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  There was something special about me in the casting director’s eyes, but I didn’t find it out till much later. Mr. Schenck had called up the head of X Studio and asked him as a favor to give me a job.

  I received several “extra girl” calls from the studio and worked in a few scenes as “background.” Then one day Mr. A., the casting director, telephoned. He wanted me in his office at four o’clock. I spent the day bathing and fixing my hair and reciting out loud different parts I had learned. And giving myself instructions. This was the big chance. Mr. A. wouldn’t have called me himself if it wasn’t for a real part. But I musn’t act overeager, or start babbling, or grin with joy. I must sit quietly and have dignity every minute.

  Mr. A. wasn’t in his office, but his secretary smiled at me and told me to go inside and wait for him.

  I sat straight in one of Mr. A’s inner office chairs waiting and practicing dignity. A door at the back of the office opened, and a man came in. I had never met him, but I knew who he was. He was head of X Studio, and as great a man as Mr. Schenck or Mr. Zanuck.

  “Hello, Miss Monroe,” he said.

  He came over to me, put his hand on my arm, and said, “Come on, we’ll go in my office and talk.”

  “I don’t think I can leave,” I said. “I’m waiting for Mr. A. He telephoned me about a part.”

  “The hell with Mr. A.,” said the great man. “He’ll know where you are.”

  I hesitated, and he added, “What’s the matter with you? You dopey or something? Don’t you know I’m the boss around here?”

  I followed him through the back door into an office three times larger than Mr. A’s.

  “Turn around,” said the great man. I turned like a model.

  “You look all right,” he grinned. “Nicely put together.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  “Sit down,” he said, “I want to show you something.”

  The great man rummaged through his oversized desk. I looked at his office. The tables were full of bronze Oscars and silver cups and all sorts of other prizes he had won with his movies. I had never seen an office like this before—the office where the head of an entire studio presided. Here was where all the great stars, producers, and directors came for conferences, and where all the decisions were made by the great man behind his battleship of a desk.

  “Hold all calls,” the great man spoke into a box on the desk. He beamed at me. “Here’s what I wanted to show you.”

  He brought a large photograph to my chair. It was a picture of a yacht.

  “How do you like it?” he asked.

  “It’s very beautiful,” I said.

  “You’re invited,” he said. He put his hand on my neck.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ve never been to a party on a yacht.”

  “Who said anything about a party,” the great man scowled at me. “I’m inviting you, nobody else. Do you want to come, or not?”

  “I’ll be glad to join you and your wife on your yacht, Mr. X.,” I said.

  The great man looked fiercely at me.

  “Leave my wife out of this,” he said. “There’ll be nobody on the yacht except you and me. And some expensive sailors. We’ll leave in an hour. And we’ll take a cruise overnight. I have to be back tomorrow evening for my wife’s dinner party. No way of getting out of it.”

  He stopped and scowled at me again.

  “What’s the idea of standing there and staring at me,” he demanded, “like I had insulted you. I know who you are. You’re Joe Schenck’s girl. He called me up to do him a favor and give you a job. Is that a reason for you to get insulting?”

  I smiled at the great man.

  “I don’t mean to be insulting, Mr. X,” I said.

  “Good,” he was beaming again. “We’ll have a fine cruise, and I can tell you now, you won’t regret it.”

  He put his arms around me. I didn’t move.

  “I’m very grateful to you for the invitation, Mr. X,” I said, “but I’m busy this week and so I shall have to refuse it.”

  His arm dropped from me. I started for the door. He stood still, and I felt I had to say something else. He was a great man, and he held my future in his hands. Seducing employees was just a normal routine for him. I mustn’t act as if I thought he was some kind of monster, or he would never—

  I turned in the doorway. Mr. X was standing glaring at me. I had never seen a man so angry. I made my voice as casual and friendly as I could.

  “I hope you invite me some time again when I can accept your invitation,” I said.

  The great man pointed his finger at me.

  “This is your last chance,” he said fiercely.

  I walked through the door and out of the office where movie stars were made.

  “Maybe he’s watching me,” I thought. “I mustn’t let him see me upset.”

  I drove to my room in my car. Yes, there was something special about me, and I knew what it was. I was the kind of girl they found dead in a hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand.

  14

  the police enter my life

  But things weren’t entirely black—not yet. They really never are. When you’re young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you’re laughing again.

  After lying around for a few days feeling sorry for myself and feeling what a failure I was, something would come back into my heart again. I wouldn’t say things out loud, but I could hear them as if voices were talking to me, get up, you haven’t begun yet, you’re different, something wonderful is going to happen.

  And wonderful things did happen on the ocean bottom—in a small way.

  I met kind people.

  I had met a married couple who lived in Burbank in a small house. They said to me one evening while I was visiting them, “We’re going away for a few months. Why don’t you just live in our house while we’re gone and save rent?”

  I moved my suitcase and make up box to Burbank. I owned one suit, two plain dresses, two pairs of shoes, some darned stockings, a little lingerie, and a bathrobe. Moving wasn’t hard.

  It was around Christmas time, and I was worrying about where I would get money to buy a few Christmas presents with. It had been fun buying presents when I was on the studio payroll. I bought them chiefly for Aunt Grace or Aunt Anna.

