The REAL Marilyn in Hollywood....a misfit

Marilyn  Monroe  is  still  very  much  around

  

even  after  50  plus  years  since  she  died.

I  like  her;  I  like  her  pretty  face;  and  I  like

her  talent.

So  time  to  know  her  in  the  context  of  

Hollywood.......it's  not  what  most  may  think.

From  the  book:  "MY  STORY"  -  in  her  own

words ----

I  DIDN'T LIKE PARTIES BUT I LIKED MR.

SCHENCK

I was to go to a number of fancy Hollywood parties and stand among the glamorous figures dressed as well as any of them and laugh as if I were overcome with joy, but I never felt any more at ease than I did the first time I watched from the hallway.

The chief fun people get out of those parties comes the next day when they are able to spread the news of the famous people with whom they associated at So-and-So's house. Most parties are run on the star system. In Hollywood a star isn't only an actor or actress or movie executive. It can also be somebody who has recently been arrested for something, or beaten up or exposed in a love triangle. If it was played up in the newspapers then this person is treated as a social star as long as his or her publicity continues.

I don't know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood important people can't stand to be invited someplace that isn't full of other important people. They don't mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners. But if a star or a studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened as if somebody was trying to demote them.

I could never understand why important people are always so eager to dress up and come together to look at each other. Maybe three or four of them will have something to say to somebody but the twenty or thirty others will just sit around like lumps on a log and stare at each other with false smiles. The host usually bustles about trying to get the guests involved in some kind of a game or guessing contest. Or he tries to get somebody to make a speech about something so as to start a general argument. But usually the guests fail to respond, and the party just drags on with nothing happening till the Sandman arrives. This is the signal for the guests to start leaving. Nearly everybody draws the line at falling asleep outright at a party.

The reason I went to parties of this sort was to advertise myself. There was always the possibility that someone might insult me or make a pass at me, which would be good publicity if it got into the movie columns. But even if nothing extra happened, just to be reported in the movie columns as having been present at a movie society gathering is very good publicity. Sometimes it is the only favorable mention the movie queens can get. There was also the consideration that if my studio bosses saw me standing among the regular movie stars they might get to thinking of me as a star also.

Going out socially in this fashion was the hardest part of my campaign to make good. But after a few months, I learned how to reduce the boredom considerably. This was to arrive around two hours late at a party. You not only make a special entrance, which was good advertising, but nearly everybody was likely to be drunk by that time. Important people are much more interesting when they are drunk and seem much more like human beings.

There is another side of a Hollywood party that is very important socially. It is a place where romances are made and unmade. Nearly everybody who attends an important party not only hopes to get favorably mentioned in the movie columns but also to fall in love or get started on a new seduction before the evening is over. It is hard to explain how you can fall in love while you are being bored to death, but I know it's true, because it happened to me several times. 

As soon as I could afford an evening gown, I bought the loudest one I could find. It was a bright red low cut dress, and my arrival in it usually infuriated half the women present. I was sorry in a way to do this, but I had a long way to go, and I needed a lot of advertising to get there. 

The first fame I achieved was a wave of gossip that identified me as Joe Schenck's girl. Mr. Schenck had invited me to his Beverly Hills mansion for dinner one evening. Then he fell into the habit of inviting me two or three times a week. I went to Mr. Schenck's mansion the first few times because he was one of the heads of my studio. After that I went because I liked him. Also the food was very good, and there were always important people at the table. These weren't party figures but were Mr. Schenck's personal friends.

I seldom spoke three words during dinner but would sit at Mr. Schenck's elbow and listen like a sponge. The fact that people began to talk about me being Joe Schenck's girl didn't annoy me at first. But later it did annoy me. Mr. Schenck never so much as laid a finger on my wrist, or tried to. He was interested in me because I was a good table ornament and because I was what he called an "offbeat" personality.

I liked sitting around the fireplace with Mr. Schenck and hearing him talk about love and sex. He was full of wisdom on these subjects, like some great explorer. I so liked to look at his face. It was as much the face of a town as of a man. The whole history of Hollywood was in it.

Perhaps the chief reason I was happy to have won Mr. Schenck's friendship was the great feeling of security it gave me. As a friend and protegee of one of the ads of my own studio, what could go wrong for me?

I got the answer to that question one Monday morning. I was called into the casting department and informed that I was being dropped by the studio and that my presence would no longer be required. I couldn't talk. I sat listening and unable to move. The casting official explained that I had been given several chances and that while I had acquitted myself fairly well it was the opinion of the studio that I was not photogenic. That was the reason, he said, that Mr. Zanuck had had me cut out of the pictures in which I had played bit parts.

"Mr. Zanuck feels that you may turn into an actress sometime," said the official, "but that your type of looks is definitely against you."

