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Sunday, May 14, 2017

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 10/10

Breaking Down "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe" final part 10/10. Before continuing, please check out the previous parts of my review so that you’re all caught up! Trigger warnings: suicide

Links are here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

THE MOVIE(1): Marilyn is invited to perform at JFK’s birthday gala in New York. She is teased about being late.

REAL LIFE(2): We all know this to be one of the most memorable events in history: the night Marilyn sang happy birthday to President Kennedy. Marilyn had a reputation of being late to things such as events, parties, work, and the like. When being introduced at the gala, Peter Lawford jokingly asked the audience to welcome “the late Marilyn Monroe.” What makes this introduction so poignant is that this would be one of Marilyn’s final public appearances before her sudden death only a few short months later. Marilyn attended this gala on May 19, 1962, much to her studio’s disapproval. They had originally granted her permission to fly to New York to perform, but at the last minute changed their minds because they were so behind on filming. Marilyn, understandably, still chose to go anyways. She would be fired from Fox a month later.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

May 19, 1962: JFK's birthday gala in New York

THE MOVIE(2): Marilyn and friend Pat Lawford, wife of Peter Lawford, are taking a walk on the beach. Marilyn soon goes on a tirade about how it should be her with President Kennedy instead of Jackie. Pat says: “Stop living in a dream world.”

REAL LIFE(2): As we’ve covered in the previous installments of this review, Marilyn was absolutely by no means paranoid or delusional over Jackie or John Kennedy. There are no eye witness accounts or accounts by close friends or reliable sources to substantiate any type of delusion whatsoever. Marilyn was not picturing a life with the President, nor did she ever have anything against Jackie. The way The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe book and movie portrays this area is horribly inaccurate to say the least.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

THE MOVIE(3): The movie then cuts back to Marilyn’s house and her conversation with Dr. DeShields, and the day is noticeably coming to an end. Marilyn has greatly opened up to this new therapist over the course of this interview. She has trusted him with her entire life story. She wants to continue working with him after this day, as she says: “You’re different from Dr. Greenson. You don’t tell me what to do.”

REAL LIFE(3): Marilyn did have a long session with Greenson the day she died. He arrived at Marilyn’s house at approximately 4:30pm, and did not leave until about 7pm. We can assume this session did not go well, as Marilyn’s secretary Pat Newcomb was asked to leave by Dr. Greenson. Marilyn was annoyed with him for doing so but promised to speak to Pat soon. The movie also implies that Marilyn would have liked to work with a new therapist, however there is nothing to suggest Marilyn was planning to fire Greenson any time soon or work with another doctor. Shortly after Dr. Greenson left her that day, Joe DiMaggio Jr. was finally able to get a call through to Marilyn, as her housekeeper Eunice Murray had been telling him all day that Marilyn was unavailable. Marilyn was in “high spirits” and happy during this call with her former stepson, as Joe Jr. was announcing the news to her that he broke off the engagement to his fiancé; Marilyn had been against him marrying so young. However, it was shortly after this cheery phone call that everything became dark and Marilyn’s fate was set in motion.

THE MOVIE(4): A distraught Marilyn stumbles down her hallway carrying a bottle of alcohol in one hand. She sits down on her bed and begins taking some sleeping pills. After a night of tossing and turning, she turns the light on to retrieve a picture frame off of her nightstand. The photo inside is of her as a baby with her mother. She takes the photo and pulls it into bed with her, where she slowly passes away.

REAL LIFE(4): The picture frame scenario never happened, and was added in for dramatic effect. Another major thing portrayed in the film that never happened was this: Marilyn was NOT drunk the night she died NOR did she consume ANY alcohol whatsoever. Her pathology results conclude with the fact that there was no alcohol in her system that night. This is a scenario that is constantly being repeated in various books, documentaries, and magazines. Marilyn was not intoxicated the night she died and that is just a fact. However, other than the alcohol situation, her death is portrayed pretty accurately. Which is kind of shocking. You would think a film which is already host to a plethora of inaccuracies such as Marilyn becoming psychotic, hearing voices, and being obsessed with JFK, you would think her death would end in something crazy like murder. That wasn’t the case here. In real life, Marilyn Monroe passed away from an overdose of sleeping pills. And that’s all there is to it. Although the story of her death has been dissected and fabricated and blown out of proportion for so long, including unnecessary convoluted accounts from people like Eunice Murray, the only real question regarding her passing is this: accidental or intentional? This is something we are simply never going to know. Did Marilyn have a suicidal impulse that night and choose to end her own life, only realizing her mistake when it was too late and that is when she called Peter Lawford and Ralph Roberts for help? Or did she simply forget what she had taken and consumed far too many pills? These are the real questions. Nowhere does murder, the Kennedys, or conspiracy theories factor in. There is absolutely nothing regarding her death that even suggests murder. If this movie had not included the part about her drinking that night, it would have been a pretty accurate representation of her death.

