Marilyn Monroe: My Story

“Doesn’t matter,” the officer insisted. “You’ll have to change it.”

I hadn’t sung the song with any suggestive meaning. I had sung it as a straight, wistful love song. But I knew there was no use arguing about it. I’d been up against this sort of thing before. People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of a mirror instead of a person. They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts. Then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.

“If I change the phrase, ‘do it again,’ to ‘kiss me again,’ will that be all right?” I asked.

The officer was dubious, but he finally agreed.

“Try it,” he said, “and try not to put any suggestive meaning into it.”

“Just kissing,” I said.

We took a helicopter for the front. I didn’t see Korea and its battlefields and beaten up towns. I left one landing field and came down on another. Then I was put in a truck and taken to where the 45th Division was waiting. The 45th Division was my first audience after the wounded in the hospital.

It was cold and starting to snow. I was backstage in dungarees. Out front the show was on. I could hear music playing and a roar of voices trying to drown it out.

An officer came back stage. He was excited.

“You’ll have to go on ahead of schedule,” he said. “I don’t think we can hold them any longer. They’re throwing rocks on the stage.”

The roar I’d been hearing was my name being yelled by the soldiers.

I changed into my silk gown as quickly as I could. It had a low neckline and no sleeves. I felt worried all of a sudden about my material, not the Gershwin song but the others I was going to sing—“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

It seemed like the wrong thing to say to soldiers in Korea, earning only soldiers’ pay. Then I remembered the dance I did after the song. It was a cute dance. I knew they would like it.

This is where Marilyn’s manuscript ended when she gave it to me.

Milton H. Greene

First Taylor Trade Publishing edition 2007

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All text in this volume © 2007 Joshua Greene

All previous editions of My Story © 1974 Milton H. Greene

All photographs © 2007 Joshua Greene

No part of the text or photographs in this book can be used in part or in whole without written consent from The Archives, LLC or Joshua Greene

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Monroe, Marilyn, 1926–1962.

My story / Marilyn Monroe with Ben Hecht. — Illustrated ed., 1st Taylor Trade Publishing ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58979-316-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-58979-316-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Monroe, Marilyn, 1926–1962. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography. I. Hecht, Ben, 1893–1964. II. Title.

PN2287.M69A35 2007

791.4’02’8092—dc22

[B]

2006017455

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America.