Marilyn Monroe - Interview 1954
Marilyn Monroe - Interview
The following interview appeared in Motion Picture magazine in January 1954. It comprises questions sent in by readers to Helen Hover, who then 'quizzed' Marilyn. Hope you enjoy it!
Q: Is it true you dress for men?
MM: Don't most women dress for men? Isn't it true that men and women have mutual appreciation of each other?
Q: Why do you wear low cut gowns?
MM: I haven't really noticed.
Q: What do you do in your spare time?
MM: When an actress is building her career in pictures, as I am, there is very little spare time. What little there is I spend in reading and studying.
Q: In Niagara, were you clad only in a sheet when you were lying in bed, or were you wearing other clothes underneath?
MM: I always wear clothes appropriate to the occasion.
Q: What is your description of the ideal man?
MM: Someone who is gentle and considerate - but I've never thought of one 'ideal man'. I doubt if there is such a person.
Q: How do you feel about being the sexiest girl in Hollywood?
MM: Isn't that a 'loaded question'?
Q: What do you do to keep your body so beautiful?
MM: I walk, exercise and study body control.
Q: What do you think of girls in pictures who try to imitate you?
MM: This is a free and democratic country and no-one has a monopoly on anything.
Q: What is your age, birthplace and nationality?
MM: I was born in Los Angeles on June 1st. I'm an American.
Q: How many different boyfriends do you have a week?
MM: I think you've been reading too many gossip columns.
Q: Are you happy being the type you are, or would you rather be more like Ann Blyth or Jeanne Crain?
MM: I am content to be Marilyn Monroe, to the best of my ability. Being one's self is a twenty-four hour a day job anyway isn't it?
Q: What is your worst fault?
MM: I probably have many, but my worst is my difficulty in remembering that there are only 60 minutes in an hour. I'm variably late, but I can't break myself of it.
Q: Do you like to dress up and go out at night to formal affairs?
MM: No. I don't go to many formal affairs, and when I do I usually go by myself because I want to, or else with someone from the studio. These formal affairs are in the line of duty, anyway.
Q: Do you think it is rude, or do you like it when men whistle at you?
MM: Any girl who resents whistles should live on a desert island.
Q: What are your measurements?
MM: Bust 37, waist 23.5, hips 37.5 - or so they tell me.
Q: Is it true that you really posed for calendar pictures?
MM: Yes.
Q: Do you act the same off screen as you do on?
MM: When I work I act; when I'm home I don't act. Do you do the same things at home as when you're working at your job as secretary, salesgirl, teacher, clerk or whatever? Why bring your work home with you?
Q: What is your favourite pastime?
MM: Walking. I can walk alone for hours and enjoy it.
Q: Were you popular at school?
MM: I won no popularity awards, but I did have a number of good friends.
Q: How many dates do you have a week?
MM: When I'm working in a picture I have no time to go out. Besides, I don't think in terms of dates per week, that's silly. If someone asks me to go out, and I find his company enjoyable, I go out with them. If not then I'd rather stay home.
Q: If you weren't an actress, what would you want to be?
MM: It's funny, but I've never thought of being anything but an actress.
Q: Do you walk in real life the way you did in Niagara?
MM: I never think about the way I walk. But since I was playing a certain type of girl in the picture who was not myself, and since the way I walked helped emphasize her, I walked as I did. I'm sure my real life walk is not exactly the same.
Q: Are you happy with the type of publicity you get or would you rather be known for something else besides your figure?
MM: I want to be known as a good actress.
Q: Who was your first love?
MM: No-one you would know.
Q: Are you sultry and sexy by nature and do you enjoy being this type?
MM: What is a type? I am myself - Marilyn Monroe.
Q: What are your favourite hobbies?
MM: Swimming, collecting records, reading and dancing, when I have time.
Q: What is the truth about your romance with Joe DiMaggio?
MM: Mr DiMaggio is a good friend and a gentleman I greatly admire.
Q: Have you a temper, and what makes you lose it?
MM: I have a little temper, and I really lose it when people write untruths about me.
Q: What attracts you first to a man, his looks or personality?
MM: It depends on the man, but I'd say that personality means more. However, a sense of humour is a wonderful help as far as I'm concerned in sizing up a man's personality.
Q: Who is your best girlfriend?
