The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: Laurence Oliver

  WRITER: Terence Rattigan

  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jack Cardiff

  Some Like It Hot (1959)

  Marilyn Monroe (Sugar Kane), Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown

  Destined to be at or near the top of a number of “best” lists, including best film, best comedy film, and best movie line (“Nobody’s perfect”), this picture marks the second working arrangement between Marilyn and director/writer Billy Wilder, the earlier being The Seven Year Itch. It was a decision he reached despite the legendary problems she’s acknowledged to have caused on that set, or because he knew she was perfect for this role and her appearance in the film would assure its box-office success. (Marilyn would earn $2.4 million during the film’s initial run, thanks to a lucrative profit-participation deal with the studio.) The story of two out-of-work jazz-era musicians who, after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, go undercover in drag as members of an all-girl band, the premise is established before we even see Marilyn, twenty-four minutes into the film. But what an entrance. For the rest of his life, Billy Wilder would recount the problems Marilyn caused on the set, always forgiving her behavior due to her own insecurities and lack of confidence. And, yes, he would do it all over again. The film received Oscar nominations in six categories—costumes, writing, directing, cinematography, art direction, and best actor (for Lemmon), winning for Orry-Kelly’s costumes. 122 minutes.

  United Artists/Mirisch

  COPRODUCER/COWRITER/DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder

  COWRITER: I. A. L. Diamond

  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Charles Lang Jr.

  Let’s Make Love (1960)

  Marilyn Monroe (Amanda Dell), Yves Montand

  Marilyn was welcomed back to the studio after a four-year absence, and while the return was not widely applauded among some Fox execs who knew too well the havoc precipitated whenever a Monroe picture was in production, this is a charming musical, vastly underrated at the time, with Marilyn at her comedic best, singing Cole Porter songs and dancing to moves created for her by Jack Cole. As Amanda, she is appearing in an off-Broadway review that targets the foibles of celebrities: Callas, Cliburn, Elvis, and Jean-Marc Clement, a French-born billionaire industrialist living in Manhattan (Montand). Clement impersonates an actor and auditions for the part of Clement himself and wins the role. Inevitably, after a few missteps, Jean-Marc and Amanda fulfill the promise in the film’s title. Color by DeLuxe in CinemaScope. Oscar nomination for best scoring of a musical. 118 minutes.

  PRODUCER: Jerry Wald

  DIRECTOR: George Cukor

  WRITER: Norman Krasna

  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Daniel L. Fapp

  The Misfits (1961)

  Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe (Roslyn Taber), Montgomery Clift Roslyn, an actress, is in Reno for a divorce when she meets and falls for Gay Langland, an aging, sexily macho ex-cowboy. The stark Nevada desert is the habitat for wild mustangs that are targeted by Gay and two other cowboy roughnecks for capture, an exercise that is as painful to watch as it is to figure out—until we learn the horses are to be sold to slaughterhouses to process as dog food. When Rose learns their fate, she goes ballistic, her passion so intense that she ultimately secures the mustangs’ freedom and their return to the wild. Film chronicler Leslie Halliwell wrote: “a solemn, unattractive, pretentious film, which seldom stops wallowing in self pity.” Considered a failure when released, it has since gained cultlike status because of the untimely deaths of the three principles. 124 minutes.

  United Artists/Seven Arts

  PRODUCER: Frank E. Taylor

  DIRECTOR: John Huston

  WRITER: Arthur Miller

  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Russell Metty

  Something’s Got to Give (1962)

  Marilyn Monroe (Ellen), Dean Martin

  A remake of the 1940 screwball comedy My Favorite Wife,starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, the movie’s thirty-seven minutes of footage, salvaged from eight boxes of raw film in a 20th Century-Fox warehouse, were included in a documentary about the film that was shown as a television special in 2001, Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days. Marilyn lost eighteen pounds for this role, which brought to mind her beauty of ten years earlier when she was in her prime. Film purists do not consider this movie to be part of the Marilyn Monroe filmography, since it was incomplete and unreleased to theaters. But given its importance to the Monroe legacy, and that it perhaps indirectly contributed to her death, I felt compelled to include it. The film was finally made in 1963 with Doris Day and James Garner as Move Over, Darling.

