Marilyn’s encounter with Soviet president, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1959, is among the ‘memorable meetings’ described in Craig Brown‘s newly-published, anecdotal book, One on One.
Khrushchev’s American visit is the subject of another book, K Blows Top by Peter Carlson, of which a big-screen adaptation was mooted last year.
An excerpt from One on One is published in today’s Guardian, though it should be noted that Brown’s main source is Lena Pepitone‘s disputed memoir, Marilyn Monroe Confidential.
‘Another key 20th-century meeting between showbiz and politics came on 19 September 1959, when Marilyn Monroe met Nikita Khrushchev on his American tour. When Monroe was first invited to meet the Soviet premier, his name hadn’t rung a bell, and she had refused. But then her studio informed her that in Russia, America meant two things: Coca-Cola and Marilyn Monroe, and she changed her mind.
When the big day comes, Monroe tells her maid that the studio wants her to wear her tightest, sexiest dress. “I guess there’s not much sex in Russia,” she concludes.
Khrushchev is a far cry from the dour, stony-faced monoliths who are due to succeed him. He is shouty and quick-tempered and wonderfully undiplomatic, but sometimes erupts in laughter. “The fellow’s all over the dials,” says the New York Daily News, while the New York Mirror describes him as “a rural dolt”.
Over lunch with 400 stars and bigwigs at 20th Century Fox (Edward G Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole, Gary Cooper and so on), Khrushchev is informed, in a note, that his spur-of-the-moment request for a tour of Disneyland has been turned down. He is furious, and his anger has not abated by the time he rises to reply to the speech of welcome from the president of 20th Century Fox. First, he berates the US for its lack of culture (“You do not even have a permanent opera and ballet theatre!”). Then the cancelled Disney tour bubbles up into his mind. “Just now, I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked, ‘Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there? … Is there an epidemic of cholera there? Have gangsters taken hold of the place?’” He punches the air. “For me, such a situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people.”
After lunch, he finally gets to meet Monroe in her low-cut, skin-tight black lace dress. All wide-eyed, Monroe delivers a line that Natalie Wood, a fluent Russian speaker, has taught her. “We the workers of 20th Century Fox rejoice that you have come to visit our studio and country.”
It seems to work like magic. Khrushchev cannot take his eyes off her. “He looked at me the way a man looks on a woman,” she recalls.
“You’re a very lovely young lady,” he says, squeezing her hand.
“This is about the biggest day in the history of the movie business,” Monroe tells the cameras. But when she gets home, she has changed her tune. “He was fat and ugly and had warts on his face and he growled,” she tells Lena, her maid. “He squeezed my hand so long and so hard that I thought he would break it. I guess it was better than having to kiss him.” ‘
