My Story

13 i didn’t like parties but i liked mr. schenck

I was to go to a number of fancy Hollywood parties and stand among the glamorous figures dressed as well as any of them and laugh as if I were overcome with joy, but I never felt any more at ease than I did the first time I watched from the hallway.

The chief fun people get out of those parties comes the next day when they are able to spread the news of the famous people with whom they associated at So-and-So’s house. Most parties are run on the star system. In Hollywood a star isn’t only an actor or actress or movie executive. It can also be somebody who has recently been arrested for something, or beaten up or exposed in a love triangle. If it was played up in the newspapers then this person is treated as a social star as long as his or her publicity continues.

I don’t know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood important people can’t stand to be invited someplace that isn’t full of other important people. They don’t mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners. But if a star or a studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened as if somebody was trying to demote them.

I could never understand why important people are always so eager to dress up and come together to look at each other. Maybe three or four of them will have something to say to somebody, but the twenty or thirty others will just sit around like lumps on a log and stare at each other with false smiles. The host usually bustles about trying to get the guests involved in some kind of a game or guessing contest. Or he tries to get somebody to make a speech about something so as to start a general argument. But usually the guests fail to respond, and the party just drags on with nothing happening till the Sandman arrives. This is the signal for the guests to start leaving. Nearly everybody draws the line at falling asleep outright at a party.

The reason I went to parties of this sort was to advertise myself. There was always the possibility that someone might insult me or make a pass at me, which would be good publicity if it got into the movie columns. But even if nothing extra happened, just to be reported in the movie columns as having been present at a movie society gathering is very good publicity. Sometimes it is the only favorable mention the movie queens can get. There was also the consideration that if my studio bosses saw me standing among the regular movie stars they might get to thinking of me as a star also.

Going out socially in this fashion was the hardest part of my campaign to make good. But after a few months, I learned how to reduce the boredom considerably. This was to arrive around two hours late at a party. You not only make a special entrance, which was good advertising, but nearly everybody was likely to be drunk by that time. Important people are much more interesting when they are drunk and seem much more like human beings.

There is another side of a Hollywood party that is very important socially. It is a place where romances are made and unmade. Nearly everybody who attends an important party not only hopes to get favorably mentioned in the movie columns but also to fall in love or get started on a new seduction before the evening is over. It is hard to explain how you can fall in love while you are being bored to death, but I know it’s true, because it happened to me several times.

As soon as I could afford an evening gown, I bought the loudest one I could find. It was a bright red low cut dress, and my arrival in it usually infuriated half the women present. I was sorry in a way to do this, but I had a long way to go, and I needed a lot of advertising to get there.

The first fame I achieved was a wave of gossip that identified me as Joe Schenck’s girl. Mr. Schenck had invited me to his Beverly Hills mansion for dinner one evening. Then he fell into the habit of inviting me two or three times a week.

I went to Mr. Schenck’s mansion the first few times because he was one of the heads of my studio. After that I went because I liked him. Also the food was very good, and there were always important people at the table. These weren’t party figures but were Mr. Schenck’s personal friends.

I seldom spoke three words during dinner but would sit at Mr. Schenck’s elbow and listen like a sponge. The fact that people began to talk about me being Joe Schenck’s girl didn’t annoy me at first. But later it did annoy me. Mr. Schenck never so much as laid a finger on my wrist, or tried to. He was interested in me because I was a good table ornament and because I was what he called an “offbeat” personality.

I liked sitting around the fireplace with Mr. Schenck and hearing him talk about love and sex. He was full of wisdom on these subjects, like some great explorer. I also liked to look at his face. It was as much the face of a town as of a man. The whole history of Hollywood was in it.

Perhaps the chief reason I was happy to have won Mr. Schenck’s friendship was the great feeling of security it gave me. As a friend and protégée of one of the heads of my own studio, what could go wrong for me?

I got the answer to that question one Monday morning. I was called into the casting department and informed that I was being dropped by the studio and that my presence would no longer be required. I couldn’t talk. I sat listening and unable to move.

The casting official explained that I had been given several chances and that while I had acquitted myself fairly well it was the opinion of the studio that I was not photogenic. That was the reason, he said, that Mr. Zanuck had had me cut out of the pictures in which I had played bit parts.

“Mr. Zanuck feels that you may turn into an actress sometime,” said the official, “but that your type of looks is definitely against you.”

I went to my room and lay down in bed and cried. I cried for a week. I didn’t eat or talk or comb my hair. I kept crying as if I were at a funeral burying Marilyn Monroe.

It wasn’t only that I’d been fired. If they had dropped me because I couldn’t act it would have been bad enough. But it wouldn’t have been fatal. I could learn, improve, and become an actress. But how could I ever change my looks? And I’d thought that was the part of me that couldn’t miss!

And imagine how wrong my looks must be if even Mr. Schenck had to agree to fire me. I lay crying day after day. I hated myself for having been such a fool and had illusions about how attractive I was. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. Something horrible had happened. I wasn’t attractive. I saw a coarse, crude-looking blonde. I was looking at myself with Mr. Zanuck’s eyes. And I saw what he had seen—a girl whose looks were too big a handicap for a career in the movies.

The phone rang. Mr. Schenck’s secretary invited me to dinner. I went. I sat through the evening feeling too ashamed to look into anyone’s eyes. That’s the way you feel when you’re beaten inside. You don’t feel angry at those who’ve beaten you. You just feel ashamed. I had tasted this shame early—when a family would kick me out and send me back to the orphanage.