MM: I don't have a best girlfriend, but I do have many good friends whose companionship is worth much to me.
Q: Was there friction between you and Jane Russell when you were making Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?
MM: None whatsoever. I don't know why this rumor sprang up unless people just can't believe that two women can work together in harmony. I consider Jane to be one of the sweetest persons I've ever met, and I'm happy to call her my friend.
Q: What's your idea of a good time when dating?
MM: I like a quiet evening with someone whose personality and conversation intrigues me.
Q: How do you feel about criticism of your low cut gowns?
MM: I don't like unfair criticism at any time. Do you? I feel that some of the criticism has been unfair.
Q: What kind of man do you want to marry?
MM: How can I say? I'm not thinking of marrying at the moment. I do want to get married and have children some day, that's for sure, but I'll cross the career-marriage bridge when I get to it.
Q: What kind of life did you live before you became a star?
MM: There were some difficult days and some pleasant ones. I went to school, held down a number of jobs, looked for openings in pictures all the time, had many disappointments which were very crushing and finally reached some small measure of success.
Q: Do you ever want to play something besides a siren on the screen?
MM: Certainly. I want to play a variety of roles. I don't think it's good to be typed.
'When you're famous you run into human nature in a raw kind of way'
This is an edited version of Last Talk With a Lonely Girl: Marilyn Monroe by Richard Meryman, first published in Life magazine, August 17 1962
Ever since she was fired from Something's Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe has kept an almost disdainful silence. As far as her troubles with 20th Century Fox were concerned, she simply said she had been too sick to work - not wilfully tardy and truant as the producer charged. While 20th Century Fox and her lawyers were negotiating for her to resume work on the movie, Marilyn was thinking about broader aspects of her career - about the rewards and burdens of fame bestowed on her by fans who paid $200 million to see her films, about drives that impel her, and about echoes in her present life of her childhood in foster homes. She thought about these out loud in a rare and candid series of conversations with Life associate editor Richard Meryman. As a camera caught the warmth and gusto of her personality, Marilyn's words revealed her own private view of Marilyn Monroe ...
Sometimes wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no makeup and with a certain attitude of walking, I go shopping or just look at people living. But then you know, there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp and they'll say, "Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?" And they'll start tailing me. And I don't mind. I realise some people want to see if you're real. The teenagers, the little kids, their faces light up. They say, "Gee," and they can't wait to tell their friends. And old people come up and say, "Wait till I tell my wife." You've changed their whole day. In the morning, the garbage men that go by 57th Street when I come out the door say, "Marilyn, hi! How do you feel this morning?" To me, it's an honour, and I love them for it. The working men, I'll go by and they'll whistle. At first they whistle because they think, oh, it's a girl. She's got blond hair and she's not out of shape, and then they say, "Gosh, it's Marilyn Monroe!" And that has its ... you know, those are times it's nice. People knowing who you are and all of that, and feeling that you've meant something to them.
I don't know quite why, but somehow I feel they know that I mean what I do, both when I'm acting on the screen or when if I see them in person and greet them. That I really always do mean hello, and how are you? In their fantasies they feel "Gee, it can happen to me!" But when you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you know, of any kind of nature and it won't hurt your feelings. Like it's happening to your clothing. One time here I am looking for a home to buy and I stopped at this place. A man came out and was very pleasant and cheerful, and said, "Oh, just a moment, I want my wife to meet you." Well, she came out and said, "Will you please get off the premises?" You're always running into people's unconscious.
Let's take some actors or directors. Usually they don't say it to me, they say it to the newspapers because that's a bigger play. You know, if they're only insulting me to my face that doesn't make a big enough play because all I have to say is, "See you around, like never." But if it's in the newspapers, it's coast-to-coast and all around the world. I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other. I don't like to say this, but I'm afraid there is a lot of envy in this business. The only thing I can do is stop and think, "I'm all right but I'm not so sure about them!" For instance, you've read there was some actor that once said that kissing me was like kissing Hitler. Well, I think that's his problem. If I have to do intimate love scenes with somebody who really has these kinds of feelings toward me, then my fantasy can come into play. In other words, out with him, in with my fantasy. He was never there.
