EDITORS’ NOTE
Norma Jeane Mortenson was born under the sign of Gemini, and she described herself as having two natures: “Jekyll and Hyde, two in one.” Even the initials of her stage name (which, according to one story, were suggested to her by the clearly visible “M”s formed by the lines of her palms) supported this duality, as did the pseudonym, Zelda Zonk, that she used while escaping incognito from Hollywood to New York.
In her lifetime, under pressure from the studios, the media created a joyful and radiant image of Marilyn Monroe, even to the point of making her out to be a “dumb blonde.” One remembers her parts in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , The Seven Year Itch , How to Marry a Millionaire , and Let’s Make Love . Anything contrary to this artificial image was not welcome. There was no room for a melancholic Marilyn. The icon was not allowed to have an opposite side.
Yet, like a medal, she did have two sides. The sunny and luminous one of the sparkling blonde, and the darker one of the excessive perfectionist who sought absolutes and for whom life (work, friendships, and love affairs) could only lead to disappointment. “I think I have a gay side in me and also a sad side,” Marilyn confided in an interview.
Her friend Marlon Brando expressed perfectly the shock people felt when her death was announced: “Everybody stopped work, and you could see all that day the same expressions on their faces, the same thought: ‘How can a girl with success, fame, youth, money, beauty…how could she kill herself?’ Nobody could understand it because those are the things that everybody wants, and they can’t believe that life wasn’t important to Marilyn Monroe, or that her life was elsewhere.”
There are thousands of photographs of this icon. Her image has been used in many, sometimes brutal, ways. But in this book a new world of truthfulness and overwhelming clarity is being thrown open. A hitherto unknown and unseen Marilyn is revealed.
On her death in 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s personal possessions were bequeathed to Lee Strasberg, and when he in turn died in 1982, his young widow, Anna Strasberg, inherited this large and uncataloged collection, which included dresses, cosmetics, pictures, books, receipts, and so forth. Many years later, while sorting out Lee Strasberg’s papers, she found two boxes of poems and other manuscripts written by Marilyn. Not knowing what to do with these, she asked a family friend, Stanley Buchthal, for advice. Some months later, at an art collectors’ dinner, Stanley told Bernard Comment, a French essayist and editor, about Anna Strasberg’s find in order to get his opinion of the unpublished materials. That was the start of the adventure that became this book.
As far as has been possible to determine, the texts are placed in chronological order. Words printed in red are the editors’ and correct spelling mistakes, add missing words, or suggest possible readings of indecipherable words. The ordering of fragments of very disparate documents has been an attempt at reconstruction and hence at interpretation. The flow of Marilyn’s thoughts on individual pages, and from one successive page to another, is indicated by red arrows (black arrows are Marilyn’s own).
It is possible that other texts written by Marilyn will surface in the years or decades to come. For the moment, this book contains every available text, excepting her technical notes on acting. In any case, these writings reveal a young woman who was dissatisfied with issues of surface appearance and who was seeking the truth at the heart of both things and people.
Only lovers of clichés will be surprised that the Hollywood actress was passionately fond of literature, although this fact cannot be illustrated merely by the pictures collected in this book. (Still: how many actresses from that period do we know who sometimes took pains to be photographed reading or holding a book?) In a 1960 interview with
Norma Jeane Mortenson was born under the sign of Gemini, and she described herself as having two natures: “Jekyll and Hyde, two in one.” Even the initials of her stage name (which, according to one story, were suggested to her by the clearly visible “M”s formed by the lines of her palms) supported this duality, as did the pseudonym, Zelda Zonk, that she used while escaping incognito from Hollywood to New York.
In her lifetime, under pressure from the studios, the media created a joyful and radiant image of Marilyn Monroe, even to the point of making her out to be a “dumb blonde.” One remembers her parts in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , The Seven Year Itch , How to Marry a Millionaire , and Let’s Make Love . Anything contrary to this artificial image was not welcome. There was no room for a melancholic Marilyn. The icon was not allowed to have an opposite side.
Yet, like a medal, she did have two sides. The sunny and luminous one of the sparkling blonde, and the darker one of the excessive perfectionist who sought absolutes and for whom life (work, friendships, and love affairs) could only lead to disappointment. “I think I have a gay side in me and also a sad side,” Marilyn confided in an interview.
Her friend Marlon Brando expressed perfectly the shock people felt when her death was announced: “Everybody stopped work, and you could see all that day the same expressions on their faces, the same thought: ‘How can a girl with success, fame, youth, money, beauty…how could she kill herself?’ Nobody could understand it because those are the things that everybody wants, and they can’t believe that life wasn’t important to Marilyn Monroe, or that her life was elsewhere.”
There are thousands of photographs of this icon. Her image has been used in many, sometimes brutal, ways. But in this book a new world of truthfulness and overwhelming clarity is being thrown open. A hitherto unknown and unseen Marilyn is revealed.
On her death in 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s personal possessions were bequeathed to Lee Strasberg, and when he in turn died in 1982, his young widow, Anna Strasberg, inherited this large and uncataloged collection, which included dresses, cosmetics, pictures, books, receipts, and so forth. Many years later, while sorting out Lee Strasberg’s papers, she found two boxes of poems and other manuscripts written by Marilyn. Not knowing what to do with these, she asked a family friend, Stanley Buchthal, for advice. Some months later, at an art collectors’ dinner, Stanley told Bernard Comment, a French essayist and editor, about Anna Strasberg’s find in order to get his opinion of the unpublished materials. That was the start of the adventure that became this book.
As far as has been possible to determine, the texts are placed in chronological order. Words printed in red are the editors’ and correct spelling mistakes, add missing words, or suggest possible readings of indecipherable words. The ordering of fragments of very disparate documents has been an attempt at reconstruction and hence at interpretation. The flow of Marilyn’s thoughts on individual pages, and from one successive page to another, is indicated by red arrows (black arrows are Marilyn’s own).
It is possible that other texts written by Marilyn will surface in the years or decades to come. For the moment, this book contains every available text, excepting her technical notes on acting. In any case, these writings reveal a young woman who was dissatisfied with issues of surface appearance and who was seeking the truth at the heart of both things and people.
Only lovers of clichés will be surprised that the Hollywood actress was passionately fond of literature, although this fact cannot be illustrated merely by the pictures collected in this book. (Still: how many actresses from that period do we know who sometimes took pains to be photographed reading or holding a book?) In a 1960 interview with
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