by James Spada
On May 6, 1952, Monroe has her appendix removed and receives thousands of get-well greetings. Her doctor, preparing to operate, found a hand-written note Scotch-taped to her stomach: “Please take only what you have to. And please, please, no major scars.”
A few days earlier, another Monroe revelation had made national news. Hollywood correspondent Erskine Johnson’s newswire dispatch gave the details: “Marilyn Monroe—Hollywood’s confessin’ glamour doll who made recent headlines with the admission that she was a nude calendar cutie—confessed again today. Highly publicized by Hollywood press agents as an orphan waif who never knew her parents, Marilyn admitted she’s the daughter of a one-time RKO studio film cutter, Gladys Baker, and said, ‘I’m helping her and want to continue to help her when she needs me,’ said Hollywood’s new glamour queen: ‘My close friends know that my mother is alive. Unbeknown to me as a child, my mother spent many years in a state hospital. I haven’t known my mother intimately, but since I’ve become grown and able to help her, I have contacted her.’ The news that Marilyn’s mother is alive and in Hollywood came as an eyebrow-lifting surprise.”
Marilyn appears in court on June 25, 1952, to deny that she ever sent out letters soliciting sales of pornographic pictures of herself, or that she had ever posed for anything but that calendar. The letters and pictures were exposed as fakes, and two men were found guilty of misdemeanor charges in the scam.
Taking a break during the filming of O’Henry’s Fall House, another vignette film, in which she played a prostitute opposite Charles Laughton. Her part was very small; Fox was still often using her as little more than window dressing.
Marilyn plays a murderess on NBC radio’s “Hollywood Star Playhouse,” 1952.
At a Hollywood party in August 1952 at which bandleader Ray Anthony unveiled the musical homage “Marilyn”: “An angel in lace, a fabulous face, that’s no exaggeration—that’s Marilyn!”
As Rose Loomis, the amoral, unfaithful wife in Niagara (1953). It was Marilyn’s juiciest part ever; her acting was quite credible, and she was now a bona fide movie star. Her costar, Joseph Cotten, was impressed: “Everything that girl does is sexy,” he said. “A lot of people—the ones who haven’t met Marilyn—will tell you it’s all publicity. That’s malarkey. They’ve tried to give a hundred other girls the same publicity buildup. It didn’t take with them. This girl’s really got it.”
In Niagara, the camera lingers on Monroe’s derriere during one long sequence in which she walks, as one wit put it, “horizontally.” The walk created still another stir around Marilyn. Her associates were questioned intensely about why she undulated so when she walked. Emmeline Snively explained that MM was double-jointed. Sidney Skolsky answered that she had broken her ankle as a young girl and the walk resulted from her favoring the injured leg. “I don’t know where they get these things,” Marilyn said. “I’ve never been doublejointed. I’ve never had an accident. I walk the way I’ve always walked. I’ve walked this way since I was eleven or twelve.”
Niagara was a big success, grossing $6 million—a hefty sum in 1953. Marilyn’s reviews were good. Otis Guernsey wrote in the New York Herald Tribune: “Miss Monroe plays the kind of wife whose dress, in the words of the script, ‘is cut so low you can see her knees.’ The dress is red. The actress has very pretty knees, and under [Henry] Hathaway’s direction she gives the kind of serpentine performance that makes the audience hate her while admiring her.” Time’s critic said: “What lifts the film above the commonplace is its star, Marilyn Monroe.”
On a trip to New York in late August 1952 to promote Monkey Business, Marilyn mulls over questions during an interview at the Sherry Netherland Hotel. Asked about Joe, she replied, “We’re just friends. He’s a wonderful person.” But the next day’s news story would offer the opinion that they’d be married within thirty days.
Marilyn was fast becoming renowned for her “Monroeisms,” bans mots which at first were thought to have been the invention of her press agents but which were genuinely her own. Hedda Hopper wrote: “She is fast supplanting Sam Goldwyn as a source of anecdotes.” Some of her better quips:
Q. Did you have anything on when you posed for that calendar?
A: Yes. The radio.
