped his act for the small group to settle.
Marilyn flashed an I-told-you-so smile to Amy. Familiar only with the woman
who babysat her son, vacuumed her floors, made sandwiches for her family, and
slept in the downstairs guest room, Amy felt duly impressed with her
houseguest’s immense star power. After the show, Sinatra took the trio to dinner
at 21 Club on West Fifty-Second Street; while across town at the Metropolitan
Opera, Marian Anderson became the first African-American to perform on its
stage.
After dinner, Marilyn and the Greenes visited German-born actress Marlene
Dietrich (1901-1992) at her penthouse apartment on Park Avenue. Dietrich’s
trademark husky-voice, heavily-lidded eyes, and blonde hair made her a star
with dark sensuality in both Germany and the United States. In the early 1950s,
she transitioned from film to high-paying cabaret acts in which she performed
memorable songs from her films, such as “Falling in Love Again” and “The
Boys in the Backroom.” Dietrich’s screen image exuded androgyny and she
sometimes wore mannish attire. Perhaps in confirmation of the rumors of her
having been bisexual, Dietrich noticed a trace of lipstick on the collar of
Marilyn’s ermine fur and later told a friend she found the sight highly erotic.
The next morning, Marilyn and the Greenes read the media’s reaction to the
“new Marilyn” and her professional aspirations. The verdict was delivered by an
anticlimactic and disappointing tone in headlines and photograph captions: “The
new her didn’t show up,” “She looked just the same as before,” “Pretty much the
same.” The Los Angeles Times was a bit more generous: “New Marilyn Same as
the Old — and That’s Plenty.” Milton had miscalculated, and the digs would
continue for months to follow. At the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences Oscar award ceremony that year, host Bob Hope asked, “Is Marilyn
Monroe here?”
“Yes,” replied co-hostess Thelma Ritter. “She just walked in with the
Brothers Karamazov.”
While the media lampooned Marilyn’s aspirations as pretentious, Darryl
Zanuck reacted with unadulterated outrage and threatened to prevent her from
making another film until the expiration of her contract in 1958. Journalist Billy
Wilkerson of the Hollywood Reporter blasted her on page one as “a stupid girl…
being fed some stupid advice.” How dare this woman demand different roles or
script and director approval!
Choice of roles was crucial in forging a career on the screen, and many
actresses in Hollywood — such as Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Judy
Garland — rooted for Marilyn in standing up for herself as an actress under a
slave contract. Indeed, there had been other actresses who had set a rebellious
precedent. Tired of the roles forced upon her in the 1930s, Bette Davis defied
Warner Brothers Studio and was suspended without pay. When the studio issued
an injunction against her working elsewhere, Davis sued and lost. A few years
later, Olivia de Havilland fought for better roles, and Warner Brothers placed her
on six-month suspension. The studio refused to release her from her seven year
contract at the end of its term, claiming that the term of her suspension should be
added. She sued and won in the landmark “de Havilland decision,” paving the
way to the negotiation of term-contracts.
In 1948, the Supreme Court diminished the power of the studio system in its
anti-trust Paramount Decree ordering that the motion picture industry expand to
include independent contractors. Suddenly, actors gained power over their
careers. James Stewart was the first star to negotiate for a percentage of gross
profits of the film Winchester ’73 (1950), in which he starred.
Fuelled by the support of many of her peers, Marilyn arrived in Los Angeles
accompanied by Milton Greene on January 9, so that she may complete retakes
for The Seven Year Itch the following day. On the evening of January 11, she and
Greene attended Sammy Davis Jr.’s show at Ciro’s on Sunset Boulevard.
The next morning, Marilyn reported to the studio’s portrait gallery to pose for
advertising photographs in a session lasting until the late afternoon, but another
day of work was required. The next day, Marilyn was instructed to report to
costume fittings for her next assignment, How to Be Very, Very Popular, and a
pre-production meeting with its writer, Nunnally Johnson. The plot was more of
the same. Two showgirls from a cabaret in San Francisco witness the murder of
another performer and flee the killer by disguising themselves as boys in a
college. Betty Grable was cast as Stormy Tornado, and Marilyn was assigned the
role of Curly Flagg. Borrowing from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Fox cast her
former co-stars Charles Coburn and Tommy Noonan. Coincidently, the plot
would foreshadow Marilyn’s later success in Some Like It Hot, but with a reverse
in the characters’ gender.
In an act of defiant courage, Marilyn called in sick. She now faced an
agonizing crossroads. If Marilyn were to cooperate with the new film, she might
lose the opportunity of having her own production company; if she were to
refuse, her career could be sacrificed. When Marilyn stood up Nunnally Johnson
for a pre-production meeting, Fox exercised its power by suspending her and
replacing her with Sheree North (1932-2005), a younger, blonde actress newly
under contract. The studio’s publicity department even arranged for the ingénue
to appear on the cover of Life with the pointed caption: “Sheree North Takes
Over From Marilyn Monroe.”
By promoting an obedient replacement not only in this film, but potentially in
any future musical or comedy with the role of a beautiful blonde, Fox sent
Marilyn an intimidating message that she was expendable. North, who respected
and sympathized with Marilyn, would portray Gladys Baker in the ABC
television movie, Marilyn: The Untold Story (1980). Marilyn bolted from Los
Angeles and returned to Weston. Milton received a barrage of calls from the
media wanting to know where Marilyn had fled and requesting an exclusive
interview, a statement, or to photograph her. Suddenly, MMP needed a staff to
handle public relations. Rupert Allan recommended the East Coast office of the
public relations firm that employed him in Los Angeles, Arthur P. Jacobs
Company.
Arthur P. Jacobs (1922-1973) had worked as a messenger at MGM Studios in
1943 where he was promoted to their publicity department. Warner Brothers
Studio hired him as a publicist in 1946, but he left the following year to venture
into his own public relations business. Marilyn signed with his New York office
and was assigned to Lois Weber Smith (1928-2012), born in Brooklyn and in her
mid-thirties, and later to John Springer (who had worked in the Fox publicity
department). Smith said, “In a matter of days I found myself protecting her just
like the others were.” Smith would later represent Meryl Streep, Whitney
Houston, Robert Redford, and Martin Scorsese. Publicist and friend Rupert
Allan would continue to work with Marilyn on the West Coast.
Marilyn realized the Greenes needed to reclaim their privacy and she would
soon overstay her welcome in their home. On January 19, avid to establish
independence in Manhattan, she moved into a sixth floor apartment at the
Gladstone Hotel on East Fifty-Second Street, between Lexington and Park,
already decorated with antiquated red velvet Victorian furniture. One of the
neighbors was author Carson McCullers, who affectionately granted Marilyn
permission to refer to her by a nickname, Choppers. McCullers had been treated
in the psychiatric unit at Payne Whitney Clinic, where Marilyn would be
hospitalized six years later. The frail, thin, and somewhat mannish author and the
glamorous movie star simply adored each other.
The Gladstone was located around the corner from Milton’s studio on
Lexington Avenue, where Marilyn posed for formal sittings in a white ermine
coat and white opera gloves as well as for casual portraits in a terrycloth robe
and seated on a stool in a simple skirt and blouse. On periodic weekends,
Marilyn returned to the Greenes’ home in Weston for respite. She was given her
own room when she visited, Amy would tell Donald Spoto, and spent most of
the time with the Greenes actively engaged in New York’s “social whirl.” They
received invitations from everyone who was anyone and did everything. Marilyn
conflictingly desired to be both an educated lady and a glamorous movie star, a
role having no precedent, but she radiated happiness and functioned well as she
battled Zanuck.

Marilyn reconnected with an author of Southern Gothica whom she had met
during the production of The Asphalt Jungle who wholeheartedly supported her
self-reinvention. Born in Louisiana, Truman Capote (1924-1984) understood
Marilyn’s yearnings to escape Hollywood for the serious theater of New York. “I
lost an I.Q. point for every year spent on the West Coast,” he said. Capote had
gained prominence in 1948 when Other Voices, Other Rooms sold more than
26,000 copies and lingered on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks.
Like Marilyn with her nude calendar pose, he created controversy with his
author portrait on the novel’s jacket. Photographed reclining on his back and
glaring provocatively at the camera, Capote looked, according to the Los
Angeles Times, “as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against
conventional morality.”
 The editorial was correct, but Capote’s affront to the morals of postwar
American lay in his homosexual themes and transparent homosexual orientation.
His diminutive stature, distinct, highpitched voice, and peculiar vocal
mannerisms suggested a cartoon character in the same way Marilyn’s dumb
blonde screen persona did. In the preceding four years, Capote had detoured
from publishing to both Hollywood and Broadway, adapting his 1951 novella,
The Grass Harp, into a film and his short story, House of Flowers, into a stage
musical. The feminine Capote also collaborated with macho John Huston on the
screenplay for the film Beat the Devil (1953). Capote would achieve critical
heights in the next decade with his well-researched nonfiction best seller, In
Cold Blood, about the brutal murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas and the
two men convicted and executed for the crimes.
Marilyn and Capote shared much in common for animated conversation:
books, plays, films, and men. He bragged to her about his claim of having
seduced womanizer Errol Flynn. She quickly got to her favorite subject,
aspirations to become a serious actress. Capote’s kneejerk reaction was to
introduce her to Constance Collier (1878-1955), a seventy-seven-year-old retired
actress living on West Fifty-Seventh Street.
Collier had appeared in the original stage production of George S. Kaufmann
and Edna Ferber’s classic comedy, Dinner at Eight, in the role of the formidable
Carlotta Vance (portrayed in the 1933 film adaptation by Marie Dressler,
Marilyn’s favorite character actress). On screen, Collier appeared in Stage Door
(1937) with Katharine Hepburn. Now frail and in declining health, Collier
coached other actresses, accepting only professionals who had achieved stardom.
Her pupils included Hepburn and Vivien Leigh.
Nearly blind, Collier had never seen a Monroe film but was entirely aware of
her popularity. “I thought they might make a stimulating combination,” Capote
said of uniting his two actress friends on opposite ends of a career timeline, and
his instinct was precise. Collier now invited Marilyn along with Capote to her
frequent luncheons with a guest list that included Greta Garbo and Hepburn.
Shortly after Marilyn began attending private tutoring with Collier, who
referred to her new pupil as “my special problem,” Capote asked Collier if
Marilyn displayed potential as a serious actress. “Oh yes,” Collier responded,
“there is something there. She is a beautiful child. I don’t mean that in the
obvious way — the perhaps too obvious way. I don’t think she’s an actress at all,
not in any traditional sense. What she has — this presence, this luminosity, this
flickering intelligence — could never surface on the stage. It’s so fragile and
subtle, it can only be caught by the camera. It’s like a hummingbird in flight:
only a camera can freeze the poetry of it. But anyone who thinks this girl is
simply another Harlow or harlot or whatever is mad.”
Marilyn and Collier had been working on the role of Shakespeare’s Ophelia
in scenes from Hamlet. The character has no past, regresses to childhood, and
goes mad. Having not seen Marilyn in the role of a psychotic babysitter in Don’t
Bother to Knock, Collier admitted people would laugh at the idea of Marilyn
Monroe performing Shakespeare, but deemed her an “exquisite Ophelia.” Collier
told this to Greta Garbo, who concurred and saw exciting possibilities for
Marilyn’s future. In fact, the divine Garbo wanted to film a remake of The
Picture of Dorian Gray with Marilyn as one of the vulnerable females Dorian
seduces and destroys. “This beautiful child is without any concept of discipline
or sacrifice,” Collier told Capote. “Somehow I don’t think she’ll make old bones.
Absurd of me to say, but somehow I feel she’ll go young. I hope, I really pray,
that she survives long enough to free the strange lovely talent that’s wandering
through her like a jailed spirit.”
While Marilyn turned to Collier for professional counsel, she sought a
wealthy dress manufacturer for fiscal sponsorship and financial advice. Henry
Rosenfield (1911-1986), hailed as “the Bronx Christian Dior,” became heavily
invested in MMP. At his peak in the 1950s, Rosenfield annually produced $2.5
million worth of inexpensive, fashionable ladies’ for the country’s foremost
department stores. Rosenfield allegedly fell in love with Marilyn. She declined
his marriage proposal but remained his friend until her death.
DiMaggio invited Marilyn to drive with him to Cooperstown, New York, for
the honor of his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame scheduled on January
26. She watched him deliver an acceptance speech on the steps of the
organization’s museum amid the loud whistles from young people sitting in the
branches of trees across from the brick building. “The last chapter has been
written,” DiMaggio declared into the microphone. “I can now close the book.”
The couple drove north to the Boston suburb of Wellsley to visit his brother,
Dominic, and wife, Emily.

Returning to Manhattan, Marilyn reunited with forty-three year-old

photographer Sam Shaw with whom she had befriended while on location in
New York during the production of The Seven Year Itch. Shaw welcomed
Marilyn into his home along with his wife, Anne; their two daughters, Edie, age
nine; Meta, age fifteen; and son, Larry, age seventeen. Like his colleague Milton
Greene, Shaw shared a telepathic bond with Marilyn with whom he identified as
a fellow seeker of knowledge, love, and adventure. He encouraged Marilyn to
dispense her heavy cosmetics, reassuring her that underneath she was still the
world’s most beautiful woman. “She really looked at Sam as part of her family,”
his friend Lorie Karnath said, “he was the kind of person who was always there,
like an Italian mother, with a pot of coffee brewing.”
“[Marilyn] was a wonderful, warm, witty, clever lady who was nothing like
her public image away from the cameras,” Edie Shaw Marcus later told
journalist Marion Scott of the Scotland’s Daily Record & Sunday. “She’d take all
us kids to the zoo or the circus and she was a big part of our family. My mum,
Anne, adored her and they were great friends. She was funny and serious all at
the same time. She had a wicked sense of humor but was also very deeply
interested in classic literature like Tolstoy. Marilyn was no blonde bimbo. She
was a very clever, astute lady.”
On February 1, Sam Shaw escorted Marilyn to a dinner party hosted by Paul
Bigelow (1905-1988), a theater consultant and editor associated with the New
York Theater Guild and known as “the fabulous Bigelow.” Proud of his
proficiency in creatively linking people together with the intent to make exciting
things happen, Bigelow called himself a “professional catalyst.” He was also a
good friend of Truman Capote and the devoted companion of Carson McCuller’s
cousin, Jordan Massee. At the dinner, Marilyn found herself seated opposite
McCuller’s friend, Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986), an important American theater
director and producer whom Bigelow had assisted in the Broadway production
of Tennessee Williams’ Rose Tattoo in 1951.
Crawford had launched the Group Theatre in New York City with Lee
Strasberg and Harold Clurman in 1931 as an experiment to revolutionize the
American theater through an ensemble approach that downplayed individual
fame and relied upon collective cooperation among its membership of
performers, directors, and playwrights. More than merely an insurgence against
the domination of mediocre entertainment, the Group promoted a political
agenda with socialistic principals. A benefit performance of the one-act play,
Waiting for Lefty, by Clifford Odets, brought acclaim to the Group and its
leading playwright by evoking street poetry. Financial success followed with
Odets’ Golden Boy in 1937. The Group Theatre disbanded four years later when,
contrary to its mission, many performers fled to Hollywood and Crawford and
Strasberg resigned.
Along with Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, and Anna Sololow, both Crawford and
Strasberg co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947 as a private workshop where
actors could expand their capabilities and confront their limitations free of the
financial pressure of commercial theater. The Actors Studio created a safe place
for actors to take chances, experiment, and grow within the framework of The
Method, an acting technique developed by Russian thespian Konstantin
Stanislavski, based on eliciting the actor’s authentic emotions. Parenthetically,
Crawford had rejected Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and influenced the
early careers of such accomplished actors as Helen Hayes, Mary Martin, Ethel
Barrymore, Ingrid Bergman, and Tallulah Bankhead.
Over dinner, Crawford harshly chastised Marilyn for leaving Charles
Feldman’s Famous Artist’s Management. Marilyn politely explained that
Feldman, protective of his position at Fox, failed to advocate for her professional
aspirations. Crawford was impressed with Marilyn’s desire to study acting
despite her fame and success as a movie star. She immediately invited Marilyn to
the Actors Studio to obtain Lee Strasberg’s assessment of her abilities as a
serious actress.
It seems highly unlikely that fate brought Marilyn to Strasberg. She had
studied with Michael Chekov, collected books on the Stanislavski theory of
acting, and told Strasberg’s daughter on the set of No Business Like Show
Business that she had plans to someday study with her father in New York.
These antecedents suggest Marilyn vied for an opportunity to network for the
purpose of meeting Strasberg and likely targeted the dinner attended by
Crawford to set her plan in motion. Once again, Bigelow had succeeded by
merely hosting an event for the Monroe and Crawford encounter.
A nervous Marilyn arranged for Elia Kazan, in town rehearsing Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof, to attend her introduction to Strasberg. Marilyn arrived early to
Crawford’s apartment on East Fifty-Fourth Street on February 4, and the two
women took a taxicab to the Malin Studios on West Forty-Sixth Street, where
the Actors Studio was housed in a loft on the second floor of a theater building.
Marilyn’s heart pounded and her skin broke out in red splotches when Cheryl
Crawford presented her to Lee Strasberg (1901-1982). Before her stood a short,
fifty-three year-old man who — in the words of his daughter — looked like a
short, rumpled “delicatessen store owner on the verge of bankruptcy.” Strasberg
was known to scrutinize a performance with the intense concentration of a
jeweler studying the inner mechanism of a watch. He had trained Marlon
Brando, Paul Newman, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Geraldine Page,
Maureen Stapleton, and Eva Marie Saint. “[Strasberg] behaved and was treated
as though he were Moses come down from the mountain,” W.J. Weatherby
wrote. “This was the teacher as priest and psychiatrist.”
Born in Budzanow, Austria, Strasberg immigrated to the United States in
1909 and grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a young adult, he
studied drama with Russian actress Maria Oupenskaya and Russian director
Richard Boleslavski, who trained directly with Konstantin Stanislavski at the
Moscow Art Theatre. After the Group Theatre disbanded, Strasberg rivaled
Harold Clurman’s wife, Stella Adler, as leading instructors of The Method. In
1951, Strasberg was appointed artistic director of the Actors Studio.
Strasberg’s critics argued his approach was self-indulgent and
psychologically damaging to his students as he guided them in personal
introspection, dredging up childhood and past emotional pain. His approach
could be particularly disastrous for an actor with a history of trauma, i.e.
Marilyn. The Method style of acting became synonymous with Brando, whose
slouching posture and inarticulate speech differed from the formal poise and
vocal articulation of classical theater. Others praised Strasberg’s technique as
creatively injecting psychological realism in performances.
The Method was taught through workshops during which actors honed their
skills by performing scenes to an audience of acting peers. Strasberg would
meticulously deconstruct the performance while engaging the audience in a
group critique, highlighting the actor’s strengths and deficits. Members were
challenged to explain the rationale behind their performance. Allegedly, James
Dean had fled a group critique and never returned. “If I let them dissect me, like
a rabbit in a clinical research laboratory or something,” he said, “I might not be
able to produce again.” The membership made its followers “convert to a new
religion,” according to Eli Wallach. “We didn’t understand anyone else’s acting
except our own,” he said. “Everyone else was a pagan.”
Strasberg recognized that Marilyn sought more than instruction and
mentorship; she desired affirmation of her worth as a human being. Modest and
humble, Marilyn revealed her dream of transforming into a serious actress and
altering the direction of her career. She candidly discussed her past, her negative
experience in Hollywood, and her inability to accurately and gracefully express
herself, causing others to misinterpret what she said. Strasberg was impressed
with Marilyn just as she was awed by him. “This sensitive core should have been
killed by all that had happened to her as a child and in adolescence,” he said.
“But here it was, fresh and alive.” A spark ignited in both of them.
To Marilyn, Checkov and Lytess had taken her as far as they could, and since
Stella Adler had lay claim to tutoring the celebrated Brando, Strasberg now
needed a promising protégé. “The more naive and self-doubting the actors,” Elia
Kazan wrote, “the more total was Lee’s power over them. The more famous and
the more successful these actors, the headier the taste of power for Lee. He
found the perfect victim-devotee in Marilyn Monroe.”
Strasberg invited Marilyn to his apartment at the luxurious Belnord at 225
West Eighty-Sixth Street off Broadway, advertised as the largest residential
building in Manhattan when it opened in 1908. Marilyn prepared for her first
formal meeting with this acting guru like a pilgrim having an audience with the
Pope at the Vatican. Intimidated, she slowly approached the Belnord. The
building resembled a Medici palazzo of Renaissance Florence build around an
interior courtyard surrounding a large fountain. She entered a gated arch and
took an elevator to a high floor.
Lee’s wife of twenty-one years, Paula, opened the apartment door and
welcomed Marilyn into the long, narrowed, high-ceiled apartment bathed in light
but its many windows overlooking the courtyard. At forty-six, Paula was short,
round, and maternal. Her eyes looked like an owl’s behind large round black-
framed eyeglasses, similar to Coco Chanel’s, and she had a penchant for wearing
black dresses and flat black shoes. Paula was the epitome of a Jewish mother,
whose large purse was described as both a pharmacy and delicatessen,
containing Yiddish food for comfort and pills for any ailment food could not
cure. With a sing-song rhythm in her voice, Paula sprinkled Yiddish words and
phrases in conversation and would come to call Marilyn, bubelah, a term of
endearment for children often used by grandmothers.
Paula Miller Strasberg, Lee’s fiercely-loyal wife, had debuted on Broadway
at age sixteen in The Cradle Song. She performed in more than twenty roles
before retiring in 1948, after an appearance in Me and Molly and being
blacklisted for her membership in the American Communist Party. Marilyn
immediately responded to her as a mother figure. Marilyn’s future husband,
Arthur Miller, would find Paula pretentious. She couldn’t tell anyone the time
without suggesting it was “secret information,” he later wrote. Paula wore a
pendant watch around her neck, a wrist watch, and another in her purse so that
she also knew what time it was in London and Tokyo, implying she and her
husband had “important interests all over the world.”
According to his daughter, the scenes played by the acting students in Lee’s
classes paled in comparison to the genuine drama acted out in his personal
household. Family life revolved around Lee’s shifting moods, needs, and
neuroses. He was prone to rages and rants during which he would experience
nosebleeds. Often exasperated, Paula would half-heartedly threaten to kill
herself or run away to a nunnery, an unorthodox option for a Jewess. For years
she tolerated her husband’s infidelities with younger actresses by turning a blind
eye and doting on their children.
Marilyn entered the living room where Lee Strasberg warmly greeted her.
Floor to ceiling bookshelves lined the walks, and books overflowed to all
surfaces in room. Marilyn felt immediately safe with his paternal demeanor and
appreciated his invitation into his home in the presence of his wife and children.
She felt relieved to learn his interest in her was nonsexual. Seated in the
Strasberg living room, Marilyn poured her heart out.
Audiences were satisfied with her performances in typecast roles, she said,
but she had not yet achieved her best work. She expressed the desire to be a
character actress with range who could transcend impending age and described
her woes with Fox in metaphor: “If I were a car, they’d be driving me in low
gear. That’s bad for the engine and it’s depressing for the car.”
Marilyn recounted to Strasberg her early experience as a contract player and
belief that the studio invested less time in developing her acting talent than they
did exploiting her. She felt less like an actress and more like a call-girl expected
to entertain the New York-based studio financial officers when they visited Los
Angeles. It had long been common practice for the studios’ most beautiful
contracted starlets to be summoned to dinners and other structured events when
these corporate executives blew into town for quarterly meetings. This
occupational hazard severely ravaged Marilyn’s already fragile self-esteem. In
1980, when Strasberg would repeat Marilyn’s figurative “call-girl” comment to
his biographer, Cindy Adams, the press jumped on the quote and alleged Marilyn
had been a prostitute. Strasberg would criticize Adams for incorrectly and
literally interpreting the remark and using it out of context.
Lee listened to Marilyn and relayed back a narrative of her experience and
feelings. Hollywood had no respect for her dignity, he said. He compared having
a natural talent for acting to having a natural talent for singing, and added voice
training would enhance this intrinsic gift. Therefore, in order for Marilyn to
become a serious actress, she must first study her craft and then portray serious
roles. Strasberg validated what Marilyn needed to hear, and with work, her
dreams could become reality. Most importantly, he conveyed belief in her.
Before the conversation ended, Strasberg compared Marilyn’s raw talent and
creativity to Jeanne Eagles (1890-1929), a stage and screen star of the 1920s,
whose passionate performances lacked the support of any technique. Eagles’
tumultuous life prematurely ended with a drug overdose.
After the meeting, Paula invited Marilyn to dinner served in the small
kitchen. Seated at the table, Marilyn’s eyes gazed around the room and landed at
postings Paula had taped to the refrigerator. Beside a copy of the Mayo Clinic’s
diet, left from Paula’s failed attempts to battled weight, Marilyn saw a quotation
hand-printed in ink: “Anything the human can conceive of is possible.” Chills
shivered down her back with this confirmation that she was entering into one of
the most significant relationships of her professional and personal life.
After Marilyn left the apartment, Strasberg swelled with excitement and
eagerness in discovery of an unforeseen wunderkind to take on as his next
project. It could not have come at a more opportune time in his career and in the
development of the Actors Studio. Rivals Elia Kazan and Stella Adler boasted
the discovery of Brando, and Strasberg would lay claim credit for Monroe when
she gave her great performance. Strasberg quickly realized Marilyn’s physical
appearance did not define who she was as a person and saw a rich inner
resource — a “treasure of gold and jewels” — with which he could work. He
told Maurice Zolotow that her acting skills were “phenomenal” and she had been
waiting for a the right mentor to push the right buttons.
Marilyn’s hoard of emotional memories could serve her in acting, Strasberg
advised. For the first time, she considered the possibility of her past not
destroying her, but instead offering a rich vocabulary and technique for her art
form. In a black journal, Marilyn jotted hopeful entries about developing acting
skills that would eventually enable her to cope with the past by confronting it,
and recognizing her adequate internal resources to cultivate a technique despite
her lack of formal training.
Due to the introspective nature of The Method, Strasberg recommended
Marilyn enter into long-term psychoanalysis before starting her studies. At the
recommendation of Milton Greene, she engaged his analyst, Dr. Margaret Herz
Hohenberg (1898-1992), a Hungarian Jew. After studying medicine in Vienna
and practicing in Prague, Hohenberg fled to America in 1939 to escape the Nazi
holocaust. She wore her graying hair in spiral braids atop her head and spoke in
a Hungarian accent. Marilyn attended sessions between three and five times each
week in Hohenberg’s home office at 155 East Ninety-Third Street.
During her work with the psychoanalyst, Marilyn recorded and processed her
thoughts and feelings in the black journal. In excerpts published in 2010,
Marilyn wrote of being haunted by Ida Bolender and feeling guilty and
depressed. She perceived herself as still obeying the former foster mother, felt
punished by her, and identified this as a harmful habit that inhibited her work.
The entries defied threats, shame, punishment, and her long-held belief of being
unlovable in a strong internal voice that seems to cry out, “No more.” In one
written affirmation, she appeared to reclaim power from her abusers and
exploiters: “My body is my body, every part of it.”
After developing the necessary skills to emotionally ground oneself and cope
with strong and overwhelming feelings, facing one’s trauma in a safe manner is a
step toward healing and recovery. However, Marilyn had not yet developed these
skills. Both the Method and psychoanalysis’ modus of dredging up childhood
pain placed her on a relentless treadmill of re-experiencing trauma without an
adequate means of coping; she had lifted the lid on Pandora’s Box.
Lee Strasberg had miscalculated the depth of Marilyn’s vulnerability when he
recommended she undergo psychoanalysis. “Marilyn has the fragility of a female
but the constitution of an ox,” Paula went on record to say, minimizing the extent
of the young woman’s emotional problems. “She is a beautiful hummingbird
made of iron. Her only trouble is that she is a very pure person in a very impure
world.” Marilyn recognized her own limitations and quickly came to doubt the
benefit of her frequent treatment sessions. “For someone like me, it’s wrong to
go through self-analysis,” she scribbled in misspelled words in her journal. “I do
it in thought enough. It’s not too much fun to know yourself to well or think you
do — everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through and past the falls.”

Strasberg reserved private lessons in his home for only two actresses. The
first was Jennifer Jones. The second was Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was
welcomed at the Strasbergs’ apartment three nights per week. The two would
disappear into the living room and work for hours while Mozart records played
in the background and the aroma of Paula’s pot roast traveled from the kitchen.
Paula respected Marilyn’s privacy and initially guarded the living room from her
adolescent children.
Susan, age sixteen, found Marilyn “funny and bright,” and equally insecure
as her girlfriends. They had met a year earlier when Steffi Skolsky introduced
Susan to Marilyn on the set of There’s No Business Like Show Business. “I really
admire your father,” Marilyn had told Susan the previous year. “He’s so brilliant
with actors, you must be so proud of him. I’m going to New York to study acting
with him. I want to do this more than anything in the world.” At the time, Susan
thought Marilyn was just being kind. Now Marilyn had won Susan’s admiration
for being fearless of her father, an emotion unfamiliar to the young girl.
John, age thirteen and about to enter Bronx High School of Science,
identified with Marilyn. “When I looked into [Marilyn’s] eyes, it was like
looking into my own,” he later said, “they were like a child’s eyes.” John was
aware that his teen male friends perceived Marilyn as the “sexiest, most sensual
woman in the world,” and began to question himself for seeing her quite
differently. Intimately connected to Marilyn as a family friend and not movie
star, he perceived her sensuality as nonsexual. John experienced her as an
ordinary person who attached to him and appeared more genuine and authentic
than most of the actors who visited his parents’ apartment. She seemed
instinctively smart, although uneducated, and struck him as “nobody’s fool.”
Within a short time, as Marilyn had endeared herself to yet another surrogate
family, just as she had with the Kargers, Shaws, and Greenes. Learning from
Paula, she now called her friends bubelah, and used Yiddish words such as
schlep, mentsh, mishegas, and verklept. She spent less time at the Greene
farmhouse and instead displaced young John Strasberg from his bed onto the
sofa. “Our door was open to many artists,” Susan Strasberg later wrote, “but
Marilyn was special.” The Strasbergs welcomed her into their home, even at
three o’clock in the morning, where there was always a bed for her and loving
arms to hold and comfort her. The family loved and accepted her
unconditionally, and without fear of rejection, Marilyn allowed them to see her
angels and her demons.

Now enjoying her privacy, Amy Greene could not understand Marilyn’s
fascination with her mentors. To Amy, Paula was an “airhead,” a frustrated
actress with no sense of artistry, and an unhappy woman. Lee struck Amy as
morose. After a thirty-minute conversation with him, she felt compelled to throw
herself out of a window. On the other hand, Amy found Susan charming and fun.
To Marilyn, the Strasbergs were the parents she never had. Paula was an
attentive, nurturing mother who validated her existence and confirmed anything
Marilyn wished to believe. Lee was a protective and adoring father, who loved
her in a nonsexual way, valued her as an actress, and believed she could achieve
her aspirations. The fact that the couple’s motives might have been self-serving
mattered not to Marilyn; she felt unconditionally loved by them.
When Billy Wilder caught wind of Marilyn studying Stanislavski, he thought
she was being grossly misguided by those exploiting her celebrity. He believed
she devalued her natural genius for comedy and a transition to serious acting
parts would only lose her audience. Wilder feared Marilyn would be transformed
into Julie Harris (1925-2013), an unglamorous but celebrated dramatic stage and
screen actress, and stripped of her uniqueness. He could not image her adapting
the stereotypic qualities he attributed to Method actors: not wearing deodorant
and preferring to sit on the floor rather than on a chair. Flippantly, Wilder told
the press Marilyn’s energy would be better spent on attending classes at Patek
Philippe, the Swiss watch manufacturer, to improve upon her only professional
limitation: tardiness.
He even suggested in jest that she make an entire series of films based upon
The Brothers Karamazov. One of these titles included The Brothers Karamazov
Meet Abbott and Costello, a popular comedy team that had appeared in many
films in the 1940s, such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Abbott
and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, but perhaps best remembered for their
hilarious Who’s on First? signature routine.
Unlike Wilder, the press ridiculed Marilyn as an actress, yet mocked her
desire to become a better one. “People patronize Marilyn,” Paula said. “They
think she’s weak in the head and in her character. They don’t know her. She’s
very intelligent and sensitive and a fast learner. She is never satisfied. She
examines everything she does.” In her new mentors, Marilyn found protective
surrogate parents who recognized her talent and believed in her capability.
Chapter Thirty-One
 February 1955

The Actors Studio is an exclusive membership. No one automatically joins;

instead, one applies to the registrar and waits for the opportunity to participate in
a rigorous series of auditions.
Only upon selection may one become a student member. Strasberg accepted
Marilyn for private lessons at his apartment three nights per week and gave her a
pass permitting attendance as an observer to his public class of about thirty
students held at eleven o’clock on Tuesdays and Fridays. Later, Strasberg invited
Marilyn to attend a private four-hour class with two hours devoted to sense
memory exercises and two hours of voice and diction lessons.
On her first day of public class, Marilyn hurriedly entered the Actors Studio
building as Strasberg would lock the door to those who arrived late. Students
gathered in the reception area and sipped coffee and tea. In a nod to
Shakespearian theater, the restrooms were marked “Romeo” for men and “Juliet”
for women. When Strasberg arrived, the students followed him up stairs and into
a large classroom for a two hour discussion. Marilyn took a seat in the rear.
Looking around the room, Marilyn saw serious New York actors who had
performed on and off Broadway, many not yet having appeared in films or
enough films that would make them well-known performers of the screen.
Seated in jeans and a t-shirt, blue-eyed Paul Newman (1925-2008) had lost parts
in On the Waterfront and East of Eden. He had not yet achieved success on the
screen in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The
Hustler (1961), and Hud (1963), nor yet received the Best Actor Oscar for The
Color of Money (1986). Having appeared on stage in Tennessee Williams’
Summer and Smoke, Geraldine Page (1924-1987) had not yet co-starred with
Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) and was three decades behind her Best
Actress Oscar for A Trip to Bountiful (1985).
Of the two thousand actors auditioning in 1955, the Actors Studio selected
only Martin Landau and Steve McQueen. Landau (born 1928) had abandoned a
career as a comic strip artist to act, but had not yet debuted on stage in Middle of
the Night, nor yet appeared on the screen in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest
(1959), Cleopatra (1963), nor received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Bela
Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994). McQueen (1930-1980) was debuting in A Hatful of
Rain on Broadway. His future work would include film roles in The Magnificent
Seven (1960) and Bullet (1968). Others seated among Marilyn had already
become successful character actors working on stage, television and film,
including Eli Wallach, Kim Stanley, Tony Franciosa, Maureen Stapleton, Anne
Bancroft, Dennis Hopper, Sidney Poitier, Ben Gazzara, Michael Pollard, Philip
Roth, Gabe Dell, and Tom Signorelli.
At first, Marilyn remained timidly quiet and feverishly scribbled notes.
Painfully insecure, she felt inferior and suspected the other students perceived
her as an outsider. In fact, the other students simply ignored her, respected her
privacy, or refrained from recognizing her. Some resented her presence. Some
suppressed their excitement but couldn’t avoid turning to look at her, while a few
actually admired her courage in leaving Hollywood at the height of her stardom
to refine her skills and seek a deeper level of work.
Although she was the only movie star in the class directly from Hollywood
with international fame and a resume of starring roles, Marilyn was largely
considered a dumb blonde celebrity, a sex symbol, and even a joke. She would
have to prove herself as an actress despite her performances as Miss Caswell,
Nell Forbes, Rose Loomis, and Lorelei Lee. Working against her, Marilyn’s
comic performances seemed effortless to many, and her physical beauty
distracted her critics from her craft. Many completely missed or dismissed her
natural comic timing and charming characterizations. Comedy is a challenge to
play as it must begin with truth and seriousness to be genuinely funny. A
comedic actress must be aware of the humor, but play against it.
As part of her plan to present the antithesis of a glamorous movie star and to
blend with her classmates, Marilyn wore no makeup. Her hair was typically in a
tangle. Her clothing consisted of a camel polo coat, plain blouses, slacks or
skirts, and flat heals. She was becoming what Billy Wilder had feared minus the
lack of deodorant. Actor and student Frank Corsaro described her as “rumpled
and not quite all put together…like an unmade bed.” As hard as Marilyn tried to
become in visible, in photographs of her seated in the group, her face and hair
seem to radiate illumination from within despite the lack of cosmetics and
fashion.
In an early observation, Marilyn watched Eli Wallach and Maureen Stapleton
perform and was moved to tears by their emoting until Strasberg delivered thirty
minutes of sharp criticism. Marilyn panicked and second-guessed her own
judgment about acting. She now remained fearfully quiet until Strasberg called
on her to comment on a performance by a young Martin “Marty” Fried (1937-
2000). She took a deep breath, carefully chose her words, and waited for a
reaction from her peers. Marilyn felt relieved that no one laughed at her
feedback.
Future feminist journalist, spokesperson for the modern women’s movement,
and editor of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem (born 1934), visited Cheryl
Crawford at the Actors Studio on one occasion with theater instructor, David
Shaber, and sat behind Marilyn in the rear of the room as Ben Gazzara and Rip
Torn performed a scene. Steinem observed Strasberg and most of his actors
found pleasure in their power to ignore a powerful but humble movie star who
came to learn from them. The other actors self-consciously and condescendingly
whispered to each other about Marilyn and greeted her with “studiously casual”
remarks. Although Marilyn sat inconspicuously in the rear of the room with her
curves concealed in loose-fitting clothing and her blonde curls covered with a
scarf, she gradually became a “presence” because the other students were trying
hard to act oblivious to her charm.
Steinem found the group “vulturous” in picking apart the scene with
“humiliating authority.” Afterward, Steinem turned around and spoke with
Marilyn about her observations. She asked Marilyn if she could imagine herself
acting in front of this group. “I admire all these people so much,” Marilyn
responded. “I’m just not good enough.”
Sometimes Marilyn sat next to Frank Corsaro (born 1924) who served as her
whispering translator of Strasberg’s technical jargon: internal composition,
master gesture, verisimilitude, sense memory, and affective memory. Marilyn
fiercely concentrated and scribbled notes in pencil on a pad as Strasberg was
known to speak for three hours in one long, rambling sentence.
Feeling safer and willing to take a risk, Marilyn would soon offer an
unsolicited opinion. Perhaps the motivation derived from the need to rescue
another actor struggling with his work. Earle Hyman (born 1926), the African-
American Shakespearean actor best known to most as Grandpa Huxtable in The
Cosbys television series in the 1980s, performed his first scene for the studio
with Marilyn in the audience. “Eli Wallach said, ‘I don’t think Earle’s work was
clear,’ ” Hyman would recall. “There was a silence and a pause, and everyone
turned to Marilyn who had raised her hand for the first time ever. She said,
‘Well, I don’t know, Lee, but it seems to me that life is sometimes unclear.’ I
thought she was extremely brave to stand up and say that and I never forgot it.”
During her observations, Marilyn befriended classmate Maureen Stapleton
(1925-2006), whose physical appearance and acting roles seemed diametrically
opposite. She lived with her husband, Max Allentuck, general manager to
Kermit Bloomgarden, the producer of Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman.
Heavy-drinking, pudgy, and with a boisterous sense of humor, Stapleton had
won a Tony for her performance in The Rose Tattoo. She would later be
nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Lonelyhearts (1958),
Airport (1970), and Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978), before winning for Reds
(1981).
Stapleton may best be remembered for her roles as aging women in both
Queen of the Stardust Ballroom (1975) and Cocoon (1985). “She was the
consummate flirt,” Stapleton said of Marilyn. “She brought out the mother in
everybody. She was a very appealing woman and a very strong woman. A bright
woman.” She firmly believed Marilyn’s beauty prevented her from getting the
better roles she deserved, though. “I never had that problem,” Stapleton said.
“People looked at me on stage and said, ‘Jesus, that broad better be able to
act.’ ”

Marilyn’s new life melded with her past when she accompanied DiMaggio to
Toots Shor’s Restaurant for a celebration in honor of the thirty-ninth birthday of
Jackie Gleason (1918-1987) on February 26. The rotund comedian’s high-rated
television variety program, aptly titled The Jackie Gleason Show, included a
monologue, musical numbers by the June Taylor Dancers, and comedy sketches.
The Honeymooners, his most successful sketch, spun off into a television
situation comedy later in the year. Gleason’s hot-tempered, bellowing character
(Ralph Kramden), a bus driver who engages in schemes to get rich or advance
his social status, is often proven wrong by his sarcastic wife, Alice, played by
Audrey Meadows (1922-1996). “One of these days, Alice,” Gleason would say
in an empty threat that entered into the lexion of popular culture. “Pow! Right in
the kisser!”
During the party, Gleason’s television wife came to the rescue when Marilyn
gingerly sat down on a wooden chair, and her buttock was impaled by a splinter.
Audrey Meadows brought her into the ladies room, sterilized a straight pin with
the flame of a cigarette lighter, and removed the splinter. “Marilyn was a sterling
silver star,” Meadows later wrote, “whose real acting ability was often obscured
by her physical attributes…It was a drama lesson to watch her shine.”
Marilyn had begun to notice familiar youthful faces (looking no older than
their mid-twenties) whenever she entered or exited the Gladstone Hotel, visited a
friend’s apartment house, or went about town. Aside from keeping vigil outside
her home or any other building she visited, they somehow seemed to know
Marilyn’s schedule and itinerary. Before long, she engaged them in conversation
and learned their names and the boroughs they called home. Marilyn was
surprised to learn they called themselves the Monroe Six and their code name for
her was “Mazzie.” The group consisted of Frieda Hull, a secretary in her early
twenties from Richmond Hill, Queens; Edith Pitts, Hulls’ roommate and the
former girlfriend of Hulls’ deceased brother; Eileen Collins and her younger
brother, Jimmy, from Rockaway, Queens; John Reilly from the Bronx; and
Gloria Milone from Brooklyn. The group was sometimes joined by Johnny
Duggan and a most passionate fan, the unabashed sixteen- year-old James
Haspiel.
When Marilyn came to Manhattan to film scenes for The Seven Year Itch,
Haspiel waited outside the St. Regis Hotel with a mob of other adoring fans to
meet his idol. Expecting to see a larger-than-life Rose Loomis in a daring red
dress and wearing hoop earrings, Haspiel was shocked when Marilyn exited the
hotel. He had to look down at the short, petite, fresh-faced lady wearing an
elegant, full-skirted dress. Marilyn happily signed autographs for her devotees
and tantalized them by announcing her return at nine o’clock in the evening.
Before Marilyn could enter her taxicab, Haspiel broke from the crowd and
boldly asked her for a kiss. Initially taken aback, Marilyn acceded to the prods
from the crowd and planted a kiss on his cheek.
A few days later, Haspiel put on a blue suit and tie, grabbed his camera, and
returned to the St. Regis Hotel with a friend. With the other male adolescent in
tow, Haspiel brazenly marched into the lobby and took the elevator to the
eleventh floor, where he fatefully interrupted Joe DiMaggio’s conversation with
a member of the housekeeping staff. Haspiel bravely asked the jealous and
protective Italian husband if he could see Marilyn. Astonishingly, DiMaggio
went inside their room and brought his wife out into the hall. The boys took
turns taking photographs of each other posing with her. Proof of this effective
maneuver exists in a photograph Haspiel published in his memoir. He stands
proudly beside Marilyn, in a black suit with red flower tucked in her cleavage,
smiling wildly, and looking every bit like her screen persona.
Marilyn befriended Haspiel, and over the course of their many frequent
interactions in the next several years, she exposed a more natural personality.
They grew so close that Haspiel would comfortably target her with his impulsive
adolescent temper, and Marilyn willingly tolerated it. Through the friendship,
Haspiel amassed a treasure trove of home movies and snapshots of her dressed
formally as “Marilyn Monroe” for public events and casually for her anonymous
everyday errands. Although Haspiel asserts he never observed Marilyn drugged
or intoxicated, he once handed her a photograph taken of her by a friend the
previous evening and told her she looked “very high.” Marilyn looked at the
picture of herself with iconic heavily-lidded eyes and retorted, “What floor was I
on?”
Haspiel began noticing another admirer lurking in the shadows outside the
Gladstone or across the street, watching Marilyn’s moves. The man was
considerably older than the Monroe Six and his stature and prominent nose gave
away his identity. It was Joe DiMaggio, still carrying his torch for his beloved
ex-wife.
DiMaggio recorded his deep love for Marilyn and concern for her wellbeing
in handwritten notes recorded in a booklet with blank pages sharing the same
cover as the April 4, 1955 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine, which was
discovered after his death. Auctioned in 2006 for nine thousand dollars, the
booklet’s first two pages contain what appear to be guidelines for a sincere
attempt at reconciliation:

1. Don’t ever be critical. 2. Forget ego & pride. 3. Talk from the heart.
4. Be warm, affectionate, & love. 5. Don’t be a sh[indecipherable] 6.
Be Patient — no matter what. 7. No jealousy. Remember this is not
your wife. She is a fine girl and remembers how unhappy you made
her. Happiness is what you strive for — for HER. Don’t talk about her
business or her friends. Be friendly towards her friends. Don’t forget
how lonesome and unhappy you are — especially without her.

The celebrity-studded world premiere of Elia Kazan’s East of Eden at the

Astor Theatre on Broadway on March 9 brought attention to the Actors Studio as
A Streetcar Named Desire had in 1951, but once again, Marilyn stole the
spotlight. The film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s six-hundred page novel
introduced James Dean as Caleb Trask, who competes with his twin brother,
Aron, for the attention of his rancher father, Adam (Raymond Massey), in pre-
World War I Salinas, California. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called
Dean’s Oscar-nominated performance a “mass of histrionic ginger-bread.”
During the preceding week, a moody portrait of Dean appeared everywhere
in the city. In the photo, he is seen walking in the rain in Times Square, huddled
in a raincoat, his hands thrust into the pockets, a cigarette dangling from his lips,
and his shadow reflected in a large puddle. Now iconic, Dennis Stock’s image
immortalized Dean as a misfit loner on a crowded street.
The premiere served as a benefit for the Actors Studio to raise funds to
purchase a century-old, deconsecrated Presbyterian Church in Greek Revival
style at 432 West Forty-Fourth Street, to serve as the studio’s headquarters.
Kazan and Strasberg invited Marilyn to participate as an usherette with hopes
she would bring international attention to the organization. She and Eva Marie
Saint agreed to don sashes over their gowns and distribute programs while comic
Red Buttons collected admission tickets. The publicity surrounding Marilyn’s
presence caused a run on the ticket booth and an instant sellout. Her name alone
enabled scalpers to sell the tickets triple the sales price of one hundred fifty
dollars.
On the evening of March 9, Marilyn emerged from the Gladstone Hotel in a
green and gold fitted brocade gown with matching fur-trimmed wrap and opera
gloves. Ever present for her mundane and significant appointments, James
Haspiel assisted her down from the curb and into the limousine. Word quickly
spread throughout Times Square that Marilyn was appearing at the Astor Theatre
and later attending the post premiere party at the Astor Roof lounge atop the
Astor Hotel across the street. Several hundred New Yorkers in the theater district
heard the information and mobbed the city block surrounding the theater, spilling
into the streets, and stopping traffic.
The premiere was telecast live with radio disc jockey Martin Block chatting
with Raymond Massey, John Steinbeck, Carol Channing, Margaret Truman, and
Imogene Coco. The stars equally commented on Marilyn’s well-anticipated
arrival, which awkwardly upstaged James Dean’s performance. Block greeted
French actress Denise Darcel for the television cameras, but the roar of the
crowd responding to Marilyn’s entrance disrupted the interview. The crowd
mobbed Marilyn, and Darcel lurched forward to observe. “She’s a beautiful
girl…I want to see her myself…She is so wonderful.” The cameras were only
able to capture a tousled blonde head being escorted through the theater doors.
Inside, Marilyn guided patrons to their seats, handed out programs, and posed
for photographs.
Overwhelmed with feedback about his performance and unable to face the
spotlight, James Dean boycotted the premiere by abruptly returning to Los
Angeles. At the film’s ending, Julie Harris’ character appeals to Caleb’s father.
“It’s awful not to be loved,” she says. “It’s the worst thing in the world…It
makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.” Seated beside Marilyn in the audience,
Susan Strasberg, turned to her and observed a single tear stream down her cheek,
signaling Marilyn’s empathy with the character’s words.
At midnight, the doors of the Astor Theatre opened, and a dozen New York
Police officers escorted Marilyn safely across the street, jammed with a mob of
fans gathered for the sole purpose of seeing her, and into the Astor Hotel. One
person whirled out of the crowd and screamed, “I touched her!” James Haspiel
felt the love for Marilyn emanating from the crowd and observed tears of joy and
exhilaration streaming down her face. She took refuge in a stall in the hotel’s
ladies room where a crowd of females gathered, sliding slips of paper and pens
underneath for her to autograph. Among the gathering at the Astor Roof
anxiously waiting to see the famous blonde usherette was Arthur Miller,
escorting his sister, actress Joan Copeland.

