Tatler

country: UK
date: 1973, October
content: 1 pages 1/2 article on Marilyn Monroe

 pays: Grande-Bretagne
date: october 1973
contenu: article d'1,5 page sur Marilyn Monroe

 In his controversial new book "Marilyn", author Norman Mailer portrays Marilyn Monroe's teen-age years as those of an "early hippie", whose mind was "muddy, drifting, fevered..." But a writer who actually knew Marilyn in those junior high school days, Dorothy Muir, has provided in the exclusive photo-story on these pages, the story of another Marilyn entirely. It is this Marilyn who is shown on a mountain excursion here with Mrs. Muir's son Bob, whom she often dated.

The Real Marilyn Monroe at 13...

A neighbor who knew her opens her family album to show the world these rare, previously unpublished snapshots and tells the truth about the Marilyn Norman Mailer never knew.
by DOROTHY MUIR
Copyright, 1973

There was no Marilyn Monroe in 1938. But that spring, and for a number of years after, Norma Jean Baker was a name I heard often.
She was a new girl at Emerson Junior High School where my son, Bob, was a student.
Norma Jean was carrying too many books and papers, there was a gust of wind, the papers sailed away and Bob retrieved them.
Of course they talked awhile - and everything considered, it is not at all surprising that in a very short time she was introduced into the group of kids he, the elder of the two, had grown up with.

They all spoke of her often, but it was June before I met Norma Jean. It was a beautiful day, a Saturday.
My husband's plans for the day included all of us, but Bob had plans of his own. He and two boy friends were going for a bike - and taking three girls. It had not been long since the boys had scorned girls in favor of a model rallroad set up in a room off our garage. Now, in junior high, girls had suddenly become important. Each had invited someone be considered "extra special."
The boys thought it too much trouble to carry a lunch, but finally agreed to one sandwich each. It wasn't nearly enough, but to a mother, there was no compensation: Hunger would certainly bring them home early.
Thus it was no surprise to hear their drugging footsteps on the drive long before four o'clock. They trooped into my kitchen, tired and hungry, and proceeded to make themselves comfortable on table top and stools as was their customs. That is, all but one did.
THE ONE WAS A stranger to me: A slender girl with delicate features and shoulder-length hair which was a shade dark to qualify as blond. She leaned hard against the wall for a few minutes and then, too tired to stand longer, eased herself down and sat cross-legged on the floor.
Suddenly Bob remerbered his manners and introduced us: "Mom - this is Norma Jean."
She simply said, "Hello," but there was a lovely smile of acknowledgement.
In a few years there would be a multitude who would adore that smile, but, at that moment, she was just a tired little girl.
I have read the book "Norma Jean" and about some of the things Norman Mailer has said about her. All they do is build up the sex angle and how unhappy she was. I don't know where Norman Mailer dug up his facts but what I know, I know from personal experience and my son agrees with me. Norma Jean was a normal teen-ager, full of fun and really enjoying life. My main reason for writing this article was to set the record straight. I don't know what went before or what went after, but she was a sweet kid, and there has been too much downgrading of her.
My impression was that she was shy, possibly thirteen years old, and just a trifle dared at being accepted as a peer by boys and girls who were all at least one year older.
While snacks and quantities of milk were consumed, I learned her last name was Baker and that she lived with an "aunt" and "uncle". Years later I learned the couple, Grace and Erwin (Doc) Goddard, were not actually her relatives.
Norma Jean become a regular in the group for several years and visited our home many times, but about all we ever learned was she was an orphan (father dead, mother hospitalised). Questions regarding her mother's health, she managed to evade. She would laugh and talk without apparent reservation, at the same time carefully avolding anything personal.
We sensed there was something in the past that was painful to think about but, for the time, it appeared she was happy living with Aunt Grace, of whom she was obviously very fond.

IN RECENT YEARS, many articles about Marilyn Monroe refer to her having lived with her Aunt Grace in the 'slum' area of what was then known as Sawtelle, now a part of the great West Los Angeles district. Since our home was there also, I always read these accounts with a certain amount of resentment, and I belive Norma Jean would share my feeling in this regard.
It is true the homes were modest, not manalons, but there were well cared for and mostly owner occupied. I recently drove through the area, and it has not changed very much in appearance. The house where Norma Jean lived with Aunt Grace still stands and its in good repair.
The fact of the matter is, Norma Jean spent her teen years in a very good neighborhood environment with an adult who was just as concerned for her welfare as any parent might be.
It is impossible not to smile when I recall some of the events following the Saturday of the bike. How often, in our living room, the girls tried to teach the boys to dance. "Begin the Beguine" was the popular tune of the day and their favorite. That record almost wore out as the boys tried valiantly to fellow the girls' nimble, not always accurate, dance routines. Those were wonderful fun times for Norma Jean, who appeared happy and carefree. She was a sweet kid we all grew to love very much.
Despite the fact that she was the youngest, she was by far the best dancer. Even with a thirteen-year-old's usual 'awkward' grace, it was clearly evident there was latent talent.

BUT THERE WAS something more important: "It's half snow and half rain, and the rain part is like ice."
She was right. My husband said, "Let's get out of here before we get stuck."
So we piled into the car. The two boys in the rumble seat, with Norma Jean between them, pulled a tarp over their heads to protect then from the ever increasing rainfall.
The road out of the valley was none too good. The car skidded around the many sharp curves. The road was littlered with debris, so we proceeded slowly. Suddenly a large rock, loosened by the snow and rain, came hurtling down the mountain side crashed directly onto the middle of the car's hood, and nearly hit the windshield.

Betty and I screamed, but the boys and Norma Jean were unaware of what had happened. While we sat numb with shock, we heard Norma Jean giggle, completely unaware of how close she had come to being killed. Just the slightest increase in the car's speed and the rock would have struck her instead of the hood. But was Norma Jean frightened when we told her ? Possibly so, but her reply was typical "teen-age".

"My head's too hard. That old rock would have bounced right off and wouldn't have left a dent."
I recall with pleasure another time in May of 1940. The desert wild flowers were especially beautiful that year, and Bob suggested we all go on a picnic and see them. Again he invited Norma Jean, Betty and Bill.
Quite by accident we came across a small deserted town - a doten or so buildings - weather-beaten and dilapidated. There was also the remains of and old jail, and of course the kids had to go inside and poke about in the rubble. When they came out, I took their picture while they stood in the doorway.
"I don't think we should have our picture taken, we're parobed prisoners and should be very careful," said Norma Jean. Her tone of voice was so solemn and her portrayal so perfect that we all burst into laughter.
After roaming about the desert for hours, sometimes in the car but mostly on foot, we finally spread a blanket on the sand and sat down to rest and eat.

WE TALKED AND LAUGHED a lot. I don't remember Norma Jean ever in a happier mood.
She was simply effervescent - the life of the party.
In late afternoon we picked bouquets of wild flowers to take home. She held hers as carefully as she might have held an infant and, with the adult sincerely she often displayed, said, "No two flowers alike - I never saw anything so lovely."
Shortly after the trip to the desert, Norma Jean stopped coming to our home. Bob said she was dating 'some old guy'. Later I learned this was Jim Dougherty, who was indeed four years her senior. That was the last I heard of Norma Jean until September of 1942, when I learned that she had been married to Dougherty, in June.
That fall, Bob chanced to meet her on Santa Monica Boulevard. Nothing could do but tell him to go home with her; she said Aunt Grace would be disappointed if he didn't.
It turned out that she and Jim happened to be visiting Aunt Grace that day. It was the only time Bob ever met Jim Dougherty, but he liked him and said Norma Jean and Jim seemed happy together.
In 1946, after his discharge from the Army, Bob again met Norma Jean, now 20. This time, it was in Van Nuys, where she was living. He declined an invitation to dinner when he learned Jim was overseas. Later, when telling about the meeting, he found it difficult to assess his impression of Norma Jean.
She was changed, prettier - actually beautiful, but something was lacking. It was as if she had been trying to cover up and was acting a part in order to do so - she was a bit too vivacious for real.
Norma Jean did say she was doing some modeling; but there was much talk, too, about an effort she was making to get into the movies.
Indeed, the day finally came when I opened a magazine to see a beautiful blond smiling at me from the printed page. Beneath was the caption: "Marilyn Monroe, Filmdom's lastes find." It was not cheesecake but a strictly glamour pose, and the photographer undoubtedly was proud of the result for it was truly a very beautiful picture.
I studied it carefully. There was just a bit of Norma Jean hidden there, but what had they done to her ? The sweet young girl we had known was gone, and I felt an unexplainable foreboding. It was as though the picture, even Marilyn Monroe, did not exist. Only Norma Jean was real, and she had gone away never to return.

traduction

Dans son nouveau livre controversé "Marilyn", l'auteur Norman Mailer décrit les années d'adolescence de Marilyn Monroe comme celles d'une "hippie précoce", dont l'esprit était "boueux, à la dérive, fiévreux..." Mais une écrivaine qui a réellement connu Marilyn pendant ses années de collège, Dorothy Muir, fourni à travers le reportage photo exclusif sur ces pages, l'histoire entière d'une autre Marilyn. C'est cette Marilyn qui est montrée ici lors d'une excursion en montagne avec le fils de Mme Muir, Bob, avec qui elle sortait souvent.

La vraie Marilyn Monroe à 13 ans...

Une voisine qui la connaissait ouvre son album de famille pour montrer au monde ces rares clichés inédits et raconte la vérité sur la Marilyn que Norman Mailer n'a jamais connue.
par DOROTHY MUIR
Droit d'auteur, 1973

Il n'y avait pas de Marilyn Monroe en 1938. Mais ce printemps-là, et pendant plusieurs années après, Norma Jean Baker était un nom que j'ai souvent entendu.
C'était une nouvelle venue de l'école Emerson Junior High School où mon fils, Bob, était étudiant.
Norma Jean transportait trop de livres et de papiers, il y a eu une rafale de vent, les papiers se sont envolés et Bob les a récupérés.
Bien sûr, ils ont discuté un moment - et tout compte fait, il n'est pas du tout surprenant qu'en très peu de temps, elle ait été introduite dans le groupe d'enfants avec lesquels lui, l'aîné des deux, avait grandi.

Ils parlaient tous souvent d'elle, mais c'était en juin avant que je rencontre Norma Jean. C'était une belle journée, un samedi.
Les plans de mon mari pour la journée nous incluaient tous, mais Bob avait ses propres plans. Lui et deux de ses copains allaient faire du vélo - et y emmenaient trois filles. Il n'y avait pas longtemps que les garçons avaient méprisé les filles en faveur d'un modèle de chemin de fer installé dans une pièce à côté de notre garage. Maintenant, au collège, les filles étaient soudainement devenues importantes. Chacun avait invité quelqu'un à être considéré comme "extra spécial".
Les garçons pensaient que c'était trop difficile de porter un déjeuner, mais ont finalement accepté un sandwich chacun. Ce n'était pas suffisant, mais pour une mère, il n'y avait aucune compensation : la faim les ramènerait certainement à la maison plus tôt.
Ce n'était donc pas une surprise d'entendre leurs pas de drogue sur l'allée bien avant quatre heures. Ils sont entrés dans ma cuisine, fatigués et affamés, et ont commencé à s'installer confortablement sur la table et les tabourets, comme c'était leur coutume. Autrement dit, tous se sont installés sauf une personne.
CELLE-CI ÉTAIT UNE INCONNUE POUR MOI : Une fille mince aux traits délicats et aux cheveux mi-longs qui étaient d'une teinte foncée pour être qualifiée de blonde. Elle s'appuya durement contre le mur pendant quelques minutes puis, trop fatiguée pour rester debout plus longtemps, se laissa tomber et s'assit en tailleur sur le sol.
Tout à coup, Bob s'est souvenu de ses manières et nous a présenté : "Maman, c'est Norma Jean."
Elle a simplement dit "Bonjour", mais il y avait un joli sourire de reconnaissance.
Quelques temps après, il y aura une foule qui adorera ce sourire, mais, à ce moment-là, elle n'était qu'une petite fille fatiguée.
J'ai lu le livre "Norma Jean" et certaines des choses que Norman Mailer a dites à son sujet. Tout ce qu'ils font, c'est développer l'angle sexuel et à quel point elle était malheureuse. Je ne sais pas où Norman Mailer a déterré ses faits mais ce que je sais, je le sais par expérience personnelle et mon fils est d'accord avec moi. Norma Jean était une adolescente normale, pleine de joie et appréciant vraiment la vie. Ma principale raison d'écrire cet article était de remettre les pendules à l'heure. Je ne sais pas ce qui s'est passé avant ou ce qui s'est passé après, mais c'était une gentille enfant, et il y a eu trop de déclassement sur elle.
J'avais l'impression qu'elle était timide, peut-être âgée de treize ans, et qu'elle osait à peine se faire accepter comme pair par des garçons et des filles qui avaient tous au moins un an de plus.
Alors que des collations et des quantités de lait étaient consommées, j'ai appris que son nom de famille était Baker et qu'elle vivait avec une « tante » et un « oncle ». Des années plus tard, j'ai appris que le couple, Grace et Erwin (Doc) Goddard, n'était pas vraiment de sa famille.
Norma Jean est devenue une habituée du groupe pendant plusieurs années et est venue dans notre maison à plusieurs reprises, mais tout ce que nous avons appris, c'est qu'elle était orpheline (père décédé, mère hospitalisée). Les questions concernant la santé de sa mère, elle réussissait à les éluder. Elle riait et parlait sans réserve apparente, tout en évitant soigneusement tout ce qui était personnel.
Nous avons senti qu'il y avait quelque chose de son passé dont il était douloureux d'y penser mais, pour le moment, il semblait qu'elle était heureuse de vivre avec tante Grace, qu'elle aimait manifestement beaucoup.

CES DERNIÈRES ANNÉES, de nombreux articles sur Marilyn Monroe mentionnent qu'elle a vécu avec sa tante Grace dans le quartier des "bidonvilles" de ce qui était alors connu sous le nom de Sawtelle, qui fait maintenant partie du grand quartier ouest de Los Angeles. Comme notre maison était là aussi, j'ai toujours lu ces récits avec un certain ressentiment, et je pense que Norma Jean partagerait mon sentiment à cet égard.
Il est vrai que les maisons étaient modestes, mais elles étaient bien entretenues et principalement occupées par leur propriétaire. J'ai récemment traversé la région en voiture et leur apparence n'ont pas beaucoup changée. La maison où Norma Jean vivait avec tante Grace est toujours là et en bon état. Le fait est que Norma Jean a passé son adolescence dans un très bon environnement de quartier de voisinage avec une adulte qui était toute aussi soucieuse de son bien-être que n'importe quel parent.
Il est impossible de ne pas sourire en évoquant certains des événements qui ont suivi le samedi du vélo. Combien de fois, dans notre salon, les filles ont essayé d'apprendre aux garçons à danser. "Begin the Beguine" était l'air populaire du moment et leur préféré. Ce disque a failli s'épuiser alors que les garçons essayaient vaillamment d'imiter les routines de danse agiles, pas toujours précises, des filles. Ce furent de merveilleux moments de plaisir pour Norma Jean, qui semblait heureuse et insouciante. C'était une enfant adorable que nous avons tous appris à aimer beaucoup.
Malgré le fait qu'elle était la plus jeune, elle était de loin la meilleure danseuse. Même avec la grâce «maladroite» habituelle d'une adolescente de treize ans, il était clairement évident qu'il y avait un talent latent.

