‘Marilyn in Manhattan’ gives readers a look at Monroe’s yearlong love affair with New York

‘Marilyn in Manhattan’ gives readers a look at Monroe’s yearlong love affair with New York

Marilyn Monroe was done with life as a ditz.

Late in 1954, Hollywood’s hottest new star pulled a dark wig over her famed flaxen locks, renamed herself Zelda — and fled from the past.

The not-so-dumb blonde forged a secret alliance with Look photographer Milton Greene to seize power from her studio, 20th Century Fox, and its tyrannical head, Daryl Zanuck.

The two formed a production company, and the star of “How To Marry a Millionaire” spent the next year living in Manhattan.

Her 1955 stay in the city became little more than a pretentious footnote in the tragic Monroe saga. Zanuck, and everyone else, sneered when she revealed her ambition was to play Grushenka in Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.”

But in a new book, “Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy,” respected biographer Elizabeth Winder reveals months of triumph as Monroe conquered both her fears and city’s elite.

Monroe initially bolted for the picture-perfect Connecticut farmhouse shared by Greene, wife Amy and baby son Josh. Amy handled the impossible duty of convincing Marilyn not to order clothes one size too small.

One night, Marilyn returned the favor to Amy with the perfect gift. Frank Sinatra was incensed when a table appeared mid-song before the Copacabana stage as he performed.

But Sinatra saw it was Marilyn and all was good. Amy tagged along to the afterparty at the 21 Club — and later shared a nightcap at Marlene Dietrich’s apartment.

Monroe soon made her next big move. For the first time she was going to live alone, albeit in a shabby suite at the Gladstone Hotel, at 52nd and Lexington Ave., near Greene’s photo studio.

Everyone noted how intense the relationship was between the two. Greene and Monroe shared a brief affair in Hollywood, but now their passion was for her future.

At the Gladstone, Monroe was taken up by the waifish Southern writer Carson McCullers, whose fearsome literary talent (“The Member of the Wedding”) was offset by her ferocious alcoholism.

Monroe started to hang with the literati. She became friendly with Tennessee Williams, but Truman Capote was a true buddy. They’d take long walks, get silly, and have pillow fights, but she refused to listen to his sordid gossip about top-tier Manhattan socialites.

He insisted Babe Paley, the beauty who ruled the social scene, was convinced her powerful husband, William, the head of CBS, was sleeping with Marilyn.

But Monroe wanted giggles, not sordid asides.

McCullers introduced Monroe to the woman who would make Monroe’s New York dreams come true, powerful theater producer Cheryl Crawford.

There was no reason for the hard-bitten Crawford to take the blond bombshell seated across from her at dinner seriously — but she did.

Crawford was a founder of the Actors Studio, and the next morning she slipped Monroe in through the back door on West 46th St.

Marlon Brando, Jack Lord, Kim Stanley and Anne Jackson were already inside, immersed in their dark lord Lee Strasberg’s exhortations on The Method, an internalized style of acting despised in Hollywood.

Strasberg was almost unseemly in his eagerness to take Monroe under his wing, agreeing to coach her three nights a week in his Central Park West apartment until she worked up the courage to show her face onstage at the Studio.

Brando, still immersed in his white T-shirt and leather jacket phase, smoldered on their evenings out on the town. But he was also someone she could call in the wee hours to work through a difficult scene.

Monroe was now a New York insider, making the scene at Broadway premieres, attending events with the diamond-bedazzled Gloria Vanderbilt, having a laugh with the guys at the 21 Club, or kicking off her shoes to samba at El Morocco deep into the night.

The city was in love with her. The folks at 20th Century Fox were not.

The studio plotted revenge against their runaway star. Sheree North, an “ersatz Monroe” according to a columnist, was cast in two pictures rejected by Marilyn. The headlines were huge.

Monroe was not intimidated. She was contractually barred from making paid appearances, so Greene had her slow-ride an elephant around the ring in Madison Square Garden for a Ringling Bros. charity gala.