On March 14, Fox attorneys sent Marilyn a check covering her salary for the
three weeks before her suspension. The studio now refused to negotiate with
Frank Delaney and threatened to delay the release of The Seven Year Itch until
1956. Charles Feldman offered Marilyn the starring role in The Sleeping Prince
opposite Richard Burton, the hard-drinking Welsh actor who sometimes chatted
with her in the Strasbergs’ kitchen. Through Famous Artists Management Group,
Feldman was attempting to acquire the rights to Terrance Rattigan’s British play
for Fox. Marilyn attempted to beat Feldman to the punch in securing the play’s
film rights and retained the Music Corporation of America (MCA),
Feldman’s rival, to represent her and challenge Zanuck. Headed by the
fearfully powerful Lew Wasserman (1913-2002), MCA was the largest talent
agency in America. Wasserman personally handled Marilyn’s interests in Los
Angeles and assigned attorneys Jay Kanter and Mort Viner to her in New York.
Marilyn formally signed a contract with MCA in July 1955.
A few weeks later and two buildings south, more excitement brewed at
Loew’s State Theatre at 1540 Broadway in the heart of Times Square. Its
marquee announced the March 21st release of MGM’s Blackboard Jungle, a
“startling story of the teen-age terror!”
Based on a book about juvenile delinquency written by a South Bronx high
school teacher, the film starred Glenn Ford as an inner-city teacher who attempts
to engage male pupils, led by actors Vic Murrow and Sidney Poitier, involved in
antisocial behavior. Disturbing scenes included outrageous classroom violence
and the attempted rape of a female teacher. The film’s main title song, “Rock
Around the Clock,” recorded by Bill Hailey and the Comets, is considered the
official debut of Rock and Roll music.
 Towering above Loew’s State Theatre’s marquee and soaring four stories
high, a large cut-out of Marilyn Monroe was erected between the theatre’s
Corinthian columns, her skirt billowing to the heavens to promote the spring
premiere of The Seven Year Itch. For some, the Rock and Roll music and the
image of female sexuality were the desecration of American culture. For others,
this combination was a thrilling, youth-inspired cultural shift.
As Rock and Roll music blared from a nearby jukebox, Marilyn sat in a
booth in a diner facing Loew’s State Theatre. Eli Wallach sat across the table.
Wallach stared out the window at the recently unveiled smiling cut-out of the
sexy, blonde movie star across the street, and then locked eyes with the real
woman sipping coffee only two feet away from him. She turned and stared out
the window with sad eyes. The iconic image Marilyn was aggressively seeking
to change had now chased her to New York and, from high above Time Square,
mocked her serious aspirations. “That’s all they think of me,” she said ruefully.
A local news station sent a reporter to the streets to interview pedestrians
about their reaction to the giant image of Marilyn Monroe attracting attention
and causing traffic jams. A middle-aged woman rhetorically asked the newsman,
“What does Marilyn Monroe got that a million other women have and prefer not
to show?”
“I think it’s very nice,” commented a young woman, “but I’d rather it were
me.”
“I think it’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” replied a man from the
driver’s side window of his car.
“It’s pretty vulgar, if you ask me,” another man said with a grimace.
Marilyn had already divulged her reaction when she told Eli Wallach, “That’s
all they think of me.” She now had the reputation of stirring controversy when
all she wanted was recognition as an actress.

The floral wallpaper in Marilyn’s room at the Ambassador Hotel on West

Forty-Fifth Street provided a feminine backdrop to her primping in front of a
vanity mirror as she prepared for an evening on Broadway. Wearing a skintight
gold lamé gown with spaghetti straps and white opera gloves, Marilyn applied
Chanel No. 5 as photographer Ed Feingersh snapped photographs. On
assignment from Redbook, he followed Marilyn to her appearances during the
month of March 1955 for a photo spread in the magazine’s July issue titled “The
Marilyn Monroe You’ve Never Seen.” On this evening, Feingersh thought his
subject resembled a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s bedroom.
 Flanked by the Greenes and sheathed in a white ermine coat, Marilyn
attended the premiere of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on March
24, 1955, at the Morosco Theatre. Directed by Elia Kazan, the play examined a
dysfunctional southern family whose dying patriarch confronts his sons’ issues
of homosexuality, alcoholism, mendacity, and greed. The potboiler ran for six
hundred ninety-four performances.
Marilyn watched the play in awe and aspired to take on the challenge of stage
roles created by Williams and other serious playwrights. Burl Ives (1909-1995),
now remembered for his holiday song “Holly Jolly Christmas” and as the
animated goateed Snowman in the beloved Christmas television special Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), received superb reviews as Big Daddy. Actors
Studio alumnus Ben Gazzara (1930-2012) played Brick, and Barbara Bel
Geddes (1922-2005) received a Tony Award for her portrayal of Maggie. After
the performance, Marilyn joined Milton Berle, Tennessee Williams, and his
mother for cocktails at St. Regis Hotel’s library to celebrate the play’s success.
MGM passed over Marilyn for Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie in the film adaptation
in 1958.
In the following days, photographer Ed Feingersh contrived scenarios in
Manhattan for his photo essay of Marilyn for Redbook. He accompanied her to
Grand Central Station and rode with her on the subway. Hair tousled and
wearing a camel coat, Marilyn posed for his camera holding onto the grab straps
and appeared comfortable among the other passengers. In reality, she never used
public transportation for fear of being mobbed, and preferred taxicabs. Feingersh
also photographed her at Costello’s restaurant, gazing adoringly at the framed
cartoons of theater luminaries by James Thurber, and entering Elizabeth Arden’s
salon. The images yielded a documentary of Marilyn’s new urban lifestyle.
The concept of the celebrity roast originated with the New York Friars Club,
a legendary fraternal organization created by actors, comedians, and musicians
in 1904. Early in its history, the group hosted lavish black tie dinners during
which greats of the entertainment world ribbed the guests of honor. “We only
roast the ones we love” was their motto, and the barbs could be profane and dirty
within the all-male membership. When Humphrey Bogart was roasted, Lauren
Bacall was not admitted to the stag event, and she participated through an audio
recording.
On St. Patrick’s Day, the Friars Club broke code by inviting Marilyn to their
award ceremony in honor of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, with comedian
Milton Berle as master of ceremonies. Known as American’s “Uncle Miltie,”
Berle (1908-2002), was the first major star of television. Escorted by Greene,
Marilyn found herself as the only female seated at the tiered dais on stage.
Placed at dead center behind the podium between Eddie Fisher and Bobby Clark,
she commanded all masculine attention. Berle brought her up to the microphone
to exchange some witty banter. She took a bow, kissed both Martin and Lewis,
and received tremendous applause.

Back in Connecticut, flames swirled and logs crackled in the fireplace of the
Greenes’ living room, where Marilyn sat curled on an ottoman in front of the
fire. Milton and Amy were seated beside her on the sofa. Relaxing in a club
chair, their friend, Michael Todd (1909-1958) animatedly discussed his plans for
producing “Michael Todd’s Dream Circus” with the Ringling Brothers and
Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. This celebrity performance,
the premiere of the circus’ New York City run, would serve as a benefit for the
New York Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation.
Todd, an impresario, showman, public relations expert, and producer of films
and plays, was spending the weekend on hiatus from Hollywood. As a Jewish
boy living in poverty in Minneapolis, he stole cigars and sold them for three
cents. A few years later, he sold worthless watches for five dollars at carnivals.
Within a year, the natural pitchman became the third of Elizabeth Taylor’s seven
husbands. Within three years of their marriage, he was killed in a plane crash in
New Mexico.
On this evening in Connecticut, Todd desired Marilyn’s participation in the
benefit circus and voiced his uncertainty about how to best use her talents to fill
the eighteen thousand seats at the Garden. The theme of the benefit would be the
holidays, so Milton suggested placing her atop a pink elephant to represent a
hangover from drinking on New Year’s Eve. (“Seeing pink elephants” was a
1950s idiom for hallucinations caused by excessive quantities of alcohol.)
Marilyn was the ideal woman to appear in a man’s hallucination. Todd liked the
idea, and Marilyn giggled.
On March 30, wearing a top hat and tails, Master of Ceremonies Milton Berle
stood in the center ring in the circus at Madison Square Garden and announced
to the crowd of eighteen thousand, “Here comes the only girl in the world who
makes Jane Russell look like a boy!” He gestured to the Garden’s massive doors,
where Milton Greene and Jay Kanter stood guard on each side. On cue, the doors
swung open, and a radiant Marilyn entered riding Karnaurdi, an elephant from
India that had been painted shocking pink for the occasion. Marilyn wore a black
and white showgirl costume adorned with a tail, elaborate feather plumes, and
ornate jewelry. Her hair was teased into a glowing golden halo.
Seated in a box with Berle’s wife and playwright and screenwriter Robert E.
Sherwood (1896-1955), Amy Greene marveled at Marilyn’s powerful charisma
as the massive crowd roared. She had never experienced such a display of mass
hysteria. Her companions stood in ovation as Marilyn passed the box,
acknowledging them with a regal sweep of her arm. Sherwood, who had also
been a speechwriter for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, exclaimed Marilyn
was the most exciting woman he had ever seen.
“It meant a lot to me,” Marilyn told Edward R. Murrow of the experience,
“because I’d never been to the circus as a kid.” She recounted another version of
the event to Amy Greene. A fitter had accidently left a straight pin in the
showgirl costume, so each time the elephant took a lurching step forward, the
pin dug deeper into Marilyn’s buttocks. Adept at concealing physical and
emotional agony behind a glamorous smile, Marilyn played to her fans and
allowed the show to go on.

With her buttocks bandaged, Marilyn curled on the sofa in the Greenes’
living room and celebrated the success of the day, knowing word would spread
back to the executive offices at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios. She and Milton
toasted their triumph like the biblical David with his slingshot standing up to
Goliath. Along with Amy, they watched a live television broadcast of the
Academy Awards Ceremony, simultaneously held at the RKO Pantages Theatre
in Hollywood and the NBC Century Theater in New York. “Nineteen fifty-four
was big year in the movie business,” host Bob Hope announced. “That’s the year
Twentieth Century-Fox lost Marilyn Monroe. Darryl Zanuck stamped his foot so
hard, they struck oil!”
During the ceremony, the Actors Studio received validation when Elia
Kazan’s gritty and realistic On the Waterfront, with its cast of Method acting
alumni and twelve nominations, won the Oscar for best film along with seven
other awards, tying with Gone with the Wind (1939) and From Here to Eternity
(1953). The Method’s greatest disciple, Marlon Brando, upset the other
nominees, Humphrey Bogart and Bing Crosby — giants from the previous
generation of actors — when Bette Davis presented him with the Best Actor
statuette. Brando’s mumbling speech in the scene filmed in the back seat of a
taxicab with J. Lee Cobb became iconic: “I coulda had class. I coulda been a
contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s
face it.”
Filmed on location in Hoboken, New Jersey, On the Waterfront was an
exposé of the brutality and corruption of union racketeering within the context of
the murder of an innocent longshoreman. Heroic dockworker Terry Malloy
(Brando) stands alone, turns witness against the intimidating gangster union
bosses, and becomes a marked informant. Kazan and screenwriter Budd
Schulberg used the plot as a means to justify their own testimonies before the
House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, which identified members of
the Communist party who worked in the theater and in film. Kazan had named
eight members of his Group Theatre as Communists, among them Clifford Odets
and Paula Strasberg. Coincidentally, Arthur Miller would live to witness another
Oscar night in 1999 when a blind Kazan, age eighty-nine, received a Lifetime
Achievement Award. Outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, about two hundred
fifty demonstrators, many elderly men who had been blacklisted from films,
protested the presentation of Kazan’s award. Inside, many members of the
audience rose to their feet and clapped their hands as Kazan was escorted to the
podium, but several actors remaining seated and withheld applause, some
folding their arms in silent protest.
As the love interest for Brando’s character in On the Waterfront, Strasberg’s
other pupil, Eva Marie Saint, won Best Supporting Actress. Karl Malden, Rod
Steiger, and Lee J. Cobb, all Actors Studio students, were nominated for Best
Supporting Actor for the same film. Arthur Miller must have recoiled as Elia
Kazan received the Best Director statuette for a film remarkably similar to The
Hook in both plot and theme. Miller couldn’t get his screenplay off the ground;
Kazan was now soaring with success.
As the frontrunner for Best Actress for her tour de force performance in A
Star Is Born, Judy Garland had given birth to her third child, Joe Luft, the
previous day. NBC set up cameras in the hospital room to air her predicted
acceptance speech. In its review of the film, Time announced: “[Garland] gives
what is just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history” as
Esther Blodgett, a struggling cabaret singer who catches the attention of a fading
matinee idol, Norman Maine (James Mason), who succumbs to alcoholism as his
career takes a nosedive. Esther is discovered by the motion picture industry,
becomes a Garlandesque Vicki Lester, and marries Maine.
In a mint green satin gown, Grace Kelly received the golden statuette for
portraying an alcoholic actor’s long-suffering younger wife in The Country Girl,
a film similar in plot to A Star is Born. Groucho Marx later sent Garland a
telegram expressing that her loss was the “biggest robbery since Brink’s.” A few
months later, Marilyn called Grace Kelly from the Greenes’ telephone to
congratulate her on her upcoming marriage to Prince Rainier III (1923-2005) of
Monaco and on her retirement from the film industry. Had Greek shipping
magnet Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975) succeeded as matchmaker, Kelly would
have been calling Marilyn. Earlier in the year, Onassis had schemed to revive the
Monaco as Europe’s center of tourism and gambling by arranging the marriage
of its prince to Marilyn. Onassis delegated friend and financier George Schlee to
contact Gardner Cowles of Look magazine who, in turn, contacted Milton
Greene and conveyed the notion of Marilyn as a suitable bride for the prince.
For the public, Kelly was the ideal choice as the princess. Her screen image
embodied the culture’s idealized femininity: classic beauty, poise, refinement,
and respectability. In reality, Kelly’s past had been far from virginal, and her love
life mirrored Marilyn’s in many ways. Kelly’s legend includes stories of messy
love affairs with co-stars Ray Milland, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby,
William Holden, and David Niven, most of them married. “She wore white
gloves,” director Henry Hathaway’s wife told a biographer, “but she was no
saint!”
The morning after the award ceremony and Marilyn’s appearance at the
circus, every newspaper published photographs of her on the pink elephant. This
international media coverage stole the spotlight from Grace Kelly’s honor. The
studio’s stockholders questioned Zanuck’s judgment in drawing swords with
their hottest property since the curly-red-haired singing and dancing prodigy
Shirley Temple (1928 — 2014) in the 1930s. Like Monroe in real life, Temple
acted in screen roles as a lovable but precocious orphaned waif who softened
grumpy old men; however, her circumstances endeared her to audiences and sold
movie tickets during the darkest years of the Great Depression. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt was moved to say, “It is a splendid thing that for just
fifteen cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a
baby and forget his troubles.” Although the postwar economy boomed, the threat
of television called for an equally spectacular smiling face on the big screen, but
one that was grown up and sexy.
Chapter Thirty-Two
 Spring 1955

As Marilyn entered and exited the front door of the Gladstone Hotel, she
noticed a new face outside along with James Haspiel and members of the
Monroe Six. Usually dressed in a suit and tie, fourteen-year-old Peter Mangone
routinely skipped school in the Bronx and took the subway to East Fifty-Second
Street in the hope of catching a glimpse of Marilyn. After taking photographs of
her with a Brownie camera, the boy from Bronx returned with the prints and
requested that she autograph them. “You were here yesterday wearing a red tie,”
Marilyn said. “Weren’t you cold?” Mangone’s face flushed due to her
familiarity.
Mangone was a frequent visitor to the sidewalk outside the Gladstone Hotel.
When it rained, Marilyn gave the boy rides in her taxicab to the subway station
and sometimes handed him candy to eat on his way home. She asked about his
family and learned his mother, Ida, was a good Italian cook. Riding home on the
subway, Mangone would eat the candy and pretend he had been on a date with
the most beautiful movie star in the world. Sometimes, Marilyn seemed to never
enter or leave the hotel, no matter how many hours Mangone spent outside
waiting for her, but even an intermittent glimpse reinforced his faithful return.
He was rewarded when Marilyn casually asked him, “How’s Ida’s meatballs?”
When the weather warmed in the spring, Mangone borrowed his brother’s
graduation gift, an eight-millimeter Kodak movie camera, and rode the subway
to the Gladstone, where he waited several long hours for his “girlfriend” to
emerge. Marilyn exited the hotel in a black cashmere suit under a short jacket
with fur collar and walked arm-in-arm with Milton Greene and George
Nardiello, a fashion designer, who had created several dresses she had worn
during the year. She winked at Mangone, blew him a kiss, and invited him to
accompany her on a shopping spree.
Walking backward, Mangone captured Marilyn strolling down Fifth Avenue
with her companions and stepping cautiously over a subway grate. James
Haspiel tagged along behind her. Mangone’s brother discovered the lost footage
nearly five decades later and it was broadcast on the Today Show. The boy from
the Bronx, who was now age sixty-two, watched the faded flickering image of
Marilyn and said it was as though he had reunited with a high school sweetheart
who looked exactly the way he remembered her.
Haspiel, Mangone, and the Monroe Six relocated their reconnaissance to the
more upscale address of 301 Park Avenue in April, when Marilyn moved out of
the Gladstone Hotel and into Suite 2728 at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
She subleased the unit in the hotel’s upper section, known as the Waldorf
Towers, from actress Leonora Corbett (1908-1960), who had appeared in Noel
Coward’s Blithe Spirit. Rented for one thousand dollars per month, the bright
apartment on the twenty-seventh floor was decorated in blue and gold with white
accents, and boasted a grand view of the city.
Marilyn displayed a sketch of herself by Zero Mostel (1915-1977), a
neighbor of the Strasbergs, with whom she frequently chatted in the apartment
building’s courtyard. Mostel starred in Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets (1950),
and later rose to fame in Broadway musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof and A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He was blacklisted for
refusing to name members of the Communist party during his testimony before
the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and did not work in films for
nearly a decade. Marilyn especially enjoyed Mostel’s referring to Twentieth
Century-Fox as “Eighteenth Century-Fox” because of the studio’s collaboration
with the committee.
In the living room, Marilyn displayed a bulletin board where she posted three
pictures: a portrait of Albert Einstein, another photograph of Einstein walking
down a road, and a photo of a group of hungry orphans huddled together. Fifty
years later, hybrid images of Marilyn and Einstein were created by
superimposing one picture atop another. One, fashioned by Dr. Aude Oliva for
the March 31, 2007 issue of New Scientist magazine, was used to better
understand how our brains handle visual scenes. At least two such images appear
on the Internet; in both, Einstein is visible when viewed up close, but Marilyn’s
image emerges when viewed from afar.
In the bedroom of her new apartment, Marilyn placed her bed against the
wall that bordered the living room, and hung a sizeable painting of Abraham
Lincoln on the wall above it. On the night table, she turned her telephone toward
the bed’s headboard to hide the private phone number printed on the dial (a
common feature of dial phones of the era.) Marilyn’s neighbors included retired
U.S. President Herbert Hoover, retired General Douglas MacArthur, and
composer and songwriter Cole Porter (1891-1964), whose song “You’re the
Top” referred to the hotel’s signature Waldorf salad.
The same week Marilyn moved her clothing into suite 2728, three significant
events of the 1950s took place. First, Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was
introduced to end the devastating epidemic that left its victims, mostly children,
paralyzed. Next, Ray Kroc, a salesman of automated milkshake machines,
opened the first MacDonald’s hamburger and french fries drive-in restaurant in
Des Plaines, Illinois, and created a corporation to franchise a restaurant chain.
Lastly, and sadly, Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein died at age
seventy-six. His theory of general relativity, the gravitational attraction between
masses resulting from the warping of space and time by those masses, paved the
way for modern astrophysics.

In a research mission, Marilyn stood in the wings at the Moorish-inspired

Martin Beck Theatre on West Forty-Fifth Street to observe actors performing in
a two hour production of Teahouse of the August Moon. A student of theater who
was anticipating a stage debut, Marilyn wanted a bird’s eye view of the
intricacies of a Broadway production. Her friend, Eli Wallach, had replaced
David Wayne in the role of Sakini, an Okinawan translator who introduces U.S.
occupation forces to his culture following World War II. Wallach and his wife,
Anne Jackson, lived in a basement apartment on Eighth Avenue in Greenwich
Village with their four-year-old son, Peter. Marilyn thought of Eli as a brother,
and the two had a natural chemistry on the dance floor. Eli became her favorite
dance partner, and her pet name for him was “Tea House.”
Marilyn also reunited with Shelley Winters, who had left Hollywood to study
at the Actors Studio. Together, the two women created a list of fantasy lovers.
Shelley’s roster included the foremost attractive young men of Hollywood, while
Marilyn’s named mature and intellectual father figures such as Arthur Miller and
Einstein. When Wallach heard about this, he signed a photograph of the aged
physicist: “To My Dear Marilyn. Love, Albert,” and sent it to his friend.
Amused, Marilyn framed the photograph and clarified with a giggle, “Oh, that’s
from Eli,” when guests queried about its authenticity.
When his wife was performing on Broadway, Wallach and Marilyn
sometimes met at Jim Downey’s Steakhouse on Eighth Avenue in the heart of
the theatrical district to discuss their work at the Actors Studio. Marilyn revealed
her preference to work with serious New York acting students instead of the
movie stars she had met in Hollywood. “They love their work,” she said, “they
listen, and they look you in the eye.” She also once helped Wallach rewrite a
contract to ensure that he received the best deal. Wearing her “little Ben Franklin
spectacles” to read the contract, she looked up at Wallach and astutely advised,
“Take out clauses three and four. And make sure they clarify your billing.”
 Marilyn called on Sam Shaw to photograph her in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park,
and he met her at the Grand Army Plaza’s impressive main entrance, with its
Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch. The monument provided a backdrop
similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the park’s ninety-acre meadow and
lake, the only one in the borough, offered picturesque vistas. Unfortunately, they
produced no portraits, as the day was too cloudy for the camera, and the ominous
clatter of thunder threatened soaking rain.
Caught in a downpour, Shaw ducked into a phone booth and called his friend,
Norman Rosten, who lived in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone on nearby Remsen
Street, while Marilyn stood under a convenient awning. Shaw told Rosten he
was with a drenched model and needed a port in a storm. Rosten immediately
offered shelter and hot coffee.
By design or fate, through Rosten, Marilyn reconnected with playwright
Arthur Miller, whom she had befriended in 1951. The son of Russian immigrant
parents, Norman Rosten (1914-1995) graduated from Brooklyn College and
joined the Federal Theater Project, President Roosevelt’s New Deal agency
established to provide jobs in the theater. He met and befriended Miller at the
University of Michigan, where both attended on scholarships from the Theatre
Guild and shared similar leftist political and social views. At the time, Miller
was dating another student, Mary Slattery, whose roommate and friend, Hedda
Rowinski (1915-1984), attracted Rosten’s attention. Mary and Hedda were
studying psychology at the same university. The four remained close friends.
After graduation, Rosten and Miller returned to New York. Rosten married
Hedda, who was working as a psychiatric social worker, and wrote radio drama
in the 1940s. He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for
his use of poetry in the medium of radio. Miller married Slattery, and the couple
lived close to the Rostens. The two men collaborated on Listen, My Children
(1939), a farcical one-act play about standing in line at a welfare office. Rosten’s
first play, First Stop to Heaven, closed after only five performances.
Subsequently, he published poetry and two novels, before writing the screen
adaptation of Miller’s A View from the Bridge in 1961.
On the cold and rainy day in early 1955, Rosten invited Shaw and his model
to his home and placed the telephone receiver in its cradle. Within minutes, there
was a knock on his door. When Rosten welcomed Shaw into his home, the
photographer hurriedly entered the foyer and headed toward the living room.
Rosten heard Shaw introduce his drenched companion as Marion. She said,
“Thank you,” as Rosten took her wet camel hair coat. Hedda emerged, invited
the guests to take a seat into the living room, and offered the girl a pair of dry
slippers.
The model gravitated to the bookcase where, by chance, she removed a slim
volume titled, Songs for Patricia, and a friendly conversation ensued, which
Rosten documented. “Who’s Patricia?” she queried. Rosten explained that
Patricia was his young daughter, and the model became captivated by the
devoted father’s tribute of poetry to his beloved daughter. After perusing her
host’s original work, the model said, “They’re lovely poems; I’ll have to get this
book.” Rosten instructed her to take the volume home with her and consider it a
gift.
Hedda asked the model if she lived in New York; the model explained that
she had come from California and was studying at the Actors Studio. “I’m sort
of an actress,” she said. Intrigued, Hedda asked if she had appeared in any plays.
The model stated she had performed some scenes in an acting class and added
that she did a couple of movies. Hedda asked her screen name. Upon hearing
“Marilyn Monroe,” Shaw interrupted with an apology for neglecting a proper
introduction. Eavesdropping on conversation downstairs, the Rostens’ young
daughter, Patricia, came out of her bedroom to meet the pretty blonde lady in the
living room.
Afterward, the foursome attended a house party in the neighborhood, where
the Rostens introduced their companion as Marilyn Monroe, but none of the
other guests believed them. Marilyn delighted in finding anonymity in New
York. For the first time since she had achieved fame, she experienced human
interactions uninfluenced by her public image.
A few days later, Marilyn sent Norman a note of thanks on The Towers of the
Waldorf-Astoria stationery for providing her shelter in a rainstorm and for the
book. She mentioned that her name was Norma, and that writing his name
reminded her of writing her own. Marilyn also reported having read his book in
bed the following morning after their meeting and that “it touched me very
much — I used to think if I had ever had a child I would have wanted only a
son — but after ‘Songs for Patricia’ — I know I would have loved a little girl as
much…” She mentioned having written some poems of her own when she was
depressed and having shared them with only two friends, one of whom had
cried. Marilyn closed the note with warm regards to Hedda and Patricia and with
hopes of seeing them again soon.
“We really didn’t give a damn who she was,” Norman said, “and she did step
out of her stereotype in real life. With us she was thoroughly enchanting, such an
odd human being…”
It wasn’t long until Marilyn was a frequent guest at the home on Remsen
Street and became a sort of older sister to the Rostens’ daughter. “She broke all
the rules, and children love being around grown-ups who can get away with
that,” Patricia recalled as an adult. “When Marilyn touched me or hugged me, I
felt a warmth and softness (dare I use the word ‘maternal’ in relation to her?) that
was very reassuring. It was not unlike falling into that champagne-colored quilt
that graced her bed.”
Marilyn easily blended into New York. Wearing slacks, a Teddy Bear coat,
bobby sox, and flat shoes, she ran errands on foot, read on a park bench near the
arch in Washington Square, and strolled along the wide walkway of the
Esplanade along the East River facing the Brooklyn skyline. Sometimes, she
took a taxi to Brooklyn Heights and admired the restored brick carriage houses
on Love Lane as she meandered down the brick streets, or browsed the stacks of
books at the Long Island Historical Society. When someone occasionally
recognized her, she facetiously said, “No, I’m Mamie Van Doren,” or, “I’m
Sheree North.”
To the amazement of friends, Marilyn could instantaneously metamorphosize
into her Monroe persona at will. An internal energy would suddenly change her
into a sexy glamorous star, beginning with her facial expression and smile, and
ending with her body and voice. Susan Strasberg remembered Marilyn asking,
“Do you want me to be her?” and described the transformation as turning on a
light bulb. After observing the phenomena on a crowded New York Street, Eli
Wallach recalled her saying afterward, “I just felt like being Marilyn for a
moment.”

Newspapers and magazines circulated images of Marilyn meeting with

legendary radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow, who always ended
his pioneering broadcasts and documentaries with his trademark closing phrase,
“Good night and good luck.” In 1937, CBS radio appointed Murrow to assemble
a team of correspondents to report on the mounting war in Europe. Amid
background sounds of bombings, he reported in a universally recognized voice.
When Morrow returned to America after the war’s end, he was surprised to
find that his overseas reports had made him famous. He had become a
straightforward newsman who tackled controversial subject matter, such as
abuses of power. Perhaps this mission, along with America’s growing fascination
with Marilyn, prompted his invitation to her to appear on his television show.
Wielding his power, Zanuck called CBS with threats of legal action, but Murrow
and Monroe would not back down. Instead, a crew from the television studio
headquarters in Manhattan descended on the valley where the Greenes’ farm sat,
and erected a one hundred fifty-foot tower on the front lawn to transmit the
television camera’s signal.
On Good Friday, April 8, Murrow interviewed Marilyn and the Greenes on
his live broadcast program, Person to Person. The weekly show’s format
featured Murrow, with his trademark cigarette in hand, visiting with movie stars,
television celebrities, sports figures, authors, and politicians. Using multiple
cameras, guests were interviewed in their homes while their images were
transmitted and projected on a mammoth screen in the CBS studio. Casually
seated in a living room easy chair, Murrow faced the screen and engaged his
guests in light conversation. Guests often took viewers on room-by-room tours
of their homes as they responded to Murrow’s questions, marking the format as a
remarkable innovation during television’s infancy.
Suffering from an unusually painful menstrual period earlier in the week,
Marilyn had medicated with painkillers and sleeping pills and was not at her
best. In addition, Marilyn’s perfectionistic style was ill suited for live television.
Unlike her experience in the Fox Studios, she could not demand retakes.
According to Amy Greene, in the final moments before airtime, Marilyn and
Milton were unnerved when crewmembers commented on their appearance
before fifty million viewers. Producer Fred Friendly noticed the onset of panic
and told Marilyn, “Just look at the camera, dear. It’s just you and the camera —
just you two.”
Murrow began the interview by speaking with Milton in his studio, and
commented on the celebrity photographs displayed on the walls. Ultimately, they
focused on the Monroe portrait that graced the cover of Look. The bulky cameras
then followed Milton into the large country kitchen, where Amy and Marilyn sat
at a rustic wooden table. Wearing a modest short-sleeved sweater and pencil
skirt, Marilyn could have been a college student visiting the Greene home, rather
than a movie star. Her choice of attire communicated seriousness in her
reinvented image, as most of Murrow’s female guests in Hollywood donned
formal cocktail dresses and jewels for the monochrome television cameras.
Immediately, Amy’s natural charm and confidence unintentionally stole the
spotlight from her blonde bombshell houseguest. On camera, Amy was relaxed,
articulate, and spontaneous. In contrast, Marilyn looked shy, nervous, childlike,
and scared. It was a rare instance in which she did not play to the camera.
Murrow asked Marilyn about her reaction to Milton’s portraits of her and
questioned if she, indeed, had appeared on every major America magazine cover.
With a girlish pout, Marilyn delivered a trademark witty remark: “No…not
the Ladies Home Journal.” She explained that appearing in the magazine would
fulfill a personal wish: “I used to long for it. I used to appear only on men’s
magazine covers…” Marilyn recounted how she requested an introduction to
Milton after perusing his portfolio. “But he’s just a boy!” she exclaimed upon
meeting him.
What was Milton’s reaction? “She’s just a girl,” he told Murrow.
Murrow talked to the Greenes about Marilyn in her presence as if she were
the couple’s adolescent daughter. “Does Marilyn help around the house?” he
asked.
Amy asserted she was an “ideal guest” who picked up after herself. Murrow
went so far as to ask if Marilyn made her own bed and cleaned her own room.
The television viewers learned she did both. Amy amusingly defined Marilyn’s
role in the family as babysitter, and Marilyn expounded on having rendered
babysitting services on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.
As hostess, Amy suggested they move into the den where the ladies sat on
the sofa in front of a crackling fire and Milton rested on the arm of the sofa next
to his wife. Murrow questioned them about business offers as the phone rang,
and Milton joked about the call probably being another offer. At this point,
Marilyn haltingly described the goal of her production company: “Primarily to
contribute…to help…make good pictures.” Has she grown tired of the same
roles? “It’s not that I object to do doing musicals and comedies,” Marilyn said.
“In fact, I rather enjoy them…but I’d like to do dramatic parts, too.”
Murrow proceeded with a mundane line of questioning. What was Marilyn’s
best part? She cited The Asphalt Jungle and the unreleased The Seven Year Itch.
Who was helpful in her rise to fame? She credited John Huston and Wilder for
casting her in the films she cited and Natasha Lytess and Michael Chekhov for
their instruction. What was her shortest line in a film? With prompts from Amy,
Marilyn mentioned her edited scene from Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! and an
audible sigh in A Ticket to Tomahawk.
When Murrow asked Marilyn if she tried to please a director, she stumbled
on words and grew anxious: “Definitely…The story is very important, but
personally, more important to me than the story is the director, because…a good
director usually has a good story…A director, I think, can contribute a lot
because…he’s really with you every moment, everything you do, I think it’s very
important. It has been to me.”
Murrow concluded by inquiring about how Marilyn coped with fame while
living in New York. “I can put on an old polo coat, no makeup and get along
pretty well,” she replied and described the Red Apple as an “optimistic, friendly
city.” Marilyn succeeded in projecting modesty over sexuality, but the apparent
lack of adequate preparation and talking points for the corporation’s goals made
her appear more like the roles she had played, rather than the intelligent woman
she was. Moreover, the absence of her onscreen charisma caused her to seem
bland next to her vivacious hostess. The next morning, Jean Negulesco called
and offered Amy a part in his next film, Bonjour Tristesse. Even Milton was
offended. He had hoped the spotlight on Marilyn would furnish more
ammunition against Fox. Instead, Zanuck enjoyed a laugh at her expense and
sarcastically announced his intentions to pass on Monroe and sign Amy Greene
to a contract.

On April 26, Marilyn attended the Newspaper Public Convention, or Banshee

Luncheon, at the Waldorf-Astoria. Seated between the master of ceremonies,
Milton Berle, and Arthur “Bugs” Baer (1886-1969), a craggy-faced sports
newspaper journalist and cartoonist, Marilyn enjoyed their ceaseless banter,
honed from years of drinking together at Toots Shor’s. The former credited the
latter as a source of fresh humor for his comic monologues on television. Berle
brought Marilyn onstage for a comic routine, and she spoke briefly to the
assembly.
Afterward, Marilyn was introduced to J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and his longtime companion
Clyde Tolson (1900-1975), the bureau’s associate director. Hoover held the
position for forty-eight years, until his death, and keep files on the intimate lives
of politicians and celebrities, including Marilyn. The Freedom of Information
Act resulted in the release of many files that contained obviously false and
unsubstantiated gossip about Marilyn, and tracked some of her contacts as
Communists or Communist sympathizers. Since then, biographers have cited
these files as “proof” of information they have covered.
Ironically, as Hoover gathered hearsay about public figures, many speculated
that he and Tolson were involved in an unconfirmed same-gender relationship
for decades or, at the least, an unconsummated intimate relationship. Tolson
inherited Hoover’s estate and house, and accepted the flag that draped Hoover’s
casket. In death, Tolson remained close to his companion’s side by being buried
in a grave a few yards from Hoover’s in the Congressional Cemetery.
The formidable Constance Collier died on April 25. Three days later, Marilyn
attended her former acting coach’s wake at Universal Funeral Home on
Lexington Avenue with Truman Capote, who devoted an entire chapter to the
event in his memoir Music for Chameleons. Marilyn arrived in what Capote
imagined was appropriate garb for “the abbess of a nunnery in private audience
with the Pope.” She told Capote she hated funerals and didn’t want one of her
own. Instead, she wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered in the sea by her
children.
“She taught me how to breathe,” Marilyn whispered to Capote in a rear pew.
“I’ve put it to good use, too, and I don’t mean just acting. There are other times
when breathing is a problem.” Marilyn wiped away tears with a lace
handkerchief as she reminisced about the woman she regarded as a tough,
grandmotherly figure.
Capote loved both Marilyn’s wit and her sadness. He perceived her as alone
in the world and constantly running away from her past. Three years later,
Capote published Breakfast at Tiffany’s; its main character, Holly Golightly,
experiences the “mean reds,” different from “the blues.” Holly describes them as
an agitated depression that leads her to take a taxicab to Fifth Avenue where, for
solace, she eats a danish for breakfast in front of a window at Tiffany’s jewelry
store. When it came time for the film adaption of his novella, Capote wanted
Marilyn to play Holly. Despite claims that the character was based on Marilyn,
her personality was largely based on his former neighbor, a German refugee who
came to the United States at age seventeen.
In late May, Marilyn called Sam and Anne Shaw and announced that
DiMaggio had given her two tickets for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and
Bailey Circus. She invited their young daughter, Edie, with whom she shared an
approaching birthday. Edie remembered Marilyn coaching her in advance to
keep her identity secret. “Don’t call me Marilyn,” she told the child. “Call me
‘Hey, you,’ ‘Hey, there,’ or ‘Haystack.’ ” Young Edie thought this was both
funny and exciting.
Marilyn and Edie sat in DiMaggio’s two front and center seats and munched
on popcorn and cotton candy as Emmett Kelly, the famous clown, warmed the
crowd with his immortal broomstick routine. Suddenly, he noticed the beautiful
blonde woman up front and turned a large spotlight toward her seat. Later, a
group of circus hands walked down the aisle toward Marilyn and Edie. One of
them said, “Excuse me, miss, but aren’t you Marilyn Monroe?” She smiled and
said, “No, I wish I was. She’s so beautiful.”
Like many of Marilyn’s New York friends, Edie knew a Marilyn who
contrasted with her public image. “I didn’t think of her as sexy knowing her, I
only think of sexy when I see a movie she’s been in,” Edie told PBS for Marilyn
Monroe: Still Life, part of the American Masters series. “Knowing her, she was
sweet, I mean, in jeans and a sweater and a scarf around her head. That wasn’t
sexy, and that’s the way I knew her…the girl next door. I wasn’t thinking sexy, I
was thinking angel.”
While visiting Marilyn’s hotel suite along with her parents, young Edie
wandered away from the adults in the living room and into her hostess’s
bedroom, where she approached the vanity table. She marveled at the array of
cosmetics her adult friend used to transform from a fresh-faced big sister to a
glamorous movie star. Edie began to play with the makeup when suddenly,
Marilyn entered. At first, the girl felt as though she had been caught doing
something naughty, but Marilyn’s reaction was nurturing. “She acted like it was
the most natural thing in the world to find me there,” Edie remembered in
Marilyn Among Friends, “and before I could even feel embarrassed, she had
plunked me down at her vanity mirror and said that since I was intrigued by the
art of make-up, she would show me how do the job right.” Over the course of
about twenty minutes, the child watched Marilyn’s skillful hands transform her
prepubescent face from ordinary to glamorous. Committed to achieving a
complete makeover, Marilyn styled Edie’s hair into a French twist before taking
her by the hand to reveal her to the adults in the living room.

On June 1, Marilyn’s twenty-nine birthday, The Seven Year Itch premiered in

Manhattan. Hedda Hopper’s column touted it as Monroe’s “first great picture.”
Fox never formally invited Marilyn, but she received tickets to the event from
Sam Shaw, who had obtained them from Zanuck in appreciation for his popular
photographs of the subway scene.
On hand to photograph the premiere, Shaw confronted Marilyn on her heavy
makeup. She explained it was for her fans waiting outside the theater during the
premiere who couldn’t afford to pay the admission. When she arrived in the
dramatic makeup, they would see her as the glamorous star of their fantasies and
not be disappointed. “I won’t let them down,” Marilyn insisted. Shaw respected
her resolve.
Escorted by a cheerful DiMaggio, Marilyn arrived ten minutes into the film
wearing a tight white cocktail dress with off the shoulder straps, a white fur
wrap, short white gloves, and white mules. Her short hair was platinum, and she
wore dangling rhinestone earrings. She carried a clutch purse and an orchid. The
pair held hands and posed for photographers in the lobby. Joe seemed to be
making an effort as he walked under the enormous cut-out of his former wife
with her skirt blowing over her shoulders and smiled for the photographers.
Motivated by love, he was willing to subject himself to the scene that had
triggered the final blow that ended their marriage.
Still holding her ex-husband’s hand, Marilyn swept down the theater aisle
and interrupted Tom Ewell’s scene. Walter Winchell later reported, “Nobody
bothered to watch Mr. Ewell’s soliloquy,” as all eyes were on Marilyn as she
took a seat. The audience was filled with Broadway and Hollywood elite: Judy
Holliday, Richard Rodgers, Henry Fonda, and Grace Kelly. They laughed at all
the right moments, applauded Marilyn’s Dazzle Dent commercial, and gave the
film a standing ovation. Within days, the rest of the world fell in love again with
Marilyn’s delightful and charismatic screen image, something she was trying
desperately to shed. Afterward, DiMaggio took Marilyn to Toots Shor’s for her
birthday celebration, where Maureen Stapleton remembered them arguing.
Disgusted by DiMaggio, Marilyn asked Sam Shaw to take her home.
While Marilyn’s performance pleased the public, she struck a nerve in New
York Times film critic Bosley Crowther. Aside from his review of the film, he
penned an additional piece about her, obviously processing his own prudish
struggle in accepting the coexistence of sexy and good or sexy and smart. In his
June 12 article, “Look at Marilyn!” the nearly fifty-year old critic lauded
Vanessa Brown’s interpretation of the role on stage as the “normal” performance
of a “normal person,” and panned Marilyn’s as “voluptuous” and “fantastic,” the
latter not intended in a positive regard.
Aside from referring to Marilyn as an “artless seductress” and “radioactive
bomb,” Crowther called her a “volatile substance, not because she is artfully
revealed as an intellectual or dramatic enigma, but because she is — well, a full-
fledged wow!” In the end, Crowther places her in an apparent second-class
category along with Mae West, and inaccurately predicts her sexy style will
someday fade like that of the aging siren of the 1930s. The article validated
Marilyn’s point about Fox’s pigeonholing her in roles that limited her range and
artistry.
Chapter Thirty-Three
 Summer 1955

Shortly following her return from Japan with DiMaggio, Marilyn confided in
Sidney Skolsky in her suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel while her new husband
went downstairs to the Polo Lounge to have a drink with his baseball friends.
“Do you know who [sic] I’m going to marry?” she asked. “I’m going to marry
Arthur Miller. You wait. You’ll see.” Skolsky was aghast. Marilyn had just
returned from her honeymoon, and declared she loved Joe and was happy. Less
than eighteen months later, Marilyn’s declaration about Arthur Miller might have
some truth in it.
At thirty-nine, the playwright whom Marilyn had befriended in Hollywood
was trying to recapture the success of Death of a Salesman. He wrote allegories
about Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reckless investigation of those unsubstantially
accused of being Communist sympathizers. Miller’s most recent play, The
Crucible, staged on Broadway in 1953, was set in Salem during the witchcraft
trials of the 1600s, and was a thinly veiled exploration of the House Un-
American Activities Committee. Those accused of witchcraft are offered an
opportunity to save their own lives by falsely confessing the practice of
witchcraft in exchange for identifying any others who practice witchcraft.
Many of the accused make accusations against anyone for whom they harbor
ill feelings. Miller’s central character, John Proctor, refuses to incriminate
anyone else and retracts his own false admission of guilt. He goes to the gallows
to die rather than give false testimony against his neighbors. “I speak my own
sins; I cannot judge another,” Protector tells his prosecutor. “How may I teach
[my children] to walk like men in the world, and I sold my friends?” Reviews
were cold, but the play won the Best Play Tony Award and was later critically
acclaimed.
Now face to face with Marilyn at a party she attended with Eli Wallach and
Anne Jackson, Miller realized how dramatically her life had changed since their
meeting in Hollywood four years earlier. She had been a starlet then but had
become the most popular and recognized woman in the world, with newspapers
reporting on her every move. She expressed interest in his new play, A View from
the Bridge, which would open in the fall. Miller commented on her bravery for
breaking from Hollywood. Attracted to each other from the start, the two had
never acted on their mutual fascination, yet retained an emotional bond.
Shortly after the party, Arthur called Paula Strasberg for Marilyn’s phone
number. Soon Miller started joining Eli Wallach and Marilyn for dinner at
Downey’s, and Marilyn began inviting Miller’s sister, actress Joan Copeland
(born 1922), to lunch. Miller later wrote of feeling as though he was swept into
an uncontrollable “swift current.” To the married playwright, Marilyn “was a
whirling light…all paradox and enticing mystery.” She could project both the
strength of a street-smart woman and the “poetic sensitivity” of an adolescent
girl.
While Marilyn explored childhood trauma in sessions with Dr. Hohenberg,
Miller lay on the psychoanalytic couch of Dr. Rudolph Loewenstein (1898-1976)
and processed his affection for both his wife and his muse. (In Timebends, Miller
documented this struggle.) Although he didn’t want to end his marriage, the
thought of losing Marilyn was “unbearable.”
Miller allegedly began a secret affair with Marilyn during the summer while
his wife and children were in their farmhouse in Connecticut, just like Tom
Ewell’s character in The Seven Year Itch. Marilyn’s willingness to partner with a
married man reflected her low self-esteem, but her diary revealed deeper feelings
of worthlessness. She wrote of herself as “subhuman” and recorded an inability
to accept Miller’s true love for her. Marilyn expected him to stop loving her but
hoped he never would.
Marilyn acknowledged the power of her screen image in attracting men but
perceived herself as unlovable. Men expected her to be the sexy girl they saw on
the screen, Marilyn told Susan Strasberg. They went to bed with the famous sex
symbol expecting “rockets…fireworks…bombs bursting,” woke up to the real
woman, and felt cheated. Marilyn sympathized with their dilemma, but also
regretted having the “same anatomy as anyone else.”
Disguised as anonymous New Yorkers, Marilyn and Miller went to see Marty
at a neighborhood theater. Starring Ernest Borgnine, the film followed an
overweight, socially awkward but warm Italian-American butcher who lives
with his mother in the Bronx and longs for a relationship. He meets and falls in
love with a plain schoolteacher at the Stardust Ballroom. The charming film
challenged the cultural standard of beauty and earned the Oscar for Best Picture
of 1955.
Afterward, they had dinner at a local diner, where the waitress seemed to
recognize her blonde customer. Conversation turned to the absurdity of
Marilyn’s fame and the public’s preoccupation with her beauty. Marilyn gave an
example of a group of dentists who had approached her with a request to take an
impression of her flawless teeth and mouth. Interjecting, Miller admitted an
inability to imagine their relationship someday ending. She questioned his doubt
about their future together. When the waitress intrusively asked for Marilyn’s
autograph, Miller confessed his annoyance at the public’s desire to possess her.
Marilyn explained how such instances of adoration were meaningless and could
not compete with their loving bond.

While the Greenes visited Italy in the summer, the Strasbergs invited Marilyn
to their rented house on Fire Island, a long and narrow outer barrier island
adjacent to the south shore of Long Island. During summer months, many
Manhattan residents escaped from the city to the quiet beaches of Fire Island or
Long Island. The Strasberg family arrived with Marilyn by ferry on Friday
afternoons and spent the weekends. As no private vehicles were permitted on the
island, Lee led the caravan of Susan, John, and Marilyn pulling little red wagons
filled with books and food along the boardwalks to the cottage near Ocean
Beach. Under a black umbrella, Paula wore a large hat and sunglasses for
protection from the sun. Marilyn ran around barefoot with no makeup and shared
a room with Susan. On occasion, she’d cook for the family. Despite having lived
in Southern California all of her life, Marilyn achieved a bronze tan for the first
time. James Haspiel noted that her skin glowed the entire summer.
Marty Fried, an orphan and former boxer who drove a cab while he studied
acting, and who later became a successful director, joined the Strasbergs and
Marilyn. They also welcomed Delos Smith, Jr. from Kansas, who later co-starred
with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Marilyn
frequently gave Delos strange gifts, like a makeup mirror or bootie socks from
an airplane. With Marty, Marilyn shared stories of her experiences in foster care,
prefacing them by saying, “Please stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”
One morning at dawn, Susan awoke to the sound of sea gulls. She opened her
eyes and noticed Marilyn’s bed was empty. Lifting her head from the pillow,
Susan saw her standing nude in front of the window. Rather than interrupt
Marilyn’s pensive mood, Susan simply watched and admired her friend’s
beautiful body from behind. Sensing eyes upon her, Marilyn turned. Susan felt
embarrassed and gushed, “Marilyn, I’d give anything to be like you.”
“Oh, no, Susie,” Marilyn whispered in horror, her brow furrowed, “Don’t say
that. I’d give anything to be like you. People respect you.”
A few weekends later, Marilyn prepared dinner. She began by unwrapping a
chicken Paula had brought from a market in the city, and burst into tears at the
sight of the carcass. It took the entire Strasberg family to calm her. Afterward,
Marilyn explained she had always purchased poultry already butchered into
pieces so that she could not recognize it as a bird that had been killed for human
consumption.
During weekend escapes to Fire Island, Susan brought along her sketchpads,
paints, brushes, and pastels and allowed Marilyn to experiment with the pastels
and watercolors. Marilyn sketched a little African-American girl in a raggedy
dress with one stocking falling down and titled it “Lonely.” In long, quick
strokes, she drew a full-figured female with catlike eyes and wrote beside it:
“Life is wonderful, so what the hell.” Susan considered the pieces Marilyn’s self-
portraits.
John Strasberg enjoyed confiding in Marilyn during the laidback jaunts to
Fire Island. She was one of the best listeners he knew. When Marilyn was able to
relax, she changed into a “soft, lovely” woman with a “sweet smile and good,
full laugh.” Strasberg most remembered her wide, frightened eyes.
Having enjoyed being an honorary member of the Strasberg family during
relaxing respites from her studies, Marilyn purchased tickets for Broadway’s
shows. She saw the musical Damn Yankees starring Gwen Verdon at the 46th
Street Theatre on June 7. Wearing a red lace gown and black gloves, Marilyn
attended the opening of Middle of the Night at the ANTA Playhouse and also
saw legends Helen Hayes and Mary Martin perform in Thornton Wilder’s Skin of
Our Teeth. On June 27, Marilyn went to the National Theater of Broadway to see
Inherit the Wind, starring Paul Muni, Ed Begley, and Tony Randall; a
fictionalized account of the Scopes Trial of 1925, which resulted in John T.
Scopes’ conviction for violating Tennessee state law by teaching Charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution to a high school science class. Playwrights Jerome
Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee used the context of the historic trial to criticize
threats to intellectual freedom created by Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist
panic.
Marilyn also met with Clifton Webb, her friend from Fox, and discussed the
recent splurge of theatergoing. “Very sweet, very serious,” he said of Marilyn in
the June 11, 1955 issue of Picturegoer. “She likes to talk about the theatre and
the kind of thing that makes people tick. She is intense and completely
straightforward. She reads all the time. She is in complete earnest towards her
career.”
Dave Garroway, the first host of NBC’s televised daily Today Show,
interviewed Marilyn in the debut of the network’s weekend radio broadcast,
Monitor, on June 12. Garroway (1913-1982) had an intimate and conversational
style of interviewing his guests, and Marilyn relaxed at the sound of his calm
and soothing voice. “Are most men scared of you?” Garroway asked. “I’m not
sure whether I should be frightened of you or not.”
“No,” Marilyn responded. “Nobody’s scared of me.”
“I bet a lot of guys are scared of you now because you’re such an institution
now — a national possession. Do you feel that you belong to the nation?”
“I don’t know quite what you mean by that,” Marilyn said modestly. Then
she giggled and added, “I live here.”
“I heard you were smart, but I didn’t know.”
“I’m not,” Marilyn replied emphatically with a laugh. “Don’t let them fool
you.”
Garroway went on to tell Marilyn she was considered the most beautiful
blonde, and perhaps a dumb blonde, because being blonde and dumb had been
paired by the culture, beginning with Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
“It’s interesting that people associate your happening to have blonde hair —
naturally or not naturally — or if you’re not out of shape in some way, with your
being absolutely dumb,” Marilyn said. “I don’t know why that is. It’s a very
limited view. It’s doesn’t matter what the person looks like or what color hair
they have or if they happen not to be out of shape. My time is to come as gravity
catches up with all of us.”

