May 26: Filming of Niagara begins.
Devotion that drove other actors out of the tent. Although Brennan’s political convictions were decidedly conservative, he remained outside the political arena, which perhaps accounts for why he playe...
We were invited to some of these royal functions, Michael said. Jill wanted to see what they were like. They had gone to Prince Charles’s wedding to Diana. There was a lot of nonsense about it. We had...
February 15: Marilyn accompanies Kazan and Miller to Santa Barbara for a preview of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Kazan. Marilyn moves out of Natasha Lytess’s apartment and into another apartm...
February 10: Ladies of the Chorus is released. Tibor Krekes in the Motion Picture Herald gives Marilyn her first review: One of the brightest spots is Miss Monroe’s singing. She is pretty, and with he...
Asked Michael if he thought she could have become the Labour Party leader: I don’t think so, really, Michael answered decisively. What stopped her? I asked. The business of understanding other people’...
May 28: Shooting begins on There’s No Business Like Show Business. Marilyn’s director, Walter Lang, does not seem to know how to handle her. Donald O’Connor, Marilyn’s love interest in the film, recal...
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...
I was beginning to feel uneasy about falling into the authorised biographer’s trap of becoming privy to secrets that could not be divulged. I could see that I was heading toward some kind of confronta...
Becoming Roy Bean was an all-consuming project. Walter worked late into the night making the old fellow come alive. Weeks of preparation went into his performance. I have literally become that man and...
Talk of Blair stimulated Michael to say, Some of our people are in my opinion too critical of him. Some of them say, ‘Oh Gordon Brown is much better, you know.’ I doubt that there is all that much dis...
March 6: Emmeline Snively, head of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, sends Norma Jeane to Joseph Jasgur for test shots. In The Birth of Marilyn, Jeannie Sakol reports Jasgur’s first impressions: What he...
We read Byron’s letters there [in Venice] together. Then we were going up in the world, having the bloody government pay for our holidays. . . Venice revived him [Byron]. It restored him, Michael insi...
Short of funds during a period in 1928, Brennan agreed to do a stunt: driving off a pier in San Diego into forty feet of water. I had to be doing 45 miles an hour, he later told an interviewer, and th...
Michael was a gallant campaigner—not just a politician, but a human being who tried to make every day an event. He would rise as high as possible to the occasion, drawing on whatever last reserves he...
Those hostile to biography rank professional biographers just above serial murderers.
For me, the most important thing is the overwhelming desire to write about a particular figure. That usually means I already have—even if I can’t articulate it yet—a vision of my subject. I have alrea...
Be versatile, cunning, and ruthless in his pursuit—in other words, have all the attributes of a good spy.—Erika Ostrovsky, Eye of Dawn: The Rise and Fall of Mata Hari (1978)
Walter also kept himself going by keeping an account book recording his earnings, starting from the first day he showed up on a movie set. He liked to turn the pages and see the entries for $7.50 unti...
March 4: Elia Kazan sends a telegram to Fox promising to arrive on April 1 to work with screenwriter Calder Willingham on a film starring Marilyn. Fox officially notifies Marilyn that she is assigned...
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