My Story

by Marilyn Monroe

  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 communiqués 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 any way 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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.

  31

  a gentleman from

  center field

  It was a balmy night, and I was late as usual.

  When the dinner host said, “Miss Monroe, this is Joe DiMaggio,” I was quite surprised. Mr. Joe DiMaggio was unexpected.

  I had thought I was going to meet a loud, sporty fellow. Instead I found myself smiling at a reserved gentleman in a gray suit, with a gray tie and a sprinkle of gray in his hair. There were a few blue polka dots in his tie. If I hadn’t been told he was some sort of a ball player, I would have guessed he was either a steel magnate or a congressman.

  He said, “I’m glad to meet you,” and then fell silent for the whole rest of the evening. We sat next to each other at the table. I addressed only one remark to him.

  “There’s a blue polka dot exactly in the middle of your tie knot,” I said. “Did it take you long to fix it like that?”

  Mr. DiMaggio shook his head. I could see right away he was not a man to waste words. Acting mysterious and far away while in company was my own sort of specialty. I didn’t see how it was going to work on somebody who was busy being
mysterious and far away himself.

  I learned during the next year that I was mistaken about this baseball idol. Joe wasn’t putting on an act when he was silent, and he was the least far away man I had ever known. It was just his way of being on the ball.

  But to return to my first meal with Mr. DiMaggio—he didn’t try to impress me or anybody else. The other men talked and threw their personalities around. Mr. DiMaggio just sat there. Yet somehow he was the most exciting man at the table. The excitement was in his eyes. They were sharp and alert.

  Then I became aware of something odd. The men at the table weren’t showing off for me or telling their stories for my attention. It was Mr. DiMaggio they were wooing. This was a novelty. No woman had ever put me so much in the shade before.

  But as far as I was concerned, Mr. DiMaggio was all novelty. In Hollywood, the more important a man is the more he talks. The better he is at his job the more he brags. By these Hollywood standards of male greatness my dinner companion was a nobody. Yet I had never met any man in Hollywood who got so much respect and attention at a dinner table. Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread—that’s how noticeable you were.

  I had been dead tired when I arrived. Now suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore. There was no denying I felt attracted. But I couldn’t figure out by what. I was always able to tell what it was about a man that attracted me. Except this time with Mr. DiMaggio.

  My feelings for this silent smiling man began to disturb me. What was the use of buzzing all over for a man who was like somebody sitting alone in the Observation Car?

  Then I began to understand something. His silence wasn’t an act. It was his way of being himself. And I thought, “You learn to be silent and smiling like that from having millions of people look at you with love and excitement while you stand alone getting ready to do something.”

  Only I wished I knew what it was Mr. DiMaggio did. I tried to remember what the football players did the time Jim Dougherty took me to a football game. I couldn’t recall anything interesting.

  I had never seen a baseball game; so there was no use trying to figure out what a baseball player did that was important. But I was sure now it was something. After one hour all the men at the table were still talking for Mr. DiMaggio’s benefit.

  Men are a lot different than women in this respect. They are always full of hero worship for a champion of their sex. It’s hard to imagine a table full of women sitting for a whole hour flattering and wooing another woman if she were three champions.

  Since my remark about the blue polka dot there had been no further conversation between my dinner partner and me. Even though I was attracted I couldn’t help thinking, “I wonder if he knows I’m an actress? Probably not. And I’ll probably never find out. He’s the kind of egomaniac who would rather cut off an arm than express some curiosity about somebody else. The whole thing is a waste of time. The thing to do is to go home—and forget him—and without delay.”

  I told the host I was tired and had a hard day ahead at the studio. It was the truth. I was playing in a movie called Don’t Bother to Knock.

  Mr. DiMaggio stood up when I did.

  “May I see you to the door?” he asked.

  I didn’t discourage him.

  At the door he broke his silence again.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.

  When we got to my car he made an even longer speech.

  “I don’t live very far from here, and I haven’t any transportation,” he said. “Would you mind dropping me at my hotel?”

  I said I would be happy to.

  I drove for five minutes and began to feel depressed. I didn’t want Mr. DiMaggio to step out of the car and out of my life in another two minutes, which was going to happen as soon as we reached his hotel. I slowed down to a crawl as we approached the place.

  In the nick of time Mr. DiMaggio spoke up again.

  “I don’t feel like turning in,” he said. “Would you mind driving around a little while?”

  Would I mind! My heart jumped, and I felt full of happiness. But all I did was nod mysteriously and answer, “It’s a lovely night for a drive.”

  We rode around for three hours. After the first hour I began to find out things about Joe DiMaggio. He was a baseball player and had belonged to the Yankee Ball Club of the American League in New York. And he always worried when he went out with a girl. He didn’t mind going out once with her. It was the second time he didn’t like. As for the third time, that very seldom happened. He had a loyal friend named George Solotaire who ran interference for him and pried the girl loose.

  “Is Mr. Solotaire in Hollywood with you?” I asked.

  He said he was.

  “I’ll try not to make him too much trouble when he starts prying me loose,” I said.

  “I don’t think I will have use for Mr. Solotaire’s services this trip,” he replied.

  After that we didn’t talk for another half hour, but I didn’t mind. I had an instinct that compliments from Mr. DiMaggio were going to be few and far between, so I was content to sit in silence and enjoy the one he had just paid me.

  Then he spoke up again.

  “I saw your picture the other day,” he said.

  “Which movie was it?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t a movie,” he answered. “It was a photograph of you on the sports page.”

  I remembered the one. The Studio had sent me out on a publicity stunt to Pasadena where some team from Chicago called The Sox was clowning around getting ready for the eastern baseball season. I wore rather abbreviated shorts and a bra, and the ball players took turns lifting me up on their shoulders and playing piggyback with me while the publicity men took photographs.

  “I imagine you must have had your picture taken doing publicity stunts like that a thousand times,” I said.

  “Not quite,” Mr. DiMaggio answered. “The best I ever got was Ethel Barrymore or General MacArthur. You’re prettier.”

  The admission had an odd effect on me. I had read reams on reams of writing about my good looks, and scores of men had told me I was beautiful. But this was the first time my heart had jumped to hear it. I knew what that meant, and I began to mope. Something was starting between Mr. DiMaggio and me. It was always nice when it started, always exciting. But it always ended up in dullness.

  I began to feel silly driving around Beverly Hills like a prowl car.

  But it wasn’t silly.

  32

  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. Joe hadn’t yet won his argument about the neckline.

  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.

  33

  a wise man

  opens my eyes

  The most brilliant 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.