The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire— would define the Monroe screen persona and secure her place in the firmament of Hollywood for the next decade, always billed above the title and more often than not in the top spot. The films would also propel Marilyn to the number five spot in Quigley’s Top Ten list of the year’s box-office stars. “The time when I sort of began to think I was famous, I was driving somebody to the airport,” she would recall in 1962, “and as I came back there was this movie house and I saw my name in lights. I pulled the car up at a distance down the street—it was too much to take in up close, you know? And I said, ‘God, somebody’s made a mistake!’ But there it was, in lights.… And I sat there and said, ‘So, that’s the way it looks’… it was all very strange to me.”

Charles Casillo, an author and Marilyn Monroe historian, best summed up Marilyn’s appeal this way: “Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. Marilyn Monroe was sexy. Marilyn Monroe was delicious… always delicious. Everyone knew that. She wasn’t just a sex symbol. She was the sex symbol. But it was a certain kind of sex appeal, initiated, developed and perfected by her. Her appeal was childlike, innocent, tempting, glowing— bursting forth and available like a dish of fresh strawberries arranged in cream.… The creation of Marilyn Monroe had made an unwanted girl of the streets the most desired, written about, analyzed, gossiped about, wondered about and longed for woman of her era.”

For the first of these landmark movies, Niagara, the studio lavished the film with an impressive team of Oscar-honored artisans and craftsmen, with veteran Fox director Henry Hathaway, who had just directed Monroe the previous year in O. Henry’s Full House.

Joseph Cotten played Loomis, a mentally damaged Korean War vet who, with his wife, Rose (Monroe), makes a trip to Niagara Falls in an attempt to repair their broken marriage. In Rose’s mind, the marriage is beyond repair and she uses the trip to continue an adulterous affair with her lover, Patrick, who agrees to murder George. The plot to kill George backfires when he hurls Patrick into the falls to his death. Rose escapes and begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with George, played out against the awesome beauty and deafening power of the falls. George’s pursuit of Rose moves furtively in and out of Niagara’s watery veil. We teeter between horror and relief as George corners the beautiful Rose in the belltower and chokes the life out of her.

Since the beginning of her film career, Marilyn had striven to win the approval and respect of those in her profession. She studied her craft and worked with coaches from day one. She had the adoration of millions of fans yet somehow felt her beauty got in the way of her being recognized as a serious actress. There is evidence that some movie critics felt the same way. But occasionally there would be favorable comments about her acting chops, and her films would also get a thumbs-up. Even Pauline Kael, the feared film critic of the New Yorker, would praise her with faint damns, as she did when writing about Niagara. “This isn’t a good movie,” she wrote, “but it’s compellingly tawdry and nasty… the only movie that explores the mean, unsavory potential of Marilyn Monroe’s cuddly, infantile perversity.” Of the same movie, a critic at the New York Times wrote, “Seen from any angle, the Falls and Miss Monroe leave little to be desired.”

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

I’m trying to find myself now, to be a good actress and good person,” Marilyn said as 1952 came to a close. “Sometimes I feel strong inside, but I have to reach in and pull it up. It isn’t easy. Nothing’s easy, as long as you go on living.” ^*

Toward the end of 1952, Marilyn leased a house in Beverly Hills so that she and Joe could have some peace and quiet away from the swarm of paparazzi that gathered whenever they left their suite at the Hotel Bel Air, where they had been spending much of their time. However, it was neither peaceful nor quiet at the new home. On October 1, they had a fight—it’s not known about what—and Joe stormed out after what Marilyn later called “a lot of name calling.” They had known each other for only seven months. A major problem in Marilyn’s relationship was presented by Natasha Lytess, who disliked Joe very much. She couldn’t understand why Marilyn would be interested in him. In her view, he had no personality, was dense, and maybe even dimwitted (which was not true). Apparently, she had called Marilyn one day only to have Joe pick up and tell her that if she wanted to speak to “Miss Monroe” she should call “Miss Monroe’s” agent. In Joe’s view, she was a controlling shrew who had too much influence over his girlfriend. “She’s an acting teacher, for Christ’s sake,” he had told Marilyn. “Why do you treat her like she’s a psychiatrist?” Marilyn said that he just didn’t understand. She was right about that—he didn’t. Pretty much from the moment Joe and Natasha met, it was all-out war between them.

