Alone!!!!!
I am alone—I am always
alone
no matter what.
Look Mag
Hu 27291
Rupert Allan
There is nothing to fear
but fear itself
What do I believe in
What is truth
I believe in myself
even my most delicate
intangible feelings
in the end everything is
intangible
my most precious liquid must
never spill don’t spill your precious liquid
life force
they are all my feelings
no matter what
My feeling doesn’t
happen to swell
into words—
Note: Rupert Allan met Marilyn in 1959. As the West Coast editor of Look magazine, he had secured Marilyn her first cover photo, which appeared on June 3, 1952. This may explain her reference “Look Mag.” Subsequently, Rupert Allan became Marilyn’s press agent and remained such up until the end of the filming of The Misfits, when he accepted Grace Kelly’s offer to work for her in Monaco.
Actress must have no mouth
no feet
shoulder girdle hangs light
hanging
so-o-o
loose
everything
focus my thought on
the partner—
feeling in the end of
my fingers
Nothing must come
between me and my
part—my feeling—
concentration
The feeling only
getting rid of everything
else
my mind speaks
no looks
body only
letting go—face feeling
mind
spirit
no attitude
listening to the body for
the feeling
listen with the eyes
buoyancy
Tension
loose—having no brakes
letting go of everything.
feeling only—all I have to
do is think it. How do
I hear the melody—the
Tone springs from emotion
Tone—groans and moans—“I’m (animals—“down to the hogs”)
so sick”—hums from
with cat—hum—nice kitty soft.
starts from below my feet
feet—all in my feet.
What is my pantomime playing with
How is my head?
as if I might never
speak move
transparency.
letting go.
down down in back.
pulling up from here.
right tension stomach
[illegible] only
Fear of giving me the lines new
maybe won’t be able to learn them
maybe I’ll make mistakes
people will either think I’m no good or
Women looked stern and critical—
unfriendly and cold in general
afraid director won’t think I’m any good.
remembering when I couldn’t do a god
damn thing.
then trying to build myself up with the
fact that I have done things right that
were even good and have had moments
that were excellent but the bad is heavier
to carry around and feel have no confidence
depressed mad
Pardon me
are you the janitor’s
wife
caught a Greyhound
Bus from Monterey
to Salinas. On the
Bus I was the only person
woman with about
sixty italian fishermen
and I’ve never met
sixty such charming gentlemen—they
were wonderful. Some
company was sending them
downstate where their boats
and (they hoped) fish were
waiting for them. Some
could hardly speak english
not only do I love Greeks
[illegible] I love Italians.
they’re so warm, lusty and friendly
as hell—I’d love to go to
Italy someday.
Notes:
The sentence of the notebook is one of the few lines Marilyn had to say in Love Nest (1951), so we may assume that these notes—at any rate, the ones written in pencil—date from the same period.
In February 1948, Marilyn went to the California towns of Salinas and Castroville in order to promote diamond sales in two jewelry stores. She stayed at the Jeffery Hotel in Salinas for a week.
Medici 1400 AD–1748
Prototype—first type
Giovanni di Bicci first foundling home
Bronze doors in the
in Florence 1424
Ghiberti 23 perspective
used his great architect
Brunelleschi 22
Donatello 1386–1466
Masaccio 1401–1428 father of modern art (reality
poverty careless about his painting)
life except his painting—
Giovanni di Bicci responsible
for him. His work never recognized
until after his death.
The Pantheon—temple
Greek philosophy—golden mean
(neither too big—or too small)
kept ousted old pope
gave money for temples for Brunelleschi
elected him Signoria
Gonfaloniere (governing body)
(pres)
Grande—nobles
Macchiavelli (1469–1527) Botticelli
damn near broke my back
and dislocated my neck trying not to
sleep all over the filipino boy
Moved my seat when a
[illegible] left the bus—the
only empty seat so
I left mine for so the
girl could sit her kid
down and I took the
other seat. It was next to
a filipino boy and
he smelled good like
flowers.