MAIS IL Y AVAIT quelque chose de plus important : "C'est moitié neige et moitié pluie, et la partie pluie est comme de la glace."
Elle avait raison. Mon mari a dit : "Sortons d'ici avant que nous soyons coincés."
Nous nous sommes donc entassés dans la voiture. Les deux garçons dans le siège du grondement, avec Norma Jean entre eux, ont tiré une bâche sur leurs têtes pour se protéger des pluies toujours croissantes.
La route hors de la vallée n'était pas trop bonne. La voiture a dérapé dans les nombreux virages serrés. La route était un peu couverte de débris, nous avons donc procédé lentement. Soudain, un gros rocher, desserré par la neige et la pluie, est descendu du flanc de la montagne, et s'est écrasé directement au milieu du capot de la voiture et a presque heurté le pare-brise.

Betty et moi avons crié, mais les garçons et Norma Jean ignoraient ce qui s'était passé. Alors que nous étions assis engourdis par le choc, nous avons entendu Norma Jean glousser, complètement inconsciente à quel point elle avait été sur le point d'être tuée. La moindre augmentation de la vitesse de la voiture, et le rocher l'aurait frappée à la place du capot. Mais Norma Jean a-t-elle eu peur quand on lui a dit ? C'est possible, mais sa réponse était typiquement « adolescente ».

"Ma tête est trop dure. Ce vieux rocher aurait rebondi et n'aurait pas laissé de bosses."
Je me souviens avec plaisir d'une autre fois en mai 1940. Les fleurs sauvages du désert étaient particulièrement belles cette année-là, et Bob a suggéré que nous allions tous en pique-nique et les voir. Encore une fois, il a invité Norma Jean, Betty et Bill.
Tout à fait par hasard, nous sommes tombés sur une petite ville déserte - une douzaine de bâtiments - battue par les intempéries et délabrée. Il y avait aussi les restes d'une ancienne prison, et bien sûr les enfants devaient y entrer et fouiner dans les décombres. Quand ils sont sortis, j'ai les ai pris en photo alors qu'ils se tenaient dans l'embrasure de la porte.
"Je ne pense pas que nous devrions nous faire prendre en photo, nous sommes des prisonniers parobés et nous devons être très prudents", a déclaré Norma Jean. Son ton de voix était si solennel et son portrait si parfait que nous avons tous éclaté de rire.
Après avoir erré dans le désert pendant des heures, parfois en voiture mais surtout à pied, nous avons finalement étalé une couverture sur le sable et nous nous sommes assis pour nous reposer et manger.

NOUS AVONS BEAUCOUP PARLÉ ET RI. Je ne me souviens pas que Norma Jean ait jamais été de meilleure humeur. Elle était tout simplement effervescente - la vie de la fête. En fin d'après-midi, nous avons cueilli des bouquets de fleurs sauvages à emporter à la maison. Elle tenait la sienne avec autant de soin qu'elle aurait pu tenir un bébé et, avec la sincérité d'une adulte qu'elle affichait souvent, dit : "Il n'y a pas deux fleurs pareilles - je n'ai jamais rien vu d'aussi beau."
Peu de temps après le voyage dans le désert, Norma Jean a cessé de venir chez nous. Bob a dit qu'elle sortait avec "un gars plus vieux". Plus tard, j'ai appris qu'il s'agissait de Jim Dougherty, qui était en effet de quatre ans son aîné. Ce fut la dernière fois que j'entendis parler de Norma Jean jusqu'en septembre 1942, quand j'appris qu'elle avait été mariée à Dougherty, en juin.
Cet automne-là, Bob a eu la chance de la rencontrer sur Santa Monica Boulevard. Rien d'autre à faire que de lui dire de rentrer chez elle avec elle ; elle a dit que tante Grace serait déçue s'il ne le faisait pas.
Il s'est avéré qu'elle et Jim rendaient visite à tante Grace ce jour-là. C'était la seule fois où Bob rencontrait Jim Dougherty, mais il l'aimait bien et dit que Norma Jean et Jim semblaient heureux ensemble. En 1946, après sa libération de l'armée, Bob rencontre à nouveau Norma Jean, âgée alors de 20 ans. Cette fois là, c'était à Van Nuys, où elle habitait. Il a décliné une invitation à dîner quand il a appris que Jim était à l'étranger. Plus tard, en racontant la rencontre, il eut du mal à évaluer son impression sur Norma Jean.
Elle avait changée, était plus jolie - en fait belle, mais il manquait quelque chose. C'était comme si elle avait essayé de se couvrir et jouait un rôle pour le faire - elle était un peu trop vive pour de vrai. Norma Jean a dit qu'elle faisait du mannequinat; mais on parlait aussi beaucoup d'un effort qu'elle faisait pour entrer dans le cinéma.
En effet, le jour est enfin venu où j'ai ouvert un magazine pour voir une belle blonde me sourire depuis la page imprimée. En dessous se trouvait la légende : "Marilyn Monroe, la dernière trouvaille de l'industrie du cinéma." Ce n'était pas une image de pin-up mais une pose strictement glamour, et le photographe était sans aucun doute fier du résultat car c'était vraiment une très belle photo.
Je l'ai étudié attentivement. Il y avait juste un peu de Norma Jean caché là, mais qu'est-ce qu'ils lui avaient fait ? La douce jeune fille que nous avions connue était partie, et j'ai ressenti un pressentiment inexplicable. C'était comme si l'image, même Marilyn Monroe, n'existait pas. Seule Norma Jean était réelle, et elle était partie pour ne jamais revenir.

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

Eye
People and Pictures

country: USA
date: 1953, September
content: 7 pages article on Marilyn Monroe

 pays: USA
date: septembre 1953
contenu: article de 7 pages sur Marilyn Monroe

Les photographies sont de John Florea

 article

 MARILYN LEARNS
How to Marry a Millionaire

Marilyn's studio knew what it was doing when it cast her in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She's first choice on every red-blooded male's list. And in keeping with the avaricious gold-digger she played in that film, Fox is starring her in How to Marry a Millionaire. To make sure she carries on the tradition, a lucky lensman Gene Trindl was called in to teach Marilyn the art of capturing her quarry.
The assignment worked out beautifully. Tarting from the ground up (above), Trindl helped his willing scholar pick the right things to wear, and pointed out the value of mink to set off a girl's personality.

 traduction

MARILYN APPREND
Comment épouser un millionnaire

Le studio de Marilyn savait ce qu'il faisait lorsqu'ils l'ont choisie pour Les hommes préfèrent les blondes. Elle est le premier choix sur la liste de tous les hommes virils. Et en accord avec la chercheuse d'or avare qu'elle a joué dans ce film, la Fox la fait jouer dans Comment épouser un millionnaire. Pour s'assurer qu'elle perpétue la tradition, un photographe chanceux, Gene Trindl, a été appelé pour enseigner à Marilyn l'art de capturer sa proie.
La mission s'est merveilleusement bien déroulée. En partant de zéro (ci-dessus), Trindl a aidé son érudit volontaire à choisir les bonnes choses à porter et a souligné la valeur du vison pour mettre en valeur la personnalité d'une fille.

 Caption photos

Légende photos

 
A GIRL'S GOT TO BE WELL GROOMED,
know how to attract a man with proper poise and posture.
UNE FILLE DOIT ÊTRE BIEN PRÉPARÉE,
savoir comment attirer un homme avec un équilibre et une posture appropriés.

 
ELIGIBILITY TEST.
Check his Dun & Bradstreet rating.
If his credit meets the requirements, the marriage campaign can get underway in earnest.
TEST D'ADMISSIBILITÉ.
Vérifiez sa cote Dun & Bradstreet.
Si son crédit répond aux exigences, la campagne de mariage peut démarrer sérieusement.

* Dun & Bradstreet est une compagnie américaine de statistiques sur les entreprises

 
DOLLAR VALUE.
Marilyn proved that diamonds were a girl's best friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Now photog teaches her important lesson - how to count her carats !
LA VALEUR DES DOLLARS.
Marilyn a prouvé que les diamants étaient le meilleur ami d'une fille dans Les hommes préfèrent les blondes.
Maintenant, le photographe lui donne une leçon importante : comment compter ses carats !

 
Final Exam.
Always look like a lady,
develop a distinctive walk
and don't ever let any man make a monkey of you...
Examen final.
Ressemblez toujours à une femme,
développez une démarche distinctive
et ne laissez jamais un homme faire de vous un singe...

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

Collier's

country: USA
date: 1953, June, 27
content: 2 pages article on Marilyn Monroe

pays: USA
date: 27 juin 1953
contenu: article de 2 pages sur Marilyn Monroe

 article

Collier's Color Camera
Gentlemen Prefer MONROE

LORELEI LEE is determined little blonde who first appeared durong the 1920s in a hugely successful book, and then a play, called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She was dedicated to the proposition. And it was her simple belief that any man with a bank roll was fair game. The fictional Lee became an enduring symbol for female gold diggers. She was put on silent film by Hollywood in 1928 and reincarnated four years ago in a hit Broadway musical. This summer, unprincipled, doll-eyed Lorelei Lee, modernized and brought up to date, will be the motivating force of a new movie to be released by 20th Century-Fox. The present embodiment of the fulsome blonde whom mid-century gentlemen seem to prefer is Marilyn Monroe. "I can't define Lorelei's character," Miss Monroe says, "but I know what's in her mind." On these pages Marilyn shows what she thinks Lorelei thinks about in a specially posed series of photos which reveals the lady's gem-bright mind.

PHOTOGRAPHS FOR COLLIER'S BY JOHN FLOREA

 traduction

La caméra couleur de Collier's
Les hommes préfèrent MONROE

LORELEI LEE est une petite blonde déterminée qui est apparue pour la première fois dans les années 1920 dans un livre à grand succès, puis dans une pièce de théâtre, intitulée Les hommes préfèrent les blondes. Elle s'est consacrée à la proposition. Et c'était sa simple conviction que tout homme avec un bon compte en banque était un jeu équitable. La fictive Lee est devenu un symbole durable pour les chercheuses d'or. Elle a été mise en scène au cinéma muet par Hollywood en 1928 et s'est réincarnée il y a quatre ans dans une comédie musicale à succès à Broadway. Cet été, Lorelei Lee, sans scrupules, aux yeux de poupée, modernisée et remise au goût du jour, sera la force motrice d'un nouveau film qui sortira chez 20th Century-Fox. L'incarnation actuelle de la blonde pulpeuse que les messieurs du milieu du siècle semblent préférer est Marilyn Monroe. "Je ne peux pas définir le caractère de Lorelei", dit Mlle Monroe, "mais je sais ce qu'elle a en tête." Sur ces pages, Marilyn montre ce à quoi elle pense que Lorelei pense dans une série de photos spécialement posées qui révèlent l'esprit brillant de la dame.

PHOTOGRAPHIES POUR COLLIER'S PAR JOHN FLOREA

Caption photos

Légende photos

  
"J'adore tout simplement le feuillage d'été.
C'est si brillant et frais et la couleur de l'argent"

 
"Une dame préfère être accompagnée par un homme
avec une bonne figure - surtout dans son carnet de banque"

 
"Eh bien, une fille comme moi ne rencontre presque jamais d'hommes vraiment
intéressants. Parfois, mon cerveau est vraiment affamé"

 
"Quand un gentleman s'intéresse à une femme,
elle devrait savoir quelque chose sur son passé"

 
Analysant le personnage de Lorelei Lee, Marilyn Monroe,
qui joue la classique chercheuse d'or à l'écran, déclare :
"Son premier, dernier et seul amour, ce sont les diamants.
Sa philosophie de la vie se résume en une simple déclaration -
" Tout le monde devrait avoir un passe-temps" "

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

Photoplay

country: USA
date: 1952, April
content: 3 pages article on Marilyn Monroe

pays: USA
date: avril 1952
contenu: article de 3 pages sur Marilyn Monroe

 Pages de l' article "Temptations of a Bachelor Girl"

Temptations of a Bachelor Girl
She's young, she's beautiful and she lives alone. And she knows how to have fun - and stand clear of gossip
By Marilyn Monroe

I like the life of a bachelor girl - including its temptation. It's a lot better life than the one I used to have. I can remember when I was practically a nonentity. What else is a girl who doesn't know much about her background ?
Everyone used to tell me what to do and how to do it, with me afraid of myself, always trying to please someone else.
So i find it pleasant now to come and go as I wish, to do what I want to do when I want to do it. However, I wouldn't say the life of a bachelor girl is all roses. There is, for one thing, the matter of loneliness...
Loneliness offers temptations. Girls who live alone can become so tired waiting for someone to ask them out that they look anywhere for excitement, accept almost any kind of date, go on any kind of party - just to go. They come to settle for too little, to take the easy road instead of growing more mature and becoming stronger. To settle for too little, can lead to a wrong marriage, to promiscuousness, to self-deceit. I've managed to avoid this danger because my work and other interests keep me mentally and physically occupied.
Recently, my days have begun at six in the morning. It's been seven when I got home to have dinner, study my lines and then work on my school lessons. I'm not supposed to be the type, I know, but I've been taking a literature course at UCLA. I've gained much from it.
Dates, too, are a problem for the bachelor girl - if she allows them to be. But not long ago when I could think of no one I knew well enough to ask to take me to a party, I went alone. And had a wonderful time.
Another night, dateless, I was pretty depressed. I called a couple of friends to ask them over, but they were busy. I tried listening to records, but wasn't in the mood. Finally, I got in my car and drove down to the beach. I got over the bleak mood, but I felt like every other bachelor girl - it would have been so nice to have someone to come home to.
A few men may have rather strange ideas about a bachelor girl's character, fell that because she lives alone she must be a little careless of her reputation. A girl can give this impression, or she can make her moral principles quite clear.
I once heard a bachelor girl say, "You know, it's so difficult to live alone. You have to be twice as careful in what you do and say so as not to give people - men especially - the wrong impression.
I didn't waste much time in disagreeing with this character, in telling her, "I see no reason for worrying about what other people think or say about me as long as I can face myself. I owe no apologies to anyone and have no intention of going around making explanations."
Some bachelor girls, of course, act as if they were carrying a sign reading, "The pure of heart." There's no point in this attitude either. If you're going to be on a tightrope when you go out for fear you'll say or do something that will give the wrong impression, you're better off at home. Some girls, of course, adopt the pure in heart attitude after spending most of the evening leading a man on. Then, when he reacts accordingly, they're oh ! so shocked !
A man will take a cue from a girl every time - whether she's a bachelor girl or not.
On dates, there may be the problem of letting a man know what the evening stops at your front door. However, when a man puts his foot inside your front door and wants to come in, just thank him for a nice evening and - close the door !
I have confidence in men - and their more noble, as well as their baser, instincts. A man wants approval. He won't force his attentions on you if you make it clear that said attentions are unwelcome.
If he doesn't go for the quiet explanation of "keep out", if he argues, gets belligerent, can't understand why he can't come in for "a few minutes", then I lose all interest in protecting his manly feelings. If he asks for a door to be closed in his face - he deserves it.
Some people, I know, disapprove of a bachelor girl entertaining a man at home. I entertain men at home - usually for dinner or for an evening of record-playing. I don't leave my door open and I don't have to know a man for two years before I invite him to my apartment. Neither do I say, "Come on up" to someone I've just met.
Before I think seriously of marriage, the goal of most bachelor girls, there are, I know, things about myself I'll have to change.
First I'll have to do an about-face on my would-be present independence and start establishing some roots. This, I think, will not be difficult since I adapt easily. There's also my personal carelessness. I come home from the studio, kick off my shoes and leave them where they fall. I may pick them up later and I may not. I go into the kitchen, fix a hurried meal, and sit on the floor by the fire and listen to records as I eat. When it's time to go to bed, I'm apt to drop my clothes wherever I am.
This might not do if I were married. With a husband as careless as I am we'd have quite a place. But carelessness is a habit we bachelor girls get into.
I'll also have to learn to share more before I quit my bachelor girl estate. I'm used to making my own decisions and taking care of my own problems. I'd have to be on guard not to be quite as efficient around my husband. I doubt that any man appreciates a wife who wants to pay all the bills, carve the roast and mix the cocktails.
There's also the matter of being on time. Because there's no one around me to keep me posted on my appointments, I often forget to arrive on time. This I understand is something which no husband appreciates.
I don't plan, however, to put these changes into effect just yet. I'm going to stay a bachelor girl for a while. It's a wonderful life -in spite of all the temptations.

