May 30: Shooting is on hiatus for Memorial Day. Marilyn stays home working on a watercolor of a red rose she wants to present to President Kennedy for his forty-fifth birthday.
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 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....
He is the spy in William Golding’s novel The Paper Men, caught by his subject in the act of rifling through his subject’s garbage.
February 9: Marilyn is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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...
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: With Joe DiMaggio’s help, Marilyn is released from Payne Whitney. Ralph Roberts picks Marilyn up. She sits in the backseat with Dr. Kris, and Marilyn berates Kris for betraying her trust....
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...
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...
Brennan, who appeared in more than two hundred films and countless television productions over a fifty-year career, is Hollywood.
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)
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’...
You’ve got to be a bit ruthless, I think, to write a biography.—Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination (2002)
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...
Watching the nuances in Brennan’s performances—especially in roles that would seem to allow for little variation—is to appreciate once again his incomparable place in Hollywood history as the consumma...
Obviously fond of Jill, Paul remembered a time they were all together in a car arguing, and Jill whispered in Paul’s ear, Michael thinks he can win an argument by how loud he shouts.