Saturday Evening Post
- The New Marilyn Monroe - Part 3

 

pays magazine: USA
paru le 19 mai 1956
article: 3ème partie "The New Marilyn Monroe"
en ligne sur saturdayeveningpost.com

Blonde, Incorporated
By Pete Martin
Originally published on May 19, 1956
The story of Marilyn’s brief marriage to Joe DiMaggio, her battle with Hollywood, and her surprising new career.

 
Milton Greene, vice-president of Marilyn Monroe Productions, playwright Terence
Rattigan, Sir Lawrence Olivier and Marilyn in New York. The occasion: To announce
plans for a movie version cf a Rattigan play, costarring Olivier and Monroe. (Hans Knopf, © SEPS)

I put this question to my friend and confidant, whom I call Flack Jones: “How did Joe DiMaggio happen to come into Marilyn’s life?” Jones is one of my principal sources of Marilyn Monroe information. As a skilled and articulate employee of the publicity department of the 20th Century-Fox motion-picture studio, he had worked closely with Marilyn for several years before her highly publicized departure from Hollywood to live in New York and “learn to be an actress.”

“Marilyn met him in a café one night on a blind double date,” Jones said. “DiMaggio had heard about her and wanted to meet her. They met through friends and had dinner. Everything went just fine and dandy, until ultimately their friendship ripened into a romance which led to their marriage.

“But to complicate things, late in 1952 she decided to mix her first holdout with her romance,” Flack Jones said. Then he corrected himself, “It must have been ’53, for she had made River of No Return and How to Marry a Millionaire. Anyhow, she decided — or else her confidential advisers had persuaded her — that she was worth more money. But instead of stalking into Darryl Zanuck’s office, slapping her next script down and saying, ‘I won’t do it!’ she simply hid out. She sneaked down alleys, didn’t answer her phone and couldn’t be reached by anybody.

“This was before she ran off and married Joe DiMaggio, and the studio was taking a firm tone with her — a very firm tone. But when the romance reached full flower, the studio had to do a fast switch,” Jones said. “Here we were, issuing communiqués about this ‘silly and stubborn girl who was ill-advised enough not to come back and take this important part’ in whatever the picture was — Pink Tights, I think — when all of a sudden she ups and marries Joe, the All-American Boy. After that, if we kept on beefing about her absence, the studio would be the big bully in the plot so far as the public was concerned.

“Then, to add to the studio’s confusion, the pair went off to Korea to entertain the troops. How are you going to snap a blacksnake whip at a girl’s calves for doing a thing like that? Snow White has married Prince Charming and they’ve gone off to Korea together to entertain the servicemen. So the studio started talking sweet in a hurry.

“However, the sharp-eyed and cynical could tell that that marriage was in danger as early as their arrival in the Orient,” Flack Jones went on. “The press interviewed Marilyn in Tokyo, and a story was radioed back which said that Marilyn had talked about this and about that, and — oh yes — there was a man in the far corner of the room whose name was Joe DiMaggio. It didn’t take much of a genius to figure that situation was the beginning of the end. Then, after an interval, the lovebirds flew back to Beverly Hills.”

“Did the studio start having its troubles making her report for work before she married DiMaggio or after she married him?” I asked.

“We were having trouble before,” Flack Jones told me.

“When was the first fly in the Monroe-Fox ointment?” I asked.

“I don’t know the exact time,” he said. “But it was not peculiar to Monroe alone. It’s peculiar to life in Hollywood. It almost invariably happens when money and success make an impact on a male or female ego. We expect it to set in when the fan mail of the party in question zooms up to over two thousand a week. It’s almost as much of a sure thing as the thermostat in your house turning on the heat. Two thousand fan letters a week is when we begin to say. ‘We’ll be having troubles with this doll.”

“What form does it usually take?” I asked. “‘I want more dough,’ or ‘I don’t like my contract.’ or ‘My script stinks’?”

“A better way to answer your question is to say that when they realize they’ve got weight to throw around, they start throwing it,” Flack Jones said. “They don’t do those things you mentioned right away; they do less serious things first. They complain about wardrobe, or, if it’s a musical, they complain about the songs or the dances, or, if it’s a plain comedy or a straight drama, they gripe about how a certain scene is being directed. Whatever’s handy, that’s what they complain about. It makes no sense, but it’s a means of saying that they have some weight now, and they want you to know it.”

“What’s the next move?” I asked.

Flack Jones rubbed his fingers over his scalp thoughtfully and said, “Ordinarily it’s a preliminary test of strength, like bracing the front office for more dough for your dramatic coach.

“When she found out that she had that much weight, she decided to go out for herself, and she did. Some people think that she has always been a naive, flibbertigibbet girl moving through life. This is utter nonsense. She wasn’t that way when she first was under contract; she was a grown person then. She kept her dates, she was always on time.”

From now on,” Jones said, “what I say is merely my own opinion, but I think that it was then that she discovered that there are people in Hollywood who respect other people who kick their teeth in. That’s not just Hollywood for you. Most people do.”

“Let’s cut to the split-up between Joe and Marilyn,” I said. “As I recall it, first there were rumors of strife, then things reached an impasse.”

“Joe and Marilyn had a rented house on Palm Drive, in Beverly Hills,” Jones said. “We had a unique situation there with the embattled ex-lovebirds both cooped in the same cage. Marilyn was living on the second floor and Joe was camping on the first floor. Then a famous attorney, Jerry Giesler, was brought into the act for Marilyn, although why they had to employ such a great lawyer to handle a simple divorce case I don’t know. The public was all worked up, the press was, too, and they’re circling the house like Indians loping around a wagon tram, waiting for somebody to poke a head out. The next move was Giesler’s announcement that came Wednesday, at eleven o’clock, Marilyn would hold a press conference in his office.

“In the Fox publicity department,” Jones said, “we concluded that if you call a press conference in a lawyer’s office, it presupposes an obligation to say something, and what could Snow White say when she was breaking up with Prince Charming, or Cinderella say when she was splitting from the All-American Boy? Any press conference would only bring more characters out to chase Marilyn from her house to Giesler’s office. And once they got there, if anybody issued one of those ‘They’re just a young couple who couldn’t make a go of it’ statements, it would only irritate everybody.

“So the studio issued a statement of its own in advance. We said that Marilyn wasn’t going to hold any press conference, but she’d be leaving for work at ten o’clock from her house, to fulfill her commitment on Seven Year Itch, based on the Broadway play of the same name and costarring Tom Ewell, in Cinemascope. Once we’d got in that plug, we said that while we didn’t promise an interview, the boys would get some pictures. So forty or fifty of the press congregated. In addition, there were several hundred volunteer reporters and photographers in the trees and trampling the lawn.

“Then an unbelievable thing happened,” Flack Jones said. He grinned when he thought of it. “They were all there to get a picture of Marilyn going to work, because it would be the first picture since her announcement that she wanted a divorce, and all at once, in front of the house a great, big, beautiful automobile pulled up. In it was a friend of Joe’s from San Francisco. As I’ve said, Joe’s been in that house for three days on the first floor, with Marilyn on the second. There was a back alley, and a rejected husband could have snuck out of that back alley and disappeared if he’d wanted to. But Joe faced up to his responsibilities and took them like a man. So what do the press and newsreels get? A bonus! Out of the front door comes Joe, grim-lipped, walking the last long mile, with his pal carrying his suitcase.

“The press stopped him on the lawn, but Joe had no comment to make. They got pictures of him as he climbed into the car slowly, and one guy asked, ‘Where you going, Joe?’

“‘I’m going home,’ Joe said.

“‘We thought this was your home, Joe,’ chirped the press like a Greek chorus.

“San Francisco has always been my home,’ Joe said. He stood there waving farewell, then he drove away.”

Looking at Flack Jones, I could see that he was still marveling at a scene which no press agent would have thought of inventing in his wildest dreams. He said, “I’ve always admired Joe for that. A lot of guys would have sneaked out the back way and gone to San Francisco, avoiding that encounter in the front yard. Not old Joe.

“About ten minutes later, Marilyn came down the stairs, sobbing, on Giesler’s arm. She was all broken up. Everybody was shoving and pushing. A lady columnist kicked the crime reporter for the Los Angeles Mirror in the shins. He turned on her and asked, ‘Who do you think you’re kicking?’ and she said, ‘I’ll kick you in the pants if you don’t get out of my way.’ All in all, there was quite a hubbub. The newsreel guys were grinding away, and somebody asked, ‘How about Joe, Marilyn?’ and Marilyn said, between sobs, ‘1 can’t talk! I can’t!’ And she got in a car and drove off.”