(CAN  YOU  IMAGINE  SUCH  A  STUPID  GUY....MARILYN  WAS  NOT  PHOTOGENIC  AND HER  LOOKS  AGAINST  HER.  HE  WAS  PROVED  TO GO  DOWN  IN  HISTORY  TO  BE  THE  SILLIEST  GUY  IN  HOLLYWOOD  -  Keith Hunt)

I went to my room and lay down in bed and cried. I cried for a week. I didn't eat or talk or comb my hair. I kept crying as if I were at a funeral burying Marilyn Monroe.

It wasn't only that I'd been fired. If they had dropped me because I couldn't act it would have been bad enough. But it wouldn't have been fatal. I could learn, improve, and become an actress. But how could I ever change my looks? And I'd thought that was the part of me that couldn't miss!

And imagine how wrong my looks must be if even Mr. Schenck had to agree to fire me. I lay crying day after day I hated myself for having been such a fool and had illusions about how attractive I was. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. Something horrible had happened. I wasn't attractive. I saw a coarse, crude-looking blonde. I was looking at myself with Mr. Zanuck's eyes. And I saw what he had seen—a girl whose looks were too big a handicap for a career in the movies.

The phone rang. Mr. Schenck's secretary invited me to dinner. I went. I sat through the evening feeling too ashamed to look into anyone's eyes. That's the way you feel when you're beaten inside. You don't feel angry at those who've beaten you. You just feel ashamed. I had tasted this shame early—when a family would kick me out and send me back to the orphanage.

When we were sitting in the Irving room Mr. Schenck said to me, "How are things going at the studio?"

I smiled at him because I was glad he hadn't had a hand in my being fired.

"I lost my job there last week," I said.  Mr. Schenck looked at me and I saw a thousand stories in his face—stories of all the girls he had known who had lost jobs, of all the actresses he had heard boasting and giggling with success and then moaning and sobbing with defeat. He didn't try to console me. He didn't take my hand or make any promises. The history of Hollywood looked out of his tired eyes at me and he said, "Keep going."

"I will," I said.

"Try X Studio," Mr. Schenck said. "There might be something there."

When I was leaving Mr. Schenck's house I said to him, "I'd like to ask you a personal question. Do I look any different to you than I used to?"

"You look the same as always," said Mr. Schenck, "only get some sleep and quit crying."

"Thank you," I said.

I called X Studio two days later. The casting department was very polite. Yes, they had a place for me. They would put me on the payroll and see that I was given "a chance at any part that came up." Mr. A., the casting director, smiled, squeezed my hand and added, "You ought to go a long way here. I'll watch out for a good part for you."

I returned to my room at the Studio Club feeling alive again. And the daydreams started coming back—kind of on tiptoe. The casting director saw hundreds of girls every week, whom he turned down, real actresses and beauties of every sort. There must be something special about me for him to have hired me right off, after a first look.

There was something special about me in the casting director's eyes, but I didn't find it out till much later. Mr. Schenck had called up the head of X Studio and asked him as a favor to give me a job.

I received several "extra girl" calls from the studio and worked in a few scenes as "background." Then one day Mr. A., the casting director, telephoned. He wanted me in his office at four o'clock. I spent the day bathing and fixing my hair and reciting out loud different parts I had learned. And giving myself instructions. This was the big chance. Mr. A. wouldn't have called me himself if it wasn't for a real part. But I musn't act overeager, or start babbling, or grin with joy. I must sit quietly and have dignity every minute.

Mr. A. wasn't in his office, but his secretary smiled at me and told me to go inside and wait for him..

I sat straight in one of Mr. A's inner office chairs waiting and practicing dignity. A door at the back of the office opened, and a man came in. I had never met him, but I knew who he was. He was head of X Studio, and as great a man as Mr. Schenck or Mr. Zanuck.

"Hello, Miss Monroe," he said.

He came over to me, put his hand on my arm, and said, "Come on, we'll go in my office and talk."

"I don't think I can leave," I said. "I'm waiting for Mr. A. He telephoned me about a part."

"The hell with Mr. A.," said the great man. "He'll know where you are."

I hesitated, and he added, "What's the matter with you? You dopey or something? Don't you know I'm the boss around here?"

I followed him through the back door into an office three times larger than Mr. A's.

"Turn around," said the great man. I turned like a model.

"You look all right," he grinned. "Nicely put together."

I said, "Thank you."

"Sit down," he said, "I want to show you something."

The great man rummaged through his oversized desk. I looked at his office. The tables were full of bronze Oscars and silver cups and all sorts of other prizes he had won with his movies. I had never seen an office like this before—the office where the head of an entire studio presided. Here was where all the great stars, producers, and directors came for conferences, and where all the decisions were made by the great man behind his battleship of a desk.

"Hold all calls," the great man spoke into a box on the desk. He beamed at me. "Here's what I wanted to show you."

He brought a large photograph to my chair. It was a picture of a yacht.

"How do you like it?" he asked.

"It's very beautiful," I said.

"You're invited," he said. He put his hand on my neck.

"Thank you," I said. "I've never been to a party on a yacht."

