Interesting facts
The love (The White Venus)
Marilyn was initiative, persistent and pushful in love matters, treated the conquest of men as military action, loved difficulties in love and could even give up love affair in case she could subdue the man too easily. Not every man was able to withstand such temperament. Thus, even at the beginning of the film career, Marilyn turned attention to Fred Karger, a serious, bespectacled intellectual, who was in charge of the musical part of "Columbia Pictures". She fell in love with him so passionately that the poor considered her to be crazy and fled. Marilyn’s passion often turned into the obsession. This property was clearly manifested in her most scandalous love affair with John F. Kennedy. On the eve of John’s 45th anniversary, when the relationship of the actress and the president has already gone to pieces, Marilyn with great difficulty managed to bribe an employee of the White House to give her birthday gift: a gold watch "Rolex" engraved "To John with love from Marilyn" with the desperate inscription on the box "Let me love or let me die". Shocked by such frankness, Kennedy asked the employee to throw the clock away and to destroy the box.
The asceticism (The White Moon)
Monroe could make do with a little during the difficult years of life. Indeed, at the very beginning of her career in Hollywood she literally starved and could get along with a piece of bread per day, which seems quite natural because of lack of money. But the same thing happened in the years of her glory. For example, at the day of her death she ate only a bowl of salad and drank a glass of orange juice. It was the whole dinner of one of the richest women of America. She never felt any attachment to things. Her friends were surprised that she bought quite modest house for a movie star. When she died it appeared that there was a very small sum of money on her bank account. She was able to earn a lot of money, as well as to spend them at a fantastic rate. The strive for the luxury life was not her peculiarity. The wealth was combined with the asceticism and abstinence. She slept and ate very little, but her energy was only added. At the same time, the students of Strasberg’s Actors Studio said that it was impossible to point at something with a finger - the next day the thing appeared at their homes. Marilyn really loved to make presents.
The credulity (The White Mercury)
The biographer Donald Spoto believed that the real tragedy was Marilyn’s compliance to other people's opinions, that she yielded to persuasion of not honest people "to make her happy" (but in fact they wanted "to shake the money tree", as her third husband Arthur Miller and her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson did). Such man was her photographer Milton Greene. It was he who helped Monroe to escape from the shackles of the studio "XX Century Fox" and create her own production company, although like most people who were close to the star, Milton was only a good spender of actress’s money. At first she did not notice it, calling Green her best friend, but after a while Marilyn realized that he was "a freeloader" and removed him from the circle of her friends.
Occupation: the sex symbol (The Black Mars)
It is known that that there are the pioneers and revolutionaries in history, whose fate is usually sad. Monroe anticipated the sexual revolution of the '60s by focusing the attention on the first word of the definition "the sex symbol". There were more beautiful and talented stars then Marilyn in Hollywood during its heyday, but any cinema buff in any country of the world will call the name of Marilyn Monroe as the embodiment of the American dream.
One of the operators recalled that when he saw Monroe for the first time in the dressing room, he was just surprised that such a simpleton was invited to appear in a movie. She played the scene somehow strange – betwixt and between. When he and the director were running through the movie in the editing room, he was blown away - it was impossible to take the eyes of her! It was real magic. The explanation for this phenomenon has not been found until now. Not trying to penetrate deeper, the filmmakers simply call her "a woman who had a love affair with the camera".
"I started my career as a sluttish blonde, and the same way I will finish it" (The White Saturn)
The way from a cheap model to Hollywood actress, from Norma to Marilyn appeared to be short, and it went, of course, through the bed of Hollywood bosses. Later, the actress said that during the 50’s in Hollywood there was no much difference between the singers, actresses and prostitutes, all of them carried their point the same way. Her contract was halfpenny - one hundred and twenty dollars a week and she had to get acquainted intimately with the founder of the "XX Century Fox", the elderly and infirm Joe Schenck and Harry Cohen from "Columbia Pictures". According to her words, he just ordered the girls to go to bed. There was anything unusual in that - the same thing happened with the hosts of other actresses, noticed in several films but and gone to ancient history. But Marilyn Monroe was a miracle, she was wildly popular.
In Marilyn’s biography there was a lot of pain, privations, suffering and humiliation, but despite of all the bad things that happened to her in life, she remained herself, she was smiling sincerely to the whole world, she rejoiced, was sad, worried, crying, seducing, surprising and did not forget to laugh at herself, sometimes quite ruthlessly.
The dreams (The Black Sun)
No matter how strange it sounds regarding Marilyn Monroe, her goal was to achieve a stable, safe and secure existence. The great actress wanted to be a housewife from a certain period of life, she gladly began to do the housework, even dug the beds in the garden. In addition, Marilyn endlessly repeated how important it was for her to have her home, family and children. Such aspirations coincide badly with the hectic way of life, which, although was necessary for the career, but, apparently, went against the grain. No wonder that in one of her poems actress wrote: "Life, you're always pushing me in different directions, but I still can resist while you push me".
The outlook, interests, abilities (The Black Jupiter)
Marilyn learned and read a lot. She was very inquisitive. The dreamer and visionary, easily assimilating new ideas and impressions, she had literary skills, wrote diaries and poems. She was seriously interested in psychology, philosophy and religion. She learned foreign languages easily. When Marilyn was a child, her aunt gave her the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of a religious sect "Christian Science". This teaching was very helpful in times of trouble. Later, when she married Arthur Miller, she fully accepted his religious Jew beliefs.
Life gave the actress a lot of opportunities for the development and self-realization in many artistic fields. It is known that Marilyn sang, painted and was gifted with literary taste (the works of Freud, Stanislavsky, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were among her favorite books).
