A Note to the Readers of the Electronic Edition of Fragments

Fragments was originally formatted for hardcover publication, and though every effort has been made to simulate the original book’s layout and design features for the electronic edition, the arrangement of the e-book text does not always correspond to the original version. The transcripts of Marilyn Monroe’s writing feature text in various colors, indicating where editors have made corrections for clarity; on a black and white device, the alterations will not be differentiated. Finally, to adapt the book to an electronic format, image resolution has been reduced. For higher resolution versions of all of the images, please consult the hardcover edition.

CONTENTS

Editors’ note

Personal note (1943)

Undated poems

“Record” black notebook (around 1951)

Other “Record” notebook (around 1955)

Waldorf-Astoria stationery (1955)

Italian agenda (1955 or 1956)

Parkside House stationery (1956)

Roxbury notes (1958)

Red livewire notebook (1958)

Fragments and notes

Kitchen notes (1955 or 1956)

Lee and Paula Strasberg

Letter to Dr. Hohenberg (1956)

Letter to Dr. Greenson (1961)

Written answers to an interview (1962)

SUPPLEMENTS

Some books from Marilyn Monroe’s library

The favorite photo

Funeral eulogy by Lee Strasberg

Chronology

Literary constellation

Acknowledgments

EDITORS’ NOTE

Norma Jeane Mortenson was born under the sign of Gemini, and she described herself as having two natures: “Jekyll and Hyde, two in one.” Even the initials of her stage name (which, according to one story, were suggested to her by the clearly visible “M”s formed by the lines of her palms) supported this duality, as did the pseudonym, Zelda Zonk, that she used while escaping incognito from Hollywood to New York.

In her lifetime, under pressure from the studios, the media created a joyful and radiant image of Marilyn Monroe, even to the point of making her out to be a “dumb blonde.” One remembers her parts in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire, and Let’s Make Love. Anything contrary to this artificial image was not welcome. There was no room for a melancholic Marilyn. The icon was not allowed to have an opposite side.

Yet, like a medal, she did have two sides. The sunny and luminous one of the sparkling blonde, and the darker one of the excessive perfectionist who sought absolutes and for whom life (work, friendships, and love affairs) could only lead to disappointment. “I think I have a gay side in me and also a sad side,” Marilyn confided in an interview.

Her friend Marlon Brando expressed perfectly the shock people felt when her death was announced: “Everybody stopped work, and you could see all that day the same expressions on their faces, the same thought: ‘How can a girl with success, fame, youth, money, beauty…how could she kill herself?’ Nobody could understand it because those are the things that everybody wants, and they can’t believe that life wasn’t important to Marilyn Monroe, or that her life was elsewhere.”

There are thousands of photographs of this icon. Her image has been used in many, sometimes brutal, ways. But in this book a new world of truthfulness and overwhelming clarity is being thrown open. A hitherto unknown and unseen Marilyn is revealed.

On her death in 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s personal possessions were bequeathed to Lee Strasberg, and when he in turn died in 1982, his young widow, Anna Strasberg, inherited this large and uncataloged collection, which included dresses, cosmetics, pictures, books, receipts, and so forth. Many years later, while sorting out Lee Strasberg’s papers, she found two boxes of poems and other manuscripts written by Marilyn. Not knowing what to do with these, she asked a family friend, Stanley Buchthal, for advice. Some months later, at an art collectors’ dinner, Stanley told Bernard Comment, a French essayist and editor, about Anna Strasberg’s find in order to get his opinion of the unpublished materials. That was the start of the adventure that became this book.

As far as has been possible to determine, the texts are placed in chronological order. Words printed in red are the editors’ and correct spelling mistakes, add missing words, or suggest possible readings of indecipherable words. The ordering of fragments of very disparate documents has been an attempt at reconstruction and hence at interpretation. The flow of Marilyn’s thoughts on individual pages, and from one successive page to another, is indicated by red arrows (black arrows are Marilyn’s own).

It is possible that other texts written by Marilyn will surface in the years or decades to come. For the moment, this book contains every available text, excepting her technical notes on acting. In any case, these writings reveal a young woman who was dissatisfied with issues of surface appearance and who was seeking the truth at the heart of both things and people.

Only lovers of clichés will be surprised that the Hollywood actress was passionately fond of literature, although this fact cannot be illustrated merely by the pictures collected in this book. (Still: how many actresses from that period do we know who sometimes took pains to be photographed reading or holding a book?) In a 1960 interview with the French journalist Georges Belmont, Marilyn recalled the beginning of her career: “Nobody could imagine what I did when I wasn’t shooting, because they didn’t see me at previews or premieres or parties. It’s simple: I was going to school! I’d never finished high school, so I started going to UCLA at night, because during the day I had small parts in pictures. I took courses in the history of literature and the history of this country, and I started to read a lot, stories by wonderful writers.” Her library contained four hundred books, ranging from such classics as Milton, Dostoyevsky, and Whitman to contemporary writers, including Hemingway, Beckett, and Kerouac.

Arthur Miller played a part in her development as a reader, too, recommending Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, which she devoured. But some years before they were involved, Marilyn had already tackled James Joyce’s Ulysses.

As we know, Marilyn inspired numerous painters: Dalí, De Kooning, and Warhol, among others. She also felt a real interest in painting—in the painters of the Italian Renaissance, such as Botticelli; Goya, especially his demons (“I know this man very well, we have the same dreams, I have had the same dreams since I was a child”); Degas, whose ballet dancer she gazed at in wonder when taken to see a private collection; and also Rodin, whose Hand of God she admired at length in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From all these examples emerges a cultured and curious Marilyn who had a strong desire to understand others, the outside world, destiny, and, of course, herself. She took notes, swiftly setting down her feelings and thoughts and expressing her wonder. Some may be surprised at her spelling mistakes, in which, most probably, a form of dyslexia is detectable. But readers of Marcel Proust’s correspondence (Marilyn read Swann’s Way on the set of Love Nest in 1951) will have seen worse. The very Proust who, answering the question “to which failings are you most lenient?” replied unhesitatingly, “spelling mistakes,” and who, in one of his letters, wrote this strange and beautiful phrase: “Each spelling mistake is the expression of a desire.”

The collection of documents revealed here is nothing less than a treasure trove. We owe its appearance to Anna Strasberg and her sons, Adam and David, who, during the preparation of this book, have embraced the opportunity to uncover a hitherto undervalued, even unknown dimension of Marilyn’s personality. From beginning to end we have shared their desire to create a book that, we would like to think, would have pleased its author. Marilyn once confessed to a journalist: “I think Lee probably changed my life more than any other human being. That’s why I love to go to the Actors Studio whenever I’m in New York.” Perhaps Strasberg, more than other people, had sensed who Marilyn really was.

One of the remarkable insights these documents offer is the sense that Marilyn was, until the end, planning for the future. Among other projects, she hoped over time to play the great Shakespearean roles, from Juliet to Lady Macbeth. She also pursued her idea of creating a new production company in association with Marlon Brando.

Some texts will give rise to interpretation and comment. But there is nothing dirty or low, no gossip in this book; that was not Marilyn’s way. What the notes reveal is intimacy without showiness, the seismic measuring of a soul. They take nothing away from Marilyn’s mystery but rather make the mystery more material. She was an elusive star with a magnetic force that sent compasses haywire whenever she got close.

To this day, her face, her eyes, her lips appear all around the world. Innumerable actors and pop singers take her as a reference, a definitive model: to sound like her, to act like her, in advertisements and music videos and films. Songs are composed for her—among them this famous one, by Elton John and Bernie Taupin: “Goodbye Norma Jeane (…) / Loneliness was tough / The toughest role you ever played / Hollywood created a superstar / And pain was the price you paid / Even when you died / Oh the press still hounded you / All the papers had to say / Was that Marilyn was found in the nude.”

This book does not attempt to show her stripped bare but, rather, simply as she was. Through these poems and written papers, she’s more alive than ever.

Stanley Buchthal

Bernard Comment

Jim Dougherty and Norma Jeane, Catalina Island, fall of 1943

PERSONAL NOTE

1943

Norma Jeane married James Dougherty when

she turned sixteen, the age of consent in California,

on June 19, 1942, thereby escaping the threat of

being returned to an orphanage when her foster

family moved out of state. Dougherty was born in

April 1921 and was five years older than she was.

At the end of 1943, the young couple settled for

a few months on Catalina Island off the coast of

Los Angeles, a fashionable resort before the war.

It is likely that this long note, uncharacteristically

typed, was written at this time.

One can’t help being surprised, even impressed,

by the maturity of this seventeen-year-old girl,

whose feelings of disillusionment are plain from the

first sentence, as she examines her marriage and

what she expects from life, and faces the fear of her

husband’s betrayal. Nevertheless, the

disjointedness of the text reveals turbulent

emotions.

The “other woman” she mentions might be

a reference to Doris Ingram, her young

husband’s former girlfriend and a

Santa Barbara beauty queen.

The couple were divorced on

September 13, 1946.

Marilyn during the filming of Niagara, 1952

Marilyn reading Heinrich Heine

UNDATED POEMS

Marilyn Monroe wrote poemlike texts or fragments on loose-leaf paper and in notebooks. She showed her work only to intimate friends, in particular to Norman Rosten, a college friend of Arthur Miller with whom she became very close. A Brooklyn-based novelist, he encouraged Marilyn to continue writing. In the book he wrote about her (Marilyn Among Friends), he concluded, “She had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but she lacked the control.”

It is likely that the poetic form, or more generally the fragment, allowed her to express short, lightning bursts of feeling—but who could hear that frail voice, the very opposite of the radiant star? Arthur Miller wrote strikingly: “To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.”

