by Lois Banner
3. Monroe, My Story, 14.
4. In 1935 the Los Angeles Times listed Grace as playing a role in Up Pops the Devil at the Wilshire Ebell Theater, sponsored by the Columbia Drama League, composed of employees at Columbia Studios.
5. Goodman, Fifty Year Decline, 226; Bolender, “Brother Lifts Lid on Past.”
6. “Report, Petition, and Account of Guardianship,” Superior Court, Los Angeles, in RT; Roman Hryniszak, “We Wanna Know About … Guardianship Papers,” Runnin’ Wild, April 1994.
7. George Atkinson listing on imdb.com. The 1935 Los Angeles census lists George and Maude, identifies them as movie actors, and gives their address as on Glencoe Way. Norma Jeane is not listed with them.
8. Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 23; Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 58. On the failed attempts to adopt Norma Jeane, see Guiles, Legend, 45–46. Guiles interviewed Goddard family members more fully than did any other Marilyn biographer.
9. In chapter 6, I trace the book’s provenance to prove its validity. Parts of the interview were published in a series of articles in Empire News, a tabloid in London and Manchester, England, in the spring and summer of 1954. Marilyn and Hecht’s lawyers stopped publication before it appeared elsewhere. A manuscript draft of the autobiography is in Hecht—NL. A version of it was published as My Story in 1974.
10. LB, interview with George Barris, February 5, 2011. He also appeared on an early episode of the television show Larry King Live in which he discussed the interviews. In 1995 he published his interviews as a separate book, along with more photos he had taken of Marilyn.
11. In describing the sexual abuse episode, I follow Monroe, My Story, 17–19.
12. Belmont, Marilyn Monroe, 18.
13. Lynn Sacco, Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Nancy Kellogg and the Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, “The Evaluation of Sexual Abuse in Children,” Pediatrics 116 (August 2005): 506–09; Jennifer J. Freyd, et. al, “The Science of Child Sexual Abuse,” Science 308 (April 22, 2005): 501. Still definitive is David Finkelhor, “How Widespread Is Child Sexual Abuse?” Children Today 13 (July–August 1984).
14. RT, interview with Ida Mae Monroe, in RT.
15. In 1933 Murray Kinnell lived at 1264 Beverly Glen in Westwood. From 1934 to 1936 he lived at 279 Glenroy Avenue in Westwood. Screen Actors Guild, address files. John Gilmore, Inside Marilyn, claims that the abuser was a boarder in the Arbol Drive house, but he doesn’t cite a source. Tracing analogues to “Kimmel” produces Atkinson as easily as Kinnell.
16. Marilyn identified the house as having four bedrooms in Barris, Marilyn: Her Life, 25.
17. George Arliss, My Ten Years in the Studios (Boston: Little Brown, 1940), 302. See also Robert M. Fells, George Arliss, The Man Who Played God (New York: Scarecrow Press, 2004). I expand here on Roy Turner’s unpublished mss. “Saturday’s Child.”
18. Bette Davis, The Lonely Life: An Autobiography (New York: Putnam, 1962), 148.
19. Hollywood Citizen News, February 2, 1946, George Arliss file, in AMPAS. See also Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1946.
20. Jean Negulesco, Things I Did and Things I Think I Did (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 216; Adele Whiteley Fletcher, “So That the Memory of Marilyn Will Linger On …” in Edward Wagenknecht, ed. Marilyn Monroe: A Composite View (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1969), 85; AS, interview with Peggy Fleury, in AS; Miracle, My Sister Marilyn, 31. Sidney Skolsky and Earl Wilson agreed that the abuse happened. New York Post, September 1962. Skolsky—AMPAS.
21. Guiles, Legend, 66.
22. Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1935.
23. New York Times, July 3, 1945.
24. Divorce Decree, State of Texas, County of Tarrant, case no. 85268, Eleanor Goddard vs. Ervin Goddard, March 5, 1931. Courtesy of Robert Herre.
25. Nona Goddard told Ezra Goodman that she didn’t meet Marilyn until she was eleven. Goodman, Fifty Year Decline, 227–28. Her son, Robert Herre, gave me the same date. Bebe Goddard stated that she first met Marilyn in 1940. “Conversations with Bebe Goddard,” Runnin’ Wild, January 1994. Doc told Fred Guiles that his children visited him in the summer of 1935.
26. See Norma Jeane to Grace Goddard, September 12, 1942, courtesy of Charles Schwab.
27. Sacco, Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest; Rachel Devlin, Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Daughters, and Postwar American Culture (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 41.
28. Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 28; Marilyn Monroe, “Who’d Marry Me?” Modern Screen, September 1951.
29. Janet Leibman Jacobs, Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self (New York: Routledge, 1994); Lenore Terr, Too Scared to Cry: Psychic Trauma in Childhood (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Christine A. Courtois, Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988); Diana E. H. Russell, The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women (New York: Basic, 1986).
30. Howell, Dissociative Mind. See the controversies over the latest revision of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMV), used by U.S. psychiatrists to diagnose mental disorders. See also R. Bentall, “Madness Explained: Why We Must Reject the Krapelian Paradigm and Replace It with a Complaint Oriented Approach to Understanding Mental Illness,” Medical Hypotheses 66, 2006.
31. See Dana Becker, Through the Looking Glass: Women and Borderline Personality Disorder (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997); and Jacob M. Virgil, David C. Geary, and Jennifer Byrd-Craven, “A Life History Assessment of Early Childhood Sexual Abuse in Women,” Developmental Psychology 41 (2005): 553.
32. Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 78.
33. Natasha Lytess, “My Years with Marilyn,” 2, 4, in Zolotow—UT; MZ, interview with Lytess, in Zolotow—UT; Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 66.
34. The “repressed memory” syndrome, identified in recent studies as a common result of sexual abuse, occurs mostly in very young children. By the age of eight, when the “elderly actor” attacked Norma Jeane, memory is fully functioning. Linda Meyer Williams, “Recall of Childhood Trauma: A Perspective Study of Women’s Memories of Child Sexual Abuse,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 (1994): 1167–76; Christine M. Ogle et al., “Accuracy and Specificity of Autobiographical Memory in Childhood Trauma,” in Mark L. Howe et al., Stress, Trauma, and Children’s Memory Development: Neurobiological, Cognitive, Clinical, and Legal Developments (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
35. Sam Shaw, “Memories,” in GiovanBattista Bambilla, Gianni Mercurio, and Stefano Petricca, eds., Marilyn Monroe: The Life, the Myth (New York: Rizzoli, 1995), 249; Sam Shaw and Norman Rosten, Marilyn Among Friends (New York: Henry Holt, 1987), 146. See also Milton Shulman, “Marilyn’s Men: Standins for Father,” London Daily Express, 1955, in NYPL; David Connolly, “Marilyn’s New Pitch,” National Police Gazette, October 1957; Ralph Roberts, “Mimosa,” unpublished memoir of Marilyn, unpaginated, Roberts Papers, in possession of Hap Roberts, Salisbury, N.C.
36. Wilson, Hot Times, 72; Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 177; Buchthal and Comment, eds., Fragments, 111.
37. LB, interview with Robert Litman, January 28, 2009.
38. Louella Parsons, Tell It to Louella (New York: Putnam, 1961), 213. Natasha Lytess, Marilyn’s first acting coach, stated in her memoir that she spent a good deal of time trying to help Marilyn get over her “bad-girl” syndrome. See Natasha Lytess, “My Years with Marilyn,” in Zolotow–UT. Wilson, Hot Times, 72; Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 25.
39. Donald Kalshed, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit (London: Routledge, 1996), 11. Monroe, My story, 17–19.
40. Some biographers maintain that Marilyn could see only the Paramount water tower from the window. They seem unaware that Paramount absorbed RKO in 1966 and removed the flashing part of the sign, observable from Marilyn’s window. The globe on which the sign rested remains in place. See Eric Monroe Woodard, wi
th David Marshall, Hometown Girl (HG Press, 2004), 19.
41. Miller, Timebends, 559; Edwin Hoyt, Marilyn: The Tragic Venus (New York: Duel, Sloan, and Pearce, 1965), vii; W. J. Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn, 146. Hoyt’s 1965 study draws from a series of interviews with Nunnally Johnson, a major Twentieth Century–Fox writer, one of Darryl Zanuck’s major advisors.
42. Judith Sealander, The Failed Century of the Child (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 99.
43. Ellen Herman, Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in the Modern United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Claudia Nelson, Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2003); Eileen B. Simpson, Orphans: Real and Imaginary (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987).
44. Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 26–31.
45. Kirk Crivello, “Marilyn Monroe,” in Crivello, Fallen Angels: The Lives and Untimely Deaths of Fourteen Hollywood Beauties (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 238; LB, interview with Jay Kanter, October 3, 2007.