It's nice to be included in people's fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake. I don't look at myself as a commodity, but I'm sure a lot of people have. Including, well, one corporation in particular, which shall be nameless. If I'm sounding picked on or something, I think I am. I'll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it's disappointing. These are the ones you aren't interested in seeing every day of your life.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself. You're just an ornament.
When I was five I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries. It goes beyond house; you could make your own situations and you could pretend, and even if the other kids were a little slow on the imagining part, you could say, "Hey, what about if you were such and such, and I were such and such, wouldn't that be fun?" And they'd say, "Oh, yes," and then I'd say, "Well, that will be a horse and this will be ..." It was play, playfulness. When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be. You can play. But then you grow up and find out about playing, that they make playing very difficult for you. Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.
When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world. Suddenly, everything opened up. Even the girls paid a little attention to me because they thought, "Hmmm, she's to be dealt with!" And I had this long walk to school, two and a half miles [there], two and a half miles back. It was just sheer pleasure. Every fellow honked his horn, you know, workers driving to work, waving, you know, and I'd wave back. The world became friendly. All the newspaper boys when they delivered the paper would come around to where I lived, and I used to hang from the limb of a tree, and I had sort of a sweatshirt on. I didn't realise the value of a sweatshirt in those days, and then I was sort of beginning to catch on, but I didn't quite get it, because I couldn't really afford sweaters. But here they come with their bicycles, you know, and I'd get these free papers and the family liked that, and they'd all pull their bicycles up around the tree and then I'd be hanging, looking kind of like a monkey, I guess. I was a little shy to come down. I did get down to the curb, kinda kicking the curb and kicking the leaves and talking, but mostly listening. And sometimes the family used to worry because I used to laugh so loud and so gay; I guess they felt it was hysterical. It was just this sudden freedom because I would ask the boys, "Can I ride your bike now?" and they'd say, "Sure." Then I'd go zooming, laughing in the wind, riding down the block, laughing, and they'd all stand around and wait till I came back. But I loved the wind. It caressed me. But it was kind of a double-edged thing. I did find, too, when the world opened up that people took a lot for granted, like not only could they be friendly, but they could suddenly get overly friendly and expect an awful lot for very little. When I was older, I used to go to Grauman's Chinese Theatre and try to fit my foot in the prints in the cement there. And I'd say, "Oh, oh, my foot's too big! I guess that's out." I did have a funny feeling later when I finally put my foot down into that wet cement. I sure knew what it really meant to me. Anything's possible, almost.
It was the creative part that kept me going, trying to be an actress. I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife. Well, also, I had to eat. I was never kept, to be blunt about it; I always kept myself. I have always had a pride in the fact that I was my own. And Los Angeles was my home, too, so when they said, "Go home!" I said, "I am home." The time I sort of began to think I was famous, I was driving somebody to the airport, and as I came back there was this movie house and I saw my name in lights. I pulled the car up at a distance down the street; it was too much to take up close, you know, all of a sudden. And I said, "God, somebody's made a mistake." But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, "So that's the way it looks," and it was all very strange to me, and yet at the studio they had said, "Remember, you're not a star." Yet there it is up in lights. I really got the idea I must be a star or something from the newspapermen; I'm saying men, not the women who would interview me and they would be warm and friendly. By the way, that part of the press, you know, the men of the press, unless they have their own personal quirks against me, they were always very warm and friendly and they'd say, "You know, you're the only star," and I'd say, "Star?" and they'd look at me as if I were nuts. I think they, in their own kind of way, made me realise I was famous.
I remember when I got the part in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jane Russell - she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde. She got $200,000 for it, and I got my $500 a week, but that to me was, you know, considerable. She, by the way, was quite wonderful to me. The only thing was I couldn't get a dressing room. Finally, I really got to this kind of level and I said, "Look, after all, I am the blonde, and it is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!" Because still they always kept saying, "Remember, you're not a star." I said, "Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!" And I want to say to the people, if I am a star, the people made me a star. No studio, no person, but the people did. There was a reaction that came to the studio, the fan mail, or when I went to a premiere, or the exhibitors wanted to meet me. I didn't know why. When they all rushed toward me I looked behind me to see who was there and I said, "My heavens!" I was scared to death. I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don't know who or what, maybe myself.
