SHE ONLY LIVED FOR 36 YEARS....MARILYN MONROE, BUT IT SEEMS HER LIFE WAS SO FULL OF THIS AND THAT, THAT YOU HAVE TO READ A DOZEN BOOKS ON HER TO GET IT ALL. ONE THAT I RECENTLY ACQUIRED IS CALLED "MARILYN...HER LIFE IN HER OWN WORDS" BY GEORGE BARRIS. NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH ANOTHER BOOK WITH JUST ABOUT THE SAME TITLE.
HERE IS PART OF THE LAST CHAPTER BY BARRIS:
MARILYN ..... Her Life in her Own Words
APPRECIATION
by George Barris
That Sunday in June 1962 when I rang Marilyn's doorbell for the first time, she appeared in a blue-gray Turkish bathrobe that matched her sparkling blue-gray eyes. She held a half-full glass of champagne that caught the sunlight. Even though the robe was tightly wrapped around her body, it could not conceal those famous curves; clearly she wore nothing underneath. She spelled s-e-x from the top of her golden head to the tips of her toes. She had a peaches-and-cream complexion and a fabulously sexy voice. Here was every man's dream of the sexiest woman in the world. I could hardly believe my eyes—this beautiful creature had turned thirty-six on June 1-—-it seemed that the older she grew, the younger she looked. The first thing she said to me was, "Hi," and then she offered an open smile and invited me to come in.
I was there because Marilyn had finally found time for us to work on our photoessay for Cosmopolitan and make some headway on our long-delayed book project. I was to interview Marilyn at home for our book, and she had suggested I bring along a tape recorder. So, along with the (borrowed) recorder, the most beautiful single rose I could buy, and a bottle of her favorite Dom Perignon, I had rung her doorbell, prepared to tape our exclusive interviews.
Marilyn went into the kitchen to get me a beer, and when she returned, we made ourselves comfortable. It turned out that she had changed her mind about talking on tape. She said it made her nervous; she'd be on guard and not able to speak freely. She thought she could give a more intimate interview if I just took notes—and then later on I could fill in the details of our conversations.
Of course I was disappointed, but what she said made sense to me. I began to realize that she was a very smart woman who knew exacdy how she wanted to work with me. I was going to play by her rules on our project; she would call all the shots. So I agreed and sat back in her new home, the first she had ever owned, to toast her and our project. She said, "Now that I've turned thirty-six, this is a dream come true for me—-my having my own home, my own house. I have an apartment in New York City on Sutton Place, and I'm officially a legal resident of New York, but since pictures are still made in Hollywood, that's where I have to be for work. I decided it was time for me to buy a house, instead of leasing one all the time . . . It's a cute little Mexican-style house with eight rooms, and at least I can say it's mine—but not alone. I have a partner."
"When I asked her who that might be, she said, "The bank! I have a mortgage to pay off. There's a six- or eight-foot wall for privacy, and my mailbox has no name on it, but the mailman knows who Eves here. I don't know if you noticed there are fourteen red stone squares leading to my front door, where there is a ceramic-tile coat of arms with the motto cursum perfecio, meaning 'end of my journey.' I hope it's true. "What's great, too, is that this house is near the ocean and, the studio. The address is cute, too: 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood. And get this, I'm in a cul-de-sac or, as we call it, a dead-end street. It's small, but I find it rather cozy that way. It's quiet and peaceful—just what I need right now.
"I want to give small dinner parties for my friends where we can relax and have some good times. I live here all alone with my snowball, my little white poodle—-he was given to me by my dear old friend Frank Sinatra. I call him Maf. Oh sure, it gets lonesome at times living alone; I'd rather be married and have children and a man to love—but you can't always have everything in life the way you want it. You have to accept what comes your way. I live alone and I hate it!"
This friendly, cordial woman seemed nothing at all like a Hollywood power to reckon with, didn't act the stereotype of the star at home. She made me feel welcome right away. She had just recovered from another of the numerous illnesses that had caused Fox to suspend her from work on Something's Got to Give, and I could hear sadness in her voice and see it on her face as she described the many "friends" who had deserted her in this crisis.
Later on, we began our photo sessions in the borrowed house in North Hollywood that would stand in for Marilyn's new Brentwood home. Brentwood was near Beverly Hills and Hollywood, but it could have been a million miles away as far as Marilyn was concerned. Although she would have no doubt preferred to be photographed in her own home, I thought its barely furnished condition made it a bit depressing.
