DAMN!

NIAGARA (1953)

dir. henry hathaway

I mean imagine waking to THIS!?

Check you would fall in love right there and then . . . don’t care who you are male, female gay straight! if you don’t fall in love with her right there and then you didn’t have a PULSE!!

the year I was born!

"Heavens to Murgatroyd!" 'Richard Sherman' (The Seven Year Itch) and The Cowardly Lion in Waiting For Godot!

 

I found this picture a’wandering around the interwebbie mcthingiemabob and was remarking how amazing to think that here was Tom Ewell (The Seven Year Itch opposite Marilyn - although he had played the stage version nearly a thousand times with other actors in the MM role off and on Broadway) ) and Bert Lahr (The Wizard of Oz - he played the Lion) were starred here in a favourite play Becket’s legendary ‘Waiting For Godot’ in 1956

This amazed me and I would have loved to have seen it! (N.B. it was the premiere for American audiences of the play, which Lahr was very much struck by upon reading the script, but it bombed commercially with audience walkouts and the director playing it as 'light comedy' was probably a mistake!)

The two are so much (inextricably?) linked to others roles (films!) that this is why both are remarked upon here for my realising they had stage careers also!

note - Lahr’s son the eminent writer John Lahr, wrote Prick Up Your Ears a biography of Joe Orton which I prize

footnote: Heavens to Murgatroyd is attributed to Lahr, a notorious adliber, from another play and it was adopted into Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Snagglepuss!

Marilyn vists Korea

Marilyn Monroe entertaining the US troops in Korea, 1954.

There was a tradition of stars visiting the troops in Korea to help raise morale and Marilyn was more than happy to be amongst them. However other people, bigger stars, like Bob Hope flew in did their ‘turn’ and flew out almost immediately after Marilyn decided to stay for four days! FOUR DAYS?! Touring sights and precious near the front line at times, it is believed she was seen by over 100,000 men

 She signed autographs and ate with the serving men even changing from her dresses into army combat fatigues which went down extremely well as you might well imagine! Most of the men had little cameras and the visit was a roaring success with most enlisted men having snapshots of the star that they would treasure for ever

(It has been suggested that for her performance she wore no underwear, I couldn’t possibly comment!) . . . . . . but we can dream. It is said she worried about what to wear and it was freezing cold and as you can just about see it would rain!. When cautioned about discarding her heavy coat she is believed to have said “But this is what the boys want to see!"

more here . . .

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Note: update on Bob Hope!

 oldshowbiz

92-year-old Mamie Van Doren trashes Bob Hope

More on Mazza!

 

“I sometimes felt I was hooked on sex; the way an alcoholic is on liquor or a junkie on dope. My body turned all these people on, like turning on an electric light, and there was barely anything human in it. Marilyn Monroe became a burden, a - what do you call it? - an albatross. People expected so much of me, I sometimes hate it. It was too much of a strain. I still feel that way. Marilyn Monroe has to look a certain way – be beautiful - and act a certain way, be talented. I wondered if I could live up to their expectations. 

There were times on The Misfits, in those emotional scenes, when I had a feeling I’d fail however hard I tried, and I didn’t want to go on-site in the morning. I was sorry that I wasn’t a waitress or a cleaning lady and free of people’s great demands. Sometimes it would be a great relief to be no longer famous. But we actors and actresses are such warriors, such – what is your word? – narcissus types. I sit in front of the mirror for hours looking for signs of age. I like old people; they have such qualities younger people don’t have. I want to grow old without facelifts. They take the life out of a face, the character. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I’ve made. Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you would never complete your life, would you? You never totally know yourself.” — Marilyn

from Conversations with Marilyn by W.J Weatherby. 

and even mo' MARILYN

I keep posting little articles and notes about Marilyn that show her humanity and depth of feeling for her own life, her sensitivity, sensibility and the care for others which at times seems boundless. She was nobody's fool but just a tragic figure who tried her best to counter her upbringing and struggles with mental health possibly inherited from her mother

The epitome of strength. 

August 10th, 1957: Marilyn Monroe and her husband, Arthur Miller, tightly hold hands as they brave a mob of reporters and fans as they leave the hospital. 

On August 1st, severe stomach pains turned out to be the result of an ectopic pregnancy. The baby had grown outside of the uterus and in order to save Marilyn’s life, the pregnancy was terminated. While Marilyn fought hard, nothing could be done. She remained in the hospital for ten days recovering from the loss and a blood transfusion. She was weak, tired, but mostly suffering with a broken heart. She had finally had what she’d always wanted… She wrote to her step-daughter, “don’t worry about me”, while she was away at camp, and promised to write by hand when she returned home. 

