Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 3/10

Thanks for tuning in! This is a continuation of my series of blog posts titled “Breaking Down ‘The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe’ the movie.” If you have not, please check out parts 1 & 2 of this review.

Links are here!
Part 1
Part 2

As always, thank you to April, my go-to Marilyn expert who this time specifically helped me source Jim's memoir.

Episode 1 continued: Marilyn’s marriage to Jim Dougherty + the beginning of her modeling career

In the last post, we ended on a breakdown of Marilyn’s foster homes; dates in which she was bounced back and forth between different houses and families as a child. Now we get out of her childhood and move on to her teenage years.

“The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe” (the movie) paints a picture of the young Jim Dougherty, played by Giacomo Gianniotti, as a man who cared for then Norma Jeane, played by Kelli Garner, but who soon became frustrated with her lack of interest in sex and who quickly became unsupportive of her career.

On June 19, 1942, a sixteen year old Norma Jeane married 21 year old James Dougherty. James had been a neighbor of Marilyn and would often help drive her and Bebe Goddard (Doc Goddard’s daughter) back from school. However, Doc was preparing for a job transfer to West Virginia, and they could not afford to bring Marilyn along. She was still a minor at fifteen years old, so she would have been forced to go back to the orphanage, a place which she had previously lived for one year at age seven. Sixteen was the legal age in California, so this gave Grace and Ethel (Jimmy’s mother) an idea. Norma Jeane would soon turn sixteen, and if she wanted to avoid another boarding at Hollygrove, why not marry Jimmy? They had been out on a couple friendly dates together, so the two ladies felt this would be the perfect arrangement to give Marilyn a better living situation. And so, in June of 1942, Norma Jeane Baker dropped out of her sophomore year at University High School and became Norma Jeane Dougherty in an intimate ceremony at the home of the Howell family (friends of Grace) on South Bentley Avenue.

Marilyn and James on their wedding day

That same month, the newlyweds signed a 6 month lease for a small one room bungalow in Sherman Oaks. They spent their short honeymoon at Sherwood Lake for fishing and camping.

Norma Jeane fishing at Sherwood Lake

James Dougherty soon joined the United States Merchant Marine. Not long after, he was shipped off to boot camp on Catalina Island, which had been cut off from the public to become a training ground for the navy. The Doughertys moved into an apartment in Avalon, Catalina Island where the headquarters of the Merchant Marine Corps was located. The couple made a few friends there and Marilyn loved to keep in shape by taking the dog out for a run each day or lifting weights. Marilyn frequently wrote to Grace McKee, updating her on her life at Catalina and her marriage to Jim. Their marriage started out decently, they still didn’t know each other very well, but felt they could make it work and start a family. Marilyn, lacking a father figure in her life, sometimes subconsciously saw him as her father rather than her husband. After all, he was 5 years older than her, and the maturity level was a little different. Marilyn was a young girl looking for love and stability and clung to him for both. She loved Jimmy during their marriage, but for the most part, Marilyn later recalled it just became “boring.” Marilyn was too young at that point to become a mother, so the thought of starting a family was hardly more than a thought at all. Being a sixteen year old virgin thrust into marriage must have been a terrifying situation, and the film portrays this in the scene shortly after their marriage, where Jimmy is expecting Norma Jeane to sleep with him, but she suddenly begins panicking and begging him to stop. It would be these elements combined with Marilyn’s soon to be modeling career that would ultimately lead to their separation.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

At this point in the movie, we return to the “present” time where Marilyn briefly leaves the room in which she is conversing with the fictional Dr. DeShields. Frantically rushing to Eunice Murray, her housekeeper, she quickly swallows some unknown type of pills. Marilyn struggled much of her life with taking too many sleeping pills, this is a commonly known fact. However, Marilyn did not constantly require pills to make it through the day. The medication she used was consumed at night when she could not sleep. She was not high every minute of every day swallowing down pills. So that was pretty disappointing to see portrayed. However, Kelli Garner, as Marilyn, says during her conversation with the fictional Dr. DeShields that she would rather be a symbol for sex than “some other thing they’ve got symbols for” and that she wants to be an “artist,” not an “erotic freak.” These are real Marilyn quotes! In her ghost written book (ghostwritten but still her book) based off her working with Milton Greene and Ben Hecht to create an autobiography titled My Story, she says “I want to be an artist, not an erotic freak. I don’t want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisical.” In Marilyn’s very last interview in July of 1962, she says: “If I’m gonna be a symbol of something, I’d rather have it sex than some other thing they’ve got symbols of!”