Q: You’re so pale. Why don’t you get a tan?
A: I like to feel blond all over.
Q: Why don’t you wear underwear?
A: I don’t like to feel wrinkles.
In Atlantic City for the 1952 Miss America pageant, Marilyn was asked to pose with “the real Miss Americas,” women in the Armed Services, as part of a “glamour” recruitment campaign. An enterprising photographer stood on a chair to capture the full measure of the Monroe cleavage. The photo wasn’t given much press play because of the plenitude of beautiful women at the pageant; most papers were interested more in their state’s entry. But an irate army information officer, aghast at the thought that the picture would give parents of potential recruits “a wrong impression of Army life,” ordered that the picture be killed. Of course, it then received tremendous play, running seven columns wide in the Los Angeles Herald and Express and on front pages across the country. Marilyn was asked about the brouhaha, and in a story under the headline “Marilyn Wounded by Army Blushoff,” she said, “I am very surprised and very hurt. I wasn’t aware of any objectionable decolletage on my part. I’d noticed people looking at me all day, but I thought they were admiring my Grand Marshal’s badge.”
Marilyn waves to the crowds along the streets of Atlantic City as the pageant parade’s Grand Marshall,.
November 1952: Monroe does a guest stint on the Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy radio program and announces that she and the precocious wooden celebrity are engaged to be married.
While on her trip East, Monroe made some young men very happy with an impromptu visit to a hospital.
PART FOUR
Phenomenon
1953-1955
Marilyn receives the Redbook Award in March of 1953 as the “Best Young Box Office Personality.” With her are Leslie Caron, Dean Martin, Redbook editor Wade Nichols, and Jerry Lewis. By now she was receiving 25,000 fan letters a week.
With Louella Parsons on the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, MM’s first extravagant, expensive musical, in 1953. Parsons and her fellow gossip columnist Hedda Hopper were instrumental in Marilyn’s success. Parsons was of particular help; shortly before this she had chosen Marilyn as the No. 1 Movie Glamour Girl, a selection that received heavy newspaper coverage. “She had to be the winner,” Parsons wrote. “It is Marilyn who is number one on all the GI polls of Hollywood favorites, and number one on exhibitors’ polls of box office favorites. She is the number one cover girl of the year, and certainly number one in public interest wherever she goes.”
“I just love finding new places to wear diamonds!” Marilyn as Lorelei Lee, fortune hunter, and Jane Russell as Dorothy Shaw, husband hunter, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The press tried to build up a feud between the two stars, but they developed a strong friendship. Working with Marilyn, Jane reported, was an interesting experience: “Marilyn is a dreamy girl. She’s the kind liable to show up with one red shoe and one black shoe—I’d find out when we’d take a break at eleven that she hadn’t had any breakfast and forgot she was hungry until I reminded her. She once got her life so balled up that the studio hired a full-time secretary-maid for her. So Marilyn soon got the secretary as balled up as she was, and she ended up waiting on the secretary instead of vice-versa.”
On the set with George Winslow, her young costar. Later he would tell the story of seeing a woman who said good night to him every evening after work—a woman he didn’t recognize. It was only later that he realized it was Marilyn—without costumes or makeup.
In March 1953, Marilyn poses happily with her Photoplay Award as “Fastest Rising Star of 1952.” Her pleasure wasn’t to last long, however. Her dress—a costume from Blondes into which she had to be sewn—became the focal point of a storm of criticism. She had h
ad her detractors before—those who thought her “cheap and vulgar”—but never before anyone as respected as Joan Crawford. The Oscar-winning actress, present at the award ceremony, was appalled when MM sauntered in. “It was like a burlesque show,” Crawford told reporter Bob Thomas for a nationally syndicated story. “The audience yelled and shouted, and Jerry Lewis got up on the table and whistled. But those of us in the industry just shuddered... sex plays a tremendously important part in every person’s life. People are interested in it, intrigued with it. But they don’t like to see it flaunted in their faces... the publicity has gone too far. She is making the mistake of believing her publicity. She should be told that the public likes provocative feminine personalities, but it also likes to know that underneath it all, the actresses are ladies.”