When it was time to leave, she insisted on walking tot he car, instead of being wheeled out in a chair. Her emotional strength comes from a place known only to her. Her doctor noted she was about six to eight weeks pregnant, it was too early to determine the gender, it was not a boy (or so we know) as so many have falsely written. The doctor remained hopeful and told Marilyn in a few months she and Arthur could try again.

Mo' MARILYN

“All I ever wanted out of life is to be nice to people and have them be nice to me. It’s a fair exchange and I’m a woman. I want to be loved by a man, from his heart, as I would love him from mine. I’ve tried, but it hasn’t happened yet.“ 

- Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe Personal Notes

Three pieces of paper torn from a telephone message pad with deeply personal musing in Monroe’s hand in pencil reading in part, “In a way I feel better when I feel terrible because at least I’m feeling something” and “Depression - it starts to depress me when I feel that I have exposed my truest feelings to people - I am afraid that they see through me - my faults and the fact that I am really a phoney who needs and wants admiration and love (I do not want to be like this - to depend on this need - its almost a form of being an ego maniac - I don’t really like my self…” One of the pages has “Oct. 15” written, but no year is indicated

Thought For The Day: it is entirely possible that Marilyn did so much to promote the wearing of jeans women might not have taken to wearing them at all? She loved the relaxed comfort and freedom they provided and prior to her wearing them women seen in them were largely home spun farm girls only. Never a fashion item until she started wearing them. Imagine today a world where women didn’t wear jeans!?

She was ahead of her time in many ways and you right her off as a dumb blonde at your peril! I liked her, (can you tell?). Avid reader, actor, writer of poetry, friend to intellectuals, troubled for sure, damaged by life’s circumstance and highly sensitive to the plight of others. Sexually interfered with at age 8 and raped at 11 we think, she struggled with relationships the rest of her adult life. Self medicated with alcohol and prescribed medicines into an early grave she suffered at least five miscarriages that we know of and unable to bear children, it was that which finished her relationships with most men. She suffered terribly from chronic dysmenorrhea. 

Despite all that she seemed to light up whenever company demanded and she could appear to actually be a source of light when being “her”, the legendary MM! The camera adored her. Women found her surprisingly warm and friendly at a time when the ‘bitch’ ruled and back stabbing competition amongst female stars was everything she was genuinely interested in her sisters.

“I like to have time for the things I do. I think that we’re rushing too much nowadays. That’s why people are nervous and unhappy—with their lives and with themselves. How can you do anything perfect under such conditions? Perfection takes time.” 

—Marilyn Monroe to Georges Belmont for Marie Claire.

MM towards the End

During the filming of The Misifts (1961), Marilyn Monroe’s mental health was almost killing her. Her marriage to Arthur Miller was over, the constant re-writes of the script caused her more anxiety, and the heat of Nevada was draining. This exhaustion, along with the toll the pills took on her, affected the camera man from focusing on her, he said, 

“I can’t focus on her eyes. There’s nowhere to focus.” 

Much of the footage in the film, you can see when in a close-up shot of Marilyn, are blurry. This was their only solution to the camera’s inability to focus on her eyes.

Lifetime of prescription pills and drinking in the face of what we know to be at least four miscarriages and possibly many more (her maternal instincts and desire to love and be loved  were an incredibly driving force for someone from such a dysfunctional background)  plus her crippling self doubt and lack of confidence all took their toll

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARILYN

“I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.” 

Marilyn by Weegee 1949

Marilyn with her guardian Aunt Ana  1940s

Marilyn, then aged 27,  taken by her trusted make-up artist and friend Allan “Whitey” Snyder to get her to relax on set.  Niagra 1953

It's the birthday of actress Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles, California (1926). As a child, she was passed around between her mother and a series of foster parents. Eventually, she wound up with her mother's friend Grace McKee, who worked in the movie industry. Grace worshiped movie stars, and she told Monroe that she would be a movie star herself one day. She taught Monroe to act like the women she saw in movies; she took Monroe to beauty parlors, she dressed her up in fancy clothes, and had her practice smiles and pouts in the mirror.

After Grace McKee got married, Monroe had to live for a while in an orphanage, and at night she would stare out the window at the water tower of RKO Studios. She spent the next several years moving from house to house, living with various distant relatives and friends of the family. She told children at school that her parents had died in a car accident.

After she went through puberty, her clothes were much tighter, but the family she was living with couldn't afford to buy her new ones. Walking to school, men started honking their horns at her and waving, and she'd wave back. She said, "The whole world became friendly." To avoid returning to an orphanage or another set of foster parents, she was married at 16 to a man named James Dougherty.

