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Marilyn (and Dorothy) at the Plaza

One of Marilyn’s favourite New York hangouts was the Plaza Hotel, where in February 1956, she held a press conference with Sir Laurence Olivier – and, much to his amazement, chaos erupted when the strap on his co-star’s dress broke!

John F. Doscher, a bartender (or ‘mixologist’) at the Plaza during the fifties, remembers Marilyn and other stars in his new book, The Back of the House, reports Hernando Today.

“Take for instance his va-va-va voom encounter with Marilyn Monroe. The starlet stayed at the hotel numerous times.

Doscher said he was awestruck by the entourage of photographers, hair stylists and makeup artists accompanying Miss Monroe each time she came in.

‘They were from Life, Look and Photoplay magazines, all there for photo opps, he said, early paparazzis, you know?’

One day Monroe was having a late breakfast in what was the Edwardian Room and sitting by the window overlooking Central Park South. A few tables away with her back to Monroe sat Plaza-regular New York newspaper columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen.

Working the bar that day in the Edwardian, Doscher mentioned to Kilgallen that Monroe was sitting by the window. Kilgallen, he said, ‘Let out a “harrumph” and said, ‘Yes. I saw her. She looks like an unmade bed.’

‘Apparently, there was some animosity there,’ Doscher observed. ‘I mean, Marilyn Monroe has been described many ways in her lifetime, but never the description Kilgallen offered.'”

Dorothy Kilgallen was a syndicated newspaper columnist. In 1952, she reported that journalist Robert Slatzer was a rival to Joe DiMaggio for Marilyn’s affections. (Slatzer has since become a notorious figure in Monroe history, and biographer Donald Spoto considers him a fraud.)

After Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released in 1953, a sceptical Kilgallen wrote to Darryl F. Zanuck, asking him to confirm that Marilyn’s singing was her own voice, which he did.

Needless to say, none of this endeared her to Marilyn, and in his essay, A Beautiful Child, Truman Capote wrote that MM had described Kilgallen as a drunk who hated her.

Kilgallen lived near the summer house where Marilyn and Arthur Miller stayed in 1957. In 1960, she was photographed with Marilyn at a press conference for Let’s Make Love.

Just days before Marilyn died, Kilgallen alluded to the star’s affair with a prominent man in her column. In the following weeks, she tried to investigate the circumstances behind Monroe’s death – particularly her alleged links to the Kennedy brothers.

In 1965, 53 year-old Kilgallen was found dead in her New York apartment, having overdosed on alcohol and barbiturates, and also having possibly suffered a heart attack.

However, some conspiracy theorists think Kilgallen was murdered, because of her critical comments about the US government.

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Marilyn and the Geishas

This giant image of Marilyn, in her iconic ‘skirt-blowing’ pose from The Seven Year Itch – alongside a traditional Geisha – in a Japanese rice field is part of an annual ‘Tanbo Art’ display, reports EuroNews.

During her 1954 visit to Japan with then-husband, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn was photographed with a group of Geishas.

After Marilyn’s death, Vogue editor Diana Vreeland said,  ‘She was a geisha. She was born to give pleasure, spent her whole life doing it, and knew no other way.’

And one of Monroe’s most recent biographers, Lois Banner, has referred to Cecil Beaton‘s 1956 diptych – which Marilyn kept, framed, on her piano – as ‘the geisha photograph.’

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Marilyn and Orson Welles

Marilyn by Laszlo Willinger, 1947

My Lunches With Orson is a new book featuring filmmaker Henry Jaglom‘s conversations with the maverick Hollywood actor-director, Orson Welles. In it, Welles mentions dating Marilyn before she was famous, during a discussion about Darryl F. Zanuck, reports the Huffington Post:

The way Welles depicts Zanuck is quite believable, as he never really respected Marilyn (even after she became his biggest star.) Another story linking Welles to MM is mentioned in a Guardian article from 2003, so their alleged affair pre-dates this book.

· 1947 
Made The Lady from Shanghai with Hayworth. A brief fling with unknown starlet Marilyn Monroe ended with an angry husband (not hers), wrongly convinced that Welles was with his wife, bursting in on Welles and Monroe and thumping the filmmaker in the jaw.