"Who said anything about a party" the great man scowled at me. "I'm inviting you, nobody else. Do you want to come, or not?"

"I'll be glad to join you and your wife on your yacht, Mr. X.," I said.

The great man looked fiercely at me.

"Leave my wife out of this," he said. "There'll be nobody on the yacht except you and me. And some expensive sailors. We'll leave in an hour. And we'll take a cruise overnight. I have to be back tomorrow evening for my wife's dinner party. No way of getting out of it."

He stopped and scowled at me again.

"What's the idea of standing there and staring at me," he demanded, "like I had insulted you. I know who you are. You're Joe Schenck's girl. He called me up to do him a favor and give you a job. Is that a reason for you to get insulting?"

I smiled at the great man.

"I don't mean to be insulting, Mr. X," I said.

"Good," he was beaming again. "We'll have a fine cruise, and I can tell you now, you won't regret it." He put his arms around me. I didn't move.

"I'm very grateful to you for the invitation, Mr. X," I said, "but I'm busy this week and so I shall have to refuse it."

His arm dropped from me. I started for the door. He stood still, and I felt I had to say something else. He was a great man, and he held my future in his hands. Seducing employees was just a normal routine for him. I mustn't act as if I thought he was some kind of monster, or he would never—

I turned in the doorway Mr. X was standing glaring at me. I had never seen a man so angry. I made my voice as casual and friendly as I could.

"I hope you invite me some time again when I can accept your invitation," I said.

The great man pointed his finger at me.

"This is your last chance," he said fiercely.

I walked through the door and out of the office where movie stars were made.

"Maybe he's watching me," I thought. "I mustn't let him see me upset."

I drove to my room in my car. Yes, there was something special about me, and I knew what it was. I was the kind of girl they found dead in a hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand........

I  BUY  A  PRESENT (Marilyn  was  in  true  love  with  a  certain  man  -  Keith Hunt)

During the time I loved this man, I kept looking for work. I had forgotten about my "career." I looked for work because I thought he would love me more if I were employed. I felt it made him a little nervous to have me just sitting around and doing nothing but wait for him. A man sometimes gets guilty and angry if you love him too much.

Besides I was broke. I was living on money I could borrow.

Someone I met at a lunch counter told me they were making retakes on a movie called Love Happy and needed a girl for a bit part. Harpo and Groucho Marx were in the movie.

I went on the set and found the producer Lester Cowan in charge. He was a small man with dark, sad eyes. He introduced me to Groucho and Harpo Marx. It was like meeting familiar characters out of Mother Goose. There they were with the same happy, crazy look I had seen on the screen. They both smiled at me as if I were apiece of French pastry.

"This is the young lady for the office bit," said Mr. Cowan.

Groucho stared thoughtfully at me.

"Can you walk?" he demanded. 

I nodded.

"I am not referring to the type of walking my Tante Zippa has mastered," said Groucho. "This role calls for a young lady who can walk by me in such a manner as to arouse my elderly libido and cause smoke to issue from my ears."

Harpo honked a horn at the end of his cane and grinned at me.

I walked the way Groucho wanted.

"Exceedingly well done," he beamed.

Harpo's horn honked three times, and he stuck his fingers in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle.

"Walk again," said Mr. Cowan.

I walked up and down in front of the three men. They stood grinning.

"It's Mae West, Theda Bara, and Bo Peep all rolled into one," said Groucho. "We shoot the scene tomorrow morning. Come early"

"And don't do any walking in any unpoliced areas," said Harpo.

I played the next day; Groucho directed me. It was hardly more than a walk-on, but Mr. Cowan, the producer, said I had the makings of a star and that he was going to do something about it right away.

When you're broke and a nobody and a man tells you that, he becomes a genius in your eyes. But nothing happened for a week. I sat every evening listening to my lover argue about my various shortcomings, and I remained blissfully happy.

Then one morning I found my name in the headline of Louella Parsons' movie column in the Los Angeles Examiner. I was so excited I fell out of bed. The headline said Lester Cowan had put me under contract to star in a forthcoming movie.

That was something to read! I dressed and made up quicker than a fireman and squandered my last two dollars on a taxi.

Mr. Cowan was in his office.

"What can I do for you, Miss Monroe?" he inquired. He always spoke like a gentleman.

"I would like to sign the contract," I said, "that I read about in Miss Louella Parsons' column."

"I haven't drawn it up yet," Mr. Cowan smiled. "It will take a while."

"How much are you going to pay me?" I asked. Mr. Cowan said he hadn't decided on a figure yet.

"A hundred dollars a week will be enough," I said.

"We'll see about it," Mr. Cowan replied. "You just go home and wait till you hear from me. I'll send for you."

"Your word of honor?" I asked.

"Word of honor," Mr. Cowan said solemnly.

I borrowed two dollars from a friend I knew sort of and hurried off to a jewelry store. I had never given my lover a present of any kind, due to my financial condition. Now I saw a chance to get him something beautiful.

I showed the man in the jewelry store the headline in Louella Parsons' column and my picture in it.

