“Marilyn Monroe has been given many labels, both during her life and after. Probably the two most insulting are that she was a dumb blonde and a victim. She was neither. The characters she played on-screen were often harebrained and made people laugh, but that did not mean that the real-life woman was dumb. She lost some battles and her ending was tragic and devastating, but that does not make her a victim. On the contrary, her determination to fight in such a male-oriented and hostile industry makes her one of the bravest women of her generation. Mental health is a topic that is still frequently dealt with behind closed doors, and the knowledge that Marilyn felt deep despair at times often makes people uncomfortable. Marilyn did have psychological issues, and to look at them can help spread the word about mental health, which is of paramount importance. Knowing that Marilyn suffered too may help those struggling with their own issues, and she would have been terrifically proud of that. The Marilyn Monroe seen in manipulated images, fake stories, and even false quotes is not the person who really existed. The exagerations around her character really have no bearing on the human being at all. By allowing ourselves to see only the legend, we reduce Marilyn to merely a character—someone who has no more bearing on real life than Betty Boop or Mickey Mouse.
Out goes the human being who loved poetry and music, and in comes a character like the ones she played on-screen. The real woman is still out there—she can be found in interviews and photographs that have existed for the past seventy years—and yet some still prefer her fake giggling blonde image. Perhaps the real woman is too much to handle. Maybe she was always too much and the fake version fits a certain mold that people are more accepting of. By humanising Marilyn, we are each given a lesson in empathy, hopefully inviting to see Marilyn in a more sensitive and caring light. For a woman who fought her entire life to be recognised as an intelligent, ambitious actress, the least we can do is understand that while she often played ditzy women on-screen, the opposite was true in real life.” —‘Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch, and the Birth of an Unlikely Feminist’ (2018) by Michelle Morgan
Amy Greene, now 92, was one of Monroe’s closest friends and confidantes. She was the Cuban model-turned-housewife of Milton Greene, a celebrity photographer who first photographed Monroe in 1953; hit it off with her; and had her as his and Amy’s houseguest at their home in Weston, Connecticut, where they lived with their infant son, for four years (1954-1957) while Monroe, at the height of her fame, took a hiatus from living and working in Hollywood, and eventually returned on her own terms, as the co-chief — with Milton — of her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions. Some highlights:
How did Milton and Marilyn first meet? (“It was the week before our wedding [that he was to photograph Marilyn, who had seen and been impressed by his work]. He flew out, and when he walked in she said, ‘But you’re just a boy!’ ‘Cause he looked like he was 12 years old. And then he said, ‘You’re just a girl! Let’s go to work.’ They hit it off right away.”) What was Marilyn’s state of mind at this time? (“At this point Marilyn was such a recluse that no one in the industry really knew her or said, ‘Oh, I saw her at a party,’ ’cause she never went anywhere… Really all she did was eat, sleep, and work… She wasn’t getting the life that she wanted in Los Angeles.”)
What appealed to Marilyn about moving in with them in Connecticut? (“She was excited because she loved the house, she loved our lifestyle… She would take walks in the woods everyday. Nobody bothered her… She felt protected.”) What was it like to share a house with the world’s most beautiful and famous woman? (“She was neat. She wouldn't cook… She was no problem whatsoever… She was a good sport… She was smarter than she looked… She read a lot.”)
Was she ever concerned that Marilyn might tempt her husband? (“I was secure in my marriage and I was secure with her… There’s no way she would shaft me to bang Milton.”) What was the impetus for Marilyn Monroe Productions? (“[The idea of creating an independent production company for Marilyn so that she could break out of her typecasting and make films that she wanted to make was] Milton’s, Lew Wasserman‘s, and Jay Kanter‘s… She loved it. She preened. She said, ‘I’m gonna be the head?!’… Milton owned forty-nine percent, Marilyn owned fifty-one.”)
What was the reaction of Marilyn’s second husband, the baseball star Joe DiMaggio, as he watched hundreds of New Yorkers watch Marilyn shoot the famous dress-blowing scene in the 1955 film The Seven-Year Itch? (“I’m standing next to him, and the man is turning white as snow… He said to me, ‘I can’t take it anymore!' I knew he loved her, though.”)
What did she make of Marilyn’s third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller? (“Arthur was a bore… a son-of-a-bitch… a creep. I saw through him the first time I met him.”) Why did Marilyn Monroe Productions ultimately break up? (“Because of Arthur. Not only was he jealous of Milton, but he was jealous of the time that they spent together… Arthur said, ‘It’s either him or me.'”)
What was her relationship with Marilyn like after the split? “We would speak on the telephone and, strangely enough, we met at her hairdressers meetings.”
What was the weird premonition that she had in July 1962 — just a month before Marilyn died — on the night before she and Milton were going out of town? “I was given to a midwife who was kind of a witch… Every once in a while I have these dreams where I can foresee something. This time I woke up and I said to Milton, ‘Call Marilyn… just call her. She needs you.’ He did call her, and they spoke for three hours.”
