My Story (2 page)

The casual pose pictured on
page 82
was part of a series of pictures Milton and Marilyn did on the back lot of Twentieth Century Fox during the filming of
Bus Stop
scenes that did not include Marilyn's character. Taken in the morning light, this beautiful image reminds us of the woman rather than the actress.

In 1956, before leaving for London to begin filming on
Prince and the Showgirl
, the three principles got together in Milton's studio to take some much needed publicity photos to announce the beginning of production for the film. On
page 125
you see Marilyn seated between producer/director and leading man Sir Lawrence Olivier and writer Terrence Rattigan. Another picture of “The Prince” and “The Showgirl” appear on
page 96
.

The candid on
page 88
is a sultry image of Marilyn, taken on the set of
Prince and the Showgirl. Bus Stop
and
Prince and the Showgirl
were both produced by Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP). MMP was the first production company where a woman was principle and had controlling interest. Marilyn had 51 percent and my father 49 percent. Though the shooting for
Prince
was much more tense and complicated than
Bus Stop
, the lighting, costumes, and the way Marilyn looked on the screen was beautiful. Other images from the film appear on
pages 12
,
99
,
102
,
132
,
142
,
145
, and
177
.

While Marilyn was living in my family's house in Weston, Connecticut, my father had a wonderful daylight studio that he converted from a barn. The picture on
page 137
with the red sweater stretched over her knees and the pictures on
pages 6
and
139
wearing a tennis sweater were both done in that natural light environment.

After the announcement of MMP, Edward R. Murrow contacted my father to discuss doing one of his Sunday evening live “Person to Person” broadcasts. Marilyn, Milton, and Murrow met in a penthouse suite at the Hotel Pierre. This candid photograph on
page 146
was one of a few taken while the trio met.

In those days, television transmission had to be done by line of sight. It took men two weeks to build a 200-foot antenna in the backyard to prepare for the broadcast. This was state-of-the-art technology of the day, and it allowed Murrow to have a live feed in his studio at Rockefeller Center and the subjects to have a live feed seeing Murrow talk to them over a TV. Now go out and rent
Good Night and Good Luck
. It will give you a more profound understanding of how important Murrow was to the broadcast community.

The pictures on
pages 110
and
184
are very important to the collection because they are from the last official sitting Milton and Marilyn had together. The setting included brown velvet, a bank of tungsten lights, an extremely sheer red dress, a big fan, and multiple bottles of champagne. The net result: only 36 exposures and the rest is history.

On
page 114
is another picture of Marilyn on the back lots of Twentieth. This time she is wearing a gypsy fortune-teller costume taken from wardrobe. They shot in two different locations—one captured her on a staircase and the other in a storefront window for a palm reader. As you can see, they were always having fun.

The delightful image on
page 151
was taken in 1954 when Marilyn first came to New York under Milton's umbrella. With Marilyn in an outrageous, tight turquoise
pantsuit, Milton shot 2-1/4 with his Roloflex and 8×10 with the Derdorf. This image was restored from an 8x10 transparency.

The “Graduation” picture, as it became known, which appears on
page 162
, was actually a hair test done at Sydney Guillaroff's home in Los Angeles. Milton played with white sheer fabric to offset Marilyn's hair. Once Milton found the neckline using the fabric, it was the precursor to the actual costume created for Marilyn's role in
Prince and the Showgirl
. Milton never showed Marilyn these pictures until after he printed one up where he cropped in on her face. He gave it to her to make up for the graduation picture she never received.

After Marilyn wed Arthur Miller in 1956, the newlyweds took a brief few days off before Marilyn went to L.A. to start filming
Bus Stop
. Milton took the candid on
page 171
when he went to have a production meeting with his partner at Miller's home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Those of us who knew Marilyn remember that she wasn't a clothes horse. She usually borrowed clothes from designers or from the wardrobe department. But one of the few items she always owned and carried with her was a white terry-cloth robe. The candid on
page 172
captures a happy moment.

We've been told that the stringed instrument cradled by Marilyn on
page 182
was a mandolin. Now with the many fans who review our collection on the Internet, we've received corrections that it's a balalaika. If you know otherwise, feel free to contact us. This image was done in 1953 as part of the first sitting for
Look
magazine. Again note the simplicity of the props that never detract from the expression captured in the moment.

Before I sign off, I'd like to share with you that the company I started in 1993 is a labor of love. In the early days it took as many as sixty hours to digitally restore one image. Now, with the newest technology, it takes only fifteen hours. I started the Archives to work on Milton's images, but we are committed to saving any kind of
photography from disappearing off the face of the earth. Located in Florence, Oregon, we are a small but intimate staff made up of Paula “Sonni” Strenke and Shawn and James Penrod, and we are able to operate globally thanks to the Internet. We beta test the newest hardware and software for today's companies as well as give workshops and attend tradeshows. There are really only a few of us who do digital imaging and large-format, fine art printing, and I'm very proud to be part of the family. In the digital realm, we share our knowledge and experience with each other in order to expand our capabilities. It is a mindset that has always inspired artists, and maybe if we keep expanding we'll eventually have an effect on the mindset of our politicians.