Traduction

Tentations d'une célibataire
Elle est jeune, elle est belle et elle vit seule. Et elle sait s'amuser - et se tenir à l'écart des commérages
Par Marilyn Monroe 

J'aime la vie d'une célibataire - y compris sa tentation. C'est une vie bien meilleure que celle que j'avais eu l'habitude d'avoir. Je me souviens quand j'étais pratiquement rien ni personne. Qu'est-ce qu'une fille qui ne connaît pas grand-chose de son passé ?
Tout le monde me disait quoi faire et comment le faire, j'avais peur de moi-même, essayant toujours de plaire à quelqu'un d'autre.
Alors je trouve agréable maintenant d'aller et venir comme je veux, de faire ce que je veux faire quand je veux le faire. Cependant, je ne dirais pas que la vie d'une célibataire est toute rose. Il y a, d'une part, la question de la solitude...
La solitude offre des tentations. Les filles qui vivent seules peuvent devenir si fatiguées d'attendre que quelqu'un leur demande de sortir, qu'elles cherchent n'importe où l'excitation, acceptant presque n'importe quel type de rendez-vous, participant à n'importe quel type de fête - juste pour y aller. Elles en viennent à se contenter de trop peu, à emprunter la voie de la facilité au lieu de mûrir et de devenir plus fortes. Se contenter de trop peu peut conduire à un mauvais mariage, à la promiscuité, à l'auto-tromperie. J'ai réussi à éviter ce danger parce que mon travail et d'autres intérêts m'occupent mentalement et physiquement.
Dernièrement, mes journées commencent à six heures du matin. Il est sept heures quand je rentre à la maison pour dîner, étudier mes répliques et ensuite travailler sur mes cours à l'école. Je ne suis pas censée être de ce genre, je le sais, mais j'ai suivi un cours de littérature à l'UCLA. J'y ai beaucoup gagné.
Les rendez-vous sont aussi un problème pour la célibataire - si elle les permet. Mais il n'y a pas si longtemps, quand je ne pouvais penser à une personne que je connaissais assez bien pour demander de m'emmener à une fête, j'y allais seule. Et j'y passais un moment merveilleux.
Un autre soir, sans rendez-vous, j'étais assez déprimée. J'ai appelé quelques amis pour leur demander de venir, mais ils étaient occupés. J'ai essayé d'écouter des disques, mais je n'étais pas d'humeur. Finalement, je suis montée dans ma voiture et j'ai conduit jusqu'à la plage. J'ai surmonté mon humeur morne, mais je me sentais comme toutes les autres filles célibataires - ça aurait été tellement agréable d'avoir quelqu'un avec qui rentrer à la maison.
Certains hommes peuvent avoir des idées assez étranges sur le caractère d'une fille célibataire, estimant que parce qu'elle vit seule, elle doit être un peu insouciante de sa réputation. Une fille peut donner cette impression, ou elle peut exprimer clairement ses principes moraux.
J'ai entendu une fois une fille célibataire me dire : "Tu sais, c'est tellement difficile de vivre seule. Il faut être deux fois plus prudente dans ce que l'on fait et dans ce que l'on dit pour ne pas donner aux gens - surtout aux hommes - une fausse impression."
J'ai très vite été en désaccord avec ce qu'elle disait, et de lui répondre : "Je ne vois aucune raison de m'inquiéter de ce que les autres pensent ou disent de moi tant que je peux m'assumer. Je ne dois m'excuser à personne et n'ai nullement l'intention de faire le tour de la question pour donner des explications."
Certaines filles célibataires, bien sûr, agissent comme si elles portaient une pancarte indiquant « Le cœur pur ». Cette attitude ne sert à rien non plus. Si vous allez être sur la corde raide lorsque vous sortez, de peur de dire ou de faire quelque chose qui donnera une fausse impression, vous serez bien mieux de rester chez vous. Certaines filles, bien sûr, adoptent une attitude de cœur pur après avoir passé la majeure partie de la soirée à diriger les choses avec un homme. Puis, quand il réagit en conséquence, elles sont oh ! tellement choquées !
Un homme réagira face à une fille à chaque fois, qu'elle soit célibataire ou non.
Lors des rendez-vous, il peut y avoir le problème de faire savoir à un homme que la soirée s'arrête à votre porte d'entrée. Cependant, lorsqu'un homme met un pied à l'intérieur de votre porte d'entrée et veut entrer, remerciez-le simplement pour une bonne soirée et - fermez la porte !
J'ai confiance dans les hommes - et dans leurs instincts les plus nobles comme les plus bas. Un homme veut l'approbation. Il ne forcera pas ses attentions sur vous si vous indiquez clairement que ces attentions ne sont pas les bienvenues.
S'il ne part pas après l'explication simple de se "tenir à l'écart", s'il râle, devient belliqueux, ne peut pas comprendre pourquoi il ne peut pas entrer pour "quelques minutes", alors je perds tout intérêt à protéger sa virilité. S'il demande qu'une porte lui soit fermée au nez, il le mérite.
Certaines personnes, je le sais, désapprouvent qu'une fille célibataire amène un homme chez elle. J'amène les hommes chez moi - généralement pour le dîner ou pour passer la soirée à écouter des disques. Je ne laisse pas ma porte ouverte et je n'ai pas besoin de connaître un homme depuis deux ans de l'inviter dans mon appartement. Je ne dis pas non plus « Viens » à quelqu'un que je viens à peine de rencontrer.
Avant de penser sérieusement au mariage, qui est le but de la plupart des filles célibataires, il y a, je sais, en moi, des choses que je vais devoir changer.
Je devrais d'abord devoir faire volte-face sur ma prétendue indépendance actuelle pour commencer à m'enraciner. Cela, je pense, ne sera pas difficile puisque je m'adapte facilement. Il y a aussi mon insouciance personnelle. Quand je rentre du studio, j'enlève mes chaussures et je les laisse là où elles tombent. Je peux les ramasser plus tard comme je peux ne pas le faire. Je vais dans la cuisine, je me prépare rapidement un repas, je m'assois par terre près du feu et j'écoute des disques pendant que je mange. Quand il est l'heure d'aller au lit, j'ai tendance à laisser tomber mes vêtements à l'endroit où je me trouve.
Cela ne fonctionnerait peut-être pas si j'étais mariée. Avec un mari aussi insouciant que je le suis, nous trouverons notre place. Mais l'insouciance est une habitude dans laquelle nous nous encrons, les filles célibataires.
Je vais aussi devoir apprendre à être plus dans le partage avant de quitter mon statut de fille célibataire. J'ai l'habitude de prendre mes propres décisions et de m'occuper de mes propres problèmes. Je devrais être sur mes gardes pour ne pas être aussi efficace avec mon mari. Je doute qu'un homme apprécie qu'une femme veuille payer toutes les factures, découper le rôti et préparer les cocktails.
Il y a aussi la question de la ponctualité. Parce qu'il n'y a personne autour de moi pour me tenir au courant de mes rendez-vous, j'oublie souvent d'arriver à l'heure. Je comprends que c'est quelque chose qu'aucun mari n'apprécierait. Je ne prévois pas, cependant, de mettre ces changements en vigueur pour l'instant. Je vais rester célibataire un moment. C'est une vie merveilleuse, malgré toutes les tentations.

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

Look
vol 15, n° 22

country: USA
date: 1951, October, 23
cover: Marilyn Monroe (by Gene Kornman)
content: 6 pages article on Marilyn Monroe

 pays: USA
date: 23 octobre 1951
couverture: Marilyn Monroe (par Gene Kornman)
contenu: article de 6 pages sur Marilyn Monroe

- sommaire:
"Marilyn Monroe... A serious blonde who can act"
by Rupert Allan - p 40

Cover Photograph: Marilyn Monroe,
Gene Kornman - 20th Century Fox

 - Pages : article "MARILYN MONROE
... a serious blonde who can act"
by RUPERT ALLAN - Photographed by Earl Theisen

Article: "MARILYN MONROE ... a serious blonde who can act"
by RUPERT ALLAN - Photographed by Earl Theisen

At lunchtime, an awed hush cancels the noise of guzzle and gossip in Twentieth Century Fox's studio commissary. Every eye in the place follows with varying degrees of calculation as a neatly delineated blonde makes her way, like a cat picking its way across a muddy path, to a far table. Oblivious to all, starlet Marilyn Monroe (23 years old; unmarried; 5'5 1/2"; 118 pounds; 34" hips; 23" waist; 36 1/2" bust)  sits down to her lunch, calmly opens a book on anatomy. For others, the chatter and staring continue. Monroe is busy studying to be a serious actress.

In the commissary or on the screen, Marilyn is a show-stopper. She's even good in a potato sack (above). Her appearances in The Asphalt Jungle, All About Eve, and the current Let's Make It Legal and Love Nest, have been tantalizingly brief - but so gratifying to fans that she's now the brighest star potential among blondes since Lana Turner. Like the great female stars, past and present, Marilyn has other assets at least as important as her impressive dimensions. Her bag of tricks include a tridimensional walk, a sultry voice with a proximity fuse, and a smile of diversified insinuations.

Despite Nature's bounty, Marilyn works as hard on self-improvement as any other actress in Hollywood. She is a serious girl, and with reason. Orphaned in early childhood, California born Marilyn (Norma Jean Baker) was brought up by a series of foster parents. At 16, she ran off to be married, but the marriage was a failure. From a job in an aircraft factory, she moved as an artist's model into the purview of movie moguls. Grabbed by a big studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, she was promised a great future, given almost no movie work in a year, and dropped. Then another studio, Columbia, picked her up, dropped her six months later. Broke and hurt, she returned to modeling to help pay for dramatic lessons. She had learned a bitter truth: An acting carrer requires dramatic experience.

She Has a Problem

Now under contract to Fox, and with co-starring role in RKO's Clash By Night coming up, Marilyn puts in long hours at the studio every day. She gives up most of her evenings for voice lessons, body-movement classes, dramatic coaching and literature classes.

Sometimes her physical assets get in the way of mental improvement. A few months ago at night drama school, it came her turn to "improvise a scene" for the benefit of the class. Marilyn started across the stage to the whistles of the men students. The teacher angrily called her aside. "You're supposed to be an actress !" she screamed. "You should give then no reason to whistle at you like that !" Marilyn was taken aback. Even today when she tells the story, she opens wide her blue eyes and inquires, "What's a girl gonna do ?"

Traduction "MARILYN MONROE ... une blonde sérieuse qui peut jouer"
par RUPERT ALLAN - Photographiée par Earl Theisen

À l'heure du déjeuner, un silence émerveillé annule le bruit des ragots et des commérages dans la cantine du studio de la Twentieth Century Fox. Tous les regards de ce lieu suivent avec divers degrés de calcul, alors qu'une blonde bien délimitée se dirige, comme un chat se frayant un chemin à travers un chemin boueux, jusqu'à une table éloignée. Inconsciente de tout, la starlette Marilyn Monroe (23 ans; célibataire; 1,66 m; 53,5 kg; 87 cm de tour de hanches; 61 cm de tour de taille; 90 cm de tour de poitrine) s'assoit pour son déjeuner, ouvre calmement un livre sur l'anatomie. Pour d'autres, le bavardage et les regard se poursuivent. Monroe est occupée à étudier pour devenir une actrice sérieuse.

A la cantine ou à l'écran, Marilyn est une vedette. Elle est même bonne dans un sac de pommes de terre (ci-dessus). Ses apparitions dans Quand la ville dort, Eve, et les actuels Chéri divorçons et Nid d'amour, ont été incroyablement brèves – mais si gratifiantes pour les fans qu'elle est maintenant la star potentielle la plus brillante parmi les blondes depuis Lana Turner. A l'image des grandes stars féminines, passées et présentes, Marilyn possède d'autres atouts au moins aussi importants que ses dimensions impressionnantes. Son sac d'astuces comprend une marche tridimensionnelle, une voix sensuelle avec un fusible de proximité et un sourire aux insinuations diversifiées.

Malgré la générosité de la nature, Marilyn travaille aussi dur pour s'améliorer que n'importe quelle autre actrice d'Hollywood. C'est une fille sérieuse, et avec raison. Orpheline dans sa petite enfance, Marilyn (Norma Jean Baker), née en Californie, a été élevée par une série de parents adoptifs. À 16 ans, elle s'est enfuie pour se marier, mais le mariage a été un échec. D'un emploi dans une usine d'avions, elle est passée en tant que modèle d'artiste au domaine des magnats du cinéma. Saisie par un grand studio, la Twentieth Century-Fox, on lui a promis un grand avenir, ne lui donnant pratiquement aucun film pendant un an, et l'abandonna. Puis un autre studio, la Columbia, est venu la chercher, pour la lâcher six mois plus tard. Brisée et blessée, elle est retournée au mannequinat pour aider à payer des cours de théâtre. Elle avait appris une vérité amère: une carrière d'acteur exige une expérience dramatique.

Elle a un problème

Maintenant sous contrat avec la Fox, et avec un rôle de co-vedette de la RKO dans Clash By Night bientôt sur les écrans, Marilyn passe de longues heures au studio tous les jours. Elle abandonne la plupart de ses soirées pour des cours de chant, des cours de mouvements corporels, du coaching dramatique et des cours de littérature. Parfois, ses atouts physiques entravent l'amélioration mentale. Il y a quelques mois aux cours d'art dramatique du soir, c'est à son tour d'"improviser une scène" au profit de la classe. Marilyn traversa la scène aux sifflets des étudiants masculins. Le professeur l'appela avec colère en aparté. "Tu es censée être actrice !" Elle a crié. "Tu ne devrais donner alors aucune raison de te faire siffler comme ça !" Marilyn était abasourdie. Même aujourd'hui, lorsqu'elle raconte l'histoire, elle ouvre de grands yeux bleus et demande : « Qu'est-ce qu'une fille devrait faire ?"

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

Photography

country: USA
published in June 1953
content: 8 pages article on Marilyn Monroe

The Marilyn session photos by Philippe Halsman for Life April, 7, 1952
is here explained by the photographer himself

pays: USA
paru en juin 1953
contenu: article de 8 pages sur Marilyn Monroe

La séance de Marilyn par Philippe Halsman pour Life 7 avril 1952
est ici détaillée par le photographe lui-même

- summary: "Shooting Marilyn... Philippe Halsman" - p66

- Pages : article "Shooting Marilyn"

Article: Shooting Marilyn
by Philippe Halsman

WHEN A PHOTOGRAPHER is asked by a photographic magazine for a set of pictures he is unhappy if he cannot offer a selection of his best and most unusual photographs. Thus I was unhappy when PHOTOGRAPHY asked me for my story on Marilyn Monroe which was only a rather typical Life assignment. But realizing that the most noble purpose of a photographic magazine is educational, and that there is not presently in Hollywood a more educationnal subject than Marilyn, I agreed sadly but willingly.
Actually, I had photographed her a couple of years before I shot my cover story. At that time she was a very intense and hard-working at putting the best points of her anatomy in the public eye. Her blouses and sweaters made it easy to guess what they were supposed to hide.
I was working then on a Life story about Hollywood starlets. To find out how good the were (as actresses) the editor, Gene Cook, invited eight of them and I photographed each one in four basic situations: listening to the funniest but inaudible joke, enjoying the most delicious but invisible drink, being frightened by the most horrible invisible monster, and finally, being kissed by the most fabulous invisible lover.
If Marilyn was a standout among the eight starlets, it was not for her acting ability in the first three of the tests. But when I asked her to act out the last basic situation, I changed my mind. She gave a performance of such realism and such dramatic intensity that not only she but even I was utterly exhausted.

