Breaking Down "Secret Life" Part 5/10

Episode 1 continued: Marilyn’s early acting career

For this post, we wrap up the first episode of The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe!

Special thanks to April for helping me a bit with the Gladys timeline

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 the other parts of this review.

Links are here!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

This area in the movie is a bit confusing, chronologically, to any Marilyn historian. So rather than try to organize it, I’m just going to explain the events depicted in the film and contrast them with what happened in real life, no matter what order they’re in. To make it a little less hard to track! And I even thought of a new way of breaking things down that I’ll start doing. I’m going to begin listing film bits as “the movie” and real life as “real life,” so it’s easier to separate and a little more comprehensive. Let me know if you like the new format of if it's too confusing.

(1) THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn is very tipsy by this point and after an award exchange with her psychiatrist, Dr. DeShields, Marilyn expresses her concern that she is afraid of “becoming her mother.”

  > (1) REAL LIFE: Marilyn lived her entire life in constant fear that she would end up like her mother. She was afraid she would inherit her mother’s mental illness and be locked up in an institution. Much speculation about Marilyn’s mental state has been presented by Marilyn fans and scholars. Some think she in fact had bipolar disorder, and some just think she suffered severe depressive episodes. While it’s important to consider certain aspects of her health, she cannot be diagnosed. You cannot diagnose a deceased person. Marilyn was not diagnosed as bipolar, split personality, or any type of mental imbalance while she was alive. What needs to be kept in mind is that she, for the most part, had a horrible childhood. She was constantly abandoned, shuffled back and forth between numerous foster homes and families, suffered an incident of sexual abuse, and lived her life in constant question of why she wasn’t wanted or loved. That’s more than enough to spark lifelong depression upon anyone.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

 (2) THE MOVIE: Gladys has another episode of being frightened that people are following her, and she starts closing the curtains and running about the house with worry. Grace attempts to restrain her on the sofa. Marilyn hurriedly shows Gladys a gift she got her to calm her down. Inside is a white nurse’s uniform and hat.  Gladys snatches it out of her hand and leaves the room to change into it, and Grace and Marilyn are relieved that Gladys is now preoccupied with the gift.

  > (2) REAL LIFE: This incident appears in the book The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, but lacks any substantiation. With the confusing chronology of the movie, it’s difficult to place the date the supposed event occurred, but if it is keeping time with being after Marilyn posed for Tom Kelley in 1949, then Gladys would be married to John Stewart Eley and living elsewhere in Los Angeles. Throughout June and July of that year, Marilyn was off in other states promoting her film Love Happy. In August through October, she was on location in Durango, Colorado filming A Ticket To Tomahawk.

(3) THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn arrives at the home of Natasha Lytess, played by Embeth Davidtz, who was suggested to her by Joe Schenck. Lytess looks Marilyn over, evaluating her and asking her questions. Marilyn stats that she is afraid of loneliness and that she just wants to be loved.

 > (3) REAL LIFE: This is all, for the most part, true. Only Marilyn met Lytess through Columbia. In 1948, Marilyn’s 20^th Century Fox screen test was sent to Columbia pictures for consideration for signing. One lady in the small group of people in the room viewing that test was Columbia’s drama coach at the time, Natasha Lytess. Lytess, herself, was unimpressed with Marilyn, but nevertheless agreed to work with her. Many people thought that by working with her, Lytess was wasting her time trying to teach this young starlet, but Marilyn paid for and attended her classes for several weeks, and improvements were quickly showing. She was signed to Colmbia Pictures in March of 1948 at $125 a week. She would work there for just six months, completing just one picture, before they dropped her.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Marilyn with Natasha Lytess, 1952.

 (4) THE MOVIE: Marilyn is at another party with Joseph Schenck. This is an important one because this is the party where Schenck introduces Marilyn to who would soon become one of the most important figures in her life and career: Johnny Hyde.

  

> (4) REAL LIFE: Johnny Hyde was one of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time. He was the vice president of the William Morris Agency and  he represented notable names such as Rita Hayworth and Bob Hope. Marilyn and Johnny first met in 1949, Marilyn in her early 20’s and Johnny in his 50’s. The two were introduced at a party at the Racquet Club in Palm Springs. Marilyn was there on a modeling assignment. Johnny convinced Lester Cowan to view her rushes from Love Happy. Shortly after, she was signed to the William Morris Agency. For the rest of his life, Johnny would beg Marilyn to marry him, so that she could inherit all of his money after he died; he had a fatal heart condition. Marilyn loved and respected him, and stayed loyal to him, but she refused to marry him. She would not marry someone she was not in love with just to receive money as an incentive.

Marilyn with Johnny Hyde.

