Here is for you one of my older stories I wrote on Marilyn Monroe. this one tries to be a mixture of a reflective piece and a obituary. When I wrote this i was very much obsessed with the idea of an image surviving time and overshadowing its origin.
August 5th. 1962.1.36 pm. 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles.
She dialed the number. The phone rang, but no one answered. She put down the phone. John did not answer, and nobody knows why. She picked up the phone once again. This will be the last time she ever touched a phone, and ever dialed a number.
When they look back at her life all they see is the bright, shiny and stunning creature, which Hollywood wanted her to be. It is not like Marilyn lied to the world, nor did Norma Jean,but she always wanted to be a terrific beautiful star and special. She loathed average. She was not average. But this night, the night of her spirit finally leaving the vessel, she had become what she hated most: average. But what she might have loved is that even in being average she was truly special. Death she may share with each and every creature, but with her death she entered the sphere of icons. She will always be remembered as this star she always wanted to be.
“Marilyn is gone. Would you come here? Marilyn is no longer alive.” Jack Clemmons, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, received this call by Marilyn’s psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson. She was 36. As the doctors entered the room all they saw was a woman lying on a bed, nude, with her face and blossoms down. Only a thin blanket covered her body. A blonde woman, dead on arrival.
What we may remember most about the following days was that her death was an unbelievable thing. Her visuals, which have been captured on photographs and in movies, have constantly flashed through the papers and now they took their final flash in the center of the spotlight. Marilyn will always be alive, even if Norma is dead. The blonde, divine, fake and dead hair shined for its last time. Superficially Marilyn’s appearance and behavior has always been about the looks, the poses, the sex appeal and the desire she embodied. The world wanted to see beauty, to own the picture, to absorb it. That is what they always got, even until the very end. She never disappointed.
When they had lifted her body up, and laid it on the stretcher, she looked as if she was not Marilyn at all. Her face was swollen softly, her eyes closed and her skin looked pale. The hair, which smelled chemical, was all messed up, her lips, which had always been perfectly full, looked torn, and her lipstick was smudged.
The whole world knew her and still, more than 2600 weeks later, everyone knows her. If you type in Marilyn on google.com it will instantly add Monroe as a proposal. If you press enter approximately eighty three million seven hundred thousand results will be found in less than 0,2 seconds. They knew her for her body, her sex appeal and her being Marilyn Monroe. But what is most remarkable is Marilyn’s smile. Smiling is a happy expression. It shows joy, vitality, energy and spirit. Marilyn smiled a lot. She always tried to be happy. Not for her own sake but for Norma. Since Norma hasn’t exactly had what is supposed to be the picture-perfect childhood, Marilyn was her way to make the experiences she did not had. She, they, Norma and Marilyn, were seen as one, but in fact were 2 different people. Norma, who was a child when she first got married, had to grow up so fast that she was an adult by the time others went on their first date. Marilyn, who was an artificial creation of FOX, was not the adult she should have been.
Not even in the night of her death the paparazzi ignored her. When her corpse arrived in an ambulance at the Los Angeles County Hospital the paparazzi were already waiting for her, to catch the image. The image of a fallen star, which once was a symbol for America, as prove for the possibility that your dreams may fulfill themselves. They wanted to catch her, take her picture. Pictures made her a star, and they were to guide her till the very end.
Her zodiac sign was twins. Twins may represent a dual force, the power of two and the unity of two parts. On the other hand twins are a representation of a duality. A split personality. And this girl, woman, being, construct, dead creature and beautiful personality was two, split. Norma Jean wanted to be Marilyn. FOX created Marilyn in cooperation with Norma Jean. Marilyn grew. Norma grew along, for a while. When Marilyn grew more and more, Norma suffered. Marilyn, always reduced to the sex symbol and serving as a mask, started to get so heavy that Norma suffered under the pressure and the reductionism. When Norma could no longer take the pressure she was in danger to break down. On movie sets she was fragile, appeared late, was always on drugsand could hardly make a scene. She needed help. Psychoanalysis seemed like theanswer. But it was not. Finally Marilyn brought Norma Jean to the edge. Norma jumped the edge. It is not clear if Marilyn helped Norma. What “helped” her were her lovers.
To be photographed always seemed a way for her to be loved without risk. Her skin was her protection. Her body was notsomething she associated with shame; rather she saw it as a vessel. As something to work with and on.
But in this night her lovers were not called Joe, John or any other male name. They were called pentobarbital, chloral hydrateand other barbiturates.
Marilyn has always been more that what the world perceived her to be. Ways more. Underestimating her and making her a dumb doll was wrong. Simply because she was everything else than that. Once she wrote a poem:
Help help
Help
Ifeel live coming closer
when all I want
is to die
It seems as like she knew that she would not get very old. Just like her idol: Jean Harlow.
She was laid to rest on August 8th in a bronze coffin. The only husband of hers coming to the funeral was JoeDiMaggio. Lee Strasberg who held the funeral speech said that he couldn’t bare to say goodbye. Marilyn hated to say goodbye.
In 1955 in a letter to Claude Claude she added in the post scriptum:
“In a few day’s I am sending you a reminder – to remind you of something of me mostly.”
It seems as though Marilyn has left behind a reminder for all of us. Her life, story and being is a reminder. We should keep it in mind.
