Marilyn's last
interview for Life Magazine
1962
Sometimes
wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no make up and with a certain attitude
of walking, I go shopping or just looking at people living. But then you
know, there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp and they'll say,
"Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?"
And they'll start
tailing me. And I don't mind. I realize some people want to see if you're
real. The teenagers, the little kids, their faces light up. They say,
"Gee," and they can't wait to tell their friends. And old people come up
and say, "Wait till I tell my wife." You've changed their whole day.
In
the morning, the garbage men that go by 57th Street when I come out the
door say, "Marilyn, hi! How do you feel this morning?" To me, it's an
honor, and I love them for it. The working men, I'll go by and they'll
whistle. At first they whistle because they think, oh, it's a girl. She's
got blond hair and she's not out of shape, and then they say, "Gosh, it's
Marilyn Monroe!" And that has it's, you know, those are times it's nice.
People knowing who you are and all of that, and feeling that you've meant
something to them.
I don't know quite why, but somehow I feel they know that I mean what I
do, both when I'm acting on the screen or when if I see them in person and
greet them. That I really always do mean hello, and how are you? In their
fantasies they feel "Gee, it can happen to me!"
But when you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of
way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who
is she who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives
them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you
know, of any kind of nature and it won't hurt your feelings. Like it's
happening to your clothing. One time here I am looking for a home to buy
and I stopped at this place. A man came out and was very pleasant and
cheerful, and said, "Oh, just a moment, I want my wife to meet you." Well,
she came out and said, "Will you please get off the premises?" You're
always running into peoples unconscious. Let's take some actors or
directors. Usually they don't say it to me, they say it to the newspapers
because that's a bigger play. You know, if they're only insulting me to my
face that doesn't make a big enough play because
all I have to say is,
"See you around, like never." But if it's in the newspapers, it's coast to
coast and all around the world. I don't understand why people aren't a
little more generous with each other. I don't like to say this, but I'm
afraid there is a lot of envy in this business. The only thing I can do is
stop and think, "I'm all right but I'm not so sure about them!" For
instance, you've read there was some actor that once said that kissing me
was like kissing Hitler. Well, I think that's his problem. If I have to do
intimate love scenes with somebody who really has these kinds of feelings
toward me, then my fantasy can come into play. In other words, out with
him, in with my fantasy. He was never there.
But one thing about fame is the bigger the people are, the simpler they
are, the more they are not awed by you! They don't feel they have to be
offensive, they don't feel they have to insult you. You can meet Carl
Sandburg and he is so pleased to meet you. He wants to know about you, and
you want to know about him. Not in any way has he ever let me down. Or
else you can meet working people who want to know what it is like. You try
to explain to them. I don't like to disillusion them and tell them it's
sometimes nearly impossible. They kind of look toward you for something
that's away from their everyday life. I guess you call that entertainment,
a world to escape into, a fantasy. Sometimes it makes you a little bit sad
because you'd like to meet somebody kind of on face value. It's nice to be
included in peoples fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your
own sake. I don't look at myself as a commodity, but I'm sure a lot of
people have. Including, well, one corporation in particular which shall be
nameless. If I'm sounding picked on or something, I think I am. I'll think
I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes.
They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their
friends, tell stories, and you know, it's disappointing. These are the
ones you aren't interested in seeing everyday of your life.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places
to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the
piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself.
You're just an ornament.
When I was 5 I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I
loved to play. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of
grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own
boundaries. It goes beyond house, you could make your own situations and
you could pretend, and even if the other kids were a little slow on the
imagining part you could say, "Hey, what about if you were such and such,
and I were such and such wouldn't that be fun?" And they'd say, "Oh, yes,"
and then I'd say, "Well, that will be a horse and this will be..." it was
play, playfulness. When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I
want to be. You can play. But then you grow up and find out about playing,
that they make playing very difficult for you. Some of my foster families
used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit
all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big,
a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up
there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn
either.
When I was 11, the whole world which was closed to me. I just felt I was
on the outside of the world. Suddenly, everything opened up. Even the
girls paid a little attention to me because they thought, "Hmmm, she's to
be dealt with!" And I had this long walk to school 2 1/2 miles to school,
2 1/2 miles back. It was just sheer pleasure. Every fellow honked his horn
you know, workers driving to work, waving, you know, and I'd wave back.
The world became friendly. All the newspaper boys when they delivered the
paper would come around to where I lived, and I used to hang from the limb
of a tree, and I had sort of a sweatshirt on. I didn't realize the value
of a sweatshirt in those days, and then I was sort of beginning to catch
on, but I didn't quite get it, because I couldn't really afford sweaters.
But here they come with their bicycles, you know, and I'd get these free
papers and the family liked that, and they'd all pull their bicycles up
around the tree and then I'd be hanging, looking kind of like a monkey, I
guess. I was a little shy to come down. I did get down to the curb, kinda
kicking the curb and kicking the leaves and talking, but mostly listening.