I met Marilyn again three years later. She was not yet a star, but already all the aging women in Hollywood hated her. I was struck by the change. She no longer tried to be sexy - she was sexy in the most unabashed and relaxed way.
There was already a flattering legend of dumbness about her, for Hollywood likes to surround its beautiful blondes with the bewitching aura of imbecility. What indeed could add more to the attractiveness of an enchantress than the complete absence of brains ? Unfortunately the facts did not confirm the legend. I found Marilyn anything but stupid, with an amazing frankness and a good sense of humor, and her company stimulating even in a spiritual way. The trait which struck me most was a general benevolence, an absolute absence of envy and jealousy, which in an actress was astonishing.

By coincidence, a week after this meeting, Life's reporter Stanley Flink informed me that his magazine wanted me to shoot Monroe for a possible cover, with a few supporting pictures to be used inside -probably two pages. We got in touch with the studio and were told that Marilyn would be available for a day and a half. I specified that I didn't want to shoot her in the studio, and a meeting in her hotel was arranged.
Now I had to decide what kind of photographs I would make. Some photographers shoot only by instinct, and though they often get beautiful individual pictures, they have difficulty in putting together a cohesive picture story. Others follow closely a shooting script and force their material into such conformity that it loses spontaneity and sincerity. In my photography I try to avoid the pitfalls of either category. Of course I don't avoid shooting by instinct whan an interisting situation offers itself to me. On the other hand, I consciously try to use my intellect as much as possible. I strive to clarify my own thinking about the subject and to organize the picture material in terms of story conitunuity and layout, being careful however not to make my subjects pose, but to incite them to do things they are used to doing.
First I had to find a theme for my story, a general idea to carry through all my pictures. I thought how I had tried to capture the essence of other women: Ingrid Bergman's radiant wholesomeness; Anna Magnani - a tragic tigress; Cecile Aubry - half child, hald woman, tempting and disturbing; Marian Anderson, singing Negro spirituals, full of priestly dignity.
And then I thought of the pathetic struggle of a poor starlet in Hollywood. Among the crowd of beautiful girls who never made the grade, Marilyn was not the one who had the most beautiful face or the most elegant figure. So why was she successfull ? Because sha was a good actress ? Nobody had yet mentionned her acting ability. But even if the great Duse were alive, would any Hollywood studio make an effort to hire her ? I doubt it. CBut I am sure that if Italy had an actress who surpassed Jane Russell and Dagmar in their most conspicuous attributes, every movie company would come running to outbid the others.
Who were the great movie stars ? Theda Bara, the "It" Girl Clara Bow, Pola Negri, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich. A few of them could even act, but in the last analysis their fabulous "glamour" was nothing but their special brand of sex appeal
And in the case of Marilyn Monroe I saw the amazing phenomenom of Hollywood being outsmarted by a girl whom it had itself characterised as a dumb blonde.
As usual, analysis led logically and almost inescapably to the theme of the story. I had to show in my pictures that Monroe's sexiness was not only her weapon but her very essence, that it permeated everything she did - talking, walking, sitting, eating, lying down. In terms of a layout everything became equally clear and simple. I had to produce and opening picture, establishing the general theme. The rest of the story would be photographs showing Marilyn in different situations, proving my point.

On the appointed day we arrived on time in front of Monroe's hotel: Life's Stanley Flink, my assistant John Baird and I. Marilyn was of course late. Finally she drove up in her not-exactly-new Pontiac convertible, apologized for being late, and we all went up to her room. It was medium-sized, with a big couch-like bed, with gymnastic aquipment on the floor and with a lot of bookshelves along the wall. Marilyn wore blue jeans and looked as unaffected as the proverbial girl next door. The was immediately a feeling of palship and of having fun. "What do you do with these dumbbells ?" I asked when I almost tripped over a couple of them. "But Philippe, I am fighting gravity !" Marilyn answered gravely, and inhaled deeply to prove her point.
I decided to begin by trying for a cover picture. First I had to find the dress. Marilyn opened her closet and I found to my surprised that one of the reasons why Monroe wore so little was that she had so little to wear. She obviously was spending more money on books and records than on dresses. There were no furs in her wardrobe and only a couple of evening gowns. I selected the white slinky one, and Marilyn put it on. It had an enormous bow on the left hip. I explained to Marilyn that the bow cheapened the gown, that as a rule simple lines in a dress were more elegant. Marilyn, after listening to me with the attention of a pupil listening to a teacher's explanation of a new algebra theorem, took her scissors and cut off the bow.
While she was in the bathroom overhauling her makeup (I insisted that she not to wear more than lipstick and mascara), I was thinking of the way she should pose. The obvious would have been to shoot her reclining in an armchair or on her couch, but because it was so obvious I decided against it. I led Marilyn to a corner and put my camera in front of her. Now she looked as if she had been pushed into the corner - cornered - with no way to escape. The basic situation was provided, and I had only two remaining worries: the lighting, and Stanley Flink.
I use my Fairchild-Halsman camera almost exclusively for photographing faces. It would have been wasteful to concentrate on Monroe's face, since she uses her body (for acting) more than any other Hollywood actress. Consequently I decided to shoot her with a Rolleiflex, and an aperture of f/5.6 seemed to me appropriate. At that stop my Weston meter indicated, in spite of the big window behind me, only 1/3 second. My assistant brought from the car thow #2 floodlamps in aluminium reflectors and I put one on a portable stand in front of Marilyn. Now, using the big window as a fill-in and the flood as the main light, i could shoot at 1/10 or 1/25 second, depending on the distance. My assistant attached the second light to the top of an adjacent closet so that it illuminated and backlighted Marilyn's blond hair. The lighting problem solved, there remained the question of Stanley Flink.
Reporters frequently insist on watching the actual shooting session. The mere fact of being observed usually inhibits both model and photographer, creating an atmosphere of self-consciousness which destroys the necessary intimacy between cameraman and subject. But fortunately for me in this case, nature has blessed Flink with a charming and helpful disposition. He is never the cold, impartial observer; he immediatly and enthusiastically becomes a part of the working team.
He placed himself near the camera ans started to compliment and to tease Monroe. I pretended to be very jealous of him and we had a fiery verbal battle, both unabashedly competing for Marilyn's favor. Surronded by three admiring men, she smiled, flirted, giggled, and wriggled with delight. During the hour I kept her cornered she enjoyed herself royally, and I... I took between 40 and 50 pictures - not of the stock expressions she usually gives to the photographers.
Why did I take so many pictures, instead of being satisfied with four or five ? I shoot when the expression seems significant, but I never know whether the next moment might not produce and even more rewarding expression. Nothing seems cheaper to a magazine photographer then unexposed film. The great number of exposures makes the subject disregard the importance of being photographed, and creates sometimes a complete immunization against the constant clicking of the shutter. I stop shooting when I feel that the situation has reached its climax. I was extremely happy to see later that the Life editors had selected as the cover the picture made at that climactic instant.

My next step was to review Marilyn's negligees. The Twentieth Century-Fox publicity man, Roy Craft, who is in charge of Marilyn, but is nevertheless particularly efficient and cooperative, had sent over ten different negligees. I selected the one I thought would photograph the best and started to look for a background. My curiosity was aroused by the only photograph in the room. To my surprise I recognized the face of Eleonora Duse. Did Marilyn display this picture just to impress itinerant intellectuals ? I asked a few questions and was startled to find that Marilyn not only knew a lot about her, but that the Divine Duse was her great idol.
An old rule of mine, when making a reportage, is to photograph everything which is significant or startling. This was both. I decided to include Duse's photograph in my opening picture. There was a record player on the bookshelf. Marilyn, in a transparent negligee, leaned against it, listening with breathless dreaminess to a record. Her derrière was pointing toward Duse's immortal face. To me it was no sacrilege. It was my ironic comment on the shift of values in our civilization.
Marilyn's bookshelves were full of the most disparate books -about religion, science, history, psychology, and translations of French, Russian, and German classics. That too was startling, and a good opportunity to make and educational picture. My next photograph showed the gorgeous blonde, in her transparent negligee, sitting with a book in her lap, wistfully working on her intellectual development. It was truly inspirationnal. Behind Marilyn's figure, eggheads could study the titles of her books. This was the last picture of the first day.

The next day, on our way to lunch, I took the opportunity of photographing Marilyn's remarkable walk, trying to catch its amazing turbinoid undulation. I made any exposures, for I had the feeling that, rhythmically, at the peak of its lilting tortility, it winked at me, but that I constantly missed catching the wink. With a movie camera it would have been child's play, but to seize the essence of the walk in one shot, if it was possible at all, demanded the utmost apperceptive concentration.
After lunch, we drove to a drive-in restaurant to show that Marilyn looks sexy even while eating. After this, I made the series of pictures showing Monroe's technique in applying for a job which were used in Life. Then we took the speedlights to her room, and with indirect lighting I photographed her exercising with dumbbells, crawling on the floor, standing on her head, and doing pushups and handstands. I thought this would be the last set of pictures. We packed our equipment and carried it down the stairs. Looking up, I saw Marilyn leaning over the railing to see us off. It looked like a well-composed photograph. I called "hold it !" and opened my Rollei to take another two dozen shots of her there.

The assignment had been typical in every respect, and when I returned to New York I was not surprised to find that as usual the magazine story did not resemble the layout the photographer originally had in mind. Life put Marilyn on the cover and made a very unexpected but journalistically shrewd move: in the opening page of the story they used the nude now-famous calendar shot of the nude Monroe. This single picture was undoubtedly more newsworthy than my entire coverage. To use my picture of her in a transparent negligee next to it would have been anticlimactic. So, since I was in New York, another photographer was asked to shoot her in sweater and slacks. The next page consisted of six shots from my set of Marilyn's approach to a job. The last page showed her magnificent walk, next to a similar photograph of Jean Harlow, also taken from behind.
For Marilyn this was probably the most important magazine story in her carrer. I have seen Life covers which did nothing for their protagonists, and I have also seen cases in which they literally changed a life or skyrocketed an unknown to fame. Although in Marilyn's case the effect was not of spectacular immediacy, this story did convince Twentieth Century-Fox that instead of a mere starlet with possibnilities, they had in her a star of the first magnitude. Monroe got star billing even in movies where she played secondary parts; her salary was adjusted, she moved to better quarters, and she is now doubtless the hottest actress in Hollywood.
For me it was only a routine story which resulted in my 54th Life cover (currently I have 60), and being routine, it is a good example of my day-by-day work. Some of my friends say that like Columbus who, trying to find the way to the Indies, discovered for the world a new continent. I, attempting to capture Monroe's personnality, discovered for the American public her derrière. It is true that since my Life story her entire publicity has rotated around this axis, and Monroe's walk was one of the main features of her latest movie.

Traduction Photographier Marilyn
par Philippe Halsman
QUAND UN PHOTOGRAPHE est sollicité par un magazine de photos pour un reportage photos, il est mécontent s'il ne peut pas offrir une sélection de ses meilleures et de ses plus rares photos. Ainsi, j'étais mécontent quand PHOTOGRAPHY m'a sollicité pour mon histoire sur Marilyn Monroe qui n'était qu'une sorte de sujet de Life assez typique. Mais réalisant que le but le plus noble d'un magazine photographique est éducatif, et qu'il n'y a actuellement à Hollywood pas de sujet plus éducatif que Marilyn, j'ai accepté tristement mais volontiers.
En fait, je l'avais photographiée quelques années avant de faire ma couverture avec elle. À cette époque, elle travaillait très intensément et durement pour mettre les meilleurs atouts de son anatomie aux yeux du public. Ses chemisiers et ses pulls permettaient de deviner facilement ce qu'ils étaient censés cacher.
Je travaillais alors pour Life pour une histoire sur les starlettes d'Hollywood. Pour découvrir à quel point elles étaient bonnes (en tant qu'actrices), l'éditeur, Gene Cook, en a invité huit et j'ai photographié chacune d'entre elles dans quatre situations de base : écouter la blague la plus drôle mais inaudible, savourer la boisson la plus délicieuse mais invisible, avoir peur du plus horrible des monstres invisible, et enfin, être embrassé par le plus fabuleux des amants invisible.
Si Marilyn s'est distinguée parmi les huit starlettes, ce n'était pas pour son talent d'actrice dans les trois premiers des tests. Mais quand je lui ai demandé de mimer la dernière situation de base, j'ai changé d'avis. Elle a donné une performance d'un tel réalisme et d'une telle intensité dramatique que non seulement elle mais même moi étions complètement épuisés.

J'ai rencontré à nouveau Marilyn trois ans plus tard. Elle n'était pas encore une star, mais déjà toutes les femmes vieillissantes d'Hollywood la détestaient. J'ai été frappé par le changement. Elle n'essayait plus d'être sexy - elle était sexy de la manière la plus éhontée et la plus détendue.
Il y avait déjà chez elle une légende flatteuse du mutisme, car Hollywood aime entourer ses belles blondes de l'aura envoûtante de l'imbécillité. Qu'est-ce en effet qui pourrait ajouter plus à l'attrait d'une enchanteresse que l'absence totale de cervelle ? Malheureusement, les faits n'ont pas confirmé la légende. J'ai trouvé Marilyn tout sauf stupide, avec une franchise étonnante et un bon sens de l'humour, et sa compagnie stimulante, même d'un point de vue spirituel. Le trait qui me frappait le plus était une bienveillance générale, une absence absolue d'envie et de jalousie, ce qui chez une comédienne étonnait.

