Swing (Feb-Dec 1952)

THE CREAM OF CROSBY 4^7 narrow, her eyebrows shoot up, and the whole vastly publicized body moves around a little bit. I suppose that would be the definition of a lot of other smiles, but Marilyn does it more expertly than anyone else. Watching her I remembered what Joseph Cotton told me just after he'd finished a picture with her : "Everything that girl does is sexy. She can't even light a cigarette without being sexy. A lot of people — the ones who haven't met Marilyn — will tell you it's all just publicity. That's malarkey. They've tried to give the same publicity build-up to a hundred girls out here. None of them took. This girl's really got it." I thought I'd better test Mr. Cotten's cigarette theory and I offered her one. She's only recently learned to smoke, having been required to do it in "Don't Bother to Knock." She does it as if she had been at it for years and after watching her for a while, I decided the Gotten theory was sound, very sound. "I haven't heard anything but the kindest things about you since I've been here," I said. "Oh, you are very nice to say so. But I know what they say, the women. I get letters from the women. 'What are you trying to do,' they say, 'put the country in a worse state than it is in.' Now it's my fault — the state the country's in. They accuse me of starting all the rapes. Rapes went on long before I came." This girl, I thought, is a very interesting bundle of neuroses. "Crank letters," I said. "Everyone gets them. What the hell do you care what a few cranks say? You're the hottest thing in pictures. You've got the country at your feet. Why worry about a few cranks?" But she does worry. Some of the Hollywood hatchet girls — and the place abounds in them — have given her the full treatment at parties. This has cut deep. And the critics, who have had a field day with her acting, have wounded her to the marrow. "They are so cruel, the critics. Sometimes I think they just take out their frustrations on other people." She speaks in a low throaty murmur, the sound coming from far back in her throat. Both her inflections and the structure of her sentences are more European than American, which is odd because Marilyn has lived in Los Angeles all her life. "My wardrobe mistress says that, too. She is a Hungarian and she is my closest friend. She says I am more like a European girl because I enjoy being a woman." She thought a moment, the lips moving a little. The face is never quite still. "I don't know where I picked it up. I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, you know, and I used to play with a lot of little Mexican boys. Perhaps there." "When did it start, the sex appeal?" I was beginning to use the same sentence structure, the delayed object. "I think I was about twelve when things changed — radically. The boys didn't have cars. They had bicycles. They'd come by the house and whistle or they'd honk their little horns. Some of them had paper routes. I'd always get a free paper." Marilyn's childhood is shrouded in contradictions. She says she was moved from household to household, that she saw her parents but rarely. This has been disputed and it's hard to know what is true. But it wasn't a happy childhood. "Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to be a movie star. I loved the movies. When I was a little girl, it seemed like the only time I was alive was when I was at the movies. The movies were much more real to me than my life." Well, she'd got there, all right. How was it, being a star? "Well — it's exciting. The first time I saw my name in lights, I just stopped the car and stared at it for twenty minutes. I thought this is some kind of ultimate. But, of course, you never quite get everything, do you? I want to be a great stage actress. No, honestly, I do." But then there were the unkind critics. One critic, in particular, said all she could do was "wiggle my fanny," the unkindest cut of all. "I know what I'm doing," she said fiercely. "I know I can act. I can play Gretchen in 'Faust" or Therese in 'Cradle Song.' I know I can." She probably can, too, and will. She's come a long way. Somehow, I never bothered her to ask what, if anything, she wore under her dress.