And sometimes the family used to worry because I used to laugh so loud and
so gay; I guess they felt it was hysterical. It was just this sudden
freedom because
I would ask the boys, "Can I ride your bike now?" and
they'd say, "Sure." Then I'd go zooming, laughing in the wind, riding down
the block, laughing, and they'd all stand around and wait till I came
back, but I loved the wind. It caressed me. But it was kind of a double
edged thing. I did find too, when the world opened up that people took
a lot for granted, like not only could they be friendly, but they could
suddenly get overly friendly and expect an awful lot for very little. When
I was older, I used to go to Grauman's Chinese Theater and try to fit my
foot in the prints in the cement there. And I'd say, "Oh, oh, my foot's
too big! I guess that's out." I did have a funny feeling later when I
finally put my foot down into that wet cement. I sure knew what it really
meant to me. Anything's possible, almost.
It was the creative part that kept me going, trying to be an actress. I
enjoy acting
when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too
much fantasy to be only a housewife. Well, also, I had to eat. I was never
kept, to be blunt about it. I always kept myself. I have always had a
pride in the fact that I was my own. And Los Angeles was my home, too, so
when they said, "Go home!" I said, "I am home." The time I sort of began
to think I was famous, I was driving somebody to the airport, and as I
came back there was this movie house and I saw my name in lights. I pulled
the car up at a distance down the street, it was too much to take up
close, you know, all of a sudden. And I said, "God, somebody's made a
mistake." But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, "So
that's the way it looks," and it was all very strange to me, and yet at
the studio they had said, "Remember you're not a star." Yet there it is up
in lights. I really got the idea I must be a star, or something from the
newspapermen, I'm saying men, not the women who would interview me and
they would be warm and friendly. By the way, that part of the press, you
know, the men of the press, unless they have their own personal quirks
against me, they were always very warm and friendly and they'd say, "You
know, you're the only star," and I'd say, "Star?" and they'd look at me as
if I were nuts. I think they, in their own kind of way, made me realize I
was famous.
I remember when I got the part in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jane Russell,
she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde. She got $200,000 for it,
and I got my $500 a week, but that to me was, you
know, considerable. She
by the way, was quite wonderful to me. The only thing was I couldn't get a
dressing room. I said, finally, I really got to this kind of level, I
said, "Look, after all, I am the blonde, and it is Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes!" Because still they always kept saying, "Remember, you're not a
star." I said, "Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!" And I want to say
the people, if I am a star, the people made me a star. No studio, no
person, but the people did. There was a reaction that came to the studio,
the fan mail, or when I went to a premiere, or the exhibitors wanted to
meet me. I didn't know why. When they all rushed toward me I looked behind
me to see who was there and I said, "My heavens!" I was scared to death. I
used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I
was fooling somebody. I don't know who or what, maybe myself.
I've always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a
scene was just to come in and say, "Hi," that the people ought to get
their money's worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them
the best you can get from me. I do have feelings some days when
there are
scenes with a lot of responsibility toward the meaning, and I'll wish,
"Gee, if only I had been a cleaning woman." On the way to the studio I
would see somebody cleaning and I'd say, "That's what I'd like to be.
That's my ambition in life. "But I think that all actors go through this.
We not only want to be good, we have to be. You know, when they talk about
nervousness, my teacher, Lee Strasberg, when I said to him, "I don't know
what's wrong with me but I'm a little nervous," he said, "When you're not,
give up, because nervousness indicates sensitivity. "Also, a struggle with
shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine. There is a censor
inside us that says to what degree do we let go, like a child playing. I
guess people think we just go out there, and you know, that's all we do.
Just do it. But it's a real struggle. I'm one of the world's most self
conscious people. I really have to struggle.
An actor is not a machine, no matter how much they want to say you are.
Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being,
you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever.
Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it
would be a little easier for me when the director says, "One tear, right
now," that one tear would pop out. But once there came two tears because I
thought, "How dare he?" Goethe said, "Talent is developed in privacy," you
know? And it's really true. There is a need for aloneness which I don't
think most people realize for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds
of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a
moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd
all like sort of a chunk of you. They kind of like to take pieces out of
you. I don't think they realize it, but it's like "rrr do this, rrr do
that." But you do want to stay intact. Intact and on two feet.
I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated. This
industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front
of a car.
But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing
the child. Like you don't dare get a cold. How dare you get a cold! I
mean, the executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in,
but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or a virus. You know, no one feels
worse than the one who's sick. I sometimes wish, gee, I wish they had to
act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection. I am not an actress
who appears at a studio just for the purpose of discipline. This doesn't
have anything at all to do with art. I myself would like to become more
disciplined within my work. But I'm there to give a performance and not to
be disciplined by a studio! After all, I'm not in a military school. This
is supposed to be an art form, not just a manufacturing establishment. The
sensitivity that helps me to act, you see, also makes me react. An actor
is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of
his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?
If you've noticed in Hollywood where millions and billions of dollars have
been made, there aren't really any kind of monuments or museums, and I
don't call putting your footprint in Grauman's Chinese a monument, all
right this did mean a lot, sentimentally at the time. Gee, nobody left
anything behind, they took it, they grabbed it and they ran, the ones who
made the billions of dollars, never the workers.