I've always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, "Hi," that the people ought to get their money's worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me. I do have feelings some days when there are scenes with a lot of responsibility toward the meaning, and I'll wish, "Gee, if only I had been a cleaning woman." On the way to the studio I would see somebody cleaning and I'd say, "That's what I'd like to be. That's my ambition in life." But I think that all actors go through this. We not only want to be good, we have to be. You know, when they talk about nervousness, my teacher, Lee Strasberg, when I said to him, "I don't know what's wrong with me but I'm a little nervous," he said, "When you're not, give up, because nervousness indicates sensitivity." Also, a struggle with shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine. There is a censor inside us that says to what degree do we let go, like a child playing. I guess people think we just go out there, and you know, that's all we do. Just do it. But it's a real struggle. I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.
An actor is not a machine, no matter how much they want to say you are. Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever. Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, "One tear, right now," that one tear would pop out. But once there came two tears because I thought, "How dare he?" Goethe said, "Talent is developed in privacy," you know? And it's really true. There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you.
I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated. This industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. Like you don't dare get a cold. How dare you get a cold! I mean, the executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in, but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or a virus. You know, no one feels worse than the one who's sick. I sometimes wish, gee, I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection. I am not an actress who appears at a studio just for the purpose of discipline. This doesn't have anything at all to do with art. I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work. But I'm there to give a performance and not to be disciplined by a studio! After all, I'm not in a military school. This is supposed to be an art form, not just a manufacturing establishment. The sensitivity that helps me to act, you see, also makes me react. An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?
You know a lot of people have, oh gee, real quirky problems that they wouldn't dare have anyone know. But one of my problems happens to show: I'm late. I guess people think that why I'm late is some kind of arrogance and I think it is the opposite of arrogance. I also feel that I'm not in this big American rush, you know, you got to go and you got to go fast but for no good reason. The main thing is, I want to be prepared when I get there to give a good performance or whatever to the best of my ability. A lot of people can be there on time and do nothing, which I have seen them do, and you know, all sit around sort of chit chatting and talking trivia about their social life. Gable said about me, "When she's there, she's there. All of her is there! She's there to work."
I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing Happy Birthday, like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, "Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!"
A hush like that from the people warms me. It's sort of like an embrace. Then you think, by God, I'll sing this song if it's the last thing I ever do, and for all the people. Because I remember when I turned to the microphone, I looked all the way up and back, and I thought, "That's where I'd be, way up there under one of those rafters, close to the ceiling, after I paid my two dollars to come into the place." Afterwards they had some sort of reception. I was with my former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, so I think I did something wrong when I met the president. Instead of saying, "How do you do?" I just said "This is my former father-in-law, Isadore Miller." He came here an immigrant and I thought this would be one of the biggest things in his life. He's about 75 or 80 years old and I thought this would be something that he would be telling his grandchildren about and all that. I should have said, "How do you do, Mr President," but I had already done the singing, so well you know. I guess nobody noticed it.
Fame has a special burden, which I might as well state here and now. I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes with it can be a burden. I feel that beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity. I think that sexuality is only attractive when it's natural and spontaneous. This is where a lot of them miss the boat. And then something I'd just like to spout off on. We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift. Art, real art, comes from it, everything.
I never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something I'd rather have it sex than some other things they've got symbols of! These girls who try to be me, I guess the studios put them up to it, or they get the ideas themselves. But gee, they haven't got it. You can make a lot of gags about it like they haven't got the foreground or else they haven't the background. But I mean the middle, where you live.
All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me and I'd worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you ask me these things straight out and I'll answer all your questions.
I wanted them to know of life other than their own. I used to tell them, for instance, that I worked for five cents a month and I washed one hundred dishes, and my stepkids would say, "One hundred dishes!" and I said, "Not only that, I scraped and cleaned them before I washed them." I washed them and rinsed them and put them in the draining place, but I said, "Thank God I didn't have to dry them."
I was never used to being happy, so that wasn't something I ever took for granted. You see, I was brought up differently from the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy. That's it: successful, happy, and on time. Yet because of fame I was able to meet and marry two of the nicest men I'd ever met up to that time.
I don't think people will turn against me, at least not by themselves. I like people. The "public" scares me, but people I trust. Maybe they can be impressed by the press or when a studio starts sending out all kinds of stories. But I think when people go to see a movie, they judge for themselves. We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.