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

In the film it is now 1944. We see Kelli as Marilyn walk into another average day at the Radioplane Munitions Factory. Marilyn herself landed this job in March of 1944 with the help of Ethel Dougherty after Jimmy was shipped off to Australia. Her job was to spray varnish on the fuselages before being promoted to inspecting parachutes. On this particular day, shown in the movie, photographer David Conover was assigned to Radioplane to photograph women on the assembly that were to be used in military magazines. Young Norma Jeane turns out to be a natural in front of the camera, and Conover suggests she take up modeling. Norma is surprised and excited at this suggestion, and it boosts her mood and her confidence in the pictures. David Conover is known as the first person to professionally photograph the soon to be Marilyn Monroe. And the film shows a super cute recreation! Just another example of why I adore the sets and costumes replicated on screen.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Marilyn Monroe, 1944

What I find surprising at this stage of the movie, however, is that Marilyn’s sister has not yet been mentioned. If you’re super new to the Marilyn world: yes, Marilyn had a sister! Berniece Baker was born to Gladys and Jasper Baker on July 30, 1919. She is still alive today, and is the half sister of Marilyn Monroe, they both share the same mother. Bernice married Paris Miracle in 1938 and they had a daughter together named Mona Rae Miracle in 1939. Norma Jeane had first learned of the existence of her older sister when she was twelve years old, but in the fall of 1944, at age eighteen, was when the two met for the first time in person after a trip to Detroit.

Marilyn with her sister Berniece and Berniece's daughter Mona Rae, 1944

Now we are at some point in what I would assume would be 1945. Norma Jeane has just lightened her hair, and returns home to find her mother Gladys sitting on her doorstep with some luggage. Gladys did in fact board with Marilyn at this time, but Jimmy was not a part of it, as is portrayed in the film. By 1945, Jimmy disapproved of Marilyn’s modeling career, he may have started out not thinking much of it, but he wanted her to stay at home and be a general housewife and have their children. Marilyn had quit her job at Radioplane and that August had signed with the Blue Book Modeling Agency. In the film, Jim angrily calls Marilyn and tells her he has been waiting for her to pick him up. Marilyn is caught up in trying to make her mother comfortable and has forgotten about her husband. He chooses to take the bus instead and meets them at the house. What really happened was this: Jim was on a short leave and called Marilyn. Gladys, at that time, was staying with her. Jim became angry and stayed with his own mother instead. And, unlike the movie, there was no crazy scene with a knife-wielding Gladys before the police were called and escorted her out of the house in handcuffs. Secret Life then follows up with a scene where Norma Jeane goes missing shortly after Gladys is taken away, then arrives several hours later, frantically scrambling back into bed claiming that a man was following her. According to Jimmy, this is true. In his memoir, he explains that he and Marilyn had a fight, she ran off, then returned later in the night panicking because she said a man had been stalking her. This all happened apparently after a fight, not as a result of her mother being taken away in handcuffs.