  20th Century-Fox

  PRODUCERS: Gene Allen, Henry T. Weinstein

  DIRECTOR: George Cukor

  WRITERS: Nunnally Johnson, Walter Bernstein

  CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Franz Planer, Leo Tover

  * The Hawthorne Community Church was nondenominational but more Baptist than not in doctrine.

  † It should be noted that this wasn’t foster care in the strictest sense of the word. What Ida was offering would today be considered “full-time child care.” However, she and her husband were licensed to care for children through the County of Los Angeles.

  * Note to reader: From this point on, when referring to Edward, it’s Mortenson. When referring to Norma Jeane, it’s Mortensen.

  * Redistricting took place in Hawthorne in the 1940s, and at that time the address was changed to 4201 West 134th Street. The original home is still standing.

  * It’s been previously reported that she was married three times by 1933. Not true. She had two husbands by this time: Reginald Evans and John Wallace McKee.

  * Besides appearing as Clark Gable’s leading ladies in their cinematic swan songs, Harlow and Monroe share a couple of other coincidental parallels in their lives. Like Marilyn would do years later, seventeen-year-old Jean Harlow was photographed nude (in Griffith Park in 1928 by Edward Bower). Harlow would also be the first movie star to appear on the cover of Life magazine, in the edition of May 3, 1937. Similarly, Marilyn appeared on the cover of the first issue of Playboy, in August 1954.

  * This orphanage was rebuilt in 1956 and a year later renamed Hollygrove Orphanage.

  * Of course, she would get her wish—men and women. An interesting story from Marilyn Monroe historian James Haspiel: “She had a ‘Man Friday’ named Peter Leonardi who drove her around the city. His sister, Marie, went shopping with Marilyn one day to Saks Fifth Avenue. When they got back to Marilyn’s apartment at the Waldorf Towers, they were going to try on the clothing. But Marilyn felt she should take a bath before she put on the new clothes. So she went into the bathroom and got into the bathtub and the two women continued talking, Marie from the living room. Finally, Marilyn said, ‘Come in here, so I can hear you.’ Marie, this 100 percent heterosexual female, went to the bathroom door and, later, she said to me, ‘Jimmy, I looked into the tub and she was so breathtakingly beautiful, I couldn’t believe it. Even her toes were beautiful. And I felt myself being drawn into the bathtub with her, and I said, “Marilyn, I have to leave. Right now!” I was going to go over there and make a fool of myself, if I didn’t leave at once!’ ”

  * In October 1947, ten years after Norma Jeane left the orphanage, Mrs. Dewey wrote to Grace Goddard to ask how the girl was faring. Grace wrote back, “Norma Jean [sic] Baker has great success in pictures and promises to be a star. She is a very beautiful woman and is now acting as Marilyn Monroe.”

  * An undated letter from Grace Goddard makes clear Gladys’s troubled mental state. “She thinks she was sent to State hospital because years ago she voted on a Socialist Ballot,” Grace wrote. “[She] sleeps with her head at the foot of the bed [so] as not to look at Marilyn’s pictures—they disturb her.… [She] wishes she never had a sexual experience so she could be more Christ like.”

  * Norma Jeane was five feet five and a half inches tall.

  * Her friend the acting coach Michael Shaw recalls, “When the studio changed her name, she was okay with it, but not thrilled. She said to me,
‘But I don’t even know how to spell Marilyn!’ She was so frustrated by that. In that little breathless voice of hers, she asked me, ‘Honey, is there an ‘i’ in it?’ I said, ‘I think so.’ But it turned out to be a ‘y.’ ”

  * Marilyn Monroe historian James Haspiel adds to this observation: “This woman who was supposed to be out there all the time in a sexual way, in private life, was very demure. If you look at newsreel of her in Korea, she is squatting down on the stage with a bunch of soldiers around her and she’s wearing a cocktail dress. She has both hands across her chest. In other words, it’s as if she is unconsciously protecting herself from being on display. This is the same lady who, of course, posed nude for the calendar. Yet, if you look at her in any of the photographs I took of her personally, or so many other photos, she’s never wearing anything low-cut. Everything is always up to the neck all the time.”