This review has really been a journey, and I've learned a lot about Marilyn through this process. Thank you so much for reading it, and for all the support. I hope you learned something new!

© Ky Reynolds and fifthhelena.blogspot.com 2016 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ky Reynolds and fifthhelena.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.,

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 9/10

This week we take a look at Marilyn's marriage to Arthur and the end of it, as well as Marilyn's pill usage and failed pregnancies. Before continuing, please check out the previous parts of my review so that you’re all caught up! Special thank you to Elisa Jordan for seeking more information for me on Gladys's alleged suicide attempt. Trigger warnings: mental illness, sanitarium, razor blades, suicide attempts

Links are here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

THE MOVIE(1): Marilyn is pacing the room of what is assumed would be a house in Palm Springs. Two men soon enter the room, notifying her that they president is ready to see her. They escort Marilyn down a walkway to JFK’s room, where Marilyn disappears to.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

REAL LIFE(1): Okay. Here’s where the controversy starts. The official presidential schedule places JFK at a luncheon at the Lawfords in November of 1961. Supposedly this may have been Marilyn and JFK’s first meeting, however there is no evidence to prove that Marilyn was actually there. So the first confirmed meeting between them was in fact at Bing Crosby’s Palm Springs home in March of 1962. This is substantiated by a reliable Marilyn source: Ralph Roberts. Ralph Roberts was Marilyn’s masseur and close friend. He is one of the small handful of people who knew Marilyn who remain trust worthy today. He says that he received a call from Marilyn the day she was in Palm Springs, and that she had put Jack on the phone to ask Ralph questions about muscles in his back. Ralph had said he had immediately recognized Jack’s distinctive voice. This is the only day/night in history where something may or may not have happened between Marilyn Monroe and JFK. We’ll truly never know, but this is the only possible time. All those photos you see of them are either photoshopped or look alikes. Two photos exist of them together: both in crowded rooms full of people.

THE MOVIE(2): The movie cuts to Marilyn and Pat lounging poolside and having a discussion about JFK. Marilyn says she had an immediate connection with him, saying “I haven’t felt anything like it since I met Joe,” and, “Just between you and me, he’s going to divorce Jackie.” Marilyn then implies that her goal is to marry Jack and become Pat’s “sister.”

REAL LIFE(2): Let’s just establish this to start off: by no reliable account was Marilyn ever jealous of Jackie, wanting to be Jackie, wanting to marry JFK, wanting to become Pat’s sister, or delusional over JFK or Jackie. The fact that this situation continues to be falsely documented in books and magazines today is mind-blowing. Forget everything you hear about Marilyn and Jackie, it isn’t true. It never happened. The general public today is always much more interested in the juicier stories and conspiracies, rather than the cold, hard truth. As Marilyn once said herself in a handwritten note: “The truth can only be recalled, never invented.” Remember that next time you hear those insane rumors.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

THE MOVIE(3):We are now deep into the JFK delusion which we have now covered and determined that none of it actually happened. Marilyn is at home attempting to reach the president, who is unavailable. Marilyn becomes furious, and slams the phone down on the receiver repeatedly. The movie soon cuts to the scene of Marilyn sorting through her mail. She notices a letter from her mother Gladys. However, she notices that it had already been opened. Not only that, but she proceeds to burst into a tangent of delusional accusations such as “They poisoned it,” and, “It had to be Jackie.” Marilyn then races into the kitchen, sets the note on fire with a lighter, and burns it in the sink. She assumes Jackie sent the poison-laced letter to her pretending to be Gladys.

REAL LIFE(3): As we’ve covered previously in this review, it was Marilyn’s mother that was schizophrenic and had outbursts of paranoia, not Marilyn. Saying something such as a letter being laced with poison is something someone with Gladys’s condition is more likely to say. However there is one incident that Marilyn’s sister Berniece covers in her book, upon her visit to Marilyn in the early 1960’s. Berniece says that Marilyn thought the food she received was poisoned. Berniece is a reliable source, but this seems entirely out of character for Marilyn and we only have her word. I'm not sure that I fully trust this claim. But by no account did Marilyn ever receive a letter she accused of being contaminated, and certainly not from Jackie.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

THE MOVIE(4): Marilyn is visiting her mother at the asylum and notifies her that she will be moving away to New York. She says, “I have a friend there. A very important man. I can’t tell you who he is.” The movie then cuts to a scene where Marilyn is on the floor of her New York hotel room, seemingly drunk or dazed. She crawls towards the window, forces it open, and looks down at the street below, contemplating whether or not to jump out and end her life.