The meeting with Ben Lyon is, for the most part, entirely true. Marilyn began declaring that she was an orphan to protect the privacy of her mother, who had not been a healthy or present parental figure anyways. The name Marilyn Monroe was decided on when she signed her first contract with 20^th Century Fox. Grace had to be her co-signer, because Marilyn was under 21 at the time. She used the name “Monroe”, after her mother’s maiden name, and “Marilyn” was decided by Lyon (casting director at Fox) after stage actress Marilyn Miller. Ironically, Marilyn Monroe would become Marilyn Miller in 1956 after her third marriage. This was the end for Marilyn and Jim. The two divorced in September of 1946 and Marilyn was free to pursue a dream career in acting.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe." Kelli Garner wears what appears to be a replica of one of Marilyn's dresses from 1949 (shown below)

Marilyn in 1949

"I never knew Marilyn Monroe, and I don't claim to have any insights to her to this day. I knew and loved Norma Jeane." [- James Dougherty, United Press International, 1990]


Thank you for reading! I hope you learned something new. In the next post we’ll discuss Marilyn’s early acting career and how it is both similar and different to how it was portrayed in the film.

© 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.

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 2/10

Thanks for tuning in! This is a continuation of my series of blog posts titled “Breaking Down ‘The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe’ the movie.” If you have not, please check out part 1 of this review.

This particular post would not have been possible without my go-to gal April VeVea, a Marilyn Monroe scholar who worked with me to create a comprehensive timeline of Marilyn’s childhood and who answered many of my questions late into the night.

Episode 1 continued: Gladys Baker + a look into Marilyn’s childhood

In the last breakdown, we left off with a brief discussion of Marilyn’s history with psychotherapy. At this point in the movie, Marilyn (played by Kelli Garner) begins opening up to the the fictional Dr. DeShields about her childhood. She starts with her mother Gladys’s meltdown, which began the course of her mother’s institutionalization for the rest of her life.

The first scene we see from her childhood is “the duffel bag story.” Gladys races up to the Bolenders’ home attempting to take Norma Jeane with her. The Bolenders were the first family that she lived with, they took Norma into their care when she was just 2 weeks old. Gladys paid them each month to take care of her. She stayed there until she was 7 years old. A screaming Gladys, played by Eva Amurri Martino, Susan Sarandon’s daughter in real life, rushes up to the house demanding Norma Jeane to come to her. The result is Gladys eventually making it into the house, then attempting an escape with a duffel bag over her shoulder. Ida Bolender and Gladys fight over the bag, which drops, and out crawls little Norma and into Ida’s arms.

About this duffel bag story: it didn’t happen. There’s just no evidence to even suggest something like this. In fact, I don’t recall hearing it before I read Secret Life the book, so I’m not sure where it originated, therefore I am not sure where Taraborrelli came up with it. There are no personal accounts by either the Bolenders or Gladys herself that she ever came by to kidnap her daughter. The sad but true part is though, at the end of this scene, Norma Jeane yells for “momma” directed at Ida Bolender. Ida then tells her that she’s not her mother, and to call her aunt instead. Here is what Marilyn had to say about this later in a recorded interview:

“The people I was staying with, I was about 3. And one morning I was having a bath and I referred to the woman as ‘momma.’ And she said ‘I’m not your mother. The one who comes here with the red hair, she’s your mother. Don’t call me mother anymore, call me aunt.’ But the one I was concerned was her husband I said ‘but he’s my daddy.’ And she said ‘No. You call him uncle.’ Although they weren’t my aunt and uncle.”

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Gladys Baker, 1924

Later on, the movie presents a scene where a young Gladys is screaming and crying at the foot of a set of stairs in a small house. Seconds prior to this, we see Grace McKee (Gladys’s co-worker) and Norma Jeane at the table flipping through a magazine article which focuses on Jean Harlow, one of Marilyn’s real life movie idols. Startled by the sudden outburst, Grace races over to her friend while Norma Jeane tries to get a better view of what is happening to her mother.