When we were sitting in the living room Mr. Schenck said to me, “How are things going at the studio?”

I smiled at him because I was glad he hadn’t had a hand in my being fired.

“I lost my job there last week,” I said.

Mr. Schenck looked at me and I saw a thousand stories in his face—stories of all the girls he had known who had lost jobs, of all the actresses he had heard boasting and giggling with success and then moaning and sobbing with defeat. He didn’t try to console me. He didn’t take my hand or make any promises. The history of Hollywood looked out of his tired eyes at me and he said, “Keep going.”

“I will,” I said.

“Try X Studio,” Mr. Schenck said. “There might be something there.”

When I was leaving Mr. Schenck’s house I said to him, “I’d like to ask you a personal question. Do I look any different to you than I used to?”

“You look the same as always,” said Mr. Schenck, “only get some sleep and quit crying.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I called X Studio two days later. The casting department was very polite. Yes, they had a place for me. They would put me on the payroll and see that I was given a chance at any part that came up. Mr. A., the casting director, smiled, squeezed my hand and added, “You ought to go a long way here. I’ll watch out for a good part for you.”

I returned to my room at the Studio Club feeling alive again. And the daydreams started coming back—kind of on tiptoe. The casting director saw hundreds of girls every week, whom he turned down, real actresses and beauties of every sort. There must be something special about me for him to have hired me right off, after a first look.

There was something special about me in the casting director’s eyes, but I didn’t find it out till much later. Mr. Schenck had called up the head of X Studio and asked him as a favor to give me a job.

I received several “extra girl” calls from the studio and worked in a few scenes as “background.” Then one day Mr. A., the casting director, telephoned. He wanted me in his office at four o’clock. I spent the day bathing and fixing my hair and reciting out loud different parts I had learned. And giving myself instructions. This was the big chance. Mr. A. wouldn’t have called me himself if it wasn’t for a real part. But I musn’t act overeager, or start babbling, or grin with joy. I must sit quietly and have dignity every minute.

Mr. A. wasn’t in his office, but his secretary smiled at me and told me to go inside and wait for him.

I sat straight in one of Mr. A’s inner office chairs waiting and practicing dignity. A door at the back of the office opened, and a man came in. I had never met him, but I knew who he was. He was head of X Studio, and as great a man as Mr. Schenck or Mr. Zanuck.

“Hello, Miss Monroe,” he said.

He came over to me, put his hand on my arm, and said, “Come on, we’ll go in my office and talk.”

“I don’t think I can leave,” I said. “I’m waiting for Mr. A. He telephoned me about a part.”

“The hell with Mr. A.,” said the great man. “He’ll know where you are.”

I hesitated, and he added, “What’s the matter with you? You dopey or something? Don’t you know I’m the boss around here?”

I followed him through the back door into an office three times larger than Mr. A’s.

“Turn around,” said the great man. I turned like a model.

“You look all right,” he grinned. “Nicely put together.”

I said, “Thank you.”

“Sit down,” he said, “I want to show you something.”

The great man rummaged through his oversized desk. I looked at his office. The tables were full of bronze Oscars and silver cups and all sorts of other prizes he had won with his movies. I had never seen an office like this before—the office where the head of an entire studio presided. Here was where all the great stars, producers, and directors came for conferences, and where all the decisions were made by the great man behind his battleship of a desk.

“Hold all calls,” the great man spoke into a box on the desk. He beamed at me. “Here’s what I wanted to show you.”

He brought a large photograph to my chair. It was a picture of a yacht.

“How do you like it?” he asked.

“It’s very beautiful,” I said.

“You’re invited,” he said. He put his hand on my neck.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve never been to a party on a yacht.”

“Who said anything about a party,” the great man scowled at me. “I’m inviting you, nobody else. Do you want to come, or not?”

“I’ll be glad to join you and your wife on your yacht, Mr. X.,” I said.

The great man looked fiercely at me.

“Leave my wife out of this,” he said. “There’ll be nobody on the yacht except you and me. And some expensive sailors. We’ll leave in an hour. And we’ll take a cruise overnight. I have to be back tomorrow evening for my wife’s dinner party. No way of getting out of it.”

He stopped and scowled at me again.

“What’s the idea of standing there and staring at me,” he demanded, “like I had insulted you. I know who you are. You’re Joe Schenck’s girl. He called me up to do him a favor and give you a job. Is that a reason for you to get insulting?”

I smiled at the great man.

“I don’t mean to be insulting, Mr. X,” I said.

“Good,” he was beaming again. “We’ll have a fine cruise, and I can tell you now, you won’t regret it.”

He put his arms around me. I didn’t move.

“I’m very grateful to you for the invitation, Mr. X,” I said, “but I’m busy this week and so I shall have to refuse it.”

His arm dropped from me. I started for the door. He stood still, and I felt I had to say something else. He was a great man, and he held my future in his hands. Seducing employees was just a normal routine for him. I mustn’t act as if I thought he was some kind of monster, or he would never—

I turned in the doorway. Mr. X was standing glaring at me. I had never seen a man so angry. I made my voice as casual and friendly as I could.

“I hope you invite me some time again when I can accept your invitation,” I said.

The great man pointed his finger at me.

“This is your last chance,” he said fiercely.

I walked through the door and out of the office where movie stars were made.

“Maybe he’s watching me,” I thought. “I mustn’t let him see me upset.”

I drove to my room in my car. Yes, there was something special about me, and I knew what it was. I was the kind of girl they found dead in a hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand.