Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters (19 page)

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 and integrity

15 – I am at ease with people I trust or admire or like the rest I’m not at ease with.

16 – At the present time I’m reading Capt. Newman M.D. and To Kill a Mockingbird—in times of crisis I do not turn to a book—I try to think and to use my understanding

17 – I love poetry and poets

18 – I constantly try to clarify and redefine my goals

Notes:

Captain Newman, M.D.
is a novel by Leo Rosten (no relation to Norman), published in 1961, based on the experiences of Ralph Greenson when he was a military officer at Yuma (Arizona) during the Second World War.
To Kill a Mockingbird
, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Harper Lee, was published in 1960.

In
Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words
, the photographer George Barris describes the conversation he had with her on August 3, 1962, the day before her death, when she told him she was reading these two books.

19 – my sleep depends on my state of satisfaction and that varies with my life—my dreams are too intimate to be revealed in public.

My nightmare is the H Bomb. What’s yours?

20 – (1) I have great feeling for all the persecuted ones in the world

(2) But I must have always refrained from
discussing
answering personal religious questions.

21 – I hope at some future time to be able to make a glowing report about the wonders that psychoanalysis can achieve. The time is not ripe.

22 – Early lack of sufficient training and experience as of yet until now

23 – I would not wish to slight all the actresses who would be left off such a list and therefore refrain from answering

24 – The lack of any consistent love and caring. A mistrust and fear of the world was the result. There were no benefits except what it could teach me about the basic needs of the young, the sick, and the weak.

25 – I can’t answer at this time

26 –
yes
and I would underline it

27 – in spades!

SOME BOOKS FROM MARILYN MONROE’S PERSONAL LIBRARY

Marilyn Monroe’s library demonstrates her range of interests. Besides classics such as John Milton, Gustave Flaubert, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, and Khalil Gibran, she read widely from contemporary authors such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, and Jack Kerouac.

The proceeds from the sale of Marilyn’s books were donated by Anna Strasberg to the charity Literacy Partners. This was a logical choice, given Marilyn’s love of books and reading, as well as Lee Strasberg’s lifelong dedication to education.

THE FAVORITE PHOTO

Among Marilyn Monroe’s personal belongings were dozens of prints of this portrait taken by Cecil Beaton on February 22, 1956, in New York. She confessed it had always been her favorite, and she often included an autographed copy when she wrote back to her fans.

Joshua Logan, the director of
Bus Stop
, gave Marilyn the photograph in an engraved triptych, flanked by two handwritten pages by Cecil Beaton recalling this shoot. Beaton saw her as a very paradoxical figure, a siren and tightrope-walker, femme fatale and naive child, the last incarnation of an eighteenth-century face in a portrait by Greuze living in the very contemporary world of nylons, sodas, jukeboxes, and drive-ins.

What really struck Cecil Beaton was Marilyn’s ability to keep transforming herself, to give the photographer a thousand variations of herself, without inhibition but with a real uncertainty and vulnerability—even though her incandescent beauty gave her the paradoxical freedom not to fuss over her clothes and her hair.

This photograph is just such an improvisation. Marilyn pulled this carnation from a bouquet to put in her mouth like a cigarette, only later lying on a sofa to place the flower on her breast in a gesture of protection and gift.

“She has rocketed from obscurity to become our post-war sex symbol, the pin-up girl of an age,” Beaton wrote. “And whatever press agentry or manufactured illusion may have lit the fuse, it is her own weird genius that has sustained her flight. Transfigured by the garish marvel of Technicolor cinemascope, she walks like an undulating basilisk, scorching everything in her path but the rosemary bushes.” He concluded, “Perhaps she was born just the post-war day we had need of her. Certainly she has no knowledge of the past. Like Giraudoux’s Ondine, she is only fifteen years old, and she will never die.”

Ambassador Hotel, New York, 1956