Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

Some of the letters addressed to Marilyn Monroe weren’t so loving. You’d have to call them aggressive, even a bit nasty, alluding to the actress’s physicality. Some of them were from mentally disturbed persons. These, her assistants screened. Yet if she knew that letters were being kept from her, these were the very letters she wanted to see. “Maybe they have something to tell me? I’d be better off knowing?” “No, Miss Monroe,” Dee-Dee wisely said, “letters like that aren’t about you. They’re about somebody thinking he’s you.” Yet there was something gratifyingly real about being called a bitch, a whore, a blond tramp. Where so much was a dreamy haze, anything promising to be real was bracing. Yet, fairly quickly, even hate mail became predictable and formulaic. As Dee-Dee saw, the Blond Actress’s detractors were venting their hatred on an imaginary being. “Like movie critics. Some of them love Marilyn, and some of them hate Marilyn. What’s that got to do with me?” The Blond Actress told no one, except the Ex-Athlete, after he’d become her lover and (she liked to think) her best friend, for the Ex-Athlete understood: what kept her searching through mounds of mail from strangers was the hope of seeking familiar names: names out of the past, names to link her with her past. Of course, some did write to her, mainly women, grown-up girls she’d once gone to high school with, or junior high on El Centro Avenue, even the Highland Elementary School (“You were always so well dressed, we knew your mother was in the movies and youd be an actress too someday”); old neighbors from Verdugo Gardens (though not the long-lost Harriet); women who claimed to have double-dated with Norma Jeane and Bucky Glazer before they were married, whose names the Blond Actress couldn’t recall (“You were Norma Jeane then I believe. You and Bucky Glazer were the most devoted couple, we were all surprise youd gotten divorced. I guess it was the War???”). Elsie Pirig wrote, not once but several times:

  Dear Norma Jeane, I hope you remember me? I hope you are not angry with me? But I think you must be for I have never heard from you in years and years and you know where I live, and my telephone is unchanged.

  The Blond Actress tore this letter into shreds. She hadn’t known how much she hated her Aunt Elsie. When a second letter came, and a third, the Blond Actress crumpled them, in triumph, and threw them on the floor. Dee-Dee said, mystified, “Why, Miss Monroe. Who’s that from, you’re so upset?” The Blond Actress was touching her mouth in that unconscious way of hers, as if, observers said, she was checking to see that she had lips. She was blinking back tears. “My foster mother. When I was a girl. An orphan. She tried to destroy my life because she was jealous of me. She married me off at fifteen to get me out of the house. Because her h-husband was in love with me and she was j-j-jealous.” “Oh, Miss Monroe! That’s a sad story.” “It was. But not now.”

  Warren Pirig never wrote, of course. Nor Detective Frank Widdoes. Of the numerous guys she’d dated in Van Nuys, she heard only from Joe Santos, Bud Skokie, and someone named Martin Fulmer she didn’t remember. Mr. Haring never wrote. Her English teacher she’d adored, and who had seemed to like her. “I suppose he’s disgusted with me. So far from what he taught me.”

  For a year or two after Norma Jeane left the Home she’d corresponded with Dr. Mittelstadt. The older woman had sent her Christian Science publications, birthday gifts. Then somehow they ceased to write. Norma Jeane guessed it was her fault, after she’d gotten married—“But why doesn’t she write to me now? Even if she doesn’t see movies she’d see Marilyn. Wouldn’t she recognize me? Is she mad at me too? Disgusted? Oh, I hate her!—she’s another one who left me on my own.”

  She was hurt, too, that Mrs. Glazer never wrote.

  Of course, there wasn’t a day when she stepped into her dressing room to confront her fan mail that she didn’t think Maybe my father has written! I know he’s aware of me. My career.

  It wasn’t clear how Norma Jeane’s father knew of her career. Or how Norma Jeane could have known that this was so.

