Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters

by Monroe, Marilyn

  Alone!!!!!

  I am alone—I am always

  alone

  no matter what.

  Look Mag

  Hu 27291

  Rupert Allan

  There is nothing to fear

  but fear itself

  What do I believe in

  What is truth

  I believe in myself

  even my most delicate

  intangible feelings

  in the end everything is

  intangible

  my most precious liquid must

  never spill don’t spill your precious liquid

  life force

  they are all my feelings

  no matter what

  My feeling doesn’t

  happen to swell

  into words—

  Note: Rupert Allan met Marilyn in 1959. As the West Coast editor of Look magazine, he had secured Marilyn her first cover photo, which appeared on June 3, 1952. This may explain her reference “Look Mag.” Subsequently, Rupert Allan became Marilyn’s press agent and remained such up until the end of the filming of The Misfits, when he accepted Grace Kelly’s offer to work for her in Monaco.

  Actress must have no mouth

  no feet

  shoulder girdle hangs light

  hanging

  so-o-o

  loose

  everything

  focus my thought on

  the partner—

  feeling in the end of

  my fingers

  Nothing must come

  between me and my

  part—my feeling—

  concentration

  The feeling only

  getting rid of everything

  else

  my mind speaks

  no looks

  body only

  letting go—face feeling

  mind

  spirit

  no attitude

  listening to the body for

  the feeling

  listen with the eyes

  buoyancy

  Tension

  loose—having no brakes

  letting go of everything.

  feeling only—all I have to

  do is think it. How do

  I hear the melody—the

  Tone springs from emotion

  Tone—groans and moans—“I’m (animals—“down to the hogs”)

  so sick”—hums from

  with cat—hum—nice kitty soft.

  starts from below my feet

  feet—all in my feet.

  What is my pantomime playing with

  How is my head?

  as if I might never

  speak move

  transparency.

  letting go.

  down down in back.

  pulling up from here.

  right tension stomach

  [illegible] only

  Fear of giving me the lines new

  maybe won’t be able to learn them

  maybe I’ll make mistakes

  people will either think I’m no good or

  laugh or belittle me or think I can’t act.

  Women looked stern and critical—

  unfriendly and cold in general

  afraid director won’t think I’m any good.

  remembering when I couldn’t do a god

  damn thing.

  then trying to build myself up with the

  fact that I have done things right that

  were even good and have had moments

  that were excellent but the bad is heavier

  to carry around and feel have no confidence

  depressed mad

  Pardon me

  are you the janitor’s

  wife

  caught a Greyhound

  Bus from Monterey

  to Salinas. On the

  Bus I was the only person

  woman with about

  sixty italian fishermen

  and I’ve never met

  sixty such charming gentlemen—they

  were wonderful. Some

  company was sending them

  downstate where their boats

  and (they hoped) fish were

  waiting for them. Some

  could hardly speak english

  not only do I love Greeks

  [illegible] I love Italians.

  they’re so warm, lusty and friendly

  as hell—I’d love to go to

  Italy someday.

  Notes:

  The sentence of the notebook is one of the few lines Marilyn had to say in Love Nest (1951), so we may assume that these notes—at any rate, the ones written in pencil—date from the same period.

  In February 1948, Marilyn went to the California towns of Salinas and Castroville in order to promote diamond sales in two jewelry stores. She stayed at the Jeffery Hotel in Salinas for a week.

  Medici 1400 AD–1748

  Prototype—first type

  Giovanni di Bicci first foundling home

  Bronze doors in the

  in Florence 1424

  Ghiberti 23 perspective

  used his great architect

  Brunelleschi 22

  Donatello 1386–1466

  Masaccio 1401–1428 father of modern art (reality

  poverty careless about his painting)

  life except his painting—

  Giovanni di Bicci responsible

  for him. His work never recognized

  until after his death.

  The Pantheon—temple

  Greek philosophy—golden mean

  (neither too big—or too small)

  kept ousted old pope

  gave money for temples for Brunelleschi

  elected him Signoria

  Gonfaloniere (governing body)

  (pres)

  Grande—nobles

  Macchiavelli (1469–1527) Botticelli

  damn near broke my back

  and dislocated my neck trying not to

  sleep all over the filipino boy

  Moved my seat when a

  [illegible] left the bus—the

  only empty seat so

  I left mine for so the

  girl could sit her kid

  down and I took the

  other seat. It was next to

  a filipino boy and

  he smelled good like

  flowers.