REAL LIFE(4): Again, Marilyn never saw her mother when she was institutionalized so we can ignore the meeting represented in the film. The “important man” we have to assume is JFK, who we now know Marilyn was not delusional over, nor was she picturing a life with him. So we can ignore that comment as well. So let’s go straight to the hotel room scene. Marilyn herself told this story to Ralph Roberts, who we, as previously stated, is a reliable source. According to him, shortly after Marilyn’s divorce from Arthur Miller, Marilyn had a suicidal impulse to jump out her 13^th floor apartment window. This is ultimately what led to her admission to Payne Whitney, which we will cover right now.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

THE MOVIE(5): Marilyn is dragged into a sanitarium against her will. She is in a strait jacket and is thrown and locked into a padded cell as she screams for help. Eventually, Joe comes to her rescue, demanding that she be released immediately, threatening to turn the establishment down “piece of wood by piece of wood.”

REAL LIFE(5): In 1961, Marilyn’s psychiatrist., Dr. Marianne Kris, suggested Marilyn receive further treatment at a facility. She failed to mention that place would be a sanitarium. That February, Marilyn was admitted to the Payne Whitney Clinic, the psychiatric division of the Cornell University Hospital, and endured five days of being held against her will there. She felt helpless. She was not severely unstable, and did not believe Payne Whitney was the right place for her. Shortly after her release, she wrote a famous six page letter to Dr. Ralph Greenson, in which she detailed her stay at the sanitarium. She states, “There was no empathy at Payne Whitney – it had a very bad effect – they asked me after putting me in a ‘cell’ (I mean cement blocks and all) for very disturbed depressed patients (except I/felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I hadn’t committed.” Furthermore, it was not Joe alone that came and rescued Marilyn from the sanitarium. Joe did, however, demand that Dr. Kris release Marilyn from the institution, which Kris agreed to. Once Marilyn was released, she was driven home by friend Ralph Roberts and also Dr. Kris, who was immediately fired.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Marilyn upon her release from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where she stayed for a few weeks to recover after Payne Whitney

THE MOVIE(6): Gladys learns of her daughter's admission to Payne Whitney. She takes a razor blade to her wrist, and is hospitalized, narrowly escaping death. Once Marilyn is recovers, she visits Gladys in the hospital, and is told that Gladys will be all right.

REAL LIFE(6): This scene may have been inspired by an event that actually occurred, but not with a razor. In Marilyn’s letter to Dr. Greenson in which she describes her experience at Payne Whitney, she speaks of one incident that occurred involving a shard of glass. Here are her exact quotes: “I went back into my room knowing they had lied to me about the telephone and I sat on the bed trying to figure if I was given this situation in an acting improvisation what would I do. I got the idea from a movie I made once called ‘Don’t Bother To Knock.’ I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it, and it was hard to do because I had never broken anything in my life – against the glass intentionally. It took a lot of banging to get even a small piece of glass – so I went over with the glass concealed in my hand and sat quietly on the bed waiting for them to come in. They did, and I said to them, ‘If you are going to treat me like a nut I’ll act like a nut.’ I admit the next thing is corny but I really did it in the movie except it was with a razor blade. I indicated if they didn’t let me out I would harm myself – the furthest thing from my mind at that moment since you know Dr. Greenson I’m an actress and would never intentionally mark or mar myself, I’m just that vain.” She then goes on to describe how four strong men carried her up to the seventh floor in the elevator and put in another cell. As far as Gladys’s suicide attempt, there is nothing on record to prove this incident happened. There are only rumors that float around, nothing to be taken too seriously. And we know by now that the last time it is confirmed that Marilyn even saw her mother was back in the 1940’s.

© Ky Reynolds and fifthhelena.blogspot.com 2016 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ky Reynolds and fifthhelena.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.,

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 8/10

Continuing with my incredibly lengthy but informative breakdown of The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe the movie (or mini-series). This week we take a look at Marilyn's marriage to Arthur and the end of it, as well as Marilyn's pill usage and failed pregnancies. Before continuing, please check out the previous parts of my review so that you’re all caught up! Trigger warnings: mental illness, miscarriage.

Links are here:

THE MOVIE(1): Marilyn strolls into the living room, where an open journal sitting on Arthur’s desk catches her eye. She approaches it, observing what he has written. She reads, “This marriage is a mistake – I’m trapped.”