  But weeks passed, and months, in this Year of Wonders. And Norma Jeane’s father never wrote. Though Marilyn Monroe was becoming so famous, you couldn’t avoid seeing her picture and her name everywhere and anywhere. Newspapers, gossip columns, movie billboards, movie marquees. Advance publicity for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes! A gigantic billboard on Sunset Boulevard! After the nude photo “Miss Golden Dreams 1949” appeared in the first issue of Playboy, as the centerfold of this brand-new bold and raunchy magazine for men, an avalanche of mail followed and yet more media attention. The Blond Actress protested to reporters, quite sincerely, that she had not given permission for “Miss Golden Dreams” to be reprinted in Playboy or anywhere else, but what could she do? She didn’t own the negative. She’d signed away her rights. And all for fifty dollars, when she’d been desperately poor, in 1949. The gossip columnist Leviticus, known for his cruel wit and scandalous revelations in Hollywood Confidential, surprised readers with an entire column devoted to an open letter that began:

  Dear “Miss Golden Dreams 1949,”

  You are indeed “Sweetheart of the Month.” Or any month.

  You are indeed a victim of our culture’s mercenary exploitation of feminine innocence.

  You are one of the lucky ones: you will go on to flourish in a movie career. Good for you!

  Yet, know: you are more beautiful and desirable even than “Miss Marilyn Monroe”—and that is saying a mouthful!

  The Blond Actress was so deeply moved by the tender gallantry of Leviticus, she impulsively sent him a personally inscribed print of the controversial nude photo, signed, Your friend forever, Mona/Marilyn Monroe.

  The Studio had printed up copies of “Miss Golden Dreams” for such purposes. “Why not? It was me, after all. Let those calendar people sue.”

  One day, a week before the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Dee-Dee handed over a fan letter to the Blond Actress with an odd stricken expression. “Miss Monroe? This is a confidential letter I guess.”

  The Blond Actress, sensing what the (typewritten) letter might be, eagerly took it up, and read:

  Dear Norma Jeane,

  This is possibly the hardest letter I have ever penned.

  Truly I do not know why I am contacting you now. After so many years.

  It is not that “Marilyn Monroe” is who she is. For I have my own life entirely. My career [from which I am newly & comfortably retired] & my family.

  I am your father, Norma Jeane.

  I will perhaps explain the circumstances of my relationship with you when we can meet face to face. Until then

  My beloved wife of many years who is ill does not know I am writing this. It would upset her greatly and so

  I have not seen a film of “Marilyn Monroe” & will not probably. I should explain that I do not see movies. I am a radio man by taste & prefer to “imagine.” My brief stint at The Studio as a would be “leading man” opened my eyes to the crassness & stupidity of that world. No thank you!

  To be frank, Norma Jeane, I would not see your movies because I do not approve of such ranchiness in Hollywood. I am a well educated & democratic man I believe. I am 100% for Senator Joe McCarthy in his crusade against the Communists. I am 100% Christian, as is my wife on both sides of her family.

  There is no justification warranted, that Hollywood which is known to be a hive of Jews should be tolerated in so long harboring such traitorous individuals as one “Charlie Chaplin” whose films I am ashamed to admit, I once paid to see. And there are

  You will wonder why I am contacting you, Norma Jeane, after more than 27 years. To speak the truth, I have suffered a heart attack & have contemplated my life with gravity & I have not been proud of my behavior in all cases. My wife does not know of

  Your birthday is June 1, I believe, & mine is June 8 so we are under the sign of Gemini. As a Christian I do not take such old pagan tales seriously but there is perhaps an inclination in the temperament linking such people as us. I do not claim to know much about it as I do not read women’s magazines.

  I have before me an interview with “
Marilyn Monroe” in the new “Pageant.” Reading it my eyes began to fill with tears. You have told the interviewer that your mother is hospitalized & you do not know your father but “await him with every passing hour.” My poor Daughter, I did not know. I have known of you at a distance. Your demanding mother kept us apart. Years passed & it became too much distance to surmount. I did send your mother checks & money orders for your support. I did not expect, nor did I receive, thanks from that quarter. Oh no!!!

  I know that your mother is a sick woman. Yet before she was sick, Norma Jeane, she was evil in her heart.

  She expelled me from your life. Her cruelty was [I know full well] she led you to believe that I expelled her.

  I have go on too long. Forgive an aging man. Though I am not sick, but am making a full recovery my doctor says. He is surprised he said considering the extent of

  I will hope to contact you again soon, Norma Jeane, in person. Look for me, my precious Daughter, upon a special occasion in your life when both Daughter & Father can celebrate our long denied love.

  Your tearful Father

  There was no return address. But the postmark was Los Angeles.