During World War II, Monroe got a job at an aircraft factory called Radioplane, where she sprayed glue on fabrics and inspected and folded parachutes. She was working at the factory when a group of photographers showed up to take pictures of women working for the war effort. The photographers noticed her right away, and they persuaded her to become a model. She bleached her hair and began to appear on the covers of magazines.

She got her big break in the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Everyone had been trying to sell her as a "love goddess," but it turned out that she had a gift for comedy.

She died just nine years after that first big success, but her life has been an inspiration to many writers. She has been the subject of more than 300 biographies, including a partially fictionalized biography by Norman Mailer. The poet Sharon Olds wrote a poem about her death. In the novel Motor City (1992), author Bill Morris wrote a fictional version of her wedding day with Joe DiMaggio. Joyce Carol Oates wrote the novel Blonde (2001) about her, and it was nominated for the National Book Award.

Marilyn Monroe said, "I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful."

Marilyn by The Writer's Almanac 

DUMB BLONDE!

MARILYN MONROE

Never make the mistake of thinking Marilyn was her characters. She wasn't . . . . . . . .simply she was a fine actor and comedically brilliant but she was more than that too. 

Marilyn Monroe at The Actor’s Studio in 1955.

“Most of the great stars of the Actors Studio were there to see Marilyn Monroe do Anna Christie. I was there, and it was a night I’ll never forget. She was marvelous. It was Marilyn’s own thing- Marilyn playing this beat down old streetwalker. It was a joke that Marilyn was going to do a scene from Anna Christie. But it was no joke. It was really an extraordinary moment in the theater. She would have been marvelous in the theater.” - John Springer, publicist.

MARILYN

Marilyn by Eve Arnold 

Following on from the pictures of MM with Arthur Miller I have been wanting to post this picture for a while and say something about it. It is by Eve Arnold who I met at the time of a talk she gave for us at Blackwell's Book Shop where I gave her a window display for her then latest book but she gave me prints of Marilyn for display that she hadn't printed in colour before and I was somewhat in awe of her. She was quite the most lovely dignified woman artist I have met and she was allowed to go into 'Gaffer's room'  in the main shop where the Blackwell family kept the most wonderful room exactly as if the gaffer Blackwell who started the shop had just stepped out. William Morris wallpaper etc. 

I love this picture of Marlyn and it tells me, I believe, that Marilyn suffered badly from her monthly cycle and I believe Eve is showing us that side of her subject. I may be wrong but the more I look at it the more I am convinced I am right. I don't think she has gone on record to say so but it is what I believe.  She was trusted by Marilyn more than almost any other photographer. Arnold was able to take the most revealing and candid of shots, with her skirts hitched up or holding her tummy as in here, tired and possibly suffering cramps. I think this is one of the most feminine pictures taken by a woman of a woman it has been my privilege to witness. Marilyn liked other women and whilst many actresses expected the edge and bitchiness, jealousy and competitiveness of starlets they were used to, they were more often than not shocked by her camaraderie and affection, glad to find things otherwise to what they had all come to expect, and she shared an intimacy and a sisterhood that belied her time and place in history.

Marilyn and Arthur Miller

I love these pictures of MM and her then husband the world famous playwright Arthur Miller. Marilyn had difficulty with her relationships but it seems they were both deeply in love here and there may need have been deep motives as to why she went on to have such difficulties but the more I read the one thing above all it seemed she desired was to be a mother and if my research is accurate then I maintain she experienced at least 5 miscarriages in her life, at least two of which whilst with Miller. That their relationship crashed it seems it was a due to a deep deep sadness that caused it to end. 

MARILYN

I have always been obsessed by Marilyn but lately it has grown and deepened. An appreciation of her trying to find her, the person, the vulnerable and adored. I have an understanding as to how bright and sensitive she was, her poetry, her letters and statements. Evidence of her human side rather than being 'her' as she would put it! I have a theory which I am sure is not unique that she was woman shaped and everyone loved her because of it. The camera loved her for a massive variety of reasons but we loved her because she was a universal, a Jungian archetype, the sexy girl woman next door and the glamorous star. Here's more evidence . . . . . . 

American photographer Sam Shaw took these intimate photographs of Marilyn Monroe and her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, eating hot dogs from a New York street stand in 1957.
These photos, taken over the course of 3 days in New York with Marilyn's husband Arthur Miller are especially poignant because they were taken just a month after Marilyn suffered a miscarriage. In every shot she’s so plump and youthful and healthy and full of hope and love, the shots with Miller are intimate and gentle, and you can see his adoration of her and all the comfort he gave her at that point in their relationship.

