Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto Page B
Authors: Donald Spoto
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Performing Arts, Women, Film & Video, History & Criticism
Ads: Link
Instead of drugs and medicines, spiritual truth must be affirmed, error denied and the distinction made between absolute being and the frail mortal life. The symbol of Christian Science is thus immediately compelling: a cross (without the figure of the dead or dying Christ) surrounded by a crown. Glory overwhelms suffering, which has no real relation to humanity.
Because by a complicated and intriguing paradox Christian Science does not share American fundamentalism’s contempt for the world and the flesh, recreation and entertainment are not forbidden, nor is the religion hostile to education (medical studies excepted). Because she chose not to seek any other employment, Ana Lower was eligible to beone of the Church’s official practitioners, and in this capacity she was permitted to take fee-paying clients.
But when Norma Jeane began seventh grade at Emerson Junior High School on Selby Avenue, between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in West Los Angeles, Aunt Ana’s creed was at once challenged. That very September, the girl began to menstruate, and every monthly period for much of her life was a grueling time during which she rarely found relief from severe cramps. In 1938 there were no readily obtainable medicines to counter the effects of what was for Norma Jeane very real agony (and it is unlikely that Ana would have made them available in any case). Friends from this and later times of Norma Jeane’s life recall that each month she writhed on the floor, sobbing in pain. So began a lifelong history of gynecological problems, including chronic endometriosis. She had, then, another conflict, but neither the spiritual nor intellectual sophistication with which to cope: if there was no real body and if God was All Goodness and Mind, why this torture? Why was her own body playing her false? Aunt Ana comforted her, prayed with her, embraced her, “but nothing did any good. I just had to wait it out.”
At Emerson there were five hundred students in the seventh grade, and like those in the eighth and ninth they came from all parts of the western sector of Los Angeles. Some were chauffeured down from the gated mansions in the enclave known as Bel-Air, above Sunset Boulevard. Others were from the middle-class flatlands of West Los Angeles. And some—Norma Jeane among them—were within walking distance, from a poorer district known as Sawtelle.
A section of the so-called Western Front of the city, Sawtelle was bounded by four boulevards: Sepulveda on the east, Bundy on the west, Wilshire on the north and Pico on the south. The area was a jumble of populations—Japanese immigrants; longtime California pioneers from the East and Midwest; recent Dust Bowl “Okies” who had sought work and refuge in sunny California during the depression; Hispanics and Mexican-Indians; and older Los Angeles residents like Ana Lower.
“Los Angeles was a very divided, class-conscious society,” according to Norma Jeane’s classmate Gladys Phillips (later Wilson),“and this was unfortunately true of school life, too. All the students were immediately, unofficially classified according to where they lived. And Sawtelle was simply not the place to be from.” Indeed, Angeleños smiled and thought of beer halls when Sawtelle was mentioned, for there were many such gathering places for the working classes; the neighborhood seemed synonymous with illiterate or semiliterate poor. Ana Lower was neither illiterate, out of work nor on the dole, yet from her first day at school Norma Jeane Baker was marked by most of her classmates as (thus Gladys Phillips) “from the wrong side of the tracks.”
Norma Jeane’s courses, those designed for seventh-grade girls not enrolled in the college prep track, were not overwhelmingly impressive from an academic standpoint, and her achievements were neither remarkably good nor bad:
AUTUMN 1938
Social Living (history, civics, geography): C
Physical education (gym class): B
Science: C
Office practice:
Because by a complicated and intriguing paradox Christian Science does not share American fundamentalism’s contempt for the world and the flesh, recreation and entertainment are not forbidden, nor is the religion hostile to education (medical studies excepted). Because she chose not to seek any other employment, Ana Lower was eligible to beone of the Church’s official practitioners, and in this capacity she was permitted to take fee-paying clients.
But when Norma Jeane began seventh grade at Emerson Junior High School on Selby Avenue, between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in West Los Angeles, Aunt Ana’s creed was at once challenged. That very September, the girl began to menstruate, and every monthly period for much of her life was a grueling time during which she rarely found relief from severe cramps. In 1938 there were no readily obtainable medicines to counter the effects of what was for Norma Jeane very real agony (and it is unlikely that Ana would have made them available in any case). Friends from this and later times of Norma Jeane’s life recall that each month she writhed on the floor, sobbing in pain. So began a lifelong history of gynecological problems, including chronic endometriosis. She had, then, another conflict, but neither the spiritual nor intellectual sophistication with which to cope: if there was no real body and if God was All Goodness and Mind, why this torture? Why was her own body playing her false? Aunt Ana comforted her, prayed with her, embraced her, “but nothing did any good. I just had to wait it out.”
At Emerson there were five hundred students in the seventh grade, and like those in the eighth and ninth they came from all parts of the western sector of Los Angeles. Some were chauffeured down from the gated mansions in the enclave known as Bel-Air, above Sunset Boulevard. Others were from the middle-class flatlands of West Los Angeles. And some—Norma Jeane among them—were within walking distance, from a poorer district known as Sawtelle.
A section of the so-called Western Front of the city, Sawtelle was bounded by four boulevards: Sepulveda on the east, Bundy on the west, Wilshire on the north and Pico on the south. The area was a jumble of populations—Japanese immigrants; longtime California pioneers from the East and Midwest; recent Dust Bowl “Okies” who had sought work and refuge in sunny California during the depression; Hispanics and Mexican-Indians; and older Los Angeles residents like Ana Lower.
“Los Angeles was a very divided, class-conscious society,” according to Norma Jeane’s classmate Gladys Phillips (later Wilson),“and this was unfortunately true of school life, too. All the students were immediately, unofficially classified according to where they lived. And Sawtelle was simply not the place to be from.” Indeed, Angeleños smiled and thought of beer halls when Sawtelle was mentioned, for there were many such gathering places for the working classes; the neighborhood seemed synonymous with illiterate or semiliterate poor. Ana Lower was neither illiterate, out of work nor on the dole, yet from her first day at school Norma Jeane Baker was marked by most of her classmates as (thus Gladys Phillips) “from the wrong side of the tracks.”
Norma Jeane’s courses, those designed for seventh-grade girls not enrolled in the college prep track, were not overwhelmingly impressive from an academic standpoint, and her achievements were neither remarkably good nor bad:
AUTUMN 1938
Social Living (history, civics, geography): C
Physical education (gym class): B
Science: C
Office practice:
Similar Books