At the Waldorf Tower, Marilyn stirred a concoction of milk, Marsala wine,

and chocolate syrup for her guest, Maurice Zolotow, during the last of three
sittings for an interview that lasted a total of nine hours in July. She handed the
journalist the drink in a crystal glass. “I am a serious actress,” Marilyn said. “I
want to prove it. I know the body is good. But I have feelings and ideas — and I
want these to be a part of my work.”
Marilyn continued talking, telling of having fallen in love with Brooklyn and
hoping to someday retire there. Of course, her dream likely included growing old
with Arthur Miller and babysitting their many grandchildren, but Marilyn
refrained from disclosing such personal desires. Instead, she discussed
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Joyce’s Ulysses. Her living room resembled the
Strasbergs’, with stack of books on tables and on the floor. Zolotow took stock
of some of the titles: Michael Gorchakov’s How Stanislavsky Directs, Edith
Hamilton’s Greek Mythology, a volume on philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
essays, and another containing the letters of French novelist George Sand.
Marilyn and Zolotow discussed an original poem she had written about a
Manhattan taxicab driver who anticipated returning home to his wife at the end
of his shift. Of course, conversation turned to her battle with Fox and desire to
become a serious actress. “My fight with the studio is not about money,” she
said. “It is about human rights. I am tired of being known as the girl with the
shape. I am going to show that I am capable of deeper acting.”

Before videotape, memorable stage performances were recorded only by the

minds of those who saw them. Because of this, none of Marilyn’s performances
on stage at the Actors Studio were filmed or taped, but they remain vivid in the
minds of those who experienced them as more powerful than her screen
performances, and demonstrate her promise as a Broadway actress.
When given her first acting assignment of an animal improvisation, Marilyn
chose to portray a kitten. She borrowed one from a friend and studied it for two
weeks. Her interpretation is said to have depicted the feline stretching,
scratching, and purring. “One can readily imagine Monroe identifying with a
kitten’s feline grace,” wrote Carl Rollyson, “but more significantly, to be a kitten
involves shedding adult inhibitions to recover a primordial spontaneity free from
stereotyping, from the Hollywood manufacturing of Marilyn Monroe.”
In a sense impression exercise, Strasberg instructed his student to sit on the
stage and recall an emotional experience from her past, but to avoid directly
identifying it to the audience. Instead, she was to describe her feelings,
visualizations, and the sounds and smells around her. When it was Marilyn’s
turn, she sat on a stool and began to describe her surroundings and said, “He is
coming into the room.” Strasberg interrupted the scene, and redirected her to
focus only on the sounds, smells, and sensations. As Marilyn described her
clothes, the sounds she heard, and the words said to her, she began to sob. At the
end, she seemed emotionally devastated. “I had great compassion for the fact
that here she was up there almost naked emotionally in from of a lot of people
who knew her,” Kay Leyder recalled. Marilyn had taken another risk, succeeded,
and earned passionate congratulations.
Afterward, Leyder walked out of class with Marilyn and told her she had
done well in the exercise. Marilyn tried hard to please and befriend Leyder by
complimenting her handbag and taste in accessories. Entries in Marilyn’s diary
reveal she was harshly self-critical. When praised for her acting, she denied any
responsibility for success and instead attributed it to some accident. Another
student, Scott Edmunds, experienced this first hand when Marilyn congratulated
him on a scene. “Oh, I think your work is wonderful,” she said. “Oh, Marilyn, I
think your work is marvelous, too,” Scott replied. “Oh no, no!” Marilyn insisted.
“You don’t have to say that. I really mean it!”
Marilyn’s next exercise in class was to project emotion vocally, with no
physical gesture or movement. Strasberg instructed students to sing a song while
standing motionless on stage, their arms handing limp at their sides. Marilyn
selected “I’ll Get By,” written in 1928 and recorded the following year by Aileen
Stanley. Perhaps the song held some significance from her childhood when it
played on the radio or Victrola phonograph in Gladys’ house, or at the
Bolenders’.
Standing alone in the center of the stage, her head tilted toward the ceiling
and her arms held motionless, Marilyn sang the lyrics: “This old world was as
sad a place for me/As could be/ I was lonely and blue/Until I met you.” Susan
Strasberg described Marilyn’s performance by saying, “Tears poured down
Marilyn’s face, but she maintained her concentration and refrained from wiping
them away. She began to sob as she sang. When Marilyn finished, she smiled
through her tears. There was not a dry eye in the house and each member of the
audience wanted to run onto the stage and embrace her.” A few skeptics
remained, Susan observed, but Marilyn had won over most of her toughest
critics.
Indeed, Marilyn was fulfilling and possibly exceeding Lee’s expectations. He
turned to Paula and said with vindication, “I told you she was great!” Marilyn
was her own greatest critic, but this was a turning point for her and the other
students. “The students realized she was talented,” recalled actor Stefan
Gierasch, “and were in awe of her in a way.”
Marilyn was ready to advance from acting exercises to performance of an
extended scene in class. She selected the love scene from Clifford Odets’ Golden
Boy, and Strasberg assigned Philip Roth (1930-2002) as her scene partner. Roth
portrayed Joe Bonaparte, a young Italian violinist who abandons his love for
music for fame and fortune in prize fighting. Marilyn’s character, Lorna Moon,
is the girlfriend of Joe’s boxing manager, Tom Moody. She has survived a tough
life, and her tough exterior covers an internal vulnerability. Strasberg had
selected a perfect part, in that it posed an acting challenge and opportunity for
Marilyn’s debut.
Roth invited Marilyn to his apartment to rehearse a scene. When she knocked
on his door, their conversation went something like this:
“This is Marilyn.”
“Marilyn who?” Roth asked.
 “You know, Marilyn. The actress from class.”
Roth was not surprised when Marilyn surveyed his messy apartment and
announced that he needed some woman to look after the place. Indeed, he was
shocked when Hollywood’s biggest sex symbol got a broom and dustpan from
his closet, swept the floor, organized all his papers in neat stacks, and emptied
the ashtrays before reading lines from the powerful scene.
In the play, Moody uses Lorna to convince Joe to fight, but after she and Joe
take long walks together in Central Park, the two fall in love and she persuades
him to return to music. Moody has been abusive to Lorna, and Joe, naïve with
women, wants to save her. In the love scene, Odets’ speech for Lorna is
substantial:

He loved me in a world of enemies, of stags and bulls!…And I loved

him for that. He picked me up in Friskin’s hotel on 39th Street. I was
nine weeks behind in rent. I hadn’t hit the gutter yet, but I was near. He
washed my face and combed my hair. He stiffened the space between
my shoulder blades. Misery reached out to misery…You make me feel
too human, Joe. All I want is peace and quiet, not love…[Her voice
mounting higher] The twice I was in love I took an awful beating and I
don’t want it again! [Now half crying] I want you to stop it! Don’t
devil me, Joe. I beg you, don’t devil me…let me alone…[She cries
softly. Joe reaches out and takes her hand. He gives her a
handkerchief, which she uses].

The skeptical students’ resentment toward Marilyn dissolved as she played

opposite Roth on stage. “This was a Marilyn no one had ever seen on the
screen,” Susan Strasberg recalled, having seen on stage the energy of the girl
who shared her room on Fire Island. “Her movements were natural, graceful, not
the exaggerated sexy walk she was famous for. She was a real person. When she
spoke, there was nothing to dispel the humanity and simplicity of that
impression.”
Marilyn had succeeded in shedding the strained mannerisms and artificial
speech taught by Natasha Lytess. When the performance ended, Strasberg turned
fully around in his front row seat, faced the entire class, and asked, “Wasn’t that
scene excellent?” In amazement, Marilyn’s classmates unanimously agreed.
Strasberg believed Marilyn possessed a unique talent, and if she had not
broken into films, she would have fulfilled herself in ballet, opera, theater, or one
of the performing arts. “She can call up emotionally whatever is required in a
scene,” Strasberg observed in their private sessions. “Her range is infinite, and it
is almost wicked that she has not used more of her range or that the films she has
been in so far have not required more of her. She is highly nervous. She is more
nervous than any other actress I have ever known. But nervousness, for an
actress, is not a handicap. It is a sign of sensitivity. Marilyn has to learn how to
channel her nervousness, this wild flow of energy, into her work.”
“Marilyn was so bright about acting,” recalled another Studio actress, Peggy
Feury (1923-1985). “But anxiety and fear of failure made her physically ill.”
Robert Scheiderman remembered Marilyn as “brilliant” in scene studies and
“perfect” in sustaining the character. However, often after a performance, she
collapsed in tears and fired off harsh self-criticism. Marilyn may have suffered
from low self-esteem, but she was an excellent actress who continuously strove
for improvement.
Renee Taylor (born 1933), best known as the meddling Jewish mother in The
Nanny television series of the 1990s, witnessed Marilyn’s stage performances as
greater than those on screen. “Not once did I see in a movie — except perhaps
Bus Stop — the range and talent she demonstrated in class no matter how
nervous she was,” she told biographer Bart Mills.
Marilyn often chose dark, melancholy characters with backgrounds of
abandonment, abuse, or exploitation for her work at the Actors Studio. She
performed a scene from Damaged Goods, written in 1913 by Eugene Brieux,
about a French prostitute with syphilis who has an affair with a young man from
a good family but is engaged to the daughter of a government official. The
venereal disease eventually passes to the young man’s wife and child. Delos
Smith played the character of Dr. Walker.
Throughout the scene, Marilyn twirled the string of pearls around her neck
while Smith unconsciously mirrored her gesture by twirling a stethoscope.
Afterward, Paula quipped to the pair that they looked like two pinwheels on the
stage.
Strasberg routinely invited Marilyn to lunch at Sardi’s with members of his
inner circle. Over sandwiches, he lectured on theater history, often changing the
subject to Marilyn’s potential. In the presence of Greek director Andreas
Voutsinas and the young Jane Fonda, Strasberg encouraged Marilyn to play
Cordelia in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Embarrassed, Marilyn interrupted the
flattery and said to Jane Fonda, “Aw, you play Cordelia, okay?”
 Without her mentor, Marilyn met other Actors Studio members at coffee
shops, diners, and luncheonettes, where artists flocked and discussed their work
over cups of coffee. She frequented a Greek diner with actor Michael Gazzo
(1923-1995), who had appeared in On the Waterfront and would be nominated
for an Oscar for his performance in Godfather II (1974). Marilyn was absorbing
like a sponge and was acquiring a broader vocabulary and deeper understanding
of her craft.
During a radio interview with journalist Pete Martin, she expounded on
Method Acting with impressive insight. “She let go with a twelve-minute
dissertation that set me back on my heels,” he wrote. “She said she agreed with
Stanislavski on certain points. She disagreed on others and she explained why. It
came over on the radio a couple of nights later and people who heard it said,
‘Oh, yeah. Some press agent wrote that interview for her.’ The press agent said,
‘What press agent knows that much about Stanislavski?’ ”

During the summer, either before or after reconnecting with Miller, Marilyn
literally bumped into Marlon Brando at a party in New York. Brando recounted
the reunion in his autobiography. While the guests were drinking and dancing,
Marilyn sat alone in a corner playing the piano. With a cocktail in hand, Brando
stood nearby and conversed with a group of guests when another guest tapped
him on the shoulder. Brando spun around, his elbow hitting someone in the head
with force.
“I’m sorry!” he exclaimed, looking down at Marilyn seated on the piano
bench. “It was an accident.”
Marilyn smiled and said, “There are no accidents.”
Brando sat beside her and joined in playing the piano as they chatted for the
remainder of the evening. They soon engaged in an affair, and Marilyn visited
him at his apartment on Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street near Carnegie
Hall.
Marilyn’s nickname or code name for Brando was “Carlo.” Aside from Rock
Hudson, he was probably her only male equivalent of a sex symbol in the 1950s.
After a night of lovemaking with Brando, Marilyn confided to Amy Greene, “I
don’t know if I do it right.” Amy spotted the irony of America’s supposed sex
symbol coming to her, a Connecticut housewife and mother, for advice on sexual
matters. Allegedly, in sexual situations, Marilyn was passive and receptive rather
than aggressive and innovative. She had far less experience than Brando.
In the late 1940s, Brando attended Saturday morning classes led by Elia
Kazan and Stella Adler at the Actors Studio. Brando and Monroe disagreed on
the topic of Lee Strasberg. “He never taught me anything,” Brando wrote of
Marilyn’s mentor. “He would have claimed credit for the sun and the moon if he
believed he could get away with it. He was an ambitious, selfish man who
exploited the people who attended the Actors Studio, and he tried to project
himself as an acting oracle and guru.”

At four o’clock in the morning on August 5, photographer Eve Arnold’s

phone rang. She rolled over in bed, lifted the receiver from the cradle, and
placed it to her ear. On the other end, Marilyn’s cheery whispery voice invited
her to Bement, Illinois, to take exclusive photographs of her quest to “bring art
to the masses.” Carlton Smith, head of the National Arts Foundation, had
appointed Marilyn the Guest of Honor and called upon her to promote an art
exhibition during the city’s centennial celebration. Other guests included poet
and author, Carl Sandburg; six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party,
Norman Thomas; and Republican Senator of Vermont, Ralph Flanders. Arnold
agreed to meet Marilyn at the airport in a few hours.
Accompanied by her hairdresser, Peter Leonardi, Marilyn arrived in a white
cotton dress with a horizontal eyelet design, and carried a large volume of
Sandburg’s biography on Lincoln. Seated next to Arnold during the flight, she
prepared a speech and rehearsed the tribute to “our late, beloved president.”
During a layover in Chicago, Arnold photographed Marilyn signing autographs
for sailors in uniform, chatting with the law enforcement deputies who guarded
her, and even combing her hair in front of a mirror in a public restroom.
The plane finally landed at the University of Illinois Airport, and Marilyn
rode in a motorcade of cars with the governor’s motorcycle escort to Bement. A
crowd of twenty thousand lined the streets four deep. Arnold observed total
chaos. The day’s grueling schedule included television, radio and newspaper
interviews, historical reenactments, town meetings, and a pageant on the town’s
history.
Arnold snapped pictures as Marilyn toured the restored Bryant home where
Stephen Douglas and Lincoln staged a series of seven senatorial debates in 1858.
By this point, Marilyn’s feet swelled in her high heels. She was escorted to an
upstairs bedroom, where she rested on a bed with her feet elevated. Arnold’s
photographs captured the glamorous Monroe, smiling as she charmed the towns-
folk, and the private Monroe, exhausted and soaking her feet in a basin of hot
water. Refreshed, Marilyn next visited the town’s nursing home and met its
oldest resident, Clara, aged one hundred years, before viewing the art on loan
from Chicago and displayed at the high school’s museum.
“And now, where are the men with the beards?” Marilyn asked at the end of
the art tour. She recognized that the highlight of the visit would be the judging of
the popular Abraham Lincoln beard contest, for which the contestants had
eagerly prepared by not shaving for six months. In a community of one thousand
five hundred, about two thousand five hundred watched Marilyn select William
“Cotton” Porter as the winner, tug on his beard, and kiss his cheek. Photographs
of the peck flashed around the country and made the seventy-three-year-old a
sudden celebrity. He later appeared on the television show I’ve Got A Secret as
the man kissed by Monroe.
Later that night, Marilyn learned that the flight to New York was delayed due
to inclement weather. She turned to Eve Arnold and said it didn’t look like they
would make it back to New York and would have to spend the night. Carlton
Smith of the National Arts Foundation clearly wanted another day of publicity.
Marilyn shivered in her sleeveless summer dress and pouted. Arnold draped her
sweater over Marilyn’s shoulders and asked Smith to arrange for the governor’s
driver and car to take them eighty miles to Chicago in time to catch a late flight
to New York. Arnold also requested the governor’s motorcycle escort to ensure
speeding the entire distance. Smith fulfilled the request, and the women caught a
flight originating from California. Most of the passengers were asleep as a weary
Marilyn, Arnold, and hairdresser Peter Leonardi boarded. When the plane
touched ground in New York at two o’clock in the morning, Marilyn thanked
Arnold for taking charge and avoiding a night away from home.
Known as the Great Emancipator, Lincoln actually held less egalitarian views
on race equality than is claimed. Indeed, his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
freed black slaves in America, but in the debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln
expressed his contemporary view that whites were superior to blacks. In the
1800s, Marilyn learned during her visit to Bement, opposition to slavery did not
equate a view of racial equality, and she returned home to read about racism
enduring a century later in the South. On August 24, a fourteen-year-old African
American boy named Emmett Till made a flirtatious remark to a white woman in
Money, Mississippi, and was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. His assailants
dumped the body in the Tallahatchie River. Till’s mother arranged a public
viewing of his mutilated remains to expose the South’s insidious bigotry and
hatred. Despite an eyewitness account that identified the two accused murderers
in court, the all-white jury acquitted them.
 Rehearsals for A View to a Bridge commenced in August at the Amsterdam
Theatre in Manhattan with Jack Warden, Van Heflin, and Eileen Heckart in the
starring roles. Miller often had lunch or dined with the play’s producer, Robert
Whitehead, once called the wonder boy entrepreneur of Broadway, at Child’s
Restaurant on Forty-Sixth Street across from the fifty-two-foot cutout of Marilyn
from The Seven Year Itch. Marilyn, in a babushka and dark glasses, a far cry
from her mammoth image, sometimes joined them for a meal. She told the men
of her anxiety about performing scenes at the Actors Studio and her even more
significant apprehension about having to critique the other actors. During these
visits, discussion turned to techniques of coping with anxiety, and Miller advised
Whitehead to ride a bicycle to reduce stress. Unknown to the producer, Marilyn
and Miller were secretly meeting and riding bicycles together in Central Park.
Marilyn spent Labor Day in Port Jefferson, Long Island, with Norman and
Hedda Rosten at the Chandler Estate in Mount Sinai, boating and playing
badminton in her striped Capris and a sleeveless black shirt. On the boat and in
the water, Marilyn splashed around in her black and white checkerboard-
patterned bikini. For the first time, Norman experienced firsthand the inherent
danger in her celebrity when fans surrounded them in the water, and the pair
drifted out, gulping salty sea. Local resident Fred Lorch rescued them with his
motorboat. Safely back on the beach, Marilyn posed for pictures with a family in
her straw hat, striped blouse, and shorts.
Eve Arnold came along to Port Jefferson and drove around, scouting for
natural landscapes to use as a backdrop for photographs of Marilyn. At first they
settled on a children’s playground, where Arnold snapped pictures as Marilyn sat
on a carousel reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, a book she had been reading and
rereading during the entire vacation. Feeling adventurous, the two women drove
around the vicinity in search of more dramatic surroundings. From the road, the
marshes looked particularly interesting. Marilyn changed into an imitation
leopard skin bathing suit and posed, lying in the bulrushes. The area was
swampier than it had looked from the car, and Marilyn was quickly covered in
mud. She remained a good sport and quit only when the sun began to set and
Arnold had no more available light.
What Arnold didn’t realize was that Marilyn’s obsessive reading was done in
preparation for an exceptionally difficult scene at the Actors Studio based on the
final chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses; the Molly Bloom soliloquy. Marilyn defied her
fear and concentration challenges by taking on the long, unpunctuated sensual
stream of consciousness of the character, who awakens at night in an aroused
state. Containing over four thousand words, the piece is known as one of the
longest sentences in English literature. Marilyn’s diligent study process was
recorded in Arnold’s playground photographs, where the cover of the book is
visible and Marilyn is clearly reading the last few pages.
Onstage at the Actors Studio wearing a black velvet dress and lounging on a
cot covered with a crumpled sheet, Marilyn exhibited the results of intense study
as she enacted Joyce’s rich language and sexual imagery:

After that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of
the mountain yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was
one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes
that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a
woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all
the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes…and
how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well
him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and
then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I
put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel
my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I
said yes I will Yes.

The heterosexual men and gay women spectators were most certainly aroused
by the electric combination of Joyce’s writing and Marilyn’s performance, and
many of the heterosexual women were envious. “[Marilyn] surpassed everyone
else who’d done it,” Susan Strasberg later wrote. “I doubted if any lover had
ever seen her like this. I wondered whether they’d be able to tolerate her this
way; Marilyn in bloom. This was no waif, she was strong, very strong.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
 Autumn 1955

As the trees in Central Park turned from green to hues of yellow, orange, and
red, Marilyn sold her Cadillac convertible, and for three thousand dollars,
Marilyn Monroe Productions purchased one of the sixteen thousand
Thunderbirds sold in its first year. She was living on about forty dollars per week
after all of her expenses were paid.
Miller progressed from bicycle rides with Marilyn in the park to private
encounters in her suite at the Waldorf Tower. His marital status and Marilyn’s
celebrity prevented them from moving freely about the city and interacting with
each other’s friends, but they still spent a considerable amount of time in the
solitude of Marilyn’s suite. “You’re the saddest girl I’ve ever met,” Miller told
her after a period of silence after a deep and intimate conversation. At first
Marilyn thought he was disappointed in her, as she thought men usually wanted
only happy girls. Realizing the compliment, she responded, “You’re the only one
who ever said that to me.”
On September 29, Miller accompanied his wife, two children, and parents to
the premiere of his one-act play, A View from the Bridge, at Coronet Theatre,
now the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, on West Forty-Ninth Street. Marilyn was
seated at a distance from the Miller family, but Arthur’s mother, Augusta, boldly
introduced herself. “I admire Mr. Miller’s plays,” Marilyn formally informed her
lover’s mother. “I’m a first-nighter at all of them.”
Miller received mixed reviews, and A View from the Bridge ran for only four
months. Eric Bentley, theater critic for New Republic, was quick to compare the
play with On the Waterfront and noted Miller’s depiction of informing on others
as evil while Kazan’s film depicted it as righteous. The protagonist, Eddie
Carbone, is an Italian immigrant working as a longshoreman in New York and
living with his wife and Catherine, his seventeen-year-old orphaned niece. Eddie
is incestuously attracted to Catherine. His Sicilian cousin, Rodolpho, who has
entered the country illegally, wins the love of Catherine. Consumed by jealousy,
Eddie informs on Rodolpho to the immigration authorities and is killed for his
betrayal. Miller seemed to be writing about Kazan, and the love triangle may
have referred to the Miller-Monroe-Kazan triangle from 1951. Miller was
personally experiencing overwhelming feelings of being swept away in his own
love affair, and this theme was reflected in the play. Again, Marilyn served as
Miller’s muse, and for the remainder of his career, she inspired the characters
and plots for his plays.
On September 30, Marilyn lost another mentor when Michael Chekhov died
in Los Angeles. That same day, the vulnerable and inarticulate antihero for
misunderstood youth, James Dean, died when his Porsche 550 Spyder sports car
crashed into a Ford that had crossed the centerline of Route 466 near Paso
Robles, California. Fox released Dean’s film Rebel Without a Cause (1955) in
late October, followed by Giant (1956), and he received two posthumous Oscar
nominations. Like Valentino in the 1920s, Dean’s youthful death immortalized
him as a cult hero figure; it also made him a symbol of the 1950s, as Marilyn
became a few years later.
During the fall, Marilyn searched for a suitable property for her corporation’s
first production, and a transforming role to change the direction of her career and
her screen image; she hoped that a former lover might offer her both. Elia Kazan
was slated to direct Tennessee Williams’ screenplay, Baby Doll, for Warner
Brothers. His first choice for the female lead was Carroll Baker, while Williams
preferred Marilyn. The plot revolved around a nineteen-year-old child bride,
Baby Doll, who sleeps in a crib and sucks her thumb. Her middle-aged husband
and cotton gin owner, Archie Lee, had promised her father that the marriage
would remain unconsummated until her twentieth birthday.
All hell breaks loose when Archie Lee’s business rival, Silva, seduces Baby
Doll. Curiously, the love triangle mirrored Miller and Kazan’s interest in Marilyn
four years earlier. A decade older than the character, Marilyn wanted to play the
provocative role, and she was willing to submit to a screen test in the hope of
swaying Kazan before filming began on location in Mississippi. Williams also
wanted Marlon Brando as Silva, but unfortunately, Kazan cast neither of the
playwright’s preferences. An entry in Marilyn’s journal indicates that Kazan
thought — despite her acting talent — her screen image would prevent the
audience from believing she was playing a nineteen-year-old virgin.
After losing Baby Doll, Marilyn wasted no time in searching for another
property and a transforming role. She remembered that Charles Feldman had
attempted to purchase Terrance Rattigan’s British stage play, The Sleeping
Prince, for Fox with the intent of coproducing. Independently, Rattigan had
approached Darryl Zanuck with an offer to sell him the rights as a vehicle for
Marilyn. A phone call from Jean Negulesco alerted her that Rattigan was in the
United States negotiating a sale with director John Huston, who wished to cast
British thespian Sir Lawrence Olivier. Marilyn took action and sent Rattigan a
telegram during his layover at Idlewild Airport on his journey to California. She
asked him to meet her at a bar in Manhattan, where she waited, armed with her
attorneys.

As Marilyn searched for a screen role of substance to utilize the skills she had
learned at the Actors Studio, Susan Strasberg landed one of the great stage roles
of the 1950s in The Diary of Anne Frank. One of the most renowned Jewish
victims of the Holocaust, Anne Frank (1929-1945) gained posthumous
international fame after her diary was found among debris and published in
nearly seventy languages. It documented her experiences in hiding during the
Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Brilliantly written, Anne’s
diary has become one of the world’s most widely read and revered books, second
to The Holy Bible.
The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the
Nazis gained control over Germany. By 1940, they were trapped in Amsterdam
by the Nazi occupation. As persecution of Jews increased, the family joined a
small group and went into hiding in a secret apartment in the office building
owned by Anne’s father. After two years, they were betrayed and transported to
internment camps. Anne and her sister died of typhus in 1945 at Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp. Marilyn repeatedly read the script with Susan, helping her
friend memorize her lines.
“I would love a meaningful part like this,” Marilyn said, raising her eyes
from the page. “Susie, you are so fortunate to play a part that will make a
difference in people’s lives. I’ll never get a part like this. My looks work against
me.” Susan encouraged her to act differently, but Marilyn told her people reacted
with hostility when she tried to change.
On October 5, Marilyn attended the premiere of The Diary of Anne Frank
starring Susan at the Cort Theater on Broadway. Afterward, she joined Susan,
Lee, and Paula for a celebratory dinner at Sardi’s. Two days later, Allen
Ginsberg (1926-1997) recited, “Howl” at San Francisco’s Six Gallery. The
bespectacled Beat poet stood on a platform before the crowd of less than one
hundred and performed the deluge of vivid imagery, written in the long-line style
of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” in a jazz rhythm. At the end of some of
the long lines, Beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac shouted, “Go!” as he drank
from a jug of wine. Earlier in the year, Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies sat
together on benches in Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, where
Marilyn often met with Phillip Roth and other friends from the Actors Studio.
Accompanied by the Rostens, Marilyn attended a more highbrow recital by
Russian pianist Emil Gilels (1916-1985), in his New York debut concert series at
Carnegie Hall on October 11. Two days later, she appeared at the opening night
of George Axelrod’s comedy, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? starring Jayne
Mansfield in the character of Rita Marlowe. An exaggerated parody of Marilyn
Monroe, Rita wants to become a serious actress and start her own production
company. Rock Hunter, a name clearly derived from actor Rock Hudson, is the
reporter who interviews her. In the opening scene, Rita is naked under a sheet on
a massage table talking on the telephone as a beefy masseur kneads her
voluptuous body.
Coincidently, Marilyn later met Ralph Roberts, an actor who made a living as
a masseur and became her close friend and confidante. Promoted as “MM King-
Size,” buxom Jane Mansfield (1933-1967) was later signed by Fox to replace the
original. More exhibitionistic than Marilyn, Mansfield was similarly adept at
portraying whispery-voiced dumb blondes, had a similarly high intellect, and
shared Marilyn’s desire to be a mother. There is no record that Marilyn found
humor in playwright George Axelrod’s satire, but she and Axelrod remained on
friendly terms and worked together again in Bus Stop.

After Arthur Miller turned forty on October 17, he went through his midlife
crisis. Shortly thereafter, Mary learned of his philandering with the famous
actress and asked him to leave their home on Willow Street. He retreated to the
Chelsea Hotel on West Twenty-Third Street. Designed in Victorian Gothic style
in 1883-84 by the architect Philip Hubert, the 250-unit Chelsea attracted literary
and musical talents as a socialist utopian center with communal dining rooms
and artist studios. It was a fitting address for Miller. For decades, the building
was home to writers and playwrights, including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Gore
Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Quentin Crisp, Allen Ginsberg, and
Charles Bukowski. There, Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, and Arthur C.
Clarke authored 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As the Millers separated, another marriage officially ended. On October 31,
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elmer D. Doyle granted the final divorce
decree of Joseph Paul DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, named legally as Norma
Jeane DiMaggio on the official document. “I couldn’t be the Italian housewife he
wanted me to be,” Marilyn told Amy Greene. “I never loved any guy more.”
On November 17, Marilyn attended the Thanksgiving March of Muscular
Dystrophy Drive organized by the Firemen International Association, and
generated sizeable donations. She posed for photographs with wheelchair-bound
Donald Thompson, a child afflicted with the disease, and planted a big kiss on
his cheek. Anonymously, Marilyn made direct charitable donations with her
weekly allowance from Milton Greene, and hairdresser Peter Leonardi often
drove her to the Bowery, where she handed out cash to the derelicts on the street.
With Thanksgiving approaching, Lee and Paula Strasberg had many reasons
to show gratitude. Marilyn Monroe had directed the global spotlight at the
Actors Studio, and the organization had finally raised adequate funds to purchase
and relocate to a former Presbyterian Church. The Strasbergs were also able to
move their family into The Langham at 135 Park Avenue West, an architectural
marvel occupying the block between West Seventy-Third and West Seventy-
Fourth Streets, facing Central Park.
Lee and Paula now had a prominent address in which to lead their
extravagant lifestyle. As the year ended, Paula decorated the apartment in
preparation for her annual legendary New Year’s Eve party. The guest list
included Henry Fonda, Judy Garland, and Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse.
The Strasbergs were also grateful for Marilyn’s ability to soothe their son,
John’s, growing anger. Having been raised by his family provided a better
education than most people received over the course of their entire lives,
Marilyn told John, and it resulted in him being more intelligent than men she
knew who controlled certain corporations.
By the end of the year, the luxurious suite at the Waldorf-Astoria financially
drained Marilyn Monroe Productions, so its president moved to apartment 8E at
2 Sutton Place South, a white-glove co-op designed by Emery Roth, on the
corner of East Fifty-Seventh Street. Following World War I, Sutton Place, along
the East River, was a prominent address. Mrs. William Kissam Vanderbilt II of
the prominent Vanderbilt family sold her mansion on Fifth Avenue and moved to
1 Sutton Place, and American banker J.P. Morgan’s daughter, Anne, bought the
double house next door at Number 3.
Marilyn’s elegant and sunny four and one-half room apartment boasted a rare
private terrace with sweeping views of the East River and the Queensboro
Bridge. The large living room featured a fireplace with a neo-classical marble
mantelpiece, hardwood flooring, and high, beamed ceilings. The living room and
master bedroom had million-dollar views of the Manhattan skyline. From the
kitchen window, Marilyn could see both the Chrysler and Empire State
Buildings.
Marilyn made James Haspiel and The Monroe Six aware of her new address,
and they regularly held vigil outside, taking turns buying coffee to keep warm.
One cold evening, Haspiel spotted Marilyn leave the building in a mink coat at
nine o’clock and walk across Sutton Place to the park on the bank of the East
River. The small group of young people tailed their “Mazzie” from a distance
and watched her sit on a bench. A fatherly-looking uniformed police officer on
beat approached the lone young woman and inquired if she were all right.
Marilyn asked him to sit with her for protection and talk with her for a while.
The two chatted about the meaning of life, while watching boats sail on the East
River and lights twinkle on Roosevelt Island.
Indeed, Marilyn needed protection from strangers on the street, as well as
from those she trusted. In November, her driver-hairdresser-assistant, Peter
Leonardi, accused her and Greene of reneging on an agreement to finance his
salon. The employee sued, and allegedly confiscated Marilyn’s furs, holding
them hostage as he negotiated a settlement with Irving Stein. An entry in
Marilyn’s journal from this time period contains her suspicions that Peter wanted
to be a woman and was jealous of her. She felt frightened by him and thought he
might harm or poison her. The entry also includes her belief that Peter was gay,
and his difference from “Jack,” another gay friend from whom she felt love,
respect, and admiration. When excerpts of the journal were published in 2010,
the media attributed the names to Peter Lawford and John “Jack” Kennedy.
However, the men mentioned are likely Peter Leonardi and another of her openly
gay friends, choreographer Jack Cole or cinematographer Jack Cardiff.
As a giant Christmas tree was erected in front of the gilded bronze sculpture
of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, Marlon Brando and Marilyn volunteered as
celebrity ushers for the premiere of The Rose Tattoo to benefit the Actors Studio.
For publicity, they clowned together for Milton’s camera, flirtatiously snuggling
behind an enlarged copy of an admission ticket and striking playful poses. Their
romantic energy and humor exploded as Brando literally swept Marilyn off her
feet with his physical strength.
On December 12, Brando escorted Marilyn to the Astor Theatre for the
benefit. He wore a black tuxedo, and she wore a black silk crepe black gown
with v-neckline and spaghetti straps, and a black wrap lined in white fur. She
posed briefly for the paparazzi outside the theater, shivering in the chilly night
air. At the after party held at the Astor Hotel, the Rostens, Lee, Paula, and Susan
Strasberg joined them. Marilyn and Brando participated in a radio interview and
spent the evening entwined and dancing.
Out of the spotlight and interested in cultural pursuits, Marilyn called
Norman Rosten and took him up on an invitation he had extended months earlier
to take her to the Rodin exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was free
for the afternoon, she announced, if he were available. Marilyn wore a disguise
consisting of a ludicrous hat and a loose coat to camouflage her curves, and the
two admired the white marble sculptures in the nearly empty Rodin wing. She
was especially drawn to “Pygmalion and Galatea,” which depicted the moment a
sculptor notices the stirring of life in his female creation. Marilyn also stood
transfixed, with her finger gently touching her lips, and studied “The Hand of
God,” a white marble hand curved upward, holding entwined male and female
figures in its palm.
Soon after, Patricia Rosten awakened to the sound of her parents’ laughter in
the kitchen of their house on Remsen Street. The couple had read a blurb in
Walter Winchell’s column: “Marilyn Monroe is cooing it in poetry with Norman
Rosten.” Within minutes, Marilyn called in a panic to apologize, and fretted that
this type of occupational hazard often resulted in the loss of married friends.
Norman reassured her; no harm was done. She expressed concern about Hedda’s
reaction and asked to speak to her directly. She was relieved by Hedda’s
amusement at the notion that the reporter believed her husband was fooling
around with a movie star.
Marilyn also attended the exhibit on Goya’s etchings with Sam Shaw, but
failed to elicit any rumors. She studied “The Sleep of Reason Produces
Monsters,” a plate in the artist’s series titled Los Caprichos. The self-portrait
depicts Goya asleep at his drawing table and surrounded by winged demons and
monsters. The nightmare was intended as a satire on the condition of Spanish
society, but Marilyn took the images of the creatures of the night literally. She
took one look at the hideous figures and said, “I know this man very well; we
have the same dreams. I have had these dreams since I was a kid.”
On Christmas Eve, Marilyn invited about twenty-five guests to her pied-a-
terre for beef stew and holiday music provided by guitarist Clarence Copeland.
Milton had placed his domestic couple, Clyde and Kitty Owens, on the payroll
of MMP, and Marilyn asked them to assist her with entertaining. When the
couple arrived, they immediately changed into their uniforms and headed
straight to the kitchen. Marilyn looked shocked and asked what they were doing.
Kitty explained that she and her husband were setting up to serve her guests.
Marilyn directed them into the living room to get a drink and join the others.
As Marilyn milled about the living room giving hugs, kisses, and gifts, Kitty
heard her greet her guests with coded nicknames. Paula was Black Bart, because
she perpetually wore black. Lee was the Great White Father, a Native-American
title for a man in a position of authority. Norman Rosten was Claude, because
Marilyn thought he resembled the actor Claude Raines. Eli Wallach was called
Tea House since he was in The Tea House of the August Moon. Sam Shaw was
Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart’s character in The Maltese Falcon. Arthur was
Arturo and Marlon Brando was Carlo. Marilyn usually referred to herself as
Zelda Zonk. She was Mrs. Leslie only to Miller, Miss Caswell to Sidney
Skolsky, and Mazzie to the Monroe Six.

As the year drew to close, the legal team at MCA and Irving Stein convinced
Twentieth Century-Fox’s legal representatives that it would fiscally benefit both
Marilyn Monroe Productions and the studio to settle their yearlong dispute.
Attorney Frank Delaney had tendered his resignation because Marilyn had lost
faith in him. The success of The Seven Year Itch motivated Fox to concede to
Marilyn’s demands. The movie had successfully lured millions of Americans
away from their living room sofas and television sets, and broke all records for a
summer hit. Marilyn had delivered on the studio’s current advertising slogan,
“Movies are Better than Ever,” and as its most valuable property, her
appearances in future films guaranteed a fortune in profits. During her exile in
Manhattan, the studio received a staggering six thousand fan letters addressed to
her each week.
When Fox’s board of directors met in New York on December 29, the third
point on the agenda was a new agreement with MMP. Studio President and
major stockowner Spyros Skouras led the meeting and urged the board to come
to a settlement with the woman who called him “Papa Skouras,” so that she
might begin filming the adaptation of William Inge’s Bus Stop. Rejecting good
business sense, Zanuck took Marilyn’s rebellion personally and feared her
victory would be perceived as his public humiliation.
In the end, the board waved a white flag and sacrificed Zanuck’s ego for the
bottom line. Fox consented to MCA’s demand for a salary increase to $100,000
per picture. Marilyn would also receive an annual salary of $100,000 paid to
MMP as a tax shelter, an additional weekly salary of five hundred dollars during
the production of a film, and a percentage of the profit of her films. The new
contract also permitted her performance in only four high-budgeted “A-films”
over the course of seven years, unlike her last contract that required fourteen
films in the same length of time. She could appear in one-half dozen television
or radio shows and record songs. There would even be a $100,000 bonus for Itch
and an annual salary of $75,000 for Milton Greene.
 Most importantly to Marilyn, the contract gave her the power to select the
directors of her films and to refuse any script. She also had the freedom to make
films with independent producers and with other studios. Oddly, she could only
select the cinematographer of two of the films, the first and the fourth; a petty
provision demanded by Zanuck. Her approved short list of directors appeared in
the contract: George Cukor, Vittorio De Sica, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, John
Huston, Elia Kazan, David Lean, Joshua Logan, Joseph L. Mankiewicz,
Vincente Minnelli, Carol Reed, George Stevens, Lee Strasberg, Billy Wilder,
William Wyler, and Fred Zinnemann.
The fight with Fox was never about money, Marilyn had said; it was about
gaining a measure of creative control, respect, and dignity. One cannot
underestimate the magnitude of a woman during this era who courageously
stood up to the masculine powers of Hollywood and achieved a precedent-
setting victory. Her advantage improved even more when Zanuck resigned and
relocated to Europe soon after, where he worked as an independent producer.
Fox appointed Buddy Adler as chief of production.
On December 31, the contract was signed but there was more to celebrate on
New Year’s Eve at the Greene farm in Connecticut. Before the strike of
midnight, Terrance Rattigan called Marilyn to announce John Huston’s
withdrawal from the purchase of his play, The Sleeping Prince, and its
availability. Moreover, Sir Lawrence Olivier wanted her as co-star. “I regard her
as an actress and a comedienne of the first order,” the esteemed, knighted actor
told the press. “Who would resist an approach from Miss Monroe?”
Milton popped the champagne cork and overflowed the glasses. The year had
ended on a high, and the next held tremendous promise. Marilyn was
empowered, in love with Arthur Miller, preparing for a meaty role at Fox, and
embarking upon an independent production. “I’m beginning to understand
myself now,” she told Pete Martin. “I can face myself more, you might say. I’ve
spent most of my life running away from myself, but after all, I’m a mixture of
simplicity and complexity.”
On January 4, 1956, the New York Times announced: “MARILYN MONROE WINS
PACT FIGHT.” Over the course of the next eight years, she stood to earn an
estimated eight million dollars. More important to Marilyn, she could now
navigate the course of her career. “There is persuasive proof that Marilyn
Monroe is a shrewd business-woman,” Time wrote on January 30. “The bitter
battle was over. Marilyn Monroe, a five-foot five and a half inch blonde
weighing 118 alluringly distributed pounds, had brought to its knees mighty
Twentieth Century-Fox.”
On February 7, Terrance Rattigan, Lawrence Olivier, Cecil Tennant (Olivier’s
agent), Greene, and attorney Jay Kanter waited for an hour in the living room of
Marilyn’s Sutton Place apartment to hammer out the financial details. Once
Marilyn appeared, Olivier noted, “She had us all on the floor at her feet in a
second. She was so adorable, so witty, such incredible fun.” Getting down to
business, Marilyn agreed to pay Rattigan $125,000 for the film rights and an
additional fifty thousand dollars for his screen adaptation.
“Just a minute,” she shrewdly exclaimed amid the casual joviality. “Shouldn’t
someone say something about an agreement?”
With the group’s unanimous agreement, The Sleeping Prince would
commence production at Pinewood Studios, outside London, in July, after
Marilyn completed Bus Stop. Two days later, Marilyn and Olivier announced the
project at a press conference at the Plaza Hotel, and afterward, Milton
photographed Marilyn seated cozily and triumphantly between Olivier and
Rattigan, both men kissing her on a cheek. The film adaptation of Rattigan’s
play was the perfect vehicle for — what Time called — “one of the least likely
duos in cinematic history.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
 January-March 1956

Marilyn wrote more than letters on The Towers of the Waldorf-Astoria

stationery stacked neatly on the desk in her suite. She recorded her hopes, her
fears, and symbolic dreams involving significant people in her life during this
period. In childlike printing, Marilyn described a dream in which Lee Strasberg
appeared as the “best finest surgeon.” She also mentioned Dr. Hohenberg (“Dr.
H”) having “diagnosed the case and agreed with what has to be done — an
operation — to bring myself back to life and to cure me of this terrible disease
whatever the hell it is.” In Marilyn’s words, the psychoanalyst adequately
prepared and anesthetized her for Strasberg’s scalpel. In the hospital waiting
room, Miller prayed for a successful operation as Norman Rosten comforted
him. Hedda Rosten called during the procedure, and Milton Greene called from
his office while conducting business, worried but still able to enjoy himself. His
work was no longer centered on fashion photography; now he photographed
classic paintings by artistic masters.
The symbolism in the dream is evident. Through the surgery, Strasberg and
Hohenberg discover Marilyn is a fraud — talentless. They find her empty aside
from sawdust, like the stuffing of a doll. She disappoints everyone, but most
deeply, she disappoints Strasberg, who is shocked by his inaccurate assessment
of her talent and worth as a fully functioning person.
In the margin of the stationery, Marilyn scribbled a reminder to discuss with
Hohenberg a dream involving a “repulsive” man with a sexually transmitted
disease who leans uncomfortably too close to her in an elevator. She described
feelings of panic and anger and suspected her angry feelings stemmed from an
unhealthy attachment. Marilyn was working through feelings of inadequacy and
identity confusion in her dreams, as well as in conscious exploration with her
therapist.
Marilyn’s nightmare may have been caused by months of preparation for her
first lengthy performance at the Actors Studio. Lee suggested Marilyn work with
Maureen Stapleton on a scene from Fallen Angels by Noel Coward, but it did
not resonate with her. Instead, Marilyn chose the famed entrance scene from
Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, referred to as the “whiskey scene” by theater
folk.
In the 1930 film adaption of Anna Christie, Greta Garbo’s debut in a talking
picture, man-hating streetwalker Anna searches for redemption by reuniting with
her estranged father, a barge captain. She stumbles into a New York waterfront
saloon lugging a heavy, battered suitcase and shuffles over to a table. She drops
her suitcase to the floor, and sits in a chair across from her father’s drinking
companion, Marthy. The bar waiter approaches, and Garbo, as Anna, delivers the
famous opening line in a husky, heavily accented voice: “Gimme a whiskey,
ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby!” Promotional posters
announced, “Garbo speaks!”
In her choice of scene, Marilyn took a tremendous risk. If she had played it
safe by choosing a role that was obscure, her performance could have been
evaluated only on its own value, Maureen Stapleton told Donald Spoto.
However, by selecting the role of Anna Christie, which had been played by at
least a dozen accomplished actresses, including the revered Garbo, Marilyn
faced a professional audience who came with preconceived notions of how the
part should be performed.
As Marilyn struggled with memorizing Anna’s lengthy lines, Stapleton
suggested leaving the script on the table, a common practice at the studio. “I
can’t rely on that,” Marilyn protested. “If I do, I’ll be dependent upon that for the
rest of my career.” She didn’t have to dig too deeply to find parallels between
herself and Anna. Like Marilyn, Anna believed others were ridiculing her. She
felt exploited by her foster family and alluded to being sexually abused by a
relative on a farm. Stapleton had already discovered Marilyn as an “intuitive,
bright and attentive” woman, but after weeks of rehearsal, she recognized her
potential to become an accomplished stage actress.
The scene took place on February 17, 1956. Marilyn and Stapleton arrived
early. Marilyn went directly to the balcony, where a man operated the lights and
impressed her scene partner with knowledge of stage lighting design; Stapleton
had no idea Marilyn was versed in the technical aspects of theater.
When the Actors Studio doors opened, the main hall was standing room only.
Nearly all two hundred members attended, including founder Cheryl Crawford,
who had sent her to Strasberg a year before. “I couldn’t see anything before I
went on stage,” Marilyn recounted to a Redbook reporter. “I couldn’t remember
one line. All I wanted was to lie down and die. I was in these impossible
circumstances and I suddenly thought to myself, ‘Good God, what am I doing
here?’ Then I just had to go out and do it.”
Her performance of Anna Christie demonstrated her promise as a Broadway
actress, and became legendary. When Marilyn stepped onto the stage, Susan
Strasberg thought she was sick at first. She seemed worn, and her hands were
trembling when she lifted the glass. Susan suddenly realized Marilyn was acting.
The performance was particularly poignant when she emoted — without
overdramatizing — about the father who had abused and betrayed her.
According to Susan, the audience felt the depth of Marilyn’s feelings as Anna’s
soliloquy revealed her backstory of paternal abandonment, sexual and physical
abuse, and promiscuity:

It’s my Old Man I got to meet. Honest! It’s funny, too. I ain’t seen him
since I was a kid — don’t even know what he looks like — just had a
letter every now and then…Seeing he ain’t never done a thing for me
in my life, he might be willing to stake me to a room and eats till I get
rested up…But I ain’t expecting much from him. Give you a kick when
you’re down, that’s what all men do. Men, I hate ’em — all of ’em!
And I don’t expect he’ll turn out no better than the rest. The old man of
the family, his wife, and four sons — I had to slave for all of ‘em. I was
only a poor relation, and they treated me worse than they dare treat a
hired girl. It was one of the sons — the youngest — started me — when
I was sixteen. After that, I hated ‘em so I’d killed ‘em all if I’d stayed.
So I run away…It was all men’s fault — the whole business. It was men
on the farm ordering and beating me — and giving me the wrong start.
Then when I was a nurse, it was men again hanging around, bothering
me, trying to see what they could get. And now it’s men all the time.
Gawd, I hate ’em all, every mother’s son of ’em!

When Marilyn completed the scene, the room was silent. Suddenly, the
audience burst into applause, a rare phenomenon at the Actors Studio. She had
stolen the scene from Stapleton and triumphed. Clapping was not customary for
students at the Actors Studio, as it was like a church. “It was the first time I’d
ever heard applause there,” Kim Stanley recalled. She and others privately
approached Marilyn later and apologized.
The audience observed an unusual and exciting quality in Marilyn onstage,
which she was unable to transmit on the screen. “It was really an extraordinary
moment in the theater,” publicist John Springer recalled. “She would have been
marvelous in the theater.”
Cheryl Crawford, who had originally directed Marilyn to the stage, sat in the
audience and found her “quite extraordinary — full of color.”
 Current Actors Studio Co-President Ellen Burstyn, twenty-five at the time
Marilyn gave her defining performance, recalled, “Everybody who saw that says
that it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did, it was some of the best work
ever seen at the Studio…and certainly the best interpretation of Anna Christie
anybody ever saw. She achieved real greatness in that scene.” Burstyn herself
achieved greatness when she received an Academy Award for The Last Picture
Show (1972) and nominations for her performances in The Exorcist (1973) and
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974).
By all eyewitness accounts, Marilyn’s performance was flawless, but of
course, she was her own worst critic. “The only one that was great was
Maureen,” she said. When Susan embraced her, Marilyn fretted about being
“lousy” and disappointing her father. Afterward, Stapleton took Marilyn to a bar
on Tenth Avenue to steady her nerves with a drink and process the experience.
The buzz reached columnist Arthur Gelb of the New York Times, who
published a blurb on February 20. He reported that the performance inspired an
hour-long discussion among the observers, who expressed enthusiasm over
Marilyn’s “histrionic development.” Marilyn had shown the naysayers she was a
real actress and many of the other students acknowledged their underestimation
of her sensitivity and ability to effectively use it. Through the solid performance,
Marilyn conquered her fear and banished the nightmare of being exposed as
empty inside and talentless.

On the suggestion of her corporation’s attorney, Irving Stein, Marilyn lived

for two weeks in an apartment located at 124 East Sixtieth Street, the home of
publicist Lois Weber, or gave the appearance of living there. The purpose of this
ruse was to establish an address in New York so that she could legally change
her name.
Norman Rosten’s adaptation of the Joyce Cary’s novel Mister Johnson
opened the Martin Beck Theatre with Marilyn as its primary investor. The plot
follows an educated Nigerian man who feels estranged from his fellow natives
and identifies with the British colonists who employs him. When Harry
Belafonte dropped out of the leading role for a film opportunity, Earle Hyman
took his place and attended meetings with Marilyn to draw other investors. “She
was a star…but on the screen she was different,” Hyman said. “In real life she
was uniquely extraordinary.”
Robert Lewis, the play’s director, joined Marilyn and Miller at the Rostens’
home for a meal after each performance and afterward, Lewis washed the dishes
and Marilyn dried. “She had a way with a dish towel,” he wrote. Mr. Johnson
closed after forty-four performances.