  Later, when I talked to Marilyn in New York, I guided our conversation around to a story written by Aline Mosby, of the United Press. The story was about how Marilyn had told her that she had bought Joe a king-size, eight-foot bed because she didn’t approve of separate bedrooms. “People say it’s chic to have separate bedrooms,” Marilyn told me. “That way a man can have a place for his fishing equipment and guns as well as sleeping, and a woman can have a fluffy, ruffly place with rows and rows of perfume bottles. The way I feel, they ought to share the same bedroom. With a separate-bedroom deal, if you happen to think of something you want to say, it means you have to go traipsing down the hall, and you may be tired. For that matter, you may forget what you started out to say. Besides, separate bedrooms are lonely. I think that people need human warmth even when they’re asleep and unconscious.”

There were other things I wanted to ask her. “I’ve heard that in Asphalt Jungle you displayed a highly individual way of walking that called attention to you and made you stand out. I’ve heard a lot of people try to describe the way you walk, and some of those descriptions are pretty lurid. How do you describe it?”

She leaned forward, placed her elbows on a table and cupped her chin in her palms. She was very effective that way. “I’ve never deliberately done anything about the way I walk,” she said. “People say I walk all wiggly and wobbly, but I don’t know what they mean. I just walk. I’ve never wiggled deliberately in my life, but all my life I’ve had trouble with people who say I do. In high school the other girls asked me, ‘Why do you walk down the hall that way?’ I guess the boys must have been watching me and it made the other girls jealous or something, but I said, ‘I learned to walk when I was ten months old, and I’ve been walking this way ever since.’”

In California I had asked Flack Jones, “What would you say Marilyn does best? Is her walk her greatest asset?” Jones regarded the feathery top of a slender, swaying palm tree, as if searching for an answer. “She does two things beautifully,” he said. “She walks and she stands. Also, as I’ve already told you she has wit enough to buy her clothes one or two sizes too small, and with a chassis like hers, this infuriates women and intrigues guys. From a woman’s standpoint, there is no subtlety in such gowns. I remember when Marilyn came to a party. In a number which fitted her like a thin banana peel and the other women there thought it outrageous. Comments were made about that gown in a gossip column.”

“How did Marilyn react to that?” I asked.

“Marilyn asked me, ‘What should I have done?”’ Jones said. “I said, ‘Look, honey, the men loved it. Pay no attention to what the gossip-column cat said. You’re a man’s woman, so dress for men, not for other women. Any time you quit dressing for men you’re out of business.’”

I told Jones that I’d been trying to find a phrase which would describe her walk, but that I hadn’t been able to. “I can’t help you there,” Jones said. “I’ve heard the words ‘quivering’ and ‘trembling’ used in connection with her walk, but I don’t know a description that really does the job. But when she walks across a screen a couple or three times, she attracts attention — a whole lot. That much I know.

“The public laughed at her walk in Niagara,” Jones told me, “but Marilyn was only doing what the director wanted her to. It wasn’t up to her to cut the picture or to tell the director not to point the camera at her during a long walk across cobblestones. I challenge any girl to walkdown a cobblestoned street in high heels without wiggling at least once.”

After his analysis of Marilyn as a pedestrian, Flack Jones picked up our conversational threads where we’d broken them off with her parting from Joe DiMaggio, and tied them together again. “After that she came back and finished Seven Year Itch at Fox,” he said. “Her agent, Charlie Feldman, flung a snazzy party for her at Romanoff’s, and she went to New York. The next thing anybody knew, she announced that, with a New York photographer named Milton Greene, she had formed Marilyn Monroe, Inc. She’s the president of the corporation; Greene’s vice-president. But I have reason to think that she’d done that before she left Hollywood, for a hairdresser at the studio told me that one day when he had Marilyn in front of his mirror, she had said, ‘Gee, I feel good. I’m incorporated.’”

I put it to Jones, “When she left the studio that last time, was it a clean, sharp break or did her relations with the studio gradually become fuzzy and vague?”

“After Itch,” Flack Jones said, “she simply didn’t show up again. I don’t know whether you’d call that sharp or vague.”

I said, when I finally met Marilyn, “The way I get it, you invented a whole new system of holding out; you just disappeared.”

“I disappeared because if people won’t listen to you, there’s no point in talking to people,” Marilyn told me. “You’re just banging your head against a wall. If you can’t do what they want you to do, the thing is to leave. I never got a chance to learn anything in Hollywood. They worked me too fast. They rushed me from one picture into another.

“I know who started all of those stories which were sent out about me after I left Hollywood the last time,” she added. One paper had an editorial about me. It said: ‘Marilyn Monroe is a very stupid girl to give up all the wonderful things the movie industry has done for her and go to New York to learn how to act.’ Those weren’t the exact words, but that was the idea. That editorial was supposed to scare me, but it didn’t, and when I read it and I realized that it wasn’t frightening me, I felt strong. That’s why I know I’m stronger than I was.”

She thought for a while; then she said, “I’m for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is, the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them an individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It’s tragic.”

Going back to a straight question-and-answer routine, I said, “You’re habitually late for appointments. What are the psychological reasons for your lateness?’

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never come to any conclusion. If I knew, I’d get over it.”

I said that I’d heard she was so nervous before appointments that she was sometimes became nauseated. I asked if this was caused by a feeling of pressure — of people pushing and hauling and pulling at her.

“You’d throw up, too, in some situations,” she told me. “I flew into New York at eight o’clock one morning and there were photographers waiting to take pictures of me at the airport, and all that morning I had a series of interviews with newspaper people. Those interviews came twenty minutes or a half hour apart. Then I was rushed to a luncheon with a group of magazine people, and right after luncheon I tore over to the Daily News Building. I don’t think anybody can take that routine very long. Another complication is that I have a certain stupid sincerity. I don’t want to tell everybody who interviews me the same thing. I want them all to have something new, different, exclusive. When I worry about that, I start to get sick at my stomach.”

I asked her if writers had ever prepared material for her to use in an “interview” or in a “by-line story.”

“I refuse to let articles appear in movie magazines signed ‘By Marilyn Monroe,” she said. “I might never see that article and it might be O.K.’d by somebody in the studio. This is wrong, because when I was a little girl I read signed stories in fan magazines and I believed every word of them. Then I tried to model my life after the lives of the stars I read about. If I’m going to have that kind of influence, I want to be sure it’s because of something I’ve actually said or written.”

“I’ve been told that you devote hours to selecting and editing pinup pictures of yourself,” I said.

“I haven’t so far,” she told me. “But maybe it’s time I did. At least I’d like to have my pictures not look any worse than I do. I’d like them to resemble me a little bit. With some photographers, all they ask is that a picture doesn’t look blurred, as if you’ve moved while they were taking it. If it’s not blurry they print it.”

“Somewhere,” I said, “I’ve read that at least half of the photographs taken of you are killed because they are too revealing.”

“That’s the Johnston Office for you,” she sighed. “They’re very small about stuff like that, and what the Johnston Office passes, the studio ruins with retouching. After one sitting of thirty poses, twenty-eight of those poses were killed. The Johnston Office spends a lot of time worrying about whether a girl has cleavage or not. They ought to worry if she doesn’t have any. That really would make people emotionally disturbed. I don’t know what their reasoning is,” she went on with a puzzled air. “They certainly can’t expect girls to look like boys.”

“I’ve read that your measurements are 37-23-34,” I told her.

“If you’re talking about my lower hips, they’re thirty-seven inches,” she said. “If you’re talking about my upper hips, they’re thirty-four.” Eying her, I tried to decide where “upper” hip left off and “lower” began. I gave up.

“Nowadays,” she said, “there’s a vogue for women with twenty-twenty-twenty figures. Models in the high-style magazines stick out their hipbones and nothing else. But I’m a woman, and the longer I am one the more I enjoy it. And since I have to be a woman, I’m glad I’m me. I’ve been asked, ‘Do you mind living in a man’s world?’ I answer, ‘Not as long as I can be a woman in it.’”

“There’s another thing I want to ask you,” I said. “It’s about something you said to a man in the Fox Studio legal department. You said, ‘I don’t care about money. I just want to be wonderful.’ He didn’t know what you meant by that.”

“I meant that I want to be a real actress instead of a superficial one,” Marilyn herself told me. “For the first time I’m learning to use myself fully as an actress. I want to add something to what I had before. I want to be in the kind of pictures where I can develop, not just wear tights. Some people thought that they were getting their money’s worth when they saw me in The Seven Year Itch, but in future I want people to get even more for their money when they see me. Only today a taxi driver said to me, ‘Why did they ever put you in that little stinker, River of No Return?’

“I thought it was a good question,” Marilyn told me. “I’m with that taxi driver. He’s my boy. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t accept River of No Return today. I think that I deserve a better deal than a Z cowboy movie, in which the acting finishes third to the scenery and CinemaScope. The studio was CinemaScope-conscious then, and that meant that it pushed the scenery instead of actors and actresses.” Without missing a beat, she switched gears into another subject. “One of the things about leaving Hollywood and coming to New York and attending the Actors’ Studio was that I felt that I could be more myself,” she said. “After all, if I can’t be myself, who can I be?” I shook my head. She had me puzzled too.

Nunnally Johnson had directed How to Marry a Millionaire, costarring Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn. “Do her pictures make a lot of money?” I asked him in Hollywood.