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

Note: Marilyn apparently wrote several variations on the theme of the twofold course of life (“life in both directions”) and the delicate, sometimes invisible “cobweb,” revealed by dew and resistant to wind—in particular a poem entitled “To the Weeping Willow” that was published in Norman Rosten’s book about Marilyn: “I stood beneath your limbs / And you flowered and finally / clung to me, / and when the wind struck with the earth / and sand—you clung to me. / Thinner than a cobweb I, / sheerer than any—/ but it did attach itself / and held fast in strong winds / life—of which at singular times / I am both of your directions—/ somehow I remain hanging downward the most, / as both of your directions pull me.”

Oh damn I wish that I were

dead—absolutely nonexistent—

gone away from here—from

everywhere but how would I do it

There is always bridges—the Brooklyn

bridge—no not the Brooklyn Bridge

because But I love that bridge (everything is beautiful from there

and the air is so clean) walking it seems

peaceful there even with all those

cars going crazy underneath. So

it would have to be some other bridge

an ugly one and with no view—except

I particularly like in particular all bridges—there’s some

thing about them and besides these I’ve

never seen an ugly bridge

Stones on the walk

every color there is

I stare down at you

like those 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

Only parts of us will ever

touch only parts of others—

one’s own truth is just

that really—one’s own truth.

We can only share the

part that is understood by within another’s knowing acceptable to

the other—therefore so one

is for most part alone.

As it is meant to be in evidently in nature—at best though perhaps it could make

our understanding seek

another’s loneliness out.

I can’t really stand Human

Beings sometimes—I know

they all have their problems

as I have mine—but I’m really too tired for it. Trying to understand,

making allowances, seeing certain things

that just weary me.

On Hospital gowns

My bare

(darrie) derrière

is out the air

in the air

when I’m not aware

aware

several

Handel Concertos

Vivaldi Concertos

Benny Goodman

My (pair)

Beethoven

Last 6—quartets

Ravel—the Waltz

Bartok—quartets of his

continued on other side

of list of records

Marilyn in the garden of Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, 1952 Marilyn reading Joyce’s Ulysses, Long Island, summer of 1955

“RECORD” BLACK NOTEBOOK

AROUND 1951

As she often did, Marilyn filled only a few pages of this notebook, about twelve out of the hundred and fifty it contains and at obviously distinct periods. The first pages open with a heartfelt “Alone!!!” followed by reflections on fear and feelings that can’t be put into words; these were probably jotted down in response to acting classes, which may have been those given by Michael Chekhov that she started attending in September 1951. On page 135 of the notebook, there is a poignant text about the panicky fear that sometimes overtook her when she was about to shoot a scene because of her dread of disappointing; her deep-seated sense that, despite the good work she had done, the bad outweighed it, sapping her confidence. Here the language is very strong: “depressed mad.”

On page 146, she jotted down in pencil one of the few lines she delivered in Love Nest (1951), a film by Joseph M. Newman, in the supporting but nonetheless crucial role of Roberta Stevens, who was the former wartime (girl?)friend of the hero, Jim Scott. The notes on pages 148 and 149 of the notebook indicate diligent reading on the Florentine Renaissance, unless they are class notes from courses she attended at UCLA in the fall of 1950, after she had already begun acting in films. However, this school-like exercise is surrounded by an older story that most likely preceded her star status, as she writes of traveling in a crowded bus. Could this have been the same bus in which she met sixty likable Italian sailors, then a headily perfumed Filipino boy, ending up, half-crushed by a sleeping five-year-old almost slipping from his young mother’s arms, in the middle of sailors far too young to feel sad?

Alone!!!!!

I am alone—I am always

alone

no matter what.

Look Mag

Hu 27291

Rupert Allan

There is nothing to fear

but fear itself

What do I believe in

What is truth

I believe in myself

even my most delicate

intangible feelings

in the end everything is

intangible

my most precious liquid must

never spill don’t spill your precious liquid

life force

they are all my feelings

no matter what

My feeling doesn’t

happen to swell

into words—

Note: Rupert Allan met Marilyn in 1959. As the West Coast editor of Look magazine, he had secured Marilyn her first cover photo, which appeared on June 3, 1952. This may explain her reference “Look Mag.” Subsequently, Rupert Allan became Marilyn’s press agent and remained such up until the end of the filming of The Misfits, when he accepted Grace Kelly’s offer to work for her in Monaco.

Actress must have no mouth

no feet

shoulder girdle hangs light

hanging

so-o-o

loose

everything

focus my thought on

the partner—

feeling in the end of

my fingers

Nothing must come

between me and my

part—my feeling—

concentration

The feeling only

getting rid of everything

else

my mind speaks

no looks

body only

letting go—face feeling

mind

spirit

no attitude

listening to the body for

the feeling

listen with the eyes

buoyancy

Tension

loose—having no brakes

letting go of everything.

feeling only—all I have to

do is think it. How do

I hear the melody—the

Tone springs from emotion

Tone—groans and moans—“I’m (animals—“down to the hogs”)

so sick”—hums from

with cat—hum—nice kitty soft.

starts from below my feet

feet—all in my feet.

What is my pantomime playing with

How is my head?

as if I might never

speak move

transparency.

letting go.

down down in back.

pulling up from here.

right tension stomach

[illegible] only

Fear of giving me the lines new

maybe won’t be able to learn them

maybe I’ll make mistakes

people will either think I’m no good or

laugh or belittle me or think I can’t act.

Women looked stern and critical—

unfriendly and cold in general

afraid director won’t think I’m any good.

remembering when I couldn’t do a god

damn thing.

then trying to build myself up with the

fact that I have done things right that

were even good and have had moments

that were excellent but the bad is heavier

to carry around and feel have no confidence

depressed mad

Pardon me

are you the janitor’s

wife

caught a Greyhound

Bus from Monterey

to Salinas. On the

Bus I was the only person

woman with about

sixty italian fishermen

and I’ve never met

sixty such charming gentlemen—they

were wonderful. Some

company was sending them

downstate where their boats

and (they hoped) fish were

waiting for them. Some

could hardly speak english

not only do I love Greeks

[illegible] I love Italians.

they’re so warm, lusty and friendly

as hell—I’d love to go to

Italy someday.

Notes:

The sentence of the notebook is one of the few lines Marilyn had to say in Love Nest (1951), so we may assume that these notes—at any rate, the ones written in pencil—date from the same period.

In February 1948, Marilyn went to the California towns of Salinas and Castroville in order to promote diamond sales in two jewelry stores. She stayed at the Jeffery Hotel in Salinas for a week.

Medici 1400 AD–1748

Prototype—first type

Giovanni di Bicci first foundling home

Bronze doors in the

in Florence 1424

Ghiberti 23 perspective

used his great architect

Brunelleschi 22

Donatello 1386–1466

Masaccio 1401–1428 father of modern art (reality

poverty careless about his painting)

life except his painting—

Giovanni di Bicci responsible

for him. His work never recognized

until after his death.

The Pantheon—temple

Greek philosophy—golden mean

(neither too big—or too small)

kept ousted old pope

gave money for temples for Brunelleschi

elected him Signoria

Gonfaloniere (governing body)

(pres)

Grande—nobles

Macchiavelli (1469–1527) Botticelli

damn near broke my back

and dislocated my neck trying not to

sleep all over the filipino boy

Moved my seat when a

[illegible] left the bus—the

only empty seat so

I left mine for so the

girl could sit her kid

down and I took the

other seat. It was next to

a filipino boy and

he smelled good like

flowers.

Marilyn with a book about Goya, around 1953 Marilyn and Degas sculpture, Los Angeles, 1956

OTHER “RECORD” NOTEBOOK

AROUND 1955

This black notebook has a smoother cover than the preceding one. Only the first few pages have been filled; pages 3 and 4 have disappeared, because Marilyn either ripped out the sheet to write on, or did so on rereading it. It is likely that this group of notes, which is coherent and forms a certain continuity, dates from the time Marilyn started working with Lee Strasberg, around 1955. A sincere effort at introspection can be observed as the star returned to her childhood and the lifelong fears it engendered. Aunt Ida is probably Ida Martin (rather than Ida Bolender, with whom Marilyn also stayed as a child). Ida Martin was the mother of Marilyn’s aunt by marriage, an evangelical Christian and strict disciplinarian who emphasized obedience and was repressive about sexual issues in general; she may also have made the twelve-year-old Norma Jeane feel guilty for an episode in which she said she had been molested. To no longer feel ashamed of what you were, of what you desired: this was what Marilyn, who had made her childhood dream come true by becoming an actress, was now aiming for. We may also assume that she had just started psychoanalysis, as she pointed out the bent of the unconscious to forget and repress, an impulse she urged herself to struggle against by trying to reclaim memory in order to be able to accept herself fully. She experienced work as a way of freeing herself from the constraints and shackles of the past, and these pages can be read as an outline of self-analysis, both gripping and moving.

to know reality (or

things as they are than

to have not to know

and to have few

illusions as possible—

train my will now

working (doing my tasks that I

have set for myself)

On the stage—I will

not be punished for it

or be whipped

or be threatened

or not be loved

or sent to hell to burn with bad people

or feeling that I am also bad.

or be afraid of my genitals being

or ashamed

exposed known and seen—

so what

or ashamed of my sensitive feelings—

they are reality

or colors or screaming or doing

nothing

and I do have feeling

very strongly sexed feeling

since a small child—(think of all the

things I felt then

I do know ways people

act unconventionally—mainly

myself—do not be afraid of

my sensitivity or to

use it—for I

can & will channel it + crazy thoughts too

I want to do my scene or exercises

([illegible] idiotic as they seem)

as sincerely as possible I

can knowing and showing

how I know it is also—no

matter—what they might

think—or judge from it

I can and will help

myself and work on

things analytically no

matter how painful—if I

forget things (the unconscious

wants to

forget—I will only try to remember)

Discipline—Concentration

my body is my body every part of it.

feel what I feel

within myself—that is trying to

become aware of it

also what I feel in others

not being ashamed of my

feeling, thoughts—or ideas

realize the thing that

they are—

having a sense of myself

Marilyn reading To the Actor by Michael Chekhov, New York, 1955 Marilyn writing at home, May 1953

WALDORF-ASTORIA STATIONERY

1955

Marilyn Monroe’s immense popular appeal had at last been recognized by the Hollywood elite, who had gathered together at a party given in her honor by Charles Feldman, the producer of The Seven Year Itch, on November 6, 1954, at the Beverly Hills Romanoff. Still dissatisfied with what Hollywood had to offer, Marilyn decided to leave the West Coast for New York and set up Marilyn Monroe Productions with the photographer Milton Greene. This was a tremendous challenge to the all-powerful studios and a gesture for which she would never really be fully forgiven. From then on her life would swing between the West Coast and the East Coast, a contest between the movie-star image and the cultural and artistic self-invention that the Actors Studio and her New York acquaintances made possible. After a few weeks spent at the Gladstone Hotel, she stayed in a three-room suite on the twenty-seventh floor of the Waldorf-Astoria from April to September 1955. The following documents were written on this prestigious hotel’s stationery. They include a long prose poem, the account of a nightmarish dream that is full of surprises (not least her drama teacher turning into a surgeon), thoughts and notes about what Lee Strasberg had said (she misspelled his name with a double “s”) during the classes she attended at the Actors Studio, the draft of a letter to a certain “Claude,” and a list of song titles. Some of these documents are discontinuous, and the links between texts, which might have been written in any order, have been left to the reader’s discernment.