What is strange, though, is that The Guardian places Welles’s encounter with Marilyn in 1947. Success, for her, didn’t come ‘six months later’ – it took several years. And even in 1955, when she was a worldwide star, she had to fight for better pay. So I don’t know where his figure of $400,000, as told to Jaglom, comes from.

Exaggerations aside, though, his story may be true – Marilyn was certainly attracted to strong, intellectual men. And Welles was a well-known ladies’ man, on the rebound from his marriage to another beautiful actress, Rita Hayworth.

While Marilyn never mentioned an affair with Welles publicly, this is not all that surprising, as she was generally a very discreet person. It may not even have been a very long, or significant relationship for her, despite Welles’s fame. During her single days, and like many other pretty starlets, Marilyn would often be dating several men at any given time – but this is not to imply that she slept with every man she went out with.

In If This Was Happiness, Barbara Leaming‘s 1989 biography of Rita Hayworth, the Welles-Monroe rumour is also firmly placed in 1947. Leaming interviewed Welles; she had published a biography of Welles in 1988, and of course, would later write about MM.

“When Rita returned home to California that September, there was one last matter to be taken care of before she went back to work at Columbia: in October she officially filed for divorce. Not a word of protest came from Welles, who, meanwhile, had been hurriedly shooting a low-budget Macbeth at Republic Studios, enjoying a fling with Marilyn Monroe, and preparing to decamp for Italy to star in a film about Cagliostro. By the time of the divorce hearing in November, he was already out of the country.”

1947 was a shadowy year in Marilyn’s life, and it remains little-documented. The Cursum Perficio website notes that Marilyn’s contract with Twentieth Century Fox (Zanuck’s studio) lapsed in July. From September to November – the most likely time-span of the alleged fling with Welles – Marilyn was also in Los Angeles, playing a role in a stage production called Glamour Preferred, at the Bliss-Hayden Theatre.

The only known photo of Welles with Marilyn was taken eight years later, in January 1956, when she received the award from the ‘Women’s Division of the Jewish Philanthropies of New York City.’ Since her arrival in New York a year before, Marilyn had done a great deal of charitable work; and she would convert to Judaism a few months later, just before marrying Arthur Miller.

Welles also won an award that day; behind them is Victor Borge, the comedian, conductor and pianist dubbed ‘the Clown prince of Denmark.’

 

 

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‘1*9*5*6 Degrees of Separation’

1*9*5*6 Degrees of Separation, choreographer Killian Manning’s new play – exploring an imaginary meeting between Marilyn (played by J. Evarts), Grace Kelly, Diane Arbus and Margot Fonteyn – will be staged at the Manbites Dog Theatre in Durham, North Carolina from June 20-24, reports the Herald-Sun.

“They discuss life with their respective husbands – Roberto ‘Tito’ Arias, a Panamanian diplomat; Rainier III, Prince of Monaco; and playwright Arthur Miller. Later in the scene, photographer Diane Arbus (played by Marcia Edmundson) enters and takes a photo of Kelly. Monroe whispers into Arbus’ ear that all three women ‘met with horrible deaths’ (Fonteyn died of bone cancer, Kelly was killed in a car crash, and Monroe committed suicide). Arbus committed suicide in 1971, and in this play Arbus recites lines to Monroe from a poem her brother, Howard Nemerov, wrote for her after her suicide.”

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‘Bigger Than Life’: The Lost Cameo

Marilyn with actor James Mason and his son Morgan on the Bigger Than Life set

This second extract from Patrick McGilligan’s Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director concerns Ray’s attempt to include Marilyn in his 1956 movie, Bigger Than Life.

“‘Some weekends,’ [Gavin] Lambert wrote, ‘Nick arranged for a girlfriend to come over in the late afternoon, and asked me to stay out of the bungalow for “a couple of hours.” The girlfriend was usually one of several young unknown actresses, very occasionally she was Marilyn Monroe, and in any case [she] never stayed the night.

Divorced from baseball star Joe DiMaggio, Monroe was dating Ray again when convenient. She remained one of his deepest crushes, although he could never quite promote himself into the role of her steady ‘beau’ (as Hedda Hopper was encouraged to describe their relationship.) He couldn’t quite promote her into any film he was directing either.

