19 – my sleep depends on my state of satisfaction and that varies with my life—my dreams are too intimate to be revealed in public.
My nightmare is the H Bomb. What’s yours?
20 – (1) I have great feeling for all the persecuted ones in the world
(2) But I must have always refrained from discussing answering personal religious questions.
21 – I hope at some future time to be able to make a glowing report about the wonders that psychoanalysis can achieve. The time is not ripe.
22 – Early lack of sufficient training and experience as of yet until now
23 – I would not wish to slight all the actresses who would be left off such a list and therefore refrain from answering
24 – The lack of any consistent love and caring. A mistrust and fear of the world was the result. There were no benefits except what it could teach me about the basic needs of the young, the sick, and the weak.
25 – I can’t answer at this time
26 – yes and I would underline it
27 – in spades!
SOME BOOKS FROM MARILYN MONROE’S PERSONAL LIBRARY
Marilyn Monroe’s library demonstrates her range of interests. Besides classics such as John Milton, Gustave Flaubert, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, and Khalil Gibran, she read widely from contemporary authors such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, and Jack Kerouac.
The proceeds from the sale of Marilyn’s books were donated by Anna Strasberg to the charity Literacy Partners. This was a logical choice, given Marilyn’s love of books and reading, as well as Lee Strasberg’s lifelong dedication to education.
THE FAVORITE PHOTO
Among Marilyn Monroe’s personal belongings were dozens of prints of this portrait taken by Cecil Beaton on February 22, 1956, in New York. She confessed it had always been her favorite, and she often included an autographed copy when she wrote back to her fans.
Joshua Logan, the director of Bus Stop, gave Marilyn the photograph in an engraved triptych, flanked by two handwritten pages by Cecil Beaton recalling this shoot. Beaton saw her as a very paradoxical figure, a siren and tightrope-walker, femme fatale and naive child, the last incarnation of an eighteenth-century face in a portrait by Greuze living in the very contemporary world of nylons, sodas, jukeboxes, and drive-ins.
What really struck Cecil Beaton was Marilyn’s ability to keep transforming herself, to give the photographer a thousand variations of herself, without inhibition but with a real uncertainty and vulnerability—even though her incandescent beauty gave her the paradoxical freedom not to fuss over her clothes and her hair.
This photograph is just such an improvisation. Marilyn pulled this carnation from a bouquet to put in her mouth like a cigarette, only later lying on a sofa to place the flower on her breast in a gesture of protection and gift.
“She has rocketed from obscurity to become our post-war sex symbol, the pin-up girl of an age,” Beaton wrote. “And whatever press agentry or manufactured illusion may have lit the fuse, it is her own weird genius that has sustained her flight. Transfigured by the garish marvel of Technicolor cinemascope, she walks like an undulating basilisk, scorching everything in her path but the rosemary bushes.” He concluded, “Perhaps she was born just the post-war day we had need of her. Certainly she has no knowledge of the past. Like Giraudoux’s Ondine, she is only fifteen years old, and she will never die.”
Ambassador Hotel, New York, 1956
FUNERAL EULOGY
by Lee Strasberg
Marilyn Monroe was a legend.
In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.
But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe.
We, gathered here today, knew only Marilyn—a warm human being, impulsive and shy, sensitive and in fear of rejection, yet ever avid for life and reaching out for fulfillment. I will not insult the privacy of your memory of her—a privacy she sought and treasured—by trying to describe her whom you knew to you who knew her. In our memories of her she remains alive, not only a shadow on a screen or a glamorous personality.
For us Marilyn was a devoted and loyal friend, a colleague constantly reaching for perfection. We shared her pain and difficulties and some of her joys. She was a member of our family. It is difficult to accept that her zest for life has been ended by this dreadful accident.
Despite the heights and brilliance she had attained on the screen, she was planning for the future: she was looking forward to participating in the many exciting things she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the startling sensitivity which she possessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, struggling to express itself despite the life to which she had been subjected. Others were as physically beautiful as she was, but there was obviously something more in her, something that people saw and recognized in her performances and with which they identified. She had a luminous quality—a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning—to set her apart and yet make everyone wish to be part of it, to share in the childish naivete which was at once so shy and yet so vibrant.
This quality was even more evident when she was on the stage. I am truly sorry that the public who loved her did not have the opportunity to see her as we did, in many of the roles that foreshadowed what she would have become. Without a doubt she would have been one of the really great actresses of the stage.