In a session that later gained fame as the “Black Sitting,” Marilyn and Greene
collaborated on test shots to establish the look for her next character, Cherie, the
third-rate showgirl in Bus Stop. Even though it was the middle of winter,
Marilyn slipped out of her mink coat and into flimsy black lingerie, fishnet
stockings, black pumps, a top hat, and a boa, and looked like a chorus girl from
Bob Fosse’s future musical, Chicago. The session was an improvisational acting
and photographic triumph of two artists ahead of their time.
When Marilyn reported to Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), British costume
designer and fashion photographer, and his assistant, Edward Pfizenmaier, for a
photographic session on February 22 at the Ambassador Hotel, she immediately
threw off her shoes and got down to work, charming both men with her engaging
gaiety and wide variety of moods. “The initial shyness over, excitement has now
gotten the better of her,” Beaton wrote in his diary. “She romps, she squeals with
delight, she leaps onto the sofa. She puts a flower stem in her mouth, puffing on
a daisy as though it were a cigarette. It is an artless, impromptu, high-spirited,
infectiously gay performance. It may end in tears.” Pfizenmaier also said, “She
was the greatest fun. I found her just a delight to work with; we just had a
magnificent time.”
While Marilyn showed the camera her fun and giddy side, she easily
transformed into a more serious model, and seductively posed on the sofa in a
black dress and in a headscarf with an artificial bird perched on her finger. For
the most famous portraits of the session, Beaton stood on the bed and shot
Marilyn from above as she reclined on Japanese-patterned sheets and clutched a
carnation she had spontaneously snatched from a bouquet. She considered one of
these poses her favorite and later received a handwritten tribute from Beaton and
a framed copy of the photograph.
After two successful photo shoots, a limousine delivered Marilyn to Idlewild
Airport on February 25. Seated beside Greene, she looked out the rear window,
and watched a car that followed closely behind and carried James Haspiel and
the Monroe Six. Marilyn rolled down the window, stuck her head out, and waved
as her hair blew wildly in the wind. Her fans had visited Sutton Place the night
before and had vowed to see her off. As Marilyn ascended the steps to the plane
in her high-necked black dress and mink coat, the young friends she had made in
Manhattan presented her with a bouquet of red roses.
 Landing in Los Angeles, Marilyn emerged from the plane in a tight black
suit, black tailored shirt, mannish black tie, and black leather gloves. Her black
patent leather pumps and shapely legs feminized her businesslike appearance.
With Greene at her side, Marilyn was met by publicist Patricia Newcomb of the
Arthur P. Jacobs West Coast office and engulfed by a pack of reporters.
“Hollywood turned out to meet her as few women have ever been met,” Time
reported. The mob followed her to an American Airlines airport lounge, where
she took a seat and consented to an interview
“Are you happy to be back in Hollywood?” asked a female reporter who took
the lead. “Is this a happy time?”
“It’s a very happy time,” Marilyn said, visibly tired by the long flight. “I’m
happy to be back, as I’ve always said, it’s my hometown.”
“So you’re a happy girl?” the reporter asked. In response, Marilyn’s gestures
and facial expression conveyed uncertainty. “Well, Marilyn, you haven’t
changed,” the reporter observed.
When asked to comment on rumors that the studio had been given a list of
directors with whom she would work, Marilyn carefully replied, “I’d rather say
that I have director approval. That is true. It’s very important to me.”
“You said you wanted to grow. You feel you’ve grown?” the reporter coaxed.
“I hardly know how to answer that, since they misinterpret that…meaning in
inches or something.” The reporters broke into laughter, and the female inanely
asked Marilyn if she had gained or lost weight. “I think I’m about the same,” she
graciously replied.
“You’re wearing a high-neck dress now. The last time I saw you, you
weren’t. Is this a new Marilyn, a new style?” the newswoman pressed.
“No, I’m the same person,” Marilyn said wryly with a smile, “but it’s a
different suit.” Her response generated another burst of laughter.
Milton and Marilyn settled in a nine-room home at 595 North Beverly Glen
Boulevard in Bel Air, leased from Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Lushing for $950 per
month. Amy soon followed with Joshua, the Owens, and Milton’s production
assistant, David Maysles. After gaining experience on Bus Stop and The
Sleeping Prince, Maysles and his brother, Albert, became documentary
filmmakers. Their cult masterpiece, Grey Gardens (1975), tracked the eccentric
socialite relatives of former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, both named
Edith Bouvier Beale and living in squalor in East Hampton, Long Island.
Lee wouldn’t abandon his work at the Actors Studio to provide private
coaching for Marilyn and sent Paula in his stead. Bus Stop would be the first of
Marilyn’s final six films sets on which Paula served as acting coach, hand-
holder, and supporter. She focused solely on Marilyn delivering the best
performance of her ability and provided feedback on each take. If Paula wasn’t
satisfied, Marilyn requested additional takes, even when the director was
content. For her vital role in Marilyn’s work, Paula was ensconced in luxury at
the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. In the days before filming began,
Marilyn met with Paula every morning and broke down the script, studying her
character’s motivation for each scene, and rehearsing every line, every
intonation, gesture, and expression. Fox and MMP met Lee’s demand for Paula’s
salary of $1500 per week, the equivalent of a star’s.
Marilyn, accompanied by Irving Stein, appeared in the high-necked black
dress she wore to board the plane from New York, for a hearing at the Beverly
Hills City Hall to settle an unresolved legal matter. She had failed to respond to a
citation issued by a Los Angeles police officer for having driven without a
license on Wilshire Boulevard on November 21, 1954. Marilyn had simply
forgotten about the fine when she relocated to New York, but Judge Charles J.
Griffin sternly scolded her in front of the reporters.
“Laws are made for all of us,” Judge Griffin growled, “whether our name
happens to be Miss Monroe or not.”
“I am very sorry,” Marilyn stated in a serious tone. “It isn’t at all the kind of
publicity I want.”
“I would suggest, Miss Monroe, that in the future I would much rather pay to
go and see you perform than have you pay to come and see me.”
The judge slapped her on the wrist with a fifty-five dollar fine. Facing the
press outside the courthouse, Marilyn made a statement of accountability: “I
think Judge Griffin was right in penalizing me. I don’t really believe in ignoring
traffic citations.” Marilyn returned to court on March 5, when she legally
changed her name from Norma Jeane Baker to the professional name she had
been using since 1946.
Natasha Lytess read the newspapers and learned of Marilyn’s return to Los
Angeles. She began calling and writing letters with the hope of reuniting with
Marilyn. Diagnosed with cancer and no longer able to work at Fox, she derived
income from taking on private acting students. Lytess thought her former pupil
would either hire her back as coach or influence the studio to reinstate her.
However, Marilyn never returned the calls or responded to the letters.
Directly after Fox dismissed her, Lytess drove to the house on North Beverly
Glen Boulevard and boldly rang the doorbell. Someone came to the door and
informed her that Marilyn refused a meeting. Irving Stein later called Lytess and
instructed her not to visit or attempt to contact Marilyn again. According to the
attorney’s memorandum documenting the call, Lytess cited Marilyn as her only
protector. Lytess claimed she had advocated for and shaped Marilyn, risking her
own reputation by acting as the heavy with directors on the set. She was
devastated by Marilyn’s refusal to take her calls. The most urgent of all issues
raised by the coach was that Marilyn had some-thing she lacked: financial
security.
The rejection relayed by Stein didn’t prevent Lytess from returning to the
Beverly Glen address. This time, MCA agent Lew Wasserman came to the door
and asked her to leave. As Lytess walked down the circular driveway and got
into her car, she looked up to a second-story dormer window and saw Marilyn
passively watching her leave. “It was the last time I ever saw her,” she wrote in
an unpublished memoir, available in the Maurice Zolotow Collection at the
University of Texas. “Had she any sense of gratitude for my contribution to her
life, she could have saved my job.” Lytess lost the Rexford Drive home Marilyn
had helped her buy to foreclosure, and outlived her famous student by two years.
Some speculated Marilyn’s refusal to intervene on behalf of this maternal
figure was due to displaced anger toward her own mother. Others thought she
cold-heartedly discarded Lytess and replaced her with Paula. Rumors circulated
about Marilyn’s discomfort with Lytess’ alleged homosexual orientation and
overt attraction to her. Most likely, the source of Marilyn’s rebuff was feelings of
betrayal. She learned from Maurice Zolotow that Lytess wrote an unauthorized
and unflattering memoir titled My Years with Marilyn.

Amid arguments about the presidential race between Dwight D. Eisenhower

and Adlai Stevenson, Marilyn and Milton hosted a press conference at the house
on North Beverly Glen Boulevard to promote the production of Bus Stop.
Director Joshua Logan also participated. The atmosphere was casual, and
Marilyn spent a great deal of time sitting on the staircase with two-year old
Joshua Greene on her lap.
According to his son, Rock — only three years old at the time — Yul
Brynner (1920-1985) had a brief affair with Marilyn during the time she was
involved in pre-production work. Likely an example of Monroe Apocrypha,
Rock’s claim involves having seen Marilyn scurry away from the Brynner
family home while his mother was away. His father, the Russian born son of a
Swiss-Mongolian, was an exotic man with strikingly hyper-masculine beauty
and an accented, baritone voice. Brynner typically shaved his head; a practice
that was unusual for a young man of the era and which began when he played
the role of the King of Siam in the Broadway musical The King and I in 1951.
He reprised the role many more times on stage, and it ultimately defined his
career. At the time of Brynner’s alleged brief relationship with Marilyn, he was
filming Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman and usually arrived on the Fox lot
wearing a sleeveless black leather shirt and driving a Cadillac convertible with
two German Shepherds in the back seat.
Brynner and Marilyn were kindred spirits. He had recently battled the studio
for more realism in The King and I. He complained that Twentieth Century-Fox
was backward and conservative, and Marilyn laughed at his profane reference to
the studio as “Sixteenth Century Fuck.” On the soundstages of “Sixteenth
Century Fuck,” Marilyn tackled the role that established her credibility as a
serious actress. Originally titled The Wrong Kind of Girl, the film was an
adaptation of William Inge’s Bus Stop and the perfect vehicle for her recently
honed acting skills.
Chapter Thirty-Six
 Bus Stop

While filming Bus Stop, Marilyn risked it all. As the first film co-produced
by her new corporation and in her first starring dramatic role in a class-A motion
picture, everything was at stake: her business investment, her credibility as a
serious actress, her career, and her future. This labor of love became the vehicle
for a pivotal performance that made even the toughest critics acknowledge her as
a gifted actress. The turbulent production also became the subject of an episode
of the American Movie Classics Network’s Backstory documentary series in
2001, and director Joshua Logan dedicated an entire chapter to Marilyn and the
film’s production in his 1978 autobiography Movie Stars, Real People, and Me.
Released in the summer of 1956, Bus Stop was the first film starring Marilyn
distributed in over a year — the longest her audience had waited between
films — and her first opportunity to implement her controversial training from
the Actors Studio. There were many in Hollywood who expected — and even
wanted — her to fail.
The plot opens with Beauregard “Bo” Decker, a twenty-one-year-old
orphaned cowboy rancher traveling from Montana to Phoenix to compete in a
rodeo. His fatherly guardian, Virgil, accompanies him. Bo wants to find an
“angel” in the big city but has no experience with women, and Virgil worries
about his sheltered innocence. At the Blue Dragon Café in Phoenix, Bo meets an
untalented showgirl, Cherie, a hillbilly from the Ozarks who dreams of
becoming a movie star. Cherie makes up for her lack of talent with tremendous
ambition. On a crumpled roadmap, she tracks her career trajectory from her
birthplace in Arkansas to Hollywood. Bo immediately falls in love with her, and
wins her over by making the rowdy nightclub audience pay attention to her
clichéd cabaret act.
Bo decides to marry Cherie after just a kiss, and she tries to clarify that she
has no intention of marrying him. He bullies her into accepting an engagement
ring and signing a marriage license. When Cherie’s attempt to escape fails, she
and her friend, Vera — a waitress at the nightclub — watch Bo win every
competition in the rodeo. After seeing Bo acquire everything he sets out to win,
Cherie tries to leave town on a bus. Bo chases Cherie to the bus depot and uses
his skills to lasso her like a steer. He abducts her and takes her aboard a bus
headed back to his home in Montana.
When Bo falls asleep in the back seat with Virgil after an exhausting day at
the rodeo, Cherie confides in Elma, a young girl taking the bus to her job at
Grace’s Diner. Cherie sneaks off the bus when it arrives at the diner, but a
blizzard prevents the bus from departing to the next stop. Bo carries Cherie over
his shoulder with a plan to find a local minister to perform the wedding. Carl, the
bus driver, challenges Bo to a fight out in the snow.
The humiliation of Carl’s beating softens Bo and helps him to acknowledge
his selfish disregard for Cherie’s feelings. Bo’s heartfelt apology to Cherie and
the other passengers awakens her tender emotions toward him. Moved by his
transformation, Cherie confesses to Bo that she is not a virgin and has had
relationships with several men. Bo admits his lack of experience with women
and gallantly expresses his love for Cherie despite her past. This is the kindest
profession of unconditional love Cherie has ever heard, and she accepts his
marriage proposal.
Over the course of the story, Cherie tames Bo’s wild nature and transforms
him into a sensitive, gentleman, and Bo validates her worth by loving her
unconditionally. Once Bo has matured and chosen a wife to care for him, Virgil
sets him free. No longer seeking happiness through a film career, Cherie throws
away her map to Hollywood and chooses a life as a wife. Having transformed
individually and together, the couple leave without Virgil for Bo’s ranch in
Montana.
Early in the film, Cherie shows Vera a roadmap on which she has circled her
starting point in River Gulch and has drawn a line that she calls her “direction.”
Pointing to her destination, Cherie exclaims, “Look where I’m goin’…
Hollywood and Vine!” Her face lights up with hope. Vera asks what will happen
at the intersection of those streets. “Honey, you get discovered,” Cherie explains.
“You yet tested, with options, and everything. And you get treated with a little
respect, too!” The character and scene are somewhat autobiographical to
Marilyn and her own dream of stardom, although she was born in Hollywood.
Bus Stop was one of an unprecedented string of Broadway hits written by
William Inge (1913-1973) during the 1950s. In Come Back Little Sheba (1952),
Picnic (1955), and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957), Inge featured
solitary protagonists grappling with strained sexual relationships. He received a
Pulitzer Prize for Picnic and eventually earned an Academy Award for his
screenplay, Splendor in the Grass (1960).
Longtime friend and mentor Tennessee Williams envied Inge’s success, but
privately, Inge was miserable. He struggled with depression, alcoholism, and a
profound shame over his homosexual orientation. Ultimately, Inge committed
suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning when he purposefully started his car
in his closed garage. “Death makes us all innocent,” he wrote, “and weaves all
our private hurts and griefs and wrongs into the fabric of time, and makes them a
part of eternity.”
Opening on March 2, 1955 at the Music Box Theatre, Bus Stop moved to the
Winter Garden Theatre (where Cats and Mamma Mia! would later play) in
February 1956. It closed on April 21 after a total of four hundred seventy-eight
performances. Kim Stanley (1925-2001) and Albert Salmi, both Actors Studio
protégés, starred, along with Elaine Stritch. Marilyn attended several
performances with Greene and the Strasbergs, and intently studied Stanley’s
performance.
As an unaccredited co-producer, Marilyn had approval of the story line,
cinematographer, and director for the first time in her career. Maurice “Buddy”
Adler (1909-1960), Fox’s new production chief and the husband of actress Anita
Louise (1915-1970), also produced. He was responsible for the success of From
Here to Eternity (1953) and Love is a Many Splendored Thing (1955).
Having successfully altered The Seven Year Itch for Marilyn, George Axelrod
adapted William Inge’s script for the screen and fleshed out the role of Cherie
specifically for her, creating the most fully realized of her roles to date. Marilyn
also selected cinematographer Milton Krasner, who had filmed her beautifully in
All About Eve and The Seven Year Itch. Initially, she wanted John Huston to
direct but consented to Joshua Logan (1908-1988), whose name appeared on her
short list of acceptable directors. “I nearly missed one of the high spots of my
directing life because I had fallen for the popular Hollywood prejudice about
Marilyn Monroe,” Logan wrote in his autobiography, Movie Stars, Real People,
and Me.
When MCA agent Lew Wasserman approached Logan about working with
Marilyn in her first producing and acting venture, the director balked. When the
agent questioned his reaction, Logan contended she could not act. “I could
gargle with salt and vinegar even now as I say that,” the director later wrote,
“because I found Marilyn to be one of the great talents of all time.” Logan
consented to direct Marilyn after Lee Strasberg bestowed an endorsement.
“I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of actors and actresses, both in
class and in the Studio,” the fellow follower of Stanislavski told the director,
“and there are only two that stand out way above the rest. Number one is Marlon
Brando, and the second is Marilyn Monroe…”
When Marilyn described her ideal director to Edward R. Murrow on national
television, she might as well have named Logan. His credentials as Method
acting alumnus, successful stage and screen director, and patient temperament
made him a perfect fit for MMP. Moreover, he was willing to collaborate with
his stars and give them a measure of creative input. Much in the way today’s
stars are afforded power, even when they are not co-producing, Marilyn had
some creative control over ways to stage scenes and position the cameras.
After leaving Princeton University without graduating, Logan studied with
Stanislavski on scholarship at the Moscow Arts Theatre. Following two separate
stints as a Hollywood dialogue director, he entered a period of prolific output
that eventually led to a nervous breakdown in 1940. Logan was diagnosed with
Bipolar Disorder, for which he required two psychiatric hospitalizations before
he stabilized later in life on the drug lithium carbonate. He attributed his
creativity to the manic episodes associated with the disorder. Logan directed
Annie Get Your Gun (1946) and Mister Roberts (1948), won Best Director Tony
Awards for South Pacific (1950) and Picnic (1953), and earned a Golden Globe
Award for the screen adaptation of the latter in 1955.
Marilyn’s path had crossed Logan’s before in Connecticut and New York,
when he frequently visited the Greene’s neighbors, Richard and Dorothy
Rodgers, and the Strasbergs. Once she approved him as director, they met one
evening at Milton and Amy’s house in Weston. Arriving an hour late, Marilyn
made up for lost time by passionately talking about Stanislavski and barraging
Logan with questions about his study with the guru in Moscow. She wanted to
know intimate details about the way the actors lived and how Stanislavski
trained them. She struck Logan as a brighter person than he had ever imagined,
and he came to learn that intelligence — and even brilliance — are not
necessarily related to an education.
Logan found Marilyn interesting and enthusiastic, and never “ignorant” or
“gross.” He believed she had reached a peak in her emotional and intellectual
life. Marilyn was also equally won over in this mutually satisfying conference.
Logan loved Paula and had no objection to Marilyn’s working closely with her.
However, he forbade the coach from appearing on the set. Prudently, Logan also
made a resolution to accept Marilyn’s chronic tardiness.
The director’s admiration for Marilyn survived even the most grueling
production. He described her as “the most talented motion picture actress of her
day — warm, witty, extremely bright and totally involved in her work.” In Bus
Stop, Marilyn experienced a director who, for the first time in her career, truly
recognized her artistry and was open to collaboration. “I’d say she was the
greatest artist I ever worked with in my entire career,” Logan said. “Hollywood
shamelessly wasted her, hasn’t given the girl a chance. She has immense
subtlety, but she is a frightened girl, terrified of the whole filmmaking process
and self-critical to the point of an inferiority complex.”
Having instantly bonded, Logan took Marilyn to a Los Angeles theater to see
his directorial work in Picnic, starring William Holden and Kim Novak, and
introducing Susan Strasberg in a minor role. Marilyn was entranced with the film
and nudged him throughout the screening, whispering her reactions into his ear.
During the scene in which Holden’s character talks about having sex with two
girls at the same time in a motel, Marilyn prodded Logan firmly with her hand
and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “How did you ever get away with that?”
she whispered.
Buddy Adler took great care in selecting an appropriate leading man to create
proper chemistry in a role opposite Marilyn’s. Rock Hudson (1925-1985) was
the first choice for Beauregard “Bo” Decker. With his dashing good looks, virile
masculinity, and undeniable charm, Hudson was arguably the male equivalent of
Marilyn Monroe. After serving in the U.S. Navy as an airplane mechanic during
World War II, Hudson (birth name Leroy Scherer, Jr.) moved to Los Angeles and
worked as a delivery truck driver while trying to break into the movies.
Discovered by Henry Willson, who created the “beefcake craze” of the 1950s,
Leroy’s name was changed to the manly Rock Hudson, a combination of the
Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River.
Hudson was manufactured to be Hollywood’s ultimate ladies’ man, much in
the same way Marilyn was manufactured to be the ultimate every man’s ideal,
the only difference was that Marilyn was straight and Rock Hudson was gay.
Marilyn could live openly as heterosexual, but Hudson had to live a lie in 1950s
America. In 1955, Willson arranged for Hudson to marry his secretary, Phyllis
Gates, as a cover. As times changed, Hudson lived a closeted life with a
longtime male partner before dying from complications of AIDS in 1985. His
secret life was exposed in the most tragic way with the public announcement of
the cause of death. Hudson became the first major Hollywood casualty of the
grossly misunderstood and widely feared disease. His death educated the
American public about the malady and inspired his friend and former co-star
Elizabeth Taylor to dedicate her life to AIDS activism.
Decades before his successful screen pairings with Doris Day and his tragic
demise, Hudson completed Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven
Allows (1955). He chose to pass on the logically good fit of Bo in Bus Stop and
instead, accepted George Stevens’ 1956 epic, Giant, alongside James Dean and
Elizabeth Taylor, for which he would receive an Academy Award nomination.
Later Amy Greene asked Hudson why he refused the part. Admitting that he
realized it had been a mistake, Hudson told her the decision was based upon
Milton having treated him poorly during a photographic session for an
advertisement for American Airlines. Amy shared this with Milton, who
disclosed to her that Hudson had made a sexual advance toward him during the
shoot. Milton had casually dismissed the incident, but Hudson apparently
remained embarrassed.
Other options for Bo included Robert Wagner, Aldo Ray, Dale Robertson,
Jeffrey Hunter, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Perkins, Robert Stack,
and Albert Salmi. Although he played the part on the stage, Salmi (1920-1990)
turned it down because he despised film work. He soon changed his position and
achieved Marilyn’s unfulfilled aspiration by appearing in the film version of The
Brothers Karamazov. In later life, Salmi killed his wife and then himself.
Allegedly, both suffered from drug addiction.
Finally, Fox cast newcomer Don Murray (born 1929). Like Marilyn, he was a
native of Hollywood with lineage tied to the entertainment industry. His father
was a Broadway dance director, and his mother had performed as a Ziegfeld
showgirl. At East Rockaway High School in New York, Murray played football
and track. After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he
made his Broadway debut in the 1951 play The Rose Tattoo with Maureen
Stapleton. During the Korean War and the early years of Marilyn’s fame, he
served as a social worker for orphans and war casualties in refugee camps in
Europe, seeing her films dubbed in Italian. “From my pay of thirty dollars a
month, I saved up fifteen cents a week to see a movie in the poorest
neighborhood,” Murray recalled in 2012. “One movie I had to save up three
weeks for was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was playing in the richest
neighborhood and cost thirty-five cents.”
Murray returned to the United States in 1954 and performed with Mary
Martin in the 1955 stage version of The Skin of Our Teeth, where his square-
jawed, matinee idol good looks attracted the attention of Joshua Logan and
landed his film debut opposite the nation’s number one female superstar. When
Fox executives thought Murray was too loud and too boisterous, Logan fired
back, “I want Attila the Hun and that’s who we have.”
Logan championed the casting of Arthur O’Connell (1908-1981) as Virgil.
After a walk-on part as a reporter in the closing scenes of Orson Welles’
masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941), O’Connell returned to Broadway, where he
appeared as the middle-aged suitor of a spinster schoolteacher in Picnic in 1952,
a role he recreated in the film adaptation and earned an Oscar nomination in the
process. He earned another nomination as James Stewart’s alcoholic mentor in
Anatomy of a Murder (1959).
Logan also influenced Fox’s pick of his other stage version of Picnic cast
member, Eileen Heckart (1919-2001), as Vera. She received rave reviews on
Broadway in The Bad Seed as Hortense Daigle and stole two scenes as the
intoxicated bereaved mother of a young boy killed by an eight-year-old
psychopathic serial killer with blonde braided pigtails. Heckart recreated the
character in the 1956 film adaptation and earned a Best Supporting Actress
Oscar nomination. She also appeared in Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two
Mondays, paired with the original one-act version of A View from the Bridge.
Logan talked Heckart into playing the part of Vera by reading the entire script
to her over the phone while her husband and children waited for dinner to be
served. Finally, the housekeeper commanded her to agree so that the family
could eat. According to Heckart’s son, Marilyn made a huge impact on his
mother’s life, and he grew up with photographs of Marilyn holding him and his
brother during the production. Whenever she talked of Marilyn in later years,
tears streamed down her face. It was painful to watch the pathos in her, Heckart
said.
For the role of Grace, producer Buddy Adler considered Maureen Stapleton,
Ann Sothern, Gloria Graham, and Barbara Stanwyck before casting bawdy Betty
Field (1913-1973). Born in Boston as a direct descendant of the Pilgrims, Field
began her acting career on the stage before making her film debut in Of Mice
and Men (1939). She appeared in The Great Gatsby (1949), Picnic (1955), and
later had featured parts in Peyton Place (1957), Butterfield 8 (1960), and
Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).
Hope Lange (1933-2003) made her screen debut as Elma in Bus Stop. She
also came from a theatrical family. Her father was a cellist and the music
arranger for Florenz Ziegfeld, and her mother was an actress. After Bus Stop, she
appeared in Peyton Place (1957) and alongside Glenn Ford in director Frank
Capra’s final film, A Pocketful of Miracles (1961). From 1968 to 1970, Lange
starred in the popular television series, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. To finish the
casting, virile Robert E. Bray (1917-1983), who portrayed forest ranger Corey
Stuart in the long-running CBS television series Lassie, was cast as Carl, the bus
driver.
 In late February, Marilyn and Logan met with William Travilla to review his
design sketches for Cherie’s costumes. Having dressed the glamorous pre-
Method Marilyn, his watercolor renderings depicted elegant outfits befitting an
MGM Technicolor musical but completely devoid of realism. With feigned
enthusiasm, Marilyn approved the designs. After Travilla left the room, Marilyn
turned to Logan. “I hate it!” she confessed before erupting into a rippling laugh.
“But it isn’t gonna [sic] be the way it is. You and I are gonna shred it up, pull out
part of the fringe, poke holes in the fishnet stockings, then have ‘em [sic] darned
with big, sprawling darns. Oh, it’s gonna be so sorry and pitiful it’ll make you
cry.”
Marilyn took Logan to the studio’s vast wardrobe department and rummaged
through the rows of racks. As a true Method actress, she searched for pieces that
authentically reflected Cherie’s pitiful salary as a saloon singer and snatched a
gaudy gold blouse with black-lace overlay originally been worn by Susan
Hayward in With a Song in My Heart (1952). She also selected a tattered gold
lamé coat and asked the wardrobe department to add a border of moth-eaten
rabbit fur. When Travilla’s green and gold showgirl costume was completed,
Marilyn distressed it with a pair of scissors and ripped the fish net stockings with
her hands. At her request, wardrobe seamstresses darned the holes for increased
realism. Logan began to feel that Marilyn had always been brilliant, but that
none of her directors had ever listened to her opinions.
Marilyn also conferred with Allan Snyder about makeup suggestions. Since
Cherie slept during the day and performed at the Blue Dragon all night, her skin
was rarely exposed to sunlight and appeared absolutely white. Snyder used a
mixture of clown white in the foundation and urged Marilyn to allow him to
darken the shade to make her look more attractive, but she insisted on realism
over vanity. When Buddy Alder viewed the costume and makeup tests, he balked
at the pallor of Marilyn’s skin, but she convinced him of its appropriateness for
the character.
On March 12, Marilyn missed the flight to Phoenix, Arizona by twenty
minutes; she was to film location sequences of parade and rodeo scenes during
the local Junior Chamber of Commerce’s annual rodeo. She caught another flight
aboard a Constellation and sat beside Donald Zec of Great Britain’s Daily
Mirror. When a stewardess placed a tray of food before her, she demurely
declined saying, “I have to watch my figure.” Zec dryly responded, “You eat,
Marilyn; I’ll watch your figure.” She playfully slapped his arm.
Marilyn arrived on time with Don Murray in a stagecoach for a publicity
event staged downtown on the following day. Someone handed Marilyn a
cowgirl hat, and she enthusiastically placed it on her head for a few photographs.
Suddenly, she took it off and handed it to an assistant. “Dietrich wouldn’t have
done it,” she murmured to Murray. Marilyn was serious in turning over a new
leaf as a serious actress, leaving behind her whimsical cheesecake past.
At the newly constructed Sahara Inn on First Street in downtown Phoenix,
Marilyn moved into the penthouse suite. Eileen Heckart’s young sons, Philip,
age four, and Mark, age six, joined their mother on location with their nanny, and
stayed in the same motor hotel.
In the early evenings after work, Marilyn took grapefruits and oranges from
the gift baskets sent to her by the hotel management and other local
organizations and used them to play catch with the boys on her terrace. When the
boys missed the catch, the fruit rolled onto the balcony below, fell down the
flight of stairs, and landed with a splash into the swimming pool. Heckart told
Marilyn it was sweet of her to play with the boys, but it wasn’t necessary. “Are
you kidding?” she replied. “It’s my favorite part of the day! Besides, vitamin C
is very important for growing boys. They have to have their citrus!”
“Marilyn’s playing catch with the boys on the terrace again,” Eileen told her
husband when he called from home to check on his family. “They’re having the
time of their lives. Guess who’s gonna [sic] have her raggedy ass down at the
pool at two in the morning picking up all those goddamn grapefruits and
oranges? It ain’t [sic] Miss Monroe, that’s for sure!”

Over twenty-five thousand spectators participated in the parade sequence and

gave Logan more challenges than his leading lady. Marilyn was more relaxed
shooting on location in the open air than within the confines of a soundstage and
required no more than two takes for each set-up.
Following a sequence filmed at the rodeo, Heckart and Marilyn walked
toward their dressing room trailers while fans barraged them with autograph
books. Marilyn kept walking as she signed, and a large crowd converged.
Heckart panicked, but Marilyn reassured her and took charge. “Walk faster,” she
advised. “Don’t look right or left.” The actresses broke into a trot as Marilyn
continued signing autographs until they escaped to a trailer and slammed the
door. Outside, the crowd tried to climb through the windows.
During the hazardous rodeo scenes, a stunt double rode the bucking bronco in
place of Don Murray, but Logan needed some establishing shots of him
straddled on the animal. Apprehensive, Murray admitted he had never ridden a
horse. “No one could have been less equipped for the job,” Murray remembered
in 2012. “I was a New Yorker who’d never ridden a real horse and had tackled
football players, but never a five-hundred-pound steer.” Striving for realism,
Marilyn encouraged him to try it anyway.
Marilyn was described as a “totally satisfying professional” who arrived on
time and sat for hours in the sun while the horses were set up. At one point, she
slipped and fell off the bleachers but sustained no serious injuries. In another
undignified moment, she became anxious and vomited behind the bleachers
while press photographers snapped pictures before Milton Greene protectively
intervened by chasing them away.
On March 26, the company moved from the high temperatures of Phoenix to
freezing temperatures at the second location in Sun Valley, Idaho for mountain
exteriors needed for the film’s ending. Filming out of chronological sequence,
Logan completed the final, touching scene of Cherie and Bo boarding the bus to
Montana.
When Bo opposes Virgil’s decision to stay behind, Cherie gently advises, “If
he don’t want to come, you can’t make him.” Cherie clutches the box containing
her wedding ring as she shivers in the cold. Bo notices her discomfort in a
tattered coat and offers her his heavy, fleece-lined coat. She looks surprised as he
stands behind her and opens the coat. Slowly, Cherie slides each arm into the
sleeves, and Bo lovingly wraps the coat around her. Logan directed her to
imagine slipping into a warm bubble bath. Paula echoed the same direction from
behind him. Marilyn relishes the moment as if it were an embrace. She leans
back against Murray, closes her eyes, and tilts her head back. She turns her head
to the side and opens her mouth — her eyes remain closed. Bo pulls her closer to
him. She draws his hand around her. Sensitive to this chivalrous and selfless
gesture leaving Bo uncovered in the cold, Cherie ties her scarf around his neck
and symbolically unites them as a couple.
Back at the Fox lot, Logan filmed interior scenes in soundstages eight and
fourteen. Marilyn typically arrived early each morning and summoned courage
by clinging to the arm of a crewmember as she paced around the soundstage.
Don Murray witnessed her anxiety manifesting in a rash covering her upper
body, which required Whitey Snyder to apply additional makeup. Marilyn was
always in character, speaking in an Ozark accent at all times, even when the
cameras stopped. When the camera rolled, Marilyn immediately acted with
intensity. No external distraction could interrupt her until Logan yelled, “Cut.”
The director found a simple solution to avoid breaking his star’s
concentration. Instead of yelling, “Cut,” signaling the studio bell to sound and an
assistant to clap the board marking the next take, he kept the camera rolling. He
physically moved Marilyn back into position and softly instructed her to repeat
the scene or line. With this technique, Marilyn was usually word-perfect in less
than four attempts. Logan also permitted the dialogue coach, Joe Curtis, to feed
Marilyn a line whenever she hesitated and later erased the prompt from the
soundtrack. This made for more natural dialogue between characters and
allowed Marilyn to fill the gaps with appropriate facial expressions.
In an appreciative letter to Lee in New York, Marilyn professed complete
emotional devastation when she was unable to achieve her self-imposed
expectations: “Thanks for letting Paula help me on the picture; she is the only
really warm woman I’ve known. It’s just that I get before the camera and my
concentration and everything I’m trying to learn leaves me. Then I feel like I’m
not existing in the human race at all.”
Several of the cast and crew got sick while working in the freezing
temperatures in Sun Valley, and Don Murray returned to Los Angeles with
pleurisy and a fever of one hundred five degrees. In early April, Marilyn was
sent home when her temperature rose to one hundred one degrees, but she
returned to work a few days later. On April 12, studio physician Dr. Lee Siegel
diagnosed her with a viral infection, exhaustion, and acute bronchitis and
admitted her to St. Vincent’s Hospital, Los Angeles’ first hospital.
A nun escorted Nedda Logan down a corridor to Marilyn’s room and
described her famous patient as sweet — but too sweet. The nun recounted
Marilyn having complained in the morning of having been freezing through the
night. When asked why she did not ring the bell to request a blanket, Marilyn
replied, “I didn’t want to disturb you.” Nedda found Marilyn weak and
depressed. Marilyn told her of feeling sad and alone when she had been asked by
the medical staff to name a next of kin. Marilyn had told them she had no one to
contact in the event of an emergency. While holding and stroking Marilyn’s
hand, Nedda offered her own name.
While Marilyn received treatment at the hospital, Don Murray and Hope
Lange used the hiatus to get married. The couple eventually had two children,
actor Christopher Murray and photographer Patricia Murray, before Lange left
Murray in 1961 for a co-star whom she never married. After Marilyn returned to
work, she wrote to Paula about her deepening depression: “Oh Paula, I wish I
knew why I am so anguished. I think maybe I’m crazy like all the other members
of my family were, when I was sick I was sure I was. I’m so glad you’re with me
here!”
While filming the scene at the Blue Dragon where Cherie escapes Bo’s
relentless advances by running off the cabaret floor, Don Murray was to grab the
tail of Marilyn’s costume, and it would rip off. Marilyn was to angrily snatch the
fabric from his hand and deliver the speech: “You ain’t got the manners to give a
monkey! I hate ya! I despise ya! And gimme back my tail!” In the first take, she
bounced off Murray and landed on the floor. In the next, she struck him in the
face with the tail with such Method acting intensity that one of its sequins
lacerated his eyelid. Angry, Murray stormed after her for an apology, but Logan
stopped him.

Arthur Miller left New York and rented a cabin on Pyramid Lake, Nevada to
establish residency for his Reno divorce. There was no telephone in the cabin,
and Marilyn had to discreetly call him at the phone booth located outside the
manager’s office under the pseudonym “Mrs. Leslie.” Late one evening, she
called Miller in a panic, and the manager had to knock on his door to summon
him. Miller went to the phone booth in a bathrobe and placed the receiver to his
ear. Marilyn’s depression and anxiety had worsened, and she sounded suicidal.
“I can’t do it, I can’t work this way,” Miller quotes a tormented Marilyn.
“Oh, Papa, I can’t do it…I’m no trained actor; I can’t pretend I’m something if
I’m not. All I know is real! I can’t do it if it’s not real!” She confessed doubting
her resiliency and wanting to abandon her career and live quietly with him in the
country. Marilyn’s despondency was beyond any comfort Miller could offer
from afar. Emotionally overwhelmed, he became nauseous and nearly passed out
in the phone booth, but thankfully, a resilient Marilyn managed to face her
demons and find her performance.
“Arthur writes me every day — at least it gives me air to breathe,” Marilyn
wrote to Dr. Hohenberg in New York. “I can’t get used to the fact that he loves
me and I keep waiting for him to stop loving me — though I hope he never
will — but I keep telling myself — who knows.” On weekends, Miller traveled to
Los Angeles to reassure Marilyn and lend support. They met at the Chateau
Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, in a suite formerly occupied by Jean
Harlow, while the Greenes remained in the house on North Beverly Glen
Boulevard.
On set and off, Marilyn peppered her conversations with jargon associated
with Method acting and Freudian psychology. She found ways to make “affected
memory” and “Freudian slip” fit oddly with other unrelated topics. This
peculiarity is nowhere better evident than in the scene where Bo bursts into
Cherie’s bedroom and finds her asleep during the day, nude under the sheets.
Marilyn came to the set in a robe and removed it after getting under the covers.
Instead of reciting a line about her looking “so pale and white,” Murray uttered
the words “white and scaly.”
“You must have been thinking about sex,” Marilyn knowingly told Murray
during a break.
“What makes you say that?” Murray asked.
“Well, a snake is scaly, and a snake is a phallic symbol! Don, you do know
what a phallic symbol is?”
“Of course I know what a phallic symbol is,” he retorted. “I have one!”
For added realism in the saloon scene where Bo watches Cherie perform
“That Old Black Magic” by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, Logan and Greene
dispensed with the typical practice of the performer pre-recording the song and
lip-synching to a playback during filming. Instead, Marilyn sang live with an
orchestra while two cameras filmed from different distances.
Marilyn interpreted Cherie as singing off pitch and using trite theatrical
gestures. Serious about her performance despite a lack of talent, Cherie creates
her own lighting effects during her act by kicking floor switches with her gold
high-heeled pump to turn off the nightclub’s lights and to turn on colored
spotlights. “She did it with almost instinctive comic genius,” Logan recalled.
Marilyn waved a silk scarf in an old vaudeville move taught to her by a
makeup lady, and used corny hand-gestures to act out some of the lyrics,
including “icy fingers up and down my spine” and “that old black magic that
you weave so well.” She cupped her ear as she sang the lyric, “I hear you call
my name…” At one point, Cherie even flinched when she hit a note far off-key.
“We had a memorable musical sequence, primarily because we gave a great
artist, a superb comedienne, the freedom to perform the way she felt,” Logan
said.
In a mock-up of a bus against a rear projection screen, Marilyn sat beside
Hope Lange for her longest speech in the film. Logan needed a perfect take, as
he planned to cut away only once for Lange’s close-up, which showed her
listening intently. As Bo sleeps in the rear of the bus, Cherie explains her
abduction to Elma and shares her life story, hopes, and dreams. It is the caliber
of soliloquy that begets an Oscar nomination:

Maybe I don’t know what love is. I want a guy I can look up to and
 admire. But I don’t want him to browbeat me. I want a guy who’ll be
sweet with me. But I don’t want him to baby me, either. I just gotta feel
that whoever I marry has some real regard for me — aside from all
that lovin’ stuff.

Fox’s executives edited a portion of the soliloquy because it slowed the film’s
pace, but Marilyn felt betrayed by Logan and held him responsible for failing to
fight for the integrity of her performance. She later believed the excision of the
speech cost her the Oscar nomination. In the deleted portion, Cherie considers
the possibility of singing hillbilly songs on a radio station if she were not
immediately discovered as a film star. Doubting herself, she concedes the option
of working at a drug store and marrying a man whether she loves him or not,
saying, “Who am I to keep insistin’ I should fall in love?”
Marilyn saw a rough-cut of the film before she left for England to make The
Prince and the Showgirl. When Logan visited her at Pinewood Studios, Marilyn
thanked him for singing her praises to the New York Times, but also confronted
him indignantly for editing her big scene. “I wanted to show it to Arthur, and I
can’t. When you cut it, I was never angrier in my life, and I still feel as angry
today!” She soon forgave Logan.
At the climax of the film, when Bo professes his love and Cherie realizes she
has fallen in love with him, Logan envisioned extreme close-ups of the principal
actors’ faces from forehead to chin to highlight the intensity of the emotions. The
widescreen process did not easily accommodate extreme close-ups due to a
distortion in the edges of the frame, but Logan wanted to experiment with the
CinemaScope lens to capture Marilyn’s beautiful face. He believed hers was one
of the great faces of all time, and he wanted the world to really see it.
Excited, Marilyn danced around the set like a child in anticipation of a big
close-up like Garbo’s in the traditional square lens format of the 1930s and ’40s.
Logan started with Murray. Following Logan’s direction to bring the camera
close, cinematographer Milton Krasner announced that the top of Murray’s head
wasn’t visible in the lens — the camera was too close. “Everybody knows he has
one,” Marilyn said logically. “It’s already been established.” The crew and actors
roared with laughter.
When Bo asks Cherie permission to kiss her goodbye, he approaches her with
brute force. Cherie resists and explains the kiss should be different — tender.
Logan directed Marilyn and Murray to perform the kiss with great emotion and
delicacy. Logan watched the rushes in the screening room and observed a string
of saliva as Marilyn pulled away from the kiss. It was not evident to the naked
eye on the set or through the lens. The censors wanted the scene cut, but he
retained it for realism.
Saliva also distracted the censors from Marilyn’s other emotional scene. In a
tight shot of Cherie and Bo together, Marilyn rests her head on the bar counter,
and Murray rests his head beside hers. Both of their faces are visible in the
elongated frame. “I like ya the way ya are, so what do I care how ya got that
way?” Murray says to her.
Marilyn nervously brings her hand to her mouth, bursts into tears, and
replies, “That’s the sweetest most tender-est thing anybody has ever said to me.”
As she pulls her hand away from her mouth, another string of saliva spills to the
counter. As she played this scene, Marilyn’s skin flushed.
“There are still those of us who remember that extraordinary performance,
who know how badly she was judged by most of the world, including her co-
called peers, how stupidly she was written about,” Logan wrote.
On May 16, production ended and Marilyn returned to New York with the
Greenes. Six weeks later, when she married Arthur, the Logans presented her
with a three-panel sterling silver custom-made Cartier triptych frame. The center
frame displayed a gelatin print of the portrait Cecil Beaton took of Marilyn
earlier in the year, one of her favorite images of herself, and was engraved, “For
Marilyn Monroe Miller…Love Nedda and Joshua Logan.” The left and right
frames contained a handwritten tribute by Beaton.
In part, it read, “The real marvel is the paradox — somehow we know that
this extraordinary performance is pure charade, a little girl’s caricature of Mae
West. The puzzling truth is that Miss Monroe is a make-believe siren,
unsophisticated as a Rhine maiden…She is an urchin pretending to be grown-up,
having the time of her life in mother’s moth-eaten finery, tottering about in high-
heeled shoes and sipping ginger ale as though it were a champagne cocktail.”
For the film’s publicity, advertisements with Marilyn’s image appeared on
tops of buses in large cities, where they could be seen from high floors in
skyscrapers. Fox’s trailer announced, “No one but Marilyn could do justice to
Bus Stop,” “Broadway’s biggest becomes Marilyn’s best,” “Marilyn Monroe is
back on the screen!…in the eagerly awaited picture in years.”
Those who worked with Marilyn knew her performance would change the
way the world perceived her, and a buzz spread throughout the film industry. In
American Movie Classic’s Backstory episode about the film, Hope Lange called
Marilyn’s performance “extraordinary.” “She is wonderful in the film,” the
actress asserted.
“She was very real,” Don Murray said. “She tore your heart out. It’s one of
the best performances in the history of talking films.”
Bus Stop, starring and co-produced by Marilyn Monroe, premiered at the
Roxy Theatre, next to the Taft Hotel, on West Fiftieth Street in Times Square.
The theater had opened in 1927 with silent film The Love of Sunya starring and
produced by an earlier generation’s screen maverick, Gloria Swanson.
In London filming The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier,
Marilyn missed the premiere. Critics unanimously agreed the performance was a
triumph. Playing off advertising for Anna Christie, “Garbo Speaks,” Louella
Parsons’ headline in the Los Angeles Examiner announced, “Marilyn Acts.”
“This is Marilyn’s show, and, my friend, she shows plenty in figure, beauty and
talent,” Parsons continued. “The girl is a terrific comedienne as the bewildered
little ‘chantoose’ of the honky-tonk circuit. Her stint at the Actors Studio in New
York certainly didn’t hurt our girl.”
The most noteworthy review came from her heretofore harshest critic, Bosley
Crowther of the New York Times. Without doubt she waited with bated breath for
his reaction and must have delighted in his fervent approval:

Hold on to your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise.
Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress in Bus Stop. She
and the picture are swell!…Fortunately for her and for the tradition of
diligence leading to success, she gives a performance in this picture
that marks her as a genuine acting star, not just a plushy personality
and sex symbol, as she has previously been.