Her outfit was more cleavage than costume, the fishnet stockings were pure sex. The crowd went wild and the pictures went worldwide.

When Monroe finally steeled herself to take classes at the Studio, her fellow students — including Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Ben Gazzara, and Ellen Burstyn — were less than eager to welcome Strasberg’s celebrity pet.

“She saw her classmates as colleagues — they saw her as a vampy pinup girl,” Winder writes.

Marilyn, dressed down in men’s crewneck sweaters and no makeup, tackled the work. Strasberg drew her even closer, making her part of his family with the approval of his wife Paula.

On nights when Monroe slept over, their son Johnny resentfully surrendered his room. “He was the only boy in America not happy to have Marilyn Monroe sleeping in his bed,” his teen sister Susie later joked.

Susie and Monroe bonded almost as girlfriends. One night the pair practiced positions from a dusty copy of the Kama Sutra they found on the shelf. Monroe was the male.

Boy, this is a switch,” she said.

Monroe soon upgraded to a three-room Waldorf-Astoria suite. She was blossoming and seemed to finally believe in herself, scribbling encouraging notes on the creamy hotel stationary. One read, “Not a scared little girl anymore.”

Then along came Arthur Miller, again.

In 1951, the 36-year-old writer first met Monroe in Hollywood. Their encounter of a few days was intense, but Miller had a wife and three children in Brooklyn Heights.

This time he wasn’t in such a hurry to get home. Amy Greene failed to see exactly what Monroe did in the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright.

“I have never been so bored with a human being in my life,” Amy said later.

But Miller became Monroe’s new guide to life. Through him she discovered Brooklyn, announcing it was her “favorite place in the world.”

In June, “The Seven Year Itch,” the last movie Monroe made before bolting Hollywood, premiered. Her white skirt billowed upwards over the subway grate and Monroe was the biggest star in the world.

It took a long summer for things to fall into place, and Monroe was once again digging deep into her stash of pills.

Then Miller’s wife finally threw him out, and Fox offered Monroe an $8 million payday. She was to play Cherie, the broken-down “chanteuse,” as she called herself, with Hollywood dreams in “Bus Stop,” a prestige project by playwright William Inge.

On Dec. 31, 1955, Monroe signed a new contract with Fox giving her approval over directors. Los Angeles loomed in her future.

Her final landmark New York moment came just before she headed west. Monroe made her debut as Anna Christie onstage at the Actors Studio.

“She achieved greatness in that scene,” Ellen Burstyn said later. “It was some of the best work they’d ever seen at the Studio, and certainly the best interpretation of ‘Anna Christie’ anyone ever saw.”

“Bus Stop” was another triumph, the reviews glorious. On July 1, 1956, Monroe returned to New York to marry Miller. In the moments before the ceremony, she begged Milton and Amy Greene to tell her if she was making a mistake.

“Oh what the hell,” Monroe finally decided. “We can’t disappoint the guests.”

But Miller always resented Greene’s influence over Monroe. After the disastrous “The Prince and the Showgirl” shoot, where Laurence Olivier raged at Marilyn throughout, Miller got his way and Greene departed.

At the final meeting, a phalanx of lawyers stood by to protect Monroe’s interests. But Greene only asked for half of his $100,000 initial investment.

“Take more,” Monroe whispered to him across the table.

“No,” Greene said firmly. “Let me be the one in your life to never take more.”

With that, Monroe was free to face her future. Soon enough, she was a scared little girl once more.

“Marilyn in Manhattan” is on sale March 14.

Article by New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/marilyn-manhattan-monroe-new-york-love-affair-article-1.2982232

Marilyn Monroe’s beauty secrets: The most surprising tips from Hollywood’s ultimate icon

Marilyn Monroe’s beauty secrets: The most surprising tips from Hollywood’s ultimate icon

Everyone has a preferred beauty routine, whether it’s on the simpler side (say, lip balm and mascara) or a full-on ritual that rivals the likes of Kim Kardashian. Of course, the queen of #IDidNotWakeUpLikeThis was the ultimate blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe.

