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 3: Responding to reports that she is not an orphan and that her mother is alive, Marilyn issues a statement through Erskine Johnson in the Los Angeles Daily News: My mother spent many years at the...
February 10: Norma Jeane sells her white piano to Ana Lower.
I slept on a sofa bed in Michael’s library. Each night before retiring, I would go through a shelf or pile of books (his only filing system) filled with letters and reviews and notes. Every night brou...
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 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 12: Nunnally Johnson completes a new draft of Something’s Got to Give. Marilyn later writes on the script, We’ve got a dog here. She pencils in several suggestions and rejects some lines as n...
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...
Whether it was Byron, Wells, Hazlitt, Swift, or himself, Michael saw mating with women through a romantic screen that ennobled him and his heroes, no matter what grief they caused others.
Michael was the male partner in a dance, but he did not know how to lead. Or rather, he led by default, since Jill did not challenge his authority. He simply filled a vacuum. As a political man, he wo...
By the time he was six, Walter was luring tramps and other unsavory characters home with the promise of a meal. He loved to hear their tall tales. A year later, imitating an Irish neighbor, he began c...
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...
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...
May 17–18: In her New York apartment, Marilyn practices singing Happy Birthday for the president.
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)
I followed Michael upstairs to the living room, where Emma had prepared drinks. I know we have some other matters [Michael’s lovers] to talk to you about at some stage, he said, almost chuckling.
February 20: Time publishes Co-Stars, about the Monroe-Olivier matchup.
William Brennan did not live to see his son, now a remarkable transformative actor, win his first Academy Award, for Come and Get It, the first time the award for supporting actor was given. Edward Ar...
Becoming a Biographer: Marilyn Monroe Made Me Do It
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...
Showing 41 to 60 of 368 results