“Millionaire earned a tremendous amount,” Nunnally told me.

“What about The Seven Year Itch?” I asked.

“Variety reports it as the top Fox grosser for 1955,” he said. “But speaking for myself, I can’t say that I saw the ‘new Marilyn Monroe’ in The Seven Year Itch that some others did. I thought that essentially it was the same performance, just longer. Still, this could scarcely be a cause for worry for her; God had given her that equipment and it was still magnificent. She was still a phenomenon.”

“Maybe she’ll grow into a young Mae West and make people laugh at sex,” I suggested.

Johnson agreed that it might be a good thing if she could do that. “I believe that the first time anybody genuinely liked Marilyn for herself, in a picture, was in How to Marry a Millionaire,” he said. “She herself diagnosed the reason for that very shrewdly, I think. She said that this was the only picture she’d been in in which she had a measure of modesty. Not physical modesty, but modesty about her own attractiveness. In Millionaire she was nearsighted; she didn’t think men would look at her twice, because she wore glasses; she blundered into walls and stumbled into things and she was most disarming. In the course of the plot she married an astigmatic; so there they were, a couple of astigmatic lovers. In her other pictures they’ve cast her as a somewhat arrogant sex trap, but when Millionaire was released, I heard people say, ‘Why, I really liked her!’ in surprised tones.”

These comments of Johnson’s were made before Marilyn was enlightened by exposure to the Actors’ Studio. Upon her return from New York to work at Fox in Bus Stop, Johnson did see a “new Marilyn Monroe.”

“In contrast to the old Marilyn, in her present incarnation she is a liberated soul, happy, co-operative, friendly, relaxed,” he wrote me. “Actually, it is as if she had undergone a psychoanalysis so successful that the analyst himself was flabbergasted. Now she’s different; her behavior and her manner as a member of the social order are O.K. As for her acting, that remains to be seen.”

I told Marilyn that I had read an Associated Press story which estimated that her newest contract — scheduled to run for seven years — would bring her more than $8,000,000. When I mentioned this, she said, “Eight million dollars is a lot. However, no matter what they tell you, it’s not for money alone that I’m going back to Hollywood. I am free to make as many pictures for my own company as I do for Fox, and I can do TV and stage shows.”

Among others I’d talked to about Marilyn, before discussing her with herself, was Milton H. Greene, the New York photographer who’d become vice president of Marilyn Monroe Productions.

“I don’t know where they got that figure eight million, either,” Greene had told me. “Not from me or Marilyn.” He went on, “I don’t ask you what you make, do I? Everybody wants an exclusive release or an exclusive interview with Marilyn on the subject, and I want everybody to be happy, but things like that are confidential.”

Like Marilyn, Greene asked me not to use a tape-recording machine when interviewing him. “Makes me stutter,” he said. So, carefully, laboriously, and word for word, I wrote down everything he said to me. While doing it, I noticed no signs of stuttering. Evidently a notebook and pencils didn’t bother him. Greene had also asked me to put the initial “H” in his name, making it Milton H. Greene. “Would you mind very much?” he said. “There’re other Milton Greenes who are also in the photography business.”

He had met Marilyn when he had gone to California to do a series of photographs of Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons and Marilyn Monroe. It hadn’t been his idea to do anything too sexy. “After all,” he said, “in a national magazine you can only expose so much of a girl, even if the girl is willing. Marilyn turned out to be different from what I thought she’d be. More sensitive.”

Greene had gone to California on a second assignment, and had begun to think of doing a book of photographs of Marilyn. “The book isn’t out yet,” he said, “but I’ll show you a few of the pictures I made for it. It will be Marilyn in different moods and settings, as if she were playing different parts.” He went to a shelf and brought back a box of aluminum squares. Each square contained a color transparency. “Here’s one where she looks as if she’s in England,” he said. “As you can see, she’s wearing an Edwardian hat. Here’s one where she looks like Bernadette in The Song of Bernadette.” I looked at that one for a long time. It was, I thought, a novel idea.

Milton H. Greene watched me write down what he’d said in my notebook; then he went off on a slight tangent. “One day I plan to do a cookbook for dogs,” he said. “It would contain dog-dish recipes. I think it would be amusing.” I brought him back from his dog cookbook project to his association with Marilyn. “In Hollywood,” he said, “we got to talking. This was after she’d made Seven Year Itch and after her divorce from Joe, and I told her that I hoped to go into television and theatrical production. I found that all Marilyn wants is to make just enough money to be able to afford to make good pictures. That’s the way I feel about it, too, so Marilyn Monroe Productions hopes to buy a good story property; then approach the right studio about making and distributing the picture.”

He stood up, walked around his office and came back to his chair. “If Marilyn had been only interested in making money,” he said, “she wouldn’t have been interested in me.”

When I asked Marilyn to tell me about her association with the Actors’ Studio, she said that she not only attended classes there, but had also had private lessons from Lee Strasberg and his wife, who are the mainsprings of the project.

Greene told me, “Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, Kim Stanley, Julie Harris and Montgomery Clift all studied under the Strasbergs. Marilyn observes, studies and watches. She listens to lectures. Occasionally she is allowed to take part.”

The Actors’ Studio lets interested people like Marilyn sit in on an informal, guest basis. She is not an officially enrolled student member of the Actors’ Studio, because you are not admitted there on that basis unless you have contributed something notable on the stage in a performance or have passed a series of exacting auditions. Just wanting to be in isn’t enough. This is very smart of the Strasbergs, because it eliminates all those who are without talent; otherwise the studio would be full of women all seven feet tall and all trying to be actresses.

I said to Marilyn that I’d heard she’d spent some time with Terence Rattigan, the British playwright, discussing the screenplay he was adapting for her from his London stage success, The Sleeping Prince, a vehicle in which Sir Laurence Olivier had played the prince. Sir Laurence had also agreed to play the same role opposite Marilyn and also to direct the film. “I had a bad cold the evening I spent with Mr. Rattigan, and he said I sounded like Tallulah Bankhead,” Marilyn told me proudly. Then she added thoughtfully, “Mr. Rattigan is young, but not too young.”

I asked her what she meant. She smiled and said, “I guess you want me to say over twelve and not quite ninety. I don’t know how old Mr. Rattigan is. I’d say he’s kind of ageless.”

I asked her to give me a hint of the story line followed by The Sleeping Prince. “I’m an American chorus girl in London, in it,” she said, “and the regent of a foreign country notices me and asks me to a reception at his country’s legation. I wriggle into my only formal and go, only it turns out it’s not a large gathering at all. In fact, it’s the same stale bit that’s been tried out on girls for the last three thousand years: dinner for two, candles, wine and soft music, when she’s expecting other guests. The next thing I know, I’ve had too much champagne and I’ve passed out. I won’t tell you any more. You ought to be willing to spend money to find out what happens next.

“The truth is,” she said, “the plot is about a man who’s been asleep — at least his emotional something or other has been asleep — but little by little a relationship builds up between him and this American chorus girl, and he begins to stir in his sleep, as you might say. He’s a married man, but that doesn’t complicate things because he’s sophisticated about the whole deal. Terence Rattigan describes it as ‘an occasional fairy tale or a comedy with serious overtones.’”

Weeks before, when I’d talked to Billy Wilder about Marilyn, I’d said to him, “I should think it would take a great deal of mature mental and moral strength to cope with becoming an enormous success overnight. It must be unsettling to suddenly become a sex symbol known all over the world.”

Wilder replied, “It’s my opinion that she’s basically a good girl, but what’s happened to her is enough to drive almost anybody slightly daffy, even someone who is armored with poise and calmness by his background and bringing up. You take a girl like Marilyn, who’s never really had a chance to learn, who’s never really had a chance to live, and suddenly confront her with a Frankenstein’s monster of herself built of fame and publicity and notoriety, and naturally she’s a little mixed up and made giddy by it all. However, I’d like to go on record with this: I worked with her in Seven Year Itch and I had a good time with her. She was seldom on time, but it wasn’t because she overslept. It was because she had to force herself to come to the studio. She’s emotionally upset all the time; she’s scared and unsure of herself — so much so that when I worked with her I found myself wishing that I were a psychoanalyst and she were my patient. It might be that I couldn’t have helped her, but she would have looked lovely on a couch.”

“You mean you didn’t get annoyed when she was late?” I asked.

“I understood the reasons for it,” Wilder told me. “There was no use getting annoyed. Even at the beginning, when I discovered that I had let myself in for a certain amount of trouble, I found myself liking her. At no time did I find her malicious, mean, capricious or anything but conscientious. There are certain urges and drives in her which make her different, but, as a director, I think it worth combating those things and living with them in order to work with her.”

I found myself hoping that Josh Logan, who will direct her in her next picture, the filmed version of Bus Stop, and Buddy Adler, the producer who bought that play for Fox, would feel the same way about her Wilder feels. That’s what she does to you. In spite of her spells of procrastination carried to fantastic lengths, in spite of her verbal convolutions, you wind up liking her.

