by Wendy Leigh
I forgot, because of the hospital, to give you the big news that, just before I got sick, we finished shooting Seven Year Itch, and Charlie Feldman gave a dinner in my honor at Romanoff’s* I borrowed a bright red chiffon ball gown from wardrobe and I was glad I did, because guess who I danced with? Clark Gable! The orchestra played “Bye-Bye Baby,” Clark held me a little close, and I felt like Cinderella dancing with Prince Charming. During the dance, I was so shy that I just kept on smiling, but when it ended, I told Clark how much I admired him and that I longed one day to do a picture with him, and guess what, he said he had seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. thought I had “magic”—I remember you once said that about me as well—and that he wanted to work with me as well! So you will get to meet him after all—I’ll make sure of it!
Thinking back to that wonderful evening makes me so happy, which I need to be now, what with Thanksgiving round the corner and not having anyone I love here with me. Today I heard a song which really made me cry, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” It was almost as if I wrote it myself, except for the line “just like the one I used to know”—because I have never known that kind of Christmas, but it sounds wonderful, and maybe one day I will.
Your advise [sic] about Mr. G was very kind and, I am sure, right. I know I’m wrong seeing him. But I just can’t help myself. If you knew him, I’m sure you’d understand. At least, I hope you would.
Please write me soon and forget about that stupid last letter.
Love,
Martha
P.S. Sometimes I just don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Please forgive me.
__________________________
* The party, thrown in Marilyn’s honor by Charles Feldman, was a dinner for eighty guests. The guests included Darryl F. Zanuck, Samuel Goldwyn and Jack Warner, Humphrey Bogart, Gable, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, and Loretta Young and Billy Wilder. On each round table, the centerpiece was a cardboard cut-out of Marilyn in the skirt-blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch.
1095 North Ocean Boulevard
Palm Beach, Florida
Martha Marshall
8336 DeLongpre Avenue
Hollywood, California
January 8, 1955
Dear Martha,
Your letter was so interesting and descriptive—thank you. I adore my beautiful new Napoleon scarf and think of you every time I wear it. You were extremely kind and generous to have sent it.
You will have realized from my last letter that your second letter, imploring me not to read the first, arrived too late. Consequently, I had, indeed, already read the first letter. But you must not reproach yourself for anything you wrote in it. It was sincere, heartwarming, and your secret is utterly safe with me—as I know all mine are with you—so please don’t feel anxious.
You may think me presumptuous, but despite your reassuring words regarding Mr. G, I am still a trifle concerned that your new romance may, in the long run, have a negative impact on you. It would set my mind at rest, I think, if I knew more about him, his marital situation, and his intentions toward you. What is his profession? Does Mrs. G know of your relationship? Does he have any intention of leaving her and, now that you are free, marrying you? Are you prepared for the fact that, given that she is French, and probably Catholic, her religion will preclude divorce? I hope you will not consider these questions intrusive, Marilyn, but you know that I have your best interests at heart.
On a lighter note, I was ecstatic to learn about your dance with Clark Gable and I am now uncontrollably impatient for you to begin filming with him forthwith! But even I, stuck here on the East Coast, know that things materialize relatively slowly in Hollywood and will thus endeavor to control my impatience!
As for the benefits of televising our political proceedings—I am not convinced. Ambassador Kennedy’s creed, as he will have told you, is “It doesn’t matter who you are, it only matters who people think you are!” In the same vein, I fear that if the people one day get too close to the politicians who represent them, the entire process will be forever tarnished. I imagine that television will only ultimately benefit those politicians who are able to combine the showmanship of P. T. Barnun with the thespian ability of John Barrymore.
Yesterday I read in the Palm Beach Daily News that you are now a corporation (along with Milton Greene). Congratulations! It all sounds wonderful and now that you are moving to the East Coast, I hope you will be happier.