"I'm Marilyn Monroe," I said. "You can compare me to the photograph."

"I can see you are," the jeweler agreed.

"I haven't any money now," I said. "In fact I have less than two dollars in the world. But you can see from what it says in Miss Parsons' column that I am on my way to stardom and will soon receive a great deal of money from Mr. Cowan."

The jeweler nodded.

"Of course, I haven't signed the contract yet, or even seen it." I didn't want him to misunderstand anything. "And Mr. Cowan, whom I just saw, said it would take a while—but I thought perhaps you might trust me. I want to buy a present for someone very dear to me."

The man smiled and said he would trust me and that I could pick out anything in the store.

I picked out an object that cost five hundred dollars and ran to my lover's home and waited for him.

He was quite overcome by the beauty of my present. Nobody had ever given him such an expensive object before.

"But you haven't engraved it," he said. "From Marilyn to........ with love.

Or something like that."

My heart almost stopped as he said this.

"I was going to have it engraved," I answered, "but changed my mind."

"Why?" he asked. He looked very tenderly at me.

"Because you'll leave me someday" I said, "and you'll have some other girl to love. And thus you wouldn't be able to use my present if my name was on it. This way you can always use it, as if it were something you'd bought yourself."

Usually when a woman says that sort of thing to her lover she expects to be contradicted and soothed out of her fears... I didn't. At night I lay in bed and cried. To love without hope is a sad feeling for the heart.

It took me two years to pay the jeweler the five hundred dollars. By the time I had paid the last twenty-five dollar installment, my lover was married to another woman.

I'LL  BE  SMART  ----  TOMORROW

One evening I was listening to two friends of mine having an argument. We were having dinner in a small Italian restaurant. One of my friends was a writer. The other was a director.

The argument was whether Botticelli was a finer painter than Leonardo da Vinci. I kept my eyes wide with interest although I couldn't understand anything they were saying. To begin with I didn't know who Botticelli or da Vinci were.

"We're boring Marilyn," said the director. "I can always tell when she's bored to tears. She opens her eyes wide and parts her lips slightly with bogus eagerness."

"Let's talk about something closer to her than the Renaissance," said the writer. "How about sex?"

"At least I'll know what side you're on," I said.

But I didn't. The discussion about sex sounded completely unfamiliar. It had to do with Freud and Jung and a few other characters who seemed to me pretty mixed up.

Something occurred to me, however, as I sat listening to my two gay friends. I realized that about two-thirds of the time I hadn't the faintest idea of what people (even women) were talking about. There was no hiding from it—I was terribly dumb. I didn't know anything about painting, music, books, history, geography. I didn't even know anything about sports or politics.

When I arrived home I sat in my bed and asked myself if there was anything I did know. I couldn't think of anything—except acting. I knew about acting. It was away to live in dreams for a few minutes at a time.

I decided to go to school. The next day I enrolled in the University of Southern California. I subscribed for an art course.

I went to school every afternoon and often in the evening. The teacher was a woman. I was depressed by this at first because I didn't think a woman could teach me anything. But in a few days I knew differently.

She was one of the most exciting human beings I had ever met. She talked about the Renaissance and made it sound ten times more important than the Studio's biggest epic. I drank in everything she said. I met Michelangelo and Raphael and Tintoretto. There was a new genius to hear about every day.

At night I lay in bed wishing I could have lived in the Renaissance. Of course I would be dead now. But it seemed almost worth it.

After a few weeks I branched out as a student. I started buying books by Freud and some of his modern disciples. I read them till I got dizzy.

But I didn't have enough time. There were acting lessons and singing lessons, publicity interviews, sessions with photographers—and rehearsal of a movie.

I finally decided to postpone my intelligence, but I made a promise to myself I won't forget. I promised that in a few years after things had settled down I would start learning—everything. I would read all the books and find out about all the wonders there were in the world.

And when I sat among people I would not only understand what they were talking about. I'd be able to contribute a few words.

MY  FIGHT  WITH  HOLLYWOOD

Success came to me in a rush. It surprised my employers much more than it did me. Even when I had played only bit parts in a few films, all the movie magazines and newspapers started printing my picture and giving me write-ups. I used to tell lies in my interviews—chiefly about my mother and father. I'd say she was dead— and he was somewhere in Europe. I lied because I was ashamed to have the world know my mother was in a mental institution—and that I had been born "out of wedlock" and never heard my illegal father's voice.

I finally straightened these lies out, and I was surprised at the way the magazines and newspapers treated my "new confessions." They were kind and none of them picked on me.

Just as I was beginning to go over with the public in a big way, I got word that my "nude calendar" was going to be put on the market as a Marilyn Monroe novelty. I thought this would push me into the cold again. A writer I met laughed at my tears.

"The nude calendar is going to put you over with the biggest bang the town has heard in years," he said. "The same thing happened in the 20s to a girl who was on the verge of movie fame. She couldn't quite seem to excite the movie-queen-makers of the studios. She was called unphotogenic and 'good for a small part but definitely not star material.'"