REAL LIFE(1):The open diary is a story that gets endlessly tossed around and recycled and edited among Marilyn fans. It is one of the first things fans bring up in an attempt to bash Arthur. What was written in that diary? We don’t know. We don’t have it. We can’t say. Whatever was in it, Marilyn was hurt by it. Arthur was obviously expressing his doubts and worries about their relationship. But this discovery was early on in their marriage. They managed to stay married another 4 years. So it was certainly nothing that caused any huge problem within the marriage and it was something they both got over. Marilyn wasn’t delusional over this. Sure, some level of trust was damaged, but overall, the diary incident was not fatal to their marriage, and today it certainly gets blown out of proportion.

From The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

THE MOVIE(2):Marilyn awakens to severe abdominal pain late in the night. She limps outside to where Arthur is. She is covered in blood, and Arthur immediately runs to her aid. Marilyn realizes she has had a miscarriage.

REAL LIFE(2): In the summer of 1957, Marilyn and Arthur were vacationing in Amagansett, Long Island, when Marilyn began suffering from severe stomach pain. She was immediately rushed to the nearest hospital in New York, where her pregnancy was terminated. For ten days afterwards, Marilyn rested in the hospital in attempt to regain her strength both physically and mentally. She, of course, was absolutely devastated. In her adult life, Marilyn had wanted nothing more than to become a mother, and have children of her own. Her endometriosis condition made it difficult for her to carry a baby to term. Marilyn, unfortunately, had two confirmed miscarriages. She was farthest along in 1958, about 3 months, when her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage that December while shooting the film Some Like It Hot.

A pregnant Marilyn in 1958

THE MOVIE(3): Marilyn is delusional after the loss of her child. She has fired the maid after accusing her of kidnapping her unborn daughter. She is completely out of her mind, saying things like, “Shhh, you’ll wake the baby,” even though there is no baby. Marilyn even has a vision of her mother, Gladys, coming to her and saying, “You have no one to blame but yourself.” A confused and distraught Marilyn makes her way into the living room, where Arthur finally accuses Marilyn of killing their child, and that it’s Marilyn’s fault that she miscarried.

REAL LIFE(3): Here’s where things really start to get pretty drastic and inaccurate in the movie. As we’ve determined, Marilyn wanted nothing more than a child she could care for and love, since she herself was robbed of that kind of affection in her own childhood. She was understandably distraught and devastated over her two failed pregnancies. However, by no account was she hallucinating or breaking into psychotic episodes over it, such as searching for her missing child. At this point in the movie and for someone who didn’t know better, the viewer would think Marilyn was slowly inheriting her mother’s illness, which she, in real life, did not. Gladys was the one who suffered schizophrenia, not Marilyn. Arthur, too, is hurt by this loss, but there is no account of him mentally abusing her with insinuations that she killed his child.

From The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

THE MOVIE(4): Marilyn is out at lunch with a new character we are introduced to: Pat Kennedy Lawford, played by Tamara Hickey. They have a discussion about Pat’s brother, president John Kennedy, where Marilyn mentions the first time she met him, and soon Marilyn notices that her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio has entered the restaurant. He walks over and compliments Marilyn, striking up a conversation. Joe then goes home with her.

REAL LIFE(4): First, Pat Lawford. Marilyn was introduced to Pat through actor Peter Lawford, her husband. She was introduced to Peter through mutual friend Frank Sinatra, who Marilyn had dated briefly in 1961. Marilyn and Pat became quick friends, which was uncommon for Marilyn. Marilyn didn’t have many close female friends. Her male friends (yes, male friends, that she had no romantic relationship with) greatly outweighed her female friends. Pat really cared for Marilyn. Marilyn was beginning to sort of surround herself with a new social circle following her divorce from Arthur Miller. Christopher Lawford, Peter and Pat’s son, wrote in 2005: “My mother told me Marilyn was like ‘her little sister.’ It surprised her that Marilyn was so open with her. Marilyn Monroe trusted my mother’s love for her.” In August of 1962, Pat flew out to Los Angeles with the intention of attending Marilyn’s funeral. However, she was refused entrance by Joe DiMaggio, who did the same to most of Marilyn’s Hollywood friends and acquaintances. Pat was incredibly hurt by this. As far as Joe DiMaggio re-entering Marilyn’s life, he did this soon after Marilyn and Arthur’s divorce. He demanded Marianne Kris have Marilyn released from Payne Whitney, he took care of her and frequently visited her when she was hospitalized, and he took her on a relaxing vacation to Florida. Joe lived the rest of his life in regret for how he treated Marilyn, and he really stepped up and became a real friend to her in the last year of her life. However. Marilyn was adamant that they were just friends. Although we can never know what happened behind closed doors, it is commonly accepted that they were just that: friends. Marilyn greatly appreciated his coming back into her life. They even spent her last Christmas together. And forget what you hear about their planning to remarry the year she died, because there is nothing to prove that.