Par coïncidence, une semaine après cette rencontre, le journaliste de Life, Stanley Flink, m'a informé que son magazine voulait que je photographie Monroe pour une éventuelle couverture, avec quelques photos à l'appui à utiliser à l'intérieur - probablement deux pages. Nous avons contacté le studio et on nous a dit que Marilyn serait disponible pour un jour et demi. J'ai précisé que je ne voulais pas la filmer en studio, et un rendez-vous à son hôtel a été organisé.
Maintenant, je devais décider quel genre de photographies je voudrais faire. Certains photographes ne photographient que par instinct, et bien qu'ils obtiennent souvent de belles photos individuelles, ils ont du mal à mettre en place une histoire d'images cohérente. D'autres suivent de près une séance scénarisée et forcent leur matériel à une telle conformité que cela perd de la spontanéité et de la sincérité. Dans ma photographie, j'essaie d'éviter les pièges de l'une ou l'autre catégorie. Bien sûr, je n'évite pas de filmer par instinct lorsqu'une situation intéressante s'offre à moi. D'un autre côté, j'essaie consciemment d'utiliser mon intellect autant que possible. Je m'efforce de clarifier ma propre réflexion sur le sujet et d'organiser le matériel de l'image en termes de continuité et de mise en page de l'histoire, en prenant garde cependant à ne pas faire poser mes sujets, mais à les inciter à faire ce qu'ils ont l'habitude de faire.
J'ai d'abord dû trouver un thème pour mon histoire, une idée générale pour mener à bien toutes mes images. J'ai pensé à la façon dont j'avais essayé de capturer l'essence d'autres femmes : la santé radieuse d'Ingrid Bergman ; Anna Magnani - une tigresse tragique; Cécile Aubry - moitié enfant, moitié femme, tentante et dérangeante ; Marian Anderson, chantant de la musique noire spirituelle, pleine de dignité sacerdotale.
Et puis j'ai pensé à la lutte pathétique d'une pauvre starlette à Hollywood. Parmi la foule de belles filles qui n'ont jamais eu de diplôme, Marilyn n'était pas celle qui avait le plus beau visage ou la silhouette la plus élégante. Alors pourquoi a-t-elle réussi ? Parce que c'était une bonne actrice ? Personne n'avait encore évoqué son talent d'actrice. Mais même si la grande Duse était vivante, un studio hollywoodien ferait-il un effort pour l'embaucher ? J'en doute. Mais je suis sûr que si l'Italie avait une actrice qui surpassait Jane Russell et Dagmar dans leurs attributs les plus remarquables, chaque société de cinéma accourrait pour surenchérir sur les autres.
Qui étaient les grandes stars de cinéma ? Theda Bara, la "It" Girl Clara Bow, Pola Negri, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich. Quelques-unes d'entre elles pouvaient même jouer, mais en dernière analyse, leur fabuleux "glamour" n'était rien d'autre que leur sex-appeal spécial. Et dans le cas de Marilyn Monroe, j'ai vu l'incroyable phénomène d'Hollywood se faire déjouer par une fille qui elle-même était qualifiée de blonde stupide.
Comme d'habitude, l'analyse a conduit logiquement et presque inéluctablement au thème de l'histoire. Je devais montrer dans mes photos que la sensualité de Monroe n'était pas seulement son arme mais son essence même, qu'elle imprégnait tout ce qu'elle faisait - parler, marcher, s'asseoir, manger, s'allonger. En termes de mise en page, tout est devenu également clair et simple. J'ai dû produire une image d'ouverture, établissant le thème général. Le reste de l'histoire serait constitué de photographies montrant Marilyn dans différentes situations, prouvant mon point de vue.

Le jour du rendez-vous, nous sommes arrivés à l'heure devant l'hôtel de Monroe : Stanley Flink de Life, mon assistant John Baird et moi. Marilyn était bien sûr en retard. Finalement, elle est arrivée dans son cabriolet Pontiac pas tout à fait neuf, s'est excusée d'être en retard et nous sommes tous montés dans sa chambre. C'était de taille moyenne, avec un grand lit ressemblant à un canapé, avec du matériel de gymnastique sur le sol et avec de nombreuses étagères le long du mur. Marilyn portait un blue jean et semblait aussi indifférente que la voisine proverbiale d'à côté. Ce fut tout de suite un sentiment de complicité et de plaisir. "Que faites-vous avec ces haltères ?" J'ai demandé quand j'ai failli trébucher sur quelques-unes d'entre elles. "Mais Philippe, je combats la gravité !" Marilyn répondit gravement et inspira profondément pour prouver son point de vue.
J'ai décidé de commencer par essayer la photo de couverture. Je devais d'abord trouver la robe. Marilyn a ouvert son placard et j'ai découvert à ma grande surprise que l'une des raisons pour lesquelles Monroe était si peu vêtue était qu'elle avait si peu à porter. Elle dépensait manifestement plus d'argent en livres et disques qu'en robes. Il n'y avait pas de fourrures dans sa garde-robe et seulement quelques robes de soirée. J'ai choisi la robe moulant blanche, et Marilyn l'a mise. Il y avait un énorme arc sur la hanche gauche. J'expliquai à Marilyn que le nœud dépréciait la robe, qu'en règle générale les lignes simples d'une robe étaient plus élégantes. Marilyn, après m'avoir écouté avec la même attention qu'un élève écoutant l'explication de son professeur sur un nouveau théorème algébrique, prit ses ciseaux et coupa l'arc.
Alors qu'elle était dans la salle de bain en train de refaire son maquillage (j'insistais pour qu'elle ne porte pas plus que du rouge à lèvres et du mascara), je réfléchissais à la façon dont elle devrait poser. L'évidence aurait été de la photographier allongée dans un fauteuil ou sur son canapé, mais parce que c'était tellement évident, j'ai décidé de ne pas le faire. J'ai emmené Marilyn dans un coin et j'ai mis mon appareil photo devant elle. Maintenant, elle avait l'air d'avoir été poussée dans un coin - acculée - sans aucun moyen de s'échapper. La situation de base était prévue, et il ne me restait plus que deux soucis : l'éclairage, et Stanley Flink.
J'utilise mon appareil photo Fairchild-Halsman presque exclusivement pour photographier des visages. Il aurait été inutile de se concentrer sur le visage de Monroe, car elle utilise son corps (pour jouer) plus que toute autre actrice hollywoodienne. J'ai donc décidé de la photographier avec un Rolleiflex, et une ouverture de f/5,6 m'a semblé appropriée. A cet arrêt mon compteur Weston indiquait, malgré la grande vitre derrière moi, seulement 1/3 de seconde. Mon assistant a apporté de la voiture des projecteurs #2 dans des réflecteurs en aluminium et j'en ai mis un sur un support portable devant Marilyn. Maintenant, en utilisant la grande fenêtre comme remplissage et le projecteur comme lumière principale, je pouvais photographier à 1/10 ou 1/25 seconde, selon la distance. Mon assistant a fixé la deuxième lumière en haut d'un placard adjacent afin qu'elle éclaire et rétro-éclaire les cheveux blonds de Marilyn. Le problème d'éclairage résolu, il restait la question de Stanley Flink.
Les journalistes insistent souvent pour regarder la séance photos proprement dite. Le simple fait d'être observé inhibe généralement à la fois le modèle et le photographe, créant une atmosphère de conscience de soi qui détruit l'intimité nécessaire entre le caméraman et le sujet. Mais heureusement pour moi dans ce cas, la nature a béni Flink avec une disposition charmante et serviable. Il n'est jamais l'observateur froid et impartial ; il devient immédiatement et avec enthousiasme un membre de l'équipe de travail.
Il s'est placé près de l'appareil et a commencé à complimenter et à taquiner Monroe. J'ai fait semblant d'être très jaloux de lui et nous avons eu une bataille verbale enflammée, tous deux se disputant sans vergogne les faveurs de Marilyn. Entourée de trois hommes admiratifs, elle souriait, flirtait, gloussait et se tortillait de plaisir. Pendant l'heure où je l'ai gardée coincée, elle s'est amusée royalement, et j'ai... j'ai pris entre 40 et 50 photos - pas les expressions courantes qu'elle donne habituellement aux photographes.
Pourquoi ai-je pris autant de photos, au lieu de me contenter que de quatre ou cinq ? Je photographie lorsque l'expression semble significative, mais je ne sais jamais si le moment suivant ne produira pas une expression encore plus gratifiante. Rien ne semble moins cher à un photographe de magazine qu'un film non exposé. Le grand nombre d'expositions fait que le sujet néglige l'importance d'être photographié, et crée parfois une immunisation complète contre le cliquetis constant de l'obturateur. J'arrête de photographier quand je sens que la situation a atteint son paroxysme. J'ai été extrêmement heureux de voir plus tard que les éditeurs de Life avaient choisi comme couverture la photo prise à cet instant décisif.

Ma prochaine étape consistait à passer en revue les déshabillés de Marilyn. Le publicitaire de la Twentieth Century-Fox, Roy Craft, qui dirige Marilyn, mais est néanmoins particulièrement efficace et coopératif, avait envoyé plus de dix déshabillés différents. J'ai sélectionné celui qui, selon moi, serait le mieux rendu en photo et j'ai commencé à chercher un arrière-plan. Ma curiosité a été éveillée par la seule photographie dans la pièce. À ma grande surprise, j'ai reconnu le visage d'Eleonora Duse. Marilyn a-t-elle affiché cette image juste pour impressionner les intellectuels itinérants ? J'ai posé quelques questions et j'ai été surpris de découvrir que Marilyn en savait non seulement beaucoup sur elle, mais que la Divine Duse était sa grande idole.
Une vieille règle à moi, quand je fais un reportage, est de photographier tout ce qui est significatif ou surprenant. C'était les deux. J'ai décidé d'inclure la photo de Duse dans ma photo d'ouverture. Il y avait un tourne-disque sur l'étagère. Marilyn, en déshabillé transparent, s'y adossa, écoutant avec une rêverie haletante un disque. Son derrière pointait vers le visage immortel de la Duse. Pour moi, ce n'était pas un sacrilège. C'était mon commentaire ironique sur le changement de valeurs dans notre civilisation.
Les étagères de Marilyn étaient pleines des livres les plus disparates - sur la religion, la science, l'histoire, la psychologie et les traductions de classiques français, russes et allemands. Cela aussi était surprenant et une bonne occasion de faire une image éducative. Ma photo suivante montrait la magnifique blonde, dans son déshabillé transparent, assise avec un livre sur ses genoux, travaillant avec nostalgie sur son développement intellectuel. C'était vraiment inspirant. Derrière la silhouette de Marilyn, des têtes d'œufs pouvaient étudier les titres de ses livres. C'était la dernière photo du premier jour.

Le lendemain, sur notre chemin pour aller déjeuner, j'en ai profité pour photographier la marche remarquable de Marilyn, essayant de saisir son étonnante ondulation turbinoïde. Je faisais toutes les expositions, car j'avais l'impression que, rythmiquement, au sommet de sa tortilité chantante, comme me faisant un clin d'œil, mais que je manquais constamment d'attraper ce clin d'œil. Avec une caméra, cela aurait été un jeu d'enfant, mais saisir l'essence de la démarche d'un seul coup, si cela était possible, exigeait la plus grande concentration perceptive
Après le déjeuner, nous sommes allés dans un restaurant drive-in pour montrer que Marilyn était sexy même en mangeant. Après cela, j'ai fait la série de photos montrant la technique de Monroe pour postuler à un emploi qui ont été utilisées dans Life. Nous avons emmené les flashes dans sa chambre, et avec un éclairage indirect, je l'ai photographiée en train de faire de l'exercice avec des haltères, rampant sur le sol, se tenant sur la tête et faisant des pompes et des poiriers. Je pensais que ce serait la dernière série de photos. Nous avons remballé notre équipement et l'avons transporté dans les escaliers. Levant les yeux, j'ai vu Marilyn se pencher par-dessus la balustrade pour nous voir partir. Cela ressemblait à une photographie bien composée. J'ai interpellé: "Attends !" et j'ai ouvert mon Rollei pour prendre encore deux douzaines de photos d'elle là.

Le reportage avait été typique à tous les égards, et quand je suis retourné à New York, je n'ai pas été surpris de constater que, comme d'habitude, le reportage du magazine ne ressemblait pas à la mise en page que le photographe avait initialement en tête. Life a mis Marilyn en couverture et a fait un geste très inattendu mais astucieux sur le plan journalistique : dans la première page du reportage, ils ont utilisé la photo  du désormais célèbre calendrier de Monroe nue. Cette image unique était sans aucun doute plus digne d'intérêt que toute ma couverture. Utiliser ma photo d'elle dans un déshabillé transparent à côté aurait été décevant. Alors, comme j'étais à New York, on a demandé à un autre photographe de la photographier en pull et pantalon. La page suivante se composait de six plans de mon ensemble de l'approche de Marilyn à un travail. La dernière page montrait sa magnifique marche, à côté d'une photographie similaire de Jean Harlow, également prise de dos.
Pour Marilyn, ce fut probablement l'histoire de magazine la plus importante de sa carrière. J'ai vu des couvertures de Life qui n'ont rien fait pour leurs protagonistes, et j'ai aussi vu des cas dans lesquels ils ont littéralement changé une vie ou fait monter en flèche un inconnu à la gloire. Bien que dans le cas de Marilyn, l'effet n'ait pas été d'une immédiateté spectaculaire, cette histoire a convaincu la Twentieth Century-Fox qu'au lieu d'une simple starlette avec des possibilités, ils avaient en elle une étoile de première grandeur. Monroe a obtenu la vedette même dans les films où elle a joué des rôles secondaires; son salaire a été ajusté, elle a déménagé dans de meilleurs quartiers et elle est maintenant sans aucun doute l'actrice la plus sexy d'Hollywood.
Pour moi, ce n'était qu'une histoire de routine qui a abouti à ma 54ème couverture de Life (actuellement j'en ai 60), et en tant que routine, c'est un bon exemple de mon travail au jour le jour. Certains de mes amis disent cela comme Colomb qui, essayant de trouver le chemin des Indes, découvrit pour le monde un nouveau continent. Moi, en essayant de saisir la personnalité de Monroe, j'ai découvert pour le public américain son derrière. Il est vrai que depuis mon histoire dans Life, toute sa publicité tourne autour de cet axe, et la marche de Monroe était l'une des principales caractéristiques de son dernier film.

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

Film Humor

pays: USA
Volume 1, N°4
paru au printemps 1949

> Marilyn figure en couverture
+ contient une photo dans l'article intérieur

 - article double page -
 

- focus : photographie et légende:
"Marilyn Monroe, debuting in Columbia's 'Ladies of the Chorus', stands guard"

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

Remind

pays: USA
paru en mai 2020
magazine américain rétro - un encart est consacré à Marilyn, parmi Grace Kelly, Gene Tierney, Lauren Bacall etc... 20 stars glamours de l'âge d'or d'Hollywood.

 - visuel -
 
     

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

Movieland

pays magazine: USA
paru en juillet 1952
article: "I Dress for Men says Marilyn Monroe"

 Editor's note: the girl with built in wolf whistle is obviously qualified to talk on this subject. We hear that lunch time - when Marilyn Monroe is around - is like "MALE call" - Her table is the busiest one in the Twentieth Century-Fox commissary, the Cafe de la Paix. Women know you can't resist a magnet, too. During the making of "We're Not Married" Marilyn was lined up with a bevy of other bathing beauties. One of the girls had won 15 beauty contests, and a studio man asked her, "How would you feel about competing with Marilyn Monroe?" Said the girl, "I'd quit!"