(5) THE MOVIE: Susan Sarandon as Gladys is getting ready to leave Marilyn’s home, shortly after Marilyn informed her that she has landed a role in the upcoming star-studded Fox production All About Eve. Gladys explains that she is going to stay with Aunt Dora in Oregon for the time being.

> (5) REAL LIFE: If Marilyn had just received word she was to have a role in Eve, this would place this point in Secret Life the film taking place in March of 1950, when Marilyn first signed her contract to appear in Eve. She would work on Eve from the end of March to May 1950. Gladys’s whereabouts in 1950 aren’t really known, she was for the most part off by herself. According to Berniece Miracle, she stayed in Oregon late in 1946.

(6) THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn is seen at Natasha Lytess’s home rehearsing a part in All About Eve. She is visibly nervous and breathing heavy. She suddenly interrupts her reading in a panic. She is afraid that people are listening in on her. “They’re talking about me,” she yells. “You don’t hear that? I can’t do this while they’re out there!” Natasha pulls back the curtain and surveys the outside, trying to explain to Marilyn that there is no one out there. Marilyn then collapses into a ball of nerves in Natasha’s lap as Natasha tries to soothe her and comfort her.

> (6 )REAL LIFE: Marilyn often stayed at Natasha’s home to rehearse lines and attend private coaching. As we determined earlier, Marilyn was terrified of inheriting her mother’s mental illness. Gladys was schizophrenic. Marilyn was not. By no accounts from anyone who knew her personally did she ever “hear voices” or think people were “listening in on her.” Marilyn never displayed this type of behavior, which is constantly being mentioned in Taraborrelli’s The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe and is simply not accurate. So it’s safe to say that all of the dramatic and psychotic episodes that are portrayed in this film never happened, so I will be avoiding further detailed discussion about them, assuming you get the point.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(7) THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn is in the midst of filming a scene for All About Eve. Johnny Hyde appears on set to hand her an urgent note. The note reads that Gladys, although gone for a few weeks, never made it to Oregon. This immediately stresses Marilyn out, who becomes worried for her mother’s whereabouts. Johnny Hyde is surprised to find out that Gladys is alive, as he and the entire Hollywood world were under the impression that her mother had died a long time ago, and that Marilyn had grown up an orphan. Hyde promises to find Gladys, and hands Marilyn some pills to calm her down, which she reluctantly accepts.

> (7) REAL LIFE: As a rising starlet, Marilyn had always informed the press that she had been orphaned at a young age. This was done to protect Gladys’s privacy, only the truth came out eventually. Fortunately, she received much sympathy for this, rather than criticism for lying. In addition, it’s no secret that Marilyn was addicted to sleeping medication for much of her life. Had she been provided proper help, she might still be alive today. Johnny passed away from his heart condition in December of 1950. He was like a father figure to Marilyn, and she was devastated when he died. Natasha recalls an event in which she returned home one day to find Marilyn unconscious in her bed, after an apparent suicide attempt from sleeping pills. She had to be rushed to a nearby hospital to have her stomach pumped.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Marilyn with Johnny Hyde, 1949.

(8) THE MOVIE:  Johnny Hyde walks up to Marilyn during a promotional photo shoot, informing her that her mother’s new husband, John Stewart Eley, has a wife in Boise, Idaho, and that Gladys was not aware of it.

>  (8) REAL LIFE: John Stewart Eley and Gladys Baker wed in April of 1949. Eley was an electritian from Boise, Idaho. There is nothing to substantiate the story about Eley being married to a woman in Idaho at the time he was married to Gladys. According to his obituary from 1953, he only left behind his sister and Gladys. The wife story may have come directly from Gladys, who would likely have created it and worried about it as a result of her mental illness.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(9) THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn is seen rehearsing her big musical number, Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, for the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She soon receives a note from Zanuck stating that they have granted her request for a dressing room, but that they declined to increase her salary. “The picture’s called ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,’ and I’m the blonde! If this picture’s a hit, things are gonna change around here.”

>  (9) REAL LIFE: For the production of Blondes, Jane Russell was loaned out to Fox for $200,000. This was a much smaller amount than Marilyn was getting paid for. Marilyn’s contract at 20^th had her earning just $500 a week. She had equal star billing to Jane, so it’s understandable she would be upset and feeling like she deserved more money for an equally important performance. In her last interview from July 1962, she said: “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!’”

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(10) THE MOVIE: Marilyn is with her team getting ready to attend the Photoplay Awards. She is surprised when Gladys suddenly barges in the room and begins frantically closing the curtains.