I am afraid I have to close this letter now, because Eunice, Jack’s sister (his favorite, although I can’t imagine why), has just materialized. If she chanced to learn the identity of my secret correspondent, her cackle would echo all the way to L.A. By the way, I am unable to conceive why most people are so enthralled by Jack having so many siblings. Now that I’ve been part of the family for a while, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that large families are not so great at all. Jack is forever in his late brother Joe’s shadow, Eunice is in her late sister Kathleen’s, and all the other kids veer between being far too close to one another and being so virulently competitive that every single one of them would rather die than lose a cretinous game of touch football to the other.
I do my utmost to avoid them whenever I can, and so divide my time between reading Proust, walking on the beach, and shopping on Worth Avenue. Yesterday, when I came back from Saks with a new turquoise Balenciaga ball gown, Eunice had the gall to demand the price! Of course, I did not respond, but borrowing a gown from the studio and not having to answer to anyone seems to me to be a much more desirable way of life. In the meantime, I try to brighten Jack’s days by playing checkers, categories, and twenty questions and the new game, Scrabble, with him—all of which he relishes, just as long as he can win …
Please write when you are settled and let me know your new address.
Love,
Josephine
__________________________
Jackie wrote in her diary, “Marilyn obviously has no scruples whatsoever about hurting Mrs. G and any children the couple may have. But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. I guess part of M’s charm lies in her fundamental amorality. Rather like Jack, I suppose.”
The Gladstone Hotel
East 52nd Street
New York, New York
Josephine Kendall
3321 Dent Place
Washington, D.C.
February 24, 1955
Dear Josephine,
I am sorry I haven’t written for so long, but moving back Last has been so crazy, in a nice way, that I haven’t had a moment. I am taking acting lessons with Constance Collier and am reading Ulysses and George Sand’s letters. I want more than anything else, more even than being rich, famous, or loved, to learn. Also, I want to do something right in my art when so much is going wrong in my life—all except for Mr. G. The good news is that being here hasn’t meant being apart from Mr. G for too long. He has managed to come out here—from Paris—and we have had lovely times together.
I want to answer all your questions as well as I can. Mr. G is president of an insurance company. I don’t think Mrs. G knows about me yet. I sure hope not. I never ask him about her, because when I am with him I want to pretend that he is all mine. But I get mad when he tells me that he doesn’t have sex with her. All married men say that, you see, and I find it really insulting. I would rather he and Mrs. G were having sex all the time, but that he still wanted me. I’ve said that to him, but he just changes the subject.
You ashed if he was planning to divorce Mrs. G. Well, ever since I married Joe, Mr. G always says how great it is that we are both married to other people. He calls it “the seesaw effect,” which he says means that we are equal because, being both married, we each would suffer if we were found out.
So when Joe and I split up, at first I didn’t tell Mr. G. We met for dinner in a suite at the Algonquin and I didn’t say a word about Joe. I was wearing leopard skin stiletto boots. Mr. G said he loved them, so I kept them on all evening, all th
rough everything. Then, just as he was leaving, I told him about Joe. After, I turned away, because I started crying and didn’t want him to see. If he had, I would have expected him to hug me and kiss me, but he isn’t really that sort. After I told him about Joe, he went very quiet, then he said, “You are a very strong lady, Marilyn.” I said I didn’t feel very strong and he said, “You and I would get the last piece of bread in the concentration camp.” I didn’t like that, so I said, “But I’d share it with everyone else.” He didn’t say anything, then he left. I cried all night, thinking he would never call me again, but he did, the very next morning, just to check that I was OK. He called lots of times after that, too, and we still see each other, but I would never think of asking him to leave Mrs. G. I am just happy that now I’ve come East, I can see so much more of him—because New York is far more convenient for him than Los Angeles, being closer to Paris, I mean.
Had to stop because I got a call from Milton. I’ve been spending a lot of time with him and his wife, Amy—who is lovely—at their home in Connecticut, where they live in a beautiful old house—the kind you probably grew up in. The living room was once a stable, with vaulted ceilings and a big old fireplace. I’ve never sat in front of a fireplace before, because we don’t have them in California, but now I love to gaze into the flames for hours and just dream.
