J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Complicating matters at this time for Marilyn was that, during a recent gynecologist’s exam, certain problems were discovered that might make having children difficult. She hadn’t been able to make up her mind about whether or not she wanted a child. On some days she thought she shouldn’t. What if she couldn’t take care of the baby and it ended up as she had—in an orphanage? On other days she felt that she would be an excellent mother and that she would be able to do for the child what her own mother had not been able to do for her: love and nurture the baby and give him or her a good life. But then there were days when a different thought would haunt her: What if her child were to end up like her grandmother and mother? In fact, there had been times recently when she began to doubt her own sanity. Was it a good idea to bring a baby into the world under such troubling circumstances? She wasn’t sure what to think about it. Therefore, she decided to go back to the place where she really felt genuine love as a young girl—to the Bolenders’—and ask for some guidance. As an excuse for her visit, she said that she needed to ask her foster brother, Lester, if he would help move some furniture that she still had at Jim Dougherty’s house. She drove out to Hawthorne by herself. When she got there, Ida was not home. Wayne answered the door and let her in, and she met one of his nieces, also visiting. Her foster sister Nancy Jeffrey quoted a letter that niece wrote regarding Marilyn’s visit:

“I came to see Wayne one day and Norma Jeane came in. She had asked Lester to help her move after her separation from her first husband. She had a very deep conversation with Uncle Wayne, some things that were bothering her. Her deepest thought that day was having a child and whether it would turn out like her mother. She needed to, I guess, have Uncle Wayne’s blessing. He was the only stable man in her life, as far as I know.”

After Marilyn explained her worry, Wayne was very clear in his advice. “You are nothing like your mother or your grandmother,” he told her, according to a later recollection. “I knew Della and I know Gladys and I can tell you that you are nothing like them.”

Marilyn could only hope that what her “Daddy” had told her was the truth.

Shortly after her divorce, Marilyn moved out of Aunt Ana’s and into her own apartment in Hollywood. In that respect, the rest of 1946 and the whole of 1947 had moments of both frustration and exhilaration. First, the studio prepared her biography, to be sent out to the media. It said that she was an orphan who’d been discovered by a 20th Century-Fox executive while she was babysitting his child—classic movie studio malarkey. There would be other untrue press tidbits, as well—years of them, actually. It was, according to Berniece Miracle, Grace Goddard’s idea to say that Marilyn’s parents were both dead. What she wanted to avoid—and Marilyn certainly agreed with her about it—was the possibility of any reporter tracking down Gladys. This tactic worked… for a while, anyway.

Giving Up Her Soul

D espite the speed at which the actress was signed to a deal, there were no movies in the offing for the newly named Marilyn Monroe. In February 1947, Fox renewed her contract for another six months, though she hadn’t done anything other than pose for photographers in bathing suits and negligees for press layouts.

By the time she made her first film, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947), she was almost twenty-one years old and more beautiful than ever with her cobalt blue eyes and head of hair so silky smooth and golden blonde. There was not much of Marilyn in Miss Pilgrim , just a quick (and uncredited) shot of her as a telephone operator; most fans haven’t been able to spot her in this film. She would be (barely) seen again in 1947’s Dangerous Years. (“For heaven’s sake, don’t blink,” she wrote to Berniece, “or you’ll miss me!”)

There would be four more films (these would be released in 1948), if you count You Were Meant for Me , a Jeanne Crain–Dan Dailey musical, one that some sources maintain is part of Monroe’s filmography. Marilyn can also be spotted in Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay!— a Technicolor bit of nonsense set in the Hoosier state in which June Haver vies for the affections of Lon McCallister with a pair of prize-winning mules, while a ten-year-old Natalie Wood, as Haver’s bratty kid sister, just adds to the overall foolishness. It’s been published many times over the years—and even Marilyn had said it and, for that matter, even Fox had claimed it!—that her one little scene was cut from the film. Not true. It’s there. Just two words, but both present and accounted for. (She’s also seen in a distant shot with her back to the camera, on a rowboat.)

“She was a scared rabbit,” said Diana Herbert, whose father, F. Hugh Herbert, wrote the screenplay. “On the sly, I snuck her into a screening room where my father was viewing for editing, and Marilyn got to see herself in the bit part before it was trimmed. She’d had one line and whispered to me, ‘Do I sound that awful?’ My father, using the old adage, told me Marilyn photographed like a million dollars. He told me she was going to be a big star.”

That same year, 1947, Fox exchanged bucolic Indiana for the Wyoming countryside and a pair of mules for a wild white stallion in Green Grass of Wyoming , with Marilyn again uncredited as an extra at a square dance. Then, in August 1947, the studio decided not to renew her contract. Her agent Harry Lipton once recalled, “When I told her that Fox had not taken up the option, her immediate reaction was that the world had crashed around her. But typical of Marilyn, she shook her head, set her jaw and said, ‘Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter—it’s a case of supply and demand.’ She understood the film business already, and she was just a novice. She knew that the studio signed many contract players and the ones who struck gold overnight stayed while those who struggled usually ended up being cut. Still, the show had to go on.”

Meanwhile, there were a couple of strange incidents in Marilyn’s life in 1947 that may have pointed toward some of the emotional trouble she would experience later in her life. One is told by Diana Herbert. The same age as Marilyn, Herbert got to know her while Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! was being filmed and remained friendly with her. She recalled that when the film was completed, she hosted a pool party at her family’s mansion in Bel Air attended by her friends from UCLA. Marilyn said she would love to attend. She said that on that day, she and her new friend, actress Shelley Winters, had a class at the Actors’ Laboratory—a workshop for actors, directors, and writers, mostly from New York. Afterward, she would go to the party.

On the appointed day, Marilyn arrived very late. “She came quietly with her beach bag,” recalls Diana Herbert. “I got out of the pool to direct her to the dressing room. A lot of time passed… and no Marilyn. So I became concerned and went and knocked on the door. ‘Marilyn?’ I called out. ‘Are you okay?’ And she said, ‘Yeah,’ in a voice that was barely audible. ‘I’ll be right out, I just have to change.’ So I went back in the pool. An hour went by, and no Marilyn. So, again, I went back to the dressing room and knocked on the door. ‘I’ll be right out,’ she said. By this time, everyone was getting out of the pool, drying off, and going home. More time passed. I again went to the dressing room and knocked on the door. But… she was gone. She never even came out of the dressing room—except to leave.” Over the years, there would be numerous incidents like this in Marilyn’s life.