  * Later, some priceless quotes were attributed to Marilyn when word got out that she was the model. When asked what she was wearing, she answered, “Chanel No. 5.” And her response to what she had on: “The radio.”

  * Again, leave it to James Haspiel for another classic Monroe memory. He says that in the eight years he knew her, he never once saw Marilyn “drunk, not even tipsy.” However, one day he showed her a photograph that was taken on a day when she had definitely had too much to drink. He handed it to her and said, “This was taken in an elevator in Marlene Dietrich’s apartment building, and you were very high.” Without missing a beat, Marilyn gave him a wide-eyed look and said, “What floor was I on?”

  * Villa Nova is now the Rainbow Bar & Grill, on Sunset Boulevard. There’s a gold plaque outside the very popular establishment with Marilyn’s likeness on it to recognize her first date with Joe. (In her memoir, Marilyn recalled first meeting Joe at Chasen’s restaurant.)

  * This sanitarium has most often been described in Marilyn Monroe biographies as having been in Eagle Rock, California, and Verdugo City, California. However, it was in La Crescenta. For many years it served as a women’s rest home until closing down in 2006.

  * She really was “a good person,” too. Consider this, from James Haspiel: “A famous story about her happened on a night she went for a walk in New York, when she was living on East 57th Street. At the end of 58th is a very small park with a small bridge. As she stood on that bridge, she watched two teenage boys with nets on long poles catching pigeons and then putting the birds in a big cage. She went down and asked them what they were doing. They explained to this blonde woman they didn’t know that they were catching as many pigeons as they could so that they could then take them to the market where they would be paid 25 cents apiece for them. [This sounds like something these boys made up. What would any market want with their pigeons?] After a pause she said, ‘Well, if I sit on this bench and wait until you’re done, and I pay you for the pigeons, will you then free them?’ They agreed to do this. After they were done, she gave them a quarter for each pigeon they freed. Then she asked, ‘What nights do you come here?’ They said, ‘Thursdays.’ She said, ‘I’ll try to be here next Thursday night.’ ”

  * A funny story relating to this movie: One day, when Marilyn was to get a massage, the crew wanted to play a joke on her. So one of the jokesters asked a young production assistant—seventeen years old—to go to her trailer and give her a message. “Don’t knock,” he said. “Just walk right in. She likes that.” The youngster did what he was told. He opened the door, and there was Marilyn Monroe, lying nude on her stomach on the massage table, waiting for her masseuse. Completely nonchalant, she asked the red-faced teen, “Did they put you up to this?” He said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Okay. Well, close the door, sit down, and stay for twenty minutes. Then the joke is on them!”

  * Marilyn Monroe’s accounting ledger for this time frame indicates two payments to “Mrs. G. Goddard”—Grace—made in May and June of 1953. The first is for $851.04, and the second is for $300.00. Both carry the notation “medical.” For years, it’s been speculated that these checks were used to cover an abortion Marilyn may have had—though no one can explain why, if this were the case, the checks were made out to Grace. The truth seems clear: These checks were obviously drawn by Marilyn to help pay for Grace’s medical crisis at this time.

  * High colonic irrigation was part of the daily routine of Mae West for all of her adult life, not for weight control, but for cleansing purposes. She is said to have used coffee laced with herbs for her routine.

  * It’s been widely reported over the years—even by Vanity Fair in its cover story on Marilyn dated October 2008—that Inez Melson was hired by Joe DiMaggio to be a “spy” for him in the Marilyn Monroe camp and that she was “secretly” working for Joe. It’s true that Melson came into the picture at around the same time as DiMaggio. However, her testimony against Joe on this important day would seem to suggest that she wasn’t exactly loyal to him, if in fact she was even hired at his recommendation.