Sad, sweet trees—

I wish for you—rest

but you must be wakeful

Sooooo many lights in the darkness

making skeletons of buildings

and life in the streets

The things What were was it I thought about yesterday

down in the streets?

It now seems so far away up here long ago

and moon so full and dark.

It’s better I learned they told me as a child what it was

for I could not guess it or understand it now.

Noises from of impatience from cab drivers always driving who

must drive—hot, dusty, snowing icy streets so they

can eat, and perhaps save for a vacation, in which they

will can drive their wives all the way across the

country to see her relatives.

Then the river—the part made of pepsi cola—the park—thank god for the park

Yet I am not looking at these things

I’m looking for my lover

It’s good they told me what

the moon was when I was a child.

What was that now—

just a moment ago—

from it was mine and

now it’s gone—like the

swift movement of a moment

gone—

maybe I’ll remember

because it felt

as though it

started to be wonderful

only mine

Best finest surgeon—Strasberg

waits to cut me open which I don’t mind since Dr. H

has prepared me—given me anaesthetic

and has also diagnosed the case and

agrees with what has to be done—

an operation—to bring myself back to

life and to cure me of this terrible dis-ease

whatever the hell it is—

Arthur is the only one waiting in the outer

room—worrying and hoping operation successful

for many reasons—for myself—for his play and

for himself indirectly

Hedda—concerned—keeps calling on phone during

operation—Norman—keeps stopping by hospital to

see if I’m okay but mostly to comfort Art

who is so worried—

Milton calls from big office with lots of room

and everything in good taste—and is conducting

business in a new way with style—and music

is playing and he is relaxed and enjoying himself even if

he is very worried at the same time—there’s a camera

on his desk but he doesn’t take pictures anymore except

of great paintings.

Strasberg cuts me open after Dr. H gives me

Make no more promises

make no more

explanations—if possible.

Regarding Anne Karger

after this make no

commitments or tie

myself down to engagements

in future—to save

not being able to keep

them and mostly to

avoid feeling guilty

which is now the

case.

Notes:

Anne Karger was the mother of the man sometimes identified as Marilyn's first real love, Fred Karger, whom she met in 1948 when he was a (then-married) voice coach at Columbia Pictures. She stayed on good terms with Anne all her life.

Dr. H. refers to Dr. Margaret Hohenberg.

Hedda Rosten had been a close friend of Marilyn’s since 1955 and became her personal assistant for a time. Norman was Hedda’s husband.

“Art” was one of the nicknames Marilyn gave to Arthur Miller.

Milton Greene took many photos of Marilyn before becoming her business partner.

anesthesia and tries in a medical way to comfort

me—everything in the room is white in fact I

can’t even see anyone just white objects—

they cut me open—Strasberg with Hohenberg’s ass.

and there is absolutely nothing there—Strasberg is

deeply disappointed but more even—academically amazed

that he had made such a mistake. He thought there was going

to be so much—more than he had ever dreamed possible in

almost anyone but

instead there was absolutely nothing—devoid

of every human living feeling thing—the only thing

that came out was so finely cut sawdust—like

out of a raggedy ann doll—and the sawdust spills

all over the floor & table and Dr. H is puzzled

because suddenly she realizes that this is a

new type case of puple. The patient (pupil—or student—I started to write) existing of complete emptiness

Strasberg’s dreams & hopes for theater are fallen.

Dr. H’s dreams and hopes for a permanent psychiatric cure is given up—Arthur is disappointed—let down +

For Dr H.

tell about that

dream of the horrible repulsive man—who is trying to

lean too close to me in

elevator—and my panic

and then all my thought

despising him—does that mean

I’m attached

to him

He even looks

like he has

a venereal

disease.

Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone

You’re an old smoothie

Body and soul?

Who’s sorry now

Easy living

When I’m not near the boy I Love 259

While we’re young 262

I know where I’m going and who’s going with me?

I cried for you

You do something

The gentleman is a dope

I’ll never be the same

He’s funny that way

too marvelous for words

Don’t worry about me

What is there to say

But not for me

Easy to love

Have you ever been lonely

I’ve got you under my skin

Note: This is a set of song titles. Numbers 259 and 262 are the corresponding numbers to a fake book, or an anthology of lyrics and chord progressions from which musicians could improvise. It is not known why Marilyn made this list; possibly they were songs she wished to perform.

Dear Claude Claude,

That’s right—I know exactly what I’m doing and I know mean

I’ve just written Dear Claude, Claude—it’s because meanwhile besides

“The way of a country man is hard, his training strict, his progress slow, his disappointments many.” If in fact he is to survive succeed he must should “give it up.” Are you prepared? I am interested only per one “borderline” to the other. in knowing from one of course it’s easier simpler to be a member of the Mr. Johnson club because for when one could probably get kicked out of the club for stress, or strain or exertion as probably forbidden—

but then how is one to know since there are no rules I ask this question as a member of good standing of Borderline Anonymous also as a newly chartered member of the Mr. Johnson club. It’s easier even to be a member of the M.J. Club where for any kind of exertion, stress or strain you’re kicked out.

Is it/this true that I am under the right impression My love to Hedda and Patty and Candy and Bammoo. Come back if you haven’t come back from Port Jefferson yet (hope you’ve)—why don’t you.

You’re needed here.

looking forward to seeing you all

Love

Marilyn

P.S. In a few short days I’m sending you a reminder—to remind you of something of me mostly

This might very well serve as (the)/(a) possible watchword for some other weekend don’t you think or do you think I’ve gone too far

Re—reminder [drawing of envelope]

84 Remsen St.

Brooklyn

Heights

Notes:

Marilyn nicknamed her friend Norman Rosten “Claude” because he looked so much like the actor Claude Rains. He and his wife, Hedda, had a daughter called Patricia (Patty). At this time they lived in Brooklyn, at 84 Remsen Street.

Bam-Moo and Candy were the names of the Rostens’ dog and cat.

The Mr. Johnson club was invented by Norman Rosten and Marilyn; the name refers to Rosten’s play Mister Johnson, based on Joyce Cary’s novel, which embodied for Marilyn the spirit of innocence destroyed by cynicism and greed.

On the balcony of the Ambassador Hotel, New York, 1955 Marilyn Monroe with Truman Capote, New York, 1955

ITALIAN AGENDA

1955 or 1956

In an Italian diary engraved in green, Marilyn Monroe wrote down thoughts in free association in continuation of a kind of self-analysis she had begun to practice in the “record” notebook (she noticed with amusement her own Freudian slip when she wrote the first three letters of the name “Buddy” as “Bad”). It isn’t really known who the woman with big breasts was: perhaps her analyst, Dr. Hohenberg (mentioned on another page)? A salaried member of her circle? In any case, Marilyn remembered two traumatic moments: as a lonely child, when, despite the lies she told, a teacher was one of the only people who seemed to understand her; and an incident of sexual abuse for which Ida Martin, her foster mother, seemed to have taken her to task rather than consoling or helping her. It is likely that these pages correspond to work on repressed memory undertaken as part of her analysis with Dr. Hohenberg, which she started in February 1955. Her relationship with her third husband, Arthur Miller, seemed to be idyllic still, propelled as it was by strong desire and absolute confidence: there is no trace of either doubt or crisis.

She also evoked her relationship to fear, which she seemed to need to draw on for her acting but which terrorized her as well. The Peter whom she mentions twice as a source of fear and threat could well be Peter Lawford, whom she knew in the early 1950s, although it is not known with what degree of intimacy. Lawford later became John Kennedy’s brother-in law upon his marriage to Patricia Kennedy. Some years later Marilyn often saw the Lawford couple and visited their Santa Monica beach house several times.

Note: Ida Bolender and her husband, Albert Wayne, cared for Norma Jeane at their home in Hawthorne from June 1926, shortly after her birth, and she stayed with them until she was seven. The child called Ida Wayne’s husband “Daddy” despite the fact that Ida Bolender would have preferred her to call him “Uncle Wayne.” The Bolenders adopted two children: Nancy, who was five years younger, and Lester, who was the same age as Marilyn.

Notes:

The Peter who is mentioned is possibly the British-born actor Peter Lawford, a friend of Marilyn’s and brother-in-law to the Kennedys through his marriage to Pat, the president’s sister.

If indeed it is the name Jack that is written (the writing is difficult to decipher), it could refer to Jack Cole, a dancer friend of Marilyn’s who coached her on the films Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and There’s No Business Like Show Business.

