John Gilmore - Inside Marilyn Monroe

With an extended, revealing interview with John Gilmore
on his friendship with Marilyn Monroe

Amok Books
Los Angeles
2011

John Gilmore has written a book about the real Marilyn, the sensitive, confused, sad person she was far more than the joking, laughing Marilyn, a faade she was remarkable at maintaining. Gilmore has lived too close to his subjects to be in awe of their illusions. In this penetrating memoir, he gives us a deeply personal, rather disturbing portrait of a true artistic wonder that deserted the world far, far too early in her remarkable life Inside Marilyn Monroe is the first offering I have read about Marilyn that offers the reader a journey into Marilyns extremely private world where we are touched by a scenario no writer has succeeded in revealing. There is no question about it; John Gilmore has succeeded in this. A highly recommended read for all desirous of confronting the life behind the silver screen, and the illusions we are programmed to accept as the real thing. This is the real thing.

Kathleen Hughes Rubin and Stanley Rubin, Producers of River of No Return

John Gilmore's genius is at its peak in this penetrating memoir/biography. Because of a fascination with Marilyn Monroe that began before puberty, I have read every single book ever written about her, but I'd long been frustrated that none of the books I read gave actual breath to the real human being that Marilyn/ Norma Jeane was. Not until now. At long last the book I'd been searching for all my life has been written. Even better, it's been written by one of my favorite authors. And the prose is breathtaking: Trying to reach Gladys [Marilyn's mother] was like stirring the air, floating her further away. Finally, I can experience what it truly was like to be inside the skin of Marilyn Monroe. Opening John Gilmore's book on Marilyn means stepping into a time machine that has the capacity for mingling and merging energies to the point where the reader becomes one with Marilyn/Norma Jeane. It's more than the ultimate Marilyn Monroe experience. Reading Inside Marilyn Monroe illuminates the mind to a greater compassion and understanding of the human condition. To my loved ones, friends and family, there is no other book about life that I'd more strongly recommend than this one. It is an awakening. Through Marilyn Monroe, Gilmore takes us on a journey to greater enlightenment. He does so with integrity. Every phrase he writes reverberates with truth A master of his craft and a genius of the heart.

Ian Ayres, French Connection Press, Paris, France

Also by John Gilmore

Hollywood Boulevard

Crazy Streak

L.A. Despair
A Landscape of Crimes and Bad Times

Cold-Blooded
The Saga of Charles Schmid

The Garbage People

Severed
The True Story of the Black Dahlia

Live Fast, Die Young
Remembering the Short Life of James Dean

Laid Bare
A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip

Manson
The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family

The Real James Dean

Fetish Blonde

O, Time

Be kind.

Help this weary being

To forget what is sad to remember.

Loose my loneliness,

Ease my mind,

While you eat my flesh.

Marilyn Monroe

Copyright 2007 by John Gilmore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover and Book Design by Timothy H. Kepple

Editing by Marijon Shearer

Manufactured in the United States of America

Published by Amok Books

Los Angeles, California

Amok Books are available to bookstores through their primary distributor: SCB Distributors, 15608 South New Century Drive, Los Angeles, 90248, California.

Phone: 800-729-6423 FAX: 310-532-7001.

First Edition

Bibliographic Information for Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gilmore, John, 1935

Inside Marilyn Monroe : A Memoir/John Gilmore 1st ed.

1. Monroe, Marilyn, 1926-1962.
2. Motion picture actors and actresses-United States-BiographyMemoir

ISBN 9781617505430

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my son, Carson Gilmore,

and my daughter, Ursula Maura Gilmore

The more I knew, the deeper it went, like a wound covering itself to heal. I did try to healto understand. It was a dark time. Trying only pushed the loss deeper and then I found it everywhere in myself. Each event that occurred became a mirror framing her face.

A worldwide enterprise rakes profit from conspiracy theories and from manufactured exhibits of items supposedly related to Marilyn. An infestation turned epidemic. I have said, That never belonged to Marilyn, and That never happened to Marilyn. So sensing now some personal need to counter the commerce of non-Marilyn endeavors called Marilyn, perhaps shedding a little realism into the jungle of fancy, Ive undertaken to show this person behind the image, to make Marilyn real again if only in memory, and to share this view with others who care to gaze more deeply than passing a garish billboard.

This book then is intended to explore some personal aspects of Marilyn, gathered from my experiences of her company and from others who shared that same experience. For almost two generations Ive kept notebooks, journals, scribbles on paper placemats or scraps grabbed fast so I wouldnt forget what Id witnessed or was told. Ive done this most of my lifewhile an actor from an early age (resigning that career following Marilyns early death), and then long after becoming a writer.

The reconstruction of scenes, conversations and interviews contained here has been distilled from those notes, memory, reel-to-reel tapes or cassettes, the activity continuing over decades into the present. A movie set between takes proves an unlikely spot for an interview, but when an opportunity arose I seized it. I have undertaken whenever possible to document these exchanges as accurately as I could, attempting to preserve the content. Many original materials copyrighted by the author are with the John Gilmore Papers in the Special Collections Department of the UCLA Research Library.

I never envisioned writing about Marilyn, not about that personal connection to her, nor about how that connection affected me as we intersected over a decade through the Hollywood and New York circuit; Marilyn wholly, hungrily drawn to art and coming to terms with her talents. I have lived my life in art, not in commerce. Nor have I expected to live as long as I have, for I hoped to seek the truth of a thing, as the poet Rainer Rilke put it, the