The star’s beauty routine was rumoured to be three hours long, which explains why her make up artist Allan ‘Whitey’ Snyder was one of her closest friends. Monroe not only spent hours on her appearance, but she employed some seriously bizarre beauty hacks. For instance, she used to shock her system with ice baths to keep her skin tight and firm (hello, cryotherapy!) and wash her face four to five times a day out of fear of breakouts. This obsessive cleansing obviously caused extremely dry skin, so she would slather on coats of olive oil, Vaseline and Nivea face cream (the latter contributing to her famous glowing white skin). She was also known to sew marbles into her bra to ensure a permanent hard-nipple effect.

  

Marilyn also used Erno Laszlo products to keep her skin smooth. It helped her be camrea ready after a night of late parties.

When asked what she wore to bed, Marilyn famously replied 'Chanel No 5 of course.' She even spiked her bath with a few drops.

Marilyn liked to use 5 different shades to perfect that infamous pout. She would layer lighter and darker shades to give her lips a lush full look. Her favourite lipstick was produced by Max Factor although she did love Estee Lauder's lipsticks too.

Marilyn liked to high light her eyes to get the flirty/bedroom eye look Monroe literally called it the "Greta Garbo eye". Highlight the whole of your eye with a light shade and use a taupe

For quick, everyday slashes of eyeliner, most women are either brown or black pencil kinds of girls. But Snyder used a combination of both on Monroe, using Elizabeth Arden's classic eye pencils in both hues. He applied liner to her upper lids and waterlines, extending the lash lines with wings to elongate.But his most important trick? Sketching out a small white triangle on the outer corner of the eye, in between the top and lower liner wings, to make her eyes look bigger and wider. Additionally, he drew white on the waterlines and put a dot if red liner in the inner corner to make her eyes look even whiter.

  

Marilyn wanted her lashes longer and more voluminous with help from fringy falsies, but with natural-looking results. Therefore, Snyder would cut her false eyelash strips in half and apply them only to the outer corners of her eyes.

Would Marilyn Monroe’s Career (And Life) Have Been Different If She Had Acted on Stage?

 Epoch Times Would Marilyn Monroe’s Career (And Life) 

Have Been Different If She Had Acted on Stage?

By Tien Nguyen,

On their first evening together, four years before they married, Arthur Miller encouraged Marilyn Monroe to pursue a career on the stage. It was something she never forgot.


In all that has been written about her, surprisingly little has been devoted to Monroe’s acting prowess or her attraction to the stage. But, as with all sliding doors scenarios, it is tempting to consider what might have been if Miller’s suggestion had become reality.


Monroe’s career began in the era of Broadway’s Golden Age. In 1949, Carol Channing became an instant star when she played Lorelei on stage in Gentleman Prefer Blondes. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, meanwhile, made stars out of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy and director Elia Kazan.


Miller became a household name when Death of a Salesman – directed by Kazan – was performed over 750 times in New York. Many of Monroe’s films were adaptations of stage plays: besides Gentleman Prefer Blondes, there was Bus Stop, The Prince and I, the Seven Year Itch, Clash by Night and How to Marry a Millionaire.












After Miller’s suggestion, Monroe began to research how best to hone her craft. The place she eventually went to, encouraged by Kazan, was the Actors Studio New York. As billboards advertising the Seven Year Itch were plastered to buildings nearby, Monroe sat at the back of the class, where she listened and learned.Lee Strasberg, who became a pivotal influence in Monroe’s life, was convinced she had the qualities to become a serious stage actor. Delivering a eulogy, after she died in 1962, he claimed,


The luminous quality she had on the screen was oddly enough not reduced, but enlarged in life. Usually, it is the other way around.


But it wasn’t just the Strasbergs, who had so much to gain from their friendship with Monroe, who praised her ability. Fellow students at the studio were often surprised at her talent.