As I took pictures of her in Tim Liemert's lovely home, Marilyn would now and then lapse into a blue mood. She would cover her face with both hands, lower her head for a moment or two, and then, smiling, become her old self again—cheerful and clowning for the camera. But I could see a residual tear or two.
Once she walked out into the garden, with its panoramic view of Los Angeles below. Holding her glass of champagne, she lifted her face to the sun and toasted the city where she'd been born, grown up, and had her successes and her failures.
As we talked on there, Marilyn told me she loved the beach, and when I suggested we take a series of photographs at the Santa Monica beach, she was thrilled. That particular beach brought back memories of her childhood, when she had spent many wonderful days there with her mother and her friends.
In her younger days, Marilyn had often driven along the Pacific Coast Highway, enjoying the sunset or the moon's reflection in the water. She might stop with a boyfriend at a small beachside restaurant, have a late dinner, and dance the night away. She might go down to the beach, kick off her shoes, roll up her slacks, and let the cool water caress her feet as she and her friend walked along the sand in the moonlight. "It was sometimes better than sex," she said.
She had continued to enjoy these nights on the beach, and on such stops after she'd become a star, she needed to disguise herself in order not to be mobbed by fans. Even though she was most often dressed in a baggy sweater and slacks, with a scarf over her hair and huge sunglasses over her eyes despite the darkness, a fan might come up and ask, "Did anyone ever tell you, you look just like Marilyn Monroe?"
Marilyn would laugh and reply, "All the time."
She wasn't the only Califomian who loved the beach—there were plenty of others who often spent whole days there, so finding a quiet, uncrowded area was a problem when we went there, but we finally located a place the other beachgoers had overlooked. The spot was near the old Peter Lawford house, where rumor has it Marilyn had trysted with John Kennedy and later with his brother Bobby. If Marilyn noticed, she didn't say so.
I was surprised by the respect Marilyn's fans showed her during the sessions at Santa Monica beach. No one bothered us; the people who gathered around spoke in whispers.
Of course there were exceptions to the generally respectful treatment by the fans: A very regal lady once paraded majestically into camera range and, with a slow sideways glance, indicated that it would be perfectly okay to include her in a photo or two. On another occasion, a couple of picnickers positioned themselves for a clear view of our work and politely asked anyone blocking their front-row view of the star to please move on. The teenage boys were the funniest-—-they would mimic Marilyn's sultry poses, much to their own amusement, as well as our own.
But the "mystery lady" intrigued us. Wearing a large straw hat that concealed her face, she stood silently and almost motionless as she watched the goings-on. All of us wondered who this presence might be. Sometime later, when I was visiting Mae West, she revealed that she had been the mystery lady. Although she'd never met Marilyn, the sex queen of years gone by was an admirer of the work of the current sex queen. Mae West said, "Oh, if only I could have met her. It would have been such an honor to talk to her. She's such a beautiful and talented actress."
But the hero of our picture days at the beach was Marilyn herself. Photography is hard work for the photographer but even harder for his model. Both of us wanted every picture to be as exciting, unusual, and yet natural as could be. We worked as a team, and both of us came up with ideas for the pictures. As a former photographer's model, Marilyn was a pro posing for the still camera—and that shows clearly in the pictures I took of her then.
We were both relaxed during our beach shoot, and some of our best photos were taken there. The Santa Monica beach photos were Marilyn's favorites among all those I took of her. They may "well have reminded her of the ones that had been taken when she was just nineteen, top model at the Snively agency and dreaming of becoming a star.
The weather during June and July 1962 was often cloudy, with occasional bursts of sunlight. I liked photographing in this type of light. The clouds encouraged the soft light I wanted for the moody, reflective experiences I thought appropriate to that time in her life, while the sunlight produced the cheerful days she was to recall in other photos.
Marilyn was often late for our photo sessions. One day I waited for her for what seemed like hours, when suddenly she appeared on the beach with a strange-looking hairdresser and an even stranger-looking makeup man; the car was filled with clothes. I knew she never traveled with an entourage, so these two had to be her faithful friends, Agnes Flanagan and Allan "Whitey" Snyder, who were constantly at Marilyn's beck and call. (This time she hadn't brought along the third member of her "family," Pat Newcomb, who handled Marilyn's press and acted as her majordomo. She handled Marilyn's wardrobe and her fans, but was much more than an employee; she was a best friend. She was ten years younger than Marilyn, but I couldn't tell the difference in their ages; both looked much younger than they were.)
