A note to the Readers of the Electronic
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  A Note to the Readers of the Electronic Edition of Fragments Fragments was original y formatted for hardcover publication, and though every effort has been made to simulate the original book’s layout and design features for the electronic edition, the arrangement of the e-book text does not always correspond to the original version. The transcripts of Marilyn Monroe’s writing feature text in various colors, indicating where editors have made corrections for clarity; on a black and white device, the alterations wil not be differentiated. Final y, to adapt the book to an electronic format, image resolution has been reduced. For higher resolution versions of al of the images, please consult the hardcover edition. CONTENTS Editors’ note Personal note (1943) Undated poems “Record” black notebook (around 1951) Other “Record” notebook (around 1955) Waldorf-Astoria stationery (1955) Italian agenda (1955 or 1956) Parkside House stationery (1956) Roxbury notes (1958) Red livewire notebook (1958) Fragments and notes Kitchen notes (1955 or 1956) Lee and Paula Strasberg Letter to Dr. Hohenberg (1956) Letter to Dr. Greenson (1961) Written answers to an interview (1962) SUPPLEMENTS Some books from Marilyn Monroe’s library The favorite photo Funeral eulogy by Lee Strasberg Chronology Literary constellation Acknowledgments  ^ Norma Jeane Mortenson was born under the sign of Gemini, and she described herself as having two natures: “Jekyl and Hyde, two in one.” Even the initials of her stage name (which, according to one story, were suggested to her by the clearly visible “M”s formed by the lines of her palms) supported this duality, as did the pseudonym, Zelda Zonk, that she used while escaping incognito from Hol ywood to New York. In her lifetime, under pressure from the studios, the media created a joyful and radiant image of Marilyn Monroe, even to the point of making her out to be a “dumb blonde.” One remembers her parts in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire, a nd Let’s Make Love. Anything contrary to this artificial image was not welcome. There was no room for a melancholic Marilyn. The icon was not al owed to have an opposite side. Yet, like a medal, she did have two sides. The sunny and luminous one of the sparkling blonde, and the darker one of the excessive perfectionist who sought absolutes and for whom life (work, friendships, and love affairs) could only lead to disappointment. “I think I have a gay side in me and also a sad side,” Marilyn confided in an interview. Her friend Marlon Brando expressed perfectly the shock people felt when her death was announced: “Everybody stopped work, and you could see al that day the same expressions on their faces, the same thought: ‘How can a girl with success, fame, youth, money, beauty…how could she kil herself?’ Nobody could understand it because those are the things that everybody wants, and they can’t believe that life wasn’t important to Marilyn Monroe, or that her life was elsewhere.” There are thousands of photographs of this icon. Her image has been used in many, sometimes brutal, ways. But in this book a new world of truthfulness and overwhelming clarity is being thrown open. A hitherto unknown and unseen Marilyn is revealed. On her death in 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s personal possessions were bequeathed to Lee Strasberg, and when he in turn died in 1982, his young widow, Anna Strasberg, inherited this large and uncataloged col ection, which included dresses, cosmetics, pictures, books, receipts, and so forth. Many years later, while sorting out Lee Strasberg’s papers, she found two boxes of poems and other manuscripts written by Marilyn. Not knowing what to do with these, she asked a family friend, Stanley Buchthal, for advice. Some months later, at an art col ectors’ dinner, Stanley told Bernard Comment, a French essayist and editor, about Anna Strasberg’s find in order to get his opinion of the unpublished materials. That was the start of the adventure that became this book. As far as has been possible to determine, the texts are placed in chronological order. Words printed in red are the editors’ and correct spel ing mistakes, add missing words, or suggest possible readings of indecipherable words. The ordering of fragments of very disparate documents has been an attempt at reconstruction and hence at interpretation. The flow of Marilyn’s thoughts on individual pages, and from one successive page to another, is indicated by red arrows (black arrows are Marilyn’s own). It is possible that other texts written by Marilyn wil surface in the years or decades to come. For the moment, this book contains every available text, excepting her technical notes on acting. In any case, these writings reveal a young woman who was dissatisfied with issues of surface appearance and who was seeking the truth at the heart of both things and people. Only lovers of clichés wil be surprised that the Hol ywood actress was passionately fond of literature, although this fact cannot be il ustrated merely by the pictures col ected in this book. (Stil : how many actresses from that period do we know who sometimes took pains to be photographed reading or holding a book?) In a 1960 interview with the French journalist Georges Belmont, Marilyn recal ed the beginning of her career: “Nobody could imagine what I did when I wasn’t shooting, because they didn’t see me at previews or premieres or parties. It’s simple: I was going to school! I’d never finished high school, so I started going to UCLA at night, because during the day I had smal parts in pictures. I took courses in the history of literature and the history of this country, and I started to read a lot, stories by wonderful writers.” Her library contained four hundred books, ranging from such classics as Milton, Dostoyevsky, and Whitman to contemporary writers, including Hemingway, Beckett, and Kerouac. Arthur Mil er played a part in her development as a reader, too, recommending Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, which she devoured. But some years before they were involved, Marilyn had already tackled James Joyce’s Ulysses. As we know, Marilyn inspired numerous painters: Dalí, De Kooning, and Warhol, among others. She also felt a real interest in painting—in the painters of the Italian Renaissance, such as Botticel i; Goya, especial y his demons (“I know this man very wel , we have the same dreams, I have had the same dreams since I was a child”); Degas, whose bal et dancer she gazed at in wonder when taken to see a private col ection; and also Rodin, whose Hand of God she admired at length in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From al these examples emerges a cultured and curious Marilyn who