By “her” I mean, of course, all of the various Marilyn Monroes — and there are several of them. There is the sexpot Marilyn Monroe; she’s the one who tries so hard to live up to the legend of her sexiness that even her own stomach sometimes can’t take it. Then there’s the frightened Marilyn Monroe, product of a broken home and a battered childhood — a girl named Mortenson who still can’t believe that she’s that girl on the screen they’re making all the fuss about. And last of all there is “The New Marilyn Monroe” — the one who is supposed to have emerged from the Actors’ Studio as a composed and studied performer, “having achieved growth” and “developed more.”

Somehow, as I neared the end of my interview, I found myself wondering if people would accept her as the new and different Marilyn Monroe she thinks she is. I had heard one man say, “Even if you hung Ethel Barrymore’s and Helen Hayes’ talent on Marilyn’s beautiful body, people wouldn’t take her acting seriously.”

To my surprise, I realized that I was dreading the possibility that when she turned on her new brand of acting, audiences might laugh at her, as they laughed at Zasu Pitts when she went in for “heavy drahma” after a lifetime as a comedienne.

“It doesn’t scare me,” Marilyn told me bravely, when I mentioned my fears. “If I have the same things I had before I started to go to the Actors’ Studio and I’ve added more — well, how can I lose?”

Whether she has really “added more” or not, I don’t know. But, as she herself points out, she does — emphatically — still have the same things she had before. My guess is that they’re still negotiable at the box office.

© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by Saturday Evening Post.

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Marilyn Monroe en pull col roulé noir et manteau camel Dior,
 New York - 1955
Marilyn Monroe in a black turtleneck sweater and Dior's camel overcoat

- de la collection de James Collins, fan des Monroe Six
-from the personal collection of James Collins, one of the 'Monroe Six'
   
Marilyn & Milton Greene

  - de la collection de Frieda Hull, une fan des Monroe Six
-from the personal collection of Frieda Hull, one of the 'Monroe Six'
 
 
 
 
    

- de la collection de James Haspiel, fan
-from the personal collection of James Haspiel, fan 
 

© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by GinieLand. 

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EXCLUSIVE: Never-before-seen pictures of secretly pregnant Marilyn Monroe, who confided to her close friend that her Let's Make Love co-star Yves Montand was the baby's father - not husband Arthur Miller
Article published on 15 february 2017
online Daily Mail

• Marilyn Monroe's friend Frieda Hull kept the color pictures she took of Marilyn's baby bump private but were sold as part of Frieda's estate last year
• The pictures were taken in July, 1960 in New York City; Marilyn was 34 years old
• Marilyn and married French actor Yves Montand began working together on Let's Make Love in February of that year and their affair began soon after
• The images were the prized possession of Hull, who worked for Pan Am and became close to the star while part of a group of fans known as the Monroe Six
• Frieda dubbed the pictures  ‘the pregnant slides’ – a reference to a shocking secret the screen siren kept right up until her death
• Tony Michaels, a friend and neighbor of Frieda's,  bought the images at the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ Marilyn Memorabilia Auction held by Julien’s Auctions in LA
• Michaels was told by Frieda that Marilyn  lost the baby. ' It was never made clear whether that was by way of a miscarriage or even an abortion'

Extraordinary photographs purporting to show a secret pregnancy of film icon Marilyn Monroe can today be revealed for the first time.
The world exclusive images of the beautiful Some Like It Hot actress and model were sold as original color slides at an auction in Hollywood in November last year from the estate of well known Monroe confidante Frieda Hull.
But the stunning photos went under the radar, selling for a mere $2,240 with wealthy collectors not aware of their true significance.

Now DailyMail.com can reveal the six unique images were the prized possession of Monroe's loyal friend Hull, which she dubbed the ‘pregnant slides’ – a reference to a shocking secret the screen siren kept right up until her death.
The shots were taken on July 8, 1960, outside Fox Studios in New York after Monroe had completed costume and hair tests for her film The Misfits, starring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift .

 
- Six photos of legendary film icon Marilyn Monroe taken by her friend Frieda Hull on July 8, 1960, outside Fox Studios in New York
- The images clearly show a prominent bump from Monroe’s belly which Hull claimed was evidence the star was in the early stages of pregnancy
- Monroe had wanted a baby more than anything in the world, but that joy was denied her. She had three miscarriages prior to losing this baby, all of which played out in the public eye

 
Marilyn and sexy French actor Yves Montand didn't contain their lovemaking to onscreen

The images clearly show a prominent bump from Monroe’s belly which Hull claimed was evidence the star was in the early stages of pregnancy.
And DailyMail.com can reveal the would-be father was not Monroe's then husband, playwright Arthur Miller, it was in fact Italian-French actor Yves Montand – who she met on the set of film Let's Make Love and who she had a very public affair with.

DailyMail.com spoke to Tony Michaels, the man who bought the color slides at the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ Marilyn Memorabilia Auction held by Julien’s Auctions in LA.
Tony, 56, was a close friend and next door neighbor of Frieda Hull before she passed.
He reveals that Hull had confided in him about Monroe’s secret pregnancy and claims the ‘pregnant slides’ are genuine evidence that she was with child.
And in an extraordinary and tragic Hollywood tale Tony says Monroe kept her pregnancy a secret from the world before 'losing' the baby during a hospital visit.

 
The images were the prized possession of Hull, who died in 2014

Tony told DailyMail.com: ‘Frieda was very proud of those slides and she was very proud to keep them a secret until the day she died.
‘But she told me the story behind them, that Marilyn got pregnant by Yves Montand.
‘It wasn’t a guess or a presumption, it was something she knew for sure, she was very close to Marilyn.
‘As far as she was concerned Marilyn was pregnant in the summer of 1960 and the slides prove it.’

Monroe had wanted a baby more than anything in the world, but that joy was denied her.
She had three miscarriages prior to losing this baby, all of which played out in the public eye. The star suffered with a condition called endometriosis her entire life that caused severe menstrual pain and she also struggled to conceive.

‘I suggested she sell the slides and all her other memorabilia so she could afford a better place to live, but again she refused, she said she would never sell out on her friend of ten years Marilyn.’

At Julien’s three day auction the Frieda Hull estate had 187 lots on sale.
Rare items from the archive included unseen color photos of Monroe as she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ for President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962 as well as Frieda’s original ticket and program to the gala event; never-before-seen slides of Monroe on location as she filmed the now famous subway skirt-blowing scene for The Seven Year Itch and a large collection of many unpublished photos of Marilyn at the 1955 premiere of East of Eden.

 
Hull (circled) , who worked for Pan Am,  became close to the star while part of a group of fans known as the Monroe Six who followed the star from place to place, here the star boarding a plane for Hollywood at Idlewild Airport in New York on February 25, 1956. One of the images in this set way signed by Marilyn: 'To Frieda Love & Kisses

   
In January of 1960 when she was filming Let's Make Love with Yves Montand  Marilyn's tummy was flat. But by the beginning of July the star has a visible baby bump

In total, according to Julien’s, ‘The Frieda Hull Marilyn Monroe Photo Archive’ included over 550 color and black and white candid snapshots and photographs, over 150 color slides, nearly 750 movie stills, publicity photos and lobby cards, and personal home movies.
Even the camera Frieda had used to take the 'pregnant slides' as well as dozens of other photos of Marilyn - a Mercury II, model CX 35mm - went up for sale selling for a bid of $3,437.50.
Tony said: 'It was amazing stuff, Frieda had 14 Marilyn autographs, some went as high as $14,000.'

The provenance for all the lots – which sold for $433,000 - was simply that they came as part of the Frieda Hull estate.
Tony recalls: ‘Frieda had even gotten permission from Marilyn to get a couple of locks of hair from her hairdresser.
‘I’m not talking much, just small lots of hair, together the two locks of hair went for $72,700.
‘She also had a red scarf that Marilyn had given her in there.
‘But out of all the lots her prized possession was the six ‘pregnant slides’ as she called them.
'She talked about these to me all the time, they were very important to her.'

Julien's auctioneers decided not to mention the pregnancy claims when selling the slides.
As a result the slides went relatively unnoticed and Tony felt it his duty to snap them up, paying just $2,240 - a bargain given the back story now emerging.
Of course, the astonishing claims which will send Marilyn Monroe historians into a flap, cannot be proven - both Marilyn and Yves Montand are long dead.
But Tony's compelling account of what Frieda had confided in him is difficult to ignore.

 
Tony Michaels (left) purchased six photos of the film icon Marilyn Monroe taken by his friend and neighbor Frieda Hull (right)

And today he wants to tell Frieda’s story and how his long time friend was infatuated with Marilyn Monroe.
Speaking from his home in Las Vegas, the high stakes casino croupier told DailyMail.com: ‘I met Frieda over the wall in my back yard around 20 years ago around 1996, she was a neighbor and I introduced myself, she introduced herself and I invited her over for a prize fight.
‘I had ordered a pay for view fight that night and she had mentioned she was a fan of boxing and she came over with a bottle of Jack Daniels and drank me under the table.
‘She became my drinking partner and we became pretty good friends, she came to all the kid’s Little League games, if they had events, she went to all of them.
‘She became my kid’s surrogate grandmother because she had no family of her own.’