On March 30, one of the dreams I used to dream as a child will come true and I’ll be thinking of you wanting to be Queen of the Circus because I shall actually be in the circus, riding a pink elephant, for a benefit.* It means a lot to me, because I never went to the circus as a kid and now I am actually going to be in one! Mike Todd is running it. I quite like him, he’s very handsome, strong, and determined. But he isn’t Mr. G. No one is.
But going bach to Amy Greene. At first, I think she was afraid I’d make a play for Wilton, which I never would. Also, she didn’t really seem to trust my mind or my word much. Anyway, after the press party announcing the formation of my corporation, I wanted to take everyone to the Copa, where Frank Sinatra was singing, but Amy said the show was sold out for months and we wouldn’t get a table. I explained that I thought I could get one, but I could tell that she didn’t believe me. I got mad and said, “Watch this, Amy,” picked up my ermine wrap, and told everyone to follow me to the Copa. Although they probably secretly agreed with Amy, out of politeness—and I guess because sometimes it helps that I am Marilyn Monroe—they all followed me. At the Copa, the doorman took one look at me, got us inside, and the maître d’ put down a table and chairs just for us. Then—and this was the best—Frank, who was right in the middle of singing “Always,” stopped dead, stared right at me, and winked. Amy almost fainted dead away. Then she whispered to me, “I stand corrected.” Since then, she believes in me and we are friends—but of course I would never dream of confiding in her as I do in you.
I hope Palm Beach is fun for you. I’d love to go there and perhaps we will he there together one day. That would be nice.
Love,
Martha
__________________________
* On March 30, 1955, a benefit was given at Madison Square Garden for the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. Milton Berle was the ringmaster. When Marilyn first met him—mindful of Berle’s reputation, still unchallenged even today, as being the best-endowed man in Hollywood—she greeted him with the words “Mr. Berle, I’m finding it really difficult to keep my eyes on your face.…” He returned the compliment by announcing Marilyn as “the only girl who makes Jane Russell look like a boy!” Marilyn made a breathtaking entrance on a pink elephant named Karnaudi and the 18,000-strong crowd went wild.
Jackie wrote in the Purple Diary, “So Marilyn’s Mr. G has a propensity for leopard skin stiletto boots.… He obviously possesses the soul of a Pigalle pimp coupled with the aesthetic sensibilities of Hugh Hefner. Still—if that’s what makes MM happy … On the other hand, he (and don’t they all—the ones who attract us) clearly has a well-developed vein of ruthlessness—witness his concentration camp remark. And applying it to Marilyn as well … interesting …”
3321 Dent Place
Washington, D.C.
Martha Marshall
Gladstone Hotel
East 52nd Street
New York
April 10, 1955
Dear Martha,
Thank you for your enchantingly evocative letter. It seems such a long time since I last wrote to you, but life has been extremely hectic, so I hope you will forgive my lapse. I quite agree with you that meeting in Palm Beach would be wonderful when things have calmed down a little.
How marvelous that you are now taking acting lessons (although I cannot imagine why you would need them, as you are already so accomplished), that you are reading vociferously, and that you had such a glittering evening at the Copa. By now, you are probably accustomed to my undying curiosity regarding the Hollywood gods and goddesses who inhabit your dazzling universe, thus I am certain you will not be in the least bit surprised when I reveal my abiding fascination with Frank Sinatra and my desire to discover more about him.* I should love to learn any details/anecdotes/gossip you have time to share with me.
Jack and I have just returned from what will be our new home, a white brick Georgian mansion, on six acres of woodland overlooking the Potomac, complete with stables, where I house my horses, and an orchard. The serenity of the house, the river flowing nearby, and the tall trees surrounding the house transports me back to Merrywood, the home in which I spent much of my childhood and sometimes still yearn for. But at last Jack and I have a home of our own! Perhaps we can finally be a family.