Marilyn was devastated by Crawford’s attack, and the fact that Joe DiMaggio agreed made things all the worse. Marilyn went into seclusion for several days, then replied through Louella Parsons’ influential column. “I think the thing that hit me hardest about Miss Crawford’s story,” Marilyn said, “is that it came from her. I’ve always admired her for being such a wonderful mother—for taking four children and giving them a fine home. Who, better than I, knows what it means to homeless little ones?”
Her big number: “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” She had to convince Darryl Zanuck she could sing by doing the number a cappella in his office. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a huge box office success, and Marilyn’s performance sparkled. She was now clearly the most potent box office force in Hollywood. Her reviews were good, although there were some critics who resisted being swept up in the country’s “Monroe Mania.” Otis Guernsey, however, summed up the popular reaction to MM: “Marilyn looks as though she would glow in the dark, and her version of the baby-faced blonde whose eyes open for diamonds and close for kisses is always as amusing as it is alluring.”
Filming How to Marry a Millionaire, 1953. This pose was used to illustrate the wide-angle wonder of CinemaScope, the revolutionary new process that had been used previously only for the biblical epic The Robe.
With Millionaire costar Lauren Bacall. At first Marilyn resisted playing the role of Pola, a hopelessly nearsighted model who won’t wear her glasses when men are around because, “men aren’t attentive to girls who wear glasses.” Monroe thought she would look terrible and that the public wouldn’t like her that way. But the role actually won her new admirers; she displayed fine comic timing and a charming self-effacement. Nunnally Johnson, the film’s writer and producer, said: “I believe that the first time anyone genuinely liked Marilyn for herself, in a picture, was in Millionaire. She herself diagnosed the reason for that very shrewdly, I think. She said that this was the only picture she’d been in in which she had a measure of modesty about her own attractiveness... she didn’t think men would look at her twice, because she wore glasses; she blundered into walls and stumbled into things and she was most disarming.... In her other pictures they’ve cast her as a somewhat arrogant sex trap, but when Millionaire was released, I heard people say, ‘Why, I really like her!’ in surprised tones.”
Marilyn, Lauren, and the third Millionaire glamour doll, Betty Grable, pose with a visitor to the set. Bacall was rather cool toward Marilyn, but Grable treated her with kindness, despite the fact that Marilyn was said to be replacing Grable as Fox’s blond sex symbol. Betty told Marilyn, “Honey, I’ve had it. Go get yours. It’s your turn now.”
In her autobiography, Bacall wrote: “Marilyn was frightened, insecure, trusted only her coach and was always late. During our scenes she’d look at my forehead instead of my eyes, and at the end of a take, look at her coach... if the headshake was no, she’d insist on another take. A scene often went to fifteen or more takes... not easy, often irritating. And yet I didn’t dislike Marilyn. She had no meanness in her—no bitchery.... There was something sad about her—wanting to reach out—afraid to trust—uncomfortable. She made no effort for others and yet she was nice. I think she did trust me and like me as much as she could anyone whose life must have seemed so secure, so solved.”
Monroe and Russell put their handprints and signatures in cement in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, 1953. It was a hallowed Hollywood tradition and a sure sign of success. Marilyn’s mother had taken her there twenty years earlier to see the stars’ hand-and footprints. “I used to try and fit my hands and feet in the stars’ prints,” she said. “The only ones that fit were Rudolph Valentino’s.” Marilyn suggested that if these “prints” were supposed to reflect your public personality, Jane Russell should bend over into the cement and she should sit in it. The idea was nixed, as was her suggestion that a diamond be used to dot her i. A rhinestone was put in place as a compromise; it was pried loose by a thief shortly thereafter.