> (10) REAL LIFE: Gladys stayed at Rockhaven sanitarium from 1953 to 1967. Before this, she was staying with the Bolenders, the first foster family that took care of Norma Jeane. In October of 1952, Grace McKee wrote Marilyn suggesting that Gladys be transferred to Rockhaven, which ultimately wouldn’t happen until February of the following year. Gladys was admitted there on the same day as the night of the Photoplay Awards (February 9, 1953), although some evidence suggests that may have been the day before, on the 8th. Whatever the case, Marilyn did not see her. The whole fiasco with Gladys at Marilyn’s house depicted in the movie never happened.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

(11) THE MOVIE: Kelli as Marilyn arrives at the Photoplay Awards looking exquisite in a replica of one of the most famous dresses in Marilyn history: the gold one used in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and designed by William Travilla. I didn’t notice this little detail until watching the movie this time around, but you can see Marilyn walk right past Giacomo Gianniotti, who plays Jim Dougherty, Marilyn’s first husband. He is a cop holding back the screaming fans. Next, while being interviewed, Kelli as Marilyn says “With the right pair of shoes, a girl can conquer the world!”

>  (11) REAL LIFE: Marilyn looked beautiful this night as she received the award for “Fastest Rising Star of 1952.” The part about Jimmy being a cop is true, but he was not there that night. The last time Jim Dougherty saw Marilyn, then Norma Jeane, was at the end of their marriage. Dougherty had joined the LAPD not long afterwards, and was in fact part of the security team controlling the crowds at the premiere of The Asphalt Jungle in 1950. That would have been the only opportunity for him to see her, only she did not attend. Lastly, the quote about giving a girl the right shoes is fake, a misquote. Didn’t come from Marilyn. It actually came from Bette Midler, and the original quote goes something like “Give a girl the correct footwear and she can conquer the world.” Didn’t know? Now you do!

Marilyn at the Photoplay Awards, 1953.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

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© 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 4/10

Episode 1 continued: Marilyn’s starlet years

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
Part 3

In the last post, we ended on Marilyn’s marriage to her first husband Jim Dougherty, as well as the beginning of her decorated modeling career. Now we are moving on to her years as an ambitious starlet in Hollywood.

At this point in the movie,we see Jim and Norma Jeane visiting Gladys at a mental institution.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

 Marilyn is asking about her father, whom she had never met and didn’t know much about. She is referring to Charles Stanley Gifford. Gifford is widely accepted among reputable researchers as Marilyn’s biological father, although no definitive proof has ever been produced. She resembles him a lot more than Edward Mortenson, the man listed as her father on her birth certificate. This was done to avoid being looked at as an illegitimate child. Gifford was known around town at the time to be sort of a player. In July of 1919, he married Lillian Prester until she left him due to his promiscuity in 1923. He was Gladys’s supervisor at Consolidated, where they soon began seeing each other. Gladys was then separated from Mortenson and with Gifford by the time she became pregnant. Gifford left shortly after learning this news, and denied any responsibility to the child. Edward Mortenson denied being her father in 1934, although by the time he died in 1981, he had accumulated several newspaper and magazine clippings of Marilyn Monroe.

Side by side comparison of Marilyn with Stanley Gifford

“I never called myself Mortenson at any time because Mr. Mortenson was not my father. He proved that to the satisfaction of the authorities, and for that reason, he had no financial responsibility for me.”  -Marilyn to Hedda Hopper in 1953

Kelli as Marilyn mentions that she “drove out to the desert to see him,” meaning her father. The only thing we really know about Marilyn’s contact with her father is that in February of 1943, she wrote to Grace McKee telling her of her plans to contact Gifford. Jim recalls a time when she attempted to call her father, but he hung up on her. Both Natasha Lytess and Sidney Skolsky claim that they did drive out to the desert to see him, and that he wouldn’t answer her. And finally, rumor has it that in 1960 he finally made the effort to get a hold of her over the phone, but she told him to talk to her attorney. We can’t be sure of very much, it’s possible she drove out there, it’s possible she attempted to phone him a few times in the early 40’s, but there is nothing to really substantiate all of this. It’s safe to say that in any event, Marilyn did not have any relationship with her father. There are also no accounts that suggest Gladys did not remember giving birth to her daughter. Gladys was very emotionally distant as a mother, she suffered the rest of her life with schizophrenia, but she always knew who her daughter was.

At this point in the movie, a shy but determined Kelli as Marilyn slowly walks into a makeup room where a man is working. She asks him if he can give her some tips. The man agrees to help her out, and gives her a full face of makeup, deciding which techniques would be best for her and educating her on the ways she can improve her makeup for film. This man is Allan ‘Whitey’ Snyder, who will become a life-long friend and confidante until Marilyn’s death. He will even have the emotionally brutal task of applying her makeup for her funeral, as requested by Marilyn herself in conversation once. Whitey first did Marilyn’s makeup for her very first screen test at 20^th Century Fox in 1945. He continued to work with her on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the Jack Benny Show, How To Marry A Millionaire, Niagara, River of No Return, There’s No Business Like Show Business, The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop, Some Like It Hot, Let’s Make Love, The Misfits, and Something’s Got To Give. He was even one of her casket pallbearers.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Marilyn with Whitey Snyder, 1953.