Lastly I need to thank Stephen Weingrad, my brother Anthony, my mom Amy, and of course my father Milton, whose work lives on through such efforts as this project.

Enjoy the book and write to us at
[email protected]

All the best,

Joshua Greene

President

The Archives LLC

 

 

my

story

 

 

I thought the people I lived with were my parents. I called them mama and dad. The woman said to me one day, “Don't call me mama. You're old enough to know better. I'm not related to you in any way. You just board here. Your mama's coming to see you tomorrow. You can call her mama if you want to.”

I said, thank you. I didn't ask her about the man I called dad. He was a letter carrier. I used to sit on the edge of the bathtub in the morning and watch him shave and ask him questions—which way was east or south, or how many people there were in the world. He was the only one who had ever answered any questions I asked.

The people I had thought were my parents had children of their own. They weren't mean. They were just poor. They didn't have much to give anybody, even their own children. And there was nothing left over for me. I was seven, but I did my share of the work. I washed floors and dishes and ran errands.

My mother called for me the next day. She was a pretty woman who never smiled. I'd seen her often before, but I hadn't known quite who she was.

When I said, “Hello mama,” this time, she stared at me. She had never kissed me or held me in her arms or hardly spoken to me. I didn't know anything about her
then, but a few years later I learned a number of things. When I think of her now my heart hurts me twice as much as it used to when I was a little girl. It hurts me for both of us.

My mother was married at fifteen. She had two children (before me) and worked in a movie studio as a film cutter. One day she came home earlier than usual and found her young husband making love to another woman. There was a big row, and her husband banged out of the flat.

While my mother was crying over the collapse of her marriage, he sneaked back one day and kidnapped her two babies. My mother spent all her savings trying to get her children back. She hunted them for a long time. Finally she traced them to Kentucky and hitchhiked to where they were.

She was broke and with hardly any strength left when she saw her children again. They were living in a fine house. Their father was married again and well off.

She met with him but didn't ask him for anything, not even to kiss the children she had been hunting for so long. But like the mother in the movie
Stella Dallas
, she went away and left them to enjoy a happier life than she could give them.

I think it was something besides being poor that made my mother leave like that. When she saw her two children laughing and playing in a fine house among happy people she must have remembered how different it had been for her as a child. Her father had been taken away to die in a mental hospital in Patton, and her grandmother had also been taken off to the mental hospital in Norwalk to die there screaming and crazy. And her brother had killed himself. And there were other family ghosts.

So my mother came back to Hollywood without her two children and went to work as a film cutter again. I wasn't born yet.

The day my mother called for me at the letter carrier's house and took me to her rooms for a visit was the first happy day in my life that I remember.

I had visited my mother before. Being sick and unable to take care of me and keep a job, too, she paid the letter carrier five dollars a week to give me a home. Every once in a while she brought me to her rooms for a visit.

I used to be frightened when I visited her and spent most of my time in the closet of her bedroom hiding among her clothes. She seldom spoke to me except to say, “Don't make so much noise, Norma.” She would say this even when I was lying
in bed at night and turning the pages of a book. Even the sound of a page turning made her nervous.

There was one object in my mother's rooms that always fascinated me. It was a photograph on the wall. There were no other pictures on the walls, just this one framed photograph.

Whenever I visited my mother I would stand looking at this photograph and hold my breath for fear she would order me to stop looking. I had found out that people always ordered me to stop doing anything I like to do.

This time my mother caught me staring at the photograph but didn't scold me. Instead she lifted me up in a chair so I could see it better.

“That's your father,” she said.

I felt so excited I almost fell off the chair. It felt so good to have a father, to be able to look at his picture and know I belonged to him. And what a wonderful photograph it was. He wore a slouch hat a little gaily on the side. There was a lively smile in his eyes, and he had a thin mustache like Clark Gable. I felt very warm toward the picture.

My mother said, “He was killed in an auto accident in New York City.”

I believed everything people told me in that time, but I didn't believe this. I didn't believe he was run over and dead. I asked my mother what his name was. She wouldn't answer, but went into the bedroom and locked herself in.

Years later I found out what his name was, and many other things about him—how he used to live in the same apartment building where my mother lived, how they fell in love, and how he walked off and left her while I was getting born—without ever seeing me.

The strange thing was that everything I heard about him made me feel warmer toward him. The night I met his picture I dreamed of it when I fell asleep. And I dreamed of it a thousand times afterward.

That was my first happy time, finding my father's picture. And every time I remembered how he smiled and how his hat was tipped I felt warm and not alone. When I started a sort of scrapbook a year later the first picture I put in it was a photograph of Clark Gable because he looked like my father—especially the way he wore his hat and mustache.

And I used to make up daydreams, not about Mr. Gable, but about my father. When I'd be walking home from school in the rain and feeling bad I'd pretend my father was waiting for me, and that he would scold me for not having worn my rubbers. I didn't own any rubbers. Nor was the place I walked to any kind of a home. It was a place where I worked as a sort of child servant, washing dishes, clothes, floors, running errands and keeping quiet.

But in a daydream you jump over facts as easily as a cat jumps over a fence. My father would be waiting for me, I daydreamed, and I would come into the house smiling from ear to ear.