   I wonder why most women dress for women ? I think that's a mistake; for myself it would be, anyway. I happen to like men, so I usually like the same things they like. Therefore it's a matter of simple logic that, of course, I dress for men !
    Also, I am aware, that I am a woman, and I enjoy being a woman. I don't think I could dress like the illustrations in the high - fashion magazines. For that you require what is thought as a Vogueish figure, and is, I believe, a boyish type figure and I don't have a boyish figure.
    To begin with, I believe your body should make your clothes look good - instead of using clothes to make the body conform to what is considered fashionable at the moment, distorted or not. That's why I don't care for  " unorganic" clothes- clothes that have no relation to the body. Clothes, it seems to me, should have a relationship to the body, not be something distinct from it.
     I don't feel that ruffles mean femininity. You can't put on womanliness; you have to be womanly. Part of being a woman is the desire to please a man, a very important part. That's nature, and you can't get away from it.
    In the 20th Century-Fox picture I am doing with Cary Grant , "Monkey business", I wear only two dresses. They're daytime dresses, somewhat on the tailored side. But they prove you don't have to be obvious to be feminine. Billy Travilla has designed them first, to follow natural body lines, and second, without any attempt to disguise the fact that there is a body underneath.
    I have been criticized for wearing as little lingerie as possible. Yet, I have also been accused of appearing in the Twentieth Century-Fox commissary in lingerie. It happened while I was making "We're Not Married" - in which I wear a one piece black bathing suit. One day I went directly to lunch in that suit, with a robe worn over it. The shooting schedule called for me to wear the bathing suit all day, so I kept it on. The robe must have done a pretty good job of covering me, because the next day a column carried the report that I had lunched in bra and panties !
    The only people who have criticized my clothes so far are women. It all started when a columnist disliked a dress I wore to a cocktail party and said I would have looked better in hopsacking. The studio then released a picture of me as "the girl who looks good even in hopsacking". Later, still carrying the ball, a columnist criticized another cocktail  party dress I wore, saying I should have worn a gunnysack.
    But I wore the very same dress for 10,000 Marines at Camp Pendleton, and they seemed to like it. At least, I heard no complains! This was a strapless beige lace dress that dipped, not too much in front and had a fishtail effect in back. How wrong can you go with simple beige lace ?
    Men like simplicity in clothes, and so do I. There’s nothing so startling about that. Many famous women have followed the basic rules of selecting suitable, timeless clothes that they can wear for years. And in basic colors like black, white, grey and red. Red gets response ! Busy prints or busy lines in a dress get tiring.
    Of course, it’s natural for women to respond to the freshness of fashion edicts; like this is a purple season, or the bouffant silhouette is it. There’s something feminine in that, too. Personally, I get the same satisfaction out of changing my hair. Since before  “The Asphalt Jungle”, when it was longer, I have kept it shorter, but I try to do different things with it.
    So far as clothes are concerned, I’ll pass up the blandishments of writers, and stick to what’s suitable for me. In that I go from one extreme to the other. I like blue-jeans, slacks and suits or “everything” in dressing up. But you can be feminine even in jeans, but even my jeans fit! I buy boys’ jeans, because they are long waisted like me; and boys’ shirts to go with them.
     I have two favorite suits. One is black Christian Dior; but instead of wearing a blouse or gilet, I wear fresh red roses at the plunged neckline. I like to wear flowers; I even have some artificial ones for times when fresh ones aren’t handy.
    The other suit is a brown very fine-checked, with which I wear yellow roses at the neckline. This one is scooped out, so sometimes I substitute a white pique collar. Or I like to wind scarfs around and let one end fly over the shoulder; that leaves half scarf, half flesh in the neckline.
    My love for dressy clothes might have a psychological implication. When I went to school, I had exactly two navy skirts and two white blouses. I washed one and wore the other. But because they looked so much alike, my school mates made fun of me because I had only one outfit.
    But I am afraid I buy such things as cocktail and dinner dresses because they’re beautiful and feminine, rather than because I need many of them, in my present way of life. I have yet to go to my first premiere. Someday I might, but not yet. I don’t care for nightclubs. I go out with a man because I want to see him, not be seen because it’s the thing to do. I don’t go out with anyone unless I like him, and if you like a man, there are many more things to do than go to a nightclub. 
     So in the meantime, I would just as soon stay home with Tolstoi or Thomas Wolfe  - or even go for a walk alone. Three evenings a week my jeans-suit-and-slack wardrobe is much more suitable, anyway. One night I spend in a literature class at U.C.L.A., and two more studying with Lottie Goslar, the European pantomimist.
     To get back to why I dress for men, I think the big difference in the outlook of the sexes on fashion is that a woman will think of a dress for itself, but a man will think of it in relationship to the woman who is wearing it. So do I. 
    That’s why I like to feel that I am right for my clothes, too. I don’t want to be bone thin, and I make it a point to stay the way I want to be. A breakfast of hot milk with two raw eggs means energy without fat. I like rare steaks and green salads and vegetables, too. Rather than wonder, should I eat dessert ? I just go on an ice cream binge once a week (chocolate, please !). And, of course, if you don’t like girdles, you’re going to exercise. Working out with light weight dumbbells, and a slow, relaxed dog trot around the block are very good for toning muscles. You have to be friends with your clothes if you’re going to dress for men – no too tight zippers or unnecessary doodads to make you uncomfortable ! Sometimes their acceptance is just in their response, but the response tells me I am right. Dressing for men is natural for a woman. After all, you can’t get away from basic fundamentals! – who wants to ?

Traduction

Note de la rédaction: la fille avec un sifflet de loup est évidemment qualifiée pour parler de ce sujet. Nous entendons que l'heure du déjeuner - quand Marilyn Monroe est dans le coin - est comme "un appel aux HOMMES" - Sa table est la plus occupée du restaurant de la Twentieth Century-Fox, le Café de la Paix. Les femmes savent que vous ne pouvez pas résister à un aimant, aussi. Pendant le tournage de "We're Not Married", Marilyn était alignée avec une foule d'autres beautés en maillot de bain. Une des filles avait gagné 15 concours de beauté, et un homme de studio lui a demandé: «Comment te sentirais-tu en compétition avec Marilyn Monroe ?" et la fille de répondre, "Je démissionnerais !"

    Je me demande pourquoi la plupart des femmes s'habillent pour les femmes ? Je pense que c'est une erreur; pour moi, cela le serait, de toute façon. Il m'arrive d'aimer les hommes, alors j'aime habituellement les mêmes choses qu'ils aiment. Par conséquent, c'est une question de logique simple que, bien sûr, je m'habille pour les hommes !
    Aussi, je suis consciente, que je suis une femme, et j'aime être une femme. Je ne pense pas que je pourrais m'habiller comme les illustrations dans les magazines de haute couture. Pour cela, vous avez besoin de ce qui est considéré comme une figure de Vogue, et je crois que c'est une figure de type masculine et je n'ai pas cette ligne masculine.
    Pour commencer, je crois que votre corps devrait faire en sorte que vos vêtements soient beaux - au lieu d'utiliser des vêtements pour que le corps se conforme à ce qui est considéré à la mode en ce moment, déformé ou non. C'est pourquoi je ne me soucie pas des vêtements «inorganiques», qui n'ont aucun rapport avec le corps. Les vêtements, me semble-t-il, devraient avoir une relation avec le corps, ne pas être quelque chose de distinct.
    Je ne pense pas que les volants signifient la féminité. Vous ne pouvez pas mettre de la féminité; tu dois être femme. Une partie d'être une femme est le désir de plaire à un homme, une partie très importante. C'est la nature, et vous ne pouvez pas vous en éloigner.
     Dans le film de la 20th Century-Fox que je fais avec Cary Grant, "Monkey business", je ne porte que deux robes. Ce sont des robes de jour, un peu côté tailleur. Mais elles prouvent que vous n'avez pas besoin d'être évident pour être féminin. Billy Travilla les a conçus en premier, pour suivre les lignes naturelles du corps, et en second lieu, sans aucune tentative de déguiser le fait qu'il y a un corps en dessous.
    On m'a reproché de porter le moins de lingerie possible. Pourtant, on m'a aussi accusé d'être apparue dans le restaurant de la Twentieth Century-Fox en lingerie. C'est arrivé pendant que je faisais "We're Not Married" - dans lequel je porte un maillot de bain noir d'une seule pièce. Un jour, je suis allée directement déjeuner dans ce costume, avec une robe portée par dessus. les horaires de tournage m'ont amené à porter le maillot de bain toute la journée, alors je l'ai gardé. La robe doit avoir fait un assez bon travail de me couvrir, car le lendemain une colonne portait le rapport que j'avais déjeuné en soutien-gorge et en culotte !
    Les seules personnes qui ont critiqué mes vêtements jusqu'à présent sont les femmes. Tout a commencé quand un chroniqueur n'aimait pas une robe que je portais à un cocktail et a dit que j'aurais eu l'air mieux vêtue dans un sac à houblon. Le studio a ensuite publié une photo de moi comme "la fille qui a l'air bien même en houblon". Plus tard, portant toujours à un bal, un chroniqueur a critiqué une autre robe de cocktail que je portais, disant que j'aurais dû porter une sacoche.
    Mais je portais exactement la même robe pour 10 000 Marines au Camp Pendleton, et ils semblaient l'aimer. Au moins, je n'ai entendu aucune plainte ! C'était une robe bustier en dentelle beige plongeante, pas trop en avant, et avait un effet queue de poisson à l'arrière. À quel point pouvez-vous aller avec de la dentelle beige simple ?
     Les hommes aiment la simplicité dans les vêtements, et moi aussi. Il n'y a rien de si surprenant à ce sujet. Beaucoup de femmes célèbres ont suivi les règles de base de la sélection de vêtements appropriés et intemporels qu'elles peuvent porter pendant des années. Et dans les couleurs de base comme le noir, blanc, gris et rouge. Le rouge obtient une réponse ! Les impressions occupées ou les lignes occupées dans une robe deviennent fatigantes.
     Bien sûr, il est naturel pour les femmes de réagir à la fraîcheur des dictats de la mode; comme ceci est une saison pourpre, ou cela la silhouette bouffante. Il y a quelque chose de féminin là-dedans aussi. Personnellement, j'ai la même satisfaction de changer de coiffures. Avant "The Asphalt Jungle", quand ils étaient plus long, je l'ai ai fait plus court, mais j'essaie de faire différentes choses avec.
    En ce qui concerne les vêtements, je vais laisser passer les flatteries des écrivains et m'en tenir à ce qui me convient. En cela, je vais d'un extrême à l'autre. J'aime les blue-jeans, les pantalons et les costumes ou «tout» pour m'habiller. Mais vous pouvez être féminine, même en jeans, mais même mon jean me sied ! J'achète des jeans pour garçons, car ils sont longs comme moi; et des chemises des garçons pour aller avec.
    J'ai deux tenues préférées. L'une est une tenue noire de Christian Dior; mais au lieu de porter un chemisier ou un gilet, je porte des roses rouges fraîches à la plongée de l'encolure. J'aime porter des fleurs; J'en ai même des artificiels pour les moments où les fraîches ne sont pas pratiques.
     L'autre tenue est d'un brun très fin, avec laquelle je porte des roses jaunes à l'encolure. Celle-ci est creusée, donc parfois je substitue un collier de pique blanc. Ou j'aime enrouler des écharpes autour et en laisser une fine voler sur l'épaule; cela laisse moitié écharpe, moitié chair dans l'encolure.
     Mon amour pour les vêtements habillés pourrait avoir une implication psychologique. Quand j'allais à l'école, j'avais deux jupes exactement de la marine et deux blouses blanches. J'en lavais une et portait l'autre. Mais parce qu'elles se ressemblaient tellement, mes camarades d'école se moquaient de moi parce que je n'avais qu'une seule tenue.
     Mais j'ai peur, j'achète tellement de choses comme des robes de cocktail et de dîner parce qu'elles sont belles et féminines, plutôt que, parce que j'en ai besoin de beaucoup, dans mon mode de vie actuel. Je dois encore aller à ma toute première de film. Un jour je pourrais, mais pas encore. Je ne me soucie pas des boîtes de nuit. Je sors avec un homme parce que je veux le voir, ne pas être vu parce que c'est la chose à faire. Je ne sors avec personne seulement si je l'aime bien, et si vous aimez bien un homme, il y a beaucoup plus de choses à faire que d'aller dans une boîte de nuit.
     Alors, entre-temps, je resterais simplement chez moi avec Tolstoi ou Thomas Wolfe, ou je me promènerais seul. Trois soirs par semaine, ma garde-robe de jeans et tenues de relâche est beaucoup plus appropriée, de toute façon. Une nuit, je suis allée à un cours de littérature à U.C.L.A., et deux autres à étudier avec Lottie Goslar, la pantomimiste européenne.
     Pour en revenir à la raison pour laquelle je m'habille pour les hommes, je pense que la grande différence dans la perspective des sexes sur la mode est qu'une femme va penser à une robe pour elle-même, mais un homme y pensera par rapport à la femme qui la porte. Donc, moi aussi.
     C'est pourquoi j'aime sentir que je suis bien dans mes vêtements aussi. Je ne veux pas être maigre, et je me fais un devoir de rester comme je veux être. Un petit déjeuner de lait chaud avec deux œufs crus signifie de l'énergie sans graisse. J'aime les steaks saignants et les salades vertes et les légumes, aussi. Plutôt que de me demander, devrais-je manger un dessert ? Je m'accorde une crème glacée une fois par semaine (au chocolat, s'il vous plaît !). Et, bien sûr, si vous n'aimez pas être gainée, vous allez faire de l'exercice. Travailler avec des haltères légeres, et doucement, trottinant comme un chien autour du quartier sont très bons pour la tonicité des muscles. Vous devez être amis avec vos vêtements si vous vous habillez pour les hommes - pas de fermetures éclaires trop serrées ou des ornements inutiles pour vous mettre mal à l'aise ! Parfois, leur acceptation est juste dans leur réponse, mais la réponse me dit que j'ai raison. S'habiller pour les hommes est naturel pour une femme. Après tout, vous ne pouvez pas échapper aux fondamentaux de base ! - qui le veut ?

Saturday Evening Post
- The New Marilyn Monroe - Part 1

pays magazine: USA
paru le 5 mai 1956
article: 1ère partie "The New Marilyn Monroe"
en ligne sur saturdayeveningpost.com

The New Marilyn Monroe
This three-part series by Pete Martin was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, May 5–19, 1956:
By Pete Martin
Originally published on May 5, 1956
A Post editor’s surprisingly candid report on the girl with the horizontal walk. He reveals things about the phenomenal blonde that even Marilyn herself doesn’t know.

 
The new Marilyn Monroe in Hollywood after returning from
her self-imposed exile in New York. Not quite 30,
she possesses what is possibly the most
photographed face and figure in history. (Gene Lester, © SEPS)

I said to Marilyn Monroe, “Pictures of you usually show you with mouth open and your eyes half closed. Did some photographer sell you the idea that having your picture taken that way makes you look sexier?”

She replied in what I’d come to recognize as pure Monroese. “The formation of my lids must make them look heavy or else I’m thinking of something,” she told me. “Sometimes I’m thinking of men. Other times I’m thinking of some man in particular. It’s easier to look sexy when you’re thinking of some man in particular. As for my mouth being open all the time, I even sleep with it open. I know, because it’s open when I wake up. I never consciously think of my mouth, but I do consciously think about what I’m thinking about.”

Tucked away in that paragraph like blueberries in a hot muffin were several genuine Monroeisms. I had studied the subject long enough to be able to tell a genuine Monroeism from a spurious one.

When I asked her, “Has anyone ever accused you of wearing falsies?” she came through with a genuine Monroeism.

“Yes,” she told me, her eyes flashing indignantly. “Naturally,” she went on, “it was another actress who accused me. My answer to that is, quote: Those who know me better know better. That’s all. Unquote.”

Another Monroeism followed hard on the heels of that. I said, “I’ve heard that you wowed the marines in Korea when you climbed up onto a platform to say a few words to them, and they whistled at you and made wolf calls.”

“I know the time you’re talking about,” she said. “It wasn’t in Korea at all; it was at Camp Pendleton, California. They wanted me to say a few words, so I said, ‘You fellows down there are always whistling at sweater girls. Well, take away their sweaters and what have you got?’ For some reason they screamed and yelled.”

Another example came forth when Marilyn was asked if she and the playwright, Arthur Miller, were having an affair. “How can they say we’re having a romance?” she replied. “He’s married.”

Still another Monroeism had emerged from a press conference in the Plaza Hotel, in New York City. It was held to announce her teaming with Sir Laurence Olivier in an acting- directing-producing venture — a get-together described by one of those present as “one of the least likely duos in cinematic history.” The big Monroeism of that occasion was Marilyn’s answer to the query, “Miss Monroe, do you still want to do The Brothers Karamazov on Broadway?”

