Posted on 06/01/2010 3:19:18 PM PDT by jackspyder
One of Marilyn Monroe's Bibles is now for sale at the Art & Artifact gallery in Los Angeles, CA (approx. 130 miles N of San Diego) as well as one of her rings and the only known photograph of Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy together - taken after she sang "Happy Birthday Mr. President" - perhaps the most well-known public performance of the song in history.
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Today, June 1st happens to be Marilyn Monroe's birthday. She was born Norma Jean Mortensen in 1926, eighty four years ago, in Los Angeles, California. Coincidence? I think not. All very strategic planning for the many fans who could possibly be interested in owning any of these three fine collectibles.
Marilyn was said to be well read, her personal library consisting of "Works of Literature, Art, Drama, Biography, Poetry, Politics, History, Theology, Philosophy, and Psychology"
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(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Just write a letter and be friendly. I don’t think she’ll think you’re nuts unless you ask to do a repeat of what you did with her mother, only this time for ‘real.’
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Yes, it is true that I did not know MM, but I clearly remember her public persona, and it was most definitely not one that would engender any sort of respect.
BTW, since she is not likely to be reading this thread, I think your caution about thinking before I post is a bit dramatic.
Lee Strasberg:
Others were as physically beautiful as she was, but there was obviously something more in her, something that people saw and recognized in her performances and with which they identified. She had a luminous quality - a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning - to set her apart and yet make everyone wish to be a part of it, to share in the childish naïveté which was so shy and yet so vibrant.
Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.
Authur Miller:
What she wanted most was not to be judged but to win recognition from a sentimentally cruel profession, and from men blinded to her humanity by her perfect beauty. She was part queen, part waif, sometimes on her knees before her own body and sometimes despairing because of it — “Oh, there’s lots of beautiful girls,” she would say to some expression of awed amazement, as though her beauty betrayed her quest for a more enduring acceptance.
Photographer Eve Arnold
I never knew anyone who even came close to Marilyn in natural ability to use both photographer and still camera. She was special in this, and for me there has been no one like her before or after. She has remained the measuring rod by which I have — unconsciously — judged other subjects.
Billy Wilder
It’s very difficult to talk seriously about Monroe, because she was so glitzy, you know. She escaped the seriousness somehow; she changed the subject. Except that she was very tough to work with. But what you had, by hook or crook, once you saw it on the screen, it was just amazing. Amazing, the radiation that came out. And she was, believe it or not, an excellent dialogue actress. She knew where the laugh was. She knew.
The luminosity of that face! There has never been a woman with such voltage on the screen.
“This girl had something I hadn’t seen since silent pictures. She had a kind of fantastic beauty like Gloria Swanson and she radiated sex like Jean Harlow. She didn’t need a soundtrack to tell her story.”
— Leon Shamroy, the cinematographer who shot Marilyn’s first screen test
“Marilyn was one step from oblivion when I directed her in The Asphalt Jungle. I remember she impressed me more off the screen than on.there was something touching and appealing about her.”
— John Huston, director of The Misfits and The Asphalt Jungle
“She seemed very shy, and I remember that when the studio workers would whistle at her, it seemed to embarrass her.”
— Cary Grant, co-star in Monkey Business< I did Niagara with her. I found her marvelous to work with and terrifically ambitious to do better. And bright. She may not have had an education, but she was just naturally bright.”
— Henry Hathaway, director of the 1952 film
“She represents to man something we all want in our unfulfilled dreams. A man, he’s got to be dead not to be excited by her.”
— Jean Negulesco, director of How to Marry a Millionaire
“Marilyn’s a phenomenon of nature, like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. All you can do is stand back and be awed by it.”
— Nunnally Johnson, producer of How to Marry a Millionaire
“It’s a toss-up whether the scenery or the adornment of Marilyn Monroe is the feature of greater attraction in River of No Return. The mountainous scenery is spectacular, but so in her own way is Miss Monroe.”
— Bosley Crowther, movie critic for The New York Times
“She had a great natural dignity and was extremely intelligent. She was also exceedingly sensitive.”
— Edith Sitwell, poet
“Marilyn was history’s most phenomenal love goddess.”
— Philippe Halsman, photographer
“She saw herself drowning in Hollywood in 1955 and told her studio, ‘I’m not just wiggling my behind.’ Marilyn is not any one thing; she’s multidimensional. As an actress, she has lots of imitators- but only Marilyn survives.”
— Eli Wallach, Marilyn’s co-star in The Misfits
“I saw that what she looked like was not what she really was, and what was going on inside her was not what was going on outside, and that always means there may be something to work with. In Marilyn’s case, the reactions were phenomenal. She can call up emotionally what is required for a scene. Her range is infinite.”
— Lee Strasberg, creator-director of the Actors Studio
“She is a brilliant comedienne, which to me means she also is an extremely skilled actress.”