Frieda was never married and had no children so she ‘adopted’ many of the neighborhood children, including Tony’s two young boys Anthony and Andrew.
She was preceded in death by her brother, Thomas Hull; and her aunt, Elizabeth Hagen, but had no obvious heir when she died.

Tony said: ‘My family became very close to her. Frieda didn’t drive so we would take her grocery shopping or to her doctor’s appointments.
‘She was very generous, we’d go out to eat and she’d never let us pay for it, she liked to do a little gambling and loved sports, she was a die-hard fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Mets.
‘She was set in her ways and was never going to change her opinion about anything, She was a brutally honest person.

 
Marilyn carried a coat in front of her belly after Frieda took the 'pregnant slides.;

‘She was very warm hearted, especially to the under dog whether it was children or animals.
‘She loved Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, but she had an infatuation with Marilyn Monroe.’

Frieda is widely known to have been one of the ‘Monroe Six’ – a group of six friends based in New York City who followed the star all over America to take her photo.
As an employee of Pan Am Airlines Frieda was in the enviable position of being able to photograph Monroe on a regular basis.
The group learned of the screen siren's whereabouts by reading movie magazines and asking her hairdresser and would wait outside her hotel or home.

Tony said: ‘Frieda started out as a fan, almost like a stalker, her and five friends.
‘Then after a while Marilyn would recognize the kids and she came over and asked their names and they started a friendship.
‘When she would come in to town, for lack of a better word, they would kidnap her, put a scarf on her head and put sunglasses on her and they would go out and do things that Marilyn couldn’t do because she was too famous.
'They called her "Mazzi". It was a code name they had for her, so no one else would know who they were talking about.
‘She got to be a kid with the Monroe Six, they would go roller skating in Central Park or bike riding, just hang out.’

Eventually Monroe came to know each member of the group very well, even inviting them to the Roxbury, Connecticut home she shared with then husband Arthur Miller for a picnic.

 
'I would never, I couldn’t capitalize on Marilyn’s death she was my friend,' Frieda told Tony. Her photos and memorobilia of Marilyn was sold as part of her esate when she passed away

Tony added: ‘To show you how gruff Frieda could be at times, the story went that Marilyn came over and took a potato chip off her plate and Frieda snapped and put her in her place, “don’t you ever do that, I don’t care who you are, or who you think you are, that’s rude, don’t do that”. From then on they were pretty close friends.
‘Every time we would get together, especially if we were drinking, I’d get to hear all the stories from Frieda.
‘Marilyn gave her a red scarf at one point and she worked for Pan Am so any time Marilyn came in to town Frieda would run out on to the tarmac and start taking pictures.
‘I told Frieda, you know you have all this stuff why don’t you sell it, you can get a better place.
‘But she said, “no I would never, I couldn’t capitalize on Marilyn’s death she was my friend”.

Tony lost contact with Frieda after he divorced his wife and moved out of the marital home, but he says his ex-wife and two sons kept in close contact with her.
The best friend of Tony’s sons, a man named Chris who asked for his last name to be left out of this article, was also close to Frieda and helped her in her dying months.
‘Chris visited her in the hospice and took care of her house, he did a great job of helping her put and Frieda was very thankful,’ said Tony.
As a result Chris was made the executor of the estate and took up Tony on his offer to help catalogue all her Marilyn Monroe memorabilia.
‘My kids were in the will as was my ex-wife, I was not. Frieda and I kind of had a falling out.
‘But I was still fond of her and her death was terribly sad.
'I helped catalogue Frieda’s Marilyn Monroe collection because over the years she had shown me most of it, I knew what to look for in her mountain of belongings.
'The first thing on my list was "The pregnant slides".
'She always called them that, she told me the father of the unborn child was Yves Montand, she told me the story of how Arthur got called away and Yves Montand's wife got called away and they stayed together in a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow and they had an affair.'
Indeed the affair between Monroe and Montand has been widely discussed over the years.

 
The camera with which Frieda snapped her pictures of Marilyn

Monroe and playwright husband Arthur Miller were staying in a luxury bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, while the golden couple of French cinema, Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand were next door.
Monroe and Montand were starring in the George Cukor movie, Let's Make Love at the time.
Miller and Monroe's unhappy marriage made it easy for the star to stray.
Signoret famously said of Monroe: 'If Marilyn is in love with my husband it proves she has good taste, for I am in love with him too.'

Production on Let's Make Love, a movie starring Monroe and Montand, began in February 1960.
Soon after shooting got underway, their respective partners Miller and Signoret were called away from Los Angeles, leaving Monroe and Montand alone in Miller's Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow.
On March 8, 1960 Monroe received the Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Actress for Some Like It Hot.
Could this be the night of conception? She would have been exactly four months pregnant in Hull's July 8, 'pregnant slides'.
In May, 1960 Miller found out about the affair and was very upset - his marriage to Monroe began to crumble.

 
In later years Montand admitted to the affair. 'I was crazy about my wife, but what can you do?' Montand recalled

 
Tony says that Frieda believed that when Marilyn went to hospital for ten days during the filming of The Misfits, it wasn't for acute exhaustion as was claimed at the time, it was for a nervous breakdown and possibly a miscarriage

By August that year they weren't speaking and Monroe moved out of a shared room with Miller at the Mapes Hotel in Reno.
In later years Montand admitted to the affair. 'I was crazy about my wife, but what can you do?' Montand recalled with a very French shrug.
Monroe died two years after Let's Make Love, at age 36.

Tony says he has meticulously researched the time period when Frieda claimed Monroe was pregnant and claims photographs taken at the time show the development of the child between two of her movies.
'Let's Make Love, you can see towards the end that she could be pregnant and she went right in to the The Misfits, Arthur Miller's play that he wrote for her,' he says.
'Then right at the end of The Misfits there's no sign of a pregnancy.'

Tony says that Frieda believed that when Marilyn went to hospital for ten days during the filming of The Misfits, it wasn't for acute exhaustion as was claimed at the time, it was for a nervous breakdown and possibly a miscarriage.
'She just told me Marilyn was pregnant in those photos and I believed her. I don't think she'd tell me that on a hunch, she knew.

 
Speaking from his home in Las Vegas, the high stakes casino croupier told DailyMail.com: ‘I met Frieda over the wall in my back yard around 20 years ago around 1996, she was a neighbor and I introduced myself, she introduced herself and I invited her over for a prize fight

'Frieda believed that it wasn't exhaustion that landed her in hospital, she said it was a nervous breakdown and she lost her baby.
'And all she told me was that Marilyn has lost the baby, it was never made clear whether that was by way of a miscarriage or even an abortion, and I never thought to press her on it.'

Tony says he bought the photos because he knew their history as 'The pregnant slides', while no one else did.
'Now I think that the story needs to be told,' he added.
Tony says he kicks himself that he didn't quiz Frieda more on her time with Marilyn.
She would often share gems of information and fascinating stories with him, more often than not when they shared a drink together.
'Frieda worshipped Marilyn, she loved her. She wouldn't give up anything after she died,' he said.

Frieda, originally from Brooklyn, NY, and just four years younger than Monroe, died of natural causes aged 83 in 2014.
She had retired from Pan Am and came out to Las Vegas where she enjoyed the occasional flutter in the Vegas casinos, loved watching sports and lived a solitary life with her lap dog Bobby, who died before she did.
An online obituary posted locally in Las Vegas read: 'Frieda Elizabeth Hull, of Las Vegas, passed June 22, 2014... She was one of the most interesting, wonderful and kind-hearted people the world has ever known.'
The obituary mentioned her bond with her old friend: 'She was a good friend to Marilyn Monroe and loved sharing stories and private photos of the icon.'
And it ended poignantly: 'She lived a long and beautiful life, dying at 83 years old... She was an amazing woman and I could only hope to be half the person she was. "We love you and you will be greatly missed."'

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> du site fanpop.com

*photographe

When she saw a camera, any camera, she lit up and was totally different. The moment the shot was over, she fell back into her not very interesting position.

Quand elle voyait un objectif, n'importe quel objectif, elle s'illuminait et était totalement différente. Au moment où la séance était terminée, elle retombait dans sa position pas très intéressante.

Dorothy Dandridge
(1922 - 1965)
actrice américaine
amie avec Marilyn de 1948 à 1955s
surnommée "The Black Marilyn Monroe" 

Dorothy Jean Dandridge naît le 29 novembre 1922 à Cleveland (dans l'Ohio, USA). Deuxième fille d'un pasteur et ébéniste (Cyril Dandridge) et d'une apprentie comédienne (Ruby Dandridge), sa soeur aîné s'appelle Vivian. Ses parents se séparent peu avant sa naissance. Leur mère lance ses deux petits filles très vite sur scène: Dorothy et Vivian se produisent sous le nom des Wonder Children, dans des spectacles religieux au sein des églises à travers le territoire des États-Unis pendant cinq ans, avec leur manager Geneva Williams, pendant que leur mère reste travailler à Cleveland, se produisant aussi sur scène.