Once I was supposed to be finished, that was the end of me. When Mr Miller was on trial for contempt of congress, a certain corporation executive said either he named names and I got him to name names, or I was finished. I said, "I'm proud of my husband's position and I stand behind him all the way," and the court did too. "Finished," they said. "You'll never be heard of."
It might be a kind of relief to be finished. You have to start all over again. But I believe you're always as good as your potential. I now live in my work and in a few relationships with the few people I can really count on. Fame will go by, and, so long, I've had you fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live.
· Copyright 1962 Life Inc. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Life Magazine
August 17, 1962 A Last Long Talk With A Lonely Girl
by Richard Meryman
Only a few weeks before her death Marilyn Monroe talked at length to LIFE Associate Editor Richard Meryman about the effects of fame on her life. Her story was published in the August 3 issue. Here he recalls what Marilyn was like as she talked to him. If Marilyn Monroe was glad to see you, her "hello" will sound in your mind all of your life - the breathless warmth of the emphasis on the "lo", her well-deep eyes turned up toward you and her face radiantly crinkled in a wonderfully girlish smile. I first experienced this when, after two get-acquainted meetings in New York, I came in the late afternoon several weeks ago to her Brentwood, Calif. home to begin a series of conversations on fame. Expecting one of the famous waits for Marilyn, I sat on the soft wall-to-wall carpet of the living room and began struggling to set up my tape recorder. Suddenly, I became aware of a pair of brilliant yellow slacks upright beside me. In the slacks was Marilyn, silently watching me with a solicitous grin, very straight and slender with delicately narrow shoulders. She seemed shorter than I remembered and she looked spectacular in a loose-fitting blouse. I stood up and we greeted and she said,"Do you want my tape recorder? I bought one to play the poems of a friend of mine." Before starting what was to be no less than a six-hour talk, she wanted to show me her house which she had personally searched out and bought. Describing it earlier she exclaimed, "...and it has walls." She had refused LIFE any pictures of it, saying, "I don't want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like. Do you know the book Everyman? Well, I want to stay just in the fantasy of Everyman." It was a small, three-bedroom house built in Mexican style, the first home entirely her own she had ever had. She exulted in it. On a special trip to Mexico she had carefully searched in roadside stands and shops and even factories to find just the right things to put in it. The large items had not arrived - nor was she ever to see them installed. As she led me through the rooms, bare and makeshift as though someone lived there only temporarily, she described with loving excitement each couch and table and dresser, where it would go and what was special about it. The few small Mexican things - a tin candelabra, folding stools ingeniously carved from single pieces of wood, a leather-covered coffee table, tiles on the kitchen walls - revealed her impetuous, charming taste. Separate from the house, attached to her two-car garage, was a large room being converted to an apartment which would be, she explained, "a place for any friends of mine who are in some kind of trouble, you know, and maybe they'll want to live here where they won't be bothered till things are OK for them." Back in the house I remarked on the profusion of flowers outside. Her face grew bright and she said, "I don't know why but I've always been able to make anything grow." She went on: "When I was married to Mr. Miller, we celebrated Hanukkah and I felt, well, we should also have a Christmas tree. But I couldn't stand the idea of going out and chopping off a Christmas tree." In the living room, seated on a nondescript chair and sofa, we went on talking-after Marilyn poured herself a glass of champagne. At each question she paused thoughtfully. "I'm trying to find the nailhead, not just strike the blow," she said. Then a deep breath and out her thoughts would tumble, breathless words falling over breathless words. Once she said, "One way basically to handle fame is with honesty and I mean it and the other way to handle it when something happens-as things have happened recently, and I've had other things happen to me, suddenly, my goodness, the things they try to do to you, it's hard to take - I handle with silence." Her inflections came as surprising twists and every emotion was in full bravura, acted out with exuberant gestures. Across her face flashed anger, wistfullness, bravado, tenderness, ruefulness, high humor and deep sadness. And each idea usually ended in a startling turn of thought, with her laugh rising to a delightful squeak. "I think I have always had a little humor," said Marilyn. "I guess sometimes people just sort of questioned, 'does she know what she's saying,' and sometimes you do all of a sudden think about something else and you didn't mean to say it exactly. I'm pointing at me. I don't digest things with my mind. If