by James Spada
MARILYN MONROE
HER LIFE IN PICTURES
JAMES SPADA
with GEORGE ZENO
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Connecticut ● New York ● Colorado
Table of Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE & PREFACE
Copyright Notices
Other Biographies by James Spada
Dedication
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Preface
THE CHAPTERS
PART ONE - The Early Years (1926-1945)
PART TWO - Starlet (1946-1950)
PART THREE - The Latest Blonde (1951-1952)
PART FOUR - Phenomenon (1953-1955)
PART FIVE - The New Marilyn (1956-1957)
PART SIX - Acclaim (1958-1959)
PART SEVEN - The Last Reel (1960-1962)
Photo Credits
Copyright Notices
JAMES SPADA
with GEORGE ZENO
MARILYN MONROE
HER LIFE IN PICTURES
Copyright © 1982, 2012 by James Spada with George Zeno
Int’l ISBN: 978-1-62071-094-4
ISBN: 1-62071-094-3
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic means is forbidden unless written permission has been received from the publisher
Cover photograph of Marilyn Monroe is by Douglas Kirkland.
Copyright © 1961, 2012 by Douglas Kirkland
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Spada, James.
Monroe: Her life in pictures.
1. Monroe, Marilyn, 1926-1962. 2. Moving-picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography.
I. Zeno, George. II. Title.
PN2287.M69S6 791.43’028’0924 [B]
ISBN: 0-385-17941-3 AACR2
ISBN: 0-385-17940-5 (A Dolphin book: pbk.)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-43540
For information address:
Author & Company, LLC
P.O. Box 291
Cheshire, CT 06410-9998
This eBook was designed by iLN™
and manufactured in the United States of America.
Other Biographies by
JAMES SPADA
Grace Kelly: The Secret Lives of a Princess
Streisand: Her Life 2012
Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets
Bette Davis: More Than a Woman
To learn more about James Spada and
all of his books please visit:
http://www.jamesSpadasHollywood.com
Other Books by George Zeno
Marilyn in Fashion: The Enduring Influence of Marilyn Monroe
Dedication
Dedicated to my father,
Joseph V. Spada,
who always encouraged me
in my love for Marilyn.
—J.S.
Dedicated to my father,
Jorge; my mother, Alejandrina;
and my sister Vilma,
for their love and understanding.
—G.Z.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks, once again, to Karen Swenson for her research help and dedication.
For their help, advice, and enthusiasm, appreciation to Lindy Hess, Larry Alexander, Doug Bergstreser, Dan ConIon, Chris Nickens, Lou Valentino, Pat Miller, Neal Peters, Andre de Dienes, Lester Glassner, Bruce Mandes, John Liscio, Rick Carl, Mrs. Eunice Murray Blackmer, Allan Grant, Edward Weston, Mrs. Philippe Halsman, Margaret Wagstaff, Robb Carr, Francoise Kirkland, Greg Schreiner and everyone at Author & Company who worked so hard on this book.
Love to our editor, Laura Van Wormer, and our agent, Kathy Robbins, who are everything an author could hope for.
And a debt of gratitude to all those photographers, famous and anonymous, who captured the Monroe image on film and without whom books like this would be impossible.
About the Authors
JAMES SPADA was ten years old when he was first enchanted by Marilyn Monroe in 1960. At thirteen he founded the Marilyn Monroe Memorial Fan Club and produced its bulletins and journals for four years. Spada is the author of the bestselling Streisand: Her Life; Grace Kelly: The Secret Lives of a Princess, Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets and Bette Davis: More Than a Woman and was publisher of Barbra, a quarterly magazine about Streisand. His writing has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Vanity Fair, Ladies Home Journal, The New York Times Book Review, London Sunday Express, Cosmopolitan, People, McCall’s, Us, Los Angeles, New York Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and London Daily Mirror. Born and raised in Staten Island, New York, he now lives in Los Angeles.
GEORGE ZENO’s extraordinary collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia was profiled in Life magazine. He “discovered” Marilyn in 1953 and was vice-president of the Marilyn Monroe Memorial Fan Club for four years. Mr. Zeno was a library assistant for Time, Inc. He studied at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and is a free-lance fashion illustrator. Born in Puerto Rico, he now lives in New York. He co-authored his second Marilyn Monroe book, Marilyn in Fashion, with Christopher Nickens in 2012
Preface
She starred in just eleven films over ten years, not a prodigious output of product compared to that of many other screen greats. But her films were just one part of the Marilyn Monroe mystique; she was a total celebrity, one in whom the public’s interest did not flag despite often lengthy periods between films.
Her rise to fame in the early 1950s was a cultural phenomenon; barely a day passed when one of the New York newspapers wasn’t featuring a Monroe photo, article, gossip column item, or all three. The public found her fascinating: she was a beautiful, successful woman who had spent an abysmal childhood dreaming of stardom; she played dumb blondes, yet was famous for her fast witticisms; she was in many ways vulnerable and naïve, yet had a streak of independence and ambition that would surprise many who tried to take easy advantage of her.