  Marilyn with a book about Goya, around 1953 Marilyn and Degas sculpture, Los Angeles, 1956

  OTHER “RECORD” NOTEBOOK

  AROUND 1955

  This black notebook has a smoother cover than the preceding one. Only the first few pages have been filled; pages 3 and 4 have disappeared, because Marilyn either ripped out the sheet to write on, or did so on rereading it. It is likely that this group of notes, which is coherent and forms a certain continuity, dates from the time Marilyn started working with Lee Strasberg, around 1955. A sincere effort at introspection can be observed as the star returned to her childhood and the lifelong fears it engendered. Aunt Ida is probably Ida Martin (rather than Ida Bolender, with whom Marilyn also stayed as a child). Ida Martin was the mother of Marilyn’s aunt by marriage, an evangelical Christian and strict disciplinarian who emphasized obedience and was repressive about sexual issues in general; she may also have made the twelve-year-old Norma Jeane feel guilty for an episode in which she said she had been molested. To no longer feel ashamed of what you were, of what you desired: this was what Marilyn, who had made her childhood dream come true by becoming an actress, was now aiming for. We may also assume that she had just started psychoanalysis, as she pointed out the bent of the unconscious to forget and repress, an impulse she urged herself to struggle against by trying to reclaim memory in order to be able to accept herself fully. She experienced work as a way of freeing herself from the constraints and shackles of the past, and these pages can be read as an outline of self-analysis, both gripping and moving.

  to know reality (or

  things a
s they are than

  to have not to know

  and to have few

  illusions as possible—

  train my will now

  working (doing my tasks that I

  have set for myself)

  On the stage—I will

  not be punished for it

  or be whipped

  or be threatened

  or not be loved

  or sent to hell to burn with bad people

  or feeling that I am also bad.

  or be afraid of my genitals being

  or ashamed

  exposed known and seen—

  so what

  or ashamed of my sensitive feelings—

  they are reality

  or colors or screaming or doing

  nothing

  and I do have feeling

  very strongly sexed feeling

  since a small child—(think of all the

  things I felt then

  I do know ways people

  act unconventionally—mainly

  myself—do not be afraid of

  my sensitivity or to

  use it—for I

  can & will channel it + crazy thoughts too

  I want to do my scene or exercises

  ([illegible] idiotic as they seem)

  as sincerely as possible I

  can knowing and showing

  how I know it is also—no

  matter—what they might

  think—or judge from it

  I can and will help

  myself and work on

  things analytically no

  matter how painful—if I

  forget things (the unconscious

  wants to

  forget—I will only try to remember)

  Discipline—Concentration

  my body is my body every part of it.

  feel what I feel

  within myself—that is trying to

  become aware of it

  also what I feel in others

  not being ashamed of my

  feeling, thoughts—or ideas

  realize the thing that

  they are—

  having a sense of myself

  Marilyn reading To the Actor by Michael Chekhov, New York, 1955 Marilyn writing at home, May 1953

  WALDORF-ASTORIA STATIONERY

  1955

  Marilyn Monroe’s immense popular appeal had at last been recognized by the Hollywood elite, who had gathered together at a party given in her honor by Charles Feldman, the producer of The Seven Year Itch, on November 6, 1954, at the Beverly Hills Romanoff. Still dissatisfied with what Hollywood had to offer, Marilyn decided to leave the West Coast for New York and set up Marilyn Monroe Productions with the photographer Milton Greene. This was a tremendous challenge to the all-powerful studios and a gesture for which she would never really be fully forgiven. From then on her life would swing between the West Coast and the East Coast, a contest between the movie-star image and the cultural and artistic self-invention that the Actors Studio and her New York acquaintances made possible. After a few weeks spent at the Gladstone Hotel, she stayed in a three-room suite on the twenty-seventh floor of the Waldorf-Astoria from April to September 1955. The following documents were written on this prestigious hotel’s stationery. They include a long prose poem, the account of a nightmarish dream that is full of surprises (not least her drama teacher turning into a surgeon), thoughts and notes about what Lee Strasberg had said (she misspelled his name with a double “s”) during the classes she attended at the Actors Studio, the draft of a letter to a certain “Claude,” and a list of song titles. Some of these documents are discontinuous, and the links between texts, which might have been written in any order, have been left to the reader’s discernment.