Once, when Monroe visited the set of Bigger Than Life at the end of the day – she was finishing Bus Stop for 20th Century-Fox on a nearby soundstage – Ray tried coaxing the actress into a cameo appearance. Staging cutaways for a hospital scene, Ray talked Monroe into donning a nurse’s costume and carrying two lamps into camera range. ‘Carry them on the set,’ Ray advised her, ‘put them down, walk over to this desk, sit down and look at the star, who’s gone slightly off his nut.’

According to [James] Mason, who was in the scene, the cameo was intended as a laugh for studio executives at dailies, not for actual use in the film, but Monroe lost her nerve anyway. Ray couldn’t shoo away her anxiety. ‘Oh Nick,’ she said, ‘tell me what you want me to do! I can’t do it, Nick!’ Finally Ray called cut, according to Mason, giving Monroe a comforting embrace before announcing ‘that he did not think it was such a funny idea after all, so let’s not do it. “Come on, Marilyn, what do you what to drink?”‘ Ray later fed the item to Hedda Hopper, who ran it straight: ‘Marilyn Does Bit in Nick Ray’s Film,’ her column declared in May 1956, reporting that Marilyn had played her cameo role ‘like a lamb.’ Yet Monroe cannot be glimpsed in Bigger Than Life – nor in any other Nick Ray film.”

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Marilyn’s Sun Valley Story

Marilyn in Sun Valley, 1956 – photo by John Stephens

The Sun Valley Story is a new, illustrated book by Van Gordon Sauter, tracing the history of the now 75 year-old ski resort, where Marilyn filmed scenes from Bus Stop in 1956. (The book also boasts an introduction by another Hollywood legend, Clint Eastwood.)

“The book was published on the occasion of Sun Valley’s 75th anniversary. Like I said – lots of photos that include Averell Harriman, Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper, Ernest Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Bobby Kennedy, John Wayne and many others. The book transitions page by page from old chairlift and railroad photos and pictures of skiers wearing old wood skis with poles with big baskets to today’s modern terrain parks. The book is lots of fun to read and passing the time thumbing through all the photos.” – Idaho Statesman

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Marilyn’s English Adventure

Writing for London’s Time Out magazine, Wally Hammond investigates the true story behind Marilyn’s visit to England in 1956.

 “Marilyn’s transcendent, radiant quality is inimitable. And it would be fair to say that Williams’s performance in ‘My Week with Marilyn’ copies but does not capture it. This is despite the efforts of director Simon Curtis and his lighting, hair and make-up team to stress 31-year-old Williams’s physical similarity to Monroe. What Williams does do well, however, is suggest some of the complexities in her personality.

‘Marilyn was a very curious little person,’ Olivier told Michael Parkinson in 1969, ‘a divided personality… She wouldn’t know how humiliating she could be.’

Olivier didn’t know how humiliating he could be  either. Nor did his wife Vivien Leigh, whose presence on set crushed the insecure Monroe. Reports testify to the umbrage Monroe took to the ‘coldness’ of the Pinewood film crew. You could even read Rattigan’s script of ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’ as an essay on patronage, in its secondary, condescending, sense.”

An additional article – first published by BBC News in April 2010, includes local people’s memories of Marilyn’s stay at Parkside House in Surrey.

The widow of Marilyn’s chauffeur is interviewed, and her comments cast some doubt on Clark’s version of events in My Week With Marilyn. An attempt to trace Mabel Whittington – named as Marilyn’s English housekeeper in Randy J. Taraborrelli’s 2009 biography, also leads nowhere.

However, Nigel Hammett remembers meeting Marilyn at Parkside House, while Patrick O’Shea recalls that the tennis shoes which Marilyn wore while cycling were purchased at his parents’ shop.

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Englefield Green, Revisited

Simon Curtis, director of My Week With Marilyn, talks to Get Hampshire about recreating the famous photo call with the Millers and the Oliviers, outside the house in Englefield Green where Marilyn stayed briefly in July 1956.

‘The grandiose house, in Wick Lane, was rented by Monroe (played in the film by Michelle Williams), then newlywed to Arthur Miller (played by Dougray Scott), and the visit coincided with the pair’s honeymoon.

Curtis added: “It was the house that was the attraction.

“They came because she was working on the film and so they got the most luxurious house they could for her, while she was working.”

The London-born director explained that the shoot took a few days and amounted to “just a few minutes” of the movie’s total running time.

He said that although some interior shots were filmed on a sound stage, several others, including the famous press shot of the newlyweds stood in the doorway of the house, were filmed on location to add authenticity.’