Marilyn Monroe’s Long Island Affair
Marilyn Monroe’s Long Island Affair
By Spencer Rumsey
published on January 1, 2013
online longislandpress.com
Marilyn Monroe was already one of the most famous women in America when she posed for Eve Arnold, herself a pioneering photographer, at a Mt. Sinai playground and in a nearby marsh in 1955. (Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos)
When Marilyn Monroe came out to Fire Island in 1955 to spend the weekend with Lee and Paula Strasberg, who were mentoring her at their famed Actors Studio in Manhattan, she famously remarked, “What a lovely place this is—it’s got water all around it.”
But that wasn’t her first time on Long Island. In 1949 Monroe had visited the Town of Oyster Bay’s Tobay Beach with Andre de Dienes, a photographer friend who’d once been her lover in California when she was still using her real name, Norma Jeane, and struggling to get her footing in Hollywood as a model.
Then she was a budding starlet and she’d come east to promote the Marx Brothers’ forgettable last film, Love Happy, in which she tells Groucho that she needs his help because “some men are following me” and he lasciviously replies, “Really. I can’t imagine why.”
In de Dienes’ pin-up photograph, Monroe was 23 and full of promise. Her troubled childhood in orphanages and foster homes were long behind her. A bright future lay still ahead.
By the summer of 1955 Monroe had become one of the most famous women in America. Her marriage to Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper, was over, and she’d left Hollywood in a contract fight with 20th Century Fox. Her studio bosses had wanted her to do The Girl in Pink Tights. She balked and formed Marilyn Monroe Productions in New York.
The image of her skirt billowing in the breeze from the Lexington Avenue subway—a still from the 1954 movie The Seven Year Itch—had become “the shot seen ’round the world.” Adding to the attraction was her 1953 appearance as the nude centerfold in the first issue of Playboy magazine, because the enterprising publisher Hugh Hefner had paid $500 for the rights to Tom Kelley’s nude photos that he’d taken of her in 1949, paying her $50 to pose on a swath of crushed red velvet.
The news that the Hollywood star had been fully exposed broke in 1952 when Kelley’s photos turned up in a calendar illustration. Monroe showed her genius for self-publicity—and earned even more money for 20th Century Fox—by owning up to it. In answer to reporters’ breathless queries about what she’d been wearing during the shoot, she said she only had on “the radio.”
At the Strasberg’s place on Ocean Beach, Monroe was sharing a bedroom with their teenage daughter Susan, who was about to appear on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank. There were “a lot of theater people” at that part of the island, Susan Strasberg recalled. “They were sophisticates, which meant they stared at Marilyn Monroe from a distance instead of staring up close.”
Over the Labor Day weekend in 1955 Monroe was on the North Shore, staying at Norman and Hedda Rosten’s cottage in Port Jefferson. They were artistic college friends of Arthur Miller’s, who’d Monroe had been seeing since she moved to Manhattan even though they were both still married at the time. Late that September afternoon she left to do a photo shoot with famed photographer Eve Arnold, the second woman to join Magnum Photos, the world-renowned agency founded by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Arnold, who was then living in Miller Place, took Monroe to a playground in Mt. Sinai. Monroe brought along three bathing suits and a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which she kept in her car.
“She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it,” Arnold recalled, “but she found it hard going.”
Monroe had performed Molly Bloom’s sensual soliloquy to much acclaim at a small workshop at the Actors Studio. While Arnold was changing film, Monroe got the book out to read.
“So, of course, I photographed her,” Arnold explained. Soon it was 5 o’ clock, the golden hour, photographers say. “The timing for the marshes was just right,” Arnold wrote, “the light soft and shadowless and ranging from pale yellow through deep saffron.”
Monroe changed into a one-piece bathing suit with a leopard-skin print and waded in.
“She was intrepid,” Arnold enthused later. “She stood in [it], sat in it, lay in it until the light started to go and I called a halt. She climbed out, covered in mud, but she was exhilarated—and giggling.” Later, Arnold would insist that Monroe told her “she had loved the day and kept repeating that these were the best circumstances under which she had ever worked.”