Personally HOW can she do this?
She is eating for pity's sake!
We all look dreadful with food in our mouth. Not Marilyn! She looks unaware of the camera (she wouldn't have been) she appears natural and unselfconscious. She is with her husband who she adored and it again is my contention that had she been able to conceive they would have stayed together much longer . . . . her some several (at least four) miscarriages bely the tragedy that she was always looking, desperately searching, for someone who could bring her what she needed but it was not to be 

Here is the evidence she is with normal everyday folk and is entirely at home . . . . 

but here in a shift dress looks simply stunningly sexy!

First in a new occasional series of jobs I could have done! 
N.B. The Yosser principle applies (Boys From The Black Stuff - "Gis a job!")

"I could do that!"

No.1 'Test Boy'

Robert Wagner with a seductive Marilyn Monroe on his lap during a test scene for Let’s Make It Legal on June 14, 1951. Wagner was the ‘test boy’ for Fox at the time and played the male lead for actresses being screen tested for possible contracts.

More evidence . . . . . . (as if you need any . . . )

“She treated me more like a friend than a studio associate. Before I would go into a scene to stand in for her, she would come over and fix my hair and my clothes and she’d give me the motivation for the scene, so I would know what I was doing. She was my Paula Strasberg. She was the realest person I ever met.” -Evelyn Moriarty (stand in)

OCCASIONAL POSTINGS of pictures found wandering t'interweb . . . . . . . 

Notes from a lifelong fascination with Marilyn Monroe comes this photo and comments by Eve Arnold. Eve came to my shop at Blackwell's in Oxford (Blackwell's Art & Poster Shop - the brainchild of Eliza Blackwell, wife of Nigel, who was tasked with bringing what had been Parker's book shop into the 20th Century) and she came and gave a talk and I did a window display with originals in the window she was kind enough to lend us. One print she clearly maintained she had never printed in colour before and I was shocked to realise she had printed some off especially for the display. However here it is her revealing the essence of Marilyn's personality that transfixed me. Truly a kind and giving, caring human being she is revealed by this insight. . . . . . . those who clearly delight in the joy of others are to be treasured 

"There is one picture where you see the back of Gable and the front of Marilyn, and there’s a rubber tire somewhere. And she looks very happy and she’s hugging him and that was the moment when he told her he was going to be a father - I knew about it because he told me the day before - and she was so thrilled because there he was 63, expecting his first child, and as you know she’s had some bad luck herself so, she was just delighted with that." 

-Eve Arnold [from Eve & Marilyn documentary]

Marilyn Monroe - poetry

I think it is now pretty much common knowledge that Marilyn wrote poetry and this combined with her marriage to Arthur Miller who encouraged her reading and added depth to her writing. The saddest of love stories in many ways though towards the end he treated her badly, it was a love story none the less and it would seem the several miscarriages MM endured during their time together destroyed their love affair and in the end their marriage. This is well documented elsewhere but it always struck me as the cruellest and unkindest way nature has of crushing such loving relationships. I may have over romanticised this but it stands that her undeniable depth of sadness was her inability to have children. May have been the reason why she drank so heavily and ultimately sent her to an early grave. Either way she is maligned and dismissed too easily. she was undoubtedly bright, intelligent, funny and driven to make herself better than she thought she was.

“I will kiss you and hold you close to me and sensational things will then happen. 

All sorts of slides, rollings, pitchings, rambunctiousness of every kind. 

And then I will sigh. 

And when you rest your head on my shoulder, then slowly I will get HUNGRY.

 I will come again to the kitchen, pretending you are not there and discover you again. And as you stand there cooking breakfast, I will kiss your neck and your back 

and the sweet cantaloupes of your rump and the backs of your knees 

and turn you about 

and kiss your breasts 

and the eggs will burn.”

 – Arthur Miller (a letter to M.M.)

“On the screen of pitch blackness 

/ comes the shapes of monsters 

/ my most steadfast companions … 

/and the world is sleeping 

/ ah peace I need you 

– even a peaceful monster.” 

– Marilyn Monroe (A.M. was the ‘peaceful monster’)

believed to be pregnant

beginning to show - photo Sam Shaw

in love and radiant

Life —
I am of both of your directions
Life
Somehow remaining hanging downward
the most
but strong as a cobweb in the
wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a paintings — ah life they
have cheated you

leaving hospital

Stones on the walk

every color there is

I stare down at you

like

these the

 a horizon —

the space / the air is between us beckoning

and I am many stories

besides

 up

my feet

are

 frightened

from my as I grasp 
for towards you

young young young

Incandescent 

Andre de Dienes an early art shot 1946 

I guess I have always been
deeply terrified at to really be someone’s
wife
since I know from life
one cannot love another,
ever, really

MM poetry from 'Brainpickings'

“A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.” 

― Marilyn Monroe