  Sad, sweet trees—

  I wish for you—rest

  but you must be wakeful

  Sooooo many lights in the darkness

  making skeletons of buildings

  and life in the streets

  The things What were was it I thought about yesterday

  down in the streets?

  It now seems so far away up here long ago

  and moon so full and dark.

  It’s better I learned they told me as a child what it was

  for I could not guess it or understand it now.

  Noises from of impatience from cab drivers always driving who

  must drive—hot, dusty, snowing icy streets so they

  can eat, and perhaps save for a vacation, in which they

  will can drive their wives all the way across the

  country to see her relatives.

  Then the river—the part made of pepsi cola—the park—thank god for the park

  Yet I am not looking at these things

  I’m looking for my lover

  It’s good they told me what

  the moon was when I was a child.

  What was that now—

  just a moment ago—

  from it was mine and

  now it’s gone—like the

  swift movement of a moment

  gone—

  maybe I’ll remember

  because it felt

  as though it

  started to be wonderful

  only mine

  Best finest surgeon—Strasberg

  waits to cut me open which I don’t mind since Dr. H

  has prepared me—given me anaesthetic

  and has also diagnosed the case and

  agrees with what has to be done—

  an operation—to bring myself back to

  life and to cure me of this terrible dis-ease

  whatever the hell it is—

  Arthur is the only one waiting in the outer

  room—worrying and hoping operation successful

  for many reasons—for myself—for his play and

  for himself indirectly

  Hedda—concerned—keeps calling on phone during

  operation—Norman—keeps stopping by hospital to

  see if I’m okay but mostly to comfort Art

  who is so worried—

  Milton calls from big office with lots of room

  and everything in good taste—and is conducting

  business in a new way with style—and music

  is playing and he is relaxed and enjoying himself even if

  he is very worried at the same time—there’s a camera

  on his desk but he doesn’t take pictures anymore except

  of great paintings.

  Strasberg cuts me open after Dr. H gives me

  Make no more promises

  make no more

  explanations—if possible.

  Regarding Anne Karger

  after this make no

  commitments or tie

  myself down to engagements

  in future—to save

  not being able to keep

  them and mostly to

  avoid feeling guilty

  which is now the

  case.

  Notes:

  Anne Karger was the mother of the man sometimes identified as Marilyn's first real love, Fred Karger, whom she met in 1948 when he was a (then-married) voice coach at Columbia Pictures. She stayed on good terms with Anne all her life.

  Dr. H. refers to Dr. Margaret Hohenberg.

  Hedda Rosten had been a close friend of Marilyn’s since 1955 and became her personal assistant for a time. Norman was Hedda’s husband.

  “Art” was one of the nicknames Marilyn gave to Arthur Miller.

  Milton Greene took many photos of Marilyn before becoming her business partner.

  anesthesia and tries in a medical way to comfort

  me—everything in the room is white in fact I

  can’t even see anyone just white objects—

  they cut me open—Strasberg with Hohenberg’s ass.

  and there is absolutely nothing there—Strasberg is

  deeply disappointed but more even—acad
emically amazed

  that he had made such a mistake. He thought there was going

  to be so much—more than he had ever dreamed possible in

  almost anyone but

  instead there was absolutely nothing—devoid

  of every human living feeling thing—the only thing

  that came out was so finely cut sawdust—like

  out of a raggedy ann doll—and the sawdust spills

  all over the floor & table and Dr. H is puzzled

  because suddenly she realizes that this is a

  new type case of puple. The patient (pupil—or student—I started to write) existing of complete emptiness

  Strasberg’s dreams & hopes for theater are fallen.

  Dr. H’s dreams and hopes for a permanent psychiatric cure is given up—Arthur is disappointed—let down +

  For Dr H.

  tell about that

  dream of the horrible repulsive man—who is trying to