had a strong desire to understand others, the outside world, destiny, and, of course, herself. She took notes, swiftly setting down her feelings and thoughts and expressing her wonder. Some may be surprised at her spel ing mistakes, in which, most probably, a form of dyslexia is detectable. But readers of Marcel Proust’s correspondence (Marilyn read Swann’s Way on Proust’s correspondence (Marilyn read Swann’s Way on the set of Love Nest in 1951) wil have seen worse. The very Proust who, answering the question “to which failings are you most lenient?” replied unhesitatingly, “spel ing mistakes,” and who, in one of his letters, wrote this strange and beautiful phrase: “Each spel ing mistake is the expression of a desire.” The col ection of documents revealed here is nothing less than a treasure trove. We owe its appearance to Anna Strasberg and her sons, Adam and David, who, during the preparation of this book, have embraced the opportunity to uncover a hitherto undervalued, even unknown dimension of Marilyn’s personality. From beginning to end we have shared their desire to create a book that, we would like to think, would have pleased its author. Marilyn once confessed to a journalist: “I think Lee probably changed my life more than any other human being. That’s why I love to go to the Actors Studio whenever I’m in New York.” Perhaps Strasberg, more than other people, had sensed who Marilyn real y was. One of the remarkable insights these documents offer is the sense that Marilyn was, until the end, planning for the future. Among other projects, she hoped over time to play the great Shakespearean roles, from Juliet to Lady Macbeth. She also pursued her idea of creating a new production company in association with Marlon Brando. Some texts wil give rise to interpretation and comment. But there is nothing dirty or low, no gossip in this book; that was not Marilyn’s way. What the notes reveal is intimacy without showiness, the seismic measuring of a soul. They take nothing away from Marilyn’s mystery but rather make the mystery more material. She was an elusive star with a magnetic force that sent compasses haywire whenever she got close. To this day, her face, her eyes, her lips appear al around the world. Innumerable actors and pop singers take her as a reference, a definitive model: to sound like her, to act like her, in advertisements and music videos and films. Songs are composed for her—among them this famous one, by Elton John and Bernie Taupin: “Goodbye Norma Jeane (…) / Loneliness was tough / The toughest role you ever played / Hol ywood created a superstar / And pain was the price you paid / Even when you died / Oh the press stil hounded you / Al the papers had to say / Was that Marilyn was found in the nude.” This book does not attempt to show her stripped bare but, rather, simply as she was. Through these poems and written papers, she’s more alive than ever. Stanley Buchthal Bernard Comment   Jim Dougherty and Norma Jeane, Catalina Island, fal of 1943  ^ 1943 Norma Jeane married James Dougherty when she turned sixteen, the age of consent in California, on June 19, 1942, thereby escaping the threat of being returned to an orphanage when her foster family moved out of state. Dougherty was born in April 1921 and was five years older than she was. At the end of 1943, the young couple settled for a few months on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles, a fashionable resort before the war. It is likely that this long note, uncharacteristical y typed, was written at this time. One can’t help being surprised, even impressed, by the maturity of this seventeen-year-old girl, whose feelings of disil usionment are plain from the first sentence, as she examines her marriage and what she expects from life, and faces the fear of her husband’s betrayal. Nevertheless, the disjointedness of the text reveals turbulent emotions. The “other woman” she mentions might be  a reference to Doris Ingram, her young husband’s former girlfriend and a Santa Barbara beauty queen. The couple were divorced on September 13, 1946.       Marilyn during the filming of Niagara, 1952 Marilyn reading Heinrich Heine  ^ Marilyn Monroe wrote poemlike texts or fragments on loose-leaf paper and in notebooks. She showed her work only to intimate friends, in particular to Norman Rosten, a col ege friend of Arthur Mil er with whom she became very close. A Brooklyn-based novelist, he encouraged Marilyn to continue writing. In the book he wrote about her (Marilyn Among Friends), he concluded, “She had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but she lacked the control.” It is likely that the poetic form, or more general y the fragment, al owed her to express short, lightning bursts of feeling—but who could hear that frail voice, the very opposite of the radiant star? Arthur Mil er wrote strikingly: “To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pul ing at her clothes.”  Life— I am of both of your directions Life Somehow remaining hanging downward the most but strong as a cobweb in the wind—I exist more with the cold glistening frost. But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve seen in a paintings—ah life they have cheated you Note: Marilyn apparently wrote several variations on the theme of the twofold course of life (“life in both directions”) and the delicate, sometimes invisible “cobweb,” revealed by dew and resistant to wind—in particular a poem entitled “To the Weeping Wil ow” that was published in Norman Rosten’s book about Marilyn: “I stood beneath your limbs / And you flowered and final y / clung to me, / and when the wind struck with the earth / and sand—you clung to me. / Thinner than a cobweb I, / sheerer than any—/ but it did attach itself / and held fast in strong winds / life—of which at singular times / I am both of your directions—/ somehow I remain hanging downward the most, / as both of your directions pul me.”  Oh damn I wish that I were dead—absolutely nonexistent— gone away from here—from everywhere but how would I do it There is always bridges—the Brooklyn bridge—no not the Brooklyn Bridge because But I love that bridge (everything is beautiful from there and the air is so clean) walking it seems peaceful there even with al those cars going crazy underneath. So it would have to be some other bridge an ugly one and with no view—except I particularly like in particular al bridges—there’s some thing about them and besides these I’ve never seen an ugly bridge  Stones on the walk every color there is I stare down at you like those the a horizon— the space / the air is between us beckoning and I am many stories besides up my feet are frightened from my as I grasp for towards you  Only parts of us wil ever touch only parts of others— one’s own truth is just that real y—one’s own truth. We can only share the part |