Actor Ellen Burstyn was present when Monroe performed a scene from the play Anna Christie by Eugene O’Neill. She later said,


Everybody who saw that says that it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did, it was some of the best work ever seen at Studio, and certainly the best interpretation of Anna Christie anybody ever saw. She achieved real greatness in that scene.


Kim Stanley and Montgomery Clift (Monroe’s future co-star in The Misfits) were equally impressed. Later, Monroe would perform scenes from Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Actors Studio that so impressed Truman Capote he lobbied hard for her to play the role of Holly Golightly in the film version. To his fury, Audrey Hepburn got the part.


Joshua Logan, who directed both the film and stage version of Bus Stop, suspected Monroe was inherently a stage actress, no matter how much she loved the camera.
Affective Memory Technique


But could Marilyn Monroe, with all her associated troubles, have successfully transitioned to the stage? Certainly she was being trained for it. The Strasbergs’ employed Affective Memory Technique – using past experience to make a character’s action more real.


Students were required to find a parallel event that conveyed similar emotions to the ones the scene was asking for. In Monroe’s case, psychoanalysis was recommended to help her tap into and deal with difficult childhood memories. This drawn out Method approach is more conducive to a theatre production (which it was originally designed for) than a busy film set. The intimacy of the method, the focus on self, appealed to Monroe and she threw herself into it.


Monroe would persist with the Method approach throughout her acting career, despite the disapproval of many of her co-stars. At her insistence, Method acting coach Paula Strasberg accompanied her to film sets to help with preparation before scenes.


This habit infuriated film directors and caused much controversy. However, in the theatre world, it is likely that others would have respected Paula both for her training and the Strasberg name.


Monroe had exceedingly high expectations placed upon her in most of her films – she was the acknowledged star and the success or failure often fell on her shoulders. Whole production companies banked on her name. This pressure would test any actor, no matter how experienced.


Much is made of Monroe’s drug addiction and famous lack of punctuality (few consider the similar behaviour of her co-stars and directors). But with the smaller budgets and longer rehearsal time of the theatre productions, she may have been less prone to the crippling anxiety attacks she increasingly suffered from.


Other stars of the era who managed the transition from “sex bomb film star” to stage actor had a very different trajectory to Monroe. Elizabeth Taylor, Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell, Monroe’s co-star in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, all grew tired of films that focused mainly on their figures and made the switch to stage.


Marilyn Monroe never did perform in a formal theatre production. She died on August 5, 1962, from probable suicide (an empty bottle of Nembutal sleeping pills was by her bed), although the cause is still disputed.


But if Monroe had acted in the theatre, how different her life might have been.


Certainly, Joyce Carol Oates believes that the stage could have been a kind of salvation for the troubled star. She wrote in 2012:


My belief about Marilyn Monroe is that if she had only resisted returning to Hollywood, to make such an egregious movie as Let’s Make Love, but had remained in NYC in association with the Actors Studio, she might well have had a stage career as a serious mature actress; she might even be alive today.


A small role to begin with, an off Broadway theatre with her Studio classmates, a lengthy rehearsal schedule – it might just have garnered Monroe the respect she craved.





Margaret Hickey, Lecturer in Academic Communication, La Trobe University


This article was previously published on The Conversation.

EXCLUSIVE: Never-before-seen pictures of secretly pregnant Marilyn Monroe, who confided to her close friend that her Let's Make Love co-star Yves Montand was the baby's father - not husband Arthur Miller

