Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

MARILYN MONROE Continued from page 62 body.” This was Marilyn’s wish at the end of her life as it had been from the beginning, when she was plain Norma Jean (“The Human Bean.” as her playmates called her), a thin, gangling, rejected, scared child with a nervous stutter. “I used to dream,” she later wrote, “I was standing up in church without any clothes on. and all the people there were lying at my feet on the floor of the church and 1 walked naked with a sense of freedom over their prostrate forms, being careful not to step on anyone.” A dream of nakedness, a dream of freedom. She was six when she first had this vision of escape and of power and. as she explained years later to writer Maurice Zolotow, “My impulses to appear naked had no shame or sense of sin in them. I think I wanted people to see me naked because I was ashamed of the clothes I wore. Naked. I was like other girls and not someone in an orphan’s uniform.” To be pretty, to be admired and desired. to he like other girls, to be loved and not ashamed: this was Norma Jean's dream. In life, as in her dream, it was to be her body — clothed, partly clothed and unclothed — that was to bring her closer to happiness and yet. at the same time, keep her further from fulfillment. Her first sweater When she was twelve — as she later recalled— “I was going to Emerson Junior High and one of the girls in my class made fun of a dress I was wearing. I don't know why kids do things like that, it really hurts. Well. I ran home crying.” But the next day she was back at school in a borrowed white sweater (a size too small for her) and with make-up on her face for the first time. “My arrival in school, with painted lips and darkened brows, in the white sweater, started everybody buzzing. When I walked into the room, the boys started moaning and groaning and throwing themselves on the floor.” The lure of her body got her lots of dates (“The boys knew better than get fresh with me. The most they ever got was a good-night kiss”), and a husband when she was sixteen. Right after her wedding, she and the groom went to a night club to celebrate. When she returned to their table after joining other patrons and the entertainers in a hipswinging conga line, her husband. Jim Dougherty, snapped, “You made a monkey out of yourself.” Four years later they divorced. Dougherty, recalling the period she spent with him when he was a physical education instructor at the Catalina Island U.S. Merchant Marine base, says bitterly, “She knew she had a beautiful body, and she knew men liked it. She didn’t mind showing a little bit of it.” Norma Jean got a job in a war plant. but even her drab work clothes weren’t able to hide the body beneath. “Putting a girl in overalls is like having her work in tights, particulary if a girl knows how to wear overalls,” she said. Army photographer David Conover came to the plant to shoot morale-boosting shots of pretty defense-workers, which were to be distributed to GI newspapers, and happened upon Norma Jean. He took pictures of her. and the lab man who developed the prints said enthusiastically to Conover. “Who’s your model, for goodness sakes?” Army men all over the world, when they saw the finished photos in Yank , Stars and Stripes and camp newspapers, shouted. “Wow!” So Norma Jean became a model, mainly for “girly” magazines; and her body (sometimes they printed her face, too) was featured on the cover of five such publications in one month alone in 1946. A Hollywood studio bead, thumbing through a stack of such magazines, kept seeing her picture. That’s how' Norma Jean was called for her first screen test. As a starlet, during the years between 1946 and 1951. she made sure that she showed her body whenever and wherever she could. It was all she had. really. Her name. Marilyn Monroe, was not her own; her hair, died platinum despite her objections. was a color she despised; her face, changed and rearranged by every trick and device known to the beautician, belonged to Marilyn Monroe, not Norma Jean: her talent — well, as the studio people kept saying, it was “potential”; and her intelligence and sensitivity — the man she was in love with then. Freddy Karger (now married to Jane Wyman), told her, “Your mind isn’t developed. Compared to your body, it’s embryonic.” If her body was all she really had. then she’d really use it. Not sexually to advance her career. Biographer Zolotow quotes one producer — and says he represents all the be-nice-to-me-and-I-can-helpyou men who chased Marilyn during this period and never caught her — as saying. “Marilyn never slept with a man who could do her any good.” But she’d use it professionally to advance her career. To make it enticing, inviting, exciting, she exercised forty minutes at the start of each day. To develop her breasts and “keep them good and firm,” she’d end her exercise period by rotating dumbells extended above her head. She’d cleanse and perfume and pamper her body — even if that meant being late for a dinner date at eight o’clock. “Eight o’clock will come and go and I will remain in the tub,” Marilyn once wrote. “I keep pouring perfumes into the water and letting the water run out and refilling the tub with fresh water. I forget about eight o’clock and my dinner date. “Sometimes I know the truth of what I’m doing. It isn’t Marilyn Monroe in the tub but Norma Jean. I’m giving Norma Jean a treat. “After I get out of the tub I spend a long time rubbing creams into my skin. I love to do this. Sometimes another hour will pass, happily. When I finally start putting my clothes on, I move as slowly as I can. . . “Cheese-cake” art to advance her career. “The yummiest ‘cheese-cake’ pictures I ever snapped,” said one photographer Send for This FREE Style Book SAVE MONEY on the latest style dresses, coats, Sizes 38 to 60, all designed to help you look slimmer. Striped Shirtwaist Dress ot Drip-Dry Cotton. Little or no ironing. Concealed front zipper to below waist. Button-trimmed notched collar. Only $4.98. Others S2.9S to S29.98. Coats S12.98 up. Also suits, sportswear, hats, underwear, shoes and hose— all at Low Prices. Mail coupon for your FREE Style Book. jane $3rHan* DEPT. 23 INDIANAPOLIS 7, INDIANA Please mail me FREE Style Book for Stout Women. (23) Address Post Office Zone State s-63 DANCING SHOES— COSTUMES Toe $5.95, Ballet $3.29. 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