Avec la Grande Dépression, le travail se fait plus rare et en 1930 Ruby déménage avec ses filles pour s'installer à Hollywood (en Californie), où elle trouve du travail dans des stations de radio et joue des rôles de servantes au cinéma.
En 1934, le duo Dorothy - Vivian se rebaptise The Dandridge Sisters et s'associent avec la danseuse et chanteuse Etta Jones (voir photo ci-contre). Elles se produisent sur scène dans de nombreux clubs à travers le pays, dont le Cotton Club et l'Apollo Theater à New York.
Dorothy obtient un petit rôle au cinéma en 1935, dans la comédie Teacher's Beau (de la série des films Our Gang). Et le trio parvient à être au casting des films The Big Broadcast of 1936, A Day at the Races avec les Marx Brothers et It Can't Last Forever avec les Jackson Brothers en 1937.
Puis Dorothy parvient à enchaîner divers rôles au cinéma; dans Four Shall Die (1940), une production de films faits pour les noirs avec des acteurs noirs, puis l'année suivante dans Lady from Louisiana avec John Wayne et Sundown avec Gene Tierney. En 1941, elle joue dans une comédie musicale de la 20th Century Fox: Sun Valley Serenade, où elle chante avec les Nicholas Brothers. En plus du cinéma, Dorothy prête sa voix à plusieurs courts métrages d’animation.

  Le 6 septembre 1942, Dorothy se marie avec le danseur de claquettes Harold Nicholas (l'un des frères Nicholas des 'Nicholas Brothers' - voir photo ci-contre). Ils ont ensemble une fille, Harolyn Suzanne Nicholas qui naît le 2 septembre 1943 avec un handicap mental (autisme profond). Sa belle-soeur Geraldine Branton racontera: «Dottie ne devait plus jamais se débarrasser d'un sentiment de culpabilité; personne n'est parvenu ensuite à la raisonner.» Dorothy et Harold finissent par divorcer en octobre 1951. Les échecs de sa vie privée et son enfance chaotique où elle s'est toujours sentie exploitée, vont la conduire à une dépression chronique jusqu'à la fin de sa vie.
Contrainte de subvenir aux besoins de sa fille, elle se produit dans les night-clubs qu'elle abhorre, paralysée par le trac et la timidité, malgré un grand succès car elle est plébiscitée par le public masculin séduit par sa beauté et elle triomphe au Mocambo de Los Angeles. Elle devient la première chanteuse noire à se produire dans des endroits aussi huppés que l'Empire Room du Waldorf Astoria de New York (elle voyagera ensuite à Londres, Toronto, La Havane, São Paulo).

L'Amérique des années 1950 est ségrégationniste et Dorothy va souffrir du racisme, comme toute personne de couleur aux Etats-Unis. Les lois raciales vont notamment lui imposer de ne pas 'se mélanger' avec les blancs. Dorothy racontera qu'un hôtel du Nevada lui avait ordonné de rester enfermer dans sa chambre quand elle n'était pas sur scène en train de chanter dans la salle de spectacle de l'hôtel et de ne pas fréquenter ni le bar ni la piscine de l'hôtel, réservés à la clientèle blanche. Le costumier William Travilla lui dessine des robes pour ses performances dans les nights-clubs; ils deviennent amis et Travilla sera témoin du traitement de racisme que subit Dorothy: un soir, au début des années 1950, il va la voir avec un ami à Las Vegas où Dorothy se produit. Le trio souhaite sortir ensemble dans les bars, casinos et night clubs mais il est interdit à Dorothy d'aller dans les lieux publics. Donc ils se retrouvent dans la cuisine de l'appartement d'hôtel de Dorothy et les hommes sont écoeurés de voir qu'il est acceptable pour Dorothy de se produire sur scène pour la clientèle blanche, mais pas assez pour se mêler à eux avant ou après. Ce qui aménera à Dorothy de dire "Si j'étais blanche, je pourrais capturer le monde."
A la même époque, elle a une aventure avec le comédien Peter Lawford, futur gendre du président Kennedy, qui, au dernier moment, refuse de l'épouser par crainte de saborder sa carrière.

  En 1951, son apparition dans Tarzan's Peril fait parler d'elle: c'est surtout sa tenue qui est jugée provocante (voir photo ci-contre) et elle surfe sur le phénomène en posant en tenue sexy pour la couverture du magazine Ebony.
En décembre 1952, un agent des studios de la MGM la voit sur scène au club Mocambo à Los Angeles et la recommande au casting de Bright Road, qui sera son premier vrai grand rôle, où elle y donne pour la première fois la réplique à l'acteur Harry Belafonte, qu'elle retrouvera plus tard dans bien d'autres films et qui restera un fidèle ami.
Elle poursuit en parallèle sa carrière sur scène, se produisant dans de nombreux nightclubs et multipliant les apparitions dans des émissions de télé, comme le célèbre Ed Sullivan.

En 1953, un casting national est organisé par la 20th Century Fox pour l'adaptation de la comédie musicale jouée à Broadway en 1943 Carmen Jones, basée sur l'opéra Carmen, et adapté dans le contexte de la seconde guerre mondiale, mettant en scène les afro-américains. A la recherche d'acteurs et d'actrices noirs, le réalisateur Otto Preminger ne veut pas au départ de Dorothy dans le rôle de Carmen, pensant que son look est trop sophistiqué et mieux adapté au rôle de Cindy Lou. Pour obtenir le rôle, Dorothy se fait aider des maquilleurs de la marque Max-Factor, pour obtenir l'apparence et la personnalité du rôle titre Carmen, et se rend dans le bureau de Preminger qui se laisse convaincre. Dorothy retrouve Harry Belafonte pour former le couple star du film. Malgré le statut de chanteuse reconnu de Dorothy, le studio voulait une voix d'opéra, les chansons sont donc doublées par la chanteuse d'opéra Marilyn Horne.

  A sa sortie, le film rencontre un succès considérable tant au niveau de la critique (le chroniqueur Walter Winchell dit que sa performance est "enchanteresse") que des recettes engendrées, et impose Dorothy comme la première sex-symbol noire américaine. Elle devient la première femme noire à faire la couverture du très populaire magazine Life (le 1er novembre 1954 - voir photo ci-contre), en posant dans son rôle de Carmen par une photographie publicitaire du film. Le succés international du film (qui a rapporté 10 millions $ au box office qui en fait l'un des films ayant rapporté le plus de bénéfices) mène Dorothy, la première actrice afro-américaine, aux Oscars (elle est nommée meilleure actrice aux Oscars de 1955 et fait sensation à la cérémonie, mais c'est Grace Kelly qui remporte le prix. Ce soir là, Marlon Brando, très attiré par Dorothy, va embrasser Dorothy sur la bouche pour la consoler et l'anecdote va choquer les bonnes moeurs américaines).
Dorothy va se rendre au Festival de Cannes en mai 1955 pour présenter le film en hors compétition: elle y est présentée comme "la bombe du festival"; dans un reportage pour la télévision française, le journaliste François Chalais dit qu' "elle explose sous les traits de l'étourdissante actrice café au lait. (...) elle n'a qu'à paraître pour que tout ait l'air de disparaître autour d'elle. Elle n'a qu'à bouger pour que tout, à part elle, ait l'air d'être soudain immobile, comme figé de stupeur devant autant d'inconsciente audace, devant autant d'hormones en liberté pas surveillée".
Le film lui a aussi permis de rencontrer l'amour: Dorothy devient la maîtresse d'Otto Preminger qui, de son côté, est marié. Leur relation va durer quatre ans, au bout desquels Dorothy mettra fin, réalisant que les promesses de Preminger de quitter sa femme ne seront jamais réelles et après que Preminger l'ait obligé à avorter par peur du scandale.

Le 15 février 1955, Dorothy signe un contrat de trois films avec la Fox, avec l'appui du grand patron des studios Darryl F. Zanuck, lui permettant de gagner 75 000 $ par film. Zanuck veut faire d'elle la première icone afro-américaine du cinéma. Dorothy est en lice pour de grands rôles: le remake du film The Blue Angel, reprenant le rôle de la chanteuse Lola, tenu jadis par Marlene Dietrich, ainsi que dans le remake de Under Two Flags, dans des adaptations entièrement afro-américaine. Elle accepte le rôle de Tuptim dans The King and I, et un rôle dans The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. Mais, suivant les conseils de Preminger lui indiquant que ces films sont indignes d'elle, elle décline donc les offres, ce qu'elle regrettera plus tard.
Elle fait son retour au cinéma en 1957, dans le film Island in the Sun, donnant la réplique à James Mason, Joan Fontaine, Joan Collins, et retrouvant encore Harry Belafonte. L'histoire controverse raconte l'amour entre une indienne (jouée par Dorothy) et un homme blanc (joué par John Austin) et le script a été remanié plusieurs fois afin de respecter les codes imposés par les studios concernant les relations inter-raciales. Côté coulisses, Dorothy et John Austin vont entamer une liaison. Malgré la controverse et les critiques négatives, le film rencontre un très grand succès.

