Steve Rowland was a movie actor in the 1950s, later becoming a record producer in London. His 2008 memoir, Hollywood Heat, is now available via Kindle. This weekend, Britain’s Express published a series of extracts detailing his encounters with stars including Marilyn.
Rowland describes meeting her by chance at a doctor’s office in Los Angeles in 1957. However, she spent that year in New York. The movie he was preparing for was Gun Glory, released in July. It’s possible, then, that he may actually have met Marilyn during the spring of 1956, when she was in L.A. to film Bus Stop.
“In 1957, I came down with a very bad case of the flu. Our family doctor, Dr. Motchan, being the friend of our family that he was, told me to come to the office before it opened. He knew that I was needed in wardrobe at MGM and that I was to start a film in Garberville CA in ten days.
This was an important break for me as it was a feature role in a western with Stewart Granger and Rhonda Fleming. When I entered the office I noticed a very bedraggled yet sexy woman sitting in one of the waiting room chairs.
My throat felt like it had a hundred rusty nails in it and my nose was plugged up as if I was at the bottom of a well. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but check out the sexy lady sitting opposite me. She was overly nice to me, offered me Kleenex and sympathy, and we started talking.
After a couple of minutes we seemed to bond. There was something very familiar about her, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I found her interesting. About that time, the doctor called me into his office for a shot of penicillin.
As I lowered my Levi’s and bent over to receive the shot, I asked the doctor ‘who was that chick in the waiting room? I asked her to join me for a cup of coffee after I leave here.’
The doctor started laughing and said ‘Steve, don’t you know who that is? That’s Marilyn Monroe!’
I almost had a heart attack, quickly pulled up my pants, rushed out into the waiting room – but Marilyn was gone with the wind.”