Murray Garrett Remembers Marilyn

Murray Garrett – whose photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and other great stars of Hollywood’s golden age, are now on display at New York’s Washington Square Hotel – has spoken movingly to Out Impact about his memories of Marilyn:

“I always refer to her – and a lot of my contemporaries would laugh at me because they felt differently, but I always felt that she was a deer in the headlights, and that all this pressure – the throngs would scream and yell when she’d get out of a car. 60, 70 guys with flashbulbs and strobe lights and you could see how she fought fear.

I always felt sorry for her. I remember when my wife woke me one day and said ‘Oh my god!’; I said, ‘What?’ she said ‘Marilyn Monroe died’. I sat there and thought for a minute, I said, ‘She finally found peace.’

I don’t think this woman could have grown old gracefully in that business … she wasn’t tough, hard – because if she was, she would have survived. But she couldn’t have survived; she was threatened by almost everything.

I think there are eras …. (Betty) Grable was a part of the war publicity, stuff to make you feel very patriotic. Monroe didn’t have that going for her. All she had was that she was the sexiest thing to come down the pike since Jean Harlow, and Harlow was another one of those stories that didn’t work out as well as it might have.”

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