Gladys with baby Marilyn

Get ready because a lot of dates are coming up! Let’s start with this house. The house shown in the movie represents the 3 bedroom home Gladys purchased in 1933 in Hollywood, California. After Gladys left her job as a film splicer at Consolidated Studios, she needed a source of income to pay the bills. Gladys rented out part of the house to an English couple called the Atkinsons. George and Maude Atkinson were both bit part actors, stand-ins trying to build a career in Los Angeles. They had a teenage daughter named Nell. Beginning in January of 1934, the Atkinson family moved into the house on Arbol Drive and paid rent to Gladys. They also helped take care of 8 year old Norma Jeane. It was during that month and in this house that Gladys had a psychotic meltdown. Gladys had been going through a lot of hardships in her life, she didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford to care for her child, her father had died in a mental hospital, in 1927 Gladys’s mother Della died of heart failure during a panic attack, and in 1933 Gladys learned that her grandfather, Tilfred Hogan, had committed suicide. These traumatizing events ultimately led to depression and realizing one of her worst fears that eventually became one of Marilyn’s own: that her family’s mental illnesses were hereditary and that she would inherit them. It was at that house on Arbol drive that Gladys broke into a mental panic. She was then admitted to a rest home in Santa Monica in January of 1934 and stayed there until an unknown date before being transferred to Los Angeles General Hospital in that same year. The following year, in January of 1935, Gladys was declared legally insane and transferred to Norwalk State hospital. Norma Jeane continued to live with the Atkinsons during this time and until May of 1935 while Grace McKee attempted to obtain legal guardianship and permission to be in charge of Gladys’s financial affairs.

Grace McKee

At some point that May, Grace had Norma removed from the Atkinsons’ care apparently after discovering that they had been neglectful. Later in life, Marilyn recalled them as being very busy with work and understandably not wanting to be “bothered with a child.” From then, she was placed in the care of the Giffen family, who didn’t live far from the Bakers. She stayed with them for only 2 months, leaving in July of 1935. Harvey Giffen worked as a sound engineer in Hollywood. Norma Jeane lived there with him, his wife Elsie, and their 3 young children. However, Harvey had plans on leaving his job and moving all the way to New Orleans, so he became interested in adopting Norma Jeane. He contacted Gladys regarding this, but Gladys refused, and Norma Jeane was sent to live with Grace.

At this point, Grace was still in the midst of working on receiving guardianship of Norma Jeane, but the courts allowed her to live with Grace temporarily. This began at some point in July of 1935. Grace would marry Doc Goddard that August. Doc had 3 children from a previous marriage: Eleanor (nicknamed Bebe, she was also born in 1926), John, and Nona. Norma Jeane was allowed to live with them until September of 1935, when she was required by law to board at an orphanage for at least one year before legally being allowed to live with Grace. From September 1935 to September 1936, Norma Jeane lived at Hollygrove Orphanage in Los Angeles, California before finally being able to move in with Grace.

Hollygrove Orphanage

Marilyn in 1933

So, that’s a ton of information and dates. If all of this is too confusing and you feel a little scrambled, I don’t blame you, it’s a lot of information! Here is the basic timeline:

·         January 1934: The Atkinsons move in with Marilyn and Gladys at Arbol Drive

·         January 1934: Gladys has a mental breakdown and is admitted to a rest home in Santa Monica where she is then transferred to Los Angeles General Hospital at an unknown date

·         January 1935: Gladys is transferred to Norwalk State Hospital

·         May 1935: Marilyn is removed from the Atkinsons’ care

·         May 1935: Marilyn moves in with the Giffen family

·         July 1935: Marilyn is removed from the care of the Giffens

·         July 1935: Marilyn is allowed to temporarily live with Grace and Doc

·         September 1935: Marilyn is moved to Hollygrove orphanage

·         September 1936: Marilyn leaves Hollygrove to live with Grace full time

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and I hope you learned more about Marilyn’s difficult childhood. Bouncing around to different homes is definitely not ideal, and led to Marilyn’s fear of abandonment and feeling of being unwanted and forgettable. Especially being that she was not in the foster care system, there was no social worker on her case inspecting the homes she lived in. The main focus of the next post will be her marriage to Jim Dougherty. Thank you for reading!

© 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.