Now it is all at an end. I hope that her death will stir sympathy and understanding for a sensitive artist and woman who brought joy and pleasure to the world.
I cannot say goodbye. Marilyn never liked goodbyes, but in the peculiar way she had of turning things around so that they faced reality—I will say au revoir. For the country to which she has gone, we must all someday visit.
August 9, 1962
CHRONOLOGY
June 1, 1926
Birth of Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles, third child of Gladys Pearl Baker, born Monroe, of unknown father. The baby was immediately placed in a foster home, first of all with the Bolenders and then with various other families. Sometimes Grace Goddard, one of her mother's friends, looked after her.
June 19, 1942
At only sixteen years old, Norma Jeane married Jim Dougherty, who was five years her senior.
1945
First meeting and first photo shoot with André de Dienes.
August 1946
First contract with Twentieth Century Fox. Ben Lyon persuaded her to change her name to Marilyn, after the musical star Marilyn Miller, and Monroe, which was her mother’s maiden name.
June 1950
First screening of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. Marilyn received rave reviews in spite of her relatively small part.
March 13, 1952
The nude calendar scandal. Marilyn’s career was jeopardized, but her confession, “I was hungry,” drew public support.
1953
Henry Hathaway’s Niagara, in which she had a dramatic role, was a big hit, as was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, directed by Howard Hawks, which came out the same year.
October 1953
Marilyn met the photographer Milton H. Greene at a reception given in honor of Gene Kelly.
November 4, 1953
Premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire, a brilliantly successful comedy.
January 14, 1954
Marilyn married baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio.
February 1954
Marilyn entertained American troops engaged in the Korean War while on her way to Japan. She considered this one of the most important events in her life.
August 10, 1954
The filming of The Seven Year Itch began in New York. The famous scene with Marilyn standing over an air vent trying to hold down her
billowing skirt was filmed on September 15 in front of a flabbergasted crowd and to DiMaggio’s great displeasure.
October 5, 1954
Official separation from Joe DiMaggio.
November 1954
Supported the appearance of Ella Fitzgerald at the Mocambo club, where it was unusual for African Americans to be booked. Marilyn kept her promise of sitting at a front-row table every night.
Christmas 1954
Marilyn decided to leave Hollywood and move to New York, even though a magnificent dinner had just been given in her honor. She traveled under the name of Zelda Zonk, wearing a black wig and sunglasses.
December 31, 1954
Marilyn and Milton H. Greene founded their own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc.
January 15, 1955
At a press conference for the new production company, Marilyn said that henceforth she wished to handpick her parts and included Grushenka in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov as an example. The press seized on this comment to hold her up to ridicule.
April 8, 1955
From Greene’s house in Connecticut, Marilyn appeared on a popular morning TV talk show, Person to Person, hosted by Edward R. Murrow. More than fifty million people watched the program.
Spring of 1955
Living in New York, Marilyn studied at the Actors Studio as well as taking private classes with Lee Strasberg. She had sessions with her psychoanalyst, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, up to five times a week.
February 25 to June 2, 1956
Marilyn returned to live in Hollywood to work on Bus Stop, directed by Joshua Logan. The terms negotiated with Fox were much more advantageous after the enormous success of The Seven Year Itch.
June 29, 1956
Marilyn and Arthur Miller were married in a civil ceremony; the religious ceremony took place on July 1 after Marilyn’s conversion to Judaism.
June 14 to November 6, 1956
Marilyn and her husband went to London for the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, and produced by Marilyn’s company. The couple lived at Parkside House in Surrey.
Spring of 1957
Marilyn fired Milton H. Greene from her production company. In May she went to Washington to support Arthur Miller during his House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing.
August 4 to November 6, 1958
The filming of Some Like It Hot. Relations with Billy Wilder and actors Jack Lemmon (cast despite competition from her friend Frank Sinatra) and Tony Curtis were tense. Marilyn regretted Wilder’s choice of filming in black and white.
1960
The filming of Let’s Make Love, directed by George Cukor, with Yves Montand (suggested by Arthur Miller after Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, and Rock Hudson had all withdrawn). Marilyn had an affair with the French actor.
March 8, 1960
Marilyn won the Golden Globe for best actress for her performance in Some Like It Hot.
July 18 to November 4, 1960
The filming of The Misfits in Nevada.
November 11, 1960
Press announcement of the separation of Marilyn and Arthur Miller.