  In triumph the Blond Actress whispered, “It’s him.” She laid the amateurishly typed sheets of stationery on the table before her and compulsively smoothed out the creases. For several strained minutes, Dee-Dee covertly observed, she continued this gesture, and read the letter another time, and said again, not to Dee-Dee but as if speaking aloud, “Oh, it’s him. I knew. I never doubted. Right here, close by. All those years. Watching over me. I felt it. I knew.”

  Such happiness in that beautiful face—Dee-Dee would afterward marvel—almost you couldn’t recognize her.

  6

  After Yvet whispered into the Blond Actress’s ear their shared secret, the evening of the premiere passed in a careening haze warmed by Benzedrine and champagne, a buoyant Technicolor landscape glimpsed from, for instance, a roller coaster. Be sure to go alone to your suite tonight. Someone special will be waiting. Despite her father’s remark that he was a “radio man” and scorned Hollywood, the Blond Actress was convinced he must be attending the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; he had studio connections and could acquire a complimentary ticket. “If only he’d told me his name, I would have invited him to sit with me.” He was somewhere in this crowd of affluent invited guests. Oh, she knew! She knew. An older man, obviously; yet not terribly old, not much beyond sixty. Sixty wasn’t old, for a man! Look at the notorious Mr. Z. He would be a handsome white-haired gentleman, dignified and alone. Uncomfortable in his tux, for such pretentious occasions were distasteful to him. Yet he’d come, for her: this was indeed a “special occasion” in his daughter’s life.

  As the Blond Actress was scrutinized on all sides, she who’d been strategically stitched into her strapless evening gown of hot-pink silk revealing every sweet swelling curve and voluptuous jutting of her supreme mammalian body, so she smiled radiant as a high-wattage lightbulb and squinted into the crowd seeking him. If their eyes locked, she would know! Probably his eyes mirrored hers. She more resembled her father than she resembled her mother. She always had. Oh, she hoped he wouldn’t be ashamed of his daughter, primped and painted and displayed like a big animated doll. “The Studio’s gorgeous replacement for Betty Grable. Just in time.” She hoped he wouldn’t change his mind and retreat in disgust. Hadn’t he said he had seen none of her films and probably would not—“He disapproves of ‘ranchiness.’” The Blond Actress, swallowing a mouthful of champagne, laughed wildly, and fizzy liquid drained from her nostrils. “Oh, ‘ranchy’—I wish I had Cass, to tell.” Cass was the only individual in Hollywood the Blond Actress might have confided in. He knew of Norma Jeane’s “sordid tabloid past” as he’d called it. At least as much as she’d wanted him to know.

  When the Blond Actress made her decision to break with the Gemini, to have the Operation, and to sign on for Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, despite the modest salary she’d receive (a little more than one-tenth of Jane Russell’s), her agent sent her a dozen red roses and his congratulations:

  MARILYN. HOW PROUD ISAAC WOULD BE OF YOU.

  Well, that was so. In fact, everyone was proud of her. These veteran Hollywood people, studio executives, producers, moneymen and their sharp-eyed wives—smiling at the Blond Actress as if, at last, she was one of their own.

  During the showing of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which the Blond Actress had seen in its entirety several times and which she’d seen, piecemeal, many more times (for even as “Lorelei Lee” she’d been a perfectionist on the set, as exasperating to her co-stars as to her director), the Blond Actress found it difficult to concentrate. Oh, the warm rushing fizzing of her blood! The happiness pounding in her heart! Someone special will be waiting for you. She was grateful that the Ex-Athlete wasn’t beside her; or V (who’d come to the premiere with a new female companion, Arlene Dahl); or Mr. Shinn. Grateful to be alone, and so plausibly alone for the night. Someone special. In your hotel suite. Arrangements must have been made through The Studio, which was paying for the suite; through Mr. Z or his office, someone with the authority to direct the Beverly Wilshire to let a visitor into the suite occupied by Marilyn Monroe. It excited her to think that Mr. Z, who’d been her enemy until only just recently, who’d spoken crudely of her as a common tramp, must know her father and know of this imminent reunion and wish both her and her father well. “It’s like a happy ending. Of a long confused movie.” Before the house lights dimmed and the first blasts of music began, the Blond Actress said to Mr. Z, in the seat beside her, “I understand that I have a special date after the party, in my hotel suite,” and shrewd bat-faced Mr. Z smiled his secretive smile, bringing a forefinger to his fleshy lips as Yvet had done to hers. Maybe everyone at The Studio knew? All of Hollywood knew?