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 1/10

Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 1: Some basic background history

In 2015, Lifetime Network aired a special two-episode mini series about Marilyn Monroe’s life based off of J. Randy Taraborrelli's book "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe." Now, over a year later, I am both reviewing it and providing more information about Marilyn’s story by comparing and contrasting it to the film in the hopes to inform and educate others who are either planning on seeing it or have already seen it. The reason I’m doing this is because after this movie came out, a lot of people seemed to join the Marilyn community, which is wonderful! And also I get asked about it all the time (my opinion, what's true and what isn't, etc). I think everyone was casted very well and I think that each actor played their part admirably. Kelli Garner is one of the best Marilyns I’ve seen, and I admire the way she portrayed her after having limited time to learn about Marilyn. I think she had it down as far as looks, spontaneity, and even the voice was well done. So many "Marilyns" these days way over-exaggerate the voice, but I think Kelli accomplished it at a comfortable level. However, this movie is riddled with inaccuracies. There were things that I liked but there were also things I was very uncomfortable with, one being the way they made it seem like Marilyn was mentally ill, to the point of being crazy. But I’ll get to that later! For the next series of blog posts I will be breaking down the movie bit by bit. This is not to criticize in any way, but to learn, both for myself and others. Like I said, although there are inaccuracies, I actually enjoyed this film. And also like I said, it is based off the book, so the book is what should hold the responsibility for the inaccuracies for the most part.

So here we go!

*EDIT/9.27.16* Marilyn slowly began taking psychoanalysis in 1952, but didn't delve into it fully until 1955.

Episode 1

The movie starts off with Marilyn (played by Kelli Garner) arriving an hour and a half late to her scheduled appointment with fictional psychiatrist Dr. DeShields. The other people in the house at the time are Pat Newcomb (Marilyn's publicist) and Eunice Murray (Marilyn's housekeeper). Marilyn Monroe, in real life, was always late for everything, this isn’t any new information. Rarely was she ever right on time. She would usually spend hours perfecting her makeup and choosing the right thing to wear. This is a trait that goes back to her childhood. During that time, she had always felt unwanted and easy to abandon. Yes, she was loved by some of the people who took care of her for a number of years such as Grace McKee and Aunt Ana, but it’s much different when you lack a strong and healthy mother figure throughout your entire childhood. Not only but that, but also not ever knowing your father, and your father never caring to know you. And that’s not something you can blame her for. And now, as Marilyn Monroe, people longed to see her, even the slightest glimpse would do, and therefore she subconsciously was enjoying what she had never experienced before: the feeling of being wanted and people waiting on you. Marilyn constantly admitted to this habit, she was fully aware of her actions. In fact, here are a few quotes she said herself regarding her chronic lateness:

From the Gadsden Times July 17, 1960:

“It’s a bad habit, I know but I believe that you shouldn’t do anything in life until you’re ready. Half of life’s heartaches come from decisions that were made in a hurry.”

From the same newspaper, screenwriter/producer Jerry Wald (producer of “Let’s Make Love” (1960) said:

 “True, she’s not punctual. She can’t help it, but I’m not sad about it. I can get a dozen beautiful blondes who will show up promptly in makeup at 4am each morning, but they are not Marilyn Monroe.”

From her last interview, conducted in July 1962, published in Life Magazine August 3, 1962:

“I guess people think that why I’m late is some kind of arrogance and I think it is the 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 do 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 can imagine it must have been pretty difficult to work with someone who was late all the time, sometimes by several hours, but honestly the way I see it now is: She wasn’t a diva about it, and clearly she owned up to it. It’s been half a century, in my opinion I think everyone should stop complaining about how tough she was to work with at times. Just like the very last line in Some Like It Hot: "Nobody's perfect."

Back to the film: As the fictional Doctor DeShields is awaiting Marilyn’s arrival, he picks up a book on her coffee table and opens it to find a short handwritten note inside that reads “Everyone’s childhood plays itself out.” In Marilyn’s case, we like to call these little scribbles of hers “fragments.” This is a real quote! In 1958 , Marilyn wrote this very sentence on a piece of note paper during the time she was living in Roxbury, Connecticut, around 2 years into her marriage with husband Arthur Miller.