"Like me," I said.

"Yes," the writer said. "Then one day a studio official giving a party got hold of a two-reel film in which the girl had performed. The film was intended for rental to stag parties. In the picture this young girl danced entirely in the nude. The dance was also vulgar and suggestive. As a result every movie producer or director who saw the stag film became haunted with the nude performer. They vied for her services as if she were the only female on tap, and the only full set of secondary female characteristics in Hollywood. She became famous in a few months and is still famous today and one of my worst detractors."

It turned out very much like that for me, too. Everybody in the studio wanted me as a star in his movie. I finally went into Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and after that, How to Marry a Millionaire. I liked doing these pictures. I liked the fact that I was important in making them a great financial success and that my studio cleaned up a fortune, despite that its chief had considered me unphotogenic. I liked the fact that the movie salesmen who came to Hollywood for a big studio sales rally whistled loudest and longest when I entered their midst.

I liked the raise I finally received to twelve hundred a week. 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.

WHY  I  AM  A  HOLLYWOOD  MISFIT

I have many bad social habits. People are always lecturing me about them. I am invariably late for appointments—sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong—and too pleasing.

When I have to be somewhere for dinner at eight o'clock, I will lie in the bathtub for an hour or longer. Eight o'clock will come and go and I still remain in the tub. I keep pouring perfumes into the water and letting the water run out and refilling the tub with freshwater. I forget about eight o'clock and my dinner date. I keep thinking and feeling far away.

Sometimes I know the truth of what I'm doing. It isn't Marilyn Monroe in the tub but Norma Jean. I'm giving Norma Jean a treat. She used to have to bathe in water used by six or eight other people. Now she can bathe in water as clean and transparent as a pane of glass. And it seems that Norma can't get enough of fresh bath water that smells of real perfume.

There's another thing that helps to make me "late." After I get out of the tub I spend a long time rubbing creams into my skin. I love to do this. Sometimes another hour will pass, happily.

When I finally start putting my clothes on, I move as slowly as I can. I begin to feel a little guilty because there seems to be an impulse in me to be as late as possible for my dinner date. It makes something in me happy—to be late.

People are waiting for me. People are eager to see me. I'm wanted. And I remember the years I was unwanted. All the hundreds of times nobody wanted to see the little servant girl, Norma Jean—not even her mother.

I feel a queer satisfaction in punishing the people who are wanting me now. But it's not them I'm really punishing. It's the long ago people who didn't want Norma Jean.

It isn't only punishment I feel. I get thrilled as if I were Norma Jean going to a party and not Miss Monroe. The later I am, the happier Norma Jean grows.

People dislike me for such tardiness. They scold me and explain to me it's because I want to seem important and make a spectacular entrance. That's partly true, except it's Norma that longs for importance—and not me.

My social faults such as this one, and also not being able to laugh all the time at parties as if I were swooning with joy, or not being able to keep chattering like a parrot to other parrots—seem less important to me than some social faults I notice in others.

The worst thing that happens to people when they dress up and go to a party is that they leave their real selves at home. They're like people on a stage playing somebody else. They play that they're important, and they want you to meet their importance, not themselves. But worse than that is the fact that when people are being "social" they don't dare be human or intelligent. They don't dare to think anything different than the other people at the party. The men and women are not only dressed alike but their minds become all alike. And they expect everybody at the party to say only "party things.''

I freeze up when I see people making important faces at me, or when I notice them strutting among the lesser party-lights. I like important people, but I like them when they're doing important things—not just collecting a few bows from lesser guests.

In party society there are also people who are unable to feel important—even if it's an important party and their names are going to be in the movie columns the next morning in "among those present." These people usually just mill around like extras on a movie set. They don't seem to have any lines or any "business" except to be ornamental space fillers.

But I can't feel sorry for them because the minute I join one of these extra-groups they all start chattering like mad and laughing and saying things that nobody can understand. I feel that having found someone more ill at ease than themselves—me—they're out to impress me what a gay and intimate time they're having.

Hollywood parties not only confuse me, but they often disillusion me. The disillusion comes when I meet a movie star I've been admiring since childhood.

I always thought that movie stars were exciting and talented people full of special personality. Meeting one of them at a party I discover usually that he (or she) is colorless and even frightened. I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.

MY  OWN  RECIPE  FOR  FAME

There are three different ways of becoming famous in the movies. The first way more often happens to men than to women. It happens suddenly as the result of a single performance in a movie.

An actor will go along getting jobs and doing good work and getting nowhere. Then all of a sudden, like John Garfield long ago or Kirk Douglas, Marlon Brando, Jose Ferrer, more recently—he will appear as a lead in a picture and wake up after the reviews as star for the rest of his life.