Crowther’s enthusiasm spilled over to a follow-up article titled, “The Proof

of Marilyn: In ‘Bus Stop,’ a Good Role and a Challenge Are Met by Miss
Monroe.” Having panned her in Don’t Bother to Knock and other roles, the critic
made ample amends when he hailed her exceptional performance. Crowther
highlighted the nuances of Marilyn’s “peak of restrained resolution and
poignancy in the final scenes” and believed she “atoned” for previous
performances, which her audiences “suffered” along with her. Convinced of
Marilyn’s talents, he raved on:

She gives a performance in this picture that marks her as a genuine

 acting star, not just a personality and a sex symbol…In one light, she is
foolish and funny, but in another she is dignified and sad. It takes
playing to catch all her facets…

Crowther concluded with a hope that Fox continued to give Marilyn good
roles.
“Speaking of artists, it is beginning to appear that we have a very real one
right in our midst…” declared The Saturday Review, “in Bus Stop Marilyn
Monroe effectively dispels once and for all the notion that she is merely a
glamour personality, a shapely body with tremulous lips and come hither blue
eyes.”
“Eighteen months ago Marilyn Monroe quit Hollywood and came East to
study ‘serious acting,’ ” announced the New York Herald Tribune. “Now she is
back on the screen…and everybody can see what the ‘new’ Marilyn is like. In
Bus Stop she has a wonderful role, and she plays it with a mixture of humor and
pain that is very real. This is also the special genius of the movie.” Marilyn had
finally succeeded in delicately balancing being wildly funny, and in the next
minute, tender and fragile.
“There has been a good deal of comment and some knowing laughter about
Miss Monroe’s attempts to broaden her native talents by working at her acting,”
began the Hollywood Reporter. “It should be some satisfaction to the lady that
she now has the last and very triumphant laugh…The celebrated attractions are
still happily there but they have been augmented by a sensitivity, a poignancy
and an apparent understanding that Miss Monroe did not display before.”
Marilyn lived up Strasberg’s endorsement of her being on par with Marlon
Brando. She moved audiences, the artificial enunciation and mannerisms
coached by Natasha Lytess were gone, and her authentic accent and loud
delivery conflicted with the breathless whisper the public had come to expect.
Carl Rollyson highlighted Marilyn’s repetitive cycle of repositioning and
gesturing with her head, hands, and face throughout the film as effective
physical manifestations of the character’s search for identity.
Without doubt, Marilyn drew from her identification with Cherie. Like
Norma Jeane, the character dreamed of escaping her mundane existence by
becoming a Hollywood star and living happily ever after. Cherie doesn’t make it
to Hollywood but finds contentment with a man who loves her and Marilyn
achieved stardom but never found eternal love.
The New York Times film critics voted Bus Stop one of the year’s ten best
films, and it was nominated for a Best Picture Golden Globe Award. Once again,
for the third and final time, Marilyn made the Quigley’s Top Ten Box Office
Champion list as a significant moneymaking film actress of 1956. She had
earned the title in 1953 and 1954, two years in which she had multiple films in
theaters.
The 1956 Academy Award nominations for Best Actress included Ingrid
Bergman in Anastasia, Carroll Baker in Baby Doll, Katharine Hepburn in The
Rainmaker, Nancy Kelly in The Bad Seed, and Deborah Kerr in The King and I.
Fox executives bought ads in Variety promoting academy votes for Kerr, who
had been under contract for many years with a rival studio, and took no action to
support Marilyn, treating her like a rebellious adolescent daughter. “Fox’s
promotion of Kerr had been a deliberate snub to the year’s most conspicuous
non-nominee, Marilyn Monroe, whose tragicomic performance in Bus Stop had
widely been deemed worthy of Oscar consideration,” wrote Anthony Holden in
Behind the Oscar: The Secret History of the Academy Awards. “Not merely had
Monroe for once, dazzled the critics; the set had buzzed — genuinely, this
time — with word of her qualities.”
“It’s a disease of our profession that we believe a woman with physical
appeal has no talent,” Logan told Maurice Zolotow in the late 1950s. “Her
performance that year was better than any other. It was a classical film
performance.”
In his film debut, Don Murray received an Oscar nomination for Best
Supporting Actor. “I was astonished,” he would say. “But still more astonishing,
Marilyn’s superb performance was overlooked.”
Following a public scandal and long absence from films, Ingrid Bergman
received the Oscar as Best Actress for portraying an imposter of the Grand
Duchess Anastasia, the daughter of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. It
was a classic Hollywood comeback that even Marilyn must have appreciated
despite her being slighted. In consolation, the Hollywood Foreign Press
Association honored her and Bus Stop with nominations for Golden Globe
Awards. Unfortunately, Marilyn lost to Deborah Kerr, whose singing was dubbed
by Marnie Nixon, and Bus Stop lost to The King and I.
The Directors Guild of America nominated Joshua Logan for Outstanding
Directorial Achievement and together with Marilyn, Logan believed he had
reached his professional pinnacle and she had reached hers. Logan and his wife
grieved deeply when they learned of Marilyn’s death. Knowing none of her
family, the couple reached out to Paula Strasberg to express their feelings of loss
and to sympathize with the Strasberg family.
In a phone call, Paula told Logan, “She loved your gift the most. You know,
the silver frame with Cecil Beaton’s portrait of her, and his tribute. Marilyn
proudly showed it to everyone who came into her home.” Marilyn displayed the
piece prominently in the living room of her Manhattan apartment.
Logan honored Marilyn until his death: “Marilyn is as near a genius as any
actress I ever knew. She is an artist beyond artistry…She is the most completely
realized and authentic film actress since Garbo. Monroe is pure cinema.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
 May-July 1956

Time honored Marilyn with a cover story in its May 16, 1956 issue featuring
a serene portrait by Boris Chaliapin and a serious exposé, “To Aristophanes &
Back,” by Ezra Goodman. The title referenced Marilyn’s intent to perform in
Lysistrata, the Ancient Grecian playwright’s comedy about a woman’s mission
to end the Peloponnesian War by persuading the women of Greece to withhold
sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers in order to force the men into
negotiating peace.
Goodman chronicled Norma Jeane’s childhood of abuse, family mental
illness, and rape before highlighting her later powerful global appeal as an
iconoclast. He cited how the Communists denounced Marilyn Monroe as a
capitalist plot to make the population of the United States forget its misery, the
Japanese government displayed her notorious nude calendar in a municipal
building to invigorate the assemblymen, and a photograph of her smiling face
occupied a prominent place in the Table of Elements in the radiation control
laboratory of the world’s first atomic submarine. Marilyn emerged as an
underdog avidly seeking the education and culture denied by her childhood
condition. “I never dared to think about it,” Marilyn told him of her professional
aspirations, “but now I want to be an artist. I want to be a real actress.”
“The eyes are large and grey,” Goodman wrote, lingering on Marilyn’s
physical beauty before getting to her acting aspirations, “and [give] the look of
baby-doll innocence.” He also commented on the innocent quality of her high-
pitched, childlike voice. Goodman proclaimed that commentary from the
soundstages of Fox indicated that she showed signs of becoming a good actress,
and “many a once-skeptical professional now thinks she may become an
outstanding one.” Goodman also described the mutual love between Marilyn, the
New York’s literati, and Broadway’s theater community during her studies at the
Actors Studio.
“For the first time,” he quoted her as saying, “I felt accepted, not as a freak,
but as myself.”
Goodman consulted with thirty other reporters and listened to Marilyn reflect
upon her life — and her first suicide attempt — as he filled sixty-five notebooks
with materials for a four-thousand-word story. The result was a public relations
coup: a scholarly study in a news magazine. During Marilyn’s cover-girl year,
Time mentioned her in another forty-eight stories, an average of nearly one per
weekly issue.
As Fox executives watched Marilyn’s performance in the screening room
during the post-production and editing of Bus Stop, they received validation for
having conceded to her contractual demands, and focused on a meaty role as her
next assignment. The studio announced the purchase of rights to The Jean
Harlow Story from the deceased actress’ mother, Jean Bello, and invited Marilyn
to star. The Fox brass was even willing to delay the film until Marilyn finished
The Sleeping Prince.
Before leaving Los Angeles, Marilyn accepted an invitation from Joshua and
Nedda Logan to their reception at the Beverly Hills Hotel in honor of
Indonesia’s President Sukarno, who wanted to meet her during his visit to the
United States. Nedda’s brother, Marshall Noble, traveled with members of the
visiting Indonesian group. Two years later, when Marilyn heard news of a
possible coup that would force Sukarno out of his country, she pleaded with
Miller to permit her to offer the Indonesian leader and his five wives refuge in
their country home. He and the Rostens insisted her impulse was well intended
but impractical.
On June 3, the plane carrying Marilyn arrived in New York. A group of male
reporters greeted her as she walked across the tarmac to her awaiting limousine,
and presented her with a birthday cake with a large, single candle in celebration
of her thirtieth birthday two days earlier. “Kinsey says a woman doesn’t get
started until she’s thirty,” Marilyn told them. “That’s good news — and it’s
factual, too.” Baggage attendants loaded a Cadillac with her suitcases and two
small animal carriers, holding a russet striped cat named Mitsou and a young
Basset Hound named Hugo that would be joining her household.
When it was soon discovered that Mitsou became pregnant, Marilyn’s friends
regarded the pet as the most pampered prenatal feline in history. Marilyn called
them repeatedly with updates, bemoaning the pet’s sexual vulnerability when it
roamed the hallways of 2 Sutton Place. Norman Rosten considered changing his
phone number. Susan Strasberg remembered Marilyn making the cat a special
bed and playing classical music for her. Mitsou went into labor one evening past
midnight. Alone, Marilyn called Norman Rosten and begged him to hop in a taxi
and come to help her with the delivery. Instead, he told her to name one of the
kittens after him, expressed his love, and hung up the receiver.
The cat delivered several kittens in twenty-minute intervals and between the
births, Marilyn was on her hands and knees cleaning the blood out of the carpet.
She tried calling a local veterinarian, but the sleepy man believed the frantic
calls from a woman identifying herself as Marilyn Monroe were merely pranks.
Finally, she reached Delos Smith and her publicist, Lois Weber Smith, who came
to the rescue. When the veterinarian arrived the following morning, he
exclaimed, “Oh, my God! If I had only known you were Marilyn Monroe, I
would have rushed over!”

Marilyn had about six weeks to spend with Miller and her friends in New
York before her career beckoned her to Great Britain. She visited the Greenes in
Connecticut and was frequently invited to the home of Richard and Dorothy
Rodgers in nearby Fairfield. Richard was half of the partnership of Rodgers and
Hammerstein II, composing music for Hammerstein’s lyrics. The prolific team
revolutionized American musical theater with their successful formula of pairing
a collection of songs with a cohesive, thought-provoking plot. Their string of hit
musicals in the 1940s and ’50s included South Pacific, Oklahoma, Carousel, and
The King and I.
Marilyn and Arthur continued to keep their relationship a secret and confided
in only their closest friends. They avoided being seen together in public, but it
leaked to the press. Miller’s petition for divorce was public knowledge, as well
as the date for Marilyn’s departure for London. The New York Post predicted
their wedding would take place before July 16, and Marilyn’s cover story in
Time alluded to a serious romance with Miller.
Privately, there was talk of marriage but no formal proposal. Eager to adopt
Miller’s faith and culture in preparation for building a family together, Marilyn
wished to convert to the Jewish religion. The couple contacted Rabbi Robert E.
Goldberg, a progressive Reform rabbi at Congregation Mishkan Israel in New
Haven, who met with Marilyn for numerous sessions of religious instruction and
assigned her a reading list, including The Five Books of Jewish Law.
Miller expected to be a free man on Monday, June 11, the date of his divorce
hearing in Washoe County Courthouse in downtown Reno. Reporters found him
at Pyramid Lake, where an employee of the motel overheard him talking
regularly to a whispery-voiced Mrs. Leslie in telephone conversations that lasted
two hours. During their discreet courtship, Marilyn and Miller used the
pseudonyms “Mr. and Mrs. Leslie,” borrowed from Vina Delmar’s 1950 novel,
About Mrs. Leslie, about a nightclub singer who lives with her lover, a married
industrialist, as man and wife six weeks each year.
Back home in her apartment on Sutton Place, Marilyn devoured the books on
Rabbi Goldberg’s reading list while she waited for Miller to return to New York
to secretly marry her and accompany her to England for a combined honeymoon
and film production. The passport Marilyn used to travel to Japan in 1954
remained active, while Miller applied to the State Department for one. An
application he had submitted to travel to Belgium in March 1954 had been
rejected. The current application was pending because the state department
required him to respond in an affidavit to disparaging information related to his
risk to national security.
Miller’s application for a passport couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
The HUAC had opened hearings investigating the fraudulent procurement and
misuse of American passports by those involved in a Communist conspiracy. On
June 8, Miller was served with a subpoena ordering him to appear before the
HUAC in Washington on June 14 to respond to questions related to alleged
Communist Party affiliation. Miller, whose recent work protested the HUAC’s
investigations, would now be ordered to answer questions related to the actual
purpose of his trip to England. Unaware of his benign plans to marry and
accompany his wife for an overseas motion picture production, some committee
members suspected Miller’s motive for travel abroad would threaten national
security.
The subpoena threw Marilyn’s life in turmoil. Miller’s six weeks of residency
in Nevada wouldn’t end until June 11. Would there be enough time for him to
prepare with attorney Joe Rauh for the hearing scheduled in Washington three
days later? If he were to leave Nevada before establishing residency, he would
be denied the divorce and would be unable to marry Marilyn. If the State
Department were to deny Miller’s application for a passport, he would be unable
to accompany Marilyn to England. Based upon the content of Miller’s testimony,
he could also be held in contempt and jailed. If jailed or prohibited from
traveling overseas, could Marilyn emotionally fulfill her professional and
financial obligation to the production without the presence of the man to whom
she turned for stability and strength?
The HUAC granted Miller an extension to June 21. Its chairman, Francis E.
Walter, informed Joseph Rauh that he would be inclined to cancel the hearing if
Marilyn consented to having a picture taken shaking his hand. Neither she nor
Miller would compromise. The State of Nevada granted Miller the divorce.
Rather than provide Mary with a fixed alimony amount, the financial settlement
guaranteed a percentage of Miller’s income until she remarried, and ownership
of the restored carriage house in Brooklyn Heights. Miller retained the frame
home in Connecticut. Upon his arrival at the airport in New York, the press
bombarded Miller with questions about his relationship with Marilyn and
whether he intended to write a play for her.
Miller was undoubtedly nervous about the next hurdle to jump. His intention
of traveling to England had no connection to furthering a Communist agenda,
but he may have been hiding a skeleton in the closet. Decades later, it was
alleged that not only did Miller attend meetings facilitated by Communist
writers, but he also wrote leftist articles under the nom de plume, Matt Wayne, in
New Masses, a Marxist publication.
African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson (1898-1976) had recently
appeared before the HUAC, and the outcome only added to Miller’s anxiety.
After a famously uncooperative testimony during which Robeson exercised the
Fifth Amendment privilege under the U.S. Constitution to refrain from
incriminating oneself; he was damned by a unanimous vote to hold him in
contempt. Miller would soon be sitting in the same chair as Robeson, following
this disturbing precedent. He would need to appear cooperative and rely less
upon the Fifth Amendment. To Miller’s advantage, he had only supported some
leftist causes and attended a handful of meetings held by Communist writers a
decade ago. Now at age forty, he firmly believed in democracy and loved his
country. Miller’s strategy would be to admit under oath his association with
Communist groups but to refuse to identify others who attended the meetings.
Joe Rauh advised Miller to be forthcoming with the HUAC and answer all
questions related directly to him. When pressed to identify others, rather than
“plead the Fifth,” Miller bravely asserted that his conscience would not permit
him to comply with this demand. Based upon the precedent of favorable
newspaper headlines announcing playwright Lillian Hellman’s testimony that
helped to exonerate her in 1952, Rauh counseled Miller that the tone of the
newspaper headlines the day following his testimony would impact the
committee’s action. Would the headlines announce that he pled the Fifth
Amendment or that his good conscience guided him to withhold the names of
others? With this tactic in mind, Rauh helped Miller prepare a testimony that
highlighted his good conscience, peppered with tidbits about his great love for
Marilyn Monroe.
Up to this point, Miller had made no public statement about the depth of his
relationship with Marilyn or his plan to marry her. Within the context of his legal
woes, Miller announced his marriage plans with the full intent to turn the media
focus from his political life to his personal life. Marilyn provided this escape at
the risk to her reputation. Miller’s association with her could only enhance his
reputation; however, Marilyn’s association to him could ruin her career forever.
Miller had everything to gain; Marilyn had everything to lose.
Blacklisting had cost Paula Strasberg her career on the stage and left her no
other option than to teach the skills she was prohibited from executing. She
believed Marilyn was on the verge of becoming a great actress of the screen and
had a future on the stage. With motherly concern and the pain of having lost her
career as an actress, Paula warned Marilyn of the danger of her continued
romantic association with Miller. An unrelenting Marilyn remained fiercely loyal
to the man she loved.
The executives at Twentieth Century-Fox were equally distressed about
Marilyn’s future. Marilyn was their number one star. Fearing her marriage to a
suspected Communist would result in the boycotting of her films and the
eventual demise of her career, the studio’s president, Spyros Skouras, called on
the couple at Marilyn’s apartment in an attempt to convince Miller to cooperate
with the HUAC as Kazan had done four years ago. Skouras smothered Marilyn
with embraces and expressed his love for her as a surrogate daughter, but Miller
would not budge.
Aside from Miller’s legal tribulations, his finances were a mess. His recent
plays had not been commercially successful. He owed Mary Slattery alimony
and child support and faced a possible jail sentence. Legal fees mounted, and a
possible appeal would only incur more. Fully aware of her role as primary
breadwinner, Marilyn modified her will and bequeathed to Miller the majority of
her estate. Against the advice of Irving Stein, she refused a prenuptial agreement
and even considered MMP acquiring the film rights of Miller’s plays or bringing
him into her corporation. The couple’s financial future was riding on Miller’s
testimony.
On June 20, Marilyn and Augusta accompanied Miller to Penn Station, where
he boarded a train to Washington. Miller’s mother coped with the gravity of the
situation by retreating into denial and talking about Marilyn’s clothes. From the
train window, Miller waved to the two most important women in his life, who
stood arm in arm on the platform. Marilyn held the collar of her mink against her
cheek in disguise.
In the Caucus Room in the Old House Office Building on Washington Hill,
Miller sat at a table flanked by attorneys Joe Rauh and Lloyd Garrison and faced
Chairman Francis E. Walter, Chief Interrogator Richard Arens, and other
members of the committee. Miller’s testimony sounded straight from the mouth
of his character John Proctor in The Crucible. “I could not use the name of
another person and bring trouble on him,” he stated under oath. “These were
writers, poets, as far as I could see, and the life of a writer, despite what it
sometimes seems, is pretty tough. I wouldn’t make it any tougher for anybody. I
ask you not to ask me that question. I will tell you anything about myself, as I
have.”
In the end, Miller asserted his belief that if communism took over the United
States, “disaster and calamity” would fall. Chairman Walter called Miller’s
refusal to name those who attended Communist gatherings with him “very
unfortunate.” Acknowledging the possibility of serious consequences for doing
so, Miller stated, “It was a great error.”
At recess, Miller spoke with reporters who asked about the purpose of his
application for a passport for travel abroad. “The objective is double,” he said. “I
have a production which is in the talking stage in England…and I will be there
to be with the woman who will then be my wife.” Everyone knew the woman
was Marilyn Monroe. He said they would marry sometime before June 13.
Marilyn heard the interview on the radio in New York and immediately
called Norman Rosten. “Arthur told the entire world he is going to marry me!”
she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it! He never asked me, though.”
To Amy Greene and Rupert Allan, Marilyn’s tone was less excited in the
absence of a proper proposal. She sarcastically wisecracked that it was nice of
Miller to alert her of his plans for the rest of her life. Fully aware of Marilyn’s
deep love for Miller, Allan suspected the playwright was using her for his own
gain. During this period, Truman Capote wrote a letter to Cecil Beaton with his
cynical commentary on the couple: “By the time you get this, Marilyn M. will
have married Arthur Miller. Saw them the other night, both looking suffused with
a sexual glow; but can’t help feeling this little episode is called: ‘Death of a
Playwright.’ ”
While Miller testified, reporters kept an all-day vigil outside Marilyn’s
apartment building. Inside, she strategized a way to rescue her fiancé by swaying
public opinion and mitigating condemnation by certain members of the press.
Accepting a phone call from Communist-hating gossip columnist Hedda Hopper,
Marilyn untruthfully announced that her wedding might take place at the home
of Spyros Skouras, alluding Twentieth Century-Fox’s support of Miller.
Marilyn attended a session with Dr. Hohenberg later in the day and attempted
to evade the press once again by sneaking back into her building through the side
service entrance she had successfully used only a few hours earlier.
Photographers snapped pictures of her in a disheveled state with unwashed hair
and no makeup. Embarrassed, Marilyn covered her face with her hand and
pleaded, “Leave me alone, fellas, I’m a mess.” Back in her apartment on the
eighth floor, she arranged for a formal press conference in the hallway outside
her apartment later in the afternoon.
At the appointed time, Marilyn’s apartment door opened. With Lois Weber at
her side, Marilyn appeared in a black dress with a scoop neckline and a sweater
draped over her shoulders. Reporters engulfed her, extending microphones into
her personal space. “I’m very happy about my forthcoming marriage,” she said.
“I’m marrying between now and the July 13. I don’t know where and I don’t
know the exact date. We’ve been making plans. But nothing definite about the
time or the place.”
“When are you planning to have some children?” a female reporter queried.
“Well,” Marilyn said, “I’m not married yet, dear.” Everyone laughed.
“What was it in particular about Mr. Miller that attracted you?” a male
reporter asked.
“Everything…” Marilyn gushed. “Have you seen him?” More laughter
ensued.
The next day, Miller and Marilyn scheduled an afternoon press conference on
the sidewalk in front of her building, as he would be back in the city. A dozen
police officers kept order as the press assembled at the intersection of Sutton
Place and East Fifty-Seventh Street, throngs of bystanders spilled into the
streets, and neighbors opened their windows to watch the spectacle. An ice
cream truck parked on the curb and did business in the sweltering heat. Marilyn
contributed to the anticipation by keeping the crowd waiting for over an hour.
Finally, the couple emerged hand in hand from the front doors. Wearing a
pink tailored shirt, black skirt, and a black belt, Marilyn held a pair of white
gloves and nuzzled Miller. He looked dashing in a suit and tie. “I’ve never been
happier in my life,” Marilyn said, looking adoringly up at her fiancé. Reporters
asked if Marilyn would go to England alone if Miller was refused a passport.
“I’ve got to go whether he can or not,” she said. “I hope he’ll go with me.”
Marilyn leaned hard against Miller as if he were her pillar and protection. In fact,
she was protecting him before the press.
“You better stop that,” Miller whispered to Marilyn with a smile, “…if you
lean too hard, I’m going to fall over.”
This brilliant scheme to attract media attention distracted the nation from
reports of Miller’s testimony and created public sympathy for the star-struck
lovers. Everyone loves a celebrity wedding. In effect, America’s sweetheart was
publicly endorsing Miller. He could not be perceived as a Communist or a threat
to national security if all-American Marilyn Monroe loved him and chose him as
her mate.
With the divorce finalized and the public announcement of the wedding,
Miller brought Marilyn to meet his parents, Isidore and Augusta Gittel “Gussie”
Miller, at their home at 1350 East Third Street in Flatbush. Isidore, age seventy-
one, had emigrated from Poland at age six; Augusta, age sixty-four, was a first-
generation American. When Marilyn asked Augusta if she could call her mother,
the elderly woman cried. “For the first time in my life,” Marilyn said, “I have
somebody I can call father and mother.”
Although Miller identified as an atheist, he had been raised in the Jewish
culture and had integrated its morality and ethics into his belief system. Eager to
adapt to his world, Marilyn learned from Augusta to make gefilte fish, potato
knodel, and borscht. When Isidore sat in his easy chair after dinner, Marilyn
slipped a footstool under his feet. After awaking from a short nap, he discovered
her untying his shoelaces and taking off his shoes. “Nothing is too good for you,
Dad,” Marilyn said.
“Until recently, I took my family for granted,” Miller said at the time. “But
Marilyn never had one, and she made me appreciate what that means. When you
see how much a family matters to her and you understand the depth of that
feeling, you have to be an ox not to respond.”
Miller’s sister, Joan, had never seen her stoic brother look so happy and
carefree. Marilyn watched and listened to Miller as if he were the only person in
the world. She made him laugh and act giddy, and in the company of family and
friends, the couple cuddled up entwined together like a Hindu sculpture, and
couldn’t keep their hands off of each other.
Marilyn formally presented her fiancé to the Strasbergs in the absence of a
biological family. They were already aware of the relationship and had him met
through Kazan. Unlike Marilyn and his sister, Joan, who idolized Lee as a guru,
Miller considered him a fraud. Recognizing Marilyn’s dependency on Lee and
the comfort he afforded her, Miller avoided lambasting him.
Miller found Paula unintelligent and believed Marilyn tolerated her confusing
advice because she represented Lee, who remained idealized by his
unavailability. Marilyn confessed feeling emotionally detached to Paula while
being simultaneously dependent upon her. “[She] in effect was the mad mother
all over again, and irresistible even when Marilyn could see through her to her
overweening ambition,” Miller wrote of Paula. She functioned as a fantasy
mother who validated anything Marilyn wanted to believe.
On Sunday, June 24, Miller left Sutton Place in Marilyn’s Thunderbird and
parked a mile away on York Avenue. Shortly thereafter, Marilyn left the
apartment carrying a suitcase and a straw picnic basket, and entered a yellow
checkered cab. The press had camped overnight in front of her building, and
they followed her to a rendezvous point on York Avenue, where she was
photographed exiting the cab and getting into the Thunderbird.
Tailed by the press, Miller and Marilyn left Manhattan and drove two hours
north to his house in rural Roxbury, Connecticut. Miller had purchased the two-
story, white frame house with batten shutters on twenty-six acres at the
intersection of Old Tophet and Goldmine Roads in rural Litchfield County in
1947. His cousin, Morton, owned a house in close proximity and the two men
thought of themselves as the only Jewish residents of the town. With his own
hands, Miller had built a small studio on the property, where he wrote Death of a
Salesman in six weeks’ time.
Privacy was of greater concern in Roxbury, where Miller had a four-family
party telephone line. In the modern era of cell phones, it is hard to image that in
1950s rural America, multiple households customarily shared landlines.
Carefully guarded from the press, the wedding was planned for Sunday, July 1.
However, a few days before the ceremony, the press arrived en masse to the
bucolic town. Paparazzi filmed the couple through the hedges with telephoto
lenses. In jeans, a white sleeveless blouse, moccasins, and sunglasses, Marilyn
frolicked on the property with Hugo while Miller smoked a pipe on the porch. To
placate the press photographers, the couple posed on the lawn with the dog.
In his naïveté, Miller announced that he and Marilyn would make a formal
statement about the wedding to the press and would cooperate with
photographers at his home on Friday, June 29. He expected this offer for an
exclusive would satisfy their demands, send the reporters back to the city with
material to publish or broadcast, and guarantee a quiet and clandestine wedding
ceremony later that weekend.
Miller called Lois Weber and requested that she come to Roxbury on Friday
to assist him with the few reporters he expected to attend the press conference.
The publicist imagined photographers hanging from tree limbs and helicopters
encircling the property from above, and took command. She called the home
office, and Arthur Jacobs and John Springer arranged the details of the press
conference.
During the week, Miller’s family started arriving for the wedding. Isidore and
Augusta Miller came from Brooklyn and Miller’s children came from a summer
camp in Massachusetts. Cousin Morton transported the vials filled with blood to
a laboratory in Hartford to expedite the tests required for the marriage license. A
few days later, Milton sent Kitty and Clyde, the domestic couple who worked for
him, back to Hartford for the results.
On Friday morning, while Marilyn and Arthur drove to the town of
Lewisboro in South Salem to obtain the marriage license, over four hundred
reporters and photographers descended on Miller’s vast front lawn. Countless
cars and vans lined the sides of the two tree-lined intersecting roads in front of
his property. To avoid the press, the couple went to the nearby home of Cousin
Morton and his wife, Florence, along with Isidore an Augusta, for a luncheon.

Years after Miller had sold the house he bought in 1947 and moved to a
neighboring property, divorced Marilyn, and remarried, he watched the gradual
death of a large tree in a bend of Goldmine Road. The tree eventually succumbed
to a wound caused when a Chevrolet sedan crashed into it on the day he married
Marilyn. Miller spent the rest of his life in a house nearby, and the tree remained
a constant, disturbing reminder of a fatal automobile accident that had clouded
what should have been an entirely happy event. The tree rotted and finally
toppled over, and Miller wrote in his memoir that the remaining stump reminded
him of the tragedy whenever he drove past.
Mara Scherbatoff, head of the New York bureau of Paris Match and a
Russian princess, lost her life in pursuit of the celebrated couple in a tragic
circumstance that mirrored the death of Princess Diana of Wales in 1997.
Pursued at high speed by paparazzi on motor scooters, the Princess’ chauffeur
lost control of a Mercedes-Benz sedan and smashed into a pillar that supported
the roof of the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris, killing the Princess, her royal
fiancé, and their driver.
Forty year earlier, another royal, employed as a journalist, died in a similar
paparazzi feeding frenzy. Upon learning of Marilyn and Miller dining at
Morton’s house, Scherbatoff and Ira Slade rushed from Miller’s lawn, where
they awaited the couple’s return, to the scene. Paul Slade remained behind to set
up his camera while his brother got behind the wheel and sped down the road.
Marilyn and Miller exited the house with Morton, who drove them in his
green Oldsmobile station wagon the short distance back to Arthur’s home. As Ira
followed in pursuit, Morton pressed his foot on the accelerator and raced down
the winding lane. He smoothly navigated a difficult turn on Goldmine Road,
well known to the local residents. However, the youthful driver of the reporter’s
car took the unfamiliar turn at full speed, lost control, and smashed head-on into
the massive tree. In the passenger seat, Scherbatoff either smashed against the
windshield or ejected halfway through it.
Morton stopped his car, and the three rushed to the scene of the accident.
Scherbatoff’s face was slashed from lip to forehead, some of her teeth were
missing, and blood gushed from a severed artery in her neck. According to some
reports, Marilyn helped Arthur and Morton carry her from the mangled wreck to
the ground, blood spraying on Marilyn’s yellow sweater. Hearing the sound of
the impact from Miller’s house, Paul Slade ran to the scene and applied pressure
to Scherbatoff’s neck in an attempt to staunch the profuse flow of blood. Other
photographers and newsmen arrived and filmed horrific close shots of the
accident scene and its victims. Morton retrieved a blanket from the back of his
station wagon and covered Scherbatoff, who had gone into shock.
Miller and Marilyn ran on foot to their home, with Morton following. Miller
called for help and learned the closest hospital was in New Milford. An
ambulance would take hours to reach the scene. Frantic, Miller erroneously
stated the injured woman was Marilyn Monroe, and the story made front-page
news. Morton stayed outside with the press and recounted the dreadful
experience while fighting back tears.
Miller’s memory of the event seems distorted when compared to other
eyewitness accounts and news articles. In Timebends, he writes of driving home
with Marilyn and observing a Chevrolet “mangled” around a tree about a quarter
mile from the house. He stopped the car and approached the accident, finding
Scherbatoff stretched across the front seat with her neck visibly broken. Miller
believed the unfortunate reporter had hitched a ride with a photographer and
mistook another car for his. The photographer raced off in pursuit, failed to
navigate a sharp turn, and smashed into the tree. It seemed to Miller a
“pointless” death, and one that foreboded tragedy for him and Marilyn.
After the ambulance hurried Scherbatoff to New Milford Hospital, a shaken
Marilyn changed into a beige blouse and black skirt to appear before the news
cameras. Despite the heat, Miller pulled a V-neck sweater over his white shirt. At
four o’clock, they emerged from the house and stood solemnly in position under
a maple tree in front of a cluster of microphones, ready to face the press.
In the raw news footage, Marilyn appears highly disturbed by the accident.
She whispers at length in Milton’s ear, covering her mouth with her hand. A lead
reporter asks Miller if he wants to be questioned or would rather make a
statement about the accident. Anxiously pacing, Marilyn whines, “Somebody
should question you.” Miller lights a cigarette to steady his nerves.
“Who’s going to ask the questions?” Marilyn asks, growing impatient. The
lead reporter explains it will be him. “Alright…fine,” she says with agitation.
Once the interview begins, she appears serene, if not dazed, standing beside her
fiancé as he addresses the assembly.
“We just had a terrible accident on this road as a result of the mobs that have
been coming by here,” Miller begins. “I knew this was going to happen, at least I
suspected it was because these roads were made for horse carts and not for
automobiles, and people who don’t know them often times smash up around
here, and I asked the press to assemble all at once today so that the pictures
could be taken that were wanted in the hope that this can be avoided every day
of the week.” The lead reporter presses Miller to disclose the date and location
of the wedding. “I am not going to say where we will get married because it’s
time enough for everybody to know when it happens,” Miller asserts, “and it will
leave us with a little bit of peace until it happens.”
Marilyn gently dusts a leaf from his shoulder with her hand and leans her
head on his shoulder. The reporter asks if she will continue her career. “Well,
that depends…” she says pensively, “probably so.” The line of questioning
reverts to the type of wedding she has planned. Marilyn’s face brightens with a
smile, and she responds, “Very quiet, I hope.”
Miller refuses to answer questions pertaining to the legal case and redirects
the reporters to the court record. A reporter reflects that if Miller is not issued a
passport, the couple might not have a honeymoon. “I think we will,” he says.
“I hope so,” Marilyn adds. With the inquisition ended, they pose for
photographers under the tree. Miller wraps his arm around Marilyn’s shoulder.
Marilyn wraps her arms around his waist and rests her head on his shoulder.
Isidore and Augusta Miller join, and the foursome lock arms for photographs
and newsreel photographers. Marilyn smiles and cuddles between her future in-
laws, and Arthur stands next to his mother.
When the newsreel cameras silenced and the flashbulbs stopped popping,
news came that Mara Scherbatoff had died on the operating table. Becoming
hysterical, Marilyn blamed herself for the accident and called the tragic incident
a bad omen. Revolted by the media spectacle having cost a reporter her life,
Miller decided to end the media’s stalking by getting married immediately as a
decoy for the religious ceremony planned on Sunday. Attorney Samuel Slavitt, a
friend of Arthur’s, organized a civil wedding in a matter of hours in his
hometown of White Plains, New York. He obtained a waiver of the twenty-four
hour waiting period between the license and ceremony and called upon a friend
to perform the nuptials.
With a wedding ring borrowed from his mother, Miller drove with Marilyn
sixty-two miles southeast to the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains,
New York, for an impromptu civil wedding ceremony in Slavitt’s office. Marilyn
wore a white shell blouse, skirt, and a sweater draped over her shoulders. Miller
simply threw a blue suit jacket over his shirt and sweater and dispensed with a
tie.
At 7:21 in the evening, Judge Seymour Robinowitz delayed his own wedding
anniversary celebration and pronounced them husband and wife in a single-ring
ceremony that lasted less than five minutes. Morton was best man, and his wife,
Florence, was matron of honor. The bride and groom posed for Milton’s camera
against the backdrop of bookcases filled with legal volumes as the guests toasted
them with champagne. Accepting a glass, the judge’s wife smiled and patiently
waited for the celebration to end so that hers could begin. When the toasts and
well wishes concluded, the newlyweds got into the black Thunderbird and
arrived home to Roxbury by 9:30 PM.
The morning headline in Variety proclaimed, “Egghead Weds Hourglass.” In
the early afternoon, Miller backed the Thunderbird out of the garage, and his
new wife got in the passenger seat carrying a large basket. With the top down,
they drove off for a picnic lunch. Marilyn waved joyously to the photographers,
who had camped overnight in their cars awaiting the couple’s next move.
The Jewish wedding ceremony took place on Sunday, July 1 at the modest
summer home of Robert and Kay Barrett in Waccabuc, New York, near Katonah.
Kay Brown Barrett (1902-1995) had been Miller’s literary agent and friend for
years. As a Hollywood talent scout, she had convinced David O. Selznick to
acquire the film rights to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. In later years,
she also represented Lillian Hellman and Isak Dinesen.
At the suggestion of Richard Rodger’s wife, Dorothy, beige orchids arrived
early in the morning from a nursery in Malibu, California, owned by MGM
producer, Arthur Freed. Cartier’s had delivered the gold wedding bands the
previous day. Marilyn’s was engraved, “A to M,” and Arthur’s, “M to A.” Both
were engraved, “June 1956. Now is forever.”
Early in the day, Marilyn converted to Judaism in the presence of Miller’s
family and a small group of her friends in a two-hour session with Rabbi Robert
E. Goldberg. As a gift to mark the conversion, Miller’s parents gave her a
musical menorah that played “Hatikvah,” the national anthem of Israel. Friends
were bewildered but touched by Marilyn’s earnest desire to adopt the Jewish
faith, as Miller was not Jewish Orthodox and did not actively practice his faith.
She desired to belong to a family and become a member of his. Moreover, most
of Marilyn’s friends were Jewish and she identified with the oppression of Jews.
Goldberg’s letters to a mentor were published in Reform Judaism magazine
in 2010 and recounted the seriousness of Marilyn’s intention. “She indicated that
she was impressed with the rationalism of Judaism — its ethical and prophetic
ideals and its concept of close family life,” Goldberg wrote. Marilyn confided in
him her negative feelings toward Christianity and enormous respect and
admiration for intellectuals such as Albert Einstein, who represented for her “the
great scientist-humanist-Jew-Socialist-dissenter.”
In a brief version of the conversion ritual, Rabbi Goldberg smiled at her and
said, “Repeat after me.” Together they spoke the ancient words: “I do herewith
declare in the presence of God and the witnesses here assembled that I seek the
fellowship of Israel.” The Rabbi took Marilyn’s hand and solemnly bestowed
upon her a name chosen from the Bible. “With this name as token you are now a
member of the household of Israel and have assumed all its rights, privileges and
responsibilities,” he said with his hand placed on her head. The previous
evening, Marilyn had married Arthur as a shiksa, but today she would remarry
him as a Jewess.
“Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher,” Oscar Levant commented on his radio
program. “Arthur Miller can eat her.” He was immediately thrown off the air.
Thirty guests gathered in the living room of the Barretts’ converted
farmhouse. They included Arthur’s parents; his children; his brother, Kermit;
sister, Joan; cousin, Morton; their spouses and Kermit’s young son, Ross;
Arthur’s aunt, Blanche Neubardt; her son and his wife; Milton and Amy Greene;
Milton’s mother; the Strasbergs; the Rostens; agent Jay Kantor and his wife,
Judy; Marilyn’s decorator and dress designer, John Moore; and screen-writer,
George Axelrod.
The day before the wedding ceremony, Marilyn had sat down privately with
Amy. “You’re a secure woman,” Marilyn said. “Would you mind terribly if I
asked Hedda to be my matron of honor? I know it would mean the world to her.”
Aware of Marilyn’s warm nature and propensity for supporting the underdog and
befriending the friendless, Amy assured her there would be no hard feelings.
This was typical of Marilyn; if someone didn’t like a statue, Marilyn liked the
“poor” statue because no one else did. Kermit replaced Norman as best man.
 In the master bedroom, Amy and Hedda attended to Marilyn on her wedding
day. John Moore had designed her elegant beige chiffon empire style dress with
elbow length sleeves, ruched bodice, and integrated belt. As hers was not yet
finished, Marilyn borrowed Amy’s shoulder-length veil and dyed it with either
tea or coffee — depending upon the source — in a large pan on the stove. Milton
went to the bedroom to take pictures and noticed Marilyn’s trepidation. He took
her off to the side. “You haven’t smiled all day,” he said. “Do you really want to
go along with the wedding?”
“What the hell,” Marilyn responded. “I invited all these people, so I’ll do it.”
By the time Norman Rosten wished Marilyn well, she seemed confident with
her decision. He jokingly asked how she could marry a man with glasses and
crooked teeth. “Oh, he’s beautiful,” she said. In a black suit with a flower pinned
to his lapel, Miller waited for his bride in front of the marble fireplace next to
Rabbi Goldberg. At six foot one and 160 pounds, Miller was not universally
perceived as beautiful; a handsome Abraham Lincoln without facial hair might
be a more accurate description of Arthur Miller at age forty.
In the role of surrogate father, Lee Strasberg walked Marilyn down the aisle
and gave her away. Under the chuppah, or wedding canopy symbolizing the new
home the couple would build together, Miller and Marilyn exchanged vows and
rings. Miller drank wine from a glass goblet. Marilyn lifted her veil, he placed
the rim of the glass to her lips and she sipped the wine. Miller wrapped the
goblet in a white handkerchief, placed it on the floor, and crushed it under his
right shoe in the Jewish ritual in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem. The
guests shouted, “Mazel tov!” In the receiving line, Axelrod congratulated the
bride and groom by wishing that their children would have Arthur’s looks and
Marilyn’s brains. Norman Rosten reflected upon the day as seeming like the
happy ending of a fairy tale, the prince having rescued the princess.
The casual reception took place outside on the flagstone terrace, where the
guests sat at long banquet tables and feasted on cold lobster, roast beef, turkey,
and champagne. The sweltering summer heat caused the men to hang their suit
jackets on the open casement windows. In Milton’s home movies and
photographs, the bride looks effervescent as she joyously greets her guests on the
terrace and plays with her veil; the groom appears uncharacteristically jovial and
openly displays affection toward her.
Marilyn hand-fed Miller a piece of the two tier wedding cake baked by either
the Greenes’ cook, Kitty, or Louis Sherry of New York, depending upon the
version of the day — Amy’s or Life magazine’s. Milton’s exclusive wedding
photographs appeared in the July 16 issue of Life. On the back of one of the
portraits Marilyn chose to frame, she wrote, “Hope, hope, hope.”
For the purpose of selling property, the newlyweds exploited the fame they
had been evading the previous week in a classified ad in the Monday morning
edition of the Herald Tribune: “Playwright and movie star’s hideout, 7 rooms, 3
baths, swimming pool, tennis court, terrace, two-car garage, small studio. 4
acres. $29,500 ($38,500 with 26 acres).” The house was quickly sold for
$27,500, and the couple deposited the remainder after settling the mortgage for
the purchase of a neighboring property, which they would occupy after they
returned from England. At Marilyn’s insistence, they retained the remaining
twenty-six acres as an investment.
Marilyn and Miller would now have a fresh start in a new home with no
reminder of his former marriage. No longer would Marilyn have to sleep in the
master bedroom where her husband had slept with Mary Slattery, but the sale of
the house did not stop Marilyn from holding herself solely responsible for
breaking up her husband’s first marriage and disrupting the lives of his children.
Even Mary Slattery had avowed that Marilyn had not ended her marriage, and
Miller tried to assure his new bride that his first marriage had died long before
they reunited in New York. Less than a week after the wedding, the State
Department issued Miller a temporary passport. Three days later, members of the
HUAC unanimously agreed to cite him for contempt.
Meanwhile, Marilyn and Milton focused on their film production, The
Sleeping Prince. They visited hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff at his home and
experimented with Edwardian era hairstyles. In photographic sessions, Marilyn
posed embracing his reproduction of “Discobolus,” the life-size bronze Grecian
sculpture of a discus thrower. In the early conceptual stages of creating the
character of Elsie Mariner, Milton shot portraits of Marilyn in formal hairstyles,
some including a tiara. Having never graduated from high school, Marilyn
lacked a traditional graduation portrait, and Milton provided her with a definitive
and romanticized one during the session. Her dreamy expression channeled a
seventeen-year-old Norma Jeane Baker.
Thirteen years earlier, Norma Jeane Baker had survived the atrocities of
sexual and physical abuse through her own resilience and resourcefulness. She
began her adult life depending on others, beginning with her arranged marriage
to Jim Dougherty, the neighbor of her legal guardian, but slowly realized she
didn’t need a man to protect and shelter her from the world. In 1956, as Marilyn
Monroe, she was a strong, independent woman who filled theaters across the
world, sold magazines and calendars, and inspired young girls so that they, too,
could survive. She was the neglected child of a mentally ill mother, the
abandoned daughter of a rejecting father, and the uneducated, struggling model
who posed nude in order to pay rent. When an accountant advised Marilyn on
strategies to avoid high taxes and save money, she told him money was the last
thing on her mind. “I don’t know about that,” she said, “I only know I want to be
wonderful.”
Sometime after leaving the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home, Norma Jeane Baker
decided she would not be a victim. She mustered strength and ambition to make
it as someone wonderful. If the casting agents and studio executives thought she
was a talentless beauty, she intended to prove them wrong. If her former,
emotionally abusive boyfriend, Fred Karger, believed she was unworthy of being
a good wife, she would prove him wrong, too. When her second husband — the
baseball hero — tried to control and possess her, she bolted to the East Coast and
established a corporation. As the queen of Hollywood and the wife of the
nation’s respected and leading playwright, Marilyn planned to produce her own
film and star opposite an eminent actor of the British stage and screen. She had,
indeed, become wonderful.
Appendix
 Selected Marilyn Monroe Film Synopses (1950-1956)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

When career criminal Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden) is released from police
custody, an eyewitness is unable to positively identify him as the perpetrator of a
robbery. Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire) has been investigating him for a
series of similar crimes and blasts Lieutenant Ditrich (Barry Kelley) for
incompetent detective work. When Doll (Jean Hagen), a lonely waitress, visits
Dix, he tells her of his desire to go straight and return to his family’s farm in
Kentucky.
Meanwhile, dangerous criminal Doc Riedenschneider (Dam Jaffe) is released
from prison and immediately plans a jewel heist with gambling bookie, Cobby
(Marc Lawrence), financed by a wealthy attorney Alonzo D. Emmerich (Louis
Calhern). They conspire with a group of small-time crooks — including Dix —
to execute the robbery. Doc grows suspicious of Emmerich and orders Dix to
ensure payment. When the vault containing the jewels is opened, alarms sound
and the safecracker is shot during Dix’s struggle with a responding armed guard.
Emmerich confides to Brannom (Brad Dexter), his bodyguard, that he is
broke and unable to pay for the jewels, and they conspire to double-cross Doc
and Cobby. Dix and his partners return the fatally wounded safecracker to his
home, where he dies in the arms of his wife. Afterward, Dix and Doc deliver the
jewels to Emmerich, and Brannom confronts them with a gun. Dix kills
Brannom and is wounded by a bullet in the process. Emmerich disposes of
Brannom’s body in a river.
Dix bolts to Doll and refuses medical treatment for his injury. Police recover
Brannom’s body and discover Emmerich’s stationery in his pocket. Emmerich’s
mistress, Angela (Monroe), provides his alibi but Ditrich, a crooked cop, coerces
Cobby to confess to the entire plot. When the Commissioner forces the truth
from Angela, Emmerich commits suicide with a gun. Doll helps Dix escape to
his family farm in Kentucky, where he dies in the pasture.

Clash By Night (1952)

 Worldly but weary Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck) returns home to a small
fishing village after a ten year absence and reunites with her younger brother Joe
(Keith Andes), who works for Jerry (Paul Douglas), the skipper of a trawler who
lives alone with his elderly father (Silvio Minciotti). Mae admits defeat in
having had “big ideas,” but “small results” and laments having made a mistake
by becoming involved with an older man who turned out to be married. Joe
introduces Mae to his girlfriend, Peggy (Monroe), who works at the local sardine
cannery. Peggy admires Mae’s sophistication and confides her own longing for
excitement — as Mae had in youth — and desire not to be controlled by a man.
When Peggy asks what brought Mae back home, Mae responds, “Home is where
you come when you run out of places.”
Mae is flattered by the interest of kind and simple Jerry, who is infatuated
with her. During their first date at a local movie theater, Jerry introduces Mae to
his best friend, projectionist Earl (Robert Ryan). Mae is attracted to the brutish
and cynical Earl, but is offended by his misogynistic rant about his burlesque
dancer wife. Mae and Earl are both hardened and world-weary. Deep down, Mae
desires a man who can make her feel confident and alive — a man like Earl.
Jerry proposes marriage and Mae declines, stating she is not the “wife type,”
but after a drunken flirtation with Earl, she sacrifices a chance at excitement for
the promise of security and agrees to marry Jerry. At the wedding reception, Earl
kisses Mae, but she resists him. Earl storms away. A year passes, and Mae gives
birth to Jerry’s daughter, Gloria. Jerry’s parasitical uncle, Vince (J. Carrol
Naish), complains about Mae being too controlling and accuses Jerry of being
emasculated. Now divorced, Earl arrives drunk and depressed at Mae and Jerry’s
home and blasts a tirade against women and marriage until he passes out in their
living room.
After Jerry leaves for work the next morning, Earl visits Mae and senses
resignation to a dull life with a man for whom she feels no passion and who
questions her about the stability of her marriage. Mae rebuffs his advances at
first, and a joyous Peggy stops by to announce her recent engagement to Joe.
After Peggy rushes off to Joe, since diamonds make her suddenly “punctual,”
Earl seduces Mae. Jerry learns from his vindictive uncle that the townspeople are
gossiping about an affair between Mae and Earl. He angrily forces Vince out of
the house and tries to elicit the truth from his father. Finally, he searches through
Mae’s dresser drawers and discovers perfume and lingerie. Having spent the day
together, Mae and Earl return to the house, and Jerry confronts them. Mae
confesses the affair and hurtfully attributes her actions to boredom and
loneliness.
Deeply wounded, Jerry calls Mae and Earl “animals” and runs off. Earl begs
Mae to leave town with him, but she worries about Jerry’s safety. Later, Mae
finds Jerry at home and tells him that she is in love with Earl and plans to leave
with him. Jerry begs her to stay but becomes agitated again when Mae speaks of
her plan to take Gloria with her.
Jerry pursues Earl in the theater’s projection room and attempts to choke him.
Mae arrives in time to stop him. Jerry pushes her away and regains his
composure. Mae and Earl eventually return to Jerry’s house to collect Gloria, but
discover the baby missing. Jerry’s father condemns Mae and refuses to reveal
where Jerry took Gloria. Mae begins having second thoughts about leaving her
family, but Earl insists that they must leave without the baby. Mae realizes she is
running away from those who love and need her. Earl plans to leave with or
without her so she decides to stay with her husband and child and rushes to the
trawler, where she finds Jerry. She asks for his forgiveness, and he accepts her
apologies, willing to give her a chance to regain his trust. Jerry tells Mae that
Gloria is safely asleep on the bunk.