An effervescent Marilyn Monroe manages to get a laugh out of her serious husband, Arthur Miller,
in this series of candid black and white photographs taken in July 1956 when they were the most curious couple in the country. (AP Photo/Julien’s Auctions)
Monroe’s career was nearing its apogee. In the summer of 1957 Monroe was married to Miller, who’d won a 1949 Pulitzer for his tragic play Death of a Salesman. They were living in a weather-worn farmhouse in Amagansett near the Rostens, who were renting a cottage in Springs. Also nearby was the abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning, who painted Monroe for his series Women. The image, which Monroe biographer Lois Banner likened to “a cross between a grinning child and a screaming fury,” did not appeal to Monroe’s playwright husband but she didn’t mind. The married couple was in a hopeful phase: He was writing in his studio near the main house and she was cooking and tending her garden. And she was pregnant.
But on Aug. 1, 1957 she cried out in pain. An ambulance rushed her to Manhattan where Monroe hoped that her own doctor could save her baby. He could not. Suffering from a painful uterine condition called endometriosis, she had an ectopic pregnancy, and it had to be terminated. She spent 10 days in the hospital, Miller by her side.
The loss was devastating. When the season was over, they moved back to Manhattan, he ensconced himself in a book-lined study at one end of the apartment struggling over a screenplay that would eventually become The Misfits while she was at the other end, strumming a ukulele and crooning, “I Wanna Be Loved By You.”
The next year they moved to a new house they had built in Connecticut, but they never could recreate the idyllic summer they’d shared on the South Fork. And Monroe’s happy times on Long Island faded into memory.
1955 Marilyn et Norman Rosten
Marilyn Monroe et Norman Rosten - vers 1955
Marilyn Monroe and Norman Rosten - circa 1955
Elle signe le livre d'or du White Barn Theatre, à Norwalk, Connecticut.
She signs the guestbook of the White Barn Theatre, in Norwalk, Connecticut. 
© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by GinieLand.
Mai 1957 Marilyn à Amagansett, Long Island 2
Photos privées de Marilyn Monroe en mai 1957,
à Amagansett, Long Island. Photographies de Sam Shaw.
Private photographs of Marilyn Monroe in 1957, May,
in Amagansett, Long Island; by Sam Shaw.
- Avec Norman Rosten
- Avec les enfants d'Arthur Miller, Jane et Robert
> Série de photographies prises par Marilyn Monroe
Les enfants d'Arthur et le chien Hugo
Snapshots taken by Marilyn herself
Arthur's children and the dog Hugo
© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by GinieLand.
Profiles in History 15/12/2012: documents et objets
Profiles in History: Documents et Photos inédites aux enchères
Partie 1/ Vente aux enchères organisée par Profiles in History. Le site de vente aux enchères ArtFact propose de nombreux lots aux enchères concernant Marilyn Monroe. On y retrouve des objets divers à l'effigie de la star (puzzle, tableaux...), des documents écrits (lettres, chèques, autographes signés par Marilyn), et des photographies, dont certaines totalement inédites; les lots sont présentés sur le site jusqu'au 29 novembre 2012 et la vente s'effectuera les 15 et 16 décembre 2012. Voici les lots sur les documents papiers et les divers objets:
> Documents écrits <
> Autographe (lot 119)
"To Kirk, Best Luck Always, Marilyn Monroe"
Le photographe Kirk Crivello a obtenu cette photo signée en rencontrant Marilyn au Mocambo nighclub de Hollywood en 1951.
> Autographe (lot 417)
"To Teddy, From all I hear you sound - nice! Marilyn Monroe"
> Lettre 2 pages de Marilyn à Norman Rosten (lot 189)
non datée (circa 1954-55)
Marilyn Monroe écrit à son ami proche à propos de sa dépressione et son désir d'avoir un enfant (et seulement un garçon plutôt qu'une fille, tel un désir "freudien"):
“Dear Norman, It feels a little funny to be writing the name Norman since my own name is Norma and it feels like I’m writing my own name almost, However--
First, thanks for letting Sam and me visit you and Hedda last Saturday. It was nice. I enjoyed meeting your wife - she seemed so warm to me. Thanks the most for your book of poetry--with which I spent all Sunday morning in bed with. It touched me - I use to think if I had ever had a child I would have wanted only a son, but after reading - Songs for Patricia - I know I would have loved a little girl just as much but maybe the former feeling was only Freudian for something...anyway Frued [sic]
I use to write poetry sometimes but usually I was very depressed at those times and the few (about two) people said that it depressed them, in fact one cried but it was an old friend I’d known for years. So anyway thanks. And my best to Hedda & Patricia and you-- Marilyn M.”