Occasionally this also happens to an actress, but the occasions haven't been recent. The actress usually becomes a star in two other ways. The first way is the Studio Buildup. When the Front Office is convinced that one of their contract players has star possibilities in her, a big campaign is started. The Star Possibility is surrounded by various teachers and coaches. Word is sent out to all the Producers in the Studio that the Possibility is the biggest coming box-office attraction in the industry. And all the producers in the studio start fighting to get her as the lead for one of their pictures.

In the meantime the publicity department goes to work on the Star Possibility and floods the press, the wire services, and the magazines with stories about her wonderful character and fascinating oddities and thousands of photographs.

The columnists are bombarded with announcements about the possibilities of every sort, from a half dozen impending marriages to an equal number of starring vehicles.

Pretty soon the whole country gets the impression that nearly all the eligible romantic males of the land are trying to marry the Possibility and that she is going to appear in half the important movies produced in Hollywood.

All this takes a great deal of money and powerful efforts on everybody's part except the young actress on whose brow the Studio has decided to weld a silver star.

The other way to fame open to the actress is the way of scandal. Sleep with a half dozen famous Don Juans, divorce a few husbands, get named in police raids, cafe brawls or other wives' divorce suits, and you can wind up almost as much in demand by the movie producers as a Bette Davis or Vivien Leigh.

The only trouble with becoming famous as a result of a half dozen scandalous happenings is that the scandal-made star can't just rest on her old scandals. If she wants to keep her high place in the public eye and on the Hollywood producer's casting list she has to keep getting into more and more hot water. After you're thirty-five getting into romantic hot water is a little difficult, and getting yourself publicized in love triangles and cafe duels over your favors needs not only smart press agents but also a little miracle to help out.

I became famous in the movies in none of these three accepted ways. The studio never thought of me as a Star Possibility, and the notion of putting me in as a lead on a picture was as far from Mr. Zanuck's head as of handing me over his Front Office as a dressing room. It would make a very good one.

Thus I didn't get a chance to burst upon the public as a Great Talent.

And there was no Studio campaign or buildup. I was never groomed. The press and the columnists were kept in ignorance of my existence. No telegrams and other passionate Front Office communiques went out about me to the Sales Force or the nation's exhibitors.

And there was no scandal to my name. The calendar business came after I was already famous everywhere except in Mr. Zanuck's mind and in the plans of my Studio, 20th Century-Fox.

I had been terrified for a week before the news of my calendar nude broke. I was sure that it would put an end to my fame and that I would be dropped by the studio, press, and public and never survive my "sin." My sin had been no more than I have written—posing for the nude picture because I needed fifty dollars desperately to get my automobile out of hock.

There are many other ways for a young and pretty girl to make fifty dollars in Hollywood without any danger of being "exposed." I guess the public knew this. Somehow the story of the nude calendar pose didn't reflect scandal on me. It was accepted by the public for what it was, a ghost out of poverty rather than sin risen to haunt me.

A few weeks after the story became known I realized that far from hurting me in anyway it had helped me. The public was not only touched by this proof of my honest poverty a short time ago, but people also liked the calendar—by the millions.

To return to my unorthodox rise to movie fame, it came about entirely at the insistence of the movie public, and most of this movie public was in uniform in Korea, fighting.

Letters started flooding my studio by the thousands and hundreds of thousands. They were all addressed to me. They came at the rate of thirty-five hundred a week, and then five and seven thousand a week.

I received five times more mail than the studio's top box-office star of the time, who was Betty Grable.

Reports from the mail room confused the Front Office. The Publicity Department was called in and asked if its personnel were engaged in some secret campaign in my behalf. There was none. The letters were pouring in only because moviegoers had seen me on the screen and felt excited enough to write and thank me or ask for my photograph.

News that the public was hailing me as the new Hollywood movie favorite appeared in the Hollywood gossip columns. No one sent the news out. The columnists printed it because people were talking about it.

The Studio officials remained unimpressed for a time. They had their own Star Possibilities they were plugging. I was regarded from Mr. Zanuck down as a sort of freak who for no reason anybody could put a finger on, was capturing some morbid side of the public's fancy.

I was making three hundred dollars a week and spending most of it on lessons, dancing and singing lessons and acting lessons. I lived in a small single room and was as broke as I used to be when I had no regular job. I had to borrow ten and twenty dollars every week or so. The difference was now that I could pay my debts back quicker—sometimes inside of the same week.

Finally the mail from the movie fans got to be so fantastic in quantity that the Front Office could no more ignore me than it might an earthquake that was tipping Mr. Zanuck's desk over. I was sent for by Mx. Zanuck himself, looked at briefly and given a few mumbled words of advice.

All I had to do, Mr. Zanuck said, was to trust him. He would do everything that was best for me and help me to become a big star for the studio.

I could tell that Mx. Zanuck didn't like me very much and that he still couldn't see any more talent or beauty in me than when he had fired me a year before on the general grounds of being unphotogenic. Studio Bosses are very jealous of their powers. Like political bosses they like to pick out their own candidates for greatness. They don't like the Public rising up and dumping an unphotogenic entry in their lap and saying, "She's our girl."

