March 5: Marilyn flies from San Francisco to Los Angeles for the Photoplay Awards dinner. Joe flies to New York on business.
June 25: Mickey Rudin warns Marilyn about expenditures for wardrobe, hairdressing, makeup, drugs, and the coaching services of Paula Strasberg—all of which threaten to exhaust the $13,000 remaining in...
January 20: Marilyn meets with Fox producer Henry T. Weinstein. Marilyn meets with the visiting Carl Sandburg, who demonstrates—holding books over their heads—a series of exercises intended to allevia...
In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson argues that Brennan should have won awards for even better performances in To Have and Have Not (1944), My Darling Clementine (1946), Red Rive...
I think Walter Brennan was the greatest example of a personality that I’ve ever used. . . . When I was in trouble, I called on Brennan. He always came through. —HOWARD HAWKS IN CONVERSATION WITH JOSEP...
I aim, as my introduction promises, to be resolutely indiscreet.
Friendship was, I think, a deep enchantment for Michael. He built up his favourite as a nonpareil. He touted you. But if you broke the spell, he would erupt with fury and then subside in a silence tha...
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...
But the Butler-Brennan collaboration splendidly informs The Prince and the Pirate, a Samuel Goldwyn million-dollar Technicolor production that spoofs the swashbuckling pictures of the 1930s that made...
Becoming a Biographer: Marilyn Monroe Made Me Do It
May 19: At 2:00 p.m., Marilyn arrives at Madison Square Garden for a brief rehearsal. She departs to have her hair styled by Kenneth Battelle at a cost of $150. Then she returns to her New York apartm...
Like other actors who worked for Goldwyn, Brennan was fond of repeating famous Goldwynisms, such as, in two words: im-possible, and include me out. Then there was the time Goldwyn called studio head D...
January 26: Journalist George Carpozi Jr. interviews Marilyn at the Gladstone Hotel. He is accompanied by photographer George Miller, who accompanies Marilyn, dressed in a dark fur coat, on a walk thr...
I went to this party for Francis Wheen’s book [on Marx]. I went and sat on a chair—at these places I can’t stand up and so I sat there and a woman came up to me—I gather from the Telegraph. It was jus...
I often thought of Boswell and Johnson during my stays with Michael Foot. In Michael’s company, I was very much a Boswell, keen to get the great man to talk. I recorded everything, compiling a hundred...
I mentioned a television documentary Julie and I had watched at Gilly’s house and that Jill remarked on how his Park Street flat was filled with women’s cosmetics and perfume bottles in the bathroom....
February 15: Marilyn appears on the cover of Votre Sante (France) in a close-up. Her hair is somewhat shorter than in earlier 1940s poses, but not yet perfected as the lighter, more subtly curled styl...
February 11: Andre de Dienes sends Marilyn a telegram calling her Turkey Foot, his nickname for her: STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. GET OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. LET’S GO DRIVING AND HIKING THROUGH THE R...
February 10: Norma Jeane sells her white piano to Ana Lower.
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...