From The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

From Marilyn's personal notes

What is significant about this book that DeShields picks up is that the subject is Stanislavsky’s form of “Method” acting. When Marilyn first joined the Actors Studio in New York in 1955, she became familiar with this technique because it is what was being taught by world renowned acting teacher Lee Strasberg. “Method” acting involves drawing from your own life experiences and using them to enhance your performance to better understand the character which you are playing. Strasberg insisted that his students see a psychoanalyst so that they would be able to look deeper into themselves to harness these experiences and memories. Marilyn first applied this form of acting in her 1956 film “Bus Stop.” Her co-star Laurence Olivier from “The Prince and the Showgirl” was famously against the Method. 

Marilyn in front of the Actors Studio, 1955

The reason I keep saying “the fictional Dr. DeShields” is because that is exactly what he is: an entirely fictional character. There is no record or documentation of anyone named Dr. DeShields in Marilyn’s history. The way the movie is set up is to have a fake psychiatrist come and have Marilyn discuss her life with him, therefore allowing the film to play out chronologically. It makes for a better story telling process, but he is entirely fictional. Marilyn’s real psychiatrist at the time of her death (1962, when the movie takes place) was Dr. Ralph Greenson, and his intern who provided prescriptions was Dr. Hyman Engelberg. There is no evidence of Marilyn trying to hire a new therapist while being in Greenson’s care. Kelli Garner briefly mentioned this in a 2015 live interview on Fox:

“We used the vice of Marilyn with a fictional therapist to kind of tell her story.”

One of the first things I notice is the setting of the house, and wow, I was impressed! It is incredibly similar to Marilyn’s real house, even down to some of the furniture items.

From The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn's house at the time of her death

Even the paintings are the same.

Part of Marilyn's dining room

They even mentioned the Latin tiles outside of Marilyn’s house saying “cursum perficio,” which means something along the lines of “My journey ends here” or “I complete the course.” I’ve read before that it was put there when it was built, and that by “journey ends” it is supposed to mean that the homeowner that is searching for a home can stop looking because this is the one they were meant to have, and therefore their journey can end. Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the settings throughout the film.

 

From The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

The original tiles from Marilyn's home

Marilyn in “Secret Life” mentions having been in psychotherapy for the past 6 years. This is true in real life, Marilyn first became acquainted with psychotherapy in 1955 when she trained at the Actors Studio in New York (mentioned above). Her first psychoanalyst was Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, who she became a client of from 1955 to 1957. Her photographer Milton Greene was also seeing Hohenberg for therapy at the time. After that, Marilyn began to see Dr. Marianne Kris from 1957 to 1961. The reason Marilyn dropped her is because Kris was the one who had her admitted to Payne Whitney Hospital in 1961, where she had been locked up in the psychiatric ward and treated as if she were crazy. Joe DiMaggio was eventually able to release her. The last therapist she saw was Dr. Ralph Greenson, who became her therapist from 1961 to 1962, who had also been a friend and colleague of Marianne Kris.

At one point during their conversation at the beginning, Dr. DeShields mentions the pills she frequently takes such as Nembutal, but I also caught him mentioning “Demerol.” Demerol is a brand of meperidine, a painkiller which is prescribed after and during major surgeries. According to Marilyn’s prescriptions and dosages, the earliest we can confirm she took a painkiller is decadron phosphate in 1960, and this would have been most likely for her allergies, since that is what this medication was used for as well. It was at a low dose and she had been going through some muscle loss. In June of 1961, Marilyn also had her gall bladder removed. She also had a couple procedures done in attempt to correct her endometriosis. In short, the only times she was prescribed painkillers was around surgical procedures. Marilyn did not seem to be addicted to painkillers whatsoever, so I was a bit taken aback when they implied excessive use of a painkiller. Again, the mention of it was so brief, but it caught my ear.

These are just some of the basics and background of Marilyn’s story, in the next posts I’ll be getting more into the chronology of her life and comparing it to the film. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, I hope it has been helpful! And special thank you to April for helping me figure out that 1960 prescription. Next post: Marilyn’s childhood and her mother, Gladys Baker.


© 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.