“I don’t want to play The Brothers,” she said. “I want to play Grushenka from that book. She’s a girl.”

Listening to her as she talked to me now, I thought, Nobody can write dialogue for her which could possibly sound half as much like her as the dialogue she thinks up for herself.

Nunnally Johnson, who produced the film, How to Marry a Millionaire, costarring Marilyn, told me, “When I talked to her when she first came on the lot, I felt as if I were talking to a girl under water. I couldn’t tell whether I was getting through to her or not. She lived behind a fuzz curtain.”

Johnson also directed How to be Very, Very Popular, and when Sheree North took Marilyn’s place in that film, he announced: “Sheree will not use the Monroe technique in How to be Very, Very Popular. She will play the entire role with her mouth closed.”

Marilyn’s last sentence to me: “I never consciously think of my mouth, but I do consciously think about what I’m thinking about” seemed a trifle murky, but I had no time to work on it, for, without pausing, she said, “Another writer asked me, ‘What do you think of sex?’ and I told him, ‘It’s a part of nature. I go along with nature.’ Zsa Zsa Gabor was supposed to write an article for a magazine on the subject: ‘What’s Wrong With American Men,’ and I did marginal notes for it. The editor cut out my best lines. I wrote, ‘If there’s anything wrong with the way American men look at sex, it’s not their fault. After all, they’re descended from the Puritans, who got off the boat on the wrong foot — or was it the Pilgrims? — and there’s still a lot of that puritanical stuff around.’ The editor didn’t use that one.”

I carefully wrote down every word she said to me. She told me that she’d rather I wouldn’t use a tape-recording machine while interviewing her. “It would make me nervous to see that thing going round and round,” she insisted. So I used pencils and a notebook instead. But I didn’t use them right away.

I had to wait for her to walk from her bedroom into the living room of her apartment, where I sat ready to talk to her. It took her an hour and a half to make that journey. At 3:45, Lois Weber, the pleasant young woman who handled the Monroe New York publicity, admitted me to the apartment Marilyn was occupying. She pushed the buzzer outside of a door on the eighth floor of an apartment building on Sutton Place South, and a voice asked, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” said my chaperone.

The lock clickety-clicked open, but when we went in, Marilyn was nowhere in sight. She had retreated into a bedroom. Her voice said to us through the door, “I’ll be out in just seven minutes.”

A publicity man to whom I’d talked at Marilyn’s studio in Hollywood had warned me, “She’ll stand you up a couple of times before you meet her. Then she’ll be late, and when I say late, I mean real late. You’ll be so burned at her before she walks in that you’ll wrap up your little voice-recording machine and get ready to leave at least three times — maybe four times — before she shows. But somebody will persuade you to wait, and finally Marilyn will come in, and before you know it, she’ll have you wrapped up too. For she’s warmhearted, amusing and likable, even if her lateness is a pain in the neck. And after that, if somebody says, ‘That was mighty thoughtless of old Marilyn, keeping you waiting like that,’ you’ll want to slug him for being mean.

“What you won’t know,” that studio publicity man went on, “is that while you’re having hell’s own headache waiting for her, whatever publicity worker is trying to get her to see you is having an even bigger headache. Marilyn will be telling that publicity worker that her stomach is so upset that she’s been throwing up for hours; she hasn’t been able to get her make-up on right; or that she’s got a bum deal in the wardrobe department and hasn’t anything to wear.”

So, in an effort to be witty, when Marilyn said, through the closed door, “I’ll be out in just seven minutes,” I said, “I’ll settle for eight.” Time was to prove it the unfunniest remark I’ve ever made. One hour later I asked Lois Weber, “What do you suppose she’s doing in there?”

“You know how it is,” my publicity-girl chaperone said soothingly, “a girl has to put on her face.”

“What has she got, two heads?” I asked politely. A half hour later I suggested that Lois Weber go into the next room and see what was causing the delay.

Waiting for Lois Weber, I roamed the apartment. On a table lay a play manuscript. Typed on its cover was: Fallen Angels, by Noel Coward. Among the books which seemed in current use were Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Ellen Terry, Shaw’s Letters to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Gertrude Lawrence as Mrs. A., by Richard Aldrich.

Mute evidence of Marilyn’s widely publicized drama studies at the Actors’ Studio, where she was said to be seeking out the secrets of artistic acting, was a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Several lines of dialogue from that volume had been penciled on a piece of paper, obviously to be recited by or to a group of drama students; then the piece of paper had been thrust part way into the book. Lying on the floor was a large recording of John Barrymore as Hamlet.

That dialogue from Ulysses and the Barrymore recording represented one of the reasons why I was there. I’d read that Marilyn had gone “long hair” and “art theaterish,” and I wanted to see for myself. Just seeing it in print didn’t make it true.

Millions of words had been written about the alluring blonde in whose living room I sat, but most of those words had been of the “authorized” or “with-Marilyn’s-blessing” variety. Several millions of them had appeared in fan magazines — after having first been O.K.’d by the 20th Century-Fox publicity department.

I’d read a lot of those words, but I still felt that I didn’t understand this dame and I was sure that a lot of other people felt the same way about her and that, like myself, they’d been asking themselves for years, “What’s she really like?”

On top of that, they were probably asking themselves other questions — as I was doing. “Why did she blow her marriage with Joe DiMaggio? Why did she walk out on a movie career which was paying her heavy money? Why did she duck California in favor of New York? Why, after she holed up there, did she attend the art-for-art’s-sake Actors’ Studio — surely an unlikely place for a girl who, up to that time, had done most of her acting with her hips?”

I hoped that when I talked to her she would tell me the answers to some of these things. Maybe I’d even see the “new Marilyn Monroe” I’d heard existed.

Lois Weber came back to report: “She thinks the maid must have gone off with the top of her tapered slacks. She’s running around without a top on.”

In an effort to keep me from brooding, Lois Weber said, “The azalea people down in Wilmington, North Carolina, want her for a personal appearance in April, but I told them they’d have to call me in April. Who knows where she’ll be then?”

The minutes crawled by and I thought of various things that people had told me about Marilyn before I’d begun my marathon wait in her Sutton Place apartment. Every male friend I had told I was doing a story about Marilyn had asked me, “Can I go along to hold your notebook?” or “You call that work?” or “You get paid for that?” or “Can’t I go along and hold the flash bulbs?” Apparently they felt that if they failed to go into a blood-bubbling, heman routine at the drop of her name, their maleness was suspect. When Marilyn appeared breathless and friendly as a puppy, I told her of this phenomenon. “How do you explain it?” I asked. “Have you become a symbol of sex?”

She gave my query thought before answering. “There are people to whom other people react, and other people who do nothing for people,” she said. “I react to men, too, but I don’t do it because I’m trying to prove I’m a woman. Personally I react to Marlon Brando. He’s a favorite of mine. There are two kinds of reactions. When you see some people you say, ‘Gee!’ When you see other people you say, ‘Ugh!’ If that part about my being a symbol of sex is true, it ought to help at the box office, but I don’t want to be too commercial about it.” Quite seriously she said, “After all, it’s a responsibility, too — being a symbol, I mean.”

I told her I’d heard that among the titles bestowed upon her were Woo-Woo Girl, Miss Cheesecake, The Girl With the Horizontal Walk. “I don’t get what they mean by ‘horizontal walk,’” she said. “Naturally I know what walking means — anybody knows that — and horizontal means not vertical. So what?” I thought of trying to blueprint it for her; then decided not to.

The Hollywood publicity worker who had warned me that she would be “real late” had talked to me quite frankly about Marilyn; he had pulled no punches; but since it is unfair to quote a publicity worker by name, I’ll call him Jones. And since “flack” is Hollywood slang for publicity man, I’ll call him Flack Jones.

Jones worked for 20th Century-Fox during the years before Marilyn staged her walkout. Since then he has moved on to bigger — if not better — things. He has opened his own public-relations office, with branches in Paris and Rome. He is bald as a peeled egg. He is as broad as a small barn door; a junior-executive-size Mister Five-by-Five. He wears black-rimmed glasses instead of the clear tortoise-shell plastic variety.

“A thing that fascinates me is this,” I told Flack Jones: “the first time I ever saw her I was sitting with a friend in the Fox commissary and this girl came in without any make-up on. She was wearing a blouse and skirt, and she sat against the wall. She bore no resemblance to anybody I’d ever seen before, but, to my amazement, my friend said, ‘That’s Marilyn Monroe.’ What I want to know is: Does she have to get into her Marilyn Monroe suit or put on her Marilyn Monroe face before she looks like Marilyn Monroe?”

“This is true of all platinum blondes or whatever you call the highly dyed jobs we have out here,” Flack Jones said. “If their hair isn’t touched up and coiffured exactly right; if they’re not gowned perfectly and their make-up is not one hundred per cent, they look gruesome. This is not peculiar to Monroe; it’s peculiar to every other synthetic blonde I’ve ever known in picture business. There are very few natural blondes in Hollywood and, so far as I know, there have been no natural platinum blondes in mankind’s history, except albinos. They are strictly a product of the twentieth century. They’re created blondes, and when you create a blonde you have to complete your creation with make-up and dramatic clothes, otherwise you’ve got only part of an assembly job.”

I also talked to a member of the Fox Studio legal staff, who told me a Monroe story I found provocative. “One day,” he said, “she was in this office, and I said to her, ‘It would be better for you to sign this contract this year instead of next. It will save you money.’ She looked at me and said, ‘I’m not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.’ Then she walked out.” The legal light looked at me helplessly and shrugged. “What do you suppose she meant by that?” he asked. I said I had no idea, but that I’d try to find out.

And I asked a friend high enough up in the Fox hierarchy to know the answer, “Why do you think your studio let her come back to work for it after she walked out and stayed in New York for fifteen months?”

“Our attitude was that she’d never work on our lot again,” he announced firmly; then he grinned, “unless we needed her.”

One of my longer talks was with Billy Wilder, who directed her in the film The Seven Year Itch.

“What do you want to know?” he asked when I went to see him in his Beverly Hills home.

“One of the interesting things about this Monroe girl, to me,” I said, “is she seemed in danger of spoiling what had begun as a successful career by running away from it. I began to ask myself: How long can a movie actress afford to stay away from moviemaking and still remain a star? The mere strangeness of her staying away gets her a terrific press for a while and makes everyone in the country conscious of her, but is it possible to stay away so long that you’re forgotten? Was that about to happen to Marilyn?”

“I don’t think there was any danger of Marilyn sinking into oblivion,” Wilder said. “A thing like her doesn’t come along every minute.”

I asked, “What do you mean ‘a thing like her’?”

“She has what I call flesh impact,” he told me. “It’s very rare. Three I remember are Clara Bow, Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth. Such girls have flesh which photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it.”

“I’ve heard that it’s a moot question as to whether Marilyn’s an actress or not,” I said.

“I’ve heard that, too,” he replied. “Before we go further I must tell you that I like the girl, but it’s also moot whether you have to be an actor or an actress to be a success in pictures. I’m sure you’ve heard the theory that there are two kinds of stars — those who can act and those who are personalities. I’ll take a personality any time. Something comes down from the screen to you when you see them, in a way that it doesn’t always come from the indifferently paid actors, although they may be perfect at their jobs.”

“It’s nothing against them or for them,” Flack Jones said, when I repeated Wilder’s idea to him. “It’s the way this business is put together. If the public likes a personality, he or she goes over. You take Tab Rock,” he said (only Tab Rock is not the name he used). “Old Tab’s a terrific personality. I doubt if he’s ever made a flop picture, but he’s never made a really good picture. This fellow can’t pick up his hat without instruction, yet he’s always picking up villains and throwing them across a bar singlehanded. He can clean up any barroom on the frontier, but he can’t clean up a kitchen. He’s a nice guy, but no one has ever called him an actor. You take Lloyd Nolan now, or Van Heflin. That’s acting for you. You believe them. There are lights and shades and meaning to what they do. But when old Tab Rock comes on the screen, he’s got to throw somebody around to prove his art. He can do this quicker than anybody in Hollywood, and this is his great value.”

“He sounds brave,” I said.

“No one is braver or more scornful about it,” Flack Jones said. “His bravery is without parallel in the industry. He’s the only man I ever saw who could take a forty-five and go to the Near East and clean the whole mess up in a day or two. He never fails. That’s the difference between a personality and an actor.”

When I talked to Wilder I said that I’d read that when Marilyn had announced that she wanted to appear in a movie version of The Brothers Karamazov, some people hooted.

“The hooters were wrong,” Wilder told me. “She meant that she wanted to play the part of Grushenka in that book, and people who haven’t read the book don’t know that Grushenka is a sex pot. People think this is a long-hair, very thick, very literary book, but Dostoevsky knew what he was doing and there is nothing long-hair about Grushenka. Marilyn knows what she’s doing too. She would be a good Grushenka.

“It was after she said that she wanted to be in The Brothers Karamazov,” Wilder went on, “that she started going to the Actors’ Studio School of Dramatic Arts in New York. She didn’t do it for publicity. She’s sincerely trying to improve herself, and I think she should be admired for that. She could have sat here in Hollywood on her pretty little fanny and collected all of the money any ordinary actress would ever want, but she keeps trying.

“Right now, as of today, no matter what she thinks, Marilyn’s great value is as a personality, not as an actress. [Wilder told me these things while Marilyn was still in New York being groomed by the Actors’ Studio. It may be that what happened to her during her Eastern schooling in new dramatic ways may change his opinion, but 1 haven’t talked to him since her return to Hollywood.] If she sets out to be artistic and dedicated, and she carries it so far that she’s willing to wear Sloppy-Joe sweaters and go without make-up and let her hair hang straight as a string, this is not what has made her great to date. I don’t say that it’s beyond the realm of possibility that she can establish herself as a straight dramatic actress — it is possible — but it will be another career for her, a starting all over.”

Back in New York, when Marilyn made that long, long journey from her bedroom to her living room in her apartment, I said to her, “I’ve heard your childhood referred to as ‘the perfect Cinderella story.’”

“I don’t know where they got that,” she told me. “I haven’t ended up with a prince, and I’ve never had even one fairy godmother. My birth certificate reads Norma Jean Mortenson. I was told that my father was killed in an automobile accident before I was born, so that is what I’ve always told people. There was no way I could check on that because my mother was put into a mental institution when I was little, and I was brought up as an orphan.”

I had read that she spent her childhood being farmed out to foster parents and to orphanages, but, talking to her, I discovered that there’d been only one orphanage, although it was true about the foster parents. “I have had eleven or twelve sets of them,” she told me, “but I don’t want to count them all again, to see whether there were eleven or twelve. I hope you won’t ask me to. It depresses me. Some families would keep me longer; others would get tired of me in a short time. I must have made them nervous or something.”

She thought of something else. “I had one pair of foster parents who, when I was about ten, made me promise never to drink when I grew up, and I signed a pledge never to smoke or swear. My next foster family gave me empty whisky bottles for playthings. With them I played store. I guess I must have had the finest collection of empty whisky bottles any girl ever had. I’d line them up on a plank beside the road, and when people drove along I’d say, ‘Wouldn’t you like some whisky?’ I remember some of the people in the cars driving past my ‘whisky’ store saying, ‘Imagine! Why, it’s terrible!’ Looking back, I guess I used to play-act all the time. For one thing, it meant I could live in a more interesting world than the one around me.