From The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

THE MOVIE(5): Marilyn is hanging out in her room with Pat Lawford. After excusing herself to use the restroom, Pat comes back and expresses her concern at the amount of pills Marilyn has in her medicine cabinet. Marilyn says, “They keep me going in the morning, they put me out at night.”

REAL LIFE(5): Let me start off with the disclaimer that I am no medical expert whatsoever. Marilyn didn’t take nor need pills to make it through the day. She needed them to make it through the night. She wasn’t regularly taking stimulants; she was regularly taking sedatives before bed to help her sleep. If you look at her numerous prescriptions, they’re all prescriptions for medications such as valmid, Librium, chloral hydrate, tuinal, seconal, Nembutal, and several other types of sedatives. If that sounds like an unnecessary amount, it’s because it is. Her doctors were providing this medication for her rather than trying to wean her off of it. The only time she was prescribed a stimulant was on July 1, 1962, in the form of 12 dexedrine tablets.

That concludes part 8 of this ongoing review. Thank you so much for keeping up with it and if you have any questions or comments, leave them here or message me on my Instagram which can be found at the top of this blog. Thank you!

© Ky Reynolds and fifthhelena.blogspot.com 2016 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ky Reynolds and fifthhelena.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 7/10

Thanks for tuning back in to my incredibly long (but informative!) breakdown of The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe the movie. This week we focus on the end of Marilyn and Joe’s marriage and the beginning of her and Arthur’s. Huge thank you to April for clarifying a few elements with Gladys and Natasha for me on this one. Before continuing, please check out the previous parts of my review so that you’re all caught up! Trigger warnings: mental illness, physical abuse, miscarriage.

Links are here:

Let’s continue!

(1)THE MOVIE: The film now cuts to a scene with Marilyn again visiting her mother at Rockhaven. They are strolling the sanitarium grounds and having a conversation about how Joe wants Marilyn to quit acting. Gladys soon becomes agitated and demands that Marilyn stop coming to visit her because she only talks about herself. She walks off saying “I don’t know how I had such a selfish child.”

(1)REAL LIFE: As we have covered in previous posts, Marilyn never visited her mother not only at Rockhaven, but at any other institution she was housed in. Marilyn’s relationship with her mother was complicated, and truthfully, they didn’t have much of a relationship at all in Marilyn’s adult life. Marilyn loved her mother and never stopped providing for her. Every month she paid for wherever Gladys was staying. She aided her financially from a distance. This way, Gladys’s privacy was protected and she was out of the public eye. By 1951, Marilyn had hired financial advisor Inez Melson to be in charge of her mother’s care, becoming Gladys’s legal guardian in 1952. The last time we can confirm that Marilyn physically saw her mother was in the summer of 1946 when the two rented out the lower half of Aunt Ana’s apartment on Nebraska Avenue. However, Gladys did return to Los Angeles for a short time in 1948 to live with Ana, and it is likely Marilyn visited her then as well. Gladys did write to Marilyn on several occasions, and due to her illness, her tone would change frequently, and she would accuse Marilyn of hating her, which was obviously not true. In a letter from April 1952, while Gladys was staying at Norwalk, she wrote to her famous daughter: “Dear Marilyn, please, my dear daughter, I wish I had some news from you. I only have worries here and I’d like to leave as soon as possible. I wish I have my child’s love instead of her hate. Tenderly, your mother.”

Marilyn and Gladys, 1926

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(2)THE MOVIE: Things seem well in their marriage when Joe offers to fly to New York with Marilyn and be there while she is filming The Seven Year Itch. But of course, the trip takes a horrible turn when Joe becomes furious at seeing his wife display her underwear to a crowd of a thousand people during the famous skirt-blowing scene. They return to their hotel that night where Joe beats her up, and the marriage is ended immediately come morning.

(2)REAL LIFE: In the previous post, we discussed in detail the nightmare that came as a result of the skirt-blowing scene, so I’m going to skip it here and move on. Joe and Marilyn went to New York separately, Joe arriving a few days later. The Seven Year Itch scene was filmed in the early morning hours of September 15, 1954. Marilyn was back in Los Angeles by October, but Joe had previously gone back to New York on the 27^th to work as a commentator for the World Series. Their marriage, for the most part, ended right after the early morning Itch scene. On October 2, after Joe had returned to Los Angeles, Marilyn was out at breakfast with close friend Sidney Skolsky and informed Joe that she was going to contact her attorney, Jerry Geisler, and file for divorce. On the 5^th, the estranged couple signed divorce decrees, and on the 6^th she publicly announced their separation.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

New York, 1954

(3)THE MOVIE: The setting is now back at Marilyn’s home during her session with Dr. DeShields. They have been discussing the end of her marriage with Joe. Kelli as Marilyn makes the comment “I never stopped sleeping with him, you know.”