  * This woman later sued DiMaggio and Sinatra for $200,000 and ended up getting $7,500 out of them.

  * Collier was an English-born, classically trained character actress of stage, radio, and films who turned to teaching and coaching as acting roles began to dry up. She worked with Marilyn for only a few months, dying at the age of seventy-seven in April 1955 in New York.

  * The occasion of Marilyn’s and Arthur’s first meeting has become like Rashomon, with so many versions reported on. Most seem to agree on one point: It took place on the set of As Young as You Feel. In dispute is how all the players happened to be gathered there at the same time. In Elia Kazan’s 1988 memoir, A Life, he writes that Charles Feldman was hosting a party in Miller’s honor, that Kazan was not able to attend, and that he then asked Miller to take Monroe. Then there’s the version of events detailed in Miller’s 1987 memoir, Timebends (Grove Press). Miller wrote that his visit to the set of As Young as You Feel was at the request of his father, who asked him to call on actor Monty Woolley (“my father’s bete noire”), who had a principal part in the movie. Unknown, as far as we could tell, is Marilyn Monroe’s version of her first meeting with Miller.

  * This same will stipulates that her mother, Gladys Baker Eley, should have her sanitarium expenses paid “for the rest of her life”—but not more than a total of $25,000.

  * Natasha Lytess died of cancer in 1964—two years after Marilyn Monroe.

  * Susan Strasberg defended her mother this way: “My mother literally sat with her for twenty-four hours on those films, holding her hand, trying to get her to take less pills.… The incredible insecurity that she [Monroe] had that she needed to be pampered and reassured. My mother gave her life’s blood, in a way. And got blamed on top of it, for Marilyn’s unprofessional behavior.”

  * Author Charles Casillo notes: “It’s only in the last decade or so that Tony Curtis tried to rectify his nasty comments about Marilyn. I don’t blame him for being furious after working with her. It’s easy to make excuses for her now, but almost everyone who made a movie with her has said that Monroe was terribly difficult to work with. Actors have huge egos and Marilyn was always favored in the final takes, which infuriated Tony Curtis. There is no denying he despised her after the movie—and his loathing lasted decades after her death. Yet, as her legend grew and her value to every movie became more and more undeniable, Curtis has tried to revise history and defuse his derogatory comments about her. But even Marilyn—in her last LIFE interview—addressed the “Hitler” remark: “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.… 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.”

  * Pat’s humor is legendary in Kennedy circles. H
ere’s a funny story from Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign: A frazzled campaign worker called Pat one day and said that he needed her immediately at a political gathering, if she could possibly make it—in an hour. “But I haven’t done my hair yet,” Pat exclaimed. “And I don’t have any makeup on. And I just have this old dress. I’m a total wreck. Why, it’s just impossible! I just can’t do it!” When the frantic campaign worker continued to press her by saying no one else was available, Pat relented. “Okay, fine, then,” she said. “I’ll just come as Eunice.”

  * Lee Strasberg’s second wife, Anna, was his sole beneficiary when he died in 1982. He married Anna—forty years his junior—in 1967, a year after his first wife, Paula, died. Today, Anna Strasberg holds the bulk of Marilyn’s estate, which, according to Forbes magazine’s most recent list of income generated by dead celebrities, ranks Marilyn at number eight, with $8 million accumulated in royalties and merchandising in 2007. It should be noted, though, that when Marilyn died, she did not die a wealthy woman. Millions accumulated for her estate after her death as a result of merchandising of her name, as well as money generated from her films. Strasberg—who guards the estate with famous determination—says she was “acquainted” with Marilyn before Marilyn’s death. (Most accounts have it that the two met at least once.) “Anna thinks about and handles” Ms. Monroe’s image “from the moment she wakes up,” says William Wegner, her attorney. “My husband, Lee, was her teacher, her mentor, but most of all Marilyn’s friend,” Anna Strasberg has said. “I am not only protecting her legacy and image, I am honoring my husband’s wishes.”