46. Barris, Marilyn: Her Life, 15.
47. Miller, Timebends, 489; “Questions and Answers to Ralph Roberts on Childhood,” typewritten ms., in RR.
48. Monroe, My Story, 15.
49. Biographers dispute the date that Grace removed Norma Jeane from the orphanage. Financial records Grace filed with the court indicate that she ended paying the orphanage for Norma Jeane’s care and began paying herself in October 1936. But Marilyn recalled staying in the orphanage for two years, which places her release in the summer of 1937. In My Sister Marilyn, Berniece Miracle gives the date as June 26, 1937. Zolotow, who gained access to orphanage records, gives the same date.
50. LB, interview with Ida Mae Monroe, October 2006. The editors of Fragments are in error in speculating that a “boarder” in the MartinMonroe house molested Norma Jeane. With two adults and three children in their small house, there was no room for a boarder.
51. Marilyn’s brief stay with the Mills family, unknown to previous biographers, is mentioned in Roy Turner, interview with Ida Mae Monroe, in RT.
52. On Marilyn’s stay with the Atchinsons, see Bebe Goddard to Roy Turner, August 24, 1987, in RT.
53. Stacy Eubank, interview with Sheryl Williams, October 26, 2010. Howard Keel, Only Make Believe: My Life in Show Business (New York: Barricade, 2005), 47.
54. “Marilyn Monroe Tells the Truth to Hedda Hopper,” Photoplay, January 1953, 85.
55. Goodman, The Fifty Year Decline, 227; Parsons, Tell It to Louella, 216, 224; Strasberg, Marilyn and Me, 104.
56. Monroe, My Story, 10.
57. Randy Taraborrelli incorrectly states that Grace put Norma Jeane in the orphanage because Norma Jeane and Nona Goddard, Doc’s daughter who was living with Grace and Doc, didn’t get along. I can find no evidence that Nona lived with them in 1935. Guiles, Legend, mentions a visit that summer.
58. Ben Hecht’s notes for his autobiography of Marilyn are contained in his papers, NL.
59. James Gloege to Maurice Zolotow, February 20, 1953, in Zolotow—UT.
60. Transcript, Beverly Hills High School, Josephine Goddard (Jody Simmons) 1945–1946. I am grateful to Victoria Vantoch for gaining access to this document for me. See “Pert Miss, New Featured Player, Visits Hometown,” undated, unsourced newspaper clipping, in Jody Lawrance file, possession of Robert Herre.
61. Nona Goddard to Grace Goddard, in GS.
62. Gary Grissman, a fifth-grade classmate of Norma Jeane, found her very unattractive. See AP wire service, February 5, 1953, in Stacy Eubank, “Holding a Good Thought”; Hedda Hopper, “They Call Her a Blowtorch Blonde,” Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1952.
63. Kirk Crivello, interview with Bebe Goddard, Crivello, Fallen Angels, 239. Los Angeles City Schools, May 26, 1938, athletic awards to Norma Jeane Baker. Sotheby Parke Bernet Catalogue for Marilyn Monroe auction, New York, October 21, 1973.
64. Jane Corwin, “Orphan in Ermine,” Photoplay, March 1954.
CHAPTER 3
1. “Conversations with Bebe Goddard,” in Runnin’ Wild, January 1994. DS, interview with Bebe Goddard, in Spoto—AMPAS.
2. I derived Ana Lower’s addresses from the Membership Records, Mary Baker Eddy Library, First Christian Science Church, Boston. As a healer registered in the Christian Science Journal, Ana had to verify her address every year with the central church in Boston. My thanks to Amanda Gustin and Leslie Pitts of the Eddy Library for giving me this information. They also gave me the dates when Grace Goddard and Norma Jeane became members of the church.
3. Jack Fujimoto, Sawtelle: West Los Angeles Japantown (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2007); Christopher Rand, Los Angeles: The Ultimate City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 121. Unlike Venice or Hollywood, Sawtelle was never an incorporated district or a separate city, although it was called “Sawtelle.” That name is not used today. It is now part of West Los Angeles or the “West Side.” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1936; Monroe, My Story, 22. Lisa Wilson, “The Truth About Me,” American Weekly, November 16, 1952.
4. Marilyn Monroe, “I Dress for Men,” Movieland, July 1952. Some Marilyn biographers maintain that she attended Sawtelle Elementary School before entering Emerson. I can find no evidence for this claim, although she may have attended Sawtelle during the first months she lived with Ana Lower. She stated in some interviews that she failed mathematics in sixth grade and had to repeat it.