(3)REAL LIFE: Marilyn and Joe had a complicated relationship. They both truly loved each other at one point, and after her divorce from Arthur Miller, they grew closer as friends. They always cared about each other, and Marilyn wasn’t one to speak ill of her ex-husbands. They may have endured a messy end to their marriage, but they did continue to meet up a few times the following year. In 1955, they met up in Boston while Marilyn was there with Milton Greene for business for Marilyn Monroe Productions. Joe even helped her move into the Gladstone Hotel in New York, and she had dinner with him and his family that same month in January. By June, he attended the premiere of The Seven Year Itch with her, however, they had an argument that night and Marilyn was driven home by her photographer Sam Shaw. This is the last time we can confirm they saw each other before her marriage to Arthur Miller, during which Joe kept his distance, only re-appearing as a friend after the Millers’ divorce in 1961.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(4)THE MOVIE: Marilyn is now married to Arthur Miller, played by Stephen Bogaert, who is in the middle of writing an important script. He enters the room, asking Marilyn to give him her opinion of it. As she is about to do so, the telephone rings, and Marilyn answers to Natasha. After Marilyn explains that she will call back later and hangs up, Arthur says, “She never gives you a moment’s peace.” He then tells Marilyn that she doesn’t need Natasha, and that Marilyn has outgrown her. In the following scene, Natasha receives a letter from her student informing her that she has been let go.

(4)REAL LIFE: The last film in which Natasha worked with Marilyn as her teacher was The Seven Year Itch. After that, she was replaced by Paula Strasberg, wife of the famous acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who she had first met in 1954. Marilyn had returned to Hollywood in February of 1956, shortly before her marriage to Arthur, to film Bus Stop. She did not notify Natasha of her replacement. Fox continued to keep Natasha as an employee, while Natasha relentlessly and desperately tried to get into contact with Marilyn, who was failing to respond. She was soon released of her services by both Marilyn and Fox; Marilyn also stopped going to private lessons with her.

Marilyn and Natasha on the set of "the Seven Year Itch," 1954

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(5)THE MOVIE: Arthur continues work on his script and he and Marilyn get into an argument after Marilyn reads aloud her praise from Variety. Arthur seems entirely uninterested, and Marilyn, offended, leaves the room. She soon receives a call from the hospital, who has just confirmed her hopes: she is pregnant. Marilyn and Arthur are overjoyed.

(5)REAL LIFE: This part of the movie is most likely meant to take place in 1957, when Marilyn learned she was pregnant for the first time. Unfortunately, this pregnancy and the one that occurred in 1958 both ended tragically. The 1957 pregnancy became ectopic; she had to be rushed to a hospital, and the 1958 one ended in miscarriage. We’ll discuss them both more in detail in the next installment of this review, when it is further presented in the film.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 6/10

Episode 2: Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio

We’ve got a shorter post than normal today, but we’re covering a lot of information.

This is a continuation of my series of blog posts breaking down The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe the movie. Before reading, please check out the previous parts before continuing.

Links are here!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

(1)THE MOVIE: Joe DiMaggio, played by Jeffery Dean Morgan, has been waiting a long while for his date to arrive. Eager to meet him, Kelli as Marilyn finally shows up to dinner and introduces herself to the former Yankee, who she had originally thought was a football player. They stay at the restaurant until one in the morning, chatting it up about life and learning all there is to know about each other. The restaurant they are at is supposed to represent Chasen’s, located in Hollywood.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(1)REAL LIFE: They did not have their first date at Chasen’s, however, they did dine there on occasion. Chasen’s was a popular star-spot at the time. This meeting in the movie was more a representation of when the famous couple went there in June of 1953. Marilyn had just gotten back from an important event in her career: placing her handprints and footprints in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. They met up at Chasen’s afterwards with Jane Russell, her husband Bob Waterfield, and Marilyn’s close friend Sidney Skolsky. Her and DiMaggio had already been dating for about a year prior to this dinner, so this was not the first time they met. But a great recreation nonetheless, down to the restaurant booths. They did not sleep together after their first date either, as implied in the film. Marilyn didn’t go around sleeping with men the first day she met them. Marilyn herself recalls that on their first date, “We [drove] around for three hours” (My Story). After they ate, Joe and Marilyn rode around Beverly Hills before she dropped him back off at his hotel.

Image result for marilyn and joe at chasens

Marilyn and Joe at Chasen's, 1953.