Notes:

Marilyn was a guest on Edward R. Murrow’s very popular TV show Person to Person on April 8, 1955.

A.I. was probably Aunt Ida, that is, Ida Martin, the other Aunt Ida (the first being Ida Bolender), a great-aunt with whom Marilyn lived from November 1937 to August 1938 in Compton, California.

In the spring of 1938, Marilyn may have suffered a sexual assault by one of her fellow boarders, who could be be the Buddy mentioned here.

“The D.” may be short for either “doctor” or “demon.”

In a bookstore in Los Angeles, February 1953 On the set of The Seven Year Itch, 1954

PARKSIDE HOUSE STATIONERY

1956

Soon after their wedding on June 29, 1956, Marilyn and Arthur Miller went to London, where the film The Prince and the Showgirl, produced by Marilyn Monroe Productions, was to be shot. Laurence Olivier directed the film and played the male lead. The relationship between the two actors was difficult: Olivier was disdainful and haughty toward Marilyn. The couple arrived in London on July 14 and stayed at Parkside House, a luxurious manor house in Egham, Surrey, near London. Everything should have been idyllic. However, one day Marilyn found her husband’s open diary and discovered that the playwright was disappointed in her, that he was sometimes ashamed of her in front of his intellectual peers, and that he had doubts about their marriage. Marilyn was extremely upset and felt betrayed.

Did she write these few poems and odd texts on Parkside House stationery before or after her discovery? In either case, their tone is mournful. They are pessimistic about love and love’s possibilities as well as the inevitable passage of time. The filming was difficult. Marilyn’s acting coach Paula Strasberg was called in to help, as was Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, her New York analyst. On October 29, Marilyn Monroe was introduced to Queen Elizabeth II during a ceremony, and she went back to the United States on November 20. The portrait shown here is possibly of Laurence Olivier.

my love sleeps besides me—

in the faint light—I see his manly jaw

give away—and the mouth of his

boyhood returns

with a softness softer

its sensitiveness that trembling

in stillness

his eyes must have look out

wonderously from the cave of the little

boy—when the things he did not understand—

he forgot but will he look like this when he is dead

oh unbearable fact inevitable

yet sooner would I rather his love die

than/or him?

the pain of his longing when he looks

at another—

like an unfulfillment since the day

he was born.

And I in merciless pain

and with his pain of longing—

when he looks at and loves another

like an unfulfillment of since the day

he was born—

we must endure

I more sadly because I can feel no joy

oh silence why don’t/aren’t you still soothe me

you sounds drums stillness hurt my ears head—and

pierce ears

jars my head with the stillness of

sounds unbearable/durable—

on the screen of pitch blackness

comes/reappears the shapes of monsters who are

my most steadfast companions—

my blood is throbbing with unrest

turns it route in the opposite another direction

and the whole world is sleeping

ah peace I need you—even a

peaceful monster.

Note: Wissett is a village in Suffolk. It is not known what the number refers to; possibly it is a phone number.

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.

it is not to be for granted

in life less that the old woman hides—

from her mirror glass—the one she polishes so it won’t be dusty—

daring sometimes that to

to see her toothless gasp and if she perhaps very gently smiles

years only she remembers—

her life or imagined youth pain

her pale chiffon dress

that she wore on a windy

afternoon when she walked

where no one had ever been

her blue eyed clear eyed baby who

lived to die—the woman’s youth years have

not left. The woman stares & stares in space

where his eyes rest with pleasure—

I want to still be—but time has changed

the hold of that glance.

Alas how will I cope when I am

even less youthful—

I seek joy but you are it is clothed

with pain—

have courage - to be brave take heart as in my youth

sleep and rest my heavy head

on your his breast—because for still my love

sleeps beside me.

Marilyn reading Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, 1951

Marilyn reading Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, 1952

ROXBURY NOTES

1958

In the summer of 1957, Marilyn and Arthur Miller bought a house in Roxbury, Connecticut, where Arthur had already lived with his first wife. They initially considered having the house demolished in order to have a new one built by Frank Lloyd Wright, with a swimming pool, a home cinema, a theater, and a big office for Arthur, but the project turned out to be too expensive and they contented themselves with renovating the property.

Marilyn probably wrote these few pages in the spring of 1958, and their tone is particularly disenchanted. The couple stayed a long time in the country, but, loveless now, their home seemed empty. Arthur worked with little success on the screen adaptation of his own short story The Misfits, and Marilyn quickly got bored with her role of housewife. Even the arrival of spring and leaves on the trees were no longer any solace, since they reminded her of failed attempts at motherhood, the lack of a child she had hoped for. At this time she would look closely at her own face in a magnifying glass and observe the effects of passing time.

Since the “other” (the beloved) was unattainable, she resigned herself “to love bravely” and accept what she could not alter. Here we can sense a tortured soul who still wanted to believe in the possibility of profound connection, even as the relationship grew more strained and distant.

starting tomorrow I will take care of myself for that’s all I really have and as I see it now have ever had. Roxbury—I’ve tried to imagine spring all winter—it’s here and I still feel hopeless. I think I hate it here because there is no love here anymore. I regret the effort I desperately made here. I tried to fight what with my being I knew was true—that due to pressure (it’s going to sound like a telegram) that have come in my work (it’s funny I’ve always accepted even the worst—tried to oppose it if it meant jeopardizing my work) he could not endure (he is from another land) though I felt (innocently, which I am not) that what I could endure helped both of us and in a material way also which means so much more to him than me even. I have seen what he intends me to see and I am strangely calm while I catch my breath. It’s a good saying the not so funny—what it stands for though—pain “If I had my life to live over I’d live over a saloon”

Those tender green leaves on these one hundred & seventy five year old maples that I see (I wondered several what my senses felt what was I looking at). It’s like having a child when one is ninety. I don’t want any children because I only could trust every delicate and indelicate feeling of my child with myself in case of accident (sounds like an identification card) there is no one I trust. I mean if anything would happen Blessed thought at this moment. In every spring the green is too sharp—though the delicacy in their form is

Note: The quote is from W. C. Fields.

sweet and uncertain though—it puts up a good struggle in the wind though trembling all the while. Those leaves will relax, expand in the sun and each raindrop they will resist even when they’re battered and ripped. I think I am very lonely—my mind jumps. I see myself in the mirror now, brow furrowed—if I lean close I’ll see—what I don’t want to know—tension, sadness, disappointment, my blue eyes dulled, cheeks flushed with capillaries that look like rivers on maps—hair lying like snakes. The mouth makes me the saddest, next to my dead eyes. There is a dark line between the lips in the outline of several [illegible] waves in a turbulent storm—it says don’t kiss me, don’t fool me I’m a dancer who cannot dance.

When one wants to stay alone as my love (Arthur) indicates the other must stay apart.

Marilyn reading a script, Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, 1952

Marilyn on her bed, Hollywood, 1962

RED LIVEWIRE NOTEBOOK

1958

In the spring of 1958, Marilyn had had enough of her dull country life. She wanted to start working again and was studying proposals from her agent and Fox, among which was an adaptation of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, when, out of the blue, Billy Wilder sent her a two-page summary of an old German farce he was working on, Some Like It Hot. On July 8 she arrived in Los Angeles for the shooting.

Marilyn used only five pages of this big red spiral notebook. It can be dated from the summer of 1958, as it includes two lines of dialogue from Some Like It Hot. Why these two lines? (One might be self-referential; Marilyn was born in June just like the character of Sugar Kane.) What do they reveal about Marilyn’s musings?

Another possibility presents itself: that the pencil notes were written before the ones in blue ballpoint pen. In that case, “after one year of analysis” would refer to 1956 (she started her analysis with Dr. Hohenberg in 1955), with a hint of irony as to the result, as revealed in a short four-line poem expressing despair in the form of a cry for help: the desire to die rather than live.

I left my home of green rough wood—

a blue velvet couch I dream till now

a shiny dark bush just left of the door.

[Illegible] down the walk clickity clack as my doll

in her carriage went over the cracks—“We’ll go far away”

The meadows are huge the earth (will be) hard

on my back. The grass surged touched

the blue and still white clouds changing from an

old man shapes to a smiling dog with ears flying

Look—

The meadows are reaching—they’re touching the sky

We’ll leave We left our outlines against/on the crushed grass.

It will die sooner because we were there—will something

else have grown?

Don’t cry my doll don’t cry

I hold you and rock you to sleep.

hush hush I’m I was only pretending now that I’m (was)

not your mother who died.

I shall feed you from the shiny dark bush

just left of the door.

Jamaica 36/78

Dr. Mike Fayer

After one year of analysis

Help Help

Help

I feel life coming closer

when I all want

is to die.

Scream—

You began and ended in air

but where was the middle?

Notes:

It has been impossible to trace Dr. Mike Fayer.

According to Donald Spoto, Marilyn is thought to have sent the five-line poem “Help” to Norman Rosten in the summer of 1961 after having started regular consultations with Dr. Ralph Greenson. Spoto adds that Marilyn first wrote this poem, or perhaps message, in Arthur Miller’s notebook in London in 1956.

I’m not very bright I guess.

No just dumb//if I had

any brains I wouldn’t be

on crummy train with this

crummy girls’ band.

I used to sing with male

bands but I can’t afford it

anymore.

Have you ever been with a male band

Heats

Note: This is a line from the scene in the train near the beginning of Some Like It Hot.

You know I’m going to be

twenty-five in June

Note: This is also a line from Some Like It Hot. When the film was made Marilyn had turned thirty-two, but her birthday was June 1.

Title—About my poems.

Norman—so hard to please

when all I want is to tease

So it might rhyme

So what’s the crime?

When I’ve spent all this After all this time

on earth

Note: Norman Rosten, poet and novelist, had been a close friend of Marilyn’s in New York since 1955.