Don’t Bother To Knock (1952)

Don’t Bother to Knock opens with its main titles superimposed above the
Manhattan skyline, and accompanied by a jazzy score. All the action takes place
in the McKinley Hotel, a residential hotel with a combination of tenants and
visitors from out of town. Jed Tower (Richard Widmark) is a cocky, cynical
airline pilot from Chicago has been dating Lyn Lesley (Anne Bancroft), a singer
in the hotel’s cowboy-themed lounge. Their time together has been limited to the
weekends, when Jed flies into town, and this arrangement no longer satisfies
Lyn. Jed is emotionally detached, with clear intimacy issues, and Lyn doesn’t
appreciate his snarky wise cracks or contemptuous treatment of others. The
audience gets a glimpse of this when Jed interacts with the kind and helpful
elevator operator and the hotel lounge’s female photographer. “You don’t have
what I need,” Lyn tells him during the breakup. “You lack an understanding
heart.”
Upstairs in room 803, Peter and Ruth Jones (Jim Backus and Lurene Tuttle)
prepare for an award ceremony in the hotel’s ballroom, where Mr. Jones will be
receiving a journalism honor. Eddie, the elevator attendant (Elisha Cook, Jr.) has
arranged for his niece, Nell Forbes (Monroe), newly in town from Oregon, to
babysit the Joneses’ young daughter, Bunny (Donna Corcoran).
Nell enters the hotel’s revolving door in a simple cotton dress, low heels, a
black sweater, and a beret. From behind, we see her outfit is wrinkled as if she
had been sitting on the subway for a long time. She meets her Uncle Eddie, who
asks Nell if she anticipates any troubles with babysitting. “Of course not,” she
says with great sadness for his doubt in her ability.
Eddie introduces Nell to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and Bunny, and after a few
simple instructions, the couple leave for the evening. Nell reads Bunny a
fairytale before the child goes to bed, and we catch a glimpse of the babysitter’s
loose grip on reality. She reads the story in a monotone voice as though in a
trance, and seems to insert herself into the fictional story.
Once Bunny is tucked in bed, Nell restlessly wanders the suite. Alone, her
mask is removed, and her expression exudes deep pathos and despondency. She
rifles through Mrs. Jones’ jewelry and clothing and tries on a negligée, earrings,
and a bracelet. In the elegant clothing, Nell begins to transform. The sound of a
propeller airplane catches her attention and draws her to the window. Peeking
between the blinds, she looks up at the sky, and tears stream down her cheek.
Nell returns to Mrs. Jones’ dressing table, applies perfume, and slowly
transforms from an introverted waif to a glamorous woman.
Now that his relationship with Lyn has ended, Jed retires to his room with a
bottle of rye. He turns on the radio intercom on the wall and hears the broadcast
of Lyn singing torch songs downstairs in the lounge (“How About You?,” “We’ll
Take Manhattan,” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo”). Jed pours a drink, lies on the
bed, and throws his little black book of telephone numbers on the floor. When he
glances out the window, he sees Nell in the suite across the courtyard. She is
dressed in Mrs. Jones’ finery and dances in a private moment to the music
broadcast from the lounge. Her beauty transfixes Jed. Nell notices him, and they
converse awkwardly through the windows. Utilizing the hotel’s floor plan posted
on the back of his room’s door, Jed deduces Nell’s room number and calls her
extension. They sit, facing each other through the windows, and talk on the
phone.
“You sound peculiar,” Nell says, the pot calling the kettle black.
Jed replies with a sexual implication, “I’m just frustrated.” She ends the call.
Eddie comes up to the Joneses’ suite to check on Nell and is horrified to see
her in Mrs. Jones’ clothes. During his confrontation, we learn more about Nell’s
dark side. The Joneses are a married couple, she tells her uncle, and “that’s what
you’re supposed to be.” Eddie reveals the death of Nell’s boyfriend. It becomes
apparent that Nell has been using Mrs. Jones’ personal items to experiment with
the role of wife and mother, denied to her by the death of her fiancé. Eddie
assures his niece there will be another man in her life. A disassociated expression
appears on Nell’s face as she connects her uncle’s prediction to the man pursuing
her from across the courtyard.
Once Eddie leaves, Nell signals an invitation to Jed by flipping the Venetian
blinds in the window and turns to stare at the phone, anticipating his response.
Jed promptly calls and asks if he can visit. She passively consents. In preparation
for Jed’s arrival, Nell holds up a mirror and applies lipstick as the camera tilts
down to show scars on both wrists, evidence of past suicide attempts.
Nell entertains Jed in the suite, quickly fabricating explanations for his
inquiries about the monogrammed luggage’s difference from her initial, and
about a pair of men’s shoes visible under the bed. She is stunned to learn Jed is a
pilot, and her fingers trace the scar on her wrist. Nell confuses Jed with her
deceased boyfriend and embraces him for having returned. “You were rescued!”
she cries. “You came back!” Nell’s deluded rambling recounts her boyfriend,
Philip, having died while flying over the Pacific Ocean, and she projects her
passionate feelings for her deceased lover onto Jed.
Bunny unexpectedly enters the room and reveals Nell is her babysitter. “I’m
the electrician,” Jed explains with sarcasm. “I came to fix a fuse.” Nell sends the
child back to bed, and Jed raises concern when he hears her crying in the other
room.
Nell reveals her own background of neglect when she coldly remarks, “If you
don’t pay attention to them, they stop.”
Jed wisecracks about his need to leave before “twins pop out of the closet.”
Unmasked, Nell communicates memories of her repressive and abusive parents.
In high school, she never was allowed to wear a dress or attend a dance. If she
liked a boy, her parents beat her. Jed realizes Nell is a disturbed woman in a
beautiful package and consciously decides not to take advantage of her
vulnerability. Instead, he tries to help her.
Nell checks on Bunny in the bedroom and accuses her of wickedly spying on
her and attempting to put a wedge between her and Jed. With lunacy in her eyes,
Nell asks if the child has a doll at home. Bunny tells her about Josephine, her
baby doll. Nell explains how Bunny would want to get rid of a doll that annoyed
and eavesdropped on her. “Don’t utter a sound,” Nell harshly orders. “Then we’ll
all live happily ever after.”
 Jed goes into the bedroom to comfort Bunny, who had started to cry.
Reassured, the child stands at the open window for fresh air as Nell places a
hand on her back. A sinister expression flashes across Nell’s face, creating
suspense that she might push the child out the window. Jed clutches the child to
him, but the incident is witnessed by Mrs. Ballew (Verna Felton), a nosy resident
of the hotel who watches from her own window across the courtyard. All the
drama with the first girl he has met since losing Lyn prompts Jed to reconcile
with her, but Nell begs him not to leave. “You’re silk on one side,” Jed snaps,
“and sandpaper on the other.” Nell desperately offers to be whatever he wants
and impulsively suggests that they go dancing.
Jed reminds Nell of her responsibility to watch the child and pulls away when
she tries to kiss him. In the struggle, he grabs her wrists and sees the scars. Nell
flinches in defeat and shame. She admits to have slashed her wrists with a razor
upon learning of Philip’s death and admits she had been with him in another
hotel room before he left to war. He promised to marry her. Eddie suddenly
knocks on the door, and Nell hides Jed in the bathroom before permitting her
uncle’s entry. Eddie demands Nell take off Mrs. Jones’ clothing and jewelry and
forcibly wipes the lipstick off her mouth.
“Now stop it, all of you!” Nell shouts with terrifying rage, her eyes wide and
crazed. She reaches for an object to throw at him but gains control. She
compares him to her repressive parents and becomes enraged again, hitting him
over the head with a nearby ashtray. In a trancelike state, Nell goes into Bunny’s
room as Jed comes out of the bathroom to tend to Eddie’s head injury.
Mr. and Mrs. Ballew knock on the door and confront Nell with the suspicious
cry they heard from her window. Eddie persuades Jed to hide in the bathroom,
but as Nell talks with the Ballews, he slips into Bunny’s room and fails to notice
that the child is bound and gaggled. When the Ballews see Jed leave the suite
through a door in the bedroom, they assume that he is an intruder holding Nell
captive. They report their observations to the hotel detective, while a deluded
Nell locks Eddie in the bathroom.
Jed returns to Lyn in the lounge and shares his harrowing experience with the
mentally unstable girl. Lyn is moved by his compassion and transformation.
Suddenly realizing that he saw Bunny on the wrong bed, Jed dashes upstairs to
Nell’s room. Meanwhile, Nell believes the child purposefully drove Jed away
and prepares to hurt her. Ruth arrives to check on Bunny and interrupts the
assault. The two women physically fight until Jed arrives, pulls Nell away, and
throws her to the floor. While Jed helps Ruth unbind Bunny, Nell crawls out of
the suite and escapes. Hearing Eddie’s shouts, Jed releases him from the closet.
When Eddie confesses that Nell had been committed to a mental institution for a
period of three years following her suicide attempt, Jed dashes off to find her.
Nell wanders into the lobby and steals a razor from the hotel’s store. A crowd
gathers around her as she threatens to mutilate herself. Having finished her act,
Lyn crosses the lobby and notices the crowd. Spotting the razor, she recognizes
Nell from Jed’s description.
Lyn gently calls out to Nell and coaxes her to put down the razor. Nell’s eyes
follow the voice calling her name and focus on Lyn’s face. She asks how she
knows her name, and Lyn explains she is a friend of Jed’s. By now, Nell is
completely psychotic and cannot remember him.
Jed intervenes and confiscates the razor. “They told me you were buried at
sea,” Nell says through tears. “I don’t want to harm anybody.” Jed tenderly
convinces her that he is not Philip and that Philip is dead. Lyn witnesses Jed’s
kindness and reconciles with him as police officers intervene. As Nell is escorted
to a hospital, she pathetically tells the couple, “If you just let someone walk
away from you, you’ll never find anyone to take their place.”

We’re Not Married (1952)

Justice of the Peace Melvin Bush (Victor Moore) marries six couples before
the validation of his license, and nearly three years later, discovers the mishap
and sends each couple a letter informing them that their unions are null and void.
Stephen Gladwyn (Fred Allen) and his fiancée Ramona (Ginger Rogers) are
bickering performers at a radio station team who must marry in order to be hired
as the happily married hosts of a morning radio show, Breakfast with the Glad
Gladwyns. Fast-forward two and a half years later, the couple’s overly
affectionately interactions are a mask to their real-life incessant battling.
Although they are thrilled to receive news about the status of their marriage,
their producer reminds them of the contract requiring their marriage in order to
retain their exorbitant weekly salary.
Perpetually wearing a frilly woman’s apron, Jeff Norris (David Wayne)
maintains the house and raises their son while Annabel (Monroe) makes public
appearances, competes in beauty pageants, and meets with prospective sponsors.
He is supportive but inconvenienced by the busy schedule that prevents her from
performing 1950s housewife duties. Jeff is delighted when he reads the letter
about their invalid marriage, hoping Annabel’s unwed status will disqualify her
from married women’s beauty contests and force her to return her to housework.
Jeff smugly reads the letter to Annabel. She appears stunned. “It means…
we’re not married?” she asks. Annabel’s face transforms from apparent dismay
to thrill as she embraces her husband and exclaims, “Darling! How wonderful!”
The new status allows Annabel to qualify for the more prestigious title of Miss
Mississippi and increased sponsorship from local businesses. This twist of fate
also offers Annabel an opportunity to expand her professional goal to the pursuit
of the Miss America title.
Annabel is ultimately crowned winner of the Miss Mississippi Contest, and
Jeff hands his son to another man in audience and uses his fingers to whistle at
her onstage. She blows him kisses. “My fiancé,” Jeff announces with pride to the
man before taking back his son. He tells the child, “Wave to mommy.” The
man’s expression conveys shock over the conclusion that Miss Mississippi had a
child out of wedlock.
The third couple, Kathleen (Eve Arden) and Hector Woodruff (Paul Douglas)
are bored with their married life in the suburbs. Upon learning the news, Hector
fantasizes about philandering with his former girlfriends in nightclubs until he
considers the high cost for dating them and burns the letter before Katie can read
it.
Dallas millionaire Frederick S. Melrose (Louis Calhern) and his younger
foreign wife Eve (Zsa Zsa Gabor) are the fourth couple to receive the letter. Eve
only married Frederick for his money. She arranges for him to be photographed
in a compromising situation in a hotel and blackmails him for a substantial
divorce settlement. When the letter arrives at Frederick’s office while Eve is
making her demands with the assistance of an attorney, he pretends to cooperate
by disclosing all of his assets. After finishing the list, Frederick shows Eve the
letter and she faints.
Navy sailor Willie (Eddie Bracken) and Patsy Fisher (Mitzi Gaynor), the last
couple, exchange farewells at a train station as he is deployed to service. Before
the train pulls out, Patsy announces that she is expecting a baby. Later, upon
reading the letter, Willie goes AWOL and contacts Patsy to meet him so that they
can legally marry. A series of mishaps prevent the ceremony, and Willie is
arrested by the Military Police and thrown into the ship’s brig. A sympathetic
Navy chaplain arranges for the couple to legally exchange vows over the ship-to-
shore radio.
In the end, Jeff and Annabel are legally married in their living room — as
Jeff holds their son — with Annabel’s beauty contest trophies proudly displayed
on the mantel. The remaining couples, with the exception of the Melroses, also
happily remarry.

Monkey Business (1952)

Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn), President of Oxley Chemical Plant, contracts

eccentric scientist Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) to devise a formula to
reverse the aging process. Anxious to sell the formula — already named B-4 in
the advertising campaign — and to restore his youth, elderly Oxley envisions
making a fortune and pursuing his beautiful but inept secretary, Miss Laurel
(Monroe).
Barnaby becomes discouraged when his experiments are ineffective on the
test chimpanzees, Esther and Rudolph. Later, Esther intelligently frees herself
and mixes chemicals, creating an effectual elixir, and just as Barnaby
approaches, she pours the concoction into the water cooler. Afterward, Barnaby
creates his own mixture and drinks it against the advice of his assistant, Dr.
Jerome Kitzel (Henri Letondal). The bitter taste prompts him to drink water from
the cooler.
Suddenly, Barnaby’s aches and pains disappear, and he can see without his
thick-lensed eyeglasses. He impulsively leaves the laboratory and starts acting
like a twenty-year-old by going to a barber and getting a youthful crew-cut, and
wearing a loud, checkered sports coat. When Miss Laurel is sent looking for
Barnaby, he flirts with her and takes her for a high-speed joyride in his newly
purchased convertible sports car. Abounding with boyish energy, Barnaby also
takes Miss Laurel roller-skating and swimming at a community pool. Miss
Laurel gives Barnaby a kiss on the cheek and becomes crushed when she learns
that he is married.
Barnaby returns to the lab and falls asleep. Upon awakening, he discovers
that the effects of the formula are gone. Summoned to the lab because of her
husband’s bizarre behavior, Edwina Fulton (Ginger Rogers) becomes disturbed
by Miss Laurel’s lipstick on her husband’s cheek. “She’s just half-infant,”
Barnaby explains.
“Not the half that’s visible,” Edwina counters. Barnaby describes the effect of
his formula, and Edwina drinks it with a chaser of water from the cooler. She
begins acting like an adolescent jitterbug dancing “bobbysoxer.”
 When Miss Laurel enters the lab, Edwina calls her a “peroxide kissing bug”
and threatens to “pull that blonde hair out by its black roots!” Edwina and
Barnaby rush off to the hotel where they stayed on their honeymoon.
Edwina panics when she is alone in a hotel room with Barnaby and they
begin arguing, so she locks him out. She seeks out her old flame, Hank
Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe), who assumes she is not content in her marriage and
seeks a divorce. Realizing the negative impact of his formula, Barnaby decides
to destroy it.
Recovered and returned to the lab, Edwina uses water from the cooler to
brew a pot of coffee, and after several cups, she and Barnaby regress to the age
of ten. Aware of the effect of the formula, Oxley enlists the board of directors to
offer Barnaby rich compensation for its rights. Behaving like a brat, Barnaby
demands a “zillion” dollars and flees. He leaves and joins some boys in playing
Cowboys and Indians.
Back home, Edwina falls asleep, and a neighbor’s baby crawls into her home.
Upon waking, she mistakenly believes Barnaby has physically regressed to
infancy. She takes the child to the lab and finds Barnaby and his youthful friends
cutting Hank’s hair into a Mohawk. Oxley, the other scientists, and board of
directors are amazed at the apparent effect on Barnaby and wait for the formula’s
effects to wear off.
The men drink water from the cooler, and Oxley orders the removal of the
bitter-tasting water. Barnaby climbs through the laboratory window and reunites
with Edwina. They find Oxley and the other men acting like children. Dr. Kitzel
infers Esther was responsible for discovering the formula for the youth serum.
Oxley chases Miss Laurel with a spray bottle of seltzer.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

As entertainers in matching red sequin gowns and plumed headdresses,

Lorelei (Monroe) and Dorothy (Jane Russell) sing “Two Little Girls from Little
Rock.” The lyrics define them as poor girls from the wrong side of the tracks
adept at attracting wealthy men who lavish them with luxuries. The musical
number transitions to the main titles and then resumes. The girls return to their
dressing room where Lorelei’s beau, Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan), proposes
with a diamond ring and sends her aboard the Ile de France to Paris.
Accompanying Lorelei will be Gus’ letter of credit and Dorothy as chaperone.
Gus plans to meet them in the City of Lights, where he will marry Lorelei.
Suspicious that Lorelei’s motivation in marrying is solely based on money,
Gus’ father hires private detective Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid) to spy on her
during the trip. On board the ship, members of the U.S. Olympic team vie for the
girls’ attention. As the ship sails, they join Lorelei and Dorothy and other
passengers in the musical number “Bye Bye Baby”, which features a sultry solo
by Marilyn.
When Dorothy falls in love with Malone, Lorelei confronts her for wasting
time with a poor man. “Find happiness,” Lorelei advises, “and stop having fun.”
She examines the passenger manifest and selects Henry Spofford III (George
“Foghorn” Winslow) as a suitable gentleman for Dorothy, solely because he is
traveling with a valet and therefore, must be wealthy. She rearranges the seating
at their dining table to force an introduction. At dinner, Lorelei coaches Dorothy
on charming Spofford, and both are shocked to discover he is only a child
traveling without parents.
Lorelei meets Dr. Francis Beekman (Charles Coburn), a diamond merchant
with mines in Africa. When his wife shows her a diamond tiara, Lorelei is
smitten with the piece, and schemes to obtain it. Playwright and screenwriter
Paul Rudnick paid homage to Marilyn’s performance in Time: “Her wit
completes her cosmic victory, particularly in her facial expression of painful,
soul-wrenching yearning when gazing upon a diamond tiara, a trinket she
initially attempts to wear around her neck…The film is an ideal mating of star
and role…”
Lorelei invites Beekman to her cabin and drops obvious hints about her
desire for the tiara as he shares stories of his adventures in Africa. When
Beekman demonstrates how a python can suffocate and consume a goat, Lorelei
is caught in a compromising situation. Malone snaps a photograph of what
appears to be an embrace as evidence of infidelity for Esmond’s father.
Eager to clear her name, Lorelei sneaks into Malone’s room at night to
recover the roll of film as a steward delivers fresh linen, and is locked inside.
Unable to find the film, she discovers that the door has been locked from the
outside. Lorelei attempts to escape through the porthole and gets stuck when her
hips won’t clear the opening. Strolling on the deck, Henry Spofford III comes to
her rescue. As Sir Beekman approaches, the young boy throws Lorelei a blanket
draped over a deck chair to hold up to her neck and hides under it. When
Beekman asks to hold Lorelei’s hand, Spofford offers his from under the blanket.
Lorelei’s expression registers both relief and shock at the boy’s quick thinking.
Beekman kisses the hand, and Spofford emits a low octave protest. Lorelei
covers by deepening her vocal register and feigning laryngitis.
The girls assume the roll of film is hidden the pocket of the suit Malone is
wearing and invite him to their cabin for a drink. When they turn up the
thermostat and drug his beverage, Malone becomes intoxicated and overheated.
He accepts what he believes is a glass of ice water from Lorelei and downs it,
only to discover it was straight liquor. Malone asks for water, and the girls spill
the contents of a pitcher on him so that they may offer to take his clothes and dry
them. They disrobe the hapless detective, and Lorelei discovers the roll of film
in the trouser pocket.
Lorelei develops the film on board and shows Sir Beekman who, in turn,
gives her the tiara as an expression of appreciation for her not exploiting the
situation and creating a scandal. Meanwhile, Malone tape-records Lorelei’s
conversation with Beekman to provide Gus’ father with information he believes
will sabotage the wedding plans.
Arriving in Paris, the girls are confronted by Lady Beekman (Norma Varden)
and her attorney. Lady Beekman accuses Lorelei of theft and demands the return
of her tiara, and Lorelei denies possession of it. Their registration at the hotel is
canceled, as Gus has revoked their line of credit. They rest at a sidewalk café
and perform “When Love Goes Wrong.”
Financially broke, the girls take jobs entertaining in a nightclub, where Gus
eventually locates them and wishes to reconcile with Lorelei, who is offended by
his suspicions. Lorelei performs her show-stopping number “Diamonds Are a
Girl’s Best Friend,” and returns to the dressing room where Malone informs her
of the issue of a warrant for her arrest on a charge of theft. She and Dorothy
decide to return the tiara to Lady Beekman, but they discover it has been stolen.
Malone suspects Beekman is responsible for the tiara’s disappearance and leaves
for the airport, where the old man is boarding a plan to Africa. Dorothy dons a
blonde wig and heads to the court to impersonate Lorelei and clear her name as
Malone attempts to recover the tiara.
Lorelei’s final fete is to win over Gus’ father with her feminine wiles.
Awestruck by her charm and logic, the senior Esmond (Taylor Holmes)
confesses that although someone had told him that Lorelei was stupid, she
doesn’t sound stupid to him. “I can be smart when I want to,” Lorelei responds.
“Only most men don’t like it.”
In Parisian night court, Dorothy entertains the judge and attorneys until
Malone arrives with Beekman and the tiara. The film ends with a double
wedding for Lorelei and Gus, and Dorothy and Malone aboard the Ile de France
as it sails home to the United States.

How To Marry a Millionaire (1953)

A curtain opens to reveal a soundstage dressed as an amphitheater. In tails,

Alfred Newman conducts the 20th Century Fox orchestra performing “Street
Scene,” written for the film adaptation of Elmer Rice’s stage play of the same
name in 1932, and synonymous with New York City. As the five and one-half
minute overture ends, Newman bows and main title credits roll over a red satin
backdrop. A chorus sings “New York” over a montage of widescreen images of
the city filmed by a second unit: Central Park, the harbor, Rockefeller Center,
and Park Avenue.
Fashion model Schatze Page (Lauren Bacall) and a realtor view a swanky
furnished apartment on Fifth Avenue. She subleases the unit, whose owner is
abroad due to personal misfortune and calls her friend and fellow model, Pola
Debevoise (Monroe). Later, the elevator doors open, and beautiful — but
nearsighted — Pola stumbles across the hall toward the apartment. Believing
men won’t find her attractive, she refuses to wear eyeglasses in public. Schatze
opens the door, and Pola immediately dons her spectacles. Pola convinces
Schatze to allow another participant in their yet-to-be revealed scheme and calls
another model, Loco, to join them and bring lunch.
Loco (Betty Grable) arrives with an attractive young man carrying bags of
groceries. She introduces him as Tom Brookman (Cameron Mitchell). Loco and
Pola find Brookman attractive, but Schatze abruptly escorts him to the door.
Unbeknownst to the models, Brookman is a millionaire who owns the building.
Impressed that Loco manipulated Brookman into purchasing the groceries by
pretending to have forgotten her wallet, Schatze welcomes her into the scheme to
attract and entrap rich husbands by pretending to be rich women.
Schatze denounces Brookman as unsuitable and insolvent and lectures Pola
and Loco on the advantage of marrying for money rather than love: A man found
at a delicatessen is less attractive than one found in the mink coat section of a
department store. She recounts having married a gas station attendant for love,
and having divorced him. The three models pool their resources to fund the plot,
and when they run out of money they pawn the apartment’s furnishings and plan
to reclaim them when they snag wealthy spouses.
 Lounging on the terrace, the models fantasize about marrying maharajas, a
Mr. Texaco, or a Mr. Cadillac. Pola announces that she’d like to marry
Rockefeller. When asked which one — John D. or William — she replies, “I
don’t care.”
A broker arrives with a delivery crew and appraises the grand piano. Schatze
accepts the offer as the crewmen haul away the instrument. “Well, kids? Where
shall we eat tonight…” she asks, “the Stork Club or 21?”
During the cold winter, the models pawn most of the furnishings, as none
receive a proposal from a prospective rich husband. It’s difficult, Pola insists.
Wealthy men become anxious when she probes for their financial statuses.
Loco arrives once again with a man who has fallen for her manipulation and
paid for another round of groceries. J.D. Hanley (William Powell) is a mature oil
tycoon in town for a convention with other rich magnates. He is also widowed
and invites the models to join him and his colleagues during their leisure time.
The models arrive separately at a restaurant with their respective dates.
Schatze is paired with Hanley, and Pola is escorted by J. Stewart Merrill (Alex
D’Arcy), a suave European with an eye patch. Without her eyeglasses, Pola
bumps into the maître de and comically navigates through the restaurant, feeling
her way to the table. Loco accompanies an irritable Waldo Brewster (Fred
Clark), who turns out to be married and spends the evening complaining about
his wife, his divorced sister-in-law, his mother-in-law and his wife’s aunt.
Later, the models compare their experiences in the ladies lounge. Pola asks
what her date looks like. “Very nice for a one-eyed man,” Loco replies. When
Pola reacts with disappointment, Schatze asks what she thought the patch was
covering. “I didn’t know it was a patch,” Pola says. “I thought somebody might
have belted him.” The girls advise her to wear her glasses long enough to see her
date.
In an iconic scene, Pola removes her glasses, places them in her clutch purse,
and inspects her appearance in a series of hinged full-length mirrors extending
across the CinemaScope screen. Her ravishing beauty and glamour are reflected
in multiple angles. Pola turns, walks toward the door, and bumps into the wall.
Pretending to be shopping for clothing for his new lady friend, Brookman
arranges to view the fashion line of the designer for whom the models work.
Each of the girls appears in a stunning outfit, with nearsighted Pola modeling a
red bathing suit and stumbling on the steps of the stage. When Schatze gives
Brookman the cold shoulder, he storms off after announcing, “I don’t see
anything here I want.”
 Although Brewster is married, Loco accepts his invitation to a lodge in
Maine, thinking she might meet an eligible bachelor there. Upon arrival, Loco
realizes the lodge is a rustic cabin in which she will be alone with Brewster, not
a convention of Elk or Moose Lodge Members. She wants to return to New York
but contracts the measles. When Loco recovers, she meets and falls in love with
Eben (Rory Calhoun), who introduces himself as a local ranger.
Pola boards a plane to meet Merrill in Atlantic City, believing he plans to
introduce her to his mother. Without her eyeglasses, she mistakenly boards a
plane to Kansas City. She meets the passenger seated beside her, Freddie
Denmark (David Wayne), who is actually the owner of her apartment unit.
Freddie tells her about his troubles with the Internal Revenue Service over
unpaid taxes embezzled by his accountant. He coaxes Pola to wear her glasses
and says they make her look more attractive. She asks if he thinks the glasses
make her look like an old maid. Freddie asserts that no one could possibly
remind him less of an old maid.
While Schatze dates Hanley, Tom Brookman relentlessly pursues her, but she
rebuffs him. Eventually, Schatze agrees to goes out with him, but tells him she’ll
never see him again at the end of the date. Schatze repeats this rebuff at the end
of several dates with Brookman, until Hanley proposes.
Loco and Pola return to the apartment on the day of Schatze’s wedding and
introduce her to the modest men they have secretly married for love and not
money. Loco announces that Eben is a park ranger, not a rancher who owns
herds of cattle. Pola explains that Freddie — wearing a neck brace — is on the
run, trying to clear his name by catching the crooked accountant who embezzled
his money. Apparently, when his glasses fell off, he couldn’t defend himself and
was beaten by the embezzler. Schatze asks if he’s blind, too. “Blinder than me,”
Pola replies with glee. When asked if she minds the need to go underground,
Pola gushes, “Love it.”
Schatze calls off the wedding and agrees to marry Tom, the man she really
loves. She apologizes to Hanley, who graciously assures her that she has made
the right decision.
After Schatze and Tom’s wedding, the three happy couples sit at the counter
of a diner feasting on hamburgers and beer…sprawled across the CinemaScope
screen. Eben and Freddie compare their paltry worth. When the conversation
turns to Tom, he lists assets in oil, stocks, steel, cattle, coalmines, and real estate.
They all dismiss his claims as a joke. Tom accepts the check from the waiter and
takes from his pocket an enormous wad of cash. “Keep the change, Mac,” he
says nonchalantly. In shock, the three models fall from their stools onto the floor.
The husbands raise their beer glasses and toast their wives.

River of No Return (1954)

Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum) rides into a raucous northwest frontier tent
city filled with rowdy gold prospectors and saloon girls in search of his young
son, Mark (Tommy Rettig), sent from Illinois with an adult escort who has
abandoned the child. Calder enters a tent saloon where Kay (Monroe), a singer,
is performing, and finds his son delivering buckets of beer. Calder introduces
himself to Mark as his father, who has returned after an unexplained absence to
claim him. Mark has no memory of his father; Calder left when he was very
young and his mother died years earlier.
Before leaving with Matt, Mark bids farewell to nurturing Kay, who has been
caring for him while he waited for his father. Kay scolds Matt for neglecting his
son, but he expresses gratitude for her kindness. After another performance, Kay
reunites with her gambler fiancé, Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun), who announces
having won a gold claim in a poker game. He outlines a plan to travel on a raft
up the river to Council City to file the deed. Kay suspects that he cheated in the
game, but goes along, hoping to improve the quality of her life. Meanwhile, Matt
takes Mark back to his farm and promises to teach him to fish, trap, and shoot.
On their farm on the bank of the river, Matt teaches Mark to plow a field for
crops, and they see smoke signals made by nearby Native Americans. They also
notice Kay and Weston combating the wild rapids, and Matt rescues them. Mark
happily reunites with Kay, and she later sings him a lullaby while Matt prepares
a meal.
Weston offers to buy Matt’s rifle and horse so that he and Kay can travel on
land, but Matt refuses out of necessity to defend against the threat of attack by
the Native Americans. Weston steals the rifle and horse but promises to return
them to Matt. Kay begs him to stop. Matt struggles with Weston and is rendered
unconscious by a blow from the handle of the rifle. Disturbed by her fiancé’s
behavior, Kay cleans Matt’s wound and chooses to stay behind to ensure that
Weston delivers on his promise to make things right. Weston rides off on the
horse.
When Matt recovers, the Native Americans prepare an attack on the farm.
Without his rifle for protection, Matt loads Mark and Kay onto Weston’s raft and
sails down the river. They solemnly watch the Native Americans charge and set
fire to the farm.
Having successfully battled the rapids, they drift to shore and set up camp.
Kay bandages a minor injury on Mark’s arm and goes off to pick berries as Matt
goes fishing. Later that night, he returns to find Kay maternally serenading Mark
in front of the fire until the boy falls asleep.
Kay justifies to Matt her working in saloons as a means to escape poverty,
and justifies Weston’s actions as a desperate and misguided attempt to improve
his situation. After Matt reveals his intention to seek revenge on Weston, Kay
tries to sabotage the plan by attempting to set the raft adrift on the river. Matt
intervenes and voices his contempt for Weston for leaving them all to die. Kay
admits her fiancé made a mistake. “I suppose you never made a mistake,” she
sarcastically challenges.
In a confrontation, Kay reveals that Weston told her Matt had been
imprisoned for shooting a man in the back. When Mark overhears their
argument, Matt explains having acted in defense of a friend whom the other man
was trying to kill. Kay regrets having inadvertently disclosed the secret to the
boy.
They board the raft and sail down the river as Matt explains the Native
Americans call it the “river of no return” due to its dangerous rapids. Kay assists
him in steering through the rocks, and they are soaked and tossed by the waves.
Kay faints, and Matt carries her to a cave, where she awakens cold and
shivering. He leaves her alone to change out of her wet clothes.
Mark fears Kay will die, but Matt assures him she is strong and will survive.
Matt returns to the cave and tenderly massages her body under the blanket to
warm her and hangs her clothing to dry. She regrets slowing down the journey
and is touched by the way Matt cares for her. Tired and hungry, Matt stays
awake guarding the cave as Kay and Mark sleep.
The next day, Kay steers the raft as Matt sleeps. Mark asks why his father
killed a man, and she gently explains Matt acted in self-defense. Mark counters
that it was his friend who was threatened. “That can be the same as your own
life,” Kay replies. They see an elk swimming in the water and wake Matt, who
captures it. Later, as they cook the meat over a fire, Mark takes exception to his
father treating Kay harshly because of her fiancé’s actions. Matt condemns
Weston, but Mark says Kay told him sometimes people do wrong acts that seem
right when they do it. Regardless, Matt vows to pursue Weston.
Kay returns to the camp refreshed from showering in the falls. She tells Matt
that under different circumstances, they might have been friends. He derides her
warmth as an attempt to manipulate him to end his pursuit of her fiancé. They
argue, and Matt forcibly kisses Kay and pins her down on the ground. He is
interrupted by a cry for help from Mark, who is being stalked by a mountain
lion.
Two passing men — Benson (Douglas Spencer) and Colby (Murvyn Vye) —
kill the big cat with a shot from a rifle. In appreciation, Matt and Kay share the
meat with them. The men report traveling to Council City, also in pursuit of
Weston, who cheated them out of their gold claim. Colby now recognizes Kay as
Weston’s fiancé and invites her to accompany them on horseback rather than
take a chance on the dangerous river with Matt. “I’d rather have no chance with
him,” she says with repulsion. When Matt orders the men to leave, Colby attacks
him with a knife. Matt takes control of the knife and rifle. The three leave the
men behind, board the raft, and continue their journey. Later, Kay apologizes for
bringing trouble into Matt’s life, and he acknowledges that she helps them fight
off any trouble she attracts. Matt also apologizes for his advances.
Perched on the cliffs above the river, Native Americans attack the raft with
arrows and boulders. Two braves swim out to the raft, but Matt fends them off.
The raft sails through a rough patch of rapids and finally reaches Council City.
Matt allows Kay to talk sense into Weston alone before confronting him. Kay
admits she knew Matt would make it due to his strong love for his son.
Kay finds Weston in a saloon and coldly asks why he didn’t return for them.
She pleads him to admit to Matt that he acted out of desperation. Meanwhile,
Matt and Mark drink coffee in the general store, where Mark examines the rifles
for sale.
Weston finds Matt exiting the store and immediately shoots at him. Aghast,
Kay wrestles him for the pistol, and Mark saves his father by shooting Weston in
the back with the rifle from the store. The boy now understands the action that
put his father in prison. “I h-had to,” Mark stammers to Kay.
“It’s alright, Mark,” Kay says, comforting him. “There was no other way.”
Mark embraces his father in reconciliation as Kay returns the rifle to its stand,
collects a satchel containing her red shoes, and heads toward the local saloon —
her dreams for a better life shattered.
Later that evening, Kay sits atop a piano in the saloon and sadly sings a
melancholy ballad about losing a lover on the “river of no return.” She sings
about Matt and not Weston. Suddenly, Matt emerges from the crowd, tosses her
over his shoulder, and carries her out to his carriage. “Where are you taking
me?” she asks as Matt covers her with a coat.
“Home,” he replies, taking the reins of the horse. Kay embraces Mark, seated
beside her. As they head home, Kay removes her red shoes — symbols of her
saloon girl past — and throws them to the ground.

There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954)

In 1919 at the Adelphi Theatre in Denver, vaudevillians Molly (Ethel

Merman) and Terrance Donahue (Dan Dailey) sing “Midnight Choo-Choo
Leaves for Alabam’ ” and “Play a Simple Melody.” As their family grows with
children — Steve (Johnny Ray), Katy (Mitzi Gaynor), and Tim (Donald
O’Connor) — the name of their act changes to The Five Donahues.
Worried that the children are living an unstable life on the road traveling from
one gig to the next, Molly persuades Terry to enroll them in St. Michael’s
Catholic Boarding School, and — to her annoyance — he hires a chorus of
beautiful blonde showgirls as replacements in the act. Meanwhile, the children
miss their parents and continuously attempt to run away and return to the stage.
Convinced by Father Dineen to reunite the family, Molly and Terry buy a home
in New Jersey.
During the Great Depression, Molly and Terry take jobs singing for radio
commercials and working at a carnival, but after Tim graduates from high
school, The Five Donahues resume performing together and enjoy a comeback
as the live stage entertainment in movie theaters. At the famed Hippodrome
Theatre in New York, their show-stopping rendition of “Alexander’s Ragtime
Band” is a hit with audiences.
Now a womanizer, Tim dates an older chorus girl as Katy starts going out
with men. The siblings arrive on dates at Gallagher’s Rooftop Night Club, where
Tim tries to flirt with the beautiful blonde hatcheck girl, Victoria “Vicky”
Hoffman (Monroe). He playfully teases her about her unnatural elocution. Tim
suggests Vicky speak again, only “more from the chest.” She explains that her
vocal teacher says the sound is “all diaphragm.” Tim replies suggestively,
“There’s quite a lot else there.”
Vicky is an aspiring singer working as a hatcheck girl between nightclub
bookings. Tim teases that he could have sworn she was a dramatic actress. “You
think that’s impossible,” Vicky reproaches, sounding amazingly like Marilyn
Monroe speaking to Zanuck.
 When Eddie (Frank McHugh), Vicky’s agent, informs her that producer Lew
Harris (Richard Eastham) is visiting the club, she arranges to perform “After
You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It).” She impresses both Tim and
Harris with her talent and charisma. Afterward, in her dressing room, Vicky
discovers that Tim is a member of the Five Donahues, but rebuffs his offer to
negotiate with Harris.
Later that evening, Steve announces to the family that he is going into the
priesthood, and Terry is distraught by his leaving show business, but Katy
predicts he will be “something big” like a bishop or a cardinal. Enter Tim,
intoxicated. As Molly puts him to bed, she vows to make a man out of him, even
if it results in murdering him. The family eventually accepts Steve’s decision and
hosts a farewell party before he enters the seminary. Steve sings “If You
Believe.”
The Five Donahues perform as headliners at the Miami Plaza’s Tropical
Room and Tim is overjoyed to discover that Vicky Parker — formerly
Hoffman — is one of the other acts. By happenstance, her Latin-themed
number — “Heat Wave” — is also the Donahues’ showcase number. Tim grants
Vicky permission to perform it, and Molly despises her for “stealing” her song
and seemingly “stealing” the heart of her oldest son.
Vicky’s performance is a smash, and Tim falls in love with her. They begin
casually dating, but Vicky kindly dismisses his marriage proposals and
concentrates on her career. In a dream sequence, Tim sings “A Man Chases A
Girl (Until She Catches Him)” with Roman female statues that come to life in
the hotel’s fountain.
Harris stages a Broadway show around Vicky’s talents, and she hires Tim and
Katy as her co-stars. Molly is outraged, but Terry persuades her to permit their
children to take advantage of the opportunity. Subsequently, Molly and Terry
perform as a duo.
In New York, Vicky rehearses “Lazy” with Tim and Katy. Katy begins dating
songwriter Charlie Gibbs (Hugh O’Brian). Meanwhile, Steve is ordained, and
Charlie proposes and requests that Steve perform their wedding ceremony. As
Tim and Vicky leave the theater on a dinner date, she notices a wardrobe
mistress carrying a costume selected by Harris for her opening number. Disliking
its shade of purple, she postpones the date to voice her objection to Harris and
the designer. In a conference, Vicky protests the color purple, and the snobbish
Miles tells her the shade is heliotrope. “Heliotrope, hydrangea, or petunia,” she
balks. “It’s still the wrong shade of purple for me!” Inadvertently, Vicky stands
Tim up, and he mistakenly assumes she is having an affair with Harris.
Vicky implores Tim to consider that his parents’ success helped lead to his,
but she has been alone, pounding on doors since the age of fifteen, and this could
be her big break. Tim implies she owes everything to Lew Harris and sneers,
“Let it not be said you’re a girl who welches on her debts.”
Tim gets drunk, wrecks his car, and is injured. Having rehearsed with Katy,
Molly saves Tim’s career by replacing him in the show until he recovers.
Dressed as a man, she performs “A Sailor’s Not A Sailor (‘Til A Sailor’s Been
Tattooed)” with Vicky. Meanwhile, Terry visits Tim in the hospital and finds him
resentful and cynical. When Terry scolds him for acting irresponsibly, Tim
accuses him of being a ham. Terry slaps him in the face and leaves. The next
morning, Molly and Terry go to the hospital and discover Tim has vanished,
leaving behind a letter of apology. Molly blames Vicky for Tim’s disappearance,
and Terry travels across the country in search of him.
During World War II, Steve joins the Army as a chaplain. Time passes, and
Vicky and The Donahues are invited to perform a benefit performance at the
Hippodrome before it is demolished. When Katy arranges for Molly to share a
dressing room with Vicky, Vicky convinces Molly of her love for Tim. Steve
arrives to watch the show and comforts his mother, urging her to keep faith that
Terry will find Tim and bring him home.
Molly is a smash in her solo performance of “There’s No Business Like
Show Business” — its lyrics autobiographical — and Terry appears in the wings
with Tim in a Navy uniform. Offstage, Molly embraces her son, who explains
that he needed to independently resolve his personal issues. Terry ceremoniously
announces the return of The Five Donahues and cues the orchestra to play
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Reunited, the family performs their signature
number, and the production segues to a reprise of “There’s No Business Like
Show Business,” with Vicky joining them in the uplifting grand finale.

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

The Seven Year Itch opens with an animated main title sequence designed by
Saul Bass. Colorful graphic rectangles swing open like doors, revealing a credit
in fanciful white font. Similarly, each word in the film’s title appears across the
elongated screen in four rectangles. Like a human stick figure, the horizontal line
in the letter “t” in “Itch” bends and scratches its vertical line. Billy Wilder’s final
credit springs out on a coil in an obvious representation of male sexual arousal
elicited by Marilyn’s character. The main title instrumental theme, recycled from
an earlier Fox comedy, contains mechanical noises and variations on
“Chopsticks.”
In the first sequence, male Native Americans inhabiting Manhattan Island
send their wives and children to cooler climates in the northern country or
seashore during the scorching summer months. After their families leave in
canoes, the men follow a young, attractive, unmarried squaw, who sashays
across the river shore.
Flash forward to Penn Station in modern-day Manhattan, where Richard
Sherman (Tom Ewell) sends off his wife, Helen (Evelyn Keyes), and son, Ricky
(Butch Bernard), on a train headed to the country for a vacation while he
remains in the city to labor. Helen reminds Richard to eat properly and avoid
smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. After he and the other men bid farewell
to their families, an attractive single girl sashays across the platform, and the
men follow her. The girl and other men are the same actors — out of Native
American garb and into contemporary clothing — from the previous scene.
Richard quickly comes to his senses, resolves to avoid summer bachelor
shenanigans, and discovers that Ricky left his canoe paddle behind. For the
remainder of the film, the paddle represents Richard’s fidelity to his wife and
son. He engages in comedic monologues, which serve as the internal battle
waging in his conscience between faithfulness and adultery.
Richard arrives at his office at the publishing firm, where he markets the old
classics by instructing the art department to design book covers with sexualized
imagery. He is currently publishing Little Women under the title The Secret of a
Girls’ Dormitory. The narrator comments on Richard’s vivid imagination,
depicted in fantasy sequences.
Heeding Helen’s advice, Richard attends to his health by dining in a
vegetarian restaurant and drinking a cocktail of sauerkraut juice on the rocks.
The waitress (Doro Merande) cannot accept his tip, but agrees to donate it to a
fund for a nudist camp. When she espouses the benefit of nudists unmasking
their “suffocating” bodies and letting them “breathe again,” Richard is reminded
of his sexual impulses and darts out of the restaurant, nearly forgetting the
paddle.
Richard arrives home to a townhouse converted to a triplex, in which the
other tenants are gone for the summer. The bell of the building’s entry door
buzzes, and Richard presses the button to unlock it. A beautiful blonde enters
carrying a grocery bag and a portable fan. She apologizes for forgetting her key.
The Girl (Monroe) is subleasing the Kaufmans’ apartment directly above
Richard’s while they are away in Europe. Obviously attracted to his shapely new
neighbor, Richard quickly orients her to the building as she ascends the stairs
and emphasizes that they will be alone for the summer.
Back inside his apartment, Richard regrets having not been “neighborly” by
inviting the Girl for a cocktail, locks his pack of cigarettes in the liquor cabinet
and throws the key on the top bookshelf. He decides to spend the evening
reading Dr. Brubaker’s manuscript — titled Of Man and the Unconscious —
until Helen calls.
Richard reclines in a chaise lounge on the garden terrace and reads the
chapter entitled, “The Repressed Urge in the Middle-Aged Male: Its Roots and
Its Consequences.” The topic triggers ruminations about Helen calling at ten
o’clock as indication of her mistrust and suspicion that he might invite girls to
the apartment soon after her departure.
After seven years of marriage, Richard has never been unfaithful, although he
has had many opportunities. Helen appears in a fantasy and mocks his
grandiosity. Richard further fantasizes about Miss Morris, the office secretary,
throwing herself at him as he resists her advances, his shirt torn in the struggle.
In another fantasy about his surgery the previous year, the night nurse, Miss
Finch (Carolyn Jones), attempts to seduce Richard. She suggests that they steal
an ambulance and make a run for the border. A group of orderlies in white coats
carry her away as she kicks and screams. In another fantasy, Richard imagines
Helen’s best friend going swimming with him in the moonlight as Helen plays
Canasta. Mimicking the love scene in From Here to Eternity, they kiss in the surf
until Richard struggles free and stumbles away in the sand. The apparition of
Helen laughingly suggests her husband is daydreaming in widescreen and
stereophonic sound.
Helen calls earlier than ten o’clock and reports she met Tom McKenzie
(Sonny Tufts), a writer, on the train, causing Richard to be jealous. After the call,
he gets up from the chaise lounge to put a twist of lemon in his raspberry soda,
and a tomato plant in a cast iron pot crashes through the wicker lounge where he
had been sitting. Richard angrily hollers to the apartment above and is stunned
when the Girl upstairs appears seemingly undressed behind the potted plants on
the heavily landscaped fire escape. She apologizes profusely and promises to
summon the janitor to clean the mess.
Mesmerized, Richard invites the blonde down for a drink. His neck strains as
he ogles her from below. Richard climbs to the top of the bookshelf to retrieve
the key to the liquor cabinet, lights a cigarette, and serves himself a glass of
scotch. He plays a recording of Rachmaninoff ’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and
imagines the blonde descending the stairs in a tiger print gown as he plays the
piece on the piano. The girl sits beside him on the piano bench and appears
enraptured. “It shakes me, it quakes me, it makes me feel goose-pimply all
over,” she purrs. In an affected voice, Richard announces he is going to take her
in his arms and kiss her “very quickly and very hard.”
The fantasy is interrupted by the door buzzer. It’s the janitor, Mr. Krahulik
(Robert Strauss), in a sweaty t-shirt, coming to collect the bedroom rug for
repair. Krahulik boasts about sending his wife and kids to the country and plans
to shave and go out with a local maid. He diabolically tells Richard they are both
summer bachelors susceptible to temptation in the city heat. Richard calls
Krahulik “disgraceful,” tells him to return later, and pushes him out the door.
The Girl buzzes the door, and Richard rushes to greet her, tripping on Ricky’s
roller skate. She enters wearing a blouse and matador slacks, and he explains
that he lives alone. Richard offers the Girl a drink, and she reveals a lack of
knowledge about liquor. She requests a “big, tall Martini.” Richard leers at her as
he pours an ample amount of alcohol into a glass. The Girl notices a staircase
leading to a boarded ceiling and realizes it led to the entry of her apartment
before the building was converted to a triplex.
The Girl admires Richard’s apartment, especially the air conditioning unit in
the living room window. As she lifts her blouse and stands in front of the air
conditioner, the Girl explains that her apartment is stifling from the lack of air
conditioning. Recently relocated from Colorado, she finds the summer heat
brutal and recounts having slept in the bathtub to keep cool. The Girl’s toe was
stuck in the faucet when she attempted to stop a drip, and she called a plumber
from a phone advantageously placed in the bathroom. When she explained the
situation, the plumber rushed over, even though it was a Sunday. Her
embarrassment stemmed only from being alone with a strange man with no
polish on her toenails.
The Girl discusses her career as a former model and describes having posed
for an “artistic” picture in U.S. Camera, pulling the deep plunge of her blouse
open. The photograph contained three textures, she explains, the driftwood, the
sand, and her. She explains that she appears in a toothpaste commercial on
television, and recites her line about eating onions and garlic and her kisses
staying sweet “the new Dazzledent way.”
 The Girl mentions that she was unable to celebrate her recent twenty-second
birthday, because she couldn’t open a bottle of champagne. With double
entendre, she asks Richard if he thinks he could get it open. He confidently
assures her of his ability. When the Girl goes back to her apartment to get the
champagne, Richard locates his copy of U.S. Camera and examines her
photograph.
Having changed into a slinky cocktail dress with unfastened shoulder straps,
the Girl returns with a bottle of champagne and a bag of potato chips. Richard
takes the bottle and asserts that he opened a few in his life using “pressure and
counter-pressure.” He pops the cork, and the champagne overflows, suggesting
an ejaculation. Richard sticks his finger in the bottle to stop the flow, and it gets
stuck.
The Girl notices Richard’s wedding band, and he admits to being married.
They sit on the floor sipping champagne, and the Girl calmly accepts his marital
status. If he weren’t married, she explains, she wouldn’t be lying on the floor
with him in the middle of the night and drinking champagne. His marital status
makes the situation simple because it couldn’t ever “get drastic.” It seems the
Girl is frequently the target of marriage proposals, and a married man won’t ask
her to marry him. Encouraged by this logic, Richard describes himself as the
“most married man” and plays the Rachmaninoff recording. However, classical
music has absolutely no effect on the Girl; she prefers listening to crooner Eddie
Fisher.
The Girl is sweet and childlike. Richard projects his own sexual fantasies
onto her, as she initiates no overt sexuality. Her allure is derived from innocently
delivering double entendre. Noticing the piano, the Girl invites him to play for
her. Richard uses two fingers to hammer “Chopsticks,” and she sits beside him
and plays a duet in a higher octave. In a sultry voice, Richard announces his
intent to embrace her and kiss her “very hard.” He leans toward her for the kiss,
and the Girl protests. They fall backward onto the floor.
Apologizing, Richard helps the Girl to her feet. Nothing like this has ever
happened to him before, he explains. With an incredulous expression, the Girl
tells him it routinely happens to her. Richard tells her to take her potato chips
and go. Before leaving, she sweetly and gently compliments his kindness.
Disgusted for having run amok, Richard meets with his boss, Mr. Brady
(Donald MacBride), the next morning and asks for a two week vacation to join
his family in the country. Brady confesses he hasn’t been to sleep since his own
wife and children left and has been playing poker with his buddies all night. He
cannot approve a vacation for Richard as the busy summer season prepares for
the fall book releases. Brady suggests they get lucky, and not just at poker.
Richard retreats to his office and reads Brubaker’s chapter entitled, “The
Sporadic Infidelity Pattern in the Married Male or, ‘The Seven Year Itch.’ ” He
begins to scratch himself as he peruses the manuscript. The urge, according to
Brubaker, rises in seventh year of marriage as well as during the summer
months. Richard also reads a case study about a German man whose unleashed
urges terrorized women. Brubaker (Oscar Homolka) arrives and seems a cross
between Sigmund Freud and Billy Wilder, complete with a Viennese accent. The
psychoanalyst observes Richard’s twitching thumb, and begins to explore his
subconscious. Richard reclines on the couch and requests free analysis based
upon the interesting nature of his case. At the rate of fifty dollars an hour,
Brubaker retorts, all his cases are interesting. Richard confesses his indiscretion
with the Girl.
When something itches, Brubaker advises, the natural response is to scratch.
Richard admits having scratched the previous night and terrorizing the Girl as a
result. When Richard shows the analyst her photograph in U.S. Camera, the
audience sees Marilyn in a polka dot bikini in a pose similar to Marilyn’s on the
nude calendar.
When Brubaker leaves, Richard’s paranoia intensifies with fantasies of the
Girl spreading news of his advances. Cut to the Girl in the bathtub — with her
toe stuck in the faucet — as she describes Richard as a monster to the plumber
(Victor Moore) and recounts his “frothing at the mouth” like the monster in the
film Creature from the Black Lagoon. The plumber, in turn, repeats the story to a
crowd in the vegetarian restaurant, adding that the sex-crazed married man
“forced” the Girl to sit on the piano bench and play “Chopsticks.” Richard’s
paranoia culminates in the Girl using her live commercial broadcast to warn the
nation about his behavior on the piano bench while Helen and Ricky watch it on
television in Maine.
From his office, Richard calls Helen, and the babysitter answers. She tells
him Helen is on a hayride with Tom McKenzie and left him a message to deliver
Ricky’s paddle. Relieved to learn news of his antics with the Girl has not
reached his wife, Richard goes home and sees the Girl blow-drying her hair from
a second-story window.
While taking a shower, Richard ruminates about Helen taking a hayride with
MacKenzie — a writer. Richard quotes MacKenzie’s erotic prose: “inwardly,
downwardly, pulsating” imagery. Having imagined his wife seduced by
MacKenzie, Richard is frenzied with jealously. In retaliation, he calls the
Kaufmans’ apartment and invites the Girl to a movie.
Leaving a screening of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Girl cools
herself from the summer heat by enjoying the breeze from a subway vent grating
in the sidewalk. Richard invites her into his air-conditioned apartment, enticing
her with having air-conditioning in every room, including the bedroom. The Girl
takes off her shoes, and sits in a chair directly in front of the air-conditioning unit
as Richard mixes cocktails.
Richard tells the Girl that she didn’t accidently brush up against the tomato
plant, but subconsciously pushed it out of her desire to have an affair with him.
The Girl isn’t listening; instead, she contemplates how to stay cool and get a
good night’s rest for her television commercial by asking Richard if she can
spend the night in his apartment. She has been warm and complimentary to him,
but she is interested in his air-conditioner and not in having an affair with a
married man.
Taken aback with what he thinks is the reality of his influence, Richard
protests the idea as “too savage.” The Girl clarifies that she wants to sleep in the
chair in front of the air-conditioner. Richard expresses concern about someone
seeing her in the morning and drawing the wrong conclusion. She could get up
very early, she suggests, and sneak out. She insists they aren’t doing anything
wrong.
The door buzzer goes off again, and the Girl hides behind the chair. Richard
opens the door to Krahulik, who has returned for the rug, and the janitor sees the
Girl’s leg extending from behind the chair in an effort to subtly retrieve her shoe.
Richard covers by nervously explaining that the Girl’s tomato plant had fallen
onto his terrace and needs to be removed. Krahulik carries the cast iron pot away
as he gawks at the girl. Realizing she must leave in order to preserve Richard’s
reputation, she follows the janitor up to her apartment, gently telling her host
that no man is an island.
Later that evening, Richard sees the trap door at top of his stairs opening, and
the Girl descending in a short nightgown and carrying a hammer. Having used
the claw of the hammer to pull up the nails, she raises her eyebrows and suggests
doing this all summer.
The next morning, Richard is asleep on the sofa with his thumb twitching as
the Girl sleeps in his bed. Richard awakens as he hears the Girl turn on the
shower and prepares a breakfast of coffee and cinnamon toast.
Once again, Richard grows paranoid at the thought of what someone might
think if he is found alone in the morning with a girl in his bed as he fixes
breakfast. He fantasizes about Krahulik calling Helen in the country to report his
finding the Girl in the apartment the previous night, and her taking an early train
home to catch him. In the daydream, Helen shoots open the door and enters,
brandishing a smoking gun. She confronts Richard with the disclosure of having
hired the janitor as a private detective to spy on him. As she shoots Richard,
Helen announces that the wives of America will give her a medal.
The Girl comes out of the bedroom in a white robe, and Richard tells her that
if Helen came home, she actually wouldn’t suspect anything because she trusts
him completely. With self-effacement, Richard lists all the reasons his wife
wouldn’t be jealous of him. In a touching speech aimed at Marilyn Monroe’s
male demographic, the Girl highlights Richard’s modesty as his most attractive
quality and admires him as a good and gentle man. She reveals being
unimpressed with men “in fancy striped vests” who attempt to be suave
Casanovas. “If I were your wife, I’d be jealous of you,” she says.
The buzzer sounds again, and the Girl retreats to the kitchen to finish the
breakfast. Richard opens the door to Tom MacKenzie — wearing a fancy striped
vest — back in the city for a meeting and to retrieve Ricky’s paddle. Richard
angrily confronts MacKenzie for attempting to seduce Helen on the hayride;
MacKenzie says he didn’t go with her because of his hay fever. The writer
begins to suspect Richard has been drinking. When Richard says he can explain
everything — the cinnamon toast and the blonde in the kitchen — MacKenzie
reacts incredulously. “Maybe it’s Marilyn Monroe!” Richard rejoins.
When MacKenzie accuses Richard of being intoxicated early in the morning,
Richard tells him that Helen loves him for being sweet and gentle, punctuating
the response with a punch that knocks MacKenzie unconscious into the record
player. The impact turns on the recording of Rachmaninoff’s crescendo.
Krahulik returns for the rug but instead carries MacKenzie out as the Girl
carries a tray of breakfast into the living room. Richard tells her that he is taking
the paddle to Helen and Ricky in the country and invites the Girl to enjoy his air-
conditioned apartment. Alone together, the Girl kisses Richard and instructs him
not to wipe off her lipstick. If his wife thinks it is cranberry sauce, the Girls says,
then Richard should accuse her of having “cherry pits in her head.”
As Richard races in his stocking feet to the train station while carrying the
paddle, the Girl calls him from the window and throws his shoes. He catches
them with a smile, and she waves farewell. In the end, the summer temptation
only helped to renew Richard’s commitment to his wife.
 Bus Stop (1956)

