Just then I felt I must confront the question of whether I was to do Michael’s biography as well as Jill’s. From our first meeting, Julie had been urging me to do so, to make sure I got my place in li...
June 22: Life publishes They Fired Marilyn: Her Dip Lives On, photographs of her nude swimming scene for Something’s Got to Give.
June 17: A letter from Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison (probably written by John F. Wharton) suggests that an article in Motion Picture by Hedda Hopper is libelous, according to Sam Silverman,...
January 24: Time publishes Dostoyevsky Blues.
January 24: Gossip columnist Earl Wilson interviews Marilyn at the Sherry-Netherlands Hotel, dubbing her the Mmmmmmmm Girl.
January 21: Marilyn returns to New York and visits Lee Strasberg.
January 20: Lew Schreiber at Fox, having received notice that Marilyn is ready to work, reviews her list of approved directors, since she cannot be required to work until the studio has a commitment f...
January 15–16: Marilyn and Joe spend the first two days of their honeymoon at the Clifton Motel in Paso Robles. DiMaggio pays $6.50 a night for a room with a television. Marilyn’s lawyer, Lloyd Wright...
January 14: At 1:46 p.m. Marilyn marries Joe DiMaggio. She gives Harry Brand, publicity director at Fox, only one hour’s notice, but one hundred reporters still manage to make it to the lobby and corr...
It was rare for Walter Brennan to express more than satisfaction at work well done. But Three Godfathers (March 6, 1936) was something special. With its combination of an unusual director, Richard Bol...
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...
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...
I am of the Samuel Johnson school of biography that adheres first to the truth as the biographer sees it, and not first to the feelings of others. What
I am not the first biographer to write a memoir about his work. But after reading the reminiscences of my colleagues, I am still looking for the kind of insider look this book offers.
How many different photographs do we have of Norman Mailer? Suppose we had only five painted portraits of him, like the five Joshua Reynolds did of Dr. Johnson? Would Mailer’s greatness seem more sing...
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...
February 9: Marilyn visits the Brady Airbase and is photographed with several women. She fits right in with her attire, which is like the conservative high-collar fashion displayed by the women who ar...
February 9: Marilyn is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
February 5: Laurence Olivier, his agent Cecil Tennant, and playwright Terence Rattigan arrive in New York to discuss with Marilyn a film of The Sleeping Prince, to be produced in London with Olivier a...
February 5: Following her psychiatrist’s advice, a depressed Marilyn checks into the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic and is upset when she is treated as a mentally ill patient who might do harm to he...