she is clean, she is
likable, she is dreamy and energetic by turns. She is capable of
getting into love affairs and getting out of them. Yet she is still
painfully shy, remote from herself. So she can be tender, yet
cold-blooded — her love tends to end when the role ends. So she is
more and more single-minded about a career, as if not only sanity
but life depends on this. Finally, she is a girl of nineteen
possessed of a witch’s skill in relation to the eye of a camera.
Mushrooms are growing in the forest and she stares at them. The
camera catches her. She is there to be caught. So her love affair
with Dienes speaks also of her love for the still camera. She will
yet use cheesecake as a lever to open the vaults of power in the
movie studios, and they are doors guarded by ogres. Thus she is,
with everything else, and all her lies, a princess with a wand to
wave. Let us assume she is stroking her wand in that sweet month
with Dienes and even loves him a little as the equerry whose
service would refine her magic.
With this much clarity, we can still tell her
story. The facts will not grow simpler. To her own lies will be
added the ten thousand lies initiated by everyone’s separate
self-interest on a movie set. A mat of factoids awaits us. So the
time is even approaching when the narrative must touch fewer events
if we are to follow her at all. Still, our history now brought to
the edge of her entrance into movie life, we may as well enjoy one
more situation where we can have no certainty of who reverses the
truth. It is just about our last glimpse of Dougherty and a good
one. Back in Los Angeles after the divorce, he is obliged to pay
for parking tickets she gets on her car because it is still
registered in his name. He comes to see her.
Dougherty’s version is by way of Guiles: “Are
you happy?” he decides to ask by way of greeting.
The question seemed to have caught her by
surprise. Jim recalls that she considered it for a minute or two,
and then said, “I guess I should be. During the day, I’m fine. But
sometimes in the evening, well, I wish there was someone to take me
out who doesn’t expect anything from me. You know what I mean?”
Jim knew what she meant and wondered if she
would ask him now to take her out or wait a few days and call him
up. The idea that she would drop him as a husband because he was in
her way and then talk about her loneliness angered him. He brought
up the matter of the parking tickets. . . .
“ I’ll pay the tickets,” she said without
hesitation. “In installments like everything else. . . .”
Finally, Jim got up to leave. As he stood in
her doorway, she said, “We could go out sometime. I know I’d like
that.”
Jim said, “Okay. Sometime. Goodbye,
Norma.”
“ Goodbye, Jim,” she said. And Jim
Dougherty walked down the stairs and out of her life.
Monroe’s version, as told to Arthur Miller,
is that when her final divorce papers had to be signed, Dougherty
asked for a meeting at a bar, and there told her he wouldn’t sign a
thing unless she went to bed with him one more time. Another man
can offer the charity of assuming Dougherty wanted a fighting
chance — only a true lover dares to make a bet on the very last of
his hopes. Of course, a woman might reject the charity by remarking
that Dougherty still didn’t feel paid for his three hundred bucks.
According to Miller, Monroe never told the end of the story. We do
not know how she got the signature. As for the versions — they
offer their conflict. We can take the word of an actress or a
narcotics cop. The life of a literary sleuth is no neater than a
precinct detective’s.
IV
Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde
It is fair to say she is a small sensation as
a model. Cover pictures of Norma Jean appear on Laff and Peek and See . Dienes’ photos are covers on U.S.
Camera, Pageant , and Parade , which offers much prestige
in the cheesecake trade, yet she is locked into the commercial
avenues
likable, she is dreamy and energetic by turns. She is capable of
getting into love affairs and getting out of them. Yet she is still
painfully shy, remote from herself. So she can be tender, yet
cold-blooded — her love tends to end when the role ends. So she is
more and more single-minded about a career, as if not only sanity
but life depends on this. Finally, she is a girl of nineteen
possessed of a witch’s skill in relation to the eye of a camera.
Mushrooms are growing in the forest and she stares at them. The
camera catches her. She is there to be caught. So her love affair
with Dienes speaks also of her love for the still camera. She will
yet use cheesecake as a lever to open the vaults of power in the
movie studios, and they are doors guarded by ogres. Thus she is,
with everything else, and all her lies, a princess with a wand to
wave. Let us assume she is stroking her wand in that sweet month
with Dienes and even loves him a little as the equerry whose
service would refine her magic.
With this much clarity, we can still tell her
story. The facts will not grow simpler. To her own lies will be
added the ten thousand lies initiated by everyone’s separate
self-interest on a movie set. A mat of factoids awaits us. So the
time is even approaching when the narrative must touch fewer events
if we are to follow her at all. Still, our history now brought to
the edge of her entrance into movie life, we may as well enjoy one
more situation where we can have no certainty of who reverses the
truth. It is just about our last glimpse of Dougherty and a good
one. Back in Los Angeles after the divorce, he is obliged to pay
for parking tickets she gets on her car because it is still
registered in his name. He comes to see her.
Dougherty’s version is by way of Guiles: “Are
you happy?” he decides to ask by way of greeting.
The question seemed to have caught her by
surprise. Jim recalls that she considered it for a minute or two,
and then said, “I guess I should be. During the day, I’m fine. But
sometimes in the evening, well, I wish there was someone to take me
out who doesn’t expect anything from me. You know what I mean?”
Jim knew what she meant and wondered if she
would ask him now to take her out or wait a few days and call him
up. The idea that she would drop him as a husband because he was in
her way and then talk about her loneliness angered him. He brought
up the matter of the parking tickets. . . .
“ I’ll pay the tickets,” she said without
hesitation. “In installments like everything else. . . .”
Finally, Jim got up to leave. As he stood in
her doorway, she said, “We could go out sometime. I know I’d like
that.”
Jim said, “Okay. Sometime. Goodbye,
Norma.”
“ Goodbye, Jim,” she said. And Jim
Dougherty walked down the stairs and out of her life.
Monroe’s version, as told to Arthur Miller,
is that when her final divorce papers had to be signed, Dougherty
asked for a meeting at a bar, and there told her he wouldn’t sign a
thing unless she went to bed with him one more time. Another man
can offer the charity of assuming Dougherty wanted a fighting
chance — only a true lover dares to make a bet on the very last of
his hopes. Of course, a woman might reject the charity by remarking
that Dougherty still didn’t feel paid for his three hundred bucks.
According to Miller, Monroe never told the end of the story. We do
not know how she got the signature. As for the versions — they
offer their conflict. We can take the word of an actress or a
narcotics cop. The life of a literary sleuth is no neater than a
precinct detective’s.
IV
Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde
It is fair to say she is a small sensation as
a model. Cover pictures of Norma Jean appear on Laff and Peek and See . Dienes’ photos are covers on U.S.
Camera, Pageant , and Parade , which offers much prestige
in the cheesecake trade, yet she is locked into the commercial
avenues
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