Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe Read Free Book Online Page B

misunderstandings that had led to her being placed in isolation. We can imagine her distress as she faced the guardians of normalcy whom she felt were ready to condemn her irrevocably. We are almost surprised at the moderate tone she used when discussing Dr. Kris’s involvement, and the sense of perspective she had when recalling a scene in Don’t Bother to Knock (directed by Roy Baker in 1952) that inspired her rebellion against the commitment and her (sham) suicide threat. We can find, too, in this poignant letter, the characteristic way Marilyn would suddenly change the subject to something positive in order to put her fears to one side: here her reconciliation with Joe DiMaggio, which had happened at Christmas.
     

     
     

     
    Note: May Reis was Marilyn’s personal assistant from the mid-1950s onward.

     

     

     

     

     

     
     

     
    Marilyn with Edith Sitwell, London, 1956
Marilyn with Carl Sandburg, Los Angeles, 1961
     
     

     

 
     

WRITTEN ANSWERS TO AN INTERVIEW
     

    1962
     
    Whereas Marilyn often established bonds of trust and complicity with photographers, she was much more on her guard with journalists. That was why she prepared for interviews and often insisted on seeing the questions beforehand. That was obviously the case here, where we can read short draft answers she wrote to about thirty questions (the first few are missing) to give herself a lead. She invoked the master-pupil aspect of her relationship with Arthur Miller, and her difficulty in being a member of a group. No wonder that among the people she admired we find Eleanor Roosevelt (who was to die soon after Marilyn in November 1962), who was famous for her early feminism and opposition to racism, and who headed the U.N. commission to draw up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No less surprising was Marilyn’s support for the Kennedy brothers, for their strength and youth and idealism. She also looked up to Carl Sandburg for his poetry, so sympathetic to the common man, as well as Greta Garbo, the other myth. A horrified vision of the H-bomb, support for all manner of persecuted people, a considered defense of psychoanalysis: the glamorous blonde was certainly no reactionary. From her reference to Payne Whitney (where she had been confined for five days in February 1961) and from the books that the photographer George Barris, one of the last to shoot her, states she was reading a few days before her death, we may judge that these notes were written in 1962.

     
    6 – although this may be true in my estimation of a formal education al is never a basic cause for a material problem—it is the emotional back ground which matters
     
     
    7 – (1) there was a pupil teacher relationship at the beginning of the marriage and when (2) I learned a great deal from it—a good marriage is a very delicate balance of many forces (3) but there was much more to the marriage than that
     
     
    10 – experiences with any group of people is [illegible] one has to discriminate the different members of a group. I never been very good at being a member of any group—more than a group of two that is.
     
     
    11 – Payne Whitney gives me a pain
    It was often obviously an error of judgment to place me in Payne Whit. and the doctor who recommended it realized it and tried to rectify it. What the my condition warranted was the rest and care I got at Presbyterian Hospital

     
    12 – the love of my work I love and a few reliable human beings the hope for my future growth & development.
     
     
    13 – I have a strong sense of self of criticism but I believe I’m becoming more reasonable and tolerant realistic in this regard
     
     
    14 – Eleanor Roosevelt—her devotion to mankind
    Carl Sandburg—his poems are songs of the people by the people and for people Pres. and Robert Kennedy—they symbolize the youth of America—in its vigor its brilliance and its compassion
    Greta Garbo—for her artistic creativity and her personal courage