1. Marilyn Monroe's friend Frieda Hull kept the color pictures she took of Marilyn's baby bump private but were sold as part of Frieda's estate last year
2. The pictures were taken in July, 1960 in New York City; Marilyn was 34 years old
3. Marilyn and married French actor Yves Montand began working together on Let's Make Love in February of that year and their affair began soon after
4. The images were the prized possession of Hull, who worked for Pan Am and became close to the star while part of a group of fans known as the Monroe Six
5. Frieda dubbed the pictures ‘the pregnant slides’ – a reference to a shocking secret the screen siren kept right up until her death
6. Tony Michaels, a friend and neighbor of Frieda's, bought the images at the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ Marilyn Memorabilia Auction held by Julien’s Auctions in LA
7. Michaels was told by Frieda that Marilyn lost the baby. ' It was never made clear whether that was by way of a miscarriage or even an abortion'

Extraordinary photographs purporting to show a secret pregnancy of film icon Marilyn Monroe can today be revealed for the first time.
The world exclusive images of the beautiful Some Like It Hot actress and model were sold as original color slides at an auction in Hollywood in November last year from the estate of well known Monroe confidante Frieda Hull.
But the stunning photos went under the radar, selling for a mere $2,240 with wealthy collectors not aware of their true significance.
Now DailyMail.com can reveal the six unique images were the prized possession of Monroe's loyal friend Hull, which she dubbed the ‘pregnant slides’ – a reference to a shocking secret the screen siren kept right up until her death.
The shots were taken on July 8, 1960, outside Fox Studios in New York after Monroe had completed costume and hair tests for her film The Misfits, starring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift .

Six photos of legendary film icon Marilyn Monroe taken by her friend Frieda Hull on July 8, 1960, outside Fox Studios in New York

The images clearly show a prominent bump from Monroe’s belly which Hull claimed was evidence the star was in the early stages of pregnancy.

And DailyMail.com can reveal the would-be father was not Monroe's then husband, playwright Arthur Miller, it was in fact Italian-French actor Yves Montand – who she met on the set of film Let's Make Love and who she had a very public affair with.

DailyMail.com spoke to Tony Michaels, the man who bought the color slides at the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ Marilyn Memorabilia Auction held by Julien’s Auctions in LA.

Tony, 56, was a close friend and next door neighbor of Frieda Hull before she passed.

He reveals that Hull had confided in him about Monroe’s secret pregnancy and claims the ‘pregnant slides’ are genuine evidence that she was with child.

And in an extraordinary and tragic Hollywood tale Tony says Monroe kept her pregnancy a secret from the world before 'losing' the baby during a hospital visit.

Tony told DailyMail.com: ‘Frieda was very proud of those slides and she was very proud to keep them a secret until the day she died.

‘But she told me the story behind them, that Marilyn got pregnant by Yves Montand.

‘It wasn’t a guess or a presumption, it was something she knew for sure, she was very close to Marilyn.

‘As far as she was concerned Marilyn was pregnant in the summer of 1960 and the slides prove it.’

Monroe had wanted a baby more than anything in the world, but that joy was denied her.

She had three miscarriages prior to losing this baby, all of which played out in the public eye. The star suffered with a condition called endometriosis her entire life that caused severe menstrual pain and she also struggled to conceive.

‘I suggested she sell the slides and all her other memorabilia so she could afford a better place to live, but again she refused, she said she would never sell out on her friend of ten years Marilyn.’

At Julien’s three day auction the Frieda Hull estate had 187 lots on sale.

Rare items from the archive included unseen color photos of Monroe as she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ for President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962 as well as Frieda’s original ticket and program to the gala event; never-before-seen slides of Monroe on location as she filmed the now famous subway skirt-blowing scene for The Seven Year Itch and a large collection of many unpublished photos of Marilyn at the 1955 premiere of East of Eden.

In total, according to Julien’s, ‘The Frieda Hull Marilyn Monroe Photo Archive’ included over 550 color and black and white candid snapshots and photographs, over 150 color slides, nearly 750 movie stills, publicity photos and lobby cards, and personal home movies.

Even the camera Frieda had used to take the 'pregnant slides' as well as dozens of other photos of Marilyn - a Mercury II, model CX 35mm - went up for sale selling for a bid of $3,437.50.