What did the heiress Alicia Corning Clark say to the Greenes and Marlene Dietrich while drunk at a dinner the night before Marilyn died? (“She said to me, ‘Well, how’s your friend Marilyn?… Then she blurted out, ‘Well, she’s gonna die soon’ I said, ‘Oh, I'll comment it to Milton, he must talk to Marilyn.'”)
What does she think really happened to Marilyn on the night that she died? (“It was a mistake. No doubt in Milton’s mind, no doubt in my mind… That doctor would have been shot at dawn… he gave her all those pills.”) Source: hollywoodreporter.com
As the filming of The Misfits neared its inexorable end during Nevada’s scorching late summer months of 1960, Susan Strasberg noticed Marilyn moving deeper and deeper into depression—not just a melancholy one, but the lament of a deeply wounded psyche. She told him one night about how, during July of 1957, she’d learned that she was pregnant of Arthur Miller. A month later, as she recalled, her doctor told her she’d been diagnosed as having an ectopic pregnancy. “After hearing that, my life went on a roller coaster ride to hell. After losing my little girl, I thought ‘to hell with my career.’ My marriage was collapsing, my life falling apart. Instead of Arthur making a rare appearance in my bed, I preferred to sleep with a bottle of liquor and bottles of pills on my nightstand. I’ve tried other men—Elia Kazan, Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman.” “Paul Newman, really, how was that?,” Susan asked. “We met at the Actors Studio in New York. It was just deep necking, he looked a bit intimidated, to be honest,” Marilyn giggled. “I think he's not the flirty type. His last affair, as Arthur Penn told me, was with Lita Milan while they were shooting The Left Handed Gun, shortly before he married Joanne.”
Paul Newman likened Lee Strasberg’s infatuation with Marilyn to Professor Unrath (Emil Jannings), who was fascinated by the charms of Marlene Dietrich (Lola) in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel. Strasberg had almost nothing to say about his private life with Marilyn, but he issued high praise for her potential as an actress. “When I finally got around to seeing her films, I was not impressed. But when I met her, I saw that what she looked like was not what she really was, and what was going on inside her was not what you saw on the outside, and that always meant there was something to work with. In Marilyn’s case, the results have been phenomenal. It was almost as if she had been waiting for a button to be pushed which would open a door to a treasure of gold and jewels.” Although she received praise from the Strasbergs and fellow actors who included Kim Stanley, Marilyn lamented, “I was bad, very bad. I could just feel it.”
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However, Strasberg praised Marilyn for her “extraordinary and inviolate sensitivity. This sensitive core should have been killed by all that had happened to her in adolescence, or so I’ve heard.” In his public pronouncements about Marilyn, Strasberg became superlative: “She was engulfed in a mystic-like flame, like when you see Jesus at The Last Supper, and there’s a halo around him. There was this great white light surrounding Marilyn.” So far as it is known, Strasberg was the only person who ever compared Marilyn to Jesus Christ. Paula Strasberg agreed to become Marilyn’s new acting coach at a salary of $1,500 a week, which later rose to $3,000 a week on the set of The Misfits. Arthur Miller detested both Lee and Paula Strasberg. He said, “Without Paula, Marilyn felt lost. In effect, Paula was Marilyn’s mother all over again. A fantasy mother who would confirm everything Marilyn wished to hear.” In 1953, Frank Sinatra had taken Marilyn to see a performance of the Broadway play, Picnic, on an evening when a young Paul Newman was filling in for its star, Ralph Meeker.
While she was observing Paul Newman and Janice Rule, Marilyn felt intrigued with playing the female lead in the film version that was in development stages at the time. On Broadway, the role was interpreted by Janice Rule. After the performance, over dinner that night, Sinatra applauded the idea of pairing Paul Newman with Marilyn as co-stars in Picnic’s film spinoff. “You guys would be terrific,” Sinatra claimed. He was possibly spot-on accurate in his assessment. Monroe-Newman would have been dynamite onscreen, no doubt. But eventually the Hollywood version of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play reached the screen with a different cast, the roles eventually awarded to William Holden and Kim Novak.
Marilyn Monroe: "I think I had many problems as the next starlet keeping the Hollywood wolves from my door. These wolves just could not understand me. They would tell me ‘but Marilyn, you’re not playing the game the way you should. Be smart. You’ll never get anywhere in this business acting the way you do.’ My answer to them would be ‘the only acting I’ll do is for the camera.’ I was determined no one was going to use me - even if he could help my career. I’ve never gone out with a man I didn’t want to. No one, not even the studio, could force me to date someone. The one thing I hate more than anything else is being used. I’ve always worked hard for the sake of someday becoming a talented actress. I knew I would make it someday if I only kept at it and worked hard without lowering my principles and pride in myself.” According to her gynecologist, Leon Khron: “The rumors of her multiple abortions are ridiculous. She never had even one. Later there were two miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy requiring emergency termination, but no abortion.” –Sources: "Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love" (2014) by David Heyman and "Mimosa: Memories of Marilyn & the Making of The Misfits" (2021) by Ralph Roberts
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