Marilyn: The Real Last Photos

Special thanks to my go-to gal April VeVea for helping me make sense of the chronology of these shoots.

So what really was Marilyn’s last photoshoot? Who was her last photographer? I bet you’re thinking: Allan Grant, LIFE Magazine 1962. And if you asked me that question yesterday, I would have said the same thing. But recently I’ve been doing some research on some of her photo sessions, specifically her last ones, and I came to this realization:  It is in fact George Barris that took the last professional photos of Marilyn Monroe. And I say professional because ….

These are actually the last known pictures of Marilyn. They were taken during the weekend of July 27-29 of 1962 at the Cal-Neva Lodge located in California/Nevada. (It overlooks Lake Tahoe, laying across the Cali/Nevada border). Marilyn would have passed away the following weekend. These pictures were taken by Ted Allan, who happens to also be a professional photographer, but these are candids, not posed pictures meant to be published in a magazine or publicity campaign. Simply like home movies. They are the last known photos of her, but I don’t count them as the last professional ones. Here she hangs out enjoying the day with friends Peter Lawford and Frank Sinatra. Buddy Greco is also pictured.

In other words, we can determine that the final professional photos of Marilyn Monroe were taken by photographer George Barris on Santa Monica beach in July of 1962.

However, the dates on these are pretty confusing. The reason everyone gets mixed up thinking that Allan Grant took her last pictures (the same reason I believed as well) was because the Grant photos accompanied her last interview. Once approved by Marilyn, the interview and the photos were published in the August 3^rd, 1962 issue of LIFE Magazine. Marilyn had passed less than 2 days after the magazine hit the stands. Grant says he took his photos on the 7^th , and that’s what I believe as well, but there has been a lot of confusion on how accurate that is. Here are a couple from the Grant session:

The George Barris session is the latest that we can confirm. We know that the swimsuit and towel pictures were at least taken July 12^th, 1962. This is substantiated because of a couple reasons: First, Pat Newcomb (Marilyn’s publicist) wrote a letter to Marilyn dated July 11^th, 1962 saying that she would pick her up “tomorrow (Thursday) at 5:30 to go to the beach and complete the Cosmopolitan layout.” (Barris’s pictures of Marilyn were to be published in Cosmopolitan). We can confirm that Pat did pick Marilyn up and took her to the beach for the shoot because she is shown in the rare color footage of the session. Second, a library in New York City had received the swimsuit pictures the next day (July 13^th). There is no way Barris could have gone and developed those photos and sent them off and have the library receive them in such a short amount of time. There is speculation that the Mexican sweater photos could have been taken on July 13^th, but they also could have been the same day, July 12^th. Which is possible, but in Pat’s letter she says to “complete” the layout, so it’s also possible that this was all done on the same day, that Marilyn simply took off the sweater and put it back on later. Therefore we cannot confirm whether Whitey did her makeup or if Marilyn did it herself for the sweater pictures, as Barris also says it was just him and Marilyn on the sweater day. But again, that may not be true.

George Barris describes the last picture he took of Marilyn in an article published in the Daily Mirror (US & UK) on August 8th, 1962, just 3 days after she had passed away. If this is the first image that came to your mind, you’re correct:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the last professional photograph taken of Marilyn Monroe.

“Marilyn was a real trooper. Even when the sun went down and the winds blew and it became cold, and she shivered, she hardly whimpered or complained. Only when the day was almost over and I had just one last bit of film in the camera, she said, ‘This is for you, George.’  Then she puckered her lips and blew a kiss my way as I took the last picture of her ever on that beach.”

As stated previously, George Barris is the latest that we can confirm. This timeless session remains a favorite among the Marilyn community and will always be treasured. She seems so effortless and happy, and she looks stunning even with the cold temperatures. When Marilyn is being photographed, it’s just her and the camera, and she is completely herself and never holds back. We are lucky to have images such as these available to us today. Regardless of the conflicting dates and times, her last photo session is magical and will continue to be enjoyed and appreciated by fans for endless years to come.

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