Marilyn Monroe with Carson McCullers, during a lunch given by the American author in honor of the great Danish writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), at McCullers’s home in Nyack, New York, 1959 Marilyn with Blixen and McCullers

FRAGMENTS AND NOTES

The notes and fragments written here and there—on torn-out pages, envelopes, tickets, address books—bring together secrets, observations, efforts at self-motivation and introspection. They also show Marilyn’s will, which was bent sometimes on purely practical matters and at other times on the general question of self-discipline. Ways of interpreting one line or other, confusion at having to act a joyful part when she felt sad, the need to concentrate harder, birthday greetings with all kinds of fanciful names (she loved inventing nicknames for her friends or herself), memories of her mother wanting to keep her out of the way, rules for life and work, reminders for fittings for a gala evening dress, instructions for her business partner Milton Greene, and, at the beginning of an address book, a list of instructions to be followed: in each text we glimpse a moment of her life, a character trait, signs of doubt or uneasiness, and, over and over, the desire to improve and transform herself.

Aug 27

I am restless and nervous and scattered and jumpy—a few minutes ago I almost threw a silver plate—into a dark area on the set—but I knew couldn’t afford to let out anything I really felt in fact I wouldn’t dare because I wouldn’t stop at that maybe. Just before that I almost threw up my whole lunch. I’m tired. I’m searching for a way to play this part I am depressed with my whole life since I first remember—How can I be such a gay young hopeful girl—What I am using is that one sunday when I was fourteen for I was all these things that day but—Why can’t I use it more consistently my concentration wavers most of the time—something is racing in me in the opposite direction to most of the days I can remember. I must try to work and work on my concentration—maybe starting with the simplest of things.

Must make effort to do

must have the discipline to do the following—

z – go to class—my own always—without fail

x – go as often as possible to observe Strasberg’s other private classes

g – never miss my actors studio session

v – work whenever possible—on class assignments—and always keep working on the acting exercises.

u – start attending Clurman lectures—also Lee Strasberg’s directors’ lectures at theater wing—enquire about both

l – keep looking around me—only much more so—observing—but not only myself but others and everything—take things (it) for what they (it’s) are worth.

y – must make strong effort to work on current problems and phobias that out of my past has arisen—making much much much more more more more more effort in my analysis. And be there always on time—no excuses for being ever late.

w – if possible take at least one class at university—in literature—

o – follow RCA thing through.

p – try to find someone to take dancing from—body work (creative)

t – take care of my instrument—personally & bodily (exercise)

try to enjoy myself when I can—I’ll be miserable enough as it is.

Words—Find out their meanings

Wanderjahre—

pertaining somehow to the word Entsagung—(what does that mean to)? does it mean sacrifice.

à trois

does it mean like—probation

Notes:

The names in this address book, especially that of Milton Greene, would seem to indicate that it was bought in New York in 1955.

Harold Clurman, theater director and drama critic, was one of the three founders of Group Theatre in New York in 1931 (along with Lee Strasberg).

Marilyn Monroe signed a contract to record film songs with the RCA label in 1954.

There is no obvious link between “Wanderjahre” (the wandering years) and “Entsagung” (renunciation), unless Marilyn is echoing her reading of Freud or Rilke.

“À trois”/“threesome” bears at most a dubious connection with “probation.”

12:00 Ceil Chapman—

530 7th ave—

4th floor tel # LA–4–5800

Saturday Morning 12:00

Sunday Night—Actors Benefit

dinner for them somewhere? At least ask

speak to Paula—about scenes for me in the future

Monday Night

Hair—instead of tues. have done

on Mon. morning—also ask about

comb out for Mon. night.

Dress—

Saturday afternoon 2:30

Lee Strasberg matinee

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Sat Morn—Profile time call about then

C. Chapman

Fri Night

John Moore fitting

Fri Morning

8:30—Francis [illegible] Hair

11:00 Actors Studio

Call Milton about—

1—6 days a week with Hohenberg—Saturdays—because learning and need it and she willing

2—about paying Hohenbergs—Bill—which didn’t give him yet—(can we pay it on Mon?)

3—about white shoes because probably wear white dress (what about wrap?)

Call Lois Weber or A. Jacobs about all yesterday’s papers mainly Herald Trib and Times

Notes:

This note was probably written in December 1955, as the Actors Studio benefit party was held in New York on December 12, to which, however, Marilyn wore a black dress.

Paula Strasberg, Lee Strasberg’s wife, was also a very close friend and became Marilyn’s coach during film shoots.

Ceil Chapman has often been said to have been Marilyn’s favorite fashion designer.

John Moore, couturier and interior designer, decorated, did up the Millers’ apartment at 444 East 57th Street in 1955. He created several dresses for Marilyn, including the wedding dress she wore when she married Arthur Miller.

Arthur Jacobs, who was head of his own company, took care of public relations for Marilyn from 1955 until her death.

Lois Weber, who worked for the Arthur P. Jacobs Company, was Marilyn’s press agent in New York.

For Kris

Sept. 9

Jane’s 12th birthday on 7th

same year

—Remember, somehow, how—

Mother always tried to

get me to “go out” as

though she felt I

were too unadventurous.

She wanted me even

to show a cruelty

toward woman. This

in my teens. In return,

I showed her that I

was faithful to her.

Notes:

Kris was undoubtedly Dr. Marianne Kris, Marilyn’s New York analyst from 1956 to February 1961.

Jane Miller, Arthur’s elder daughter, was born on September 7, 1944; therefore, this note must have been written in 1956.

for life

It is rather a determination not to be overwhelmed.

for work

The truth can only be recalled, never invented

Note: This short prose piece and the variation on it on the following page were very likely written on the occasion of Norman Rosten’s birthday. “She gave herself pretty names. One day, she signed a note with Noodle, Sam, Max, Clump, Sugar Finny, Pussy, and so on. An identity name, the little funny imp. It was a very attractive aspect of her personality: she had a great sense of humor” (Norman Rosten, Marilyn Among Friends).

It’s time for

sentiment

I know how sentimental we feel

instrumental

sentimental

merely incidental

coincidental

Not a tear you’ll see

Forgive me if I’m

influence by tender feelings

affecting the emotions

meaning—sentimental is a influenced for

tender

feelings

ourselves or myself

sense

sensible—sensitive

Happy birthday and love (we all love you)

Noodle

Sam

Max

Clump

Sugar Finny

Pussy

and all the rest of us—

Starts dream—

262

263

Feb 28

Dec 11

See in older journal—

always admired men who had many women.

It must be that to a child of a dissatisfied woman

the idea of monogamy is hollow

Note: The numbers 262 and 263 probably refer to the same collection of song standards as those shown here (the Waldorf-Astoria series). The titles these correspond to are “While We’re Young” (262) and “Wonderful Guy” (263).

Pardon me—I’m sorry to wake you

But I wonder if you could help

me

I’m being abducted

you know—kidnapped—by him

I thought maybe as soon as

we got some place I’d ask the

driver to stop and let me off

But we been driving for hours

and we still don’t seem to be

nowhere at all—not only that

but I’m freezing to death—I

ain’t got much on under

my coat

Sleeping prince—for Paula

don’t stop myself

Name tasks—1 - 2 - 3 - 4 etc.

T—weariness

write out part—copying it

work on exercises

1—cold

learn—lines logically

—I can’t do more than

one thing at a time

make map tonight

take my time to think—

Note: The Sleeping Prince was the first title for The Prince and the Showgirl, which was filmed in London in 1956. This note must have been written the same year.

He said that

I’ve become so deified

as a sex symbol

that public never accept me as

a virgin and as a nineteen/twenty year old

he wants to

feel he discovers reality

and he alone is is better

responsible

Eli

g—his lose

tennessee—wants me

tells Eli—

new ending

I don’t want anybody else

Note: Marilyn wanted to play the title role in Elia Kazan’s 1956 film Baby Doll, written by Tennessee Williams and starring Eli Wallach. However, Carroll Baker got the part.

I feel the camera has got

to look through Gay’s

eyes whenever he is in a

scene and even when he is

not there still has to be a sense of

him

He is the center and the

rest move around him

but I guess Houston will

see to that

He is both subtle and

overt in his leading them

and in his cruelty and his tenderness

(when he reaches out of himself

for her—R.)

Notes:

John Huston’s (here spelled “Houston”) film The Misfits was shot in Nevada, in the summer of 1960. Arthur Miller adapted the script from his own short story, the role of Roslyn having been inspired by his wife. The atmosphere was extremely tense, especially between the couple, whose marriage was foundering. Marilyn, a perfectionist, was frequently late—very late—frightened of not being ready for the challenge, and often groggy from the barbiturates she had begun to depend on. She was awestruck to be acting with Clark Gable, who was a lifelong idol and whom she had sometimes thought of, or dreamed of, as her own father. Marilyn had already been directed by John Huston in The Asphalt Jungle, the film that, in spite of a minor role, had put her name in lights. In a sense, in The Misfits she acted out her own life with a disquieting and magnificent closeness that must have been enormously tormenting.

It is likely that this note was written during the first half of the shooting, in July. Gay (Langland) is the name of the character played by Clark Gable. The final “R” refers to Roslyn (Taber), Marilyn’s character.