“The first family I lived with told me I couldn’t go to the movies because it was sinful,” Marilyn said. “I listened to them say the world was coming to an end, and if I was doing something sinful when it happened, I’d go down below, below, below. So the few times I was able to sneak into a movie, I spent most of the time that I was there praying that the world wouldn’t end.”

 
The famous British photographer, Cecil Beaton, shoots Marilyn.
Says the lady: “It’s a responsibility — being a symbol of sex, I mean.”
(Hans Knopf, © SEPS)

Apparently I had been misinformed about her first marriage, to a young man named Jim Dougherty. I’d got the idea that she’d married him while they were both in Van Nuys High School; that she’d got a “crush” on him because he was president of the student body there, and a big wheel around school.

“That’s not true,” she told me. “In the first place, he was twenty-one or twenty-two — well, at least he was twenty-one and already out of high school. So all I can say is that he must have been pretty dumb if he were still in high school when I married him. And I didn’t have a crush on him, although he claimed I did in a story he wrote about us. The truth is the people I was staying with moved East. They couldn’t afford to take me because when they left California they’d stop getting the twenty dollars a month the county or the state was paying them to help them clothe and feed me. So instead of going back into a boarding home or with still another set of foster parents, I got married.

“That marriage ended in a divorce, but not until World War Two was over. Jim is now a policeman. He lives in Reseda, in the San Fernando Valley, and he is happily married and has three daughters. But while he was away in the merchant marines I worked in the dope room of a plane factory. That company not only made planes, it made parachutes.

“For a while I’d been inspecting parachutes. Then they quit letting us girls do that and they had the parachutes inspected on the outside, but I don’t think it was because of my inspecting. Then I was in the dope room spraying dope on fuselages. Dope is liquid stuff, like banana oil and glue mixed.

“I was out on sick leave for a few days, and when I came back the Army photographers from the Hal Roach Studios, where they had the Army photographic headquarters, were around taking photographs and snapping and shooting while I was doping those ships. The Army guys saw me and asked, ‘Where have you been?’

“’I’ve been on sick leave,’ I said. “Come outside.’ they told me. ‘We’re going to take your picture.’

“‘Can’t,’ I said. ‘The other ladies here in the dope room will give me trouble if I stop doing what I’m doing and go out with you.’ That didn’t discourage those Army photographers. They got special permission for me to go outside from Mr. Whosis, the president of the plant. For a while they posed me rolling ships; then they asked me. ‘Don’t you have a sweater?’

“‘Yes,’ I told them, ‘it so happens I brought one with me. It’s in my locker.’ After that I rolled ships around in a sweater. The name of one of those Army photographers was David Conover. He lives up near the Canadian border. He kept telling me, ‘You should be a model,’ but I thought he was flirting. Several weeks later, he brought the color shots he’d taken of me, and he said the Eastman Kodak Company had asked him, ‘Who’s your model, for goodness’ sake?’

“So I began to think that maybe he wasn’t kidding about how I ought to be a model. Then I found that a girl could make five dollars an hour modeling, which was different from working ten hours a day for the kind of money I’d been making at the plane plant. And it was a long way from the orphanage, where I’d been paid five cents a week for working in the dining room or ten cents a month for working in the pantry. And out of those big sums a penny every Sunday had to go into the church collection. I never could figure why they took a penny from an orphan for that.”

“How did you happen to sign your first movie contract?” I asked.

She tossed a cascade of white-blond tresses from her right eye and said, “I had appeared on five magazine covers. Mostly men’s magazines.”

What, I asked, did she mean by men’s magazines? “Magazines,” she said, “with cover girls who are not flat-chested. I was on See four or five months in a row. Each time they changed my name. One month I was Norma Jean Dougherty — that was my first husband’s name. The second month I was Jean Norman. I don’t know what all names they used, but I must have looked different each time. There were different poses— outdoors, indoors, but mostly just sitting looking over the Pacific. You looked at those pictures and you didn’t see much ocean, but you saw a lot of me.

“One of the magazines I was on wasn’t a man’s magazine at all. It was called Family Circle. You buy it in supermarkets. I was holding a lamb with a pinafore. I was the one with the pinafore. But on most covers I had on things like a striped towel. The towel was striped because the cover was to be in color and the stripes were the color, and there was a big fan blowing on the towel and on my hair. That was right after my first divorce, and I needed to earn a living bad. I couldn’t type. I didn’t know how to do anything. So Howard Hughes had an accident.”

I wondered if I’d missed something, but apparently I hadn’t. “He was in the hospital,” she went on, “and Hedda Hopper wrote in her column: ‘Howard Hughes must be recuperating because he sent out for photographs of a new girl he’s seen on five different magazines.’ Right after that Howard Hughes’ casting director got my telephone number somehow, and he got in touch with me and he said Howard Hughes wanted to see me.

“But he must have forgotten or changed his mind or something,” she said, “because instead of going to see him, I went over to the Fox Studio with a fellow named Harry Lipton, who handled my photography modeling. Expensive cars used to drive up beside me when I was on a street corner or walking on a sidewalk, and the driver would say, ‘I could do something for you in pictures. How would you like to be a Goldwyn girl?’ I figured those guys in those cars were trying for a pick-up, and I got an agent so I could say to those fellows, ‘See my agent.’ That’s how I happened to be handled by Harry Lipton.”

Harry took her to see Ivan Kahn, then head of Fox’s talent department, and also to see Ben Lyon, who was doing a talent-scouting job for Fox.

I  asked her how it happened that she changed her name from Norma Jean Dougherty to Marilyn Monroe.

“It was Ben Lyon who renamed me,” she said. “Ben said that I reminded him of two people, Jean Harlow and somebody else he remembered very well, a girl named Marilyn Miller. When all the talk began about renaming me, I asked them please could I keep my mother’s maiden name, which was Monroe; so the choice was whether to call me Jean Monroe or Marilyn Monroe, and Marilyn won.”

I asked Flack Jones, “What happened when she came to your studio?”

“She came twice,” he said. “The first time was in 1946. We did our best with her, but she just hadn’t grown up enough. She was great as far as looks went, but she didn’t know how to make the most of her looks — or what to do with them. That came with practice. Not that you have to mature mentally to be a star. In fact, it can be a holdback. It might even defeat you. Stars who are mature mentally are in the minority. But actually we had no stories lying around at that time in which she would appear to advantage. So we tried her out in a picture or two in which she played bit parts — secretaries, the pretty girl in the background. Then we let her go, and she went over to RKO and did a picture with Groucho.”

“I didn’t see the film,” I said, “but you’d think with the Marx Brothers chasing her, like a bosomy mechanical bunny romping about the sound stage a couple of jumps ahead of the greyhounds, the fun would have been fast and furious.”

“The trouble was that while the Marx Brothers always chased a dame in their pictures,” Flack Jones told me, “they never caught the dame. And usually the dame never became a star, so the whole thing was a waste of time. It was amusing while you were watching it, but the girls usually outran the Marx boys and a career.”

 
The author interviewing Marilyn. Says Pete Martin:
“Every male friend I told I was doing a story about
her asked me, ‘Can I go along to hold your notebook?'”
(Hans Knopf, © SEPS)

Marilyn gave me her own version of Flack Jones’ story:

“Most of what I did while I was at Fox that first time was pose for stills. Publicity made up a story about how I was a baby sitter who’d been baby-sitting for the casting director and that’s how I was discovered. They told me to say that, although it strictly wasn’t true. You’d think that they would have used a little more imagination and have had me at least a daddy sitter.”

Flack Jones had filled me in on some more Monroe chronology: “After she left us she went to Metro and appeared in The Asphalt Jungle, directed by John Huston,” he said. “Marilyn’s role was small. She was only a walk-on, but she must have looked good to Darryl Zanuck, for when he saw it, he re-signed her. Asphalt Jungle was one of those gangster things. There was a crooked legal mouthpiece in it, a suave fellow, played by Louis Calhern. Marilyn was his ‘niece’; which was a nice word for ‘keptie.’ She’d say a few lines of dialogue; then she’d look up at him with those big eyes and call him ‘Uncle.’”

“When did you first notice her impact on the public?” I asked.

“Once we got her rolling, it was like a tidal wave,” he said. “We began to release some photographs of her, and as soon as they appeared in print, we had requests for more from all over the world. We had the newspapers begging for art; then the photo syndicates wanted her; then the magazines began to drool. For a while we were servicing three or four photos to key newspapers all over the world once a week — and that was before she had appeared in a picture.

“Once this building-up process started,” Flack Jones explained, “other people got interested in her. We called up the top cameramen around town who had their own outlets, and we told them what we had, and we asked them if they’d like to photograph her. They said, ‘Ho, boy, yes.’

“We told them what the deal was,” Flack Jones went on. “We said, ‘We think this girl has a great future; she’s beautiful, her chassis is great, and are you interested?’ Each guy had his own idea of what he wanted, and he let his imagination play upon her. This is the way such things get done. They’re not created by one person. They’re the creation of all of the press representatives who cover Hollywood for all the publications in the world, which means about three hundred and fifty people.

“Everybody in the studio publicity department worked on her.” Jones ticked them off on his fingertips, “The picture division, the magazine division, the fan-magazine division, the planters who plant the columnists, the radio planters, and so forth. Then, when you make a motion picture, a ‘unit man’ or ‘unit woman’ is assigned to cover its shooting, and he or she handles publicity for that film alone. In addition, the whole department works on the same picture. Our department is highly specialized, but each specialist makes his contribution to the personality we’re erecting in the public’s mind.”

“I’ve met a couple of press agents who’ve been unit men on Marilyn’s films,” I said.

“But the unit man is not always the same for a certain star’s pictures,” Jones said. “Sonia Wilson’s been unit woman on Monroe pictures, and Frankie Neal’s been a unit man on her pictures, but Roy Craft has been her unit man more than anyone else. Roy likes her. He gets along with her fine.”

There was something else I wanted to know. “In addition to distributing her photographs,” I asked, “did you have her show up at different places where you thought her appearance would do her good?”

“We took her to all of the cocktail parties we thought were important,” Flack Jones said. “For instance, one picture magazine had its annual cocktail party, and we told Marilyn she ought to show so we could introduce her to various editors, columnists and radio and TV people. She waited until everybody had arrived; then she came in in this red gown. That gown became famous. She’d had sense enough to buy it a size or two too small, and it had what Joe Hyams calls ‘break-away straps.’

“When she came in, everybody stopped doing what they were doing and their eyes went, ‘Boing, boing,’” Flack Jones went on. “The publisher of the magazine who was picking up the tab for the party shook hands with her a long, long time. After a while he turned to one of his associate editors and said, ‘We ought to have a picture of this little girl in our book.’ Then he looked at her again and said, ‘Possibly we should have her on the cover.’”

Flack Jones grinned. “So that’s the way things went,” he said. “Some months there were as many as fifteen or sixteen covers of her on the newsstands at once. She came back to the Fox lot in 1950 to appear in All About Eve, but she was not anyone’s great, big, brilliant discovery until we got our still cameras focused on her and started spreading those Marilyn Monroe shots all over the universe.”

“What did she do in All About Eve?” I asked. “I don’t remember.”

“She’s the dumb broad who walks into a party at Bette Davis’ place leaning on George Sanders’ arm,” he said. “There’s dialogue which shows you that Sanders is a critic, like George Jean Nathan; and he brings this beautiful dish Marilyn in, and he sights a producer played by Gregory Ratoff. Sanders points at Ratoff and says to Marilyn, ‘There’s a real live producer, honey. Go do yourself some good.’ So Marilyn goes off to do herself some good while Sanders stays in his own price class with Bette.”

“Do you remember the first day she came to work?” I asked.

“Do I remember?” he said. “She was in an Angora sweater out to there. While we were shooting her in photography, the word got around and the boys rushed across the hall to get an eyeful. Next we did some layouts with her for picture magazines. We put her in a negligee, and she liked it so much that she wouldn’t take it off. She walked all over the lot in it, yelling, ‘Yoo hoo’ at strangers as far away as the third floor of the administration building. Pretty soon the whole third floor was looking down at her. The first and second floors looked too.”

Flack Jones did an abrupt shift into the present tense, “It’s a bright, sunny day; the wind is blowing and she has Nature working with her. It has taken Nature quite a while to bring her to the ripe-peach perfection she reaches on that day, but it finally makes it. The wind does the rest. She walks all over the lot, has a ball for herself, and so does everybody else.”

Then he shifted back again, “After that we took her to the beach with a lot of wardrobe changes. But the basic idea was that this is a beautiful girl with a great body, and that idea was always the same, although we had different approaches to it. We had color shots, we had black-and-white shots, we had mountain shots, we had field shots, faked water-skiing shots — every type of approach we could think of. Picnicking, walking — anything a person does, we let her do it. When we began to see what she did best, we concentrated on it.

“Women always hate the obvious in sex,” Flack Jones said, “and men love it.” Apparently he had given this matter a lot of thought. He had even worked out a philosophy about it. “Guys are instinctively awkward and blundering and naïve — even worldly-wise ones — and subtlety in sex baffles them. Not only that, but they don’t have the time. Women who are not supporting a husband have all the time in the world for it. But men have other things to do, like making a dollar; and they like their love-making without preliminaries which last four or five hours. Instinctively Marilyn knows this. She is very down-to-earth, very straightforward.”

I asked Marilyn when I talked to her back on Sutton Place, “Do you think men like their sex subtle or fairly obvious?” This was a double check. I already had the male answer.

It seemed to me that she hedged. “Some men prefer subtleties and other men don’t want things so subtle,” she said. “I don’t believe in false modesty. A woman only hurts herself that way. If she’s coy she’s denying herself an important part of life. Men sometimes believe that you’re frigid and cold in the development of a relationship, but if they do, it’s not always your fault. Religion has to do with it and how you’re brought up. You’re stuck with all that.”

I remembered something else Wilder had told me before Marilyn’s recent return to Hollywood to make the film version of the New York stage hit Bus Stop. “You take Monroe, now,” he remarked. “Aside from whether she’s an actress or not, she’s got this lovely little shape, it twitches excitingly, and the public likes to watch it, either coming toward them or going away. There are two schools of thought about her — those who like her and those who attack her — but they both are willing to pay to watch her. Their curiosity is good for eighty cents or a dollar and a quarter or whatever the price of the ticket.”

He shook his head thoughtfully. “And she went back East to study at a slow-take arty place, where they feature understatement. Here’s a girl who’s built herself a career on overstating something, and she’s made up her mind to understate. It won’t be long before we’ll know whether she’s right and whether she needs the wardrobe department and the hairdressing department as much as she needs artistic lines to say. It’ll be interesting to watch and I hope it works out the way she wants it to, but the lines that the public really wants from her so far are not written in English. They are her curves.”

The voice of Flack Jones echoed in the back of my head. “I forgot to tell you. When she finished that Marx Brothers picture, she went over to Columbia for a couple of shows, but she didn’t click, and they released her too. After that she was around town for a while going broke. It was then that she posed for that famous nude calendar — the composition of glowing flesh against a red velvet background which threw the public into a tizzy when they learned about it.”

I asked Marilyn to tell me the story of that nude calendar herself, and she said, “When the studio first heard about it, everybody there was in a frenzy. They telephoned me on the set where I was working in a quickie called Don’t Bother to Knock. The person who called asked me, ‘What’s all this about a calendar of you in the nude? Did you do it?’

“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is there anything wrong with it? So they’ve found out it’s me on that calendar. Well, what do you know!’

“‘Found out!’ he almost screamed. ‘There you are, all of you, in full color!’ Then he must have gotten mixed up, for first he said, ‘Just deny everything’; then he said, ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll be right down.’”

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

Enregistrer