February 7 to February 10, 1961
Against her will and following a “misunderstanding.” Marilyn was forcibly admitted into Payne Whitney psychiatric unit in New York on the recommendation of her current analyst, Dr. Kris. Lee and Paula Strasberg, whom she called for help, couldn't legally intervene, as they were not family members. Only DiMaggio was able to effect her release. She then spent three weeks at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center undergoing a rest cure.
November 19, 1961
Marilyn met John Kennedy at his brother-in-law Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica house.
February 1962
Marilyn bought a house in Brentwood, a fashionable neighborhood in Los Angeles.
April 23, 1962
The filming of Something’s Got to Give, directed by George Cukor and produced by Henry Weinstein, began. Because Marilyn was repeatedly late or absent, production stopped on June 8. The film was never finished.
May 19, 1962
President John Kennedy’s birthday gala was held at Madison Square Garden in New York. Marilyn made a memorable appearance.
June 23, 1962
Marilyn began the long photo shoot for Vogue with Bert Stern that came to be known as “The Last Sitting.”
August 3, 1962
Marilyn appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
August 5, 1962
Marilyn Monroe died at night at her house in Brentwood.
Karen Blixen (1885–1962)
On February 5, 1959, a luncheon was organized at Carson McCullers’s house in Nyack, New York, with Karen Blixen, who, on a lecture tour of the United States, had expressed a desire to meet Marilyn Monroe. She wrote to the American writer Fleur Cowles Meyer on February 21, 1961: “I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the most overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”
Truman Capote (1924–1984)
The author of In Cold Blood met Marilyn in 1950 on the set of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. They became close friends, and in Music for Chameleons, Capote dedicated a magnificent short story to her, entitled “A Beautiful Child.”
Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
Carson McCullers met Marilyn through Arthur Miller in New York in 1954 and afterward saw her regularly. She described her memories of these meetings in her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare.
Norman Mailer (1923–2007)
Norman Mailer lived in the same brownstone in Brooklyn as Arthur Miller and had a house not far from Marilyn and Arthur’s in Roxbury, but despite his many sollicitations, he never met Marilyn. After her death, Mailer devoted two biographical essays to her, the first, Marilyn, in 1973, and the second, Of Women and Their Elegance, in 1980.
Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
Maugham wrote to Marilyn to express his delight at the news that she was to play the part of Sadie Thompson in an adaptation of his short story “Rain,” which Lee Strasberg hoped to direct for NBC, but the movie was never made.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005)
Marilyn met her future husband, along with Elia Kazan, in Hollywood in 1952. She was photographed by Ben Ross that same year, reading a book by Miller. When she moved to New York, he helped her move toward a more intellectual and cultured way of life. In spite of the disapproval of both the studios and her own circle, Marilyn courageously stood by Miller’s side during his House Un-American Activities Committee hearing. Marilyn also met Saul Bellow through Arthur Miller.
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)
He never met Marilyn Monroe, but a year after her death in 1963, he wrote an elegy to her, which was recited as a voice-over during a montage sequence in his film La Rabbia, with Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor as background music. He wrote, “You, little sister, had that beauty humbly bestowed on you, and your soul born from modest people never knew how to own it, for it would not be beauty otherwise. The world first taught it to you, and so took your beauty as its own.”
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
Marilyn and the American poet met on the film set of Some Like It Hot in 1959. She was a great fan of his biography of Abraham Lincoln. They communicated mostly by phone, but there are photos of their joyous meeting at Irena and Henry Weinstein’s home in January 1962. He wrote about her, “She was not the usual movie idol. There was something democratic about her. She was the type who would join in and wash up the supper
dishes even if you didn’t ask her.”
Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
Edith Sitwell and Marilyn Monroe first met and had tea together at the end of 1954, in Hollywood. Marilyn, with her golden hair and green dress, reminded the eccentric English poet of a daffodil. They got on well and discussed poetry, in particular The Course of Life by Rudolph Steiner. They met again in London in 1956.
Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
When the Welsh poet was on a reading tour of the United States in February 1950, he expressed the wish to meet Charlie Chaplin; however, before his dinner engagement he had a great time drinking martinis with Shelley Winters and Marilyn Monroe. He arrived dead drunk at Chaplin’s home and was turned away by the great comedian himself.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to:
Sarah Churchwell
Ségolène Dargnies
Marion Duvert
Abby Haywood
Courtney Hodell
Karen Hope
Mark Krotov
Annie Ohayon
Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters Page 6