11
MARILYN’S CAREER TAKES OFF
Remember when I told you about my being back at Fox and nothing was happening for me? Well, one day Roy Croft in the publicity department got a bright idea. He was going to build me up as a pinup, a sex queen. That really did the trick. Editors around the world began publishing my pinup pictures.
The studio began receiving thousands of letters from fans wanting to know who Marilyn Monroe was and wanting a picture of me. The studio said I was receiving more mail for photo requests than their biggest star, Betty Grable. Mr. Zanuck wanted to know just what was going on.
I remember when the studio gave a party for visiting exhibitors. They kept asking me what picture I was going to appear in. I told them they would have to ask Mr. Zanuck. Even Mr. Spyros Skouras, who was the president of Twentieth Century-Fox, asked me the same question. Everyone wanted to know what my next picture was going to be. Can you imagine how the other studio executives felt when Mr. Skouras said, “The exhibitors and the public like her, so what picture is she in?”
My contract was soon to expire. The next day the studio entered into negotiations with my agency on a new contract for me. The new contract was for seven years— starting date May 11, 1951, at a salary of five hundred dollars a week, with semiannual raises of two hundred fifty dollars a week additional until the full amount of the contract. I was now twenty-five years old. Then orders were issued by Mr. Zanuck to all producers to find a part for me in their films.
You see, it was my fans who wanted me, who made me a star. The studio was finally doing something about it because of the pressure that came from the public. The signal was given, and I began to appear in one film after another. They put me into a film called As Young as You Feel, with Monty Woolley. Then came Love Nest, with June Haver. In this film I played [a member of] the Womens Army Corps. Then there was Let’s Make It Legal, with Claudette Colbert and Macdonald Carey. Wow, I was
GEORGE BARRIS: When Marilyn married Joe DiMaggio, she was in love not only with him, but with his large and loving family, too. She probably found in them, as in the families of other friends and lovers, a replacement for the whole family she had so needed as a young girl. She became especially fond of Joe’s son, Joe Jr., and she kept in touch with him even after her divorce from his father. Later on, she remained in contact with Arthur Miller’s son and daughter after she and their father had called it quits, and she kept up a friendly relationship with Miller’s father as well.
Marilyn’s storybook marriage to the American sports icon Joe DiMaggio was doomed from the start; her career demanded that she remain in the public eye; he was through with all that, never liked it much in the first place, and considered
kept busy—I could hardly catch my breath. It was exciting. I was now appearing on the screen regularly.
Then when Mr. Zanuck said, “Miss Monroe is the most exciting new personality in Hollywood in a long time,” I tried that much harder to live up to his and my fans’ confidence in me. I worked day and night, now more so, to prove that I wanted to be a serious dramatic actress—even though some of the roles I was put in you could hardly believe it at the time.
But I tried very hard at my profession of acting. It was always very important to me not to let my public down. I have an obligation to them. They are the ones who gave me the opportunity, and they still are the people that can make an actress a star.
A few weeks before my marriage to Joe DiMaggio, I was put on suspension by [Fox] for refusing to make a film called The Girl in Pink Tights. It was a remake of an old Betty Grablefilm. Frank Sinatra was to star with me in it, but I thought the studio could find a more suitable story for me than a remake.
But then when [Joe and I] were married, the studio as a wedding present took me
himself well out of the limelight. He wanted to settle down and make a home. Although Marilyn, too, was basically a private person (she liked more than anything to stay at home and read a book or listen to her favorite Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra recordings), her career was going into overdrive, and there were more and more invitations and appearances that she couldn’t afford to turn down if she wanted her fortunes to continue to rise.
A friend of mine, the excellent photographer and producer Sam Shaw, came up with the inspired suggestion for the skirtblowing scene in The Seven Year Itch, a scene that Marilyn has “credited” with being the final cause of the breakup of her marriage to the jealous Joe D. But if Marilyn had wanted to preserve her marriage, she would have had to give up the stardom she had
off suspension and that following summer started another film for me: There’s No Business Like Show Business.
We rented a lovely cottage in Beverly Hills and settled down to married life. Everything went fine for a while, until Joe started complaining about my working all the time. He even would find little things to upset him after a while. It got so that we didn’t even talk to each other for days. I began living in one part of the house and Joe the other. It was now too much to take. When I did the film The Seven Year Itch, he said my dress-flying scene, my exposing my legs and thighs, even my crotch—that was the last straw.
It was always very important to me not to let my public down.
worked so hard to gain, just when she had finally and fully claimed it.
When I asked questions about her three marriages, Marilyn gave me polite but terse answers. There had been too many bad elements in her relationships with Dougherty, DiMaggio, and playwright Arthur Miller, and these were too intimate to be part of our discussions. She had loved them as best she could, but she had probably never been in love with any of them. She did mention to me some of her memories of the good times, and she was always respectful in talking of the men in her life whom she had married when she was too young, too confused, and too lonely to undertake such a lasting commitment.