I did, the whole thing wouldn't work. Then I'd just be kind of an intellectual and that I'm not interested in." At this point I began to see that Marilyn did nothing by halves. Of her millions of fans she said, "The least I can is give them the best they can get from me. What's the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?" I could also see how important it was to her to feel that the person she talked to "understood." Understanding apparently meant being very sympathetic, taking her side in everything, recognizing the nuances of her meanings and valuing all that she valued, especially small things. When I showed genuine enthusiasm for her house, she said, "Good, anybody who likes my house, I'm sure I'll get along with." But I had the constant, uneasy feeling that my status with her was precarious, that if I grew the least bit careless, she might suddenly decide the I, like many others she felt had let her down, did not understand. Once I slangily asked her how she "cranked up" to do a scene. I was instantly confronted by queenly outrage: "I don't crank anything. I'm not a Model T. I think that's kind of disrespectful to refer to it that way." But I could not feel impatient with her impatience. It was all so understandable as she talked about the people who wrote columns and stories about her: "They go around and ask mostly your enemies. Friends always say, 'Let's check and see if this is all right with her.'" And then she added wistfully: "You know, most people really don't know me." There was grief in her eyes when she described how she had once found her stepson Bobby Miller hiding a magazine containing a lurid article about her, and how Joe DiMaggio Jr. used to be taunted at school because of her. "You know, ha, ha, your stepmother is Marilyn Monroe, ha, ha, ha. All that kind of stuff." And there was yearning in her voice as she returned over and over again to "kids, and older people and workingmen" as a source of warmth in her life, as the unthreatening people who treated her naturally, whom she could meet spontaneously. I felt a rush of protectiveness for her; a wish - perhaps the sort that was the root of the public's tenderness for Marilyn - to keep her from anything ugly and hurtful. Before I left late that night, she asked to be sent a transcript of the interview. "I often wake up in the night," she explained, "and I like to have something to think about." When I arrived the next afternoon for a second session she immediately asked to postpone our talk. She was tired out, she said, from negotiations with 20th Century Fox over resumption of Something's Got To Give. But she hospitably offered me a drink and we chatted. She was obviously upset. But there was no hint of morose despair. She was electric with indignation and began talking angrily about how studios treat their stars. Then she paused, said she needed something to help overcome her tiredness and got a glass of champagne. I asked if she had ever wished that she were tougher. She answered, "Yes - but I don't think it would be very feminine to be tough. Guess I'll settle for the way I am." We were interrupted when her doctor arrived. Marilyn bounded out to the kitchen, returned with a little ampule, and holding it up to me said, "No kidding, they're making me take liver shots. Here, I'll prove it to you." By then she was willing to talk on, and it was nearly midnight when Marilyn jumped up and announced she was going to throw a steak on the grill. She came back to say there was no steak and no food at all. Before I left one of the last things she said was, "With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself - for survival and living day to day with what comes up." Over the weekend Marilyn was scheduled to pose for pictures so I suggested we eat breakfast before her noon appointment. She agreed and I arrived on Saturday at 10. I rang the doorbell repeatedly. No answer. But through the window I could see a man sitting in her little glassed-in porch, reading a magazine with the bored patience of somebody who had been there a long time. I waited and rang for about 10 minutes, then went away for an hour. At 11 my ring was answered by Marilyn's housekeeper, Mrs. Murray, who took me to wait in a guest room just off a tiny hall from Marilyn's bedroom. At noon Mrs. Murray took a tray of breakfast in to her. Shortly afterward Marilyn came out and said hello. I then became a witness to the fabled process of Marilyn preparing for an appointment - and being four hours late for it. The patient gentleman was her hairdresser, Mr. Kenneth. While he worked on her and she sat under the dryer I could hear uproarious laughter. Then, in her curlers, she made little barefooted errands about the house and in and out of her room, phone calls, visits to me to ask if I was comfortable, all busy bustling, getting nothing done. There was none of the fearful moping and preening in front of mirrors I had heard so much about. She was entirely cheerful and utterly disorganized. I could not help feeling that what some people blamed on stagefright might partly be her endless debt to time. The necessary mechanics of daily living were beyond her grasp; she always started out behind and never caught up. Finally she was almost ready and she came tripingly into the room where I sat. She wore high heels, orange slacks, a brassiere, and held an orange blouse carelessly across her bosom. "Do I look like a pumpkin in this outfit?" she asked. She looked wonderful. "You'll set the fashion industry ahead 10 years." I said. She was very pleased and answered, "You think so? Good!" Two days later I called Marilyn for another appointment to talk over the final draft of her story. She said, "Come anytime, like, you know, for breakfast." There was in her voice a note which I had come to recognize - an appealing eagerness to please. I came again at 10 and once again she slept till noon. Finally we sat down together on a tiny sofa. She was barefooted, wearing a robe, and had not yet washed off last night's mascara. Her delicate hair was in a sleep-tumbled whirl. But she had made me feel this was a compliment. "Friends," she had said, "accept you the way you are." As was usual, her face was very pale. She held the manuscript high in front of her eyes and carefully read it aloud, listening to every phrase to be sure it sounded exactly like her. She kept the manuscript and I returned for it late that afternoon. On the steps of the house she showed me changes she had penciled in, all of them small. She asked me to take out a remark about quietly giving money to needy individuals. And then we said goodbye. As I walked away she suddenly called after me, "Hey, thanks." I turned to look back and there she stood, very still and strangely forlorn. I thought then of her reaction earlier when I had asked if many friends had called up to rally round when she was fired by Fox. There was silence, and sitting very straight, eyes wide and hurt, she had answered with a tiny, "No". -Transcribed by Melinda |
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LIFE at Home With Marilyn Monroe, 1953
Jan 18, 2013
When Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed Marilyn Monroe at her Hollywood home in 1953, the 54-year-old LIFE staffer and the 26-year-old actress were—on the face of it, at least—an utterly improbable, mismatched pair.
An artist and a master craftsman with the camera, the German-born Eisenstaedt had been a professional photographer for three decades (he would keep shooting into the 1990s) and by the early 1950s had made several of the 20th century's most recognizable, iconic pictures. His "V-J Day in Times Square," for example—a.k.a, "The Kiss"—is arguably the single most famous, reproduced and (lovingly) parodied photograph ever made. He had traveled everywhere and photographed most everyone, from Hitler and Hemingway to Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein.
In photographic circles he was something of a legend, and over the next four decades would continue to create fond, inimitable pictures of the famous (Jackie Kennedy, Leonard Bernstein, Sophia Loren) and the unknown. His unforgettable shot of children reacting to a 1963 puppet show in Paris, for example, remains one of the single greatest portraits of raw, innocent wonder ever produced.
Jacob Deschin, a long-time photography critic and "camera editor" at the New York Times, said of Eisenstaedt in 1954: "After 25 years of professionalism, he is still an amateur at heart, excited about his medium, full of delight in persons and things and as enthusiastic as a beginner."
For her part, by 1953 Marilyn Monroe was indisputably an actress on the rise—that year alone she would star in three memorable movies: Niagara, How to Marry a Millionaire and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—and there was little doubt that bigger things were on the horizon; but even her most ardent fans could hardly have imagined the utterly singular, enormous place in the pop culture pantheon that she would someday occupy. Her career-defining screen roles (Bus Stop, The Misfits, The Seven Year Itch and, of course, Some Like It Hot) were still to come, but unmistakable glimmers of the Marilyn mystique—sex goddess, muse, troubled soul—were there for anyone with eyes to see.
Happily, if anyone had eyes to see, it was "Eisie." The images that he captured on one afternoon in 1953 remain not only among the warmest, most casually intimate photos of Marilyn that anyone ever made: they also serve as a poignant record of a young woman on the very cusp of both genuine superstardom and years of gradually, ever-deepening misery. Defined less by her film work and more by her celebrity, her broken marriages (to baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio and great American playwright, Arthur Miller), depression, drugs, affairs—most famously and devastatingly, of course, with JFK — Marilyn Monroe's life in the decade between that 1953 photo session with Eisenstaedt and her death in August 1962 has been chronicled, dissected, analyzed and sifted so thoroughly that there's little need to recount it here.
Instead, LIFE.com offers this series of photos—most of which never ran in LIFE magazine—as both a tribute and a reminder: a tribute to the great, uniquely empathetic photographer who made them, and a reminder of the talented, beautiful, utterly alive young Marilyn who so bewitched the world, her whole life still ahead of her.
Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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