5. William Moynier to Roy Turner, October 26, 1986, in RT.
6. Dorothy Muir, “The Real Marilyn Monroe at Thirteen,” Tatler, October 7, 1973, courtesy of Stacy Eubank.
7. DS, interview with Gladys Wilson, in Spoto—AMPAS; LB, interview with Gladys Wilson, October 27, 2008.
8. Spoto, Marilyn Monroe, 60–69, gives the fullest account of Norma Jeane’s years at Emerson Junior High.
9. “What Is Your Favorite Type of Girl?” The Emersonian 5 (June 20, 1941).
10. Monroe, My Story, 22.
11. John Engstead, Star Shots: Fifty Years of Pictures and Stories by One of Hollywood’s Greatest Photographers (New York: Dutton, 1978), 194; LB, interview with Edith Shaw Marcus and Meta Shaw Stevens, January 9, 2009; Jane Russell, “That Girl Marilyn,” pamphlet, Affiliated Magazines, 1954.
12. Monroe, “I Was an Orphan,” Modern Screen, February 1951; Eve Arnold, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 16–17.
13. My description of Crawford and Davis is based on Maria DiBattista, Fast-Talking Dames (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001).
14. Belmont, Marilyn Monroe and the Camera, 16.
15. On Christian Science, I have used Caroline Fraser, God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church (New York: Metropolitan, 1999); Barbara Wilson, Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood (New York: St. Martin’s/Picador, 1997); Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy (New York: Perseus, 1998); Victoria Vantoch, interview with Christian Science practitioner Don Ingerson; and my reading of Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health.
16. Miracle, My Sister Marilyn (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1994), 50.
17. Rolf Swensen, “Christian Scientists on the Pacific Coast, 1880–1915,” The Pacific Historical Review 72 (May 2003), 229–63. Gregory H. Singleton, Religion in the City of Angels (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research, 1978), 169.
18. John Gilmore, interview with Ernest Neilson, Consolidated Film Industries, in Gilmore, Inside Marilyn Monroe, 55.
19. Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 34. Will Sykes to Marilyn, October 7, 1954, in Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 169.
20. Banner and Anderson, MM—Personal, 168–71; Mrs. E. Ana Lower to Dearie, October 22, 1949.
21. Monroe, My Story, 49–50.
22. I am grateful to Rebecca Kuhn M.D., who works with drug addicts, and to Carrie Rickard M.D., a specialist in gynecological surgery, for their discussions on medical matters concerning Marilyn’s body with me, in September 2010 and August 2011.
23. Ibid.
24. AS, interview with Henry R
osenfeld, in AS; LB, interview with Noreen Nash, July 10, 2009. Robert Mitchum, “Introduction,” Matthew Smith, The Men Who Murdered Marilyn (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 1–2; Earl Wilson, The Show Business Nobody Knows (Chicago: Cowles, 1971), 282.
25. DS, interview with Ralph Roberts, in Spoto—AMPAS.
26. I have taken the quotes from “Marriage” in Science and Health.
27. Marilyn Monroe, “Who’d Marry Me?” Modern Screen, September 1951.
28. Elda Nelson, “Marilyn Monroe,” Modern Screen, December 1952.
29. Amanda Littauer, “Unsanctioned Encounters: Women, Girls, and Non-marital Sexuality in the United States, 1941–1963,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2006; Marilyn E. Hegarty, Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality During World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2008.)
30. I derive the term “plain folk Americanism” from James Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). On the girl next door, see Jane Powell, The Girl Next Door—and How She Grew (New York: Morrow, 1988).
31. Ralph Greenson to Marianne Kris, August 1962, in Greenson—UCLA. Monroe, My Story.
32. Estelle B. Freedman, “‘Uncontrolled Desires’: The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920–1960,” Journal of American History 74 (January 1987), 83–106; Miriam R. Reumann, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 165–98.
33. Monroe, My Story, 28, 93–4.
34. Zolotow, Marilyn Monroe, 35; Marilyn Monroe, “Who’d Marry Me?” Modern Screen, September 1951.
35. “Anthony Cordova’s Memories of Marilyn,” Hollywood Studio Magazine, clipping, n.d., in GS.
36. Arthur C. Verge, Paradise Transformed: Los Angeles During the Second World War (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt, 1993); Starr, Embattled Dreams; Dougherty, To Norma Jeane with Love, 13.