Tony said: 'It was amazing stuff, Frieda had 14 Marilyn autographs, some went as high as $14,000.'

The provenance for all the lots – which sold for $433,000 - was simply that they came as part of the Frieda Hull estate.

Tony recalls: ‘Frieda had even gotten permission from Marilyn to get a couple of locks of hair from her hairdresser.

‘I’m not talking much, just small lots of hair, together the two locks of hair went for $72,700.

‘She also had a red scarf that Marilyn had given her in there.

‘But out of all the lots her prized possession was the six ‘pregnant slides’ as she called them.

'She talked about these to me all the time, they were very important to her.'

Julien's auctioneers decided not to mention the pregnancy claims when selling the slides.

As a result the slides went relatively unnoticed and Tony felt it his duty to snap them up, paying just $2,240 - a bargain given the back story now emerging.

Of course, the astonishing claims which will send Marilyn Monroe historians into a flap, cannot be proven - both Marilyn and Yves Montand are long dead.

But Tony's compelling account of what Frieda had confided in him is difficult to ignore.

And today he wants to tell Frieda’s story and how his long time friend was infatuated with Marilyn Monroe.

Speaking from his home in Las Vegas, the high stakes casino croupier told DailyMail.com: ‘I met Frieda over the wall in my back yard around 20 years ago around 1996, she was a neighbor and I introduced myself, she introduced herself and I invited her over for a prize fight.

‘I had ordered a pay for view fight that night and she had mentioned she was a fan of boxing and she came over with a bottle of Jack Daniels and drank me under the table.

‘She became my drinking partner and we became pretty good friends, she came to all the kid’s Little League games, if they had events, she went to all of them.

‘She became my kid’s surrogate grandmother because she had no family of her own.’

Frieda was never married and had no children so she ‘adopted’ many of the neighborhood children, including Tony’s two young boys Anthony and Andrew.

She was preceded in death by her brother, Thomas Hull; and her aunt, Elizabeth Hagen, but had no obvious heir when she died.

Tony said: ‘My family became very close to her. Frieda didn’t drive so we would take her grocery shopping or to her doctor’s appointments.

‘She was very generous, we’d go out to eat and she’d never let us pay for it, she liked to do a little gambling and loved sports, she was a die-hard fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Mets.

‘She was set in her ways and was never going to change her opinion about anything, She was a brutally honest person.


‘She was very warm hearted, especially to the under dog whether it was children or animals.

‘She loved Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, but she had an infatuation with Marilyn Monroe.’

Frieda is widely known to have been one of the ‘Monroe Six’ – a group of six friends based in New York City who followed the star all over America to take her photo.

As an employee of Pan Am Airlines Frieda was in the enviable position of being able to photograph Monroe on a regular basis.

The group learned of the screen siren's whereabouts by reading movie magazines and asking her hairdresser and would wait outside her hotel or home.

Tony said: ‘Frieda started out as a fan, almost like a stalker, her and five friends.

‘Then after a while Marilyn would recognize the kids and she came over and asked their names and they started a friendship.

‘When she would come in to town, for lack of a better word, they would kidnap her, put a scarf on her head and put sunglasses on her and they would go out and do things that Marilyn couldn’t do because she was too famous.

'They called her "Mazzi". It was a code name they had for her, so no one else would know who they were talking about.

‘She got to be a kid with the Monroe Six, they would go roller skating in Central Park or bike riding, just hang out.’

Eventually Monroe came to know each member of the group very well, even inviting them to the Roxbury, Connecticut home she shared with then husband Arthur Miller for a picnic.

Tony added: ‘To show you how gruff Frieda could be at times, the story went that Marilyn came over and took a potato chip off her plate and Frieda snapped and put her in her place, “don’t you ever do that, I don’t care who you are, or who you think you are, that’s rude, don’t do that”. From then on they were pretty close friends.

‘Every time we would get together, especially if we were drinking, I’d get to hear all the stories from Frieda.

