The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

^* 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. Here’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.”

^* Casillo cites an interesting comment from her, made shortly before her death, to Life magazine’s Richard Merryman: “Sometimes I’m invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who’ll play the piano after dinner, and I know [I’m] not really invited for myself. You’re just an ornament.”

^* Later Marilyn recalled in a letter to Dr. Ralph Greenson, “There were screaming women in their cells—I mean they screamed out when life was unbearable for them, I guess—and at times like this I felt an available psychiatrist should have talked to them, perhaps to alleviate even temporarily their misery and pain. I think they (the doctors) might learn something, even—but they are interested only in something they studied in their books. Maybe from some life-suffering human being they could discover more.”

^* Despite all of the confusion in her life, Marilyn always managed to be kind to her fans. Also, despite all of the upset in her life, she still managed to keep her sense of humor. Here’s a good story: Back in 1960, the first-ever biography of Marilyn Monroe was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, written by Maurice Zolotow. She wasn’t happy with it—just on principle; she probably didn’t read it. Her friend and longtime fan James Haspiel had Zolotow sign a copy of the book to him. Afterward, he wanted nothing more than to have Marilyn sign it as well. Therefore, when he felt the time was right—in June 1961—he asked her if she would do so. She frowned, then said she would sign it—and that it would be “the only copy of this book I will ever sign.” She opened to the page Zolotow had signed. It said, “To Jim Haspiel—who could have written a better book on MM—Sincerely, Maurice Zolotow.” Then she took a pen and scrawled right below it, “That’s right! Marilyn Monroe xoxo.”

^* In February 1962, Frank Sinatra would announce his intention to marry the dancer Juliet Prowse. While promoting his third memoir, Why Me? Sammy Davis Jr. said that the engagement was Frank’s way of putting distance between himself and Marilyn. “Marilyn was a sweetheart, but Frank had his hands full with her,” Sammy recalled. “Next thing I knew, I get a call from him telling me he’s involved with Juliet and going to marry her. I know it had to do with Marilyn in some way; him trying to break from her.”

^* Perhaps Marilyn Monroe historian Charles Casillo best put these events into perspective: “Clearly, Michael Selsman showed poor judgment in bringing Carol Lynley to Marilyn’s house uninvited. Imagine! Bringing a beautiful younger blonde actress (from the same studio) to a private meeting to discuss publicity photographs with Marilyn Monroe? And Carol was pregnant, to boot! He knew that Marilyn had been unable to have children. Bad call. Bad judgment. Also, maybe it wasn’t so outrageous that Marilyn destroyed the negatives by cutting them into tiny pieces. With any other star, it would have sufficed to simply cross them out with a red grease pencil. With Marilyn, any scrap of her was valuable and would eventually be exploited. No one understood that better than Marilyn herself. Look at what happened after she scratched out the photos she disliked taken by Bert Stern on the negative. Soon after she died, he released them—all scratched and crossed out! And years after that, they were digitally retouched so that her mark of disapproval was erased forever.”

^* A classic Newcomb/Murray story is this one: Eunice Murray, in the last months of Marilyn’s life, said to her, “Pat Newcomb is going all over town telling everybody she’s your best friend.” In her peculiar genius, Marilyn retorted, “Eunice, if she were my best friend, she wouldn’t have to tell anybody.” Of course, as interesting as that story is, it does come via Eunice Murray, and there was definitely no love lost between her and Pat.

^* Jacobs says that his boss, Frank Sinatra, never indulged in dalliances at Pat’s home, “because he had too much respect for her… more, I guess, than her own brother.”

^* On her revised script for Something’s Got to Give (dated February 12, 1962), Marilyn recognized that the story was still not a good one. She wrote on the title page, “We’ve got a dog here—so we’ve got to look for impacts in a different way, or as Mr. [Nunnally] Johnson says, the situation.” On page 12, she noted, “The only people on earth I get on well with is [sic] men so let’s have some fun with this opening scene.” And on page 23, she commented on Cyd Charisse’s character, “Let’s remember she is frigid—We all know what Kinsey found out about most females.”

^* Nunziata Lisi, a friend of Jackie’s sister Lee Radziwill, recalled, “Lee told me that there wasn’t a big fight between Jackie and JFK over the matter of Marilyn at Madison Square Garden. She just made a quiet decision that if he wasn’t going to care about her feelings—if he didn’t care that she would be humiliated—then, fine. She just wasn’t going to go and there would be nothing he could do to persuade her otherwise. She told Lee, ‘Life is too short to worry about Marilyn Monroe.’ She would take the children to the Glen Ora retreat, a couple hours outside of Washington, where she enjoyed riding her horses.”

^* Marilyn Monroe historian James Haspiel recounts this story: “[The actress] Sheree North told me that when she was at 20th Century-Fox one day, she ran into Allen ‘Whitey’ Snyder, who was pacing outside of a closed door, very frustrated. She asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘Marilyn is in there and she won’t let me in. She’s making up her own face.’ I’m not saying Whitey never made up her face. Of course, he did. But there were times when all he needed to do was make a touch-up. She—Marilyn—was the real master of that look.”

^* Because of the nature of his service to Marilyn Monroe, this doctor asked for anonymity. Therefore, we are using a pseudonym to protect his identity.

^* Frank Mankiewicz was the son of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who cowrote Citizen Kane with Orson Welles. They both won Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay for the 1941 film.

^* Of course, Elizabeth Taylor had just been paid a million for only one film—Cleopatra—but that was an unprecedented deal in the business. Considering that Marilyn was only compensated $100,000 for Something’s Got to Give, this new contract was quite amazing and also one of the biggest in show business up until that time. Beyond its obvious financial reward, it marked a big personal win for her, too. That she and Fox were able to come to these terms despite everything that had occurred on the set of her most recent film suggests that the studio had finally begun to understand just how valuable a property Marilyn was to them—at whatever financial inconvenience it may have been when she worked on a movie.

^* “At the side of her bed was a lot of Seconal, which I had never given her,” said Dr. Engelberg. “Also, her liver showed that she had a lot of chloral hydrate. I never gave her chloral hydrate and I don’t think any doctor in the United States gave it to her. She must have bought it in Tijuana.

^* While Marilyn may have had certain projects in the offing, the fact remains that she was still in financial straits at the end of her life. In a letter dated June 25, 1962, her attorney, Mickey Rudin, warned her, “I feel obligated to caution you on your expenditures since at the rate you have been making those expenditures, you will spend the $13,000 in a very short period of time and we will then have to consider where to borrow additional monies.” As stated earlier in this text, Marilyn always had financial problems.