Bus Stop opens with the folksy main title song, “A Paper of Pins,” written by
Ken Darby and recorded by the popular singing group, The Four Lads. Marilyn’s
name appears before the title, superimposed on footage of a passenger bus
speeding along a highway. On a ranch in Montana, rowdy and immature cowboy
Bo Decker (Murray) wrestles a steer down to the ground with his bare hands in
record-breaking time as he trains for a rodeo in Phoenix. Bo’s father figure,
Virgil (O’Connell), accompanies him to the bus station, where they board a bus
to Arizona. Seated in the backseat, Virgil prepares Bo for a rite of passage now
that he has left the ranch for the first time to experience the big city: dating
women.
On the bus, Bo expresses fears about being inexperienced and describes his
idealized angel of a girl, different from the ones pictured in his magazines. Virgil
advises him against setting unrealistic expectations and instead settling instead
on a “plain girl with a cooperative nature.” Bo compares procuring an angel to
the way he captures a horse or a steer — by means of overpowering her. Virgil
reckons Bo will soon receive a crash-course in life.
Once in Phoenix, Bo is overwhelmed by the traffic lights and the sight of so
many females in the city. From the hotel window, he sees the Blue Dragon
nightclub across the street. Virgil tells Bo to join him at the nightclub after his
bath. In the dressing room of the Blue Dragon, the owner manhandles Cherie
(Monroe), a pathetic entertainer, whom he calls an “ignorant hillbilly.” Vera
(Heckart), Cherie’s friend and the cocktail waitress, consoles her. “I’ve been
tryin’ to be somebody,” Cherie declares with tears in her eyes.
Cherie shows Vera a line drawn on a map, which serves as the “history of my
life.” She started in River Gulch, Arkansas, where a flood washed everything
away, and fled with her younger sister to Texas, where she won second place in
an amateur talent contest. The owner interrupts Cherie’s backstory by barking at
her to entertain the customers. Vera pushes her toward a table, where Virgil is
seated. Cherie uses a line suggested by Vera — “I’m so dry, I’m spittin’
cotton” — to hustle him for drinks. Vera pours Cherie iced tea but charges Virgil
for whiskey.
As Cherie begins her cabaret act, the rowdy customers ignore her efforts and
continue chattering. Bo walks in and takes one look at Cherie on stage in her
tattered costume and decides she is his precious angel. He is immediately in
love. Offended by the noisy and inconsiderate audience, he stands on a table and
orders the crowd to quiet down and pay attention to Cherie’s singing.
Flattered by Bo’s chivalry, Cherie sings directly to him, stumbling on the
stage as she kicks a switch on and off to control her lighting effects. She acts out
the lyrics by pretending to blow him kisses; Bo touches his face as though he can
feel her kisses from across the dance floor.
After the number, the audience remains silent until Bo grants permission to
resume their chatter. He goes backstage, introduces himself to Cherie, and asks
her for a date. She expresses gratitude for his gallantry, but explains that the
owner forbids her from going out with the customers.
Cherie tells Bo her name, articulating it with a French accent, but Bo
pronounces it as “Cherry.” They walk outside and into a storage shed, where
Cherie reveals that she is attracted to Bo because he demanded the customers
show her respect. She also admits to a “physical attraction” to his height,
strength, and his being “so darn healthy-looking.” After one kiss, Bo decides to
marry Cherie and announces their engagement to Virgil and Vera. Cherie is
surprised by the turn of events.
The next morning, Bo bursts into Cherie’s room at nine o’clock and awakens
her. Cherie cries that she didn’t get to bed until five o’clock in the morning, and
buries her face in the pillow. Bo climbs into the bed and insists she hasn’t had
enough time to develop an attraction to his mind, and recites Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address. Cherie interrupts with a stern pronouncement that she has
no intention of marrying him. Impervious, he continues the recitation and stares
lovingly into her eyes until the boarding homeowner warns that if he orates any
further, he’ll miss the rodeo.
At the rodeo parade, Bo carries a weary Cherie on his shoulders. The bright
sun blinds her, since she performs her cabaret act all night, sleeps during the day,
and rarely sees sunlight. Vera finds Cherie elevated over the crowd and gestures
to her. Gesturing back, Cherie uses her fingers to signal her plan to run away, but
Bo looks up at her. Bullied, Cherie lifts her fingers and signals Vera to buy two
tickets for the rodeo. She wraps her silk scarf around Bo’s neck for luck in the
rodeo.
Seated with Vera in the bleachers, Cherie buries her face in her friend’s
shoulder when she cannot bear the thought of Bo falling off a bucking bronco.
“You are stuck on him!” Vera cries. Bo wins every event and boisterously hollers
to Cherie in the stands. She tells Vera that Bo has planned a wedding ceremony
during the rodeo and confesses to having signed a wedding license. Cherie
insists she had to do something, because he was “making such a fuss” in public.
She also shows Vera a diamond ring in a heart-shaped box. Spotting a minister
and a deliveryman carrying a wedding cake, Cherie flees by running across the
rodeo ring with Vera.
Back at the Blue Dragon, Cherie, Virgil, and Vera plan Cherie’s escape.
While planning, Cherie learns Bo is a virgin who had never even kissed a girl
before her. “First time?” she says in disbelief, never before having such an
honor. When Bo arrives to collect Cherie, she excuses herself to prepare for her
show and tells him goodbye forever. He goes after her and rips off the tail of her
costume in his effort to keep her near him. Cherie climbs out the window with
her suitcase and flees to the bus station, but Bo chases after her, lassos her, and
drags her onto a bus headed to Montana.
When the bus is stranded in a blizzard at Grace’s bus stop café, the bus driver
(Robert Bray) challenges Bo to a fight and humbles him. Bo realizes he
essentially abducted and molested Cherie and apologizes, setting her free.
Touched by his transformation and newfound sensitivity, Cherie confesses that
she isn’t the girl he thinks she it. In fact, some might even say that she led a
“wicked” life. Cherie explains that she had assumed Bo knew about her previous
boyfriends. “Quite a few,” she clarifies with painful embarrassment before
admitting he is better off without her.
When the roads are cleared, Bo admits to Cherie that she was the first girl in
his life and asks permission to kiss her goodbye. Cherie agrees, but when he
grabs for her, she avows, “This time it should be different.” Experiencing
intimacy and the intensity of emotions, Bo describes feeling scared, and Cherie
agrees. They tenderly kiss and embrace. Overwhelmed, Bo walks away to
consult with Virgil as Cherie collapses on the counter of the café.
Bo returns and rests his head against Cherie’s, pressed on the counter. He
says Virgil believes his inexperience combined with her experience averages out
to propriety, and makes them a suitable couple. With deep emotion, Cherie asks
Bo what he thinks. He expresses unconditional love, which touches her, and
tears stream down her cheek.
Bo proclaims his wish for Cherie to join him in returning to his ranch. “I’d go
anywhere in the world with you now…” Cherie asserts. “Anywhere at all.” She
throws away her map and boards the bus with Bo en route to Montana to start a
life together.
 Notes

Introduction:
Goddess, Legend, Icon

“Please hold a good thought…”: Quoted in Strasberg, Marilyn and Me: Sisters,
Rivals, Friends, 1992, p. 278.

“Do you want me to be her?”: Quoted in Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 143.

“I knew I belonged…”: Monroe, My Story: Illustrated Edition, 2006, p.159.

“No one will be believe me…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own
Words: Marilyn Monroe’s Revealing Last Words and Photographs, 1995, p. xv.

“Well, I can’t believe it…”: Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words, p. xv.

“She was (and still is)…”: Christies, The Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe,
1999, p 9.

“A religious metaphor…”: Churchwell, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe,

2004, p. 8.

“Marilyn has gone from sex symbol…”: Churchwell, p. 4.

Part I: Norma Jeane Baker

Chapter One:
 Ancestry

“I was never used…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Monroe Let’s Her Hair
Down About Being Famous: ‘Fame My Go By and So Long, I’ve Had You’…
An Interview.” Life, August, 3, 1962, p. 38.“Mama like men, and we all wanted
a papa.” Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, 1993, p. 6.

“Jackie seemed destined for disaster…”: Miracle, My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir

of Marilyn Monroe, 1994, p.12.

“Jasper told me…” Quoted in Miracle, p. 14.

“Maggie told me…”: Quoted in Miracle, p.15.

“I just don’t see…” Quoted in Miracle, p. 15.

“Like the mother in Stella Dallas…:” Monroe, My Story: Illustrated Edition,

2006, p. 2.

“My mother was mentally ill…”: Quoted in Belmont, Marilyn Monroe and the
Camera, 1989, p. 14.

“I was a mistake…”: Quoted in Morgan, Marilyn Monroe: Private and

Undisclosed, 2007, p. 20.

Chapter Two:
1926-1934

“Dear Little Berniece…”: Miracle, p. 5

“Do you and Jackie…” Quoted in ibid., p. 5.

“Everything that’s been said about my father…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 13.

“When you love a man…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own
Words, p. 5.

“I was always…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 13-14.

“I remember waking up…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean: The Life of Marilyn
Monroe, 1969, p. 12.

“It’s the memory of a struggle…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 13.

“We have to watch that one…”: Quoted in Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 1998, p.
53.

“When I was real little, I’d say…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 14.

“He was the only one…”: Monroe, My Story: Illustrated Edition, p. 1.

“the rollercoaster road…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 15.

“It’s a big wet!”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 15.

“She had never kissed me…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 1.

“When I was five I think…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Monroe Let’s Her
Hair Down About Being Famous,” p. 33. “timid child who loved to sing…”:
Quoted in Morgan, p. 16-17.

“I was the only black mark”: Quoted in Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 1960, p. 13.
“warm and not alone”: Monroe, My Story, p. 5.

“I could not get him…: Monroe, My Story, p. 5.

“The people I thought were my parents…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 1.

“They were terribly strict…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 14.

“She’s just like her mother — crazy…’: Quoted in Morgan, p. 20.

Chapter Three:
1934-February 1938

“fantasy world…”: Quoted in Summers, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn

Monroe, 1985, p. 157.

“stern-looking”: Monroe, My Story, p.17-18.

“Now you can’t…”: Ibid, p 18.

“I was frightened…” Ibid., p. 18.

“‘Don’t you dare…’ ”: Ibid, p. 18.

“I ran to my foster mother…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own
Words, p. 24.

“I fell on my knees…”: Monroe, My Story, p, 19.

“I will not be punished…”: Monroe, Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters,

2010, p. 56-57.
“Somebody’s coming…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 8. “the most frightening noise”:
Monroe, My Story, p. 8.

“pretty casual…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 14.

“didn’t want to be bothered with a child…”: Belmont, p. 14.

“I loved anything…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Monroe Let’s Her Hair

Down About Being Famous,” p. 33.

“They stayed…”: Miracle, p. 31.

“She was the first person…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 10.

“They were very poor…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 16.

“I’m not an orphan! I’m not an orphan!” Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 24.

“I wanted more than anything…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her
Own Words, p. 15.

“I knew I was different…:” Monroe, My Story, p. 13. “She made me smile…”:

Quoted in Belmont, p. 15.

“I used to tell [my step-children]…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Monroe

Let’s Her Hair Down About Being Famous,” p. 38.

“My school shoes were too big…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 45.

“Norma Jeane is not the same…”: Glatzer, The Marilyn Monroe Treasures, 2008,
p. 14
“Norma Jeane Baker has great success…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 21.

“Anxious and withdrawn…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 47.

“walk into a crowded room…”: Miller, Timebends: A Life, 1987, p. 9.

“No one ever told me…”: Quoted in Glatzer, p. 10.

“[Grace] was always wonderful…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 16.

“When I was 11, the whole world…”: Quoted in Meryman,

“Marilyn Monroe Let’s Her Hair Down About Being Famous,” p. 33.

“At first I was waking…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 50.

“The other kids knew…”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, The Secret Life of Marilyn
Monroe, 2009, p. 69.

“I never minded coming last…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 15. “Aunt Olive/VE8-

7202…”: Monroe, undated notes on an envelope in The Scott Fortner Collection.

Chapter Four:
March 1938-1939

Impact of sexual abuse on children later in life. Harvey, et al., “A Social

Psychology Model of Account-making in Response to Severe Stress.” Journal of
Language and Social Psychology, 9, 191-207, 1990.

Criteria for diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder: American Psychiatric

Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth
Edition Text Revision, 2000.

Suicide and Borderline Personality Disorder: Soloff, et al., “Characteristics of

Suicide Attempts of Patients with Major Depressive Episode and Borderline
Personality Disorder.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 157:601-608, 2000.

“I didn’t like the world…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Monroe Let’s Her
Hair Down About Being Famous,” p. 33.

“naughty”: Quoted in Barris, “Twilight of a Star.” New York Daily News, August
14, 1962, p. 10.

“But you remember…”: Quoted in Barris, “Twilight of a Star.” New York Daily
News, August 14, 1962, p. 10.

“Most of the families…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 15.

“I guess I got soured…”: Quoted in David, “Which Was the True Marilyn?” The
Milwaukee Journal, April 12, 1964, p. 5.

“Legally, he is [Marilyn Monroe’s] father…”: Quoted in “Do A Dead Man’s

Files Finally End Marilyn Monroe’s Search for Her Dad?” People, March 9,
1981.

“She changed my whole life…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 24. “Norma Jeane, when
you grow up…” Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words:
Marilyn Monroe’s Revealing Last Words and Photographs, 1995, p. 26.

“ecstatic”: Miracle, p. 20.

“Everyone talked so glibly”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 30. “A little thing,

perhaps…”: Quoted in Glatzer, p. 15.
“She was very much…”: Quoted in Spoto., Marilyn Monroe, p. 61.

“so other girls wouldn’t make fun…”: Quoted in Glatzer, p. 15. “You used to
have such tiny little feet”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 62.

“She was a lovely girl and we loved her…”: Interview with Doris Howell in
Remembering Marilyn, directed by Andrew Solt, 1988.

“Even before she became…”: Quoted in LaSalle, “A Marilyn Monroe Story,”

www.Sfgate.com, August 13, 2012.

Chapter Five:
1940-1944

“My head’s too hard…”: Quoted in Muir, “The Real Marilyn Monroe at 13…”
The National Tattler, October 7, 1973, np.

“No two flowers are alike…”: Quoted in Muir, “The Real Marilyn Monroe at
13…” The National Tattler, October 7, 1973, np.

“I don’t think we should…”: Quoted in Muir, “The Real Marilyn Monroe at

13…” The National Tattler, October 7, 1973, np.

“Suddenly his hands were everywhere…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p.

66.

“I decided finally that the boys…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 28. “According to the
general consensus…”: Monroe, Emersonian, June 20, 1941.

“M-m-m-minutes…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 15.

“smiling and beaming Chairman…”: Emersonian, June 20, 1941. “She very
neatly held things…”: Quoted in Wolfe, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe,
1998, p. 143.

“If I’d gone with [the Goddards]…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 16.

“I didn’t realize…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 32.

“Norma, dear, read this book…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 24.

“good thoughts”…“aura of love”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 26.

“She began our married life…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 146.

“There were no thoughts of sex…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 26.

“The first effect…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 29.

“shrink-proof ”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 42.

“She had a quick wit…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 146.

“greatly attracted to [Jim]…”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 6. “Dearest Daddy…”:

Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 43. “overwhelming qualities…”: Monroe,
Fragments, p. 6.

“loved from the beginning…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 50.

“I want to thank you so much for writing…”: Monroe, letter to Grace dated
September 14, 1942, www.bonhams.com/auctions/19377/lot/521/.
“How can I get in touch…”: Monroe, letter to Grace, www.bonhams.com.

“other woman…”: Monroe, letter to Grace, www.bonhams.com. “spent most of

the evening…”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 9.

“Aunt Ana said that…”: Monroe, letter in the Christelle Montagner Collection.

“She wrote me long letters…”: Interview with James Dougherty in Marilyn’s

Man, directed by Schani Krug, 2004.

“The other girls were furious…”: Belmont, p. 17.

“wolves”, “army”: Monroe, letter to Grace dated June 15, 1944,

www.bid.profilesinhistory.com/18-year-old-Marilyn-Monroe-amazing-
autograph-letter-signed_i11537108.

“All of a sudden…”: Miracle, p. 36.

“I just love it…I just wouldn’t feel…I love you and Daddy…”: Monroe, letter to
Grace dated December 3, 1944, in The Christelle Montagner Collection.

Chapter Six:
1945

“Naturally I refused…”: Monroe, letter to Grace dated June 4, 1945,

www.julienslive.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/36/lot/11599/.

“He is awfully nice…”: Monroe, letter to Grace dated June 3, 1945,

www.julienslive.com.

“You are a real morale booster…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her
Own Words, p. 44.
“Her response to the camera was amazing…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 155.

“There was a luminous quality…”: Quoted in Conover, Finding Marilyn, 1981,

p. 12.

“She was concerned…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 57.

“I do hope…”: “Marilyn Monroe/Norma Jeane Handwritten Letter (dated June

4, 1945), Julienslive.com, www.julienslive.com/view-
auctions/catalog/id/36/lot/11599/

“[She] looked like the girl next door…”: Tackery, “Emmeline Snively.” Los
Angeles Herald Examiner, August 7, 1962.

“curly haired blue-eyed teeth perfect”: Published in Haspiel, The Ultimate

Marilyn, 1998, p. 16.

“She smiled too high…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 60.

“They would not tell me why…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her
Own Words, p. 51.

“It’s just you have more…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own
Words, p. 51.

“Girls ask me all the time…”: Quoted in Churchwell, p. 193.

“There was real connection…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 16.

“enchanting…”: de Dienes, Marilyn Mon Amour, 1985, np.

“What do you think…”: Taraborrelli, p. 99.

“She didn’t seem to connect…”: Taraborrelli, p. 97.

Part II: Marilyn Monroe

Chapter Seven:
1946

“While nature has been…”: Susan Bernard, Bernard of Hollywood’s Marilyn:

Images by Hollywood’s Great Glamour Photographer, 1993, p. 5.

“I’ve become her big brother…”: Bernard, p. 6.

“no choice”…”Carry on”…”I’ll try to be…” Monroe, Letter to James

Dougherty, dated March 14, 1945, in “120 Years of Popular Culture at Christie’s
South Kensington in June,” Christies.com, June 2013,
http://www.christies.com/about/press-center/releases/pressrelease.aspx?
pressreleaseid=6468

“My husband didn’t support me…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 68.

“If you actually…”: Quoted in Monroe, “I Want Women To Like Me,”

Photoplay, November, 1952.

“He had immediately given some instructions…”: Hopper, “Howard Hughes is

on the Mend.” The Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1946.

“He said I looked so fresh…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 17.

“I got a cold chill…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 50-51.

“I owe a lot to Ben Lyon…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own
Words, p. 63.

“Baby…”: Ibid, p. 63.

“fantastic drive…”: Quoted in Buskin, Blonde Heat: The Sizzling Screen Career
of Marilyn Monroe, 2001, p. 14.

“Every [acting] business…”: Quoted in Mansfield, “Wild and Woody.” Chicago

Sun-Times, July 5, 1996.

“almost every leading actress…”: Quoted in “News From the Casting Couch.”
The Chicago Sun-Times, June 10, 2005, p. 52.

“normal life…”: Interview with Marilyn Monroe in Remembering Marilyn,

directed by Andrew Solt, 1988.

“I was never kept…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Monroe Let’s Her Hair
Down About Being Famous,” p. 33.

“Not even Marilyn Monroe…”: Quoted in Gussow, “The Last Movie Tycoon.”
New York Magazine, February 1, 1971, p. 32.

“Men who tried to buy me…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 55.

“There was something warm and gentle…”: Quoted in Banner, Marilyn: The
Passion and the Paradox, 2012, p. 120.

“Marilyn never slept…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 58.

“prey to a confused…”: Churchwell, p. 203.

Research on survival sex: Mallon and Hess. Child Welfare for the Twenty-first
Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies, and Programs, 2005, p. 237.

“To judge her…”: Churchwell, p. 204.

“I knew nothing…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 43-44.

Chapter Eight:
1947: Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! & Dangerous Years

“Don’t think…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 14.

“She was a very sweet person…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 24.

“I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything…”: Haspiel, Young Marilyn:

Becoming the Legend, 1994, p. 29.

“It really doesn’t matter…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 70.

“What can I say to men…”: Quoted in Lipton, “Marilyn’s the Most!” Motion
Picture, May 28, 1956.

“There was one woman who helped…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 134.

“Please take good care…”: Recreated from a quote in Monroe, My Story, p. 134.

“She could have played anything…”: Quoted in Haspiel, Young Marilyn, p. 34-
35.
“They tried to sell her…”: Haspiel, Young Marilyn, p. 34. “My illusions didn’t
have…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 64.

Chapter Nine:
1948: Ladies Of The Chorus

“It’s an open house…”: Quoted in Shevey, The Marilyn Scandal, 1987, p. 82.

“tawdy”…”terrible”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 134.

“the old bastard”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 74.

“Perhaps not…”: Recreated response based upon quote in Buskin, p. 74.

“He just wanted to have this sweet…”: Quoted in Banner, Marilyn, p. 143.

“I know the word around Hollywood…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 70.

“She used to come here…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 73. “trollop’s

outfit”…”unable to take refuge…”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 135.

“Miss Lytess made me feel free…”: Quoted in Banner, Marilyn, p. 147.

“Marilyn was inhibited and cramped…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 17.

“not to speak unnecessarily…”: Quoted in Banner, Marilyn, p. 146.

“I had always been attracted to men…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 92.

“It was really dreadful…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 18.

“I’m not inviting nobody…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 78.

“I’d love to join you and your wife…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 78.

“Leave my wife out of this…”: Monroe, My Story, p.78.

“You can drop…”: Recreated and based on quote in Zolotow, p. 71.

“To my great benefactor…”: Quoted in Victor, The Marilyn Encyclopedia, 1999,

p. 60.

“I kept driving past…”: Quoted in Kidder, Marilyn Monroe: Cover to Cover:

Second Edition, 2003, p. 20.

“Those who saw it…”: Quoted in Haspiel, Young Marilyn, p. 40. “floating”&
“Your mind isn’t developed…” Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 95.

“I don’t want her…” Monroe, My Story, p. 95.

“He didn’t love me…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 96.

“only bitchy thing”: Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong — I Love Hollywood, 1975,
p. 223.

“I ran into the words…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 93-94.

“Now, having fallen in love…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 94.

“I don’t love you…”: Recreated based on quote in Monroe, My Story, p. 131.

 Chapter Ten:
1949: Love Happy, A Ticket To Tomahawk, & Asphalt
Jungle

“Harpo, Chico, and I…”: You Bet Your Life, NBC radio, March 8, 1950.

“terrible movie…”: Interview with Groucho Marks in Today Show, NBC,

October 21, 1963.

“Wonderful girl…”: Today Show, NBC, October 21, 1963.

“for a young lady who can walk…”: Victor, p. 185.

“Which one do you like…”: Today Show, NBC, October 21, 1963.

“You’re kidding…”: Today Show, NBC, October 21, 1963.

“Mae West, Theda Bara…”: Victor, p. 185.

“I found Marilyn an extremely warm…”: Quoted in Mailer, “A Biography of

Tom Kelley.” Durangodowntown.com.

“Nude?”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 18. “Completely nude”: Quoted in Belmont, p.

18.

“I was very hungry…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 18.

Conversation between Marilyn and Kelley recreated based upon quotations in

Belmont, p. 18.

“I felt shy about it…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 18.

“We liked Marilyn…”: Quoted in Nelson, “Looking It Over with Hal Nelson —
Before a Star Was Born.” Rockford Morning Star, np.

“It’s tough to get to the top…”: Quoted in Nelson.

“You’ll make it”: Quoted in Nelson.

“I played a vacuous, rich man’s darling…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn

Monroe: A Life of the Actress, 1993, p. 59.

“I trimmed her hair carefully…”: Guilaroff, Crowning Glory: Reflections of

Hollywood’s Favorite Confidante, 1996, p. 146.

“When it was over…:” Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 109.

“Three was something…”: Interview with John Huston in in ABC Stage 67,
“The Legend of Marilyn Monroe,” directed by Dan Eriksen, November 30,
1966.

“I don’t know what I did…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 18. “Milton Greene/I love you
dearly…”: Monroe, telegram dated September 14, 1949, The Scott Fortner
Collection.

“[Marilyn] gave a performance…”: Quoted in Halsman, “Shooting Marilyn.”

Popular Photography, June 1953, np.

“Marilyn Monroe is not only the most beautiful…”: Sakakeeny, letter to the
editor of Life, October 31, 1949.

 Part III: Rising Star

Chapter Eleven:
1950: The Fireball, Right Cross, Hometown Story, & All
About Eve

“Oh, gee, I wish I really looked…”: Quoted in Hoyt, p. 74.

“You are not going to believe…”: Interview in Larry King Live, CNN, “June
Allison Discusses Her Career,” July 4, 2001.

“If you knew Marilyn…”: Interview in Larry King Live, CNN,

“Marilyn Monroe,” August 5, 1997.

“Dear World…”: Quoted in Lipton, Inside “Inside”, 2007, p. 155.

“I felt Marilyn had the edge…”: Mankiewicz, “All About the Women in ‘All
About Eve.’ ” New York Magazine, October 16, 1972, p. 41.

“The party went on…” Merrill, Bette, Rita, and the Rest of My Life, 1988, p. 90.

“That poor Monroe child…”: Quoted in Quirk, Fasten Your Seat Belts: The
Passionate Life of Bette Davis, 1987, p. 336.

“I thought of her as the loneliest person I had ever known,” Mankiewicz, p. 42.

“I know and you know everyone knows…”: Quoted in Quirk, Fasten Your Seat
Belts, p 337.
“That woman hates every female…”: Quoted in Collins, Second Act, 1996, p.
79.

“very inquiring and unsure…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 260. “Poetry!”: Gabor, One
Lifetime is Enough, 1991, p. 76-77.

“Mr. Sanders’ wife…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 122-123.

“You see, in my whole life…”: Quoted in Mankiewicz, p. 41-42.

“It was the first book I’d read…”: Quoted in Staggs, All About “All About Eve”,
2000, p. 98.

“Even then…”: Sanders, Memoirs of a Professional Cad: The Autobiography of

George Sanders, 1960, p. 70.

“She was a very strange girl…”: Quoted in Staggs, All About “All About Eve”,
p. 94.

“That girl’s going to be a big star…”: Quoted in Staggs, All About “All About
Eve”, p. 94.

“I can still see us walking…”: Quoted in Haspiel, Young Marilyn, 1994, p. 84.

“Are you a camel…”: Quoted in Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong — I Love

Hollywood, 1975, p. 214.

“From then on…”: Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong — I Love Hollywood, p. 214.

“She was not the ordinary blond…”: Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong — I Love
Hollywood, p. 214.

Transcript of Royal Triton commercial based on various documentaries and

“Vintage 1950s Commercial with Marilyn Monroe for Royal Triton,”
YouTube.com, n.d., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXH2UGP4H1Q

“I can climb trees…”: Quoted in Ventura, Marilyn Monroe: From Beginning to

End: Newly Discovered Photographs by Earl Leaf from the Michael Ochs
Archives, 1997, p. 23.

“That was her first attempt…”: Quoted in Ventura, p. 38. Dialogue from screen
test for Cold Shoulder: YouTube.com, “Marilyn Monroe — The Complete Rare
Screen Test 1950.”

“one of the nicest girls in this town…”: Quoted in Parsons,

“Marilyn Monroe Gets First Starring Role in Cold Shoulder,” Desert News, July
19, 1950.

“[Marilyn] wasn’t quite right…”: Quoted in Davis, Just Making Movies:

Company Directors on the Studio System, 2005, p. 164.

“a hot tomato”: Stebner, “My Day with Marilyn,” Dailymail.co.uk, February 7,

2012.

“Who the hell is…”: Stebner.

“Be sure that Marilyn…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 115.

“I leave my car…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 226.

“It was a gesture of evasiveness…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 34.

“I just want you to know…”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 168.

 Chapter Twelve:
1951: As Young As You Feel, Love Nest, & Let’s Make It
Legal

“Just standing still…” “Apprentice Goddesses.” Life, January 1, 1951, p. 37.

“Marilyn was so attentive…”: Quoted in Cahn, “The 1951 Model Blonde,”

Collier’s, September 8, 1951, p. 51.

“absolutely brilliant,” “He worked…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 18. “There’s a

broad…”: Quoted in Staggs, All About “All About Eve”, p. 124.

“When we shook hands…”: Miller, Timebends, p. 303.

“They’ll eat her alive…”: Quoted in Miller, Timebends, p. 302.

“It was like running into a tree…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, 1969, p. 119.

“Bewitch them…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 113. “honest and

perceptive,” “do it next week,” “naturally excellent,” “[taking] shit from
anyone,” “No night will ever…”: Kazan, undated letter to Marilyn,
Ephemera.com. www.ephemera.typepad.com/ephemera/2009/08/elia-kazan-
love-letter-to-marilyn-monroe.html

“wasted,” “cherish”: Monroe, “Restore Paper, Conservation by J. Franklin

Mowery,” Restorepaper.com, www.restorepaper.com/services.stain-reduction/

“He loved me for one year…” Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 461-462.

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Zanuck…”: Quoted in Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, p. 28.
“I was frozen with fear…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 144.

“Her voice was steady…”: Staggs, All About “All About Eve”, p. 211.

“Looking back…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 82.

“Suddenly, she seemed to shine…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 43.

“To Renie…”: Monroe, image of autographed photograph on Internet for

auction.

“She was a difficult person…”: Quoted in Davis, p. 164.

“To touch…”: Quoted in Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Biography, 2000, p 254.

“He was obviously…”: Quoted in Meyers, The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur
Miller and Marilyn Monroe, 2010, p. 107 and in Winters, Shelley II: The Middle
of My Life, 1989.

“I thought [Marilyn] was great…”: Interview with Robert Wagner in Larry King
Live, CNN, August 5, 1997.

“Well if you don’t like it…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 87.

“No, I don’t think…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 87.

“He gave the greatest performance…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 53. “You must
strive…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 188. “It is childish…”: Quoted
in Roberts, Mimosa, unpublished manuscript, ralphroberts.com.

“sort of a religion”: Monroe, My Story, p. 171.

“I want to be an artist…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 174.

“Please don’t give…”: Quoted in Guiles, Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn
Monroe, 1984, p. 187.

“Lincoln was the man…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 186.

Chapter Thirteen:
Clash By Night

“This sexy blonde…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 127. “She’s younger…”: Quoted in

Zolotow, p. 114.

“I got this feeling…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 114.

“She was awkward…”: Quoted in Mills, Marilyn: On Location, 1990, p. 32.

“terrific applause”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 115.

“There was a sort of magic…”: Quoted in Haspiel, Young Marilyn, p. 84.

“This is Marilyn…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 232. “He doesn’t want…”: Quoted in

Wolfe, p. 232.

“I don’t want you to start…”: Skolsky, Don’t Get Me Wrong — I Love

Hollywood, p. 221.

“All I really wanted…”: Quoted in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words,
p. 6.

“Only once…”: Cahn, “The 1951 Model Blonde,” Collier’s, September 8, 1951.
“was told that her father…” “an impressive array…”: Cahn, “The 1951 Model
Blonde,” Collier’s, September 8, 1951.

“She is rarely seen…”: Cahn, “The 1951 Model Blonde,” Collier’s, September 8,
1951.

“Someday I want…”: Cahn, “The 1951 Model Blonde,” Collier’s, September 8,

1951.

“the most promising star…”: Allan, “Marilyn Monroe…A Serious Blonde Who
Can Act,” Look, October 23, 1951.

Chapter Fourteen:
Don’t Bother To Knock

“She walks across the hotel lobby…”: O’Malley, The Sheila Variations,
www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=8009

“She did it her way…”: Quoted in Gilmore, Inside Marilyn Monroe, 2007, p.
141.

“It was a remarkable experience…”: Quoted in Haspiel, The Unpublished

Marilyn, 2000, p. 32 and Victor, p. 51.

“lulls you into always believing…”: Farber, “Blame the Audience,” The Nation,
December 19, 1952, p. 49.

“Monroe takes her character…”: Farber, “Blame the Audience.” The Nation,
December 19, 1952, p. 49.

“The Monroe wasn’t bad either…”: Cypert, The Virtue of Suspense: The Life and
Works of Charlotte Armstrong, 2008, p. 74.

Chapter Fifteen:
January-February 1952: We’re Not Married & Monkey
Business

“I pretended to be…”: Schwartz, “Becoming Cary Grant,” Theatlantic.com,

January-February 2007,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/01/becoming-cary-grant/305548/

“Marilyn Monroe was the most frightened…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 39.

“She wanted to do…”: Quoted in Mast, Howard Hawks, Storyteller, 1982, p.

164.

Chapter Sixteen:
March-June 1952

“To David — do you still…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 133.

“I’d rather be lonely…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 134.

“Babe who”: Recreated, based on quote in Zolotow, p. 135.

“I don’t like men in loud clothes…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 160. “loud, sporty
fellow,” “a reserved gentleman,” “was either a steel magnate or a congressman”:
Monroe, My Story, p. 161.

“I’m glad to meet you…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 161. “There’s a blue
polka dot…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 161.
“I had never met a man…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 163.

“Would you mind…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 165.

“I don’t feel like turning…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 165.

“There’s a friend of mine…”: Recreated and based on quote in Monroe, My

Story, p. 165.

“I hope I won’t be too hard…”: Recreated and based on quote in Monroe, My

Story, p. 165.

“You must have posed…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 166.

“The best I ever got…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 166.

“heart jumped…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 165.

“It’s just a matter of two people…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 41.

“I disliked him…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 208. “Someday I will

have…”: Quoted in “Old Friend Releases Marilyn Monroe Keepsakes,” ABC
Good Morning America, July 17, 2006,
abcnews.com/GMA/Entertainment/story?id=220193&page=1

“I don’t know why you boys…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 210.

“Although I really thought…”:Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 210.

“Aline, I have a problem…”: Quoted in Mosby, “Marilyn Monroe Admits She’s

Nude Blonde of Calendar,” Los Angeles Express, March 13, 1952.
“Oh, no, I had the radio on…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 46.

“I was facing her…”: Halsman, Sight and Insight, 1972, p. 35. “distinctly
highbrow…”: “Hollywood Topic A-Plus,” Life, April 7, 1952, p. 104.

“She sprinkles…”: “Hollywood Topic A-Plus,” Life, April 7, 1952, p. 104.

“I only wear a few drops…”: Quoted in Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her
Secrets, 1972, p. 177.

“Hell — what’s so menacing about you?” Quoted in Carroll, Falling For

Marilyn: The Lost Niagara Collection, 1996, p. 3.

“Dr. Rabin…”: Monroe, letter reproduced in Summers, Goddess: The Secret

Lives of Marilyn Monroe, p. 62.

“Whitey Dear…”: images of engraved money clip reproduced on the Internet.

“Marilyn Monroe — Hollywood’s confessin’ glamour…”: Johnson, “Marilyn

Monroe Confesses Mother Alive, Living Here,” Los Angeles Daily News, May
3, 1952.

“I frankly did not feel wrong…”: Monroe, letter to the editor, Redbook, July
1952.

“Please dear child…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 215.

Chapter Seventeen:
Niagara
“with clear eyes…”: Zolotow, p. 145-146.

“polished Republican”: Staggs, Close Up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder,

Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream, 2002, p. 5.

“All the adultery…”: Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 139.

“If the people are believable…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 123.

“To be a good director…”: Quoted in Shalit, Great Hollywood Wit: A Glorious

Cavalcade of Hollywood Wisecracks, Zingers, Japes, Quips, Slings, Jests, &
Sass from the Stars, 2002, p. 134.

“marvelous to work with…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 137.

“If you wanted to talk about yourself…”: Cotten, Vanity Will Get You
Somewhere, 1987, p. 110.

“It was magic…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 126.

“I don’t think…”: Recreated and based on quote in Zolotow, p. 146.

“That’s why I have to borrow…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 223.

“I’m just with her…”: Quoted in Cramer, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, 2000,
p. 331.

“was more than a pal — he was a devotion…”: Cramer, p. 195.

“Oh, that…”: Quoted in Cotten, p. 109.

“She was a pretty clown…”: Cotten, p. 111. “outgiving and charming”: Cotten,
p. 110.

“She was being driven down…”: Quoted in Bailey, Marilyn Monroe and the
Making of “Niagara”,1998, p. 19.

“a dancer’s grace”: Shevey, p. 152.

“Mr. Hathaway told me…”: Quoted in Slatzer, The Life and Curious Death of
Marilyn Monroe, 1977, p. 146.

“(Rose) is bound to die…”: Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 58.

“I have to go and be sexy…”: Quoted in Bailey, p. 20. “Marilyn was blessed…”:

Cotten, Variety, p. 111.

“most frightened little girl…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 39.

“I had an easy time…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 39.

“[Hathaway] always had to have…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 123.

“There was a quality about her…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 126. “She didn’t look at
me…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 126.

“Don’t ask me to look…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 126.

“I designed slightly…”: Guilaroff, p. 150.

“A dark horse…”: Kilgallen, “Voice of Broadway,” New York Journal American,

August 28, 1952.

“It is strictly of the mind…”: Kilgallen, “Voice of Broadway,” New York Journal
American, August 28, 1952.

“Some books…”: Kilgallen, “Voice of Broadway,” New York Journal American,

August 28, 1952.

“Send me some…”: Kilgallen, “Voice of Broadway,” New York Journal

American, August 28, 1952.

“Too bad you weren’t married…”: Quoted in Fowler, Reporters: Memoirs of a

Young Newspaperman, 1991, np.

“Slatzer made a career…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 228.

“like a vulture”: Gilmore, p. 144.

“He keeps asking questions…”: Gilmore, p. 144.

“Be rude”: Gilmore, p. 144.

“It is difficult to remember…”; Slatzer, The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn
Monroe, 1977, p. xiii.

“It’s the one photo…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 229.

“When she smiled…”: Carroll, p. 2-3.

“She was always asking…”: Quoted in Bailey, p. 15.

“I look forward to the day…”: Quoted in Carroll, p. 4.

“We’ll just consider your beer…”: Quoted in Carroll, p. 5.

“They teach…”: Quoted in Carroll, p. 10.

“Imagine…”: Quoted in Carroll, p. 17.

“She’s the best natural actress…”: Quoted in Reise and Hitchens,

The Unabridged Marilyn: Her Life from A to Z, 1987, p. 203. “Hollywood was
creating…”: Weston,

“Niagara,”Filmmonthly.com, www.filmmonthly.com/film_noir/niagara.html

“That scene was in the very best…”: “Marilyn’s Hot Shower Causes Sparks to
Fly,” press release reproduced in Brambilla, Marilyn Monroe: The Life, The
Myth, 1996, p. 86 .

“The girl I played…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 59.

“turbinoid undulations”: Halsman, “Shooting Marilyn,” Popular Photography,

June 1953, np.

“I don’t know where they get…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 149.

“I just walk…”: Quoted in Martin, “The New Marilyn Monroe,” Saturday

Evening Post, May 19, 1956. “By denying it…”: Zolotow, p. 148.

“swiveling of her hips, a motion fluid enough to seem comic.” Miller,

Timebends, p. 303.

“Her footprints…”: Miller, Timebends, p. 303.

“Is this the way you…”: Quoted in Crown, Marilyn at Twentieth Century Fox,
1987, p. 78.
“This is the PTA?”: Quoted in Crown, p. 78.

“This is the Methodist…”: Quoted Crown, p. 78.

“This venal employment…”: Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 59.

Chapter Eighteen:
July-November 1952

“I’m trying to make…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 339. “Why does he want…”:

Quoted in Carroll, p. 14. “It’s too bad…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 339.

“Monroe, famous…”: Monroe, “Failure Was My Spur,” Filmland, January 1953.

“I wasn’t aware…”: Quoted in Newsweek, September, 15, 1952, p. 50.

“What do I wear…”: Quoted in Martin, “The New Marilyn Monroe,” Saturday

Evening Post, May 12, 1956.

“I don’t talk…”: Martin, Pete Martin Calls On, 1962, p. 173. “either a tart or a
dumb blonde,” “neither,” “when I really needed them,” “when I’ve only…”:
Ross, “How Marilyn Monroe Sees Herself,” Parade, October 12, 1952.

“I’m beginning to feel…”: Quoted in Ross. “For me, marriage…”: Quoted in

Ross.

“I do not suntan…”: Monroe, “How I Stay in Shape,” Pageant, September 1952.

“I must be part rabbit…”: Monroe, “How I Stay in Shape,” Pageant.



Part IV: Goddess

Chapter Nineteen:
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

“because she so closely approximates…”: Churchwell, p. 57.

“some of the best…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 139.

“We purposely made…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 158.

“We must be sold…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 81. “We got along great…”: Quoted
in Shevey, p. 161.

“I looked up from the table…”: Belmont, np.

“We all had a mutual…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 92.

“Gee, one take…”: Recreated and based on quote in Crown, p. 92.

“When I say cut…”: Quoted in McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of
Hollywood, 1997, p. 506.

“If anyone has ever…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 160. Conversation between

Zanuck and Newman recreated by quotes in Crown, p. 98.

“I don’t even know…”: Nixon, I Could Have Sung All Night, 2006, p. 92.
“Jack changed musical theatre…”: Quoted in Mann, Behind the Screen: How
Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 2001, p. 282-283.

“If you were willing…”: Quoted in Levine, “Hollywood’s Dance History: Jack
Cole Made Marilyn Monroe Move,” Latimes.com, August 9, 2009.
www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-marilyn-mon-roe9-
2009aug09,0,5569636.story

“With Cole…”: Mann, p. 285.

“probably the single most identifiable…”: Buskin, p. 140.

“As it would be impossible…”: De La Hoz, Marilyn Monroe: Platinum Fox,

2007, p. 120.

“The setting, the costumes…”: Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 65.

“The part where…”: Quoted in Levine.

“cover her up”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 143.

“The resulting images…”: Mann, p. 284.

“Replace Marilyn…”: Quoted in McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of

Hollywood, 2000, p. 506.

“She radiated complete innocence…”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 70.

“I’d stand in her doorway…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 48.

“She was quite wonderful…”: Quoted in Meryman, “Marilyn Let’s Her Hair
Down About Being Famous,” Life, p. 34.
“Well, they’re birds of a feather…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 48.

“And stand together…”: Quoted in Russell, My Path and My Detours : An

Autobiography, 1985, p. 161.

“Is it true?”: Quoted in Russell, p. 161.

“You didn’t forget me…”: Quoted in Russell, p. 164.

“Jane, who is deeply religious…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 163-164.

“If you raised your voice…”: Quoted in Belmont, np.

“My great ambition…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 231.

“I had to get out…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 231.

“I couldn’t even get a dressing room…” Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 203.

“They tried to take me…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 158.

“As far as I am concerned…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 161.

“They were all rather evil…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 160.

“And so beautiful”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 162.

“And so talented”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 162. “This is for all time…”: Quoted in
Glatzer, p. 92.
“I sure knew…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 208.

“It’s funny to think…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 14.

“There I was…”: Heston, In the Arena: An Autobiography, 1995, p. 274.

Chapter Twenty:
January-March 1953

Mamie Eisenhower’s believes about women: Eisenhower, “If I Were A Bride

Today,” Today’s Woman, 1953.

“Is this your air…”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 206.

“She’s got a family…”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 211-212.

“I knew Marilyn…”: Quoted in Webb & Smith, Sitting Pretty: The Life and
Times of Clifton Webb, 2011, p. 205.

“With one little twist…”: Quoted in Barbas, The First Lady of Hollywood: A
Biography of Louella Parsons, 2006 p. 316 & Muir, “Florabel Muir Reporting,”
Los Angeles Mirror, February 10, 1953.

“God, she was magnificent…”: Jerry Lewis, Dean and Me: A Love Story, 2005,
p. 221-222.

“burlesque show,” “the public likes provocative…”: Quoted in Franklin &

Palmer, The Marilyn Monroe Story, 1954, np.

“where unless you are self-sufficient…”: Quoted in Flint, “Joan Crawford Dies
at Home,” The New York Times, May 11, 1977.
“Balls, he had them!”: Quoted in Bret, Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr, 2008,
p. 86.

“The thing that hit me…”: Quoted in Barbas, , p. 316.

“The girl had talent…”: Quoted in Quirk, Joan Crawford: The Essential
Biography, 2002, p. 166.

Transcript of Marilyn’s interview with Ken Murray: “Marilyn Monroe —

Interviewed At Call Me Madam Premiere 1953 FOOTAGE,” YouTube.com, n. d.,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPAd59uBETk (accessed June 1, 2012).

“It will give you a nice feeling…”: Quoted in Russell, p. 170.

“I have it in my home…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 9.

“Grace was always…”: Quoted in Miracle, p. 120.

“You made a palace…”: Image of autographed photograph appears on the

Internet.

Chapter Twenty-One:
How To Marry a Millionaire

“People will soon…”: Valentine, The Show Starts on the Sidewalk: An

Architectural History of the Movie Theatre, Starring S. Charles Lee, 1994, p.
165.

“She’s the girl…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 179.

“Marilyn, don’t try to sell this…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 86.

“She wore no makeup…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 175-176.

“the oddities of the human condition…”: Horst, “Lotte Goslar: 1907-97,” Dance
Magazine, January 1998.

“Good night, my dearest darling”: Quoted in Schulman, Harlow: An Intimate

Biography, 2000, p. 396.

“I’ve been in this business…”: Quoted in Wilson, “David Wayne Discovers Who
Marilyn Monroe Is,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 24, 1956.

“I’ve been in this business…”: Quoted in ibid.

“I adore her”: Quoted in ibid.

“Honey, I’ve had mine…”: Quoted in Warren, Betty Grable: The Reluctant
Movie Queen, 1981, p.189.

“Honey, give it to her…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 171.

“I looked into those famous…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 241.

“Hello, this is Marilyn”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 171.

“Marilyn who?”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 171.

“[We] were very close…”: Quoted in Dolleris, Hello, Norma Jean, 2010, p. 151.

“You can’t appear…” Recreated and based on Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 144.
“She had such a right sense…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 66.

“If a director is willing…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 180. “I also recall Marilyn…”:

Quoted in Buskin, p. 151.

“Marilyn was frightened…”: Bacall, By Myself and Then Some, 2006, p. 233.

“Monroe cannot do a picture…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 152.

“I couldn’t dislike Marilyn…”: Bacall, By Myself, 1979, p. 208.

“There’s nobody else…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 145. “There was
something sad…”: Bacall, By Myself and Then Some, p. 234.

“Don’t let them push…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 145. “want[ing] to
be in San Francisco…”: Bacall, By Myself and Then Some, p. 234.

“Monroe plays Pola’s reactions…”: Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 68.

“In the end I adored her…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 86-87.

“I liked the raise…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 149.

“I want to be all platinum…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 184.

“Give my regards to George…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 184.

“Tell them you came…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 101.

“This is just about…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 115.

“On some feminine…”: Leaf, “A New Marilyn Comes Back,” Movie Spotlight,
April 1954.

“It was the first time…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 173.

“Marilyn’s the biggest thing…”: Quoted in Mosby, “‘They’re Just Jealous of

Miss Monroe’ Says Betty Grable,” Los Angeles Daily News, March 16, 1953.

Chapter Twenty-Two:
Spring & Summer 1953

“To my vast regret…”: Jerry Lewis, Dean & Me: A Love Story, 2005, p. 221.

“She had a delicious sense of humor…”: Jerry Lewis, p. 221. “It did mean a lot
of sentimental ballyhoo…”: Quoted in Meryman,”Marilyn Let’s Her Hair Down
About Being Famous,” Life, p. 36.

Chapter Twenty-Three:
River Of No Return

“I’m really eager…”: Quoted in Williams, “Marilyn Wants to Turn It Off,” The
Mirror, March 10, 1953.

“I think I deserve better…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 245.

“the picture of no return”: Quoted in Crown, p. 121.

“I thought River of No Return could be…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 161.

“Unless we get a cast…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 121.

“like Palm Springs…”: Quoted in Ortiz, My Life Among the Icons: A
Fascinating Memoir of a Raconteur, 2001, p. 196.

“Look, I have two kinds…”: Quoted in Bryonic: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to
Know (blog), “Tag Archives: Robert Mitchum,” April 11, 2010,
byronic.me/tag/robert-mitchum/

“show up on time…”: Quoted in Ibid.

“a very special girl…”: Interview with Robert Mitchum in Marilyn Monroe:

Beyond the Legend, directed by Gene Feldman, 1987.

“Otto Preminger, never having been known…”: Winters, Shelley: Also Known
As Shirley, 1981, p. 433-437.

“On location…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 62.

“I carried her out of the river…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 178.

“We put her through a lot…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 244.

“He was a Nazi…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 162.

“Tommy, may I…”: Recreated and based on quote in Guiles, Norma Jean, p.
152.

“My priest told me…”: Recreated and based on quote in Guiles, Norma Jean, p.
152.

“Natasha had a theory…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 66.

“How can I aim…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 67. “Marilyn’s ambition…”: Quoted in

Mills, p. 64.
“take lessons and learn to use their instrument”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean,
p. 153.

“Get up…”: Recreated and based on quote in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 154.

“Producers had this general impression…”: Quoted in “Tommy Rettig,”

Wikipedia.org.

“I just can’t”: Quoted in Brown & Barham, Marilyn: The Last Take, 1992, p.
320.

“certainly could not have…”: Quoted in Condon & Wolfe, Kinsey: Public and
Private, 2004, p. 126.

“You, me, and Mitchum”: Quoted in Summers, p. 90.

“That would kill me”: Recreated based on quote in Summers, p. 90.

“Look at that poor man…”: Recreated, based on interview with Robert Mitchum
in Beyond the Legend.

“Any girl with that much guts…”: Recreated & based on interview with Robert
Mitchum in Beyond the Legend.

“But at least…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 127.

“will give us an amazing…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 124.

“violent, aggressive,” Quoted in Crown, p.; 124.

“she is utterly exhausted…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 124.

“Did those men…”: Recreated and based on quote in Taraborrelli, p. 216.

“Yes, ma’am”: Quoted in Taraborrelli, p. 216.

“Well, then…”: Recreated and based on quote from Taraborrelli, p. 216.

“This shouldn’t be hard…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 165.

“I thought Marilyn behaved…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 163.

Chapter Twenty-Four:
Autumn 1953

“She was like a sad ghost…”: Quoted in Green, “I Am an Electric Eel in a Pool
of Catfish,” Life, January 4, 1963.

“We talked mainly…”: Sitwell, Taken Care Of: An Autobiography, 2011, np.

“quiet…”: Quoted in Meyers, The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and
Marilyn Monroe, 2010, p. 111.

“On the occasion…”: Sitwell, np.

Transcript of The Jack Benny Show: The Jack Benny Show, “Honolulu Trip”
(CBS), directed by Ralph Levy and Hilliard Marks, September 13, 1955.

“She was superb…”: Benny, Saturday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story,
1990, p. 243.

“I don’t know why everyone…”: Quoted in Doty, p. 64.

“Grace’s death…”: Quoted in Miracle, p. 120.

“During a conversation…”: Inez Melson, letter to E. S. Goddard, dated

November 23, 1953, cursumperficio.net,
http://www.cursumperficio.net/CD/Peop/Ent/Mels/Letter/Mels 7.jpg

“That was class”: Amy Greene’s speech at the fiftieth anniversary memorial,
August 5, 2012.

“Producing a movie…”: Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 175.

“Hold on!”: Quoted in Attanasio , “He Played with the Yankee Clipper,”
Broowaha.com, January 14, 2008, broowa-ha.com/articles/2912/he-played-with-
the-yankee-clipper-dario-lodigiani#Fcf7b9qBuuw7lUw1.99 Sports Corner

“She hooked it…”: Quoted in Attanasio. “Joe, you better…”: Quoted in

Attanasio.

“realize his responsibilities…”: Quoted in Gaffney, “Joe DiMaggio Jr.,”

PBS.org., n.d., http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dimaggio/peopleevents/pande0
3.htm

“My father and I didn’t say two words”: Cramer, p. 440.

“It was the most beautiful party…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 252-
253.

“When the rest of the world…”: Monroe, My Story, p. 179.

 Part V: Mrs. Joseph Dimaggio

Chapter Twenty-Five:
January-May 1954

“You’re having all this trouble…”: Quoted in Monroe, My Story, p. 150.

“eighty per cent publicity”: Monroe, My Story, p. 179.

“I take pride I my work…”: Quoted in Torre, “Marilyn Monroe,” New York

Herald-Tribune Television and Radio, week of August 14-20, 1955.

“Marilyn was sweet…”: Quoted in “Meeting Marilyn Monroe,”

Connectionnewspapers.com, August 16-20, 2012.
http://connectionarchives.com/PDF/2012/081512/Springfield.pdf

“What I learned…”: Quoted in “Meeting Marilyn Monroe.”

“I’d like to have six”, “One,” “couldn’t be happier,” “continue to work”: Quoted
in Cramer, p. 352.

“I forgot to kiss the bride”: Quoted in Hoppe, “Joe DiMaggio Weds Marilyn
Monroe at City Hall,” The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 1954.

“Oh, boy…”: Quoted in “Joe and Marilyn Spend First Night in $4 Motel,” New
York Daily News, January 16, 1954.

“We haven’t lost a star…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 79.

“I just bumped it…”: Quoted in “Marilyn and DiMaggio on Their Way to

Japan,” The Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1954.
“If she had tried…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 356.

“They’re mad…”: Quoted in Wit, “Marilyn and Joe in Japan (Japan-zine.com),”

OnMarilynmonroe.ca, October 2000.
http://www.marilynmonroe.ca/camera/tickets/index.html

“We’re all overwhelmed…”: Quoted in Towles, “Monroe Sidesteps Queries on

Tour, Family, Lingerie,” Stars and Stripes, February 3, 1954.
http://www.stripes.com/news/monroe-sidesteps-queries-on-tour-family-lingerie-
1.85777

“If I could get a piano…”: Quoted in Towles, “Monroe Sidesteps Queries on

Tour, Family, Lingerie,” 1954.

“Why don’t you ask me that question?” Quoted in ibid.

“It’s going on…”: Quoted in ibid.

“A fox…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 263.

“But this is my favorite…”: Quoted in ibid.

“I’m planning…”: Quoted in Towles, “Monroe Sidesteps Queries on Tour,

Family, Lingerie.” Stars and Stripes. February 3, 1954.

“the greatest cure…”: Quoted in Wit, 2000.

“She was not like the usual…”: Quoted in Flynn, Faces of Fukuoka, 1999.

“Someone ought…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 160. “People had a habit…”: Monroe,

My Story, p. 183. “She excused herself…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 139.
“I’ve always been frightened…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 265.

“Of all the performers…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 160.

“This was the best thing…”: Quoted Jennings, “Six Thousand Thunderbird
Stampede, Mob Stage to See Marilyn,” StarsandStripes.com, February 23, 1954,
www.stripes.com/news/6-000-thunderbirds-stampede-mob-stage-to-see-marilyn-
1.6395

“Corporal, where are you…” “That works both…”: Quoted in Jennings, 1954.

“I’ll never forget…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 360.

“Do you still love me…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 360.

“Now I’m flying back…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 140.

“It was wonderful…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 200. “Yes, I have…”: Quoted in

Zolotow, p.200.

“I took a cab…”: Quoted in Porter, “Psychic Medium Kenny Kingston Reveals

‘The Marilyn Monroe I Knew,’ ”, Voices.yahoo.com, November 28, 2011.
http://voices.yahoo.com/psychic-medium-kennykingston-reveals-marilyn-
10490545.html

“Hello, You…”: Quoted in Porter, 2011.

“I worked with her, using meditation…”: Quoted in Porter, 2011.

“I have no idea when the suspension…”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 110.

“True love is visible…”: Quoted in McCann, Marilyn Monroe, p. 46.

“What the hell…”: Quoted in McCann, p. 46.

“This Monroe hitch…”: Quoted in Kovan,”Ben Hecht & Marilyn Monroe:

Hecht Wrote Marilyn Monroe’s Memoir ‘My Story,’ ” BenHechtBooks.net,
2001. http://benhechtbooks.net/ben_hecht__marilyn_monroe “Marilyn had
called and asked…”: O’Hara, ‘Tis Herself a Memoir, p. 215-216

“Treat a husband…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 99. “You can’t outlaw…”: Quoted

in Summers, p. 99

“My Dad”: Monroe, “Important March 1, 1954 Marilyn Monroe Autographed

Handwritten Letter As Sent to Joe DiMaggio,” HuntAuctions.com, n.d.,
http://www.huntauctions.com/online/imageviewer.cfm?auction_
num=27&lot_num=866&lot_qual= (accessed January 1, 2012).

“Please accept…”: Monroe , “Significant Marilyn Monroe Letter Handwritten to

Joe DiMaggio As Found with Joe DiMaggio’s Personal Wallet c.1954,”
HuntAuctions.com., n.d., http://www.huntauctions.com/online/imageviewer.cfm?
auction_num=27&lot_num=884&lot_qual= (accessed January 1, 2012).

Research by John Gottman: Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How
You Can Make Yours Last, 1994.

Chapter Twenty-Seven:
There’s No Business Like Show Business

“lots of little DiMaggios”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 113. “We want children…”:

Quoted in Leaming, p. 113.

“You know how much…”: Image of Skouras telegram in Banner, MM-Personal:

From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe, 2011, p. 136.

“She’s the best…”: Quoted in Seaman, Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline
Susann, 1996, p. 245.

“I’ve never before…”: Quoted in Siegel, “Forever Marilyn Part 2: There’s No

Business Like Show Business in Cinemascope!” Blu-ray.com, August 16, 2012.
http://www.blu-ray.com/new/?id=9279

“when I was going to a new foster home…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 204.

“I told her to buy…”: Quoted in Marchese, “Channeling a Bombshell, One Jazzy

Note at a Time,” The New York Times, August 5, 2011.

“She had the same problem…”: Quoted in ibid.

“About 50 percent…”: Quoted in ibid.

“Have I been there…”: Quoted in Cahn, “Marilyn Monroe Hits a New High,”
Collier’s, July 9, 1954.

“And it was a good trip”: Quoted in ibid.

“I won’t be satisfied until people…”: Quoted in ibid.

“If you hear the record now…”: Quoted in Marchese, 2011.

“This is the way…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 205.

“[We would] dish dirt…”: Quoted in Flinn, Brass Diva: The Life and Legend of
Ethel Merman, 2007, p. 272.
“high-necked, long-sleeved…” Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 75.

“Some were on business…”: Quoted in Flinn.

“She seemed to flicker…”: Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 5.

“Marilyn was a very serious…”: Quoted in Siegel, 2012. “You haven’t heard…”:
Quoted in Flinn, p. 270.

“She was obviously trying…”: Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 6. “Italian marble
statue”: Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 7. “Meeting Marilyn and finding her as
sweet…”: Quoted in Hoyt, The Marilyn: Tragic Venus, 1965, p. 142 and Siegel,
2012.

“I’d rather do it…”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 122

“Perhaps it’s because I’ve been lucky…”: Pearson, “Merman, Monroe Mull
Over Male/Female Fashions,” The Tuscaloosa News, August 30, 1954.

“act like a bubble and just burst,” Quoted in Buskin, p. 174.

“nuts”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 175.

“But I don’t know him”: George Chakiris speaking at the Marilyn Monroe 50th
Anniversary Memorial Service in Los Angeles on August 5, 1962.

“She was very loyal…”: Quoted in Crown, p. 147.

“Special accolades must be reserved for Marilyn Monroe…” Quoted in Siegel,

2012.

“I never saw anybody work…”: Quoted in King, “Marilyn Monroe: People Who
Knew Her Recall the Real Person,” The Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2012.
 Chapter Twenty-Eight:
The Seven Year Itch

“It went on about sex…”: Newcastle, “George Axelrod and the Great American
Sex Farce,” The cad.net, n.d., http://the cad.net/Theatre/george-axelrod.html

“The truth of the matter…”: “The Seven Year Itch,” Moviediva.com, n.d.,
http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDSevenYe arItch.htm

“In spite of the enormous…”: Darryl F. Zanuck, Interoffice Correspondence to

Billy Wilder, dated September 20, 1954, icollector.com, December 16, 2011,
www.icollector.com/Marilyn-Monroe-extensive-archive-of-pro-duction-and-
publicity-material-from-The-Seven-Year-Itch_i11537134 (accessed June 28,
2013).

“The Seven Year Itch is a promotion…”: Taylor, “The Seven Year Itch: The Title
Credits,” Notcoming.com, August 8, 2005.

“I had a big, professional, emotional…”: Quoted in McGilligan, Backstory 3:

Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s, 1997, p. 64. “He was so funny…”:
Quoted in Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, 1998,
p. 364. “In medium shots…”: Quoted in Sikov, p. 367.

“adored,” “such a lovely person to work with”: Interview with Tom Ewell, Good
Morning America, August 5, 1982.

“look clean, talcum-powdered, and adorable”: Quoted in Nickens, Marilyn in

Fashion: The Enduring Influence of Marilyn Monroe, 2012, p. 170.

Transcript of interview at Idelwild Airport 1954 based upon various

documentaries and “Marilyn Monroe Interviewed at Idlewild Airport Circa
1954,” YouTube.com.

“I have a bulbous nose”: Quoted in Shaw, The Joy of Marilyn, p. 30.

“Marilyn, when I’m shooting…”: Quoted in Shaw, p. 30. “roadblock named

Marilyn Monroe”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 127. “This one is my favorite”: Based
on photo of Marilyn’s scrapbook in “Parting Shots,” Life, September 8, 1972.

“There won’t be any admission…” Quoted in Leaming, p. 127.

“Before the filming began…”: Quoted in Brierly, “Photographing Marilyn

Monroe in ‘The Seven Year Itch,’ ” Black and White, September 2008.

“the finest instance…”: Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 78

“She had a natural instinct…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 288.

“I saw [Joe’s] face…”: Quoted in Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn, p. 14.

“look of death”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 284.

“Joe wasn’t any great hero…”: Quoted in Guiles, Legend, p. 249.

“Joe?”…”Yes”: Quoted in Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn, p. 34.

“beat [Marilyn] up”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 285.

“Joe slapped me around…”: Quoted in Guilaroff, p. 161.

“Don’t ever do that again…”: Quoted in Guilaroff, p. 161.

“I would have been tough…”: Interview with Tom Ewell, Good Morning
America.

“I didn’t realize what a disorganized…”: Quoted in Thomas, “Wilder’s Winning

Ways,” London Daily Express, April 19, 1961.

“Marilyn you’re absolutely wonderful…”: Quoted in interview with Tom Ewell,

Good Morning America.

“I wouldn’t know…”: Quoted in ibid.

“I had no problems with Monroe…”: Quoted in Sikov, p. 367-368.

“There is no chance at reconciliation…”: Quoted in “Marilyn Monroe to Divorce

DiMaggio; She cites ‘Conflicting Career Demands,’ ” The New York Times,
October 5, 1954 and in “Marilyn Monroe Will Seek Divorce from Joe
DiMaggio,” Sarasota-Herald Tribune, October 5, 1954.

“I’m going to San Francisco…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 369. “There is no other

man…” and transcript of press conference announcing divorce based on
newsreels: “Marilyn Monroe — announcing separation from Joe DiMaggio,”
YouTube.com, n.d., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_CdnJxqskQ

Geisler’s statement about divorce based on newsreels: “Marilyn Monroe —

Attorney Jerry Giesler Press Conference,” YouTube.com., 1954,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrjft31ogOw

“I can’t understand…”: Quoted in Belser, “DiMaggio Voices Hope for

Reconciliation with Marilyn Monroe,” Lima News, October 28, 1954.

“Now she does everything…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 245. “Things like this
just…”: Parker and Heard, “What Made Marilyn and Joe Bust Up?” Los Angeles
Mirror, October 5, 1954.
“She told me later…”: Quoted in Shaw and Rosten, Marilyn Among Friends,
1987, p. 54.

“There have been tough days…”: Charles K. Feldman Inter-office Memo to

Darryl Zanuck, dated October 22, 1954, icollec-tor.com, December 16, 2011,
www.icollector.com/Marilyn-Monroe-extensive-archive-of-production-and-
publicity-materi-al-from-The-Seven-Year-Itch_i11537134 (accessed June 28,
2013)

“His life-style…”: Skolsky, 1975, p. 225.

“cold indifference,” “ill-temper”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 210. “He may have been
the idol…”: Quoted in Cramer, p. 210. “Your Honor…”: Quoted in Spoto,
Marilyn Monroe, p. 293. “Mr. DiMaggio was completely…”: Quoted in Cramer,
p. 371.

“I regret it…”: Quoted in Muir, “Marilyn is Free; Love Caught Cold From Joe,”
The New York Daily News, October 28, 1954.

“[Marilyn] was wonderful…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 184. “Marilyn did not

have…”: Interview with Tom Ewell, Good Morning America.

“Billy’s a wonderful director…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 256.

“I have seen at least twenty…” Quoted in Shaw & Rosten, p. 52.

“normal person,” “voluptuous,” “fantastic,” “artless seductress,” “radioactive

bomb,” “volatile substance…”: Crowther, “Look at Marilyn!” The New York
Times, June 12, 1955.

“She was an absolute genius…”: Quoted in Churchwell, p. 49.

“Mystery…”: Interview with Tom Ewell, Good Morning America.

“Marilyn was a fighter:” Ibid.

Part VI: The Actress

Chapter Twenty-Nine:
November-December 1954

“I hated Frankie…”: Quoted in Server, Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing, 2007, np.

“A tall one…”: Quoted in Harvey, “Marilyn Monroe Secrets Were Safe — At

Least for a While,” Latimes.com, June 5, 2011,
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/05/local/la-me-0605-then-20110605

“I was terrified…”: Quoted in Ponder, “Wrong Door Raid: The Celebrity

Scandal That Irked Sinatra, Made a Fool of DiMaggio — All at Marilyn
Monroe’s Expense,” Sunsetstrip.com, December 7, 2010,
http://www.sunsetstrip.com-2010/12/07/wrong-door-raid/

“Almost all…”: Quoted in Ponder, 2010.

“I was the first one…”: Quoted in Ponder, 2010.

“Frank Sinatra was…”: Quoted in Harvey, 2011.

“Marilyn had come up…”: Quoted in Harvey, 2011.

“He did physically abuse…”: Interview with Hal Schaefer on E! Entertainment

News, “Marilyn Monroe-Hal Schaefer Interviewed”, YouTube.com, n. d.,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzGJc3UOmaY

“She was such a good soul…”: ibid.

“She’s looking wonderful…”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 137. “Everybody is always

tugging…”: Quoted in Meryman,

“Marilyn Let’s Her Hair Down About Being Famous,” Life, p. 34.

“I owe Marilyn Monroe…”: Quoted in Nicolson, p. 149.

“I disappeared because…”: Quoted in Martin, “The New Marilyn Monroe —

Part Three,” Saturday Evening Post May 19, 1956.

“I’ve worked hard…”: Quoted in “Fleur’s Flair,” Time, September 12, 1949.

“How could a movie star…”: Cowles, She Made Friends and Kept Them: An
Anecdotal Memoir, 1996, p. 248.

“I must do good…”: Quoted in Cowles, Friends & Memories, 1978, p. 190.

“I promise you…”: Quoted in Banner, Marilyn, p. 274.

“a structured life in an organized house”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p.

302.

“Milton and Marilyn spoke…”: Interview with Amy Greene in Marilyn in

Manhattan, directed by John Parsons Peditto,1998.

“a genius”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 230.

“If I hold her…”: Quoted in Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn, p. 41.

“One of the things…”: Interview with Joshua Greene in Marilyn in Manhattan.

“She was like a child…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 122.

“Milton never had an affair…”: Interview with Amy Greene in Marilyn in

Manhattan.

“He was telling me…”: Quoted in Belmont, p. 19.

“It was a moment…”: Interview with Amy Greene in Marilyn in Manhattan.

Chapter Thirty:
January 1955

“We will go…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 231 & “New Role for Marilyn,” The New
York Times, January, 8, 1955, p. 10.

“It’s no temptation…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 300.

“I don’t like some…”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 143.

“I don’t want to play…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 231.

“Marilyn knows…”: Martin, Pete Martin Calls On, 1962, p. 160. “Is Marilyn
Monroe…”: “Academy Awards 1954 Complete Part 2,” YouTube.com,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIz0E7cpvE8

“a stupid girl…”: Leaming, p. 146.

“I’ve never felt that about…”: Quoted in Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 186.
“social whirl”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 302.

“I lost an I.Q. point…”: Quoted in Rutledge, The Gay Fireside Companion,

1989. p. 76.

“as if he were dreamily…”: Rutledge, The Gay Fireside Companion, 1989, p.

76.

“I thought they might…”: Quoted in Capote, Portraits and Observations: The

Essays of Truman Capote, 2008, p. 471.“my special problem…”: Quoted in
Wolfe, p. 255.

“Oh yes…”: Quoted in Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of

Truman Capote, 2008, p. 471.

“exquisite Ophelia.” Quoted in Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays

of Truman Capote, 2008, p. 471.

“This beautiful child…”: Quoted in Capote, Portraits and Observations: The

Essays of Truman Capote, 2008, p. 471-472.

“The last chapter…”: Quoted in The New York Daily News, Joe DiMaggio: An
American Icon, 1999, p. 182.

“She really looked at Sam…”: Quoted in Walker, “The Photography of Sam

Shaw,” HollywoodReporter.com, January 25, 2011.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/photography-sam-shaw-75208

“[Marilyn] was a wonderful, warm…”: Quoted in Scott, “Secret Marilyn;

Celebrity Snapper’s Unseen Photos of the World’s Most Famous Movie Star,”
Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail, Thefreelibrary.com, 2009,
www.thefreelibrarycom/Secret+Marilyn%3B+CELEBRITY+SN
APPER’S+UNSEEN+PHOTOS+OF+THE+WORLD’S+MOST…-a0197614763

“delicatessen store owner…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 237. “[Strasberg] behaved

and was treated…”: Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 1992 , p. 118.

“If I let them dissect me…”: Quoted in Dalton, James Dean: Mutant King,
1983,p. 9.

“We didn’t understand…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 292.

“This sensitive core…”: Quoted in Guiles, Legend, p. 84.

“The more naive…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 292.

“She could hardly say…”: Miller, Timebends, p. 471.

“If I were a car…”: Quoted in Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 197.

“In Marilyn’s case…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 238 & 239.

“No more…”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 59.

“She is a beautiful hummingbird…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 293.

“For someone like me…”: Quoted in Kashner, “Marilyn and Her Monsters,”
Vanity Fair, October 2008.

“I really admire your father…”: Quoted in Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 9-10.

“When I looked into [Marilyn’s] eyes…”: Quoted in Strasberg, Marilyn and Me,
p. 30.
“sexiest, most sensual woman in the world”: Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 30.

“nobody’s fool”: Quoted in Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. 30. “Our door was
open to many artists…”: Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, p. xiii

“airhead,” Quoted in Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn, p. 54. “People

patronize…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 293.

Chapter Thirty-One:
January 1955-February 1955

“rumpled and not quite all put together…”: Quoted in Leaming168

“studiously casual,” “presence,” “vulturous,” “humiliating authority”: Steinem,

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 1983, p. 257.

“I admire all these people…”: Ibid.

“Then, fifteen minutes later…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 130. “People were quite
nice…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 154-155. “She was the consummate flirt…”:
Quoted in Shevey, p. 229.

“I never had that problem…”: Stapleton and Scovell, One Hell of a Life: An
Autobiography, 1995, p. 119.

“Marilyn was a sterling silver star…”: Meadows and Daley, Love, Alice: My Life
as a Honeymooner, 1994. p. 121-122

“You were very high…”: Quoted in Haspiel,1991, p. 47.

“What floor was I on?”: Ibid.

“1. Don’t ever be critical…”: Quoted in “Significant Joe DiMaggio Journal with
Handwritten Notes Regarding Marilyn Monroe, c. 1955.” HuntAuctions.com.
n.d. http://www.huntauctions.com/online/imageviewer.cfm?auction_
num=27&lot_num=880&lot_qual=

“She’s a beautiful girl…”: “East of Eden Film Premiere (1955) Feat. Marilyn
Monroe, Jack Warner, John Steinbeck,” Youtube.com., n.d.,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEP5CSXV4xA (accessed January 1, 2012).

“I touched her!”: Quoted in Hapiel,1991, p. 54.

“That’s all they think of me”: Interview with Eli Wallach in Marilyn Monroe:
Life After Death, directed by Gordon Freedman, 1994.

Interview with people on the street about The Seven Year Itch cutout from
newsreels in various documentaries

“Oh, let’s talk about arthritis”: Quoted in Wilson, “In Defense of Marilyn,”
Modern Screen, June 1955.

“I should get his…”: Quoted in ibid.

“Dear Marilyn/We need you for our Shakespeare Theatre…”: Quoted in ibid

“Here comes the only girl…”: Quoted in Haspiel, 1991, p. 54.

“It meant a lot to me…”: Interview with Marilyn Monroe, CBS, Person to
Person, April 8, 1955.

“Nineteen fifty-four…”: “Academy Awards 1954 Complete Part 2,”

YouTube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIz0E7cpvE8
“I did wrong to withhold these names…”: Quoted in Newman, The Cold War
Romance of Lillian Hellman and Joe Melby, 1989, p.174.

“She wore white gloves…”: Quoted in Leigh, True Grace: The Life and Times of
An American Princess, 2008.

“It is a splendid thing…Quoted in Cravens, Great Depression: People and

Perspectives, 2009, p. 216-217.

Chapter Thirty-Two:
Spring 1955

“You were here…”: Quoted in McKinley, “A Boy’s Film of a Day With Marilyn
Monroe,” NYTimes.com, February 18, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/18/arts/a-boy-s-film-of-a-day-with-marilyn-
monroe.html

“How’s Ida’s meatballs?” ibid

“To My Dear Marilyn…”: Quoted in Gottfried, Arthur Miller: His Life and
Work, 2004, p. 311.

“Oh, that’s from Eli”: Quoted in Gottfried, p. 246.

“They love their work…”: Quoted in Wallach, The Good, the Bad, and Me: In
My Anecdotage, 2006, p. 211.

“Take out clauses three and four…”: Quoted in ibid, p. 211. Conversation
between Marilyn and the Rostens recreated based upon quotations in Rosten,
Marilyn: An Untold Story, 1973.

“it touched me very much…”: Quoted in Gertz, “Heartbreaking Marilyn Monroe

Letter Estimated at $30,000-$50,000,” Booktryst.com. n.d.
http://www.booktryst.com/2012/11/heartbreaking-marilyn-monroe-letter.html

“We really didn’t give…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 132. “She broke all the
rules…”: Quoted in Ibid., p. 155.

“No, I’m Mamie Van Doren,” or “I’m Sheree North”: Quoted in Haspiel, 1991,
p. 93.

“I just felt like being Marilyn…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 130. “It’s just you and
the camera…”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 193. Transcript of interview with Edward
R. Murrow based on CBS, Person to Person, April 8, 1955.

“the abbess of a nunnery…”: Quoted in Capote, Portraits and Observations: The

Essays of Truman Capote, 2008, p. 471.

“She taught me how…”: Quoted in ibid., p. 474

“Don’t call me Marilyn…” Interview with Edie Shaw in Marilyn Monroe: Child
Goddess, directed by Donatella Baglivo, 1994.

“Excuse me…”: Quoted in Saw & Rosten, Marilyn Among Friends, p. 158.

“I’m sorry…”: Ibid.

“Knowing her…” Interview with Shaw family, PBS, American Masters, Marilyn
Monroe: Still Life, directed by Gail Levin, 2006.

“She acted like…”: Quoted in Shaw & Rosten, 1987, p. 163.

“I won’t let them down…”: Quoted in Shaw & Rosten, 1987, p. 16. “Nobody
bothered…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 243. “voluptuous,” “fantastic,” “artless
seductress,” “radioactive bomb”: Crowther, “Look at Marilyn!” The New York
Times, June 12, 1955.

“volatile substance, not because she is artfully revealed as an intel-lectual or

dramatic enigma, but because she is — well, a full-fledged wow!” Ibid.

Chapter Thirty-Three:
Summer 1955

“Do you know who…”: Quoted in Skolsky, 1975, p. 213.

“I speak my own sins…”: Miller, The Crucible, 1953.

“swift current,” “was a whirling light…all paradox and enticing mystery”

“poetic sensitivity”: Miller, Timebends, p. 359.

“unbearable”: Ibid., p. 356.

“sub-human” Monroe, Fragments, p. 197.

“rockets,” “fireworks,” “bombs bursting,” “same anatomy as anyone else”:

Quoted in Strasberg, 1992,p. 144.

“Stop me if you’ve heard…”: Quoted in Strasberg, 1992, p. 51.

“Marilyn, I’d give anything…”: Quoted in ibid., p. 54.

“Oh, no…”: Quoted in ibid., p. 54.

“soft, lovely,” “sweet smile and a good, full laugh”: Quoted in ibid., p. 202.

“Very sweet, very serious…”: Quoted in Picturegoer, June 11, 1955.

“She likes to talk…”: Webb and Smith, Sitting Pretty: The Life and Times of
Clifton Webb, 2011, p. 204.

Interview with Dave Garroway based on radio broadcast: NBC, Monitor,

“Marilyn Monroe — Rare Radio Interview 1955 1/2,” Youtube.com, n.d.,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab0PvSbocs8&list=PL214F
A0C965504B52&index=1

“I am a serious actress…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 250.

“My fight with the studio…”: Ibid., p. 250.

“One can readily imagine…”: Rollyson, p. 96.

“He is coming into the room…”: Quoted in ibid.

“I had great compassion…”: Quoted in Guiles, p. 272.

“Oh, I think…”: Quoted in interview with Deturk, St. Petersburg Times, May 22,
1989.

“Oh, Marilyn…”: Ibid.

“Oh no, no…”: Ibid.

Description of Marilyn singing in Strasberg, 1992, p. 83.

“I told you she was great…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 263.

“The students realized…”: Quoted in Morgan, p. 155.

Conversation with Roth recreated based upon Guiles, Norma Jean, p. 188.

“He loved me…”: Odets, Golden Boy Odets,1964, Act 2, Scene 2.

“This was a Marilyn no one had ever seen…”: Strasberg, 1992, p. 84-85.

“She can call up emotionally…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p, 239. “Marilyn was so

bright…”: Quoted in Summers, p. 130.

“brilliant,” “perfect”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 348-349.

“Not once did I see…”: Quoted in Mills, p. 92.

“Aw, you play”: Quoted in Bosworth, “The Mentor and the Movie Star,”
Vanityfair.com, June 2003.
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2003/06/marilyn -monroe-and-lee-
strasberg-200306

“She let go with a twelve-minute dissertation…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 230.

“Oh, my God…”: Quoted in Brando, Songs For My Mother, 2005, p. 154

“There are no accidents…”: Quoted in ibid., p. 154.

“I don’t know if I do it…”: Quoted in Meyers, The Genius and the Goddess:
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, 2010. p. 63.

“He would have claimed credit…”: Brando, 2005, p. 85. “bring art to the
masses”: Quoted in Arnold, Marilyn Monroe, 2005, p. 46.

“our late, beloved president”: Quoted in ibid, p. 46.

“And now, where are the men…”: Quoted in with the beards?” Kacich, Hot
Type: 150 Years of the Best Local Stories From the News-Gazette, 2002, p. 202.

“After that long kiss…“: Joyce, Ulysses: A Reproduction of the 1922 First
Edition, 2002, np.

“[Marilyn] surpassed everyone…”: Strasberg, 1992, p. 197.

Chapter Thirty-Four:
Autumn 1955

“You’re the saddest girl…”: Quoted in Miller, Timebends, p. 369

“You’re the only one…”: Quoted in ibid.

“I admire Mr. Miller’s plays…”: Quoted in Schreiber, “Remembrance of

Marilyn” Good Housekeeping, January 1963.

“I would love…”: Recreated conversation based upon Strasberg, 1992, p. 49.

“I couldn’t be the Italian housewife…”: Quoted in Victor, p. 80.

“I know this man…”: Quoted in Shaw & Rosten, 1987, p. 146.

“Marilyn Monroe is cooing…”: Quoted in Gottfried, p. 241.

“I regard her as an actress…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn Monroe, p. 122

“I can face myself more…”: Martin, “The New Marilyn Monroe,” The Saturday
Evening Post, May12, 1956, p. 110.
“There is persuasive proof…”: “Cinema: The Winner,” Time, January 16, 1956.

“She had us all…”: Olivier, Confessions of an Actor, 1982, p. 205.

“Just a minute”: Quoted in Leaming, p. 195-196

“one of the least likely duos…”: “Cinema: The CoStars,” Time, February 20,
1956.

Chapter Thirty-Five:
January-March 1956

“best finest surgeon”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 75.

“repulsive”: Ibid., p. 77.

“Gimme a whiskey…”: O’Neill, Anna Christie, 2005, np.

“I can’t rely on that…”: Recreated based upon quoted in Shevey, p. 230.

“I couldn’t see anything before I went on stage…”: Quoted in Levin, “Marilyn

Monroe: I’m Learning About Marriage,” Redbook, February 1957, p. 96.

“It’s my Old Man I got to meet…”: O’Neill, Anna Christie.

“It was the first time I’d ever heard applause…”: Quoted in Rollyson, Marilyn
Monroe, p. 100.

“It was really an extraordinary moment…”: Quoted in Shevey, p. 229.

“quite extraordinary…”: Quoted in Adams, Lee Strasberg: The Imperfect Genius

of the Actors Studio, p. 261-262.

“Everybody who saw that says…”: Interview with Ellen Burstyn in Marilyn In
Manhattan.

“The only one that was great was Maureen”: Quoted in Strasberg, p. 101.

“histrionic development”: Gelb, “Producers Vying on ‘Golden Kazoo,’ ” The

New York Times, February 20 1956.

“She was a star…”: Quoted in Gottfried, p. 277.

“She had a way with a dish towel”: Lewis, Slings and Arrows: Theater in My
Life (1996), p. 244.

“America’s best known blonde movie star…”: Quoted in Gottfried, p. 277.

“The initial shyness over…”: Quoted in Christies, The Personal Property of

Marilyn Monroe, p. 40.

“She was the greatest fun…”: Quoted in Evans, Marilyn Handbook, 2004.

“Hollywood turned out to meet…”: Goodman, “Aristophanes & Back,” Time,

May 14, 1956.

Transcript of Marilyn’s press conference for Bus Stop from various newsreels
and documentaries: “Marilyn Monroe Rare Footage — Arriving In Hollywood
To Film Bus Stop Feb 26, 1956,” Youtube.com, n.d.,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk4HdrS8xOs (accessed June 22, 2013).

“Laws are made for all of us…”: Quoted in “Marilyn Monroe Hit with Penalty,”
City Herald, March 1, 1956.
“I am very sorry…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 349.

“I would suggest…”: Quoted in ibid., p.349.

“Well this kind of acting…”: Quoted in “Marilyn Monroe Hit with Penalty.”

“I think Judge Griffin was right…”: “Marilyn Monroe Pays a Traffic Fine,”
Youtube.com, n.d., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II7eYqnvJmQ (accessed
June 1, 2012).

“It was the last time I ever saw her…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 271. “Sixteenth
Century Fuck”: Capua, Yul Brynner: A Biography (2006), p. 57.

Chapter Thirty-Six:
Bus Stop

“Death makes us all innocent”: Quoted in Largo, Genius and Heroin: The
Illustrated Catalogue: Creativity, Obsession, and Reckless Abandon Through the
Ages (2008), p. 135.

“I nearly missed…”: Logan, Movie Stars, Real People, and Me (1978), p. 71.

“I could gargle with salt…”: Logan, p. 72.

“I have worked with hundreds of actors…”: Quoted in Logan, p. 73.

“Without my illness…”: Quoted in Bloom, p. 309.

“the most talented motion picture actress…”: Quoted in Spoto, p. 358.

“I’d say she was the greatest artist…” Logan, p. 79 “Hollywood shamelessly
wasted her…”: Quoted in Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, p. 358.

“How did you ever get away with that?”: Quoted in Logan, p. 79.

“From my pay of $30…” Don Murray’s speech at Ribbon Cutting Ceremony of

The Monroe Forum Theatre in North Hollywood, August 5, 2012.

“I want Attila the Hun…”: Ibid.

Marilyn’s reaction to costume sketches recreated and based on quote in Logan,

p. 80.

“I have to watch my figure”: Quoted in Zec, “Marilyn and Me: Mirror Showbiz
Legend on His Amazing Friendship with the Sex Goddess Movie Icon Who
Died 50 Years Ago,” Mirror.co.uk, August 3, 2012,
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/marilyn-monroe-and-me-mirror-
showbiz-1207829

“You eat, Marilyn…”: Quoted in Zec.

“Dietrich wouldn’t have done it”: Quoted in Logan, p. 105. “Marilyn, it’s very
sweet of you…”: Quoted in Yankee, Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up
with Eileen Heckart (2006), p. 85.

“Are you kidding?”: Quoted in Yankee, p. 85.

“Marilyn’s playing catch…”: Quoted in Yankee, p. 85.

“She signed…” Quoted in Yankee, p. 85.

“No one could have been less…”: Don Murray’s speech at ribbon cutting
ceremony of opening of Monroe Forum in North Hollywood, August 5, 2012.
“totally satisfying professional”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 199. “Thanks for letting
Paula help…”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 193.

“I didn’t want to disturb…”: Quoted in Logan, p. 103.

“Oh, Paula…”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 191.

“I can’t do it…”: Quoted in Miller, Timebends, p. 378.

“Arthur writes me every day…”: Monroe, Fragments, p. 203.

“so pale and white,” “white and scaly”: Quoted in Buskin, p. 201. Conversation
between Marilyn and Don Murray about sex and phallic symbols recreated from
quotes in Buskin, p. 201.

“She did it…” Logan, p. 97.

“We had a memorable musical…”: Logan, p. 99.

“Maybe I don’t know…” Quoted in De La Hoz, p. 204.

“Who am I to keep insistin’…”: Quoted in De La Hoz, p. 204. Marilyn’s angry

reaction to deletion of scene recreated and based upon quote in Logan, p. 113.

Marilyn’s comment about Don Murray’s close-up recreated and based upon
quote in Logan, p. 106.

“There are still those of us…”: Logan, p. 108-109.

“The real marvel is the paradox…” Image of letter in Christies, The Personal
Property of Marilyn Monroe, p. 42. “extraordinary,” “She is wonderful…”:
Quoted in AMC’s Backstory, “Bus Stop.”
“She was very real…”: Quoted in Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn, p. 74.

“Hold on to your chairs…”: Crowther, “The Screen: Marilyn Monroe Arrives;

Glitters as Floozie in ‘Bus Stop’ at Roxy.” The New York Times, September 1,
1956.

“She gives a performance…” Crowther, “The Proof of Marilyn: In ‘Bus Stop,’ a

Good Role and a Challenge Are Met by Miss Monroe.” The New York Times,
September 9, 1956.

“Fox’s promotion…”: Holden, Behind the Oscar: The Secret History of the
Academy Awards, p. 217-218.

“It’s a disease…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 286.

“I was astonished…”: Don Murray’s speech at Ribbon Cutting Ceremony of The

Monroe Forum Theatre in North Hollywood, August 5, 2012.

Paula Strasberg discussing Marilyn’s reaction to Joshua Logan’s gift recreated

and based upon quote in Logan, p. 115.

“Marilyn is as near a genius…”: Quoted in Wolfe, p. 274.

Chapter Thirty-Seven:
May-July 1956

“I never dared to think about it…”: Quoted in Goodman, “To Aristophanes &
Back.” Time, May 16, 1956.

“The eyes are large and grey”: Goodman. “and lend the features…”: Goodman.
“many a once-skeptical…”: Goodman.
“For the first time…”: Quoted in Goodman.

“Kinsey says a woman…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 287.

“My God, if I’d known…”: recreated and based upon quote in Strasberg, p. 127.

“like my own daughter”: Quoted in Miller, Timebends, p. 403.

“I could not use the name…”: Quoted in Murphey, Congressional Theatre:

Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film, and Television, 1999, p. 68.

“disaster and calamity,” “very infortunate,” “It was a great error”: Quoted in
“Investigation of the Unauthorized Use of United States Passports — Part 3.
Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities House of
Representatives Eighty-fourth Congress Session.” Archive.org. June 12 and 13,
1956.

“The objective is double…”: Quoted in Gottfried, p. 293. “Arthur told…”:

recreated based upon quotation in Rosten, p. 34.

“By the time you get this…”: Quoted in Clarke, Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of
Truman Capote, p. 243.

“Leave me alone…”: Quoted in Spada, p. 117.

Transcript of Marilyn’s press conference announcing her wedding plans appear

in YouTube and in various documentaries: “Marilyn Monroe — Cross-
Examination By The Press June 21st 1956,” Youtube.com, n.d.,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZMrcfHamVE

“I’ve never been happier…”: Quoted in Freedman, Klezmer America:

Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity, 2008. p. 109.
“I’ve got to go…”: Quoted in Freedman, p. 109. “You better stop…”: Quoted in
Freedman, p. 109.

“For the first time in my life…”: Quoted in Zolotow, p. 288. “Nothing is too
good…”: Quoted in Schreiber, “Remembrance of Marilyn,” Good
Housekeeping, January 1963. “Until recently…”: Quoted in Spada, p. 119.

“[She] in effect was the mad mother…”: Miller, Timebends, p. 423.

“mangled,” “pointless”: Miller, Timebends, p. 522.

Transcript of press conference announcing wedding based upon newsreels

appearing on YouTube and various documentaries: “Marilyn Monroe and Arthur
Miller at a Press Conference” YouTube.com. n.d., http://youtube.com/watch?
v=b_P2FFIVV8A

“She indicated…”: Quoted in Winter, “Marilyn Monroe Was a Sincere Convert

to Judaism, Rabbi’s Letters Reveal,” Examiner.com, March 6, 2010.
http://www.examiner.com/article/marilyn-monroe-was-a-sin-cere-convert-to-
judaism-rabbi-s-letters-reveal

“Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher…”: Quoted in Kashner & Schoenberger, A

Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant, 1994, p. 366.

Conversation between Marilyn and Amy Greene on wedding day recreated and
based on Greene & Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn, p. 75.

“Marilyn always was so good hearted…”: Quoted in Greene & Kotsilibas-Davis,

Milton’s Marilyn, p. 75.

Conversation between Milton Greene and Marilyn on wedding day recreated and
based upon Greene & Kotsilibas-Davis, p. 75-76.
“Oh, he’s beautiful”: Quoted in Rosten, p. 37. “Hope, hope, hope”: Quoted in
Wolfe, p. 288.

Appendix:
Selected Marilyn Monroe Film Synopses (1950-1956)

“Her wit completes…”: Rudnick, “The Blonde Marilyn Monroe,” Time.com,

June 14, 1999. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,991257,00.
html#ixzzib0gBjHjc
 Bibliography

“120 Years of Popular Culture at Christie’s South Kensington in June.”

Christies.com, June 2013. http://www.christies.com/about/press-cen-
ter/releases/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=6468 (accessed June 28, 2013).

“A Proposito de Bunuel (Regarding Luis Bunuel) — Screenplay.” American

Buddha, n.d. http://www.american-bud-dha.com/bunuel.screenplay5.htm
(accessed June 3, 2012).

“A Short Interview with Marilyn.” YouTube.com. n.d. http://youtube.com/watch?

v=uDHY2rhaYWQ (accessed January 21, 2013).

ABC Stage 67, “The Legend of Marilyn Monroe”. Directed by Dan Eriksen.
November 30, 1966.

“Academy Awards 1954 Complete Part 2,” YouTube.com.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl0E7cpvE8

Adams, Bruce. “Joe DiMaggio’s San Francisco.” sfgate.com. May 27, 2009.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/17/SPIT17KU1Q.DTL
(accessed March 17, 2013).

Adams, Cindy. Lee Strasberg: The Imperfect Genius of the Actors Studio.
Garden City: Doubleday, 1980.

Adams, Val. “Marilyn Monroe May Star on TV.” The New York Times, January
6, 1961: 53.

——— . “N.A.B. Convention Opens in Capital.” The New York Times, May 8,
1961.

——— . “TV ‘Play of the Week’ Considers Presenting First Original Work.” The
New York Times, November 25, 1960.

A & E, “Marilyn Monroe: The Child Goddess.” Directed by Donatella Baglivo.

1994.

A & E Biography, “Marilyn Monroe: The Mortal Goddess.” Directed by Kevin

Burns and Jeff Scheftel and Andrew Thomas. 2001.

Albelli, Alfred. “MM Left the Million $ She Look Like.” The New York Daily
News, n.d.

Allan, Rupert. “Marilyn Monroe…A Serious Blonde Who Can Act.” Look,
October 23, 1951: 40-44, 46.

“Alleged CIA Report Dated August 3, 1962.” Abovetopsecret.com., n.d.,

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread513308/pg4 (accessed February 24,
2013).

Allen, Maury. “Rare Photo Book Captures Brooklyn Team’s Magic.”

Thecolumnists.com,. n.d. http://www.thecolumnists.com/allen/allen117.html
(accessed December 13, 2012).

American Masters, “Marilyn Monroe: Still Life”. Directed by Gail Levin. 2006.

American Movie Classics Backstory: “Bus Stop”. Directed by Michele Farinola.

2001.

American Movie Classics Backstory, “The Seven Year Itch”. Directed by

Michele Farinola and Mimi Freedman. 2000.

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders Fourth Ediiton Text Revision. Washington, DC:
American Psychiatric Association, 2000. Anderson, Janice. Marilyn Monroe.
London: Hamlyn, 1983.

Andrews, Suzanna. “Arthur Miller’s Forgotten Son.” Vanity Fair, September

2007.

“Andy Warhol Pre-Pop.” Warholstars.com. n.d.

http://www.warholstars.org/warhol1/11roylichtenstein.html (accessed June 8,
2012).

Archer, Eugene. “Movie to Be Made by Publicity Firm.” The New York Times,
September 4, 1962.

Arnold, Eve. Marilyn Monroe. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005.

——— . Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Attanasio, Ed. “He Played with the Yankee Clipper.” Broowaha.com. January
14, 2008. broowa-ha.com/articles/2912/he-played-with-the-yankee-clipper-dari-
olodigiani#Fcf7b9qBuuw71Uwl.99 Sports Corner (accessed September 16,
2012).

——— . “Opening Day Brings Out the Predictions.” Marinatime.com. April

2010. http://www.marinatimes.com/apr10/sports-sports-corner.html (accessed
September 16, 2012).

Ayton, Mel. “The ‘Assassination’ of Marilyn Monroe.” Crimemagazine.com.

July 24, 2005. http://www.crimemagazine.com/assassination-marilyn-monroe
(accessed June 8, 2012).

Bacall, Lauren. By Myself. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

——— . By Myself and Then Some. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Bacon,
James. “Marilyn Monroe Has Faults, But Not in Box Office Appeal.” Idaho
State Journal, July 15, 1960.

——— . “Fans Are Orderly During Marilyn Monroe Services.” Los Angeles
Herald-Examiner, August 9, 1962.

——— . “Personal Portrait: The Saga of Marilyn Monroe.” The Washington

Observer, August 9, 1962.

Badman, Keith. Marilyn Monroe: The Final Years. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2010.

Bailey, George. Marilyn Monroe and the Making of “Niagara”. Canada:

Premier Impressions, 1998.

Baker, Norma Jeane. “What Is Your Favorite Type of Girl.” The Emersonian,
June 29, 1941.

Baker, Steven. “Actor Corey Feldman Says Pedophilia No. 1 Problem for Child
Stars, Contributed to Demise of Corey Haim.” Abcnews.com. August 10, 2011.
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/corey-feldman-pedophil-ia-problem-child-
actors-contributed-demise/story?id=14256781 (accessed January 1, 2013).

Banner, Lois. Marilyn: The Passion and Paradox. New York: Bloomsbury USA,
2012.

——— . MM-Personal: From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe. New

York: Abrams, 2011.

Barbas, Samantha. The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella

Parsons. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2006.

Barham, Peter Brown and Patte B. Marilyn: The Last Take. New York: Signet,
1993.

——— . Marilyn: The Last Take. New York: Dutton/Penguin Group, 1992.

Barrell, Tony. “Fly Me to the Stars.” The Sunday Times, February 1, 2004.

Barris, George. Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words: Marilyn Monroe’s
Revealing Last Words and Photographs. New York: Citadel Press, 1995.

——— . “Twilight of a Star.” New York Daily News, August 14, 1962. Battelle,
Phyllis. “Star Calls It ‘Wonderful,’ Fans Mob, Muss Marilyn at N.Y. Movie
Premiere.” The Miami News, June 14, 1957.

Belmont, Georges. Marilyn Monroe and the Camera. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel,

1989.

Benny, Jack Benny and Joan. Saturday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story.
New York: Warner Books, 1990.

Bernard, Susan. Bernard of Hollywood’s Marilyn: Images by Hollywood’s Great

Glamour Photographer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

——— . Marilyn: Intimate Exposures. New York: Sterling, 2011. Bernstein,

Walter. “Monroe’s Last Picture Show.” Esquire, July 1973.

Bloom, Ken. Broadway: Its History, People, and Places. New York: Routledge,
2004.

Bogdanovich, Peter. Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s

Legendary Actors. New York: Random House, 2005.

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 About the Author

GARY VITACCO-ROBLES is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and National

Certified Counselor in practice in the Tampa Bay Area. He holds a master’s
degree in Counselor Education from the University of South Florida and for
twenty years has worked with children and families who have survived
sexual/physical abuse or neglect.
Having always felt a deep admiration for Marilyn Monroe, Gary had a dream
to honor both her strength and the inspiration she became for future generations.
Born in New York to a warm Italian family, Gary now lives on Florida’s Gulf
Coast and has been happily married for twenty-three years.