Q: “What do you wear to bed, Marilyn?”
A: “Chanel No. 5.”
With her drama coach, Natasha Lytess, in Canada during the filming of River of No Return, late 1953. The film was directed by Otto Preminger and costarred Robert Mitchum and Rory Calhoun. Marilyn relied so heavily on Natasha’s coaching that Preminger began to hate them both. His autobiography’s chapter on Marilyn is almost entirely a diatribe against Lytess. But Marilyn thought the woman vital to her goals. “You’re wonderful, Marilyn,” Lytess once told her; “I love you.” Monroe replied, “Don’t love me. Teach me.”
Preminger and Monroe were constantly at odds. He found her totally exasperating in her tardiness, her reliance on Lytess, her vagueness. She thought him tyrannical, insensitive, mean. She sprained her ankle at one point and filming had to be done around her until she could get back to work. Shelley Winters, in her autobiography, says that her friend Marilyn faked the severity of the sprain in order to get Preminger to “go easy on her” and win sympathy. The ploy worked; Preminger was told by Fox brass to treat his star with more kindness and patience. Here Marilyn shows that nothing can detract from her appeal.
Joe DiMaggio pays Marilyn a visit after hearing of her sprain. He brought his own doctor with him to take a look at Marilyn’s ankle. Joe’s visit added fuel to the gossipy fires, and there was speculation that the couple were either engaged or already secretly wed. Marilyn denied the latter. “I wouldn’t want to keep my marriage secret—there wouldn’t be any reason to. Where could Joe and I marry, anyway, that the whole world wouldn’t know about it?” Rut after almost two years of saying “Joe and I are just friends,” Marilyn admitted, “I’m sure I’m in love with him. I know I like him better than any man I ever met.” Asked how close they were, Marilyn smiled and said, “We haven’t gotten around to baseball yet.” Another time she revealed coyly, “Joe has great coordination.”
The “storybook romance” added considerable interest to the already fascinating Monroe Story. She appeared on the covers of thirteen magazines in a single month in 1953—and almost every day the New York newspapers carried some item or photo about her, or her and Joe. New York, the center of world media, was enchanted by the love affair of “America’s glamour queen” and “Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper.” It was a double-threat story, and whether the press created the intense national interest in it or simply reacted to the interest already there is a moot point. The country was enraptured.
River of No Return proved an unfortunate movie for Marilyn: it had a laughable script, garish costumes, and a tacky character for Monroe to play. She described it as “a Z cowboy movie in which the acting finishes third to the scenery and Cinemascope.” She still, despite her superstardom, did not have any say in the roles she was to play, and she would soon rebel. But River of No Return did nothing to tarnish her glamorous image—Marilyn looked just as spectacular as the Canadian wilds.
Marilyn and Jack Benny get together to prepare for her national television debut on his show, September 13, 1953. “Marilyn is probably the most important guest to appear on my show in a long time,” Benny said, “and I’m highly flattered she’s going to be on my program.”
&
nbsp; Monroe waits to make her entrance on the Benny show. Her appearance, during which Benny resists her passionate advances, prompted commentator Faye Emerson to write: “Let’s face it, girls, here is the champ! She’s here to stay for a long time. From the moment she ran into our camera until she slithered off with a long last glance that withered the men in our house, this little girl was in charge.... She glistened from the top of her platinum head all the way down her famous torso... everything worked.”
Wearing the same dress she wore on the Benny show, Marilyn attends the glittering premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire, November 1953. It was a consummate night for Marilyn—a huge crowd of fans roared her name as she alighted from a limousine amid exploding flashbulbs. The adulation was intoxicating, she told a companion. “I guess this is just about the happiest night of my life. Somehow it’s like when I was a little girl and pretended wonderful things were happening to me. Now they are.” The premiere was star-studded (here Lauren Bacall’s husband, Humphrey Bogart, poses with Marilyn), but she was the center of attention. That night she was the biggest star in the world—and Millionaire went on to be a smashing box office success.