> Lettre 3 pages de DiMaggio à Marilyn (lot 292)
du 15 juillet 1952
Dear Marilyn, I just got through talking with you--and I don’t know what else to say than I have already said. However, it bothers me (call it guilt or what have you) to think about what happened the day I left for New York. I definately [sic] am punishing myself. I have always felt that I’ve been able to ‘take’ it, but in this particular instance, I find myself rather cold. It annoys me no end to think that I have ‘bit’ your feelings: you of all people, would be the last one I’d hurt! It has never been my nature to do that to anyone, and I’m certainly not going to start now. I’d rather take an ‘airship’--bow out gracefully is what I mean--rather than give you any misieres [sic; i.e., plural of misery], and please don’t get the idea I am saying these things because I want things to change -on the contrary, I have among other things great respect for you. For the time that I know you--you have done nothing but good--for me and some of your acquaintances--you have done nothing but take the worse of things when other people are involved in rough spots, and in our mild mannered way, people have taken advantage of you. I know all these things about you, and a lot more. I guess I could also mention how much you try, in everything that you do. Especially when you were here and went shopping just to please me. So you see Marilyn, I appreciate you as a real, solid, human soul, with tremendous inner feelings.
What you have already read has been put mildly and very brief.
I am handing you the ‘deck’ of cards now--you schuffle [sic] them and deal; all I ask is you forgive me. Love Joe.
> Chèque de $138.25 à City Collector (lot 75)
du 14 octobre 1959
> Chèque de $14.25 à Colonial Trust Company (lot 76)
du 28 octobre 1960 
> Autographe Dimaggio & Marilyn (lot 1240)
de 1954
"Best wishes, Joe DiMaggio" / "Love & Kisses, Marilyn Monroe" 
> Photos d'école signée par Norma Jeane (lot 1241)
de 1941 Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School
"To a swell, nice & perfect girl[?], Norma Jeane Baker." 
> Script 'The Misfits' de Clark Gable (lot 329)
Gable a donné son scrpt à Arthur Rosson le dernier jour de tournage
> Objets divers <
> Caméra 'Mitchell BNC #206' pour The Misfits (lot 418)
(Seven Arts Prod., 1961)
This Mitchell BNC #206 was used as the principal first unit camera on Marilyn Monroe's final completed film The Misfits.
12/12/1955 Première de The Rose Tattoo
Le 12 décembre 1955, Marilyn Monroe se rend à la première du film de Daniel Mann The Rose Tattoo (La Rose Tatouée) à l'Astor Theatre de New York, avec dans les rôles principaux, Anna Magnani et Burt Lancaster, pourtant absents à cette première new-yorkaise. Marilyn, resplendissante dans une robe noire assortie de longs gants noirs et d'un fourreau blanc, portant de longues boucles d'oreilles, pose avec malice et glamour devant les photographes et les caméramen venus spécialement filmer l'arrivée des stars.
On December 12, 1955, Marilyn Monroe goes to the premiere of Daniel Mann's movie The Rose Tattoo at the Astor Theater in New York, with Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster in the main roles, not present at this premiere. Marilyn, resplendent in a black dress matched with long black gloves and a white sheath, wearing long earrings, poses with mischief and glamor in front of the photographers and the cameramen who came specially to film the arrival of the celebrities.