There was some normal fumbling with how to handle me, in what sort of pictures to put me. And there was still a deep conviction in the Studio's bosom that I was only a flash in the pan and would very likely be forgotten in a year.

It wasn't to happen that way. I knew it at the time. I knew what I had known when I was thirteen and walked along the sea edge in a bathing suit for the first time. I knew I belonged to the Public and to the world, not because I was talented, or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. The Public was the only family, the only Prince Charming and the only home I had ever dreamed of.

When you have only a single dream it is more than likely to come true—because you keep working toward it without getting mixed up.

I worked hard and all day long. I worked inside the studio and outside it. It wouldn't be long now, I knew, before Mr. Zanuck would give me a lead in a big picture. The Publicity Department was already on the ball. The magazines seemed to be celebrating a perpetual Marilyn Monroe week. My picture was on nearly all their covers.

People began to treat me differently. I was no longer a freak, a sort of stray ornament, like some stray cat, to invite in and forget about. I was becoming important enough to be attacked. Famous actresses took to denouncing me as a sure way of getting their names in the papers.

In fact my popularity seemed almost entirely a masculine phenomenon. The women either pretended that I amused them or came right out, with no pretense, that I irritated them.

I did nothing vulgar on the screen. And I did nothing vulgar off the screen. All I did was work from eight to fourteen hours a day either acting or trying to improve my talents.

I felt tired all the time. Worse, I felt dull. The colors seemed to have gone out of the world. I wasn't unhappy and I didn't lie awake nights crying and hanging my head. That sort of thing was over—at least for now.

What happened was that in working to make good I had forgotten all about living. There was no fun anymore in anything. There was no love in me for anything or anyone. There was only success—beginning.

And then one night a friend at the Studio said, "A fellow like him. He's Joe DiMaggio."

"I've heard of him,'' I said.

It was partly true. I knew the name but I didn't actually know what it stood for.

"Don't you know who he is?" my friend asked.

"He's a football or baseball player," I said.

"Wonderful," my friend laughed. "It's time you were coming out of your Marilyn Monroe tunnel. DiMaggio is one of the greatest names that was ever in baseball. He's still the idol of millions of fans."

"I don't care to meet him," I said. Asked why I said that I didn't like the way sports and athletes dressed, for one thing.

"I don't like men in loud clothes," I said, "with checked suits and big muscles and pink ties. I get nervous."

But I went to join a small party with whom Joe DiMaggio was having dinner in Chasen's Restaurant.

BOSOM  TEMPEST

The Studio was always thinking up ways for me to get more publicity. One of the ways they thought up was for me to lead the parade in Atlantic City of the Miss America contest bathing beauties. I wasn't to compete but to function as some sort of an official.

Everything went well until the U.S. Armed Forces stepped in. The Armed Forces also run a publicity department. A publicity officer wanted to know if I would like to help the Armed Forces in their campaign to recruit Wacs, Waves, and Spars to serve Uncle Sam.

I said I would love to do that.

The next day a Publicity Photograph was arranged. I stood surrounded by a Wac, Wave, and Spar. They were good-looking girls, and they were dressed in uniforms. I, on the other hand, not being in any military service, couldn't very well wear a uniform. I wore one of my regular afternoon dresses. 

It was an entirely decent dress. You could ride in a street car in it without disturbing the passengers.

But there was one bright-minded photographer who figured he would get a more striking picture if he photographed me shooting down. I didn't notice him pointing his camera from the balcony a few feet above me. I posed for the camera in front of us.

The next day brought the scandal. The "shooting down" photograph had been condemned by some army general. He said it would be bad for the Armed Services for parents to think their daughters might be subjected to the influences of somebody like me—who showed her bosom in public.

I thought this a little mean. I hadn't meant to show my bosom, and I hadn't been aware of the camera that was peeping down under my bodice.

Of course nobody would believe me.

Earl Wilson, who writes about bosoms in the New York Post interviewed me over the telephone.

"Come now, Marilyn," he said, "didn't you lean forward for that shot?"

I said I hadn't. It was the photographer who had leaned downward.

I felt silly about the whole thing. It was surprising that a woman's bosom, slightly revealed, could become a matter of national concern. You would think that all the other women kept their bosoms in a vault.

I didn't mind the publicity too much although I felt I had outgrown the cheesecake phase of my movie career. I was hoping now that some of my other talents might be recognized.

The bad thing about cheesecake publicity is the letters you get from cranks. They are often frightening.

The letter writer cuts out just the bosom of your photograph and writes dirty words across it and mails it to you—without his signature. Or maybe her signature. And there are worse insults and depravities thrown at you by Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous.

A  WISE  MAN  OPENS  MY  EYES

The most brillant man I have ever known is Michael Chekhov, the actor and author. He is a descendant of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian dramatist and story writer. He is a man of great spiritual depth. He is selfless and saintlike and witty too. In Russia he was the best actor they had. And in Hollywood in the half dozen movies he played, he was considered superb. There was no character actor who could hold a candle to Michael Chekhov—who could play clown and Hamlet, and love interest, half as wonderfully. But Michael retired from the screen. The last picture in which he played was Specter of the Rose in which his performance was hailed as brilliant.