‘Marilyn gave her a red scarf at one point and she worked for Pan Am so any time Marilyn came in to town Frieda would run out on to the tarmac and start taking pictures.

‘I told Frieda, you know you have all this stuff why don’t you sell it, you can get a better place.

‘But she said, “no I would never, I couldn’t capitalize on Marilyn’s death she was my friend”.

Tony lost contact with Frieda after he divorced his wife and moved out of the marital home, but he says his ex-wife and two sons kept in close contact with her.

The best friend of Tony’s sons, a man named Chris who asked for his last name to be left out of this article, was also close to Frieda and helped her in her dying months.

‘Chris visited her in the hospice and took care of her house, he did a great job of helping her put and Frieda was very thankful,’ said Tony.

As a result Chris was made the executor of the estate and took up Tony on his offer to help catalogue all her Marilyn Monroe memorabilia.

‘My kids were in the will as was my ex-wife, I was not. Frieda and I kind of had a falling out.

‘But I was still fond of her and her death was terribly sad.

'I helped catalogue Frieda’s Marilyn Monroe collection because over the years she had shown me most of it, I knew what to look for in her mountain of belongings.

'The first thing on my list was "The pregnant slides".

'She always called them that, she told me the father of the unborn child was Yves Montand, she told me the story of how Arthur got called away and Yves Montand's wife got called away and they stayed together in a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow and they had an affair.'

Indeed the affair between Monroe and Montand has been widely discussed over the years



Monroe and playwright husband Arthur Miller were staying in a luxury bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, while the golden couple of French cinema, Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand were next door.

Monroe and Montand were starring in the George Cukor movie, Let's Make Love at the time.

Miller and Monroe's unhappy marriage made it easy for the star to stray.



Signoret famously said of Monroe: 'If Marilyn is in love with my husband it proves she has good taste, for I am in love with him too.'

Production on Let's Make Love, a movie starring Monroe and Montand, began in February 1960.

Soon after shooting got underway, their respective partners Miller and Signoret were called away from Los Angeles, leaving Monroe and Montand alone in Miller's Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow.

On March 8, 1960 Monroe received the Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Actress for Some Like It Hot.

Could this be the night of conception? She would have been exactly four months pregnant in Hull's July 8, 'pregnant slides'.

In May, 1960 Miller found out about the affair and was very upset - his marriage to Monroe began to crumble.

By August that year they weren't speaking and Monroe moved out of a shared room with Miller at the Mapes Hotel in Reno.

In later years Montand admitted to the affair. 'I was crazy about my wife, but what can you do?' Montand recalled with a very French shrug.

Monroe died two years after Let's Make Love, at age 36.



Tony says he has meticulously researched the time period when Frieda claimed Monroe was pregnant and claims photographs taken at the time show the development of the child between two of her movies.

'Let's Make Love, you can see towards the end that she could be pregnant and she went right in to the The Misfits, Arthur Miller's play that he wrote for her,' he says.

'Then right at the end of The Misfits there's no sign of a pregnancy.'

Tony says that Frieda believed that when Marilyn went to hospital for ten days during the filming of The Misfits, it wasn't for acute exhaustion as was claimed at the time, it was for a nervous breakdown and possibly a miscarriage.

'She just told me Marilyn was pregnant in those photos and I believed her. I don't think she'd tell me that on a hunch, she knew.

'Frieda believed that it wasn't exhaustion that landed her in hospital, she said it was a nervous breakdown and she lost her baby.

'And all she told me was that Marilyn has lost the baby, it was never made clear whether that was by way of a miscarriage or even an abortion, and I never thought to press her on it.'

Tony says he bought the photos because he knew their history as 'The pregnant slides', while no one else did.

'Now I think that the story needs to be told,' he added.

Tony says he kicks himself that he didn't quiz Frieda more on her time with Marilyn.