L'arrivée de Marilyn
Photographie de Peter Haas 
Photographie de Paul Slade 
video de l'arrivée de Marilyn
Captures
Dans le hall du cinéma
- de la collection de Frieda Hull, une fan des Monroe Six
-from the personal collection of Frieda Hull, one of the 'Monroe Six'
Après la projection du film, les célébrités se rendent à une soirée tenue au Sheraton Astor Hotel, dans le but de récolter des fonds pour l'Actors Studio (100 000 dollars seront obtenus), lors d'un dîner et d'une soirée dansante où les reporters sont nombreux. Marilyn est escortée par Marlon Brando, avec qui elle vit alors une aventure amoureusement secrète à cette période. Parmi les invités, se trouvent Lee, Paula et Susan Strasberg, le couple Rosten, Arthur Jacobs, Jayne Mansfield et Arthur Miller, qui sera photographiée publiquement pour la première fois au côté de Marilyn.
After the screening of the film, the celebrities go to a party held at the Sheraton Astor Hotel, with the aim of raising funds for the Actors Studio (100,000 dollars will be obtained), with a dinner and a dance party where reporters are numerous. Marilyn is escorted by Marlon Brando, with whom she then lives a lovingly secret adventure during this period. Among the guests are Lee, Paula and Susan Strasberg, the Rosten couple, Arthur Jacobs, Jayne Mansfield and Arthur Miller, who will be pictured publicly for the first time alongside Marilyn.
Marilyn & Marlon Brando
Marilyn et Marlon Brando en interview pour la BBC
-photographie de Nate Cutler >> 
-photographie de Sid Caesar >> 
- L'interview -
>> Marilyn au dîner
>> Marilyn avec l'écrivain Bill Denby et sa soeur Dorothy Denby
photographie de Max Peter Haas 
>> Marilyn avec les Strasberg
>> Marilyn avec Susan Strasberg et Jayne Mansfield
> Helen Hayes et Joan Crawford 
>> Marilyn danse dans les bras de Marlon Brando
>> Photos de Roy Schatt: Marilyn et Arthur Miller
>> Photo de Phil Stern 
Séance "Actors Studio"
- Milton H Greene -
dans la presse
All photos are copyright and protected by their respective owners.
copyright text by GinieLand.
Marilyn among friends
Marilyn among friends
Auteurs: Sam Shaw, Norman Rosten
Date de sortie: mai 1987
Relié 224 pages
Langue: anglais
Éditeur: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN-10: 0747500126
ISBN-13: 978-0747500124
Prix éditeur: livre épuisé, non reédité: jusqu'à 60 Euros d'occasion
Ou le commander ? sur amazon.fr
Livre reédité en 1992
chez l'éditeur Outlet
Présentation:
Le photographe Sam Shaw, ami de Marilyn Monroe, a pris de nombreuses photos d'elle, dont les plus célèbres de la scène de la robe dans le film Sept ans de réflexion. Deux cents photographies sont publiées dans ce livre: Marilyn se maquillant, à la plage, au téléphone, sur les tournages, dans la rue, avec Bogart, avec Gable, avec DiMaggio, avec Miller, avec leur chien le basset Hugo. Le texte qui accompagne les clichés est rédigé par les descriptions de Norman Rosten (poète/dramaturge/auteur de romans) au temps où il fréquentait par amitié Marilyn, racontant des souvenirs de ses amis, de ses marris et fans, et imaginant une conversation avec Marilyn.
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1957 Vacances à Long Island
Photos privées de Marilyn Monroe et Arthur Miller en mai 1957,
à Amagansett, Long Island, chez les Rosten.
Private photographs of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller in 1957, May,
in Amagansett, Long Island, at Rosten's.
> Marilyn avec Stefan Lorant 
© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by GinieLand.
Août 1955 Vacances à Long Island
Marilyn Monroe en vacances chez les Rosten,
à Amagansett, East Hampton (Etat de New York) l'été 1955.
Marilyn Monroe in holiday at the Rosten's
in Amagansett, East Hampton (New York), in the summer of 1955.
> Marilyn joue au badminton avec Hedda, Norman et leur fille Patricia.