Her sexuality was often blatant, yet always there was a childlike innocence about her, a suggestion of the little girl dressed in her mother’s clothes and play-acting allure. The playfulness she brought to sex made her carnality at once more stimulating to men and less threatening to women.
She would become, however, Hollywood’s ultimate victim, a sensitive, insecure, frightened woman who believed her looks and sexuality were her only key to happiness. Once worldwide fame and adulation had come to her, she realized they were only a partial fulfillment. But by then it was too late to achieve happiness anywhere else—Marilyn Monroe was public property. Her enormous fame destroyed one of her marriages, and the neuroticism that her fame created in her destroyed the other. She was unable to accept happiness from one man, and the love of the masses was merely an empty, temporary tonic.
It has been said of Marilyn Monroe that her one lasting love affair was with the camera. If that is so, the lens was certainly an ardent paramour. She may have been the most photographed woman of all time; cameramen were present to record her most personal tragedies as well as her most glorious triumphs.
This book might well be considered the history of Marilyn Monroe’s love affair with the camera. Although dozens of books have been published about her, none has ever attempted to tell the entire story purely through photographs. In doing so, one inevitably recaptures an era as well as a woman. For Monroe was both a perfect reflection of her time and, in many ways, ahead of it.
This book is, by necessity, primarily about the public Marilyn. There is no shortage of recent books purporting to reveal the most intimate
details of the private woman. An interest sparked by this book can be more than satisfied by a visit to the nearest library. But it is valuable, I think, to take a look back at how Marilyn Monroe made her mark on the world’s consciousness, and to recreate the tumultuous excitement her existence generated over the more than ten years that she was a celebrity.
For those who lived through it, I hope this book will revive pleasant memories. For those too young to have experienced Marilyn’s life, I think the following pages will at least partially explain why, fifty years after her death, she still figures prominently in our culture. As for me, it is completely gratifying that the thirteen-year-old president of the Marilyn Monroe Memorial Fan Club can grow up to do a book on his dream girl. That there is still enough interest in Marilyn in 2012 to make a book like this feasible is the ultimate indication of the extraordinary Monroe magic.
James Spada
Los Angeles, California
December 2012
MARILYN MONROE
THE CHAPTERS
PART ONE
The Early Years
1926-1945
There are no sweet memories of childhood, no misty tableaux of family, love, and hearth. Instead, there are desertion, madness, attempted murder, child rape. And in the middle, a strange, quiet, unwanted child whose first and most powerful lesson was that the less she said, the less trouble she’d get into.
Norma Jeane Baker was born on June 1, 1926. Her mother, a star-struck Hollywood film cutter, named her after a glamorous movie actress, Norma Talmadge. The last name was a convenience; Gladys Pearl Monroe had been deserted by her husband, John Newton Baker, three years before Norma Jeane’s birth, and her second husband, Edward Mortenson, left her when she told him about the pregnancy. Edward Mortenson may have been Norma Jeane’s father, but more likely it was Charles Stanley Gifford, a co-worker of Gladys’ at the RKO studios, a man she never married.
Gladys Baker’s parents and brother had all been mentally ill, and her bad luck with men and the strain of caring for Norma Jeane sent her over the brink. She suffered fits of hysteria and was committed to a mental institution in 1934. Eight-year-old Norma Jeane was treated as though she had no living parents.
From this point on, the child was shunted from one place to another. There were stays in an orphanage, with a guardian, and with eleven sets of foster parents, people who took her in only because the government, at the height of the Depression, paid them to do so. One family made her bathe in water six others had used first; another made her wash hundreds of dishes for five cents a month. “They had kids of their own,” she recalled, “and when Christmas came there was a big tree and all the kids in the house got presents but me. One of the other kids gave me an orange. I can remember that Christmas Day, eating that orange all by myself.”
Norma Jeane Baker at eighteen months, 1927.
Gladys Baker and her two-year-old on an outing, 1928.
By five, a loveliness began to emerge in the girl. But Marilyn would later say, “No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t.”
By the age of eight she was a pretty girl. Her latest foster parent ran a boardinghouse. One of the boarders, a distinguished older man, told her they would play a game. Instead, he molested her, and when she tried to tell her foster parent, she was slapped and told not to tell lies. It was at that point that she began to stammer.
By the time she reached puberty her psyche was a tender mass of scar tissue. But she was becoming beautiful, and she was developing womanly attributes. She soon discovered that boys gave her the attention she had craved all her life. She began to work at making sure they continued to find her interesting.
With friends, at eight years old in Los Angeles. By the age of ten, she had reached almost her adult height and was so thin that classmates called her Norma Jeane, the Human Bean. When she appeared in school productions, she always played “the boy parts.” But by the time she was twelve, her figure began to fill out, and she was precociously curvaceous by thirteen.