(2) THE MOVIE: Marilyn returns home with Aunt Grace, played by Emily Watson. Grace is visibly exhausted and obviously not well. When Marilyn asks what is wrong, Grace tries to tell her she's fine, but Marilyn can tell something isn't right and urges Grace to be honest. Grace finally tells her that she has cancer. The film then cuts to a scene where Marilyn is in bed with Grace reading her the Bible.

(2) REAL LIFE: As we know, Grace McKee was one of the most important people and influences in Marilyn's life. She is a very rare case being that she witnessed little Norma Jeane transform from small, lonely child to the stunning Marilyn Monroe the movie star. The movie depicts them to be a bit closer in Marilyn's adult life than they actually were. In July of 1953, Grace wrote to Marilyn's sister, Berniece, notifying her that she had cancer. In September of 1953, she passed away not from the cancer, but from an overdose of the barbiturate phenobarbital. She had committed suicide. According to Berniece, her and Marilyn had always thought that Grace had died from cancer, but the true nature of her death was not discovered until after Marilyn herself had passed away.

Grace McKee Goddard

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(3) THE MOVIE: Marilyn takes Joe to visit her mother at Rockhaven to receive her blessing for Joe to marry her. After Gladys does so, she also asks Joe if Marilyn told him she was barren. Joe is visibly disappointed and taken aback, saying "Were you planning on telling me Marilyn?"

(3) REAL LIFE: Joe DiMaggio and Gladys Baker never met. In fact, while Marilyn paid for Gladys's stay at Rockhaven and took care of her from a distance, she never visited her. Therefore, a meeting between the three of them just didn't happen. Marilyn had endometriosis, a painful condition in which the tissue which normally lines the inside of the uterus grows on the outside. She had been suffering from this since her early teens, and includes regularly having severe abdominal pain and having a difficult time conceiving, something Joe had definitely been aware of prior to their marriage.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(4) THE MOVIE: Joe and Marilyn are relaxing in bed when Marilyn grabs for her pill bottle, which frustrates Joe. He tries to explain that she doesn’t need the pills. After an argument, Joe angrily yanks them away from her and throws them over the bed and onto the floor. The bottle crashes on the ground and several tiny pills spill out all over the carpet. Marilyn, furious, scrambles off the bed and onto the floor and hurriedly begins picking them up one by one, saying “You don’t know what it’s like not to be able to sleep!”

(4)REAL LIFE: As we just determined, it was not Marilyn that overdosed with phenobarbital, it was Grace. Marilyn had been trying sleeping pills at least since around 1950. She began undergoing occasional psychotherapy in 1952. She didn’t start using them more frequently and becoming addicted until around 1955, when she was seeing a psychoanalyst several times a week and being prescribed them in larger doses. There is no account of Joe wrestling with her over a bottle of pills. Severe insomnia was something she struggled with greatly for much of her life.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(5)THE MOVIE: Marilyn and Natasha Lytess are sitting on a couch having a discussion about acting. Natasha wants for Marilyn to harness her deep-seated feelings about her childhood and her feeling of neglect so that she can present them believably on screen. Joe quickly becomes angry with her technique, shooting down Natasha’s beliefs. He doesn’t believe that Marilyn should be storing these awful memories, and that instead she should start with a clean slate.

(5)REAL LIFE: Joe and Natasha never saw eye to eye. Natasha was an important figure in Marilyn’s life, and she felt that now with Joe in the picture, he was jeopardizing that. Joe didn’t like Natasha constantly hanging around the set, and Natasha claims that Marilyn frequently called her in the late hours of the night complaining about the way DiMaggio treated her. Marilyn and Natasha had a close bond early in her career, saw each other every day, and even lived together with Natasha’s young daughter at one point. So, naturally, when Joe came along, Natasha resented him, and for Joe the feeling was mutual.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(6)THE MOVIE: Marilyn finds Grace’s prescription for phenobarbital in the medicine cabinet. Soon, Joe comes home and finds Marilyn unconscious in bed as a result of overdosing on those pills. Joe blames her overdose on Hollywood and her career, telling the doctor that there’s nothing wrong with Marilyn that can’t be fixed by getting out of Hollywood.

(6)REAL LIFE: Marilyn never overdosed or attempted suicide during her marriage to Joe. This could be the representation of a similar event which occurred a few years prior. Shortly after the death of Johnny Hyde, Natasha Lytess tells of a night that Marilyn went into such a depression that she attempted suicide. Natasha came home to find Marilyn unconscious in bed after an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Her mouth was partially open, showing dissolving pills, which Natasha then scooped out of her mouth in a hurry before rushing her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. We can also confirm at least one other suicide attempt. This occurred in 1957, shortly after Marilyn miscarried. In his book Timebends, Arthur Miller found her collapsed in a chair with labored breathing. She had apparently overdosed on sleeping pills, and had to be rushed from to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. Susan Strasberg also later wrote that Marilyn explained she was grateful for Arthur having found her in time. Close friend Norman Rosten also writes of a similar event in his memoir, which is likely this 1957 attempt.

