Marilyn Monroe: My Story

Reports from the mail room confused the Front Office. The Publicity Department was called in and asked if its personnel were engaged in some secret campaign in my behalf. There was none. The letters were pouring in only because moviegoers had seen me on the screen and felt excited enough to write and thank me or ask for my photograph.

News that the public was hailing me as the new Hollywood movie favorite appeared in the Hollywood gossip columns. No one sent the news out. The columnists printed it because people were talking about it.

The Studio officials remained unimpressed for a time. They had their own Star Possibilities they were plugging. I was regarded from Mr. Zanuck down as a sort of freak who for no reason anybody could put a finger on was capturing some morbid side of the public’s fancy.

I was making three hundred dollars a week and spending most of it on lessons, dancing and singing lessons and acting lessons. I lived in a small single room and was as broke as I used to be when I had no regular job. I had to borrow ten and twenty dollars every week or so. The difference was now that I could pay my debts back quicker—sometimes inside of the same week.

Finally the mail from the movie fans got to be so fantastic in quantity that the Front Office could no more ignore me than it might an earthquake that was tipping Mr. Zanuck’s desk over. I was sent for by Mr. Zanuck himself, looked at briefly, and given a few mumbled words of advice.

All I had to do, Mr. Zanuck said, was to trust him. He would do everything that was best for me and help me to become a big star for the studio.

I could tell that Mr. Zanuck didn’t like me very much and that he still couldn’t see any more talent or beauty in me than when he had fired me a year before on the general grounds of being unphotogenic. Studio Bosses are very jealous of their powers. Like political bosses they like to pick out their own candidates for greatness. They don’t like the Public rising up and dumping an unphotogenic entry in their lap and saying, “She’s our girl.”

There was some normal fumbling with how to handle me, in what sort of pictures to put me. And there was still a deep conviction in the Studio’s bosom that I was only a flash in the pan and would very likely be forgotten in a year.

It wasn’t to happen that way. I knew it at the time. I knew what I had known when I was thirteen and walked along the sea edge in a bathing suit for the first time. I knew I belonged to the Public and to the world, not because I was talented, or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. The Public was the only family, the only Prince Charming and the only home I had ever dreamed of.

When you have only a single dream it is more than likely to come true—because you keep working toward it without getting mixed up.

I worked hard and all day long. I worked inside the studio and outside it. It wouldn’t be long now, I knew, before Mr. Zanuck would give me a lead in a big picture. The Publicity Department was already on the ball. The magazines seemed to be celebrating a perpetual Marilyn Monroe week. My picture was on nearly all their covers.

People began to treat me differently. I was no longer a freak, a sort of stray ornament, like some stray cat, to invite in and forget about. I was becoming important enough to be attacked. Famous actresses took to denouncing me as a sure way of getting their names in the papers.

In fact my popularity seemed almost entirely a masculine phenomenon. The women either pretended that I amused them or came right out, with no pretense, that I irritated them.

I did nothing vulgar on the screen. And I did nothing vulgar off the screen. All I did was work from eight to fourteen hours a day either acting or trying to improve my talents.

I felt tired all the time. Worse, I felt dull. The colors seemed to have gone out of the world. I wasn’t unhappy and I didn’t lie awake nights crying and hanging my head. That sort of thing was over—at least for now.

What happened was that in working to make good I had forgotten all about living. There was no fun anymore in anything. There was no love in me for anything or anyone. There was only success—beginning.

And then one night a friend at the Studio said, “A fellow like him. He’s Joe DiMaggio.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said.

It was partly true. I knew the name but I didn’t actually know what it stood for.

“Don’t you know who he is?” my friend asked.

“He’s a football or baseball player,” I said.

“Wonderful,” my friend laughed. “It’s time you were coming out of your Marilyn Monroe tunnel. DiMaggio is one of the greatest names that was ever in baseball. He’s still the idol of millions of fans.”

“I don’t care to meet him,” I said. Asked why, I said that I didn’t like the way sports and athletes dressed, for one thing.

“I don’t like men in loud clothes,” I said, “with checked suits and big muscles and pink ties. I get nervous.”

But I went to join a small party with whom Joe DiMaggio was having dinner in Chasen’s Restaurant.

It was a balmy night, and I was late as usual.

When the dinner host said, “Miss Monroe, this is Joe DiMaggio,” I was quite surprised. Mr. Joe DiMaggio was unexpected.

I had thought I was going to meet a loud, sporty fellow. Instead I found myself smiling at a reserved gentleman in a gray suit, with a gray tie and a sprinkle of gray in his hair. There were a few blue polka dots in his tie. If I hadn’t been told he was some sort of a ball player, I would have guessed he was either a steel magnate or a congressman.

He said, “I’m glad to meet you,” and then fell silent for the whole rest of the evening. We sat next to each other at the table. I addressed only one remark to him.

“There’s a blue polka dot exactly in the middle of your tie knot,” I said. “Did it take you long to fix it like that?”

Mr. DiMaggio shook his head. I could see right away he was not a man to waste words. Acting mysterious and far away while in company was my own sort of specialty. I didn’t see how it was going to work on somebody who was busy being mysterious and far away himself.

I learned during the next year that I was mistaken about this baseball idol. Joe wasn’t putting on an act when he was silent, and he was the least far away man I had ever known. It was just his way of being on the ball.

But to return to my first meal with Mr. DiMaggio—he didn’t try to impress me or anybody else. The other men talked and threw their personalities around. Mr. DiMaggio just sat there. Yet somehow he was the most exciting man at the table. The excitement was in his eyes. They were sharp and alert.

Then I became aware of something odd. The men at the table weren’t showing off for me or telling their stories for my attention. It was Mr. DiMaggio they were wooing. This was a novelty. No woman had ever put me so much in the shade before.

But as far as I was concerned, Mr. DiMaggio was all novelty. In Hollywood, the more important a man is the more he talks. The better he is at his job the more he brags. By these Hollywood standards of male greatness my dinner companion was a nobody. Yet I had never met any man in Hollywood who got so much respect and attention at a dinner table. Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread—that’s how noticeable you were.

I had been dead tired when I arrived. Now suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore. There was no denying I felt attracted. But I couldn’t figure out by what. I was always able to tell what it was about a man that attracted me. Except this time with Mr. DiMaggio.