Marilyn at Costello’s restaurant, New York, 1955

KITCHEN NOTES

1955 or 1956

Contrary to the image we may have of Marilyn as often disorderly and chaotic, she attended to some aspects of daily life with care and even meticulousness. When she had to decorate an apartment or house she made notes, took measurements, collected samples or patterns, and decided on color schemes and the arrangement of furniture. Similarly, when she organized a dinner for Helen Schneider’s birthday, very likely at the end of 1955 in New York, she wrote a long, exacting list of everything she had to prepare or check out. Each detail was planned, down to the table decorations and bathroom requisites. This party may have taken place when Marilyn moved into an apartment on the corner of Sutton Place and 57th Street after her long stay in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, which had turned out to be too costly for Marilyn Monroe Productions. Incidentally, Marilyn sometimes enjoyed cooking, and when she did she noted recipes down to the last ingredient, step by step, including the quality of produce needed.

ask for Kitty & or Clyde

my white dishes—all of them from Westport

my old silver candle holders

my paintings two—dutch woman big one and drunken angels

get firewood—what about silverware

buy—white toilet seat

buy—hamper & or gold thing for bathroom & or thing for back of door for towels, bottles, etc

buy—lamps for bedroom—also shades take Kirt with me

buy foot stool & coffee table (ask M. Moumulion)

buy bar buy mirror at L. & Taylors

buy two chairs—classic—for in front of piano, also serves for extra guest chairs

buy brass ash trays one for M. one for L. one for me

buy chandeliers—one for hall—one for dining area—take back the two glass silver things

buy twelve linen napkins—silverware—for 12

buy birthday present for Helen—

have Kirt paint places for chandeliers also where railing broke

have Milton & Kirt put pictures in hallway—help me arrange room & place

have Kirt saw off legs of brass candle holders

dry clean comforter

have wash—bathroom rugs

send out laundry

call Moumulion

guest towels

paintings 2

coffee table

[indecipherable] glass bar

Notes:

Kitty and Clyde may have provided Marilyn with occasional help.

Kirt seems to have been a man who did odd jobs for Marilyn.

M. Moumulion: unidentified.

The reference to Milton Greene would mean this birthday dinner took place between 1955 and 1956. Marilyn stayed at Milton and Amy Greene’s property in Westport, Connecticut, when she first arrived on the East Coast and often visited them in subsequent months.

champagne? at least some kind of wine with dinner

buy—liquor—scotch—gin—vermouth—

hors d’œuvres—caviar—others?

two roasts—1—prime ribs of beef 1—turkey

have Hedda make dressing

large mixed green salad with endive hearts—avocado? (Also aspic?)

vegetables—frozen peas or in pod?—not done too well—Kitty’s squash? or something

Potatoes—of some kind—? ask Kitty

Celery hearts—olives—scallions?—Radishes

ask Hedda about fruit & ice cream for dessert—choc & vanilla

Coffee & cookies & danish pastry for later

Birthday cake for Helen—

Geo. Leslie & me 2

Hedda & Norman 2

Ettore & Jessie 2

Helen & Isadore 2

George Brusilla [Braziller] & wife 2

Guy & friend with guitar 2

Bloomingdales?

Wine glasses 12

linen napkins

6 or more guest towels

Murray Hill—25400

french prov. white

marble top 2 sizes

coffee table

buy for less than he says

Lloyds 116 E 60th

Ivory. Flakes or snow

Rinso Blue or detergent

Notes:

Geo. Leslie: unidentified.

Isadore Schneider (1896–1976) was born in the Ukraine and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1904. A novelist and critic, he was a friend of Norman Rosten’s, knew Arthur Miller, and worked as a reader for George Braziller at Grove Press. Helene Berlin Schneider was his wife.

Ettore Rella (1907–1988) was a poet and playwright. His wife was named Jessie.

George Braziller was born in 1916 and founded his own publishing house in 1955. His wife was Marsha.

Guy: unidentified.

LEE AND PAULA STRASBERG

When Marilyn arrived in New York at the beginning of 1955, she soon found her heart’s dream: the Actors Studio, which she hoped would open the doors to a new status as an artist. Just as quickly, Lee Strasberg saw how exceptional she was, bursting with a talent seeking to express itself fully. However, Marilyn had a major shortcoming: she was always late. Lee had his reservations about this, and when she admitted that she was absolutely unable to be on time, he replied cuttingly: “Well, be early then.” This explains the playful tone of the brief text in which she quotes a line from one of her early films that speaks of punctuation instead of punctuality…The fragile confidence she developed often shifted to anguish and despair. What would happen if she lost her concentration, the only thing that kept an actor from suicide, to repeat Lee Strasberg’s striking phrase? In February 1961, Marilyn thought she was checking into the hospital for a rest cure but instead found herself confined to a psychiatric cell at Payne Whitney in New York. Her friends couldn’t respond to her cry for help, as, legally speaking, they weren’t family members (Joe DiMaggio, whom she had divorced in 1954, would finally rescue her from this nightmare). In any case, Marilyn proved single-minded. Prompted by her sense of having escaped from quicksand, in a resolute letter to Lee Strasberg dated December 19, 1961, she laid out her plan for a new independent production company, which would make sense to her only if Lee were associated with it. To the very end, she wanted to be free of the studios, but this time she wanted to challenge them on their turf, in Hollywood.

Oh yes Mr. Oxley is always

complaining about my punctuation

so now I’m careful to get here

before 9:00. Mr. Oxley is on

telephone won’t you sit down

loose letting go

voice starts back theatre

[following is written by Lee Strasberg]

Don’t be nervous Marilyn

you are doing swell &

you look wonderful—

L.

Notes:

The chronically late pupil used this line from Monkey Business (the 1952 Howard Hawks film in which Mr. Oxley is Marilyn’s director) with no little humor when addressing her teacher (who may have been speaking on the telephone at that moment).

To judge by his reply, it is not clear that Lee Strasberg understood either the allusion or the quotation.

Dear Lee

One of the most personally helpful things I’ve heard so far in my life was what you said in class friday afternoon—it was helpful in that I feel as though I’m a little bit freer—also more—I can’t think of any I mean by that more relaxed 2 and 2 don’t necessarly make 4.

Paula dear,

You asked me yesterday why—

I felt somehow (I’m only conceiving of it this morning) that if I didn’t have the control or the will to make myself do anything simple & do it right I would never be able to act or do anything—I know it sounds crazy—maybe it was even superstitious—I don’t know—I don’t know anything.

Something has happened I think to make me lose my confidence. I don’t know what it is. All I know is I want to work.

Oh Paula I wish I knew why I am so anguished. I think maybe I’m crazy like all the other members of my family were, when I was sick I was sure I was. I’m so glad you are with me here!

Marilyn Monroe with Paula and Lee Strasberg, New York, 1955

Dear Lee & Paula,

Dr. Kris has had me put into the New York Hospital—psychiatric division under the care of two idiot doctors—they both should not be my doctors.

You haven’t heard from me because I’m locked up with all these poor nutty people. I’m sure to end up a nut if I stay in this nightmare—please help me Lee, this is the last place I should be—maybe if you called Dr. Kris and assured her of my sensitivity and that I must get back to class so I’ll be better prepared for “Rain.”

Lee, I try to remember what you said once in class “that art goes far beyond science.”

And the scary memories around me I’d like to forget—like screaming woman etc.

Please help me—if Dr. Kris assures you I am all right—you can assure her I am not. I do not belong here!

I love you both.

Marilyn

P.S. forgive the spelling—and there is nothing to write on here. I’m on the dangerous floor!! It’s like a cell can you imagine—cement blocks. They put me in here because they lied to me about calling my doctor & Joe and they had the bathroom door locked so I broke the glass and outside of that I haven’t done anything that is uncooperative

Note: Rain, adapted from a Somerset Maugham short story, was a TV project that Lee Strasberg hoped to direct. Marilyn Monroe and John Gielgud were to have had the main parts. The film was never made because of a disagreement between NBC and Lee Strasberg.

Marilyn Monroe and Lee Strasberg in a café near Carnegie Hall in New York

LETTER TO DR. HOHENBERG

1956

Before accepting Marilyn as a student of his “Method,” Lee Strasberg made it a condition that she start psychoanalysis. From the spring of 1955, therefore, three to five times a week, the actress consulted Dr. Margaret Hohenberg at 155 East 93rd Street in New York. Margaret Hohenberg was born in 1898 in Slovakia and had studied in Vienna, Budapest, and Prague before having to flee Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss. She first went to London for a year, then settled in New York in 1939.

Milton Greene, one of Dr. Hohenberg’s patients, recommended her to Marilyn, and, curiously, the doctor accepted her as an analysand in spite of the obvious risk involved in treating two patients who not only knew each other but also had very close professional links. In fact, shortly after Milton Greene was fired from Marilyn Monroe Productions, the actress stopped seeing the analyst and never returned to her consulting rooms. Nevertheless, a bill for $840, drawn up by Dr. Hohenberg on August 1, 1962, indicates that Marilyn had gotten back in touch with her former analyst for telephone consultations.

Dear Dr. Hohenberg,

I’ve been wondering myself why I don’t write to you. I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve been feeling I was taken away from you (with your consent) or that you sent me away from you—

On the whole, things are going along rather well so far

M.C.A., our agents, and Stein, our lawyer are dealing have dealt with Natasha but—we’ll see—

I have a strange feeling about Paula. I mean—she works differently than Lee but she is a wonderful and warm person—which also bewilders me

Anyway I keep feeling I won’t be able to do the part when I have to it’s like a horrible nightmare.

Also I guess I didn’t write you before this because I was waiting to see if I would get shot first.

Arthur writes me every day—at least it gives me a little air to breathe—I can’t get used to the fact that he loves me and I keep waiting for him to stop loving me—though I hope he never will—but I keep telling myself—who knows?

Notes:

In January 1953, Marilyn left the William Morris Agency, whose vice president, Johnny Hyde, had died in 1950. She signed a contract with the powerful talent agency MCA, Inc. (Music Corporation of America). George Chasin attended to Marilyn’s interests at MCA until her death. In her book Marilyn and Me, Susan Strasberg quotes a story dating back to 1962 as told by Marilyn’s masseur, Ralph Roberts: “She asked me if I had heard any rumors about Bobby Kennedy and herself. None of it is true, she told me. Besides, he is too skinny. Bobby is trying to dismantle MCA and has asked me to help him.” Indeed, MCA had to wind down its agency work and concentrate on production after an action brought against the corporation by Attorney General Robert Kennedy in July 1962.

Irving Stein, along with Frank Delaney, was one of the lawyers who worked for Marilyn Monroe Productions.