(7)THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn is in a meeting with Fox head Daryl Zanuck. He says he has a script for a film called The Girl in Pink Tights prepared “just for her.” She says that is wonderful and that she would love to take a look at it to see if that is something she would like to make. Zanuck is surprised by her comment, basically stating that she works for him and has no right to script approval. The meeting ends on a sour note with Marilyn storming out of the office.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(7)REAL LIFE: These events occurred mainly between the end of 1953 and the beginning of 1954. In December of 1953, Marilyn did not show up for the filming of Pink Tights. Although this picture would have also starred Frank Sinatra, Marilyn considered the script “inferior” and, always knowing what was best for her career, refused to be a part of it. She challenged her studio by refusing to show up for any of her required filming schedules. She said, regarding this incident, “When a studio stumbles on a box office name in its midst, it means millions of dollars income. And every studio has learned to be very considerate financially towards the goose that lays their golden eggs. The trouble was about something deeper. I wanted to be treated as a human being who had earned a few rights since her orphanage days. When I asked to see the script of a movie in which it was announced I was going to star, I was informed that the studio didn’t consider it necessary for me to see the script in advance. I would be given my part to memorize at the proper time.” She was suspended multiple times, but received a lot of moral support from her soon-to-be husband Joe DiMaggio, who was looking forward to making her his wife and Marilyn working less so they could spend more time together and raise a family. Which brings us straight into our next topic:

(8)THE MOVIE: Marilyn returns home exhausted the day she fought with Zanuck over refusing to appear in The Girl in Pink Tights before reading the script. She suggests her and Joe get away to San Francisco and get married. Joe readily agrees and supports her in her decision to not show up for work at the studio. Upon their return, Marilyn and Joe get into a fight about Marilyn’s career. Joe once again is angry that Marilyn works far too much, while he wishes that she would stay home and be a proper wife and raise children. At the end of the argument, Joe slaps her across the face.

(8)REAL LIFE: During this whole fiasco with Pink Tights, Joe proposed to Marilyn. Shortly after, the couple got married in a small, intimate ceremony in San Francisco on January 14, 1954. It wasn’t long before Joe was to appear in Japan for the Yankees training sessions. They decide to make Japan their honeymoon destination, after spending a week in San Francisco relaxing and enjoying themselves. After their return from Japan, and after Marilyn had sung for the soldiers in Korea, the couple flew back to Hollywood and began business as usual. Marilyn set to work on her next project, There’s No Business Like Show Business. They were already having problems in their marriage; Joe wanted a traditional family and was ready to settle down, after being retired from baseball and reaching the peak of his career. Marilyn was still very involved in her work and had no plans to quit any time soon. As for the part about Joe slapping her, well … there are a lot of issues concerning that. In September of 1954, Joe became furious with her when he was dragged out to Lexington Avenue by friend Walter Winchell to watch his wife showcase her underwear in front of thousands for a scene for The Seven Year Itch: A scene that went down in pop culture history and gave Marilyn her “white dress” image. That night, the couple got into a heated argument. By several accounts, screaming and yelling and banging were heard coming from their hotel room. The next morning, Marilyn showed up to work with bruises all over her back, which had to be covered up by makeup. This is the only event that we can say with, pretty much certainty, that Joe laid a violent hand on her. A couple previous events can be speculated. In 1954, Marilyn visited the set of A Streetcar Named Desiree. She is photographed with Marlon Brando, and can be seen with obvious bruising on her arm. When asked what happened by the press, she said that she must have bitten her arm in her sleep. Although closer examination reveals that it looks more like a bruise left by someone grabbing her. In another case, while packing for Japan, Joe is said to have slammed her thumb in a suitcase (either intentionally or accidentally), which is why she can be seen in several photos wearing a thumb splint. Finally, Joe threw her off of him when she tried to hug him on the set of Show Business, as witnessed by several people. She was wearing the costume used in her Heat Wave number, and Joe was embarrassed by it and refused to be photographed with her.

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Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Julien's Auctions: Marilyn Exhibit Photo Gallery

For those who did not attend the exhibit or those who are too far away, I thought might like to see some photos. Thank you to Julien's for putting on such an incredible exhibit and the staff for being so kind and friendly. The exhibit took place at Julien's Auctions in West Hollywood. Enjoy!