  They wish me well. Their Marilyn. I love them!

  Strange, to be again in Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. Almost, this was a movie scene in itself: The Blond Actress returning to the very theater in which as a lonely little girl she’d worshiped such blond actresses as herself. Since those Depression days, Grauman’s had been refurbished at considerable cost. For this was another era now, of postwar prosperity. Out of the rubble of Europe and the demolished cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the booming heartbeat of a new world.

  The Blond Actress known as Marilyn Monroe was of this new world. The Blond Actress was perpetually smiling, yet without warmth or sentiment or that complexity of the spirit called “depth.”

  The atmosphere in Grauman’s was warmly festive. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was known to be a winner. This wasn’t an opening like that of The Asphalt Jungle or Don’t Bother to Knock or Niagara, movies that might offend some viewers, and did. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was synthetic and brassy and overproduced, a triumph of glitzy vulgarity, a Technicolor cartoon about winning, American-style, and so it was a winner, already booked to open immediately in thousands of movie houses in the United States and destined to make millions here and abroad. “Oh, gosh!—is that me?” the Blond Actress squealed, staring up at the gigantic gorgeous doll-woman looming above the audience, in little-girl excitement seizing the hands of Mr. Z and Mr. D. Oh, the magic potion thrumming in her blood! In truth she hadn’t a clue what she felt, or if she felt anything at all.

  On Broadway, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had been a revue of musical numbers, not a musical comedy. There was no “story” and there were no “characters.” The movie was only slightly more coherent but coherence wasn’t the point. When Norma Jeane received the script she’d been shocked at how underdeveloped and insipid her character was; she’d wanted more dialogue for Lorelei Lee, a turn or a twist to Lorelei’s character, some background, some depth, but of course this was denied her. She’d envied the more adult and more intelligent role of Dorothy but was told, “Look, you’re the blonde, Marilyn. You’re Lorelei.”

  The Blond Actress’s smile faded as she watched the movie. As euphoria subsided. She di
dn’t want to think what, if he was here in this crowd, her father might be thinking. Foam-rubber Lorelei Lee and her twin-mammalian friend Dorothy mouthing their smart-silly lyrics and moving their bodies suggestively. “A Little Girl from Little Rock.” Oh, what if Daddy slipped from the theater without even speaking to her? What if, disgusted (and you could see why), he decided against meeting Norma Jeane, his daughter, after all?

  “Oh, Daddy. That thing on the screen, it isn’t me.”

  So strange! The audience adored Lorelei Lee. They liked Dorothy, too—Jane Russell was wonderfully warm, attractive, sympathetic, and funny—but clearly the audience preferred Lorelei Lee. Why? Such rapt, smiling faces. Marilyn Monroe was a winner, and everyone loves a winner.

  Oh the irony was, surely these people all knew: Marilyn didn’t exist.

  I can’t fail. If I fail I must die. This had been Marilyn’s secret no one knew. After the Operation. After Baby was taken from her. Her punishment was throbbing uterine pain. At first heavy bleeding (she didn’t dispute, she deserved), and then a slower blood-seeping, hot damp moisture like tears draining from her womb. Where no one could see. Her punishment. Sprayed herself with expensive French perfume somebody’d given her. Staggered from the set to hide in her dressing room in terror of bleeding to death. She wanted them to think she was temperamental, maybe; all glamorous stars were, female and male. Not this terror. And waking in the night (alone, the Ex-Athlete gone) when the codeine wore off. I will create Lorelei Lee out of this sickness. This was Norma Jeane’s great accomplishment, except no one in the premiere audience knew, or could guess; nor would they have wished to know.

  Kindly Doc Bob, who knew every detail of the Operation including the patient’s hysteria afterward, had prescribed for her codeine tablets for “real or imagined” pain and Benzedrine for “quick energy” and Nembutal for “deep dreamless (and conscienceless)” sleep. Saying in Jimmy Stewart style, “Think of me as your closest friend, Marilyn. In this world and the next.” The Blond Actress had laughed, frightened.