In his home Michael devoted himself to writing, gardening, and teaching acting to a few people. I became one of them.

As Michael's pupil, I learned more than acting. I learned psychology, history, and the good manners of art—taste.

I studied a dozen plays. Michael discussed their characters and the many ways to play them. I had never heard anything so fascinating as my teacher's talk. Every time he spoke, the world seemed to become bigger and more exciting.

One afternoon Michael and I were doing a scene from The Cherry Orchard. To set a scene with Michael Chekhov in his house was more exciting than to act on any movie set I had known. Acting became important. It became an art that belonged to the actor, not to the director or producer, or the man whose money had bought the studio. It was an art that transformed you into somebody else, that increased your life and mind. I had always loved acting and tried hard to learn it. But with Michael Chekhoy acting became more than a profession to me. It became a sort of religion.

In the midst of our scene from The Cherry Orchard, Michael suddenly stopped, put his hand over his eyes for a moment, and then looked at me with a gentle grin. "May I ask you a personal question?" he asked. "Anything," I said.

"Will you tell me truthfully" Michael asked again. "Were you thinking of sex while we played that scene?"

"No," I said, "there's no sex in this scene. I wasn't thinking of it at all."

"You had no half thoughts of embraces and kisses in your mind?" Michael persisted.

"None," I said. "I was completely concentrated on the scene."

"I believe you," said Michael, "you always speak the truth."

"To you," I said.

He walked up and down a few minutes and said, "It's very strange. All through our playing of that scene I kept receiving sex vibrations from you. As if you were a woman in the grip of passion. I stopped because I thought you must be too sexually preoccupied to continue."

I started to cry. He paid no attention to my tears but went on intently "I understand your problem with your studio now, Marilyn, and I even understand your studio. You are a young woman who gives off sex vibrations—no matter what you are doing or thinking. The whole world has already responded to those vibrations. They come off the movie screens when you are on them. And your studio bosses are only interested in your sex vibrations. They care nothing about you as an actress. You can make them a fortune by merely vibrating in front of the camera. I see now why they refuse to regard you as an actress. You are more valuable to them as a sex stimulant. And all they want of you is to make money out of you by photographing your erotic vibrations. I can understand their reasons and plans."

Michael Chekhov smiled at me.

"You can make a fortune just standing still or moving in front of the cameras and doing almost no acting whatsoever," Michael said.

"I don't want that," I said.

"Why not?" he asked me gently.

"Because I want to be an artist," I answered, "not an erotic freak. I don't want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisical. Look at me and start shaking. It was all right for the first few years. But now it's different."

This talk started my fight with the studio.

I realized that just as I had once fought to get into the movies and become an actress, I would now have to fight to become myself and to be able to use my talents. If I didn't fight I would become a piece of merchandise to be sold off the movie pushcart.

I kept telephoning the studio begging for an interview with its chief. I was told, "No interview—just appear on the set when you're notified."

I stayed in my room alone and talked to myself. They were ready to give me a lot of money— a million if I would marry them and never wander off and fall in love with art. I hadn't wanted Johnny Hyde's million, and Johnny was a much' sweeter and kinder character than 20th Century-Fox. I decided I didn't want the studio's million, either. I wanted to be myself and not just a freak vibration that made fortunes for the studio sex peddlers.

..................

AH  NOW  WE  KNOW [IF  WE  DID  NOT]  THE  REAL  MARILYN  MONROE  AS  SHE  FINALLY  WANTED  TO  BE  -  AN  ARTIST  -  BUT  HOLLYWOOD  ONLY  WANTED  HER  SEX  APPEAL.

SHE  WOULD  MOVE  AWAY  FROM  HOLLYWOOD, TAKE  CONTROL  OVER  HER  MOVIE  MAKING,  AND  SHOW  THE  WORLD  SHE  HAD  TALENT,  AS  WELL  AS  SUPER  GOOD  LOOKS.

THE  ONLY  THING  IT  SEEMS  THAT  ALLUDED  HER  WAS  FINDING  THE  MAN  THAT  COULD  LOVE  HER  FOR  HERSELF, AND  SHARE  HER  WITH  THE  WORLD.  SHE  REALLY  TRIED  VERY  HARD  TO  MAKE  HER  FIRST  AND  SECOND  PUBLIC  MARRIAGES  WORK.  BUT  NEITHER  OF  THE  TWO  FAMOUS  MEN  SHE  WAS  TO  MARRY,  HAD  THE  DESIRE  SHE  HAD  TO  MAKE  A  MARRIAGE  WITH  HER  WORK  AND  LAST.

SHE  WAS  A  CINDERELLA  THAT  COULD  NOT  FIND  HER  PRINCE.

..........