You know a lot of people have, oh gee, real quirky problems that they
wouldn't dare have anyone know. But one of my problems happens to show,
I'm late. I guess people think that why I'm late is some kind of arrogance
and I think it is opposite of arrogance. I also feel that I'm not in this
big American rush, you know, you got to go and you got to go fast but for
no good reason. The main thing is, I want to be prepared when I get there
to give a good performance or whatever to the best of my ability. A lot of
people can be there on time and do nothing, which I have seen them do, and
you know, all sit around and sort of chit chatting and talking trivia
about their social life. Gable said about me, "When she's there, she's
there. All of her is there! She's there to work."
I was honored when they asked me to appear at the President's birthday
rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place
when I came on to sing
Happy Birthday
(listen it here), like if I had been wearing a slip I
would have thought it was showing, or something. I thought, "Oh, my gosh,
what if no sound comes out!"
A hush like that from the people warms me. It's sort of like an embrace.
Then you think, by God, I'll sing this song if it's the last thing I ever
do. And for all the people. Because I remember when I turned to the
microphone I looked all the way up and back, and I thought, "That's where
I'd be, way up there under one of those rafters, close to the ceiling,
after I paid my $2 to come into the place." Afterwards they had some sort
of reception. I was with my former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, so I
think I did something wrong when I met the President. Instead of saying,
"How do you do?" I just said "This is my former father-in-law,
Isadore
Miller." He came here an immigrant and I thought this would be one of the
biggest things in his life, he's about 75 or 80 years old and I thought
this would be something that he would be telling his grandchildren about
and all that. I should have said, "How do you do, Mr. President," but I
had already done the singing, so well you know. I guess nobody noticed it.
Fame has a special burden, which I might as well state here and now. I
don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes
with it can be a burden. Like the man was going to show me around but the
woman said, "Off the premises." I feel that beauty and femininity are
ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers
won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour, it's based on
femininity. I think that sexuality is only attractive when it's natural
and spontaneous. This is where a lot of them miss the boat. And then
something I'd just like to spout off on. We are all born sexual creatures,
thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural
gift. Art, real art, comes from it, everything.
I
never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols
were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex symbol
becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I'm going to be a
symbol of something I'd rather have it sex than some other things they've
got symbols of! These girls who try to be me, I guess the studios put them
up to it, or they get the ideas themselves. But gee, they haven't got it.
You can make alot of gags about it like they haven't got the foreground or
else they haven't the background. But I mean the middle, where you live.
All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would
read terrible things about me and I'd worry about whether it would hurt
them. I would tell them, don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you
ask me these things straight out and I'll answer all your questions. Don't
be afraid to ask anything. After all, I have come up from way down.
I wanted them to know of life other than their own. I used to tell them,
for instance, that I worked for 5 cents a month and I washed one hundred
dishes,
and my step kids would say, "One hundred dishes!" and I said,
"Not
only that, I scraped and cleaned them before I washed them. I washed them
and rinsed them and put them in the draining place, but I said, "Thank God
I didn't have to dry them." Kids are different from grown ups. You know
when you get grown up you can get kind of sour, I mean that's the way it
can go, but kid's accept you the way you are. Fame to me certainly is only
a temporary and a partial happiness, even for a waif and I was brought up
a waif. But fame is not really for a daily diet, that's not what fulfills
you. It warms you a bit but the warming is temporary. It's like caviar,
you know, it's good to have caviar but not when you have it every meal
every day.
I was never used to being happy, so that wasn't something I ever took for
granted. I did sort of think, you know, marriage did that. You see, I was
brought up differently from the average American child because the average
child is brought up expecting to be happy. That's it, successful, happy,
and on time. Yet because of fame I was able to meet and marry two of the
nicest men I'd ever met up to that time.
I don't think people will turn against me, at least not by themselves. I
like people. The "public" scares me but people I trust. Maybe they can be
impressed by the press or when a studio starts sending out all kinds of
stories. But I think when people go to see a movie, they judge for
themselves. We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the
right to think for ourselves.
Once I was supposed to be finished, that was the end of me. When Mr.
Miller was on trial for contempt of Congress, a certain corporation
executive said either he named names and I got him to name names, or I was
finished. I said, "I'm proud of my husband's position and I stand behind
him all the way," and the court did too. "Finished," they said. "You'll
never be heard of."
It might be a kind of relief to be finished. It's sort of like, I don't
know, what kind of a yard dash you're
running, but then you're at the
finish line and you sort of see you've made it! But you never have. You
have to start all over again. But I believe you're always as good as your
potential.
I now live in my work and in a few relationships with the few people I can
really count on. Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you fame. If it
goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I
experienced, but that's not where I live.
Marilyn Monroe's final
days (Click here)
Marilyn's
Funeral the last journey...(Click here)
Marilyn Monroe last Photo Session....(Click here)
Marilyn
Monroe's last will (Click here)
|