She would often share gems of information and fascinating stories with him, more often than not when they shared a drink together.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4157738/Never-seen-pictures-pregnant-Marilyn-Monroe.html#ixzz4YmnLiFum
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Marilyn Monroe’s Mausoleum Marker Up For Auction

 

image from www.findagrave.com

Marilyn Monroe fans have always sought out her final resting place at the mausoleum in Westwood Village’s Memorial Park Cemetery. You can see the bronze marker with her name nestled into the wall.

However, that marker isn’t the first one. It’s in fact the third. The second one was replaced in the 1980s, after it became worn down because so many fans come by and touch it.

Now, that marker from the 1980s is up for auction, although it’s safe to say the starting bid of $10,000 is probably a little more than the average fan can afford.

According to Heritage Auctions, this marker will probably sell for far more than a marker from the 1970s, which went for $212,500 in 2015.

Online bidding will begins this month and the live auction is slated for March 18.

http://bit.ly/2lrmZEb

http://westsidetoday.com/2017/02/07/marilyn-monroes-mausoleum-marker-up-for-auction/

Marilyn's tragic plea to Judy Garland: Actress begged her fellow star to be her confidante because she was one of the few people who understood what it was like to be so famousMarilyn Monroe looked up to Judy Garland as a kindred spirit and begged her to be her confidanteMiss Monroe once followed her around a party telling her 'I'm scared'The pair's relationship is revealed in the memoir of Miss Garland's third husband, Sid Luft, ‘Judy and I’, which is out in March

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4170168/Marilyn-s-tragic-plea-Judy-Garland.html#ixzz4Y0F1ewrP
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Marilyn Monroe begged Judy Garland to become her confidante because she was one of the few people who understood the pressures of being so famous.

Miss Monroe saw Miss Garland, the Wizard of Oz star who battled drink and drug addiction, as a kindred spirit and once followed her around a party to tell her: ‘I’m scared!’

In desperation Miss Monroe said: ‘If we could just talk, I know you’d understand’.

Miss Garland did not believe Miss Monroe who died of an overdose in 1962, had wanted to hurt herself and thought she had been ‘deserted by her friends’ and had too many pills around her.

The relationship between the two women was revealed in the memoir of Miss Garland’s third husband Sid Luft, ‘Judy and I’, which is out in March.

According to extracts in People magazine, Miss Garland spoke about it in an article for Ladies Home Journal, a US magazine, in 1967 that is reprinted in the memoir.

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‘I had to leave for England and I never saw that sweet, dear girl again. I wish I had been able to talk to her the night she died’.

That final meeting happened at a party where Miss Garland said that Miss Monroe followed her from ‘room to room’.

Miss Monroe said: ‘I don’t want to get too far away from you. I’m scared!’

Miss Garland said: ‘We’re all scared. I’m scared, too!’

Miss Monroe said: ‘If we could just talk, I know you’d understand’.

Miss Garland replied: ‘Maybe I would. If you’re scared, call me and come on over. We’ll talk about it’- but they never did.

Looking back at Miss Monroe’s plight Miss Garland wrote: ‘You shouldn’t be told you’re completely irresponsible and be left alone with too much medication.

‘It’s too easy to forget. You take a couple of sleeping pills and you wake up in 20 minutes and forget you’ve taken them. So you take a couple more, and the next thing you know you’ve taken too many’.

According to Mr Luft, Miss Monroe’s death in 1962 was ‘especially troubling to Judy since Marilyn had been one of Judy’s telephone pals during her years of insomnia’.

In the book he tells he Miss Monroe used to come and visit him and Miss Garland and their two young children where she sat by the fire saying very little.

He said that their visitor looked ‘sweet and very unhappy’ and talked about one of her husbands, whom she was separated from, being nice but clueless about how to make love to a woman.

Miss Garland’s warnings about Miss Monroe did little to alter her own fate, which was eerily similar as she died of an accidental overdose in 1969 at the age of 47.

Miss Garland had been married five times, seen a psychiatrist from the age of 18 and had three children including a daughter, Liza Minnelli.