Marilyn plays badminton with Hedda, Norman and their daughter Patricia 
-captures- 
> video
> Marilyn tient la main de la petite Patricia Rosten et de Hedda Rosten
Marilyn holds the hand of the little Patricia Rosten and Hedda Rosten
> Marilyn et Hedda Rosten
Marilyn with Hedda Rosten
> Moments de détente à Long Island
Relaxing moments in Long Island 
© All images are copyright and protected by their respective owners, assignees or others.
copyright text by GinieLand.
Août 1955 Plage de Long Island
Un soir d'août 1955, la photographe Eve Arnold se promène sur la plage de Miller Place lorsqu'elle rencontre par hasard l'écrivain Norman Rosten, accompagnée d'une blonde. Eve Arnold n'a pas identifié de suite la personne: "la nuit tombait et la jeune femme tournait le dos à la lumière de sorte que j'eus du mal à reconnaître en elle l'éblouissante Marilyn". Elle propose à la photographe un projet photographique pour le magazine Esquire et convient d'un rendez-vous à la plage le lendemain, un samedi après-midi.
Lorsque Eve Arnold et son fils Francis arrivent à la plage, ses amis sont déjà là - parmi eux, la famille Rosten: Norman Rosten, le père, Hedda Rosten, sa femme, et leur fille Patricia- mais Marilyn Monroe n'est pas encore arrivée et la photographe n'a pas apporté ses appareils, pensant qu'il s'agit là d'une simple réunion entre amis où Marilyn veut rester incognito. Mais d'un coup, la photographe entend des gens parler et se regrouper au loin: c'est Marilyn qui arrivait, descendant lentement la falaise. Elle portait un bikini au haut croisé d'une cocarde et d'un bas court et moulant blanc, un grand chapeau de paille et une paire de boots de l'armée. Marilyn s'installe sur sa serviette de plage et de plus en plus de monde accourent sur la petite plage pour l'apercevoir et lui demander des autographes. C'est ainsi que bon nombre de photographes amateurs mitraillent la star. Puis Marilyn joue au ballon avec Francis, le fils d'Eve Arnold, avant d'aller se baigner. C'est alors qu'une foule l'entoure dans l'eau, ce qui était plutôt dangereux pour sa sécurité. La police a donc dû intervenir pour "sauver" Marilyn en l'emmenant dans leur hors-bord, Marilyn saluant de la main la foule.
>> Video
Daily News 11/08/1962
Le journal américain de New-York Daily News du samedi 11 août 1962, titre en Une "Eight to share in MM's Estate" et révèle, dans un article de deux pages, intitulé "8 who helped Marilyn most share in will", les huit personnes apparaissant dans le testament de Marilyn, rédigé un an auparavant, révélé par son avocate Inez Melson:
> Cinq d'entre eux sont new-yorkais: certains l'ont aidé dans sa vie professionnelle comme privée:
Lee Strasberg qui dirige l'Actors Studio;
ses amis -le poète- Norman et -sa femme- Hedda Rosten, qu'elle avait rencontré à l'époque de son mariage avec Arthur Miller;
> Six d'entre eux sont des femmes:
dont sa mère, Mrs Gladys Baker Eley qui, placée dans un hôpital psychiatrique, ne sait pas encore que sa fille de 36 ans est décèdée;
sa demie-soeur, Berniece Miracle;
sa secrétaire de New York May Reis;
sa professeur d'art dramatique Mrs Michael Chekhov;
sa psychanaliste Dr Marianne Kris ...
> Joe DiMaggio, qui s'occupa des funérailles, n'apparaît pas dans le testament.
> On estime alors son héritage s'élevant à plus de 100 000 $.
- On apprend aussi qu'Inez Melson a dû prendre les dispositions nécessaires pour évacuer les fourrures et bijoux de valeurs de la maison de Marilyn à Brentwood, afin qu'ils ne puissent pas être volés.
- Puis l'article revient sur les circonstances de sa mort: les investigations menées sont lentes, la confirmation de son décès dû à l'absorption de barbituriques n'ayant pas encore été confirmé. La version officielle livrée alors était la présence d'un flacon pouvant contenir 25 comprimés de nembutal sur la table de chevet, mais aussi d'autres flacons contenant d'autres tranquilisants et d'hydrate de chloral.