— Sir Laurence Olivier, co-star of The Prince and the Showgirl
“She was wonderful. We were taught never to clap at the Actors Studio-it was like we were in church-and it was the first time I’d ever heard applause there.”
— Kim Stanley, the actress who originated Marilyn’s Bus Stop role on stage
“Marilyn is as near a genius as any actress I ever knew. She is an artist beyond artistry. She is the most completely realized and authentic film actress since Garbo. She has that same unfathomable mysteriousness. She is pure cinema.”
Joshua Logan, director of Bus Stop
“Her quality when photographed is almost of a supernatural beauty.”
Lee Strasberg
“Her work frightened her, and although she had undoubted talent, I think she had a subconscious resistance to the exercise of being an actress. But she was intrigued by its mystique and happy as a child when being photographed; she managed all the business of stardom with uncanny, clever, apparent ease.”
Sir Laurence Olivier
"I've learned about living from her. I took her as a serious actress even before I met her. I think she's an adroit comedienne, but I also think she might turn into the greatest tragic actress that can be imagined." -- Arthur Miller, writer and husband
"Her beauty and humanity shine through.she is the kind of artist one does not come on every day in the week. After all, she was created something extraordinary." -- Arthur Miller
"She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift. Believe me, in the last fifteen years there were ten projects that came to me, and I'd start working on them and I'd think, 'It's not going to work, it needs Marilyn Monroe.' Nobody else is in that orbit; everyone else is earthbound by comparison." -- Billy Wilder, director of Some Like it Hot and The Seven Year Itch
"She had flesh which photographed like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it. Unique is an overworked word, but in her case it applies. There will never be another one like her, and Lord knows there have been plenty of imitations." -- Billy Wilder
"She has a certain indefinable magic that comes across, which no other actress in the business has." -- Billy Wilder
"They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original." -- Billy Wilder
"Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being just a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the most unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream, of being an actress." -- Lee Strasberg
"The last time I saw Marilyn was in late 1959, when I appeared in Let's Make Love at Fox. The wide-eyed Marilyn I had first known was gone. This Marilyn was more beautiful than ever." -- Milton Berle, comedian
"Marilyn Monroe is the greatest farceuse in the business, a female Chaplin." -- Jerry Wald, producer
"She listens, wants, cares. I catch her laughing across a room and I bust up. Every pore of that lovely translucent skin is alive, open every moment-even though this world could make her vulnerable to being hurt. I would rather work with her than any other actress. I adore her." -- Montgomery Clift, Marilyn's co-star in The Misfits
"Marilyn is a kind of ultimate. She is uniquely feminine. Everything she does is different, strange, and exciting, from the way she talks to the way she uses that magnificent torso. She makes a man proud to be a man." -- Clark Gable
"She went right down into her own personal experience for everything, reached down and pulled something out of herself that was unique and extraordinary. She had no techniques. It was all the truth, it was only Marilyn. But it was Marilyn, plus. She found things, found things about womankind in herself." -- John Huston, director of The Asphalt Jungle and The Misfits
"It's a terrible pity that so much beauty has been lost to us." -- John Huston
"I know people who say 'Hollywood broke her heart,' and all that, but I don't believe it. She was very observant and tough minded and appealing, but she adored and trusted the wrong people. She was very courageous-you know the book Twelve Against the Gods? Marilyn was like that, she had to challenge the gods at every turn." -- George Cukor, director
"Nobody discovered her, she earned her own way to stardom." -- Darryl Zanuck, president of 20th Century Fox
"Her death has diminished the loveliness of the world in which we live." -- Life magazine
"Marilyn Monroe.the most fragile and loveable legend of all." -- Look magazine
"She was beautiful and untouched, it was as though she were just beginning." -- Bert Stern, photographer
"It's my feeling that Marilyn looked forward to her tomorrows." -- Eunice Murray, Marilyn's housekeeper
"When you look at Marilyn on the screen, you don't want anything bad to happen to her. You really care that she should be all right.happy." -- Natalie Wood
"When you speak of the American way of life, everybody thinks of chewing gum, coca-cola, and Marilyn Monroe." -- the Russian magazine Nedvela
"Marilyn played the best game with the worst hand of anybody I know." -- Edward Wagenknecht, author
"She's scared and unsure of herself. I found myself wishing that I were a psychoanalyst and she were my patient. It might be that I couldn't have helped her, but she would have looked lovely on a couch." -- Billy Wilder
"She had such a magnetism that if 15 men were in a room with her, each man would be convinced he was the one she'd be waiting for after the others left." -- Publicist Roy Craft
"She was pure of heart. She was free of guile. She never understood either the adoration or the antagonism which she awakened." -- Edward Wagenknecht
Gentlemen DO prefer blondes!
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