In 1948, Natasha Lytess was appointed by Columbia, as was their usual practice, to help Marilyn prepare for her part in the Phil Karlson film Ladies of the Chorus. The two women worked together on about twenty films until Marilyn chose Paula Strasberg to assist her during the shooting of Bus Stop in February 1956. Natasha Lytess found it difficult to accept this break.

LETTER TO DR. GREENSON

1961

From January 1960 onward, following the advice of Marianne Kris (her analyst in New York at that time), Marilyn started analysis with Dr. Ralph Greenson in Los Angeles. She wrote him a long letter on March 2 and 3, 1961, about three weeks after her disastrous confinement at Payne Whitney, when she had had to confront one of her worst fears: the specter of hereditary family madness, the fear of ending up in a psychiatric hospital like her mother and grandmother before her.

At the time, Marilyn had been transferred from Payne Whitney after Joe DiMaggio’s intercession and was convalescing at Columbia University’s Presbyterian Medical Center. She was reading Freud, especially his letters. Bed-bound, she wrote describing the details of her confinement and all the misunderstandings that had led to her being placed in isolation. We can imagine her distress as she faced the guardians of normalcy whom she felt were ready to condemn her irrevocably. We are almost surprised at the moderate tone she used when discussing Dr. Kris’s involvement, and the sense of perspective she had when recalling a scene in Don’t Bother to Knock (directed by Roy Baker in 1952) that inspired her rebellion against the commitment and her (sham) suicide threat. We can find, too, in this poignant letter, the characteristic way Marilyn would suddenly change the subject to something positive in order to put her fears to one side: here her reconciliation with Joe DiMaggio, which had happened at Christmas.

Note: May Reis was Marilyn’s personal assistant from the mid-1950s onward.

Marilyn with Edith Sitwell, London, 1956

Marilyn with Carl Sandburg, Los Angeles, 1961

WRITTEN ANSWERS TO AN INTERVIEW

1962

Whereas Marilyn often established bonds of trust and complicity with photographers, she was much more on her guard with journalists. That was why she prepared for interviews and often insisted on seeing the questions beforehand. That was obviously the case here, where we can read short draft answers she wrote to about thirty questions (the first few are missing) to give herself a lead. She invoked the master-pupil aspect of her relationship with Arthur Miller, and her difficulty in being a member of a group. No wonder that among the people she admired we find Eleanor Roosevelt (who was to die soon after Marilyn in November 1962), who was famous for her early feminism and opposition to racism, and who headed the U.N. commission to draw up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No less surprising was Marilyn’s support for the Kennedy brothers, for their strength and youth and idealism. She also looked up to Carl Sandburg for his poetry, so sympathetic to the common man, as well as Greta Garbo, the other myth. A horrified vision of the H-bomb, support for all manner of persecuted people, a considered defense of psychoanalysis: the glamorous blonde was certainly no reactionary. From her reference to Payne Whitney (where she had been confined for five days in February 1961) and from the books that the photographer George Barris, one of the last to shoot her, states she was reading a few days before her death, we may judge that these notes were written in 1962.

6 – although this may be true in my estimation of a formal educational is never a basic cause for a material problem—it is the emotional background which matters

7 – (1) there was a pupil teacher relationship at the beginning of the marriage and when (2) I learned a great deal from it—a good marriage is a very delicate balance of many forces (3) but there was much more to the marriage than that

10 – experiences with any group of people is [illegible] one has to discriminate the different members of a group. I never been very good at being a member of any group—more than a group of two that is.

11 – Payne Whitney gives me a pain

It was often obviously an error of judgment to place me in Payne Whit. and the doctor who recommended it realized it and tried to rectify it. What the my condition warranted was the rest and care I got at Presbyterian Hospital

12 – the love of my work I love and a few reliable human beings the hope for my future growth & development.

13 – I have a strong sense of self of criticism but I believe I’m becoming more reasonable and tolerant realistic in this regard

14 – Eleanor Roosevelt—her devotion to mankind

Carl Sandburg—his poems are songs of the people by the people and for people Pres. and Robert Kennedy—they symbolize the youth of America—in its vigor its brilliance and its compassion

Greta Garbo—for her artistic creativity and her personal courage and integrity

15 – I am at ease with people I trust or admire or like the rest I’m not at ease with.

16 – At the present time I’m reading Capt. Newman M.D. and To Kill a Mockingbird—in times of crisis I do not turn to a book—I try to think and to use my understanding

17 – I love poetry and poets

18 – I constantly try to clarify and redefine my goals

Notes:

Captain Newman, M.D. is a novel by Leo Rosten (no relation to Norman), published in 1961, based on the experiences of Ralph Greenson when he was a military officer at Yuma (Arizona) during the Second World War. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Harper Lee, was published in 1960.

In Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words, the photographer George Barris describes the conversation he had with her on August 3, 1962, the day before her death, when she told him she was reading these two books.

19 – my sleep depends on my state of satisfaction and that varies with my life—my dreams are too intimate to be revealed in public.

My nightmare is the H Bomb. What’s yours?

20 – (1) I have great feeling for all the persecuted ones in the world

(2) But I must have always refrained from discussing answering personal religious questions.

21 – I hope at some future time to be able to make a glowing report about the wonders that psychoanalysis can achieve. The time is not ripe.

22 – Early lack of sufficient training and experience as of yet until now

23 – I would not wish to slight all the actresses who would be left off such a list and therefore refrain from answering

24 – The lack of any consistent love and caring. A mistrust and fear of the world was the result. There were no benefits except what it could teach me about the basic needs of the young, the sick, and the weak.

25 – I can’t answer at this time

26 – yes and I would underline it

27 – in spades!

SOME BOOKS FROM MARILYN MONROE’S PERSONAL LIBRARY

Marilyn Monroe’s library demonstrates her range of interests. Besides classics such as John Milton, Gustave Flaubert, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, and Khalil Gibran, she read widely from contemporary authors such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, and Jack Kerouac.

The proceeds from the sale of Marilyn’s books were donated by Anna Strasberg to the charity Literacy Partners. This was a logical choice, given Marilyn’s love of books and reading, as well as Lee Strasberg’s lifelong dedication to education.

THE FAVORITE PHOTO

Among Marilyn Monroe’s personal belongings were dozens of prints of this portrait taken by Cecil Beaton on February 22, 1956, in New York. She confessed it had always been her favorite, and she often included an autographed copy when she wrote back to her fans.

Joshua Logan, the director of Bus Stop, gave Marilyn the photograph in an engraved triptych, flanked by two handwritten pages by Cecil Beaton recalling this shoot. Beaton saw her as a very paradoxical figure, a siren and tightrope-walker, femme fatale and naive child, the last incarnation of an eighteenth-century face in a portrait by Greuze living in the very contemporary world of nylons, sodas, jukeboxes, and drive-ins.

What really struck Cecil Beaton was Marilyn’s ability to keep transforming herself, to give the photographer a thousand variations of herself, without inhibition but with a real uncertainty and vulnerability—even though her incandescent beauty gave her the paradoxical freedom not to fuss over her clothes and her hair.

This photograph is just such an improvisation. Marilyn pulled this carnation from a bouquet to put in her mouth like a cigarette, only later lying on a sofa to place the flower on her breast in a gesture of protection and gift.

“She has rocketed from obscurity to become our post-war sex symbol, the pin-up girl of an age,” Beaton wrote. “And whatever press agentry or manufactured illusion may have lit the fuse, it is her own weird genius that has sustained her flight. Transfigured by the garish marvel of Technicolor cinemascope, she walks like an undulating basilisk, scorching everything in her path but the rosemary bushes.” He concluded, “Perhaps she was born just the post-war day we had need of her. Certainly she has no knowledge of the past. Like Giraudoux’s Ondine, she is only fifteen years old, and she will never die.”

Ambassador Hotel, New York, 1956

FUNERAL EULOGY

by Lee Strasberg

Marilyn Monroe was a legend.

In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.

But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe.

We, gathered here today, knew only Marilyn—a warm human being, impulsive and shy, sensitive and in fear of rejection, yet ever avid for life and reaching out for fulfillment. I will not insult the privacy of your memory of her—a privacy she sought and treasured—by trying to describe her whom you knew to you who knew her. In our memories of her she remains alive, not only a shadow on a screen or a glamorous personality.

For us Marilyn was a devoted and loyal friend, a colleague constantly reaching for perfection. We shared her pain and difficulties and some of her joys. She was a member of our family. It is difficult to accept that her zest for life has been ended by this dreadful accident.

Despite the heights and brilliance she had attained on the screen, she was planning for the future: she was looking forward to participating in the many exciting things she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the startling sensitivity which she possessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, struggling to express itself despite the life to which she had been subjected. Others were as physically beautiful as she was, but there was obviously something more in her, something that people saw and recognized in her performances and with which they identified. She had a luminous quality—a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning—to set her apart and yet make everyone wish to be part of it, to share in the childish naivete which was at once so shy and yet so vibrant.

This quality was even more evident when she was on the stage. I am truly sorry that the public who loved her did not have the opportunity to see her as we did, in many of the roles that foreshadowed what she would have become. Without a doubt she would have been one of the really great actresses of the stage.

Now it is all at an end. I hope that her death will stir sympathy and understanding for a sensitive artist and woman who brought joy and pleasure to the world.

I cannot say goodbye. Marilyn never liked goodbyes, but in the peculiar way she had of turning things around so that they faced reality—I will say au revoir. For the country to which she has gone, we must all someday visit.

August 9, 1962

CHRONOLOGY

June 1, 1926

Birth of Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles, third child of Gladys Pearl Baker, born Monroe, of unknown father. The baby was immediately placed in a foster home, first of all with the Bolenders and then with various other families. Sometimes Grace Goddard, one of her mother's friends, looked after her.

June 19, 1942

At only sixteen years old, Norma Jeane married Jim Dougherty, who was five years her senior.

