The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

DIRECTOR: Fritz Lang

WRITER: Alfred Hayes (based on a Clifford Odets play)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Nicholas Musuraca

We’re Not Married (1952)

Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, Eve Arden, Paul Douglas, David Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (Annabel Jones Norris)

Five couples are notified that their marriages are invalid because the license of the justice of the peace who performed the ceremonies had not yet kicked in. The couples react to the news in a variety of ways, with Monroe and Wayne’s solution easily the most comic: Already a winner of the Mrs. Mississippi contest, Annabel is now free to enter the Miss Mississippi contest, which she also wins. First of two so-called episodic movies featuring Monroe. 85 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER/WRITER: Nunnally Johnson

DIRECTOR: Edmund Goulding

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Leo Tolver

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)

Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe (Nell Forbes)

Marilyn moves from featured player to leading lady in this melodramatic, disturbing film noir. She is a suicidal, perhaps homicidal, babysitter whose flirtatious overtures to a war-damaged pilot (Widmark) have unexpected and near-deadly consequences. The film was mounted by studio honchos to assay Monroe’s dramatic skills, which proved to be considerable. 76 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Julian Blaustein

DIRECTOR: Roy Ward Baker

WRITER: Daniel Taradash

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lucien Ballard

Monkey Business (1952)

Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe (Miss Lois Laurel)

A lab chimp accidentally dumps a youth elixir into the drinking water, creating a fountain of youth. After ingesting some of it, research professor Grant and wife Rogers revert to their teenage selves with predictable results—screwball or slapstick—though the fun can only go so far before it gets tedious. Marilyn is on hand as Charles Coburn’s secretary and holds her own quite well as she fends off his clumsily romantic advances. 97 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel

DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks

WRITERS: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I. A. L. Diamond

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton Krasner

O. Henry’s Full House (1952)

Charles Laughton, David Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (as a streetwalker), Farley Granger, Jeanne Crain, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark

Five classic short stories created by the master of the genre, all with an ironic resolution in their denouement, which O. Henry perfected and which became his signature. Each short film is self-contained with its own writer, director, and cast, and each is introduced by future Nobel winner John Steinbeck. First, in “The Cop and the Anthem,” Soapy is an urban hobo (Laughton) who in warm weather sleeps in the park. However, with winter coming, he opts for a nice warm jail cell. But he first must get arrested. A series of petty crimes go for naught: theft of an umbrella, stiffing a restaurant for a meal, vandalizing a window. He tries to offend a lady of the evening (Monroe), to no avail. Finally, he enters a church, has an epiphany, repents, and decides to find a job and go “straight.” Alas, his plan is thwarted when a cop arrests him for vagrancy; he is tried and sent to jail for the next ninety days. 19 minutes for segment; 119 minutes for film.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Andrew Hakim

DIRECTOR: Henry Koster

WRITER: Lamar Trotti

CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Lloyd Ahern, Lucien Ballard, Milton R. Krasner, Joseph MacDonald

Niagara (1953)

Joseph Cotten, Marilyn Monroe (Rose Loomis)

A cuckolded, lovesick husband, suffering from Korean War shell shock, and his gorgeous, adulterous wife are at Niagara Falls—for very different reasons: He wants to repair his beyond-repair marriage; she is meeting with her lover to plot her husband’s murder. One can almost feel the presence of Alfred Hitchcock as adultery and murder are played out against the power and grandeur of the unrelenting noise and beauty of Niagara. All does not end well, as Loomis (Cotten) discovers the plot against him and turns the tables on Rose (Monroe) and her lover, dispatching him into the crashing waters. He then goes after Rose, stalking her insistently, finding her in the resort’s belltower, and strangling the life out of her. Production values are very high with the breathtaking location filming, lush, saturated Technicolor, and ear-pounding stereo sound. Monroe’s first big-budget picture, an assignment she handles to a tee. A big hit with the public. First of three important films for Marilyn released in 1953. 89 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Charles Brackett

DIRECTOR: Henry Hathaway

WRITERS: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, Richard Breen

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Joseph MacDonald

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe (Lorelei Lee)

Lavishly produced, big-budget film of the hit Broadway musical that starred Carol Channing. In the movie, Jane Russell is first-billed and was paid $400,000 to Marilyn’s costar billing and $11,250. Upon being told by someone that Jane and not Marilyn was the star of the film, Monroe responded with perfect logic, “Maybe not, but I’m the blonde.” The familiar story: After a few harrowing experiences, including a brush with the gendarmes, a couple of naughty-but-nice, gold-digging chorus girls—“We’re Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock”—find notoriety and, eventually, love in the City of Lights. The studio pulled out all the stops in this big-musical treatment—a time- tested Broadway hit, musical score by Jule Styne and Leo Robins, gowns by Travilla, musical numbers staged by Jack Cole with an army of talented singers and dancers, color by Technicolor. Studio boss Darryl Zanuck ordered the big production number at the end of the film, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” to be refilmed in CinemaScope and stereophonic sound, the result of which was then used by Fox to demonstrate the studio-perfected process. Other studios were impressed and began to use the widescreen technology as well. 91 minutes.

20th Century-Fox

PRODUCER: Sol C. Siegel

DIRECTOR: Howard Hawks

WRITERS: Charles Lederer, Joseph Fields (based on Anita Loos’s play)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Harry J. Wild

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe (Pola), Lauren Bacall

The studio, since its beginning, has recycled the story of penniless young beauties leaving home to go to the big city in search of bright lights and rich men. These husband hunters acquired the name “gold diggers,” and Warner Bros. made a series of very successful musicals in the early thirties using the name and theme. But it was 20th Century-Fox that manipulated and honed the by now familiar story into box-office gold with this movie. It was the first film shot entirely in CinemaScope, but another Fox film, the prestigious religious epic The Robe, also filmed in CinemaScope, was released to theaters first, claiming bragging rights as the first film in the new process. To make it clear to audiences that the film was an “event,” Alfred Newman, the studio’s