Black farmer, Mrs. Effie Husband, Mississippi, 1945
Altho I know the publisher of that stink sheet & he offered me a fabulous price to edit it for him (of course I turned it down). I wasn’t able to do anything about [the] story.
The best advice I can give you at this time—try to lay off publicity—unless you can control the story, or break. And now let it (pub) come in recognition of your work!
Having a ball & freedom doesn’t mean hop, skipping & jumping from joint to joint. See people, discover them, places, look at art, theatre, get in your car and take off, study. And come to think of it—altho you’re so damn cute in jeans & torn shirts—dress up—& that’s no snobbery—but please don’t compress those things!
Remember you’re not now little Cinderella Princess & all that crap—you’re the Queen!
And maybe I’m not completely blameless altho I do sound so goddamned sanctimonious. I did say in LIFE that you borrowed a dress for a party. Now that’s cute & all that & I had to tell the truth because I’m also a reporter & it makes an interesting item for a story… but frankly, I don’t like it. It’s not grown up enough for you. Go out and get your own gowns and knock them out.
There is a hell of a lot of symbolism in your remark that you always were able to get into Match, Eye, See, etc. but never Harper’s Bazaar & Vogue etc. Well, you’ve made it. Not that I think H. Baz & Vog are godalmighty—but there’s some kind of parallel there.
Well, I’m coming into station & hope you’re not sore at me.
Love, —SAM
We all love Marilyn, The Shaws—
Edie
Blackie [the dog]
Meta
Larry Anne
Sam [postmarked December 9, 1954]
A STAR ARRIVES
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes led to a string of starring roles, magazine covers, column items, and press junkets to New York, Atlantic City, wherever. She was staying at the classy hotels, the Sherry-Netherland and the Ritz. Studio expenses. The hotel rent was more than her salary. She was becoming famous before her starring role in The Seven Year Itch, but Marilyn was still paid as a studio starlet.
When George Axelrod, was writing The Seven Year Itch stage play, he couldn’t come up with a name that fit the female character so he called her “The Girl.” When Axelrod saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, he realized Marilyn was “The Girl” and “The Girl” was Marilyn.
Top press agents were masters at spreading word through their grapevine and were able to create a crowd even for an unknown. When Marilyn came to New York to film The Seven Year Itch, 20th Century Fox was able to assemble a crowd at Idlewild Airport. At first, the crowd was a handful of maintenance personnel. Somehow the crowd became a mob, with Marilyn at the center of attraction. She not only sent kisses to them, she sent vibrations
While filming The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn told me that she played for truth. When she had difficulties remembering lines, she told me that in most cases “the lines were forced and not true to the character.”
In one scene in The Seven Year Itch, she read off three
Idlewild (JFK) Airport, New York City, 1954
“Sam Spade,” she said, “When I go to the theatre, I don’t care for the guests coming with Cadillacs. I only care for my public, the people across the street who can’t get in or up close. When I wave to them, I want them to see me from across the street. If I were in subtle makeup or without makeup, they wouldn’t see me.”
When we got to the theatre, more than an hour late, mobs lined the sidewalk and across the street. Everybody forgave her. The crowds, the VIPs, the critics, who loved her!
The 20th Century brass loved the reviews the next day.
Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn at the premiere of The Seven Year Itch, New York City, 1955
Sam Shaw
Famous Artists Corporation of New York
610 Fifth Avenue
New York 20, N.Y.
Miss Marilyn Monroe
8338 DeLongpre Street
Hollywood, Calif.
Dear Marilyn,
If there is difficulty reading these lines, you must understand that I am writing this on a train coming into N.Y.
I feel better today talking to you yesterday! Anne & kids send best to you. They LOVE you too.
About that business of G. Solotaire and discussing you & Joe—I thought I should let you know what went on.
I didn’t say much except what I felt about you & what a lovely grand person you are as a human being— discounting the great glamorous xotic star—but as a good straight forward young woman who meets all the world & people on a straight from the heart level—& that anyone whether it’s Joe or any other Joe must accept you on your terms and not bring this crap and attitude of Toots Shor Cub Room B’way hoodlum morality with him.
George S. told me that Joe is broken hearted & a strange guy etc. and that he feels he’s killed something that he loves deeply etc.
I don’t like to get involved in intensely personal affairs between a man & a woman (because in the past when I did it never worked out) and that kind of a relationship where 2 people’s personal lives are at stake where you live with somebody that is strictly for them to decide what they are going to do about it—and no matter how interested friends are—no one ever does know the deep underlying hopes, desires and feelings except you you you inside the inside corners—right?!
So all I can say to you is do as you please. You are young & beautiful (& even if you weren’t beautiful) and a most fascinatingly interesting young woman with an individual inner eye and outlook and just discovering the world and all its wonders and as one of the great Greeks—Euripides, Aeschylus or Aristotle said—“and the most wonderful is MAN!”
Stretch out and gobble it all in—and don’t moon about yourself. You’re a new champ. Disregard all the petty little maneuverings that go on around & about you. Chuck the little annoying details aside and only consider the big values.
A MEMOIR OF MARILYN MONROE
BY HER FRIEND SAM SHAW
“This is a Marilyn story. The Marilyn I knew. The many faces of Marilyn… Her independence. Her search for herself. She enjoyed life to the hilt.”–Sam Shaw
Dear Marilyn is at once a memoir and a tribute by photographer and filmmaker Sam Shaw—a long-time confidant who knew Marilyn Monroe not as an icon, but as a cherished friend and artist in her own right.
Featuring previously unpublished photos, letters and memorabilia, Dear Marilyn illuminates, with respect and affection, the funny and complicated soul behind the Hollywood persona. Told through Sam Shaw’s journals and his letters to Marilyn, this intimate portrait offers an insider’s view of a young actress’s rise to stardom and her quest for authenticity and artistic freedom.
Here, in word and image, we rediscover Marilyn Monroe—above and beyond the legend—at her most personal, spontaneous and radiant.
ISBN: 978-1-78884-333-1