1945

First meeting and first photo shoot with André de Dienes.

August 1946

First contract with Twentieth Century Fox. Ben Lyon persuaded her to change her name to Marilyn, after the musical star Marilyn Miller, and Monroe, which was her mother’s maiden name.

June 1950

First screening of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. Marilyn received rave reviews in spite of her relatively small part.

March 13, 1952

The nude calendar scandal. Marilyn’s career was jeopardized, but her confession, “I was hungry,” drew public support.

1953

Henry Hathaway’s Niagara, in which she had a dramatic role, was a big hit, as was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, directed by Howard Hawks, which came out the same year.

October 1953

Marilyn met the photographer Milton H. Greene at a reception given in honor of Gene Kelly.

November 4, 1953

Premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire, a brilliantly successful comedy.

January 14, 1954

Marilyn married baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio.

February 1954

Marilyn entertained American troops engaged in the Korean War while on her way to Japan. She considered this one of the most important events in her life.

August 10, 1954

The filming of The Seven Year Itch began in New York. The famous scene with Marilyn standing over an air vent trying to hold down her billowing skirt was filmed on September 15 in front of a flabbergasted crowd and to DiMaggio’s great displeasure.

October 5, 1954

Official separation from Joe DiMaggio.

November 1954

Supported the appearance of Ella Fitzgerald at the Mocambo club, where it was unusual for African Americans to be booked. Marilyn kept her promise of sitting at a front-row table every night.

Christmas 1954

Marilyn decided to leave Hollywood and move to New York, even though a magnificent dinner had just been given in her honor. She traveled under the name of Zelda Zonk, wearing a black wig and sunglasses.

December 31, 1954

Marilyn and Milton H. Greene founded their own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc.

January 15, 1955

At a press conference for the new production company, Marilyn said that henceforth she wished to handpick her parts and included Grushenka in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov as an example. The press seized on this comment to hold her up to ridicule.

April 8, 1955

From Greene’s house in Connecticut, Marilyn appeared on a popular morning TV talk show, Person to Person, hosted by Edward R. Murrow. More than fifty million people watched the program.

Spring of 1955

Living in New York, Marilyn studied at the Actors Studio as well as taking private classes with Lee Strasberg. She had sessions with her psychoanalyst, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, up to five times a week.

February 25 to June 2, 1956

Marilyn returned to live in Hollywood to work on Bus Stop, directed by Joshua Logan. The terms negotiated with Fox were much more advantageous after the enormous success of The Seven Year Itch.

June 29, 1956

Marilyn and Arthur Miller were married in a civil ceremony; the religious ceremony took place on July 1 after Marilyn’s conversion to Judaism.

June 14 to November 6, 1956

Marilyn and her husband went to London for the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, and produced by Marilyn’s company. The couple lived at Parkside House in Surrey.

Spring of 1957

Marilyn fired Milton H. Greene from her production company. In May she went to Washington to support Arthur Miller during his House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing.

August 4 to November 6, 1958

The filming of Some Like It Hot. Relations with Billy Wilder and actors Jack Lemmon (cast despite competition from her friend Frank Sinatra) and Tony Curtis were tense. Marilyn regretted Wilder’s choice of filming in black and white.

1960

The filming of Let’s Make Love, directed by George Cukor, with Yves Montand (suggested by Arthur Miller after Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, and Rock Hudson had all withdrawn). Marilyn had an affair with the French actor.

March 8, 1960

Marilyn won the Golden Globe for best actress for her performance in Some Like It Hot.

July 18 to November 4, 1960

The filming of The Misfits in Nevada.

November 11, 1960

Press announcement of the separation of Marilyn and Arthur Miller.

February 7 to February 10, 1961

Against her will and following a “misunderstanding.” Marilyn was forcibly admitted into Payne Whitney psychiatric unit in New York on the recommendation of her current analyst, Dr. Kris. Lee and Paula Strasberg, whom she called for help, couldn't legally intervene, as they were not family members. Only DiMaggio was able to effect her release. She then spent three weeks at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center undergoing a rest cure.

November 19, 1961

Marilyn met John Kennedy at his brother-in-law Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica house.

February 1962

Marilyn bought a house in Brentwood, a fashionable neighborhood in Los Angeles.

April 23, 1962

The filming of Something’s Got to Give, directed by George Cukor and produced by Henry Weinstein, began. Because Marilyn was repeatedly late or absent, production stopped on June 8. The film was never finished.

May 19, 1962

President John Kennedy’s birthday gala was held at Madison Square Garden in New York. Marilyn made a memorable appearance.

June 23, 1962

Marilyn began the long photo shoot for Vogue with Bert Stern that came to be known as “The Last Sitting.”

August 3, 1962

Marilyn appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

August 5, 1962

Marilyn Monroe died at night at her house in Brentwood.

Karen Blixen (1885–1962)

On February 5, 1959, a luncheon was organized at Carson McCullers’s house in Nyack, New York, with Karen Blixen, who, on a lecture tour of the United States, had expressed a desire to meet Marilyn Monroe. She wrote to the American writer Fleur Cowles Meyer on February 21, 1961: “I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the most overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”

Truman Capote (1924–1984)

The author of In Cold Blood met Marilyn in 1950 on the set of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. They became close friends, and in Music for Chameleons, Capote dedicated a magnificent short story to her, entitled “A Beautiful Child.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967)

Carson McCullers met Marilyn through Arthur Miller in New York in 1954 and afterward saw her regularly. She described her memories of these meetings in her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare.

Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

Norman Mailer lived in the same brownstone in Brooklyn as Arthur Miller and had a house not far from Marilyn and Arthur’s in Roxbury, but despite his many sollicitations, he never met Marilyn. After her death, Mailer devoted two biographical essays to her, the first, Marilyn, in 1973, and the second, Of Women and Their Elegance, in 1980.

Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)

Maugham wrote to Marilyn to express his delight at the news that she was to play the part of Sadie Thompson in an adaptation of his short story “Rain,” which Lee Strasberg hoped to direct for NBC, but the movie was never made.

Arthur Miller (1915–2005)

Marilyn met her future husband, along with Elia Kazan, in Hollywood in 1952. She was photographed by Ben Ross that same year, reading a book by Miller. When she moved to New York, he helped her move toward a more intellectual and cultured way of life. In spite of the disapproval of both the studios and her own circle, Marilyn courageously stood by Miller’s side during his House Un-American Activities Committee hearing. Marilyn also met Saul Bellow through Arthur Miller.

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)

He never met Marilyn Monroe, but a year after her death in 1963, he wrote an elegy to her, which was recited as a voice-over during a montage sequence in his film La Rabbia, with Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor as background music. He wrote, “You, little sister, had that beauty humbly bestowed on you, and your soul born from modest people never knew how to own it, for it would not be beauty otherwise. The world first taught it to you, and so took your beauty as its own.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)

Marilyn and the American poet met on the film set of Some Like It Hot in 1959. She was a great fan of his biography of Abraham Lincoln. They communicated mostly by phone, but there are photos of their joyous meeting at Irena and Henry Weinstein’s home in January 1962. He wrote about her, “She was not the usual movie idol. There was something democratic about her. She was the type who would join in and wash up the supper dishes even if you didn’t ask her.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)

Edith Sitwell and Marilyn Monroe first met and had tea together at the end of 1954, in Hollywood. Marilyn, with her golden hair and green dress, reminded the eccentric English poet of a daffodil. They got on well and discussed poetry, in particular The Course of Life by Rudolph Steiner. They met again in London in 1956.

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

When the Welsh poet was on a reading tour of the United States in February 1950, he expressed the wish to meet Charlie Chaplin; however, before his dinner engagement he had a great time drinking martinis with Shelley Winters and Marilyn Monroe. He arrived dead drunk at Chaplin’s home and was turned away by the great comedian himself.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to:

Sarah Churchwell

Ségolène Dargnies

Marion Duvert

Abby Haywood

Courtney Hodell

Karen Hope

Mark Krotov

Annie Ohayon

Flore Roumens

Ivana Ruzak

Lisa Silverman

Special thanks to Maja Hoffmann, who organized the dinner at the FIAC, and to Lou Reed, who was there.

PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

© André de Dienes

© André de Dienes

© Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

© Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library/Jock Caroll

© Archive photo

© André de Dienes

© Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

© mptvimages.com

© Joshua Logan/private collection

© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

© Rue des Archives/SPPS

© André de Dienes

© Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

© Bob Haswell/Getty Images

© Roger Viollet/Ullstein Bild

© Dave Cicero

© 2010 Mimi Ross, photograph by Ben Ross

© André de Dienes

© George Barris

© Bettmann/Corbis

© Bettmann/Corbis

© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

© private collection

© private collection

© André de Dienes

© George Silk/Life Magazine/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

© Arnold Newman/Getty Images

© Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library, private collection

© Shaan Kokin/Julien’s Auctions

© Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library, private collection

© Cecil Beaton/Camera Press/Rapho-Gamma

© Peter Basch

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2010 by LSAS International, Inc.

All rights reserved

Photograph credits.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010932487

ISBN: 978-0-374-15835-4

www.fsgbooks.com

Table of Contents

Editors’ note

Personal note (1943)

Undated poems

“Record” black notebook (around 1951)

Other “Record” notebook (around 1955)

Waldorf-Astoria stationery (1955)

Italian agenda (1955 or 1956)

Parkside House stationery (1956)

Roxbury notes (1958)

Red livewire notebook (1958)

Fragments and notes

Kitchen notes (1955 or 1956)

Lee and Paula Strasberg

Letter to Dr. Hohenberg (1956)

Letter to Dr. Greenson (1961)

Written answers to an interview (1962)

SUPPLEMENTS

Some books from Marilyn Monroe’s library

The favorite photo

Funeral eulogy by Lee Strasberg

Chronology

Literary constellation

Acknowledgments