From November 1952 through February 1953, Marilyn Monroe would be at work on one of her most memorable movies, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Fox spared no expense in its transfer of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from stage to screen—from choreographer Jack Cole’s staging of the spectacular pre-credits opening number with Jane Russell and Monroe singing and dancing to “We’re Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock,” identically gowned head to toe in shimmery red sequins, to the reprise of the song in the final scene where the two stars are again dressed identically for a double wedding ceremony in blinding white gowns of figure-hugging lace applique, both by costumer Travilla, who surely must have been Bob Mackie’s inspiration in his career. Russell was billed above Monroe in all the film’s posters and publicity and in the opening credits. Russell was also first in money earned for this film, $400,000 to Monroe’s $11,250 ($1,250 per week for nine weeks). Fox wasn’t exactly kind to Marilyn. “I couldn’t even get a dressing room,” she would recall in 1962. “I said, finally—I really got to this kind of level—I said, ‘Look, after all, I am the blonde and it is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Because still they always kept saying, ‘Remember you are not a star.’ I said, ‘Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!’ ”

Throughout the shoot, Jane and Marilyn got along famously, with the five-years-older Russell protective of the insecure Monroe in the way of a big sister. Often all it took for Marilyn to be coaxed out of her trailer was a word from Jane. “She would be afraid to come out, she was so shy,” Russell said, “but it was understandable in the sense that she never had to sing so much, dance so much. Then, of course, she had the acting teacher [Natasha Lytess] on set every moment, a woman who was such an annoyance, running Marilyn’s life the way she did. I’m sure Marilyn did not need her on this movie… she would have been fine without her, if only she had more confidence in herself.”

They may be just two little girls from Little Rock who come from the wrong side of the tracks, but Lorelei Lee (Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Russell) easily change their status to the right side of the tracks after they conquer Paris in search of a couple of men of means. Veteran director Howard Hawks guides the large cast through the tune-filled story of a beautiful blonde with a weakness for diamonds, and her equally lovely enabler. Lorelei’s erstwhile fiance Esmond (Tommy Noonan) has financed the trip to Paris to test her fidelity. Suspicious of Lorelei’s motives, Esmond the elder hires private eye Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid) to spy on the girls and report any suspicious activity back to him. And there’s plenty to report, including charges leveled at Lorelei of grand larceny of a valuable tiara. Of course, she’s guilty, and it remains for a French judge to set things right, but not before Dorothy shakes things up by posing as Lorelei. When her true identity is called into question as she testifies in court, Jane Russell mounts a perfect impersonation of Marilyn’s Lorelei, which includes a devastating, dead-on version of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

Marilyn’s rendition of this song is the most lavish of all the production numbers in the film, again with choreography by Jack Cole, and with what seems like an army of tuxedoed chorus boys, one of whom turns out to be a teenage George Chakiris, with gray brushed into his temple hair. Though the picture was photographed with 35–millimeter film, studio head Daryl Zanuck ordered the “Diamonds” production number to be reshot later in CinemaScope for use in a demonstration of the new process, held on the Fox lot in March 1953. Zanuck told Daily Variety that the CinemaScope reshoot was done in three and a half hours, as opposed to the four days it took for the original version. That would stand to reason, considering the number had already been blocked and rehearsed.

What’s clear with this movie is not only Marilyn’s sense of humor about herself but also her ability as a comedic actress. Monroe biographer Donald Spoto put it this way: “She put a twist on sexiness. It was not something wicked and shameful and shocking and dirty and embarrassing. It was something which was terribly