Marilyn Monroe - My Story

my

story

ILLUSTRATED EDITION

MARILYN MONROE, with BEN HECHT
Foreword by JOSHUA GREENE

First Taylor Trade Publishing edition 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

All text in this volume 2007 Joshua Greene
All previous editions of My Story 1974 Milton H. Greene

All photographs 2007 Joshua Greene

No part of the text or photographs in this book can be used in part or in whole without written consent from The Archives, LLC or Joshua Greene
2610 Kingwood Street Suite #3, Florence, Oregon 97439
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Limited rights for this edition are licensed as per contract to Taylor Trade Publishing

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Monroe, Marilyn, 19261962.

My story / Marilyn Monroe with Ben Hecht. Illustrated ed., 1st Taylor Trade Publishing ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58979-316-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-58979-316-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Monroe, Marilyn, 19261962. 2. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. I. Hecht, Ben, 18931964. II. Title.

PN2287.M69A35 2007

791.4028092dc22

[B]

2006017455

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

My father, Milton H. Greene, passed away in 1985. Though he was a successful New Yorkbased fashion and portrait photographer, credited with over 150 covers and thousands of editorial pages, hes remembered best for the body of work he created with Marilyn Monroe from 1953 to 1957.

Milton met Marilyn in the fall of 1953 on an assignment for Look magazine. They had an immediate, relaxed rapport and, like two children in a sandbox, began to create images together with playful abandon. A close and endearing friendship quickly grew.

The following year, Milton met up with Marilyn at the Los Angeles home of producer Joseph Schenck, with whom Marilyn was involved at the time. Also present was screenplay writer Ben Hecht. Schencks home offered expansive views with wonderful props for Milton and Marilyn to play off, as seen on live with the Greene family, Marilyn had dictated her own words and Hecht put them to paper.

Rick Rinehart and I selected the pictures for this edition, and I want to thank Rick for his assistance in this project. Many of these are favorites that have been digitally restored from the original transparencies and negatives. When my father passed, he thought that most of his 300,000-image collection had faded and been lost to time. I started the Archives in 1993 to salvage his collection. Ever since I have embraced digital photo restoration. The technology has allowed me to pursue my passion, photography, while protecting and preserving my fathers legacy.

On , theres a photograph of Marilyn dressed in a bustier with ostrich feathers and a huge shiny necklacecostume jewelry, of course. This was a very special evening. Nobody knew where Marilyn had been for the last year and a half. She had moved to New York and with the help of my father, and his attorney had successfully sued Twentieth Century Fox to get her released from her slave contract. Michael Todd organized a fundraising event at Madison Square Garden with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was a star-studded, high society affair with Milton Berle as Master of Ceremonies dressed in riding boots and tails. At the end, when the performers came out for their final bow, Marilyn appeared riding on top of a pink elephant wearing this flamboyant outfit. It brought down the house.

On , there are images from the Hooker series, so nicknamed because she was posing as a call girl on a French set on the Twentieth Century Fox back lots. On Sunday afternoons when not filming Bus Stop, Milton and Marilyn would run over to the wardrobe department and rummage through the costumes, looking for something to spark their imaginations. Milton was a photographers photographerevery frame was usable and he never overshot. Todays younger generation may recognize this outfit from Madonnas Like a Virgin video.

, Marilyn is wearing a corduroy peddle-pusher suit, very much en vogue at the time, which was sold recently at an auction. I always wonder how these clothes turn up after all these years. I love the picture on the haystack because of the off-center composition and the fact that Marilyn has her head down. Look at how her left wrist is at an angle opposite to her right ankle. This is a great example of Miltons natural eye for beauty and his appreciation of the silhouette.

The picture on , shes holding the frontispiece up in place.

The two pictures on , Marilyn was completely nude with only Amy Greenes sweater coat on. This Nude series proved to be too risqu for the times and the image was never published until the 1970s. A sister image from this sitting was digitally restored specifically for Hugh Hefner and appeared on a 1997 commemorative cover of Playboy.

On is a fun photograph with Maurice Chevalier and his accompanist on the keyboards. Milton had three favorite props that turn up in many of his images: a cigarette, a hat, and some soft fabric like a scarf or a boa.

On .

The casual pose pictured on was part of a series of pictures Milton and Marilyn did on the back lot of Twentieth Century Fox during the filming of Bus Stop scenes that did not include Marilyns character. Taken in the morning light, this beautiful image reminds us of the woman rather than the actress.

In 1956, before leaving for London to begin filming on Prince and the Showgirl, the three principles got together in Miltons studio to take some much needed publicity photos to announce the beginning of production for the film. On .

The candid on .

wearing a tennis sweater were both done in that natural light environment.

After the announcement of MMP, Edward R. Murrow contacted my father to discuss doing one of his Sunday evening live Person to Person broadcasts. Marilyn, Milton, and Murrow met in a penthouse suite at the Hotel Pierre. This candid photograph on was one of a few taken while the trio met.

In those days, television transmission had to be done by line of sight. It took men two weeks to build a 200-foot antenna in the backyard to prepare for the broadcast. This was state-of-the-art technology of the day, and it allowed Murrow to have a live feed in his studio at Rockefeller Center and the subjects to have a live feed seeing Murrow talk to them over a TV. Now go out and rent Good Night and Good Luck. It will give you a more profound understanding of how important Murrow was to the broadcast community.

The pictures on are very important to the collection because they are from the last official sitting Milton and Marilyn had together. The setting included brown velvet, a bank of tungsten lights, an extremely sheer red dress, a big fan, and multiple bottles of champagne. The net result: only 36 exposures and the rest is history.