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Memories of Marilyn Wyatt Dickerson’s fond encounter with a cinema legend B Y J A N E T D O N O VA N
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, NORMA JEAN: When Wyatt Dickerson turned 22 in 1946, he received a birthday telephone call from his friend Norma Jean Baker. It probably wasn’t as exciting as the ones President Kennedy got, but she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe yet either. “I had met Norma Jean almost two years earlier,” Dickerson recalls. “I was a young actor and had just had a part in my first movie. She also called to tell me that she had just signed a film contract at 20th Century Fox and would be paid $125 a week. She was then 20 years old.” Dickerson was living in L.A. at the home of Gen. Sir Sydney and Lady Lawford at the time. He met Norma Jean sitting alone at the beach in Santa Monica, looking sad, Above: Wyatt Dickerson, poolside in lonely, and out of place. “My in 1946. Right: Soliel Moon roommate was the Lawfords’ Hollywood Frye and David Hyde Pierce (photo by son, Peter, a struggling young Neshan Nalchayan). actor. I felt sorry for her and asked her if she would like to meet some of to drive her to wherever the young U.C.L.A. students and some of the she lived in Hollywood, surfers and volleyball players.” at least 15 miles away.” Peter, who was busy drying off from “Some years later, I surfing, didn’t display much interest in the enjoyed watching my young girl, so Dickerson took her to lunch beach friend play in at Neenies Weenies, a beach hang out for fast films and thought of my food, where they had hot dogs and soft drinks perspicacity as a young man. I was happy that before returning to the beach where Dickerson the little waif had lucked out. However, it was resumed his volleyball match. not the end of the story.” “She was still in the same place when “Peter Lawford must have had a better I finished the game. I remember asking her introduction to her 15 years later than I had where she lived and how she would get home. given him at the beach. As Marilyn Monroe, Although I didn’t get a direct answer, It was she was treated with great affection and clear she didn’t have a car and I assumed that proudly introduced by him to some of the she would take a bus or hitchhike. So I offered leading political figures of the day.”
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The rest is history. YOUNG CHAMPION: No one is fully prepared to deal with the ravages of Alzheimer’s. Just ask actress Soleil Moon Frye. Best known for her gig as “Punky Brewster” in the 1980’s sitcom, she is preparing for a role of a lifetime as the daughter of a father who has the disease. “It started out gradually,” she said, “perhaps as long as 10 years before if became noticeable. We thought he was just a little crazy ... leaving notes around the house. He would call and say he couldn’t find his car; things began collecting in the house.” “This illness is painful on dignity,” she notes. “My father had a colorful life and was robbed of his character. We are motivated to find a cure.” Frye was honored with the Young Champions Award at the seventh annual National Alzheimer’s Gala at the National Building Museum along with Terry Moran, co-anchor of ABC’s “Nightline,” who received the Sargent and Eunice Shriver Profiles in Dignity Award. The evening was emceed by “Frasier” star David Hyde Pierce. If it’s any comfort, Congress included provisions for the concerns of a growing Alzheimer patient population in the final health care reform legislation.
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