Now we see Kelli as Marilyn phoning and old acquaintance: photographer Tom Kelley. Not long before, Marilyn had a small collision with another car on Sunset Boulevard. She was on her way to an audition and thought she would never be able to make it, and couldn’t afford a taxi. Tom Kelley rushed over and they talked for a moment. He gave her his card as well as money for a cab. Now, Marilyn was phoning him granting his offer to pose nude. She didn’t have any money at this point, and she needed it to pay her rent at the Studio Club. She decided that she may as well go ahead and earn some money by posing for him, although throughout her modeling career she was against posing nude (although Andre de Dienes had asked her to many times, she politely turned him down). After all, she was an unknown actress, so no one would recognize her, right? And so in May of 1949, something legendary happened. Tom Kelley, with his wife Natalie present, snapped some of the most well-known photos in pop culture history: the famous red velvet nudes. Kelli Garner provides an absolutely beautiful recreation of this moment in history, with her hair and makeup done exactly as Norma Jeane’s in real life. Once the session was over, Marilyn was paid $50, and was on her way. The Baumgarth calendar company then bought Kelley’s photos for $500, which were then purchased by Hugh Hefner, who used them as his centerfold in his first issue of Playboy in 1953.

From "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe"

Marilyn Monroe, 1949.

At the end of this scene, Kelley recommends that Marilyn go to one of Joe Schenck’s parties. Joseph Schenck was one of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time. He was the head of production at 20^th Century Fox studios. He often threw parties at his home for celebrities in which lesser known starlets would attend to do specific jobs like, serving food or just being on display for the male guests and watching them play poker. In 1948, John Carroll, husband of Lucille Ryman, introduced Marilyn to a man named Pat de Cicco who was friends with Schenck. (Marilyn had rented out one of the Carrolls’ apartments, and they were financially helping her for a time). Pat was the one who suggested Marilyn go to one of Schenck’s parties. As a side note, Marilyn also met future confidante there, Louella Parsons.

Schenck, 76 at the time, took a liking to Marilyn. However, the film depicts an event entirely opposite from the way it went down in real life. In the movie, Schenck immediately falls in lust with Kelli as Marilyn, and convinces her to go to bed with him. Afterwards, Schenck, played by Peter MacNeill, is seen making an important phone call in which he lands Marilyn a role in the film “Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!” He offers Kelli as Marilyn cash for her services, but she politely declines, and is on her way. Here is what really happened: Taking de Cicco’s advice, Marilyn showed up at one of Schenck’s poker parties in 1948 as a young and unknown starlet. By this time, she had appeared in a few uncredited roles under her contract for 20^th, but they had chosen not to renew it, so she was dropped. Marilyn meets Schenck at this party, and he takes an immediate liking to her. The two become friends and she often visits him at his home for dinner. It was Schenck’s influence that got Harry Cohn to consider her for “Ladies of the Chorus” at Columbia studios. And here’s the most important part: they did not have a sexual relationship. Both firmly denied being involved other than just being good friends. I don’t think the mixed up chronology in the film was that intentional, it was probably just done that way to progress the movie more smoothly. To conclude, meeting Schenck and attending his party happened before Marilyn posed for Tom Kelley.

“Get this straight, Mr. Schenck and I were good friends. He gave me encouragement when I needed it. He didn’t do anything for me. He let Mr. Zanuck run the studio the way Mr. Zanuck wanted to run it. The only favor I ever asked him, Mr. Schenck, was later, when I was back at Twentieth I wanted a decent dressing room. I never asked him to help me get good parts at Twentieth, and he didn’t. He knew how I felt about it, that I wanted to succeed on my talent, not any other way, and he respected my feelings.”  -Marilyn Monroe, Empire News June 1954

“She used to come here quite often for dinner. I think she liked to eat. We have good food here. No, I never had any romantic thoughts about Marilyn and she never had any such thoughts about me.” –Joseph Schenck, Cavalier August 1961

Joe Schenck

Lastly, here in the film we see Kelli as Marilyn at the mental institution where her mother is being kept. This institution is supposed to represent Agnew, the place she was admitted to after an attempt to escape from Norwalk. In the scene, Marilyn is signing for her to be released, which is a little confusing since if they are corresponding it with the year Marilyn posed for Tom Kelly, it would be 1949, By this time in real life, Gladys had been released from Agnew a few years before and was living with her new husband, John Stewart Eley, in Los Angeles.

Right: Marilyn's mother Gladys

Thank you for taking the time to read all this, hope you learned something out of it! Stay tuned for the next post, which will be wrapping up the first episode of “Secret Life.”

© 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 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.