Marilyn with a book about Goya, around 1953 Marilyn and Degas sculpture, Los Angeles, 1956
OTHER “RECORD” NOTEBOOK
AROUND 1955
This black notebook has a smoother cover than the preceding one. Only the first few pages have been filled; pages 3 and 4 have disappeared, because Marilyn either ripped out the sheet to write on, or did so on rereading it. It is likely that this group of notes, which is coherent and forms a certain continuity, dates from the time Marilyn started working with Lee Strasberg, around 1955. A sincere effort at introspection can be observed as the star returned to her childhood and the lifelong fears it engendered. Aunt Ida is probably Ida Martin (rather than Ida Bolender, with whom Marilyn also stayed as a child). Ida Martin was the mother of Marilyn’s aunt by marriage, an evangelical Christian and strict disciplinarian who emphasized obedience and was repressive about sexual issues in general; she may also have made the twelve-year-old Norma Jeane feel guilty for an episode in which she said she had been molested. To no longer feel ashamed of what you were, of what you desired: this was what Marilyn, who had made her childhood dream come true by becoming an actress, was now aiming for. We may also assume that she had just started psychoanalysis, as she pointed out the bent of the unconscious to forget and repress, an impulse she urged herself to struggle against by trying to reclaim memory in order to be able to accept herself fully. She experienced work as a way of freeing herself from the constraints and shackles of the past, and these pages can be read as an outline of self-analysis, both gripping and moving.
to know reality (or
s they are than
to have not to know
and to have few
illusions as possible—
train my will now
working (doing my tasks that I
have set for myself)
On the stage—I will
not be punished for it
or be whipped
or be threatened
or not be loved
or sent to hell to burn with bad people
or feeling that I am also bad.
or be afraid of my genitals being
or ashamed
exposed known and seen—
so what
or ashamed of my sensitive feelings—
they are reality
or colors or screaming or doing
nothing
and I do have feeling
very strongly sexed feeling
since a small child—(think of all the
things I felt then
I do know ways people
act unconventionally—mainly
myself—do not be afraid of
my sensitivity or to
use it—for I
can & will channel it + crazy thoughts too
I want to do my scene or exercises
([illegible] idiotic as they seem)
as sincerely as possible I
can knowing and showing
how I know it is also—no
matter—what they might
think—or judge from it
I can and will help
myself and work on
things analytically no
matter how painful—if I
forget things (the unconscious
wants to
forget—I will only try to remember)
Discipline—Concentration
my body is my body every part of it.
feel what I feel
within myself—that is trying to
become aware of it
also what I feel in others
not being ashamed of my
feeling, thoughts—or ideas
realize the thing that
they are—
having a sense of myself
Marilyn reading To the Actor by Michael Chekhov, New York, 1955 Marilyn writing at home, May 1953
WALDORF-ASTORIA STATIONERY
1955
Marilyn Monroe’s immense popular appeal had at last been recognized by the Hollywood elite, who had gathered together at a party given in her honor by Charles Feldman, the producer of The Seven Year Itch, on November 6, 1954, at the Beverly Hills Romanoff. Still dissatisfied with what Hollywood had to offer, Marilyn decided to leave the West Coast for New York and set up Marilyn Monroe Productions with the photographer Milton Greene. This was a tremendous challenge to the all-powerful studios and a gesture for which she would never really be fully forgiven. From then on her life would swing between the West Coast and the East Coast, a contest between the movie-star image and the cultural and artistic self-invention that the Actors Studio and her New York acquaintances made possible. After a few weeks spent at the Gladstone Hotel, she stayed in a three-room suite on the twenty-seventh floor of the Waldorf-Astoria from April to September 1955. The following documents were written on this prestigious hotel’s stationery. They include a long prose poem, the account of a nightmarish dream that is full of surprises (not least her drama teacher turning into a surgeon), thoughts and notes about what Lee Strasberg had said (she misspelled his name with a double “s”) during the classes she attended at the Actors Studio, the draft of a letter to a certain “Claude,” and a list of song titles. Some of these documents are discontinuous, and the links between texts, which might have been written in any order, have been left to the reader’s discernment.