Gladys Baker Ely, photographed in 1963.
With her classmates at Van Nuys High School in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. She excelled only in English and in attracting appreciative stares from the boys around her. She left during her sophomore year in order to marry James Dougherty, a neighbor she had known for several years
Mr. and Mrs. James Dougherty on Catalina Island after Jim joined the service, 1944. They had been married in June of 1942, shortly alter Norma Jeane’s sixteenth birthday. For her it was a marriage of convenience, a way to avoid going back to the orphanage when her guardian at the time could no longer keep her. “But there were other considerations,” she said, “just being in love with love or sex or whatever you want to call it.” Dougherty insists that his wife was head over heels in love with him, that she threatened to jump off the Santa Monica Pier if he left her. Later he would write: “She has told the press that our marriage was one of expedience, that she was never happy with me. I wonder if she has forgotten how much in love we were.” Dougherty describes his wife as blissfully happy, a contented homemaker; she talked of boredom and despair, of hating the housewifely role, and of attempting suicide.
During the same trip to Catalina, Norma Jeane visits a bird sanctuary.
Alone most of the time, with Jim away, Norma Jeane grew restless. In 1944, with the country at war, she got a job in a plane parts factory, spraying fuselages. Jim didn’t approve of her wearing sweaters, because their effect on the men around her was inordinate. When he was away, she wore sweaters all the time—when she wasn’t wearing other equally revealing outfits.
Norma Jeane Dougherty, model. If the little girl was never told she was pretty, the older girl was. In 1945 army photographer David Conover, snapping pictures of home-front girls working to support the war effort, saw her and asked, “Where have you been all my life? Have you got a sweater?” His pictures prompted the developer at Eastman Kodak to inquire, “Who’s your model, for goodness’ sake?”
She agreed to be paid five dollars an hour only if her pictures were sold to magazines. Quite a few were. Soon she was working for Emmeline Snively, founder of the Blue Book Models School. “The graduate I’m most proud of,” Miss Snively later wrote, “is Marilyn Monroe. Not only because she is the most successful and well known of my students, but because she started with the least. She was cute-looking, but she knew nothing about carriage, posture, walking, sitting, or posing.”
Miss Snively told Norma Jeane she’d look much better if she lowered her smile and straightened and bleached her hair. She practiced the smile but resisted dyeing her hair, fearing it would look unnatural. But when she was told that more jobs would come her way as a blonde, she relented. Her first job after the transformation was a shampoo ad (previous page). It was never used.
PART TWO
Starlet
1946-1950
The movie career begins. Her success as a model for photographers like Conover and Andre de Dienes resulted in five magazine covers in one month in 1946 and led Howard Hughes to request a screen test. Emmeline Snively got Norma Jeane an agent, who felt she would do better testing with Twentieth Century-Fox. Although the test was shot without Twentieth head Darryl Zanuck’s approval (an unheard-of breaking of the rules), Zanuck was impressed. “It’s a damn good test,” he said after it was included in a day’s rushes. “Sign her up.” She got her first Fox contract in September 1946. What impressed Zanuck the most was what Billy Wilder would later describe as “flesh impact”: “Some girls have flesh that photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it.”
Divorced from James Dougherty, her name changed to Marilyn Monroe (after actress Marilyn Miller and her mother’s maiden name), she became one of dozens of young contract players at Fox. She posed for endless publicity pictures, including one series to accompany the story that she had been a baby-sitter discovered by a Fox talent scout. Said Mar
ilyn later: “They could at least have had me be a daddy sitter.”
On the set of her first film, Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!, in which she was to utter one word (“Hi!”) to the film’s star, June Haver. The word wound up on the cutting-room floor, but she can be glimpsed fleetingly in the scene. The movie was released in early 1948.
Marilyn’s second chance, a role as a waitress in Dangerous Years, resulted in her first screen close-up, but little else. The film was released before Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!, on December 8, 1947. After she completed her few scenes, Fox let her option lapse.
Six months later, Columbia Pictures put her under contract and gave her a sizable role in a B picture, Ladies of the Chorus. She played a stripper and sang several songs—including the catchy tune “Every Baby Needs a Da-Da-Daddy.” She got her first review on October 23, 1948, and it was a good one. The Motion Picture Herald critic wrote: “One of the brightest spots is Miss Monroe’s singing. She’s pretty, and with her pleasing voice and style, shows promise.” Columbia disagreed, and they, too, let her contract expire. She was disappointed but, she would later say, she didn’t blame them. “I think if other girls know how bad I was when I started they’ll be encouraged,” she said. “I finally made up my mind I wanted to be an actress and I was not going to let my lack of confidence ruin my chances.” Shunned by films for the time being, she went back to modeling.