Elle joue ensuite dans une production italienne, Tamango, face à l'acteur allemand Curd Jürgens avec qui elle vit une romance sur le tournage. En 1958, elle redonne la réplique à James Mason dans The Deck Ran Red, puis joue dans la super production hollywoodienne Porgy and Bess réalisée par Preminger avec Sidney Poitier et Sammy Davis Jr.
En 1959, elle joue dans un thriller britannique à petit budget, Malaga. La publicité autour du film annonce que c'est la première fois qu'une actrice noire embrasse un acteur blanc (ce qui est erroné, car c'est le film Tamango qui montre pour la première fois un baiser entre une noire et un blanc, entre Dorothy et Curd Jürgens); mais Dorothy et son partenaire Trevor Howard créent une tension sexuelle sous-jacente sous la direction de Laszlo Benedek et le film sera interdit dans les salles américaines jusqu'en 1962.
Elle joue avec James Coburn dans The Murder Men (1961 - qui sera ensuite intégré en épisode de la série télévisée Les Barons de la Pègre). En 1962, Christian-Jaque l’engage avec Alain Delon pour tourner un Marco Polo qui reste inachevé.

Le 22 juin 1959, Dorothy épouse en secondes noces le restaurateur Jack Denison (voir photo ci-contre). Une relation décevante: il la dépouille de sa fortune et ils divorcent en 1962 après des accusations de violences domestiques.
À cette époque, elle découvre que les personnes chargées de gérer ses finances l'ont déjouée de 150 000 $ et qu'elle avait 139 000 $ de dettes pour les arriérés d'impôts. Elle vend alors sa maison d'Hollywood et place sa fille dans un établissement psychiatrique d'état à Camarillo, en Californie, et emménage dans un petit appartement au 8495 Fountain Avenue à West Hollywood, en Californie.
Rencontrant de multiples déboires, tant sur le plan professionnel que personnel, elle décide de reprendre en main sa carrière de chanteuse. Le 9 septembre 1965, il est prévu qu'elle prenne l'avion pour New York, où elle doit faire son retour sur scène au Basin Street East.

Le 8 septembre 1965, elle discute au téléphone avec sa belle-soeur et amie Geraldine "Geri" Branton qui racontera que Dorothy évitait d'exprimer son espoir pour l'avenir de chanter People dans son intégralité (chanson de 1964 de Barbra Streisand) et de faire cette remarque énigmatique avant de raccrocher: «Quoi qu'il arrive, je sais que vous comprendrez.»
Plusieurs heures après cet appel, Dorothy est retrouvée morte, allongée nue au sol de sa salle de bain avec un turban bleu sur la tête, par son manager Earl Mills qui a forcé la porte pour rentrer. L'institut de pathologie de Los Angeles conclut que la cause de son décès est un accident vasculaire cérébral à la suite d'une overdose de médicaments (des antidépresseurs), alors que le coroner de Los Angeles parvient à une conclusion différente: décès du à une rare embolie d'obstruction du flux sanguin aux poumons et au cerveau, par de minuscules morceaux de graisse s'écaillant de la moelle osseuse dans le pied droit qu'elle s'était fracturée cinq jours avant sa mort.
Earl Mills déclarera que «La vie de Dorothy n'a été qu'une suite d'épreuves plus douloureuses les unes que les autres. Chaque fois elle perdait un peu plus pied. Il n'y avait pas d'issue, elle le savait.»
Dorothy avait 42 ans. Incinérée, ses cendres sont dispersées dans le Freedom Mausoleum du cimetière Forest Lawn Memorial Park à Glendale (en Californie). 

Dorothy Dandridge est une référence dans la culture américaine, et bon nombre des personnalités noires américaines lui rendent désormais hommage:

    
Beyoncé / Janet Jackson / Rihanna

En 1999, un biopic est réalisé pour la télévision "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge" ("Dorothy Dandridge, le destin d'une diva") avec Halle Berry dans le rôle titre, et récompensé par des Emmy Awards et Golden Globes:

Marilyn et Dorothy

 
Dorothy Dandridge, Otto Preminger, Marilyn Monroe

L'amitié entre Marilyn Monroe et Dorothy Dandridge reste un fait peu connu. Non relaté dans la presse d'époque, du à la ségrégation et au racisme -où les blancs étaient séparés des noirs- le lien entre les deux actrices est aussi peu décrit dans les biographies consacrées à Marilyn; tandis que l'on trouve plus d'information dans les livres consacrés à Dorothy.
Dorothy est surnommée la "Black Marilyn" (la "Marilyn noire") par les médias et la communauté noire de l'époque, de par leur sex-appeal et leur vie au destin tragique.

Marilyn Monroe rencontre Dorothy Dandridge à la fin de l'année 1948 pendant les cours d'art dramatique de l'"Actor's Lab" à Hollywood, que Marilyn a commencé à suivre en 1947. Elles se soutiennent lors des auditions (Dorothy, anxieuse et impatiente, apprécie la patience et la gaité de Marilyn) et s'appellent souvent au téléphone, discutant de leur carrière, des hommes et du racisme à Hollywood. Elles vont souvent ensemble à des fêtes privées à Los Angeles, parfois accompagnées d'Ava Gardner, une autre amie de Dorothy.

 
Ava Gardner et Dorothy (1953)

En 1952, quand Marilyn emménage à Hilldale Avenue, dans le West Hollywood, Dorothy est en quelque sorte une voisine de Marilyn, car elle habitait plus bas dans la même rue, dans un duplex qu'elle partegeait avec son petit-ami Phil Moore, un musicien de jazz, compositeur et professeur de chant pour les actrices, qui travaillait aussi en répétition avec Marilyn (en 1948 pour 'Ladies of the Chrorus' ). Marilyn se rendait ainsi souvent chez Dorothy, pour prendre des cours avec Phil Moore, où son piano est installé à l'étage:

    
Phil Moore avec Dorothy Dandridge (1951) / Marilyn Monroe (1948 et 1951)

Le 3 août 1952, Marilyn se rend chez Dorothy pour se préparer à la fête de Ray Anthony, en la présence du photographe Phil Stern, qui prendra des photos à la fête.

Eté 1953, sur le tournage de River of no return (La rivière sans retour) à Jasper au Canada,, Dorothy qui accompagne 'officieusement' son amant Otto Preminger, retrouve Marilyn. Les acteurs, Preminger et Dorothy sont photographiés dans les coulisses (les seules photographies montrant Dorothy en compagnie de Marilyn):

 
Rory Calhoun, Dorothy Dandridge,
Otto Preminger, Robert Mitchum et Marilyn

Le 15 septembre 1954, pendant que Marilyn tourne la scène de la robe de The Seven Year Itch (Sept ans de réflexion) à New York, Joe DiMaggio, entraîné par le chroniqueur Walter Winchell, va découvrir sa femme affoler le public majoritairement masculin lorsque sa robe blanche se soulève faisant découvrir ses jambes et sa culotte. Le soir à l'hôtel, le couple se dispute violemment. Quand la décision du divorce est prise, Marilyn téléphone aussitôt à Dorothy et les deux femmes vont pleurer ensemble. Dorothy va même proposer à Marilyn de venir à New York pour lui apporter son soutien.

En 1956, Dorothy souhaite obtenir le rôle de Cherie dans Bus Stop (Arrêt d'autobus) et supplie Darryl Zanuck de le lui donner. C'est Marilyn qui aura la rôle.

Quand Dorothy apprend le décès de Marilyn, elle en est dévastée. 
Dorothy meurt dans l'appartement D2 de l'immeuble "El Palacio Apartments", au 8495 Fountain Avenue, qui est l'immeuble où a vécu Marilyn pendant quelques mois en 1947.

 
El Palacio Apartments

Dorothy a confié à son manager Earl Mills que
- "Marilyn était un sex-symbol mondial mais je pense qu'elle n'aimait pas être ça. En plus, elle pensait ne pas être un bon coup au lit. Elle avait toujours de la peine pour toute sorte, donc faire l'amour pour Marilyn était souvent douloureux. Vous ne pouvez pas apprécier le sexe de cette manière."
- "Ce qu'elle voulait chez un homme n'existe pas. Elle avait le sentiment qu'un homme bien pourrait guérir tous ses maux, ses insécurités, ses doutes. Il pourrait la protéger de tous les troubles du monde. A chaque fois qu'elle rencontrait un homme dont elle pouvait tomber amoureuse, elle pensait que c'était cet homme qui pouvait faire toutes ces choses. Donc elle se mariait ou engageait une relation emplie de grands espoirs. Là, l'homme n'avait pas la possibilité de répondre à ces attentes. De plus, il ne savait pas ce qu'elle attendait de lui. Si il l'aurait su, peut être que ça aurait fonctionné. Mais si il finissait par lui demander, Marilyn ne savait pas dire ce qu'il fallait faire pour combler ce vide."