Marilyn, I hope what I am about to tell you will not upset you (and I firmly believe that it is only a matter of time before you find the man of your dreams—who is available—and will then follow suit) but I wanted to write and share the news with you that I am pregnant. I know that you will wish me well and understand when I tell you that I am simultaneously thrilled and scared, excited and nervous. I wonder what the next nine months will bring.
I only wish Jack could spend more time with me here. But he often has to stay over in Washington (at the Mayflower Hotel, where he has a permanent suite) because he works so hard. The Ambassador is playing an increasingly large part in our lives. He is determined that Jack one day attain high political office. Naturally, I feel exactly the same. As for Jack, he lives and breathes politics all day long. Joe says he intends to sell Jack like cornflakes—I am not at all sure that I appreciate the analogy. All in all, I am not altogether convinced that being married to a very busy politician is the easiest way of life, but I intend to make the best of it. The pictures of you on the pink elephant were glorious, by the way.
Love,
J
P.S. Are you dating anyone else, or are you true to Mr. G?
__________________________
* Jackie wrote in her Purple Diary, “Now and again, can’t help myself from fantasizing a little about Mr. Sinatra. Nothing explicit, just defused images, but all extremely pleasing. Tend to drift into that state during those evenings when Jack is at the Mayflower, doesn’t call me and when I call him, his voice is strained and his mind elsewhere. As for his body, who knows. …”
Martha Marshall
Suite 2728
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
Josephine Kendall
3321 Dent Place
Washington, D.C.
April 19, 1955
Dear Josephine,
Thank you for your letter. I am very glad about your news. Congratulations to you and Jack. I am sure he will make the best father in the world and you, of course, the best mother. Sometimes I sit in the park and watch the children play. I can’t remember ever playing in the park as a child, but I suppose I did and wish that I was expecting Mr. G’s child. But that will never be, for, tragically, he is unable to father children—due to a childhood attack of measles, I think. It is very sad for him, because every man wants to be a father and he will never be one, ever.
You asked if I was true to him. The answer is yes—but I don’t think he would care if I wasn’t. He always says, “The day you get married again, Marilyn, I’ll be standing in the wings applauding.” I never like it when he says that, because, to me, it means that he doesn’t care much. Once, I asked him why he would applaud. He said, “Not because I don’t want you.” Then he clammed up. I was afraid to ask any more. I don’t really know what to believe, except that I don’t think I’ll be seeing too much of him anymore.
I am afraid I am feeling very blue right now. Yesterday, Einstein died and although I never met him, I always hoped I would. In any case, he was a wonderful man who did a great deal of good in the world, so I am sad.
I have recently moved into the Waldorf Towers—27th floor. You spent your honeymoon here, didn’t you? Perhaps one day I’ll do the same. I hope things go well for you and the baby.
I’ve started seeing Margaret Herz Hohenberg, a psychoanalist [sic] five times a week, which may seem a lot. Lee Strasberg suggested I try psychoanalisis [sic] so as to help my acting by exploring my inner self. Most of all, I want to be wonderful, an artist and true. Sometimes, though, I don’t know what to say to Margaret. Other times, I can’t stop talking and afterwards I feel great. But that feeling doesn’t last for long. I suppose the only things that endure in life are the important ones—like babies and, sometimes, love.
You asked about Frank and I will tell you as much as I can* prank and I are good friends now, but once upon a time, as they say in fairy tales, we were lovers. Frank can be like chili peppers one minute—so mad that he flares up and burns you real deep—and the next like velvet—so gentle that you want to nestle right into him and feel safe forever. He is kind and generous—he gave me pearls—he gives all his women pearls. At first, when you sleep with him, he is real restless and dreams the same dream over and over each night. He told me so, but I didn’t dare ask what the dream was, only each night in his sleep he’d say the same thing over and over, “They’re chasing me, they re chasing me!”* Underneath, he is caring and tender, I like him very much, but I don’t love him.