On this day, the sun had disappeared over the horizon and the sky was turning dark. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. "Is there any way you can take the pictures without light?"
There was always an excuse, and I was sure it was legitimate. I gave her a hug and said not to worry, we'd do it another day.
And to prove her sincerity, the next time we worked at the beach she gave more than her all, with never a complaint, never a break. She was determined to make it up to me. Marilyn was a real trooper. Even when the sun went down and the winds blew and it became cold, and she shivered, her skin turned red and her lips blue, she hardly whimpered or complained. Only when the day was almost over and I had just one last bit of film in the camera, she said, "This is for you, George." Then she puckered up her lips and blew a kiss my way as I took the last picture of her ever on that beach. It was around 7:30 p.m., Friday, July 13, 1962.
At the end of that same day I lost one of my shoes when a huge wave came and took it away. I asked her, "What do I do with one shoe?"
"The ocean apparently needs it more than you do," she said, and with that, both of us barefoot, we left Santa Monica beach forever.
When I look at the contact prints of the black-and-white pictures I shot, I remember that Marilyn always checked the photos carefully. Once she said, "Can you make larger prints of those pictures I've marked so I can get a better look at myself?" As a reminder, she even marked those photos she selected on the contact sheet with a red grease pencil.
She would spend hours scrutinizing pictures of herself and, of those she especially liked, she would sometimes loudly remark, "Now, that's really me!" Her experience as a photographer's model had taught her to appreciate how she photographed. She was such a perfectionist that even if only a hair was not in place in a photo she would become upset. "We should have waited for the wind to stop blowing so hard—next time, let's remember this," she might remark.
We were trying to re-create various stages of her life in those pictures. Even in the photographs meant to show her in her adult years. One day I noted that little Norma Jeane appeared in many of them, and I said, "There always will be the little girl in Marilyn Monroe." Her reply was a broad smile.
She never told me not to print or use any photos of her in our book, in other publications, or in any other way. The markings she made were meant to indicate the pictures that contained no defects. She wanted me to make large prints of those photos for her. She said that those pictures were some of the best and most natural ever taken of her. "That's really me, freckles and all. The real me."
When my brother-in-law told me that Marilyn was dead, only days before I was to meet her again in Los Angeles, I broke out in a cold sweat. I felt a pounding in my chest, and for a few seconds I couldn't respond. Then I said, "Come on, Frank, don't make bad jokes. I just spoke to her; I'm going to the coast to see her on Monday." I knew I had to get back to New York City to find out what had happened.
I drove the hundred miles to my Sutton Place apartment at record speed. The doorman said reporters were asking for me. The elevator couldn't get me up to my apartment fast enough. As I opened the door, I could hear the phone ringing. I turned on the radio and television. All the stations were blaring the news of the death of Marilyn Monroe, how it appeared to be a suicide. The press wanted interviews with me; the phone didn't stop ringing. It's not true, I said to myself, I don't believe it. But it was true. We'd last spoken on August 3, 1962, only one day before she died........
....................
THIS BOOK GIVES YOU NEVER BEFORE SEEN PHOTOS OF MARILYN IN A RELAXED NATURAL MARILYN....HERSELF. THE BOOK IS ESPECIALLY DEDICATED TO A HOST OF PHOTOS TAKEN BY BARRIS, NEAR THE END OF HER LIFE. SHE IS THINNER THAN I PERSONALLY WOULD SAY WAS TOO THIN. BUT THE VERY DISAPPOINTING FACT IS WAY TOO MANY OF THE PHOTOS ARE NOT SHARP....GRAINY, AND JUST NOT SHARP AT ALL, WHICH COMING FROM A PRO PHOTOGRAPHER SHOCKS ME. I HAVE CLEAR SHARP PHOTOS OF MYSELF AND MY MOTHER AND FATHER TAKEN IN THE 1940s SO NO EXCUSE FOR IT BEING THE CAMERAS NOT BEING GOOD IN 1961/62.
..........
No comments:
Post a Comment