About Marilyn Monroe
"Marilyn is a kind of ultimate. She is uniquely feminine. Everything she does is different, strange, and exciting, from the way she talks to the way she uses that magnificent torso. She makes a man proud to be a man."
~Clark Gable

"Nobody discovered her, she earned her own way to stardom."
~Darryl Zanuck, president of 20th Century Fox

"She was beautiful and untouched, it was as though she were just beginning."
~Bert Stern, photographer

""This girl had something I hadn't seen since silent pictures. She had a kind of fantastic beauty like Gloria Swanson and she radiated sex like Jean Harlow. She didn't need a soundtrack to tell her story."
~Leon Shamroy, the cinematographer who shot Marilyn's first screen test

"Marilyn was one step from oblivion when I directed her in The Asphalt Jungle. I remember she impressed me more off the screen than on…there was something touching and appealing about her."
~John Huston, director of The Misfits and The Asphalt Jungle

"She seemed very shy, and I remember that when the studio workers would whistle at her, it seemed to embarrass her."
~Cary Grant, co-star in Monkey Business

"I did Niagara with her. I found her marvelous to work with and terrifically ambitious to do better. And bright. She may not have had an education, but she was just naturally bright."
~Henry Hathaway, director of the 1952 film

"She represents to man something we all want in our unfulfilled dreams. A man, he's got to be dead not to be excited by her."
~Jean Negulesco, director of How to Marry a Millionaire

"Marilyn's a phenomenon of nature, like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. All you can do is stand back and be awed by it."
~Nunnally Johnson, producer of How to Marry a Millionaire

"It's a toss-up whether the scenery or the adornment of Marilyn Monroe is the feature of greater attraction in River of No Return. The mountainous scenery is spectacular, but so in her own way is Miss Monroe."
~Bosley Crowther, movie critic for The New York Times

"She had a great natural dignity and was extremely intelligent. She was also exceedingly sensitive."
~Edith Sitwell, poet

"Marilyn was history's most phenomenal love goddess."
~Philippe Halsman, photographer

"She saw herself drowning in Hollywood in 1955 and told her studio, 'I'm not just wiggling my behind.' Marilyn is not any one thing; she's multidimensional. As an actress, she has lots of imitators- but only Marilyn survives."
~Eli Wallach, Marilyn's co-star in The Misfits

"I saw that what she looked like was not what she really was, and what was going on inside her was not what was going on outside, and that always means there may be something to work with. In Marilyn's case, the reactions were phenomenal. She can call up emotionally what is required for a scene. Her range is infinite."
~Lee Strasberg, creator-director of the Actors Studio

"She is a brilliant comedienne, which to me means she also is an extremely skilled actress."
~Sir Laurence Olivier, co-star of The Prince and the Showgirl

"Marilyn is as near a genius as any actress I ever knew. She is an artist beyond artistry. She is the most completely realized and authentic film actress since Garbo. She has that same unfathomable mysteriousness. She is pure cinema."
~Joshua Logan, director of Bus Stop

"Her quality when photographed is almost of a supernatural beauty."
~Lee Strasberg


"I've learned about living from her. I took her as a serious actress even before I met her. I think she's an adroit comedienne, but I also think she might turn into the greatest tragic actress that can be imagined."
~Arthur Miller, writer and husband

"Her beauty and humanity shine through…she is the kind of artist one does not come on every day in the week. After all, she was created something extraordinary."
~Arthur Miller

"She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift. Believe me, in the last fifteen years there were ten projects that came to me, and I'd start working on them and I'd think, 'It's not going to work, it needs Marilyn Monroe.' Nobody else is in that orbit; everyone else is earthbound by comparison."
~Billy Wilder, director of Some Like it Hot and The Seven Year Itch

"She had flesh which photographed like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it. Unique is an overworked word, but in her case it applies. There will never be another one like her, and Lord knows there have been plenty of imitations."
~Billy Wilder

"She has a certain indefinable magic that comes across, which no other actress in the business has."
~Billy Wilder

"They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original."
~Billy Wilder

"Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being just a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the most unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream, of being an actress."
~Lee Strasberg

"The last time I saw Marilyn was in late 1959, when I appeared in Let's Make Love at Fox. The wide-eyed Marilyn I had first known was gone. This Marilyn was more beautiful than ever."
~Milton Berle, comedian

"Marilyn Monroe is the greatest farceuse in the business, a female Chaplin."
~Jerry Wald, producer

"She listens, wants, cares. I catch her laughing across a room and I bust up. Every pore of that lovely translucent skin is alive, open every moment-even though this world could make her vulnerable to being hurt. I would rather work with her than any other actress. I adore her."
~Montgomery Clift, Marilyn's co-star in The Misfits