February 28, 11:38 p.m.: Marilyn writes a love letter to DiMaggio, who has departed for work in New York City: I want someday for you to be proud of me as a person and as your wife and as the mother o...
February 26: Picture Week features a smiling Marilyn in black-and-white, dressed casually in a loose blouse, resting the right side of her face on her hands and her upper body on her elbows. A Glimpse...
February 26: Grace McKee Goddard files papers to become Norma Jeane’s legal guardian.
February 26: At the French Film Institute in New York City, Marilyn receives the Crystal Star as Best Foreign Actress for her performance in The Prince and the Showgirl. At the party afterward, she is...
February 25: With Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Marilyn attends a reception for Princess Antonia De Braganza of Portugal at the home of Mexican actor Dennis Bourke. Some reports say she cancels at the l...
February 25: Mr. and Mrs. Rupe write to Marilyn about their son’s reaction to her Korean trip. They quote his letter to them: When she appeared on the stage, there was just a sort of gasp from the aud...
February 25: Marilyn returns to Hollywood to star in Bus Stop. Hundreds of reporters meet her at the airport, and she conducts a press conference. She is photographed in a dark business suit, wearing...
February 19: Marilyn visits Joe DiMaggio in Fort Lauderdale.
February 18: Marilyn stays home without notifying the studio. When she doesn’t answer his knock at her residence, Montand slips a note under her door: Don’t leave me to work for hours on end on a scen...
February 17: With Maureen Stapleton, Marilyn performs a scene from Anna Christie at the Actors Studio to a round of applause, but she doubts she has given a good performance. Afterwards she suffers fr...
February 17: Andre de Dienes publishes a color photograph of Norma Jeane on the cover of Parade. He shoots her from her left side. She is wearing a green sweater and yellow-gold slacks in a strongly d...
February 11: Actress Edith Evanson visits Marilyn’s Brentwood home to work on the Swedish accent Marilyn is to use for her disguise as a maid in Something’s Got to Give, an identity Marilyn’s characte...
By 1950, Brennan was settling into a schedule that saw him making three films a year, giving him more time on his ranch and with a new business he started in Joseph, a 487-seat movie theater that open...
Brennan’s contribution to The Wedding Night (March 8, 1935), starring Gary Cooper and Anna Sten—the Russian beauty Samuel Goldwyn was promoting as the next European import to rival Greta Garbo and Mar...
Brennan made everything he did look easy, but occasionally he revealed how much labor went into his roles. In Red River, for example, he walks with a slight stoop after the film flashes forward fiftee...
Biographers are often made to feel like supplicants. But Michael’s first phone call was a wooing,
Before dinner we had our usual round of Scotch, chips, and olives. [MF] I think it’s better with the olives, don’t you? [CR] Good contrast with the chips—crisps, Americans call them chips; the British...
April 27: On the last day of the shooting week, Marilyn again fails to show up at the studio.
[CR] What about Barbara Castle. You never had a sexual relationship with her? [MF] No. Never. I wanted to, maybe, but in 1938 we went across the channel together, waiting to start on our new jobs. I h...
Writing Michael’s biography had not occurred to me when I first contacted him. I was not prepared for this conversation and dropped it. Julie warned me that I did not have quite as free a hand with Mi...