 >> sources:
biographie en anglais sur wikipedia
biographie en français sur wikipedia
blog Dorothy Dandridge, Angel Face sur coppercoloredgal
photographies sur  The Red List / LIFE / Doctor Macro
livre "Dorothy Dandridge: An intimate Biography" de Earl Mills (extrait sur Google Books)
forum EverlastingStar
article "The frienship of Marilyn and Dorothy" sur le blog thegentlemensfoundation
article "Encounters with Racism - Travilla, Marilyn and Dorothy" sur le blog travillastyle

- video documentaire / biographie en anglais -

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copyright text by GinieLand. 

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I never understood it - the sex symbol -
I always thought symbols were things
you clash together.
That's the trouble, a sex-symbol 
becomes a thing -
I just hate to be a thing.
But if I'm going to be a symbol
of something, I'd rather have it sex.

Je n'ai jamais compris - le sex-symbol -
J'ai toujours pensé que les symboles étaient des choses
auxquelles vous vous heurtez.
C'est le problème, un sex-symbol
devient une chose -
Je déteste être juste une chose.
Mais si je dois être le symbole de quelque chose,
je préfère que ce soit du sexe.

Les clins d'oeils à Marilyn au Cinéma

   - Tiré à Part  -

Dans le film "Tiré à Part", pour vérifier ses soupçons sur le manuscrit de Fabry (Daniel Mesguich), Lamb (Terence Stamp) se rend en Tunisie. Il rend visite à Yasmina (Huguette Maillard), qui lui confirme que tous les faits décrits concordent avec le viol puis le suicide de sa sœur Farida. La jeune Farida (Amira Casar), fille de Yasmina, ressemble prodigieusement à celle qu'il a tant aimée. Elle le conduit dans la chambre de sa défunte tante, où l'on remarque quelques posters : un portrait de Marilyn Monroe (photographie de "The Last Sitting" de Bert Stern), une affiche du film "Géant", et une affiche du film "Fenêtre sur Cour". 

  Film: Tiré à part
Année: 1996
Pays: France
Réalisateur: Bernard Rapp
Scénario: Bernard Rapp et Richard Morgiève d'après l'œuvre de Jean-Jacques Fiechter
Genre: drame
Distribution: Terence Stamp (Edward Lamb), Daniel Mesguich (Nicolas Fabry), Maria de Medeiros (Nancy Pickford), Jean-Claude Dreyfus (Georges Récamier), Frank Finlay (John Rathbone), Hannah Gordon (Doris), Amira Casar (Farida)...
L'histoire: Nicolas apporte son dernier manuscrit à son ami Edward. Si le style séduit Edward, l'histoire lui rappelle étrangement un crime dont il fut l'un des acteurs 30 ans auparavant...

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copyright text by GinieLand.

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Chanel n°5, crème Nivea et huile d'olive : les secrets de beauté de Marilyn Monroe
Article publié le 21/12/2016
en ligne sur Madame Figaro

  Dans les années cinquante, les stars avaient des habitudes beauté plus ou moins déroutantes. Zoom sur la routine soin et maquillage de Marilyn Monroe.

Si la légende retient que Marilyn Monroe dormait seulement avec quelques gouttes de Chanel n°5, l’actrice avait d’autres habitudes beauté beaucoup moins connues. Pour préserver son teint laiteux, l’actrice se protégeait du soleil et ne s’exposait jamais aux rayons UV sans protection. De plus, Norma Jeane Mortenson était obsédée par l’hydratation, afin d’obtenir un teint glowy qui accroche parfaitement la lumière, notamment au cinéma. C’est pourquoi, comme l’explique un article de Vogue us, elle utilisait la célèbre crème Nivea comme base de maquillage pour se concocter un teint pâle. La star soignait également sa peau avec de l’huile d’olive et était une amatrice de la crème très riche de huit heures d’Elizabeth Arden. Son habitude quotidienne plutôt originale ? Plonger son visage dans de l’eau très chaude chaque soir. Une astuce surprenante héritée du dermatologue star de l’époque, le docteur Erno Lazlo.

Le contouring avant l’heure

Pour sa mise en beauté, Marilyn Monroe était d’une grande exigence. Son maquilleur attitré, Allan "Whitey" Snyder, avait coutume d’utiliser de la vaseline ou de l’huile de coco en guise d’enlumineur sur les pommettes et les tempes de l’actrice. Cette dernière voulait également qu’on lui en applique sur les paupières afin qu’elles soient brillantes. La star était, de plus, une adepte du contouring, une technique de maquillage qui n'appartient donc pas à Kim Kardashian. Comme le rapporte le site du magazine américain Marie-Claire, Marilyn demandait à son maquilleur d’appliquer cinq teintes différentes de rouges à lèvres et de gloss pour se créer une bouche plus charnue. Le sombre s’appliquait sur les coins extérieurs et le contour, les teintes clairs au milieu de la bouche. Enfin, pour un regard de biche, l’héroïne de Certains l'aiment chaud utilisait un recourbe cils, le mascara de Helena Rubinstein et des faux cils. Un make-up qui n'a finalement pas pris une ride.

Les produis de beauté cultes de Marilyn Monroe
En images

-- NIVEA --

 
Crème multi-usages, Nivea, 4,99 € le pot de 250 ml,
disponible dans les points de vente de la marque.

-- MAX FACTOR --

  
Rouge à lèvres teinte « Marilyn Berry Red »,
collection « The Marilyn Monroe Lipstick Collection »,
Max Factor, 9,95 €, disponible dans les points de vente de la marque

-- ELIZABETH ARDEN --

 
Baume apaisant réparateur sans parfum « Crème de huit heures »,
Elizabeth Arden, 35,50 € le tube de 50ml,
disponible dans les points de vente de la marque.

-- MAKE UP FOREVER --
  
Faux cils « Lash Show »,
Make Up Forever, 17,50 €, en vente sur sephora.fr.

-- AROMA-ZONE --

  
Huile végétale d’olive bio, Aroma-Zone,
5,90 € le flacon de 200ml, en vente sur aroma-zone.com.

-- REVLON --

 
Vernis à ongles rouge “Nail Enamel”,
Revlon, 9,90 €, disponible dans les points de vente de la marque.

-- HELENA RUBINSTEIN --

  
Mascara “Long Lash”, Helena Rubinstein,
42 €, en vente sur helenarubinstein.com.

-- RMS BEAUTY --

  
Crème à tout faire d’huile de noix de coco pure « Raw Coconut Cream »,
RMS Beauty, 17 € le pot de 70 g, en vente sur ohmycream.com.

-- THE BODY SHOP --

 
Recourbe-cils, The Body Shop,
5,50 €, en vente sur thebodyshop.com.

-- VASELINE --

  
Vaseline pure, Vaseline,
5,10 € le pot de 106 g, en vente sur biovea.net.

Marilyn at Twentieth Century Fox
Author: Lawrence Crown

Date de sortie: septembre 1987
Relié 216 pages
Dimensions: 28,7 x 23,9 x 2,5 cm
Langue: anglais
Éditeur: W.H. Allen / Virgin Books
ISBN-10: 185227025X
ISBN-13: 978-1852270254
Prix éditeur: ? Euros
Ou le commander ? sur amazon 

Description: Packed with photographs and memorabilia, many rarely seen before, this book is a unique panorama of Marilyn's years at Twentieth Century Fox.

Content (sommaire): Marilyn Monroe's Fox Films / Introduction / Stock Kid - Starlet / All About Eve - All About Marilyn / The Fireball - Early Stardom / A Niagara of Monkey Business / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes / How To Marry A Millionaire / River Of No Return / There's No Business Like Show Business / The Seven Year Itch / Bus Stop / Let's Make Love - Something's Got To Give / Afterword

> extrait de quelques pages
 
   
   
 

Mon Avis en Bref...  10/10
Tel qu'il est intitulé, ce livre se concentre uniquement sur les années de Marilyn à la Fox: des informations (sur ses contrats et ses films) et des photos rarement publiées (d'excellentes qualités, noir et blanc et couleur). N'hésitez pas à l'acheter (on le trouve pour quelques euros sur internet), car bien qu'il commence à dater (édité en 1987) et n'existe qu'en anglais, vous serez surpris de son contenu, car le livre vaut surtout pour son contenu photographique axé sur les films tournés par Marilyn pour la Fox (d'où l'absence de "The Prince and The Showgirl", "Some Like It Hot" et "The Misfits"): les photos officielles de promo, en studio, en coulisses et des tests costumes.

Vous avez le livre ? Do you have the book ?
Apportez votre critique, votre avis ou votre note (/10)
Gives your opinion, review or note (/10)

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