The Mistress of Camelot

O, Time,
Be kind.
Help this weary being
To forget what is sad to remember.
Lose my loneliness,
Ease my mind
While you eat my flesh.

—Marilyn Monroe

AUTHOR’S MEMO: Consistent with the trend in modern biography, this book deals with reconstructed quotes, which are presented as told to me by various sources at the time. Word-for-word conversations were reported “as remembered,” which means that the exact wording of dialogues may not be correct, but the points being made, as well as the action taking place, have been honored and replicated.

Any memoir or biography of Marilyn Monroe always invites a host of attacks, many of them so violent in expression that the attacker in some cases has ended up paying damages to the author either in court or as part of out-of-court settlements. Many of these at acks are senseless and without reason. Others, of course, are valid, but too often intemperate.

Let’s look at it this way: It is truly amazing that a luminous movie star of the 1950s can still shine her light into 2012 and beyond. The world has moved on, and Hollywood is no longer that place she set out to conquer at the end of World War II. Yet her memory lingers to enchant each new generation.

It seems that everyone who ever met Marilyn left with a very different opinion of her, and many of those who met her are staunchly commit-ted to defending that opinion, even if misguided. This book brings together not one, but a wide sampling of points of view about Marilyn. If those being quoted did not “know” Marilyn as well as they thought they did, they should be forgiven, as Marilyn probably did not know herself.

I’m grateful to those who shared their experiences of Marilyn with me, for, in spite of the differences in their respective points of view, a portrait of this fabled star nonetheless emerges.

Imagine it is the year 2012: Marilyn is eighty-four years old, with remaining traces of her former beauty. Beside her sits her twenty-four-year-old boyfriend, her latest conquest. With champagne, still her favorite drink, they’re watching the latest Monroe-inspired movie, TV series, or documentary.

After the telecast, the young man asks, “Marilyn, is that what really happened? I mean, did you really go to bed with President Kennedy?”

She giggles as she reaches over to kiss him. “Something like that, sweetie, something like that. Memory fades as time goes by. But what a hell of a story from an orphan who nobody wanted.”