Dialectal Journal: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
by J. Randy Taraborrelli Background/Context: Norma Jean was born in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital on June 1st of 1926. This was a time when massive judgment was passed on single mothers. Gladys Baker, Norma Jean’s mother had postpartum depression, struggled with mental illness and was alone. She wanted to keep Norma Jean but she also wanted her to have a better shot at life. It seemed that giving her away was a better decision. *Let the records show for future reference that Della Monroe is Gladys Baker’s mother, Marilyn Monroe’s grandmother. Passage: “Gladys would have two weeks with her baby girl before she would have to do what she had agreed to do: Before her mother had left town, Gladys had agreed to hand over the infant to a stranger, Ida Bolender. During those two weeks, something dreadful occurred, making it clear that the arrangement made between Della and Ida was necessary. A friend and coworker of Gladys’s at Consolidated Studios named Grace McKee came by the house to take care of the baby for an afternoon while Gladys went grocery shopping. (Grace would play a very important role in the lives of Gladys and Norma Jeane in years to come) When Gladys returned, she went into a maniac state for reasons unknown and began to accuse Grace of poisoning the child. One thing led to another, and somehow Grace ended up on the receiving end of a kitchen knife, stabbed by Gladys. Though Grace’s wound was superficial, it was clear that Gladys would become a danger to her baby. After that violent episode, which panicked and bewildered everyone, it was an easy decision to turn Norma Jeane over to Ida. The emotionally charged transfer happened on June 13, 1926- that was the sad day Gladys Baker showed up on Ida Bolender’s doorstep with a two-week-old infant. After a long and difficult farewell, she walked out the front door of Ida’s house without the child named Norma Jeane Mortensen. Norma Jeane was a helpless infant who had entered this world without any form of welcome. There was no freshly furnished nursery awaiting her, no tiny wardrobe, and in fact no one on earth whose future plans included her. She spent the first few days of her life simply being sustained, not nurtured. She was a burden, one that needed to be unloaded. No one can know for certain, but it very well may have been at a tender age that she began to sense that something wasn’t quite right in her world- that there wasn’t sufficient attention being paid her. Indeed, she would spend much of the rest of her life trying to change those circumstances- but to do so, she would need to one day become…Marilyn Monroe.” (Taraborrelli 24-5) Analysis: One could say that Marilyn Monroe was branded an attention seeker since childhood. She was (obviously) blessed with beauty and she was talented no arguments there. Personally, I never knew much about Marilyn Monroe. All I knew was that she was a famous star who every guy wanted to get with and every girl dreamed to be. I think that her image mattered more than anything to her for a very large portion of her life. She wanted people to view her a certain way. As a child she was in and out of different homes, orphanages, foster care, etc. All she ever really wanted was somebody to truly love her, to really care about her, for who she was. Not what she pretended to be. Marilyn was loved widely, not deeply. Men abused her and she learned that she couldn’t count on anybody to make her happy. Not even herself. Norma Jeane built a character, a joyous, beautiful, voluptuous blonde haired bombshell named Marilyn Monroe and this character was determined to have attention, love, and admiration from all the people in her world. |
Background/Context: Marilyn Monroe was to come out in a movie called The Seven Year Itch; this film would make her America’s sex symbol and would also make her husband, Joe DiMaggio a New York Yankees baseball star extremely upset. He saw the sexy scene where Marilyn is standing over a subway grate, wearing a beautiful and provocative halter dress. During the filming of this scene, Marilyn wore two pairs of underwear for modesty but everybody could still see right through the sheer fabric. This of course was not illustrated in any publicized art but the five thousand people watching the filming of this scene did see.
