The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

^* Marilyn Monroe historian James Haspiel adds to this observation: “This woman who was supposed to be out there all the time in a sexual way, in private life, was very demure. If you look at newsreel of her in Korea, she is squatting down on the stage with a bunch of soldiers around her and she’s wearing a cocktail dress. She has both hands across her chest. In other words, it’s as if she is unconsciously protecting herself from being on display. This is the same lady who, of course, posed nude for the calendar. Yet, if you look at her in any of the photographs I took of her personally, or so many other photos, she’s never wearing anything low-cut. Everything is always up to the neck all the time.”

^* Later, some priceless quotes were attributed to Marilyn when word got out that she was the model. When asked what she was wearing, she answered, “Chanel No. 5.” And her response to what she had on: “The radio.”

^* Again, leave it to James Haspiel for another classic Monroe memory. He says that in the eight years he knew her, he never once saw Marilyn “drunk, not even tipsy.” However, one day he showed her a photograph that was taken on a day when she had definitely had too much to drink. He handed it to her and said, “This was taken in an elevator in Marlene Dietrich’s apartment building, and you were very high.” Without missing a beat, Marilyn gave him a wide-eyed look and said, “What floor was I on?”

^* Villa Nova is now the Rainbow Bar & Grill, on Sunset Boulevard. There’s a gold plaque outside the very popular establishment with Marilyn’s likeness on it to recognize her first date with Joe. (In her memoir, Marilyn recalled first meeting Joe at Chasen’s restaurant.)

^* This sanitarium has most often been described in Marilyn Monroe biographies as having been in Eagle Rock, California, and Verdugo City, California. However, it was in La Crescenta. For many years it served as a women’s rest home until closing down in 2006.

^* She really was “a good person,” too. Consider this, from James Haspiel: “A famous story about her happened on a night she went for a walk in New York, when she was living on East 57th Street. At the end of 58th is a very small park with a small bridge. As she stood on that bridge, she watched two teenage boys with nets on long poles catching pigeons and then putting the birds in a big cage. She went down and asked them what they were doing. They explained to this blonde woman they didn’t know that they were catching as many pigeons as they could so that they could then take them to the market where they would be paid 25 cents apiece for them. [This sounds like something these boys made up. What would any market want with their pigeons?] After a pause she said, ‘Well, if I sit on this bench and wait until you’re done, and I pay you for the pigeons, will you then free them?’ They agreed to do this. After they were done, she gave them a quarter for each pigeon they freed. Then she asked, ‘What nights do you come here?’ They said, ‘Thursdays.’ She said, ‘I’ll try to be here next Thursday night.’ ”

^* A funny story relating to this movie: One day, when Marilyn was to get a massage, the crew wanted to play a joke on her. So one of the jokesters asked a young production assistant—seventeen years old—to go to her trailer and give her a message. “Don’t knock,” he said. “Just walk right in. She likes that.” The youngster did what he was told. He opened the door, and there was Marilyn Monroe, lying nude on her stomach on the massage table, waiting for her masseuse. Completely nonchalant, she asked the red-faced teen, “Did they put you up to this?” He said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Okay. Well, close the door, sit down, and stay for twenty minutes. Then the joke is on them!”

^* Marilyn Monroe’s accounting ledger for this time frame indicates two payments to “Mrs. G. Goddard”—Grace—made in May and June of 1953. The first is for $851.04, and the second is for $300.00. Both carry the notation “medical.” For years, it’s been speculated that these checks were used to cover an abortion Marilyn may have had—though no one can explain why, if this were the case, the checks were made out to Grace. The truth seems clear: These checks were obviously drawn by Marilyn to help pay for Grace’s medical crisis at this time.

^* High colonic irrigation was part of the daily routine of Mae West for all of her adult life, not for weight control, but for cleansing purposes. She is said to have used coffee laced with herbs for her routine.

^* It’s been widely reported over the years—even by Vanity Fair in its cover story on Marilyn dated October 2008—that Inez Melson was hired by Joe DiMaggio to be a “spy” for him in the Marilyn Monroe camp and that she was “secretly” working for Joe. It’s true that Melson came into the picture at around the same time as DiMaggio. However, her testimony against Joe on this important day would seem to suggest that she wasn’t exactly loyal to him, if in fact she was even hired at his recommendation.

^* This woman later sued DiMaggio and Sinatra for $200,000 and ended up getting $7,500 out of them.

^* Collier was an English-born, classically trained character actress of stage, radio, and films who turned to teaching and coaching as acting roles began to dry up. She worked with Marilyn for only a few months, dying at the age of seventy-seven in April 1955 in New York.

^* The occasion of Marilyn’s and Arthur’s first meeting has become like Rashomon, with so many versions reported on. Most seem to agree on one point: It took place on the set of As Young as You Feel. In dispute is how all the players happened to be gathered there at the same time. In Elia Kazan’s 1988 memoir, A Life, he writes that Charles Feldman was hosting a party in Miller’s honor, that Kazan was not able to attend, and that he then asked Miller to take Monroe. Then there’s the version of events detailed in Miller’s 1987 memoir, Timebends (Grove Press). Miller wrote that his visit to the set of As Young as You Feel was at the request of his father, who asked him to call on actor Monty Woolley (“my father’s bete noire”), who had a principal part in the movie. Unknown, as far as we could tell, is Marilyn Monroe’s version of her first meeting with Miller.

^* This same will stipulates that her mother, Gladys Baker Eley, should have her sanitarium expenses paid “for the rest of her life”—but not more than a total of $25,000.

^* Natasha Lytess died of cancer in 1964—two years after Marilyn Monroe.

^* Susan Strasberg defended her mother this way: “My mother literally sat with her for twenty- four hours on those films, holding her hand, trying to get her to take less pills.… The incredible insecurity that she [Monroe] had that she needed to be pampered and reassured. My mother gave her life’s blood, in a way. And got blamed on top of it, for Marilyn’s unprofessional behavior.”

^* Author Charles Casillo notes: “It’s only in the last decade or so that Tony Curtis tried to rectify his nasty comments about Marilyn. I don’t blame him for being furious after working with her. It’s easy to make excuses for her now, but almost everyone who made a movie with her has said that Monroe was terribly difficult to work with. Actors have huge egos and Marilyn was always favored in the final takes, which infuriated Tony Curtis. There is no denying he despised her after the movie—and his loathing lasted decades after her death. Yet, as her legend grew and her value to every movie became more and more undeniable, Curtis has tried to revise history and defuse his derogatory comments about her. But even Marilyn—in her last LIFE interview—addressed the “Hitler” remark: “I don’t understand why people aren’t a little more generous with each other. I don’t like to say this, but I’m afraid there is a lot of envy in this business.… For instance, you’ve read there