Sad, sweet trees—
I wish for you—rest
but you must be wakeful
Sooooo many lights in the darkness
making skeletons of buildings
and life in the streets
The things What were was it I thought about yesterday
down in the streets?
It now seems so far away up here long ago
and moon so full and dark.
It’s better I learned they told me as a child what it was
for I could not guess it or understand it now.
Noises from of impatience from cab drivers always driving who
must drive—hot, dusty, snowing icy streets so they
can eat, and perhaps save for a vacation, in which they
will can drive their wives all the way across the
country to see her relatives.
Then the river—the part made of pepsi cola—the park—thank god for the park
Yet I am not looking at these things
I’m looking for my lover
It’s good they told me what
the moon was when I was a child.
What was that now—
just a moment ago—
from it was mine and
now it’s gone—like the
swift movement of a moment
gone—
maybe I’ll remember
because it felt
as though it
started to be wonderful
only mine
Best finest surgeon—Strasberg
waits to cut me open which I don’t mind since Dr. H
has prepared me—given me anaesthetic
and has also diagnosed the case and
agrees with what has to be done—
an operation—to bring myself back to
life and to cure me of this terrible dis-ease
whatever the hell it is—
Arthur is the only one waiting in the outer
room—worrying and hoping operation successful
for many reasons—for myself—for his play and
for himself indirectly
Hedda—concerned—keeps calling on phone during
operation—Norman—keeps stopping by hospital to
see if I’m okay but mostly to comfort Art
who is so worried—
Milton calls from big office with lots of room
and everything in good taste—and is conducting
business in a new way with style—and music
is playing and he is relaxed and enjoying himself even if
he is very worried at the same time—there’s a camera
on his desk but he doesn’t take pictures anymore except
of great paintings.
Strasberg cuts me open after Dr. H gives me
Make no more promises
make no more
explanations—if possible.
Regarding Anne Karger
after this make no
commitments or tie
myself down to engagements
in future—to save
not being able to keep
them and mostly to
avoid feeling guilty
which is now the
case.
Notes:
Anne Karger was the mother of the man sometimes identified as Marilyn's first real love, Fred Karger, whom she met in 1948 when he was a (then-married) voice coach at Columbia Pictures. She stayed on good terms with Anne all her life.
Dr. H. refers to Dr. Margaret Hohenberg.
Hedda Rosten had been a close friend of Marilyn’s since 1955 and became her personal assistant for a time. Norman was Hedda’s husband.
“Art” was one of the nicknames Marilyn gave to Arthur Miller.
Milton Greene took many photos of Marilyn before becoming her business partner.
anesthesia and tries in a medical way to comfort
me—everything in the room is white in fact I
can’t even see anyone just white objects—
they cut me open—Strasberg with Hohenberg’s ass.
and there is absolutely nothing there—Strasberg is
deeply disappointed but more even—acad
emically amazed
that he had made such a mistake. He thought there was going
to be so much—more than he had ever dreamed possible in
almost anyone but
instead there was absolutely nothing—devoid
of every human living feeling thing—the only thing
that came out was so finely cut sawdust—like
out of a raggedy ann doll—and the sawdust spills
all over the floor & table and Dr. H is puzzled
because suddenly she realizes that this is a
new type case of puple. The patient (pupil—or student—I started to write) existing of complete emptiness
Strasberg’s dreams & hopes for theater are fallen.
Dr. H’s dreams and hopes for a permanent psychiatric cure is given up—Arthur is disappointed—let down +
For Dr H.
tell about that
dream of the horrible repulsive man—who is trying to