Passage: DiMaggio rushed back to the St. Regis Hotel and waited for his wife to join him there at the end of her workday. Then he took out his rage on her, slapping her around the room. The altercation was so noisy, in fact, that other hotel guests reported it to the hotel’s management, afraid that someone was getting badly hurt. Natasha in the room next door, was alarmed enough to pound on the door to the DiMaggio’s suite. “Is everything okay in there?” she shouted out, knowing, of course, the answer. The door swung open and there was Joe, eyes blazing, face reddened. “Get outta here,” he told her brusquely. “Mind your own business, for once.” Later that night, Milton and Amy Greene had dinner with Joe and Marilyn. They noticed bruises on Marilyn’s back. The next day, Gladys Witten, a studio hairdresser, noticed bruises on Marilyn’s shoulders, “But we covered them with makeup,” she said. “That was the last straw,” recalled Stacy Edwards, who met Joe in New York earlier that day. “The way I heard it, Joe let her have it. It was pretty bad. After he hit her, she told him she’d had enough and wanted out of the marriage. I spoke to Joe maybe three weeks later and asked him about that night. He said, ‘Things got out of hand, I admit it. But she pissed me off so much. She didn’t care what I thought about anything, she just wanted to do what she wanted to do.’ That was DiMaggio. He could be a sweetheart if everything was going his way. If not, he was pretty mean. To tell you the truth, I lost a lot of respect for Joe when I found out he hit Marilyn Monroe. I thought to myself, ‘How could a man hit such a beautiful creature?’” Years later, Marilyn admitted to her hairdresser, Sydney Guilaroff, very famous in his time for his work with Hollywood stars, “Joe beat me up twice. The first time, I warned him. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ I’m not going to stand for it. Then after he witnessed me filming a sexy scene for The Seven Year Itch, he slapped me around the hotel room. I finally screamed at him, ‘That’s it.’ I don’t know what makes a man beat a woman- vulnerable and weak- I just don’t understand it.” (Taraborrelli 244-5)
Analysis: For this particularly, Marilyn Monroe displays perfectly what a real movie star is. Even though her private life was pretty tragic, and she was miserable throughout the filming of The Seven Year Itch she still rose to the occasion and gave the best performance she could. This movie was one of her most well known films throughout her career. The moral of this passage is that she was living a miserable life, but for the cameras she gave it all she had, even though she felt like she had nothing left to give. Marilyn Monroe presents her best self to the public, she wanted to be happy, and so she pretended to be. She had been playing make believe her entire life.
word count: 1,272
Passage: DiMaggio rushed back to the St. Regis Hotel and waited for his wife to join him there at the end of her workday. Then he took out his rage on her, slapping her around the room. The altercation was so noisy, in fact, that other hotel guests reported it to the hotel’s management, afraid that someone was getting badly hurt. Natasha in the room next door, was alarmed enough to pound on the door to the DiMaggio’s suite. “Is everything okay in there?” she shouted out, knowing, of course, the answer. The door swung open and there was Joe, eyes blazing, face reddened. “Get outta here,” he told her brusquely. “Mind your own business, for once.” Later that night, Milton and Amy Greene had dinner with Joe and Marilyn. They noticed bruises on Marilyn’s back. The next day, Gladys Witten, a studio hairdresser, noticed bruises on Marilyn’s shoulders, “But we covered them with makeup,” she said. “That was the last straw,” recalled Stacy Edwards, who met Joe in New York earlier that day. “The way I heard it, Joe let her have it. It was pretty bad. After he hit her, she told him she’d had enough and wanted out of the marriage. I spoke to Joe maybe three weeks later and asked him about that night. He said, ‘Things got out of hand, I admit it. But she pissed me off so much. She didn’t care what I thought about anything, she just wanted to do what she wanted to do.’ That was DiMaggio. He could be a sweetheart if everything was going his way. If not, he was pretty mean. To tell you the truth, I lost a lot of respect for Joe when I found out he hit Marilyn Monroe. I thought to myself, ‘How could a man hit such a beautiful creature?’” Years later, Marilyn admitted to her hairdresser, Sydney Guilaroff, very famous in his time for his work with Hollywood stars, “Joe beat me up twice. The first time, I warned him. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ I’m not going to stand for it. Then after he witnessed me filming a sexy scene for The Seven Year Itch, he slapped me around the hotel room. I finally screamed at him, ‘That’s it.’ I don’t know what makes a man beat a woman- vulnerable and weak- I just don’t understand it.” (Taraborrelli 244-5)
Analysis: For this particularly, Marilyn Monroe displays perfectly what a real movie star is. Even though her private life was pretty tragic, and she was miserable throughout the filming of The Seven Year Itch she still rose to the occasion and gave the best performance she could. This movie was one of her most well known films throughout her career. The moral of this passage is that she was living a miserable life, but for the cameras she gave it all she had, even though she felt like she had nothing left to give. Marilyn Monroe presents her best self to the public, she wanted to be happy, and so she pretended to be. She had been playing make believe her entire life.
word count: 1,272