  When Aunt Grace was ill I would go shopping a whole day for her and buy a silk bed jacket, silk slippers, a fancy nightgown, and a bottle of perfume. I would put them all in one box and take it to her. Her happiness on seeing all the things in the box was worth a thousand times more than what they had cost.

  This Christmas everything seemed extra gloomy. Not only had I flopped in my career, but there was a laziness in me that kept me from getting jobs. I preferred to lie around feeling sorry for myself and thinking how cruel and unfair the world was. As a result I didn’t have any money. Even to eat, let alone to spend on presents.

  Then one day I received word from the studio that I had forty dollars coming to me. I hurried over and collected it. The cashier handed me a check for the money. I was so excited I left the studio forgetting to cash it.

  When I got off the bus in Hollywood Boulevard to do some shopping I didn’t have a dime in my purse. I went into a drugstore and ate dinner, and then I offered to pay with the check. The manager refused to cash it, but he said he’d trust me if I’d give him my name and address. I did.

  Then I went out and tried to cash the check in different places. Nobody would cash it.

  I saw a policeman looking at me; so I went up to him.

  “Pardon me, officer,” I said. “Could you help me please? I want to get a check cashed, and I don’t know where.”

  He smiled and said, “Well, that is a serious predicament. Come along, I’ll see what I can do. What sort of a check is it?”

  “It’s a payroll check,” I said, “from the 20th Century Fox studio.”

  “Are you employed there?” the policeman asked.r />
  “I’m not employed there any longer,” I said. “But they are still in business.”

  The policeman took me into a store. He spoke to the manager who agreed to cash the check.

  “So you’re an actress,” said the policeman.

  “I used to be,” I said, “but, as I told you, I’m not working at the moment.”

  The manager brought the check back and said, “Would you mind putting your name and address on the back of this?”

  I did and noticed the policeman watching me write. I also looked at his face for the first time. He had dark hair and his eyes were close together.

  After doing my shopping, I stopped in a doctor’s office. I had a cold, and I had not slept for several nights. The doctor gave me a sleeping pill.

  “I don’t usually recommend sleeping pills,” he said, “but you’ve been having hysterics too long. A good sleep will not only be good for your cold but cheer you up.”

  I went to bed early and took the pill. I’d been sleeping for a few hours when a noise woke me. I’d never heard this sort of noise before, but I knew what it was. Somebody was cutting the screen of the bedroom window.

  I jumped out of bed and ran out of the house. I went around the side to look. A man was starting to climb into my bedroom window. I imitated a gruff male voice and called indignantly, “Hey, what are you doing there?”

  The man pulled his head out of the window and looked toward me.

  “Get away from here,” I shouted again in a gruff voice, “or I’ll call the police.”

  The man started toward me. I turned and ran like sixty.

  It was around midnight. I ran down the deserted suburban street. I was barefooted, and I was wearing the new style of half nightgown. It came just a little below the waist.

  I arrived at a neighbor’s house and yelled. He came down with his wife behind him. She started yelling when she saw me. I explained about the man trying to break into my bedroom and asked the neighbor to go capture him.

  The neighbor shook his head.

  “The fellow probably has a gun,” he said. “Burglars usually carry them.” “He’s not a burglar,” I said. “He was after me.”

  I telephoned the police and covered myself with a quilt. The police took an hour to arrive. I went back to the house with them. They found the cut screen and footprints and everything.

  “Well, you scared him off,” the detective said. “You have nothing to worry about. You can go back to bed.”

  “But what if he returns?” I asked.

  “Never happens,” said the detective. “Once a burglar is scared off the premises he’ll never return to that place. Just relax, miss, and go to sleep. We’ll let you know if anything turns up.”

  There was a loud knocking on the door. I jumped two feet. It was around 1 a.m.

  “Do you usually get company at this time of night?” the detective asked me.

  “No,” I said. “I never have any company. Nobody has ever come to call on me.”

  “Go open the door,” the detective ordered.

  I went to the door and opened it. It was the screen cutter. He made a grab for me, and I screamed.

  The two detectives seized him.

  “That’s the man,” I yelled. “He’s the burglar!”

  “What’s all this?” the man scowled at the detectives holding him. “Marilyn’s an old friend. Good old Marilyn.” And he winked at me and said, “Tell ’em, honey”

  “I don’t know the man,” I said. “He looks a little familiar, but I don’t know him.”

  “Let me go,” the man cried. “You can’t arrest somebody for calling on an old friend.”

  “How about it?” one of the detectives said to me. “Let’s have the truth, Miss Monroe. Is this an old sweetie of yours?”

  I could feel that they were believing the man, and I was terrified they would go away and leave him alone with me.

  “He’s no burglar,” the detective scowled at me. “He knows your name and address. He comes back after you chase him away. Obviously he’s—”

  The other detective was searching the man and pulled a revolver out of his pocket.

  “Hey,” he interrupted, “this is a police gun! Where’d you get this?”

  At the words “police gun” I knew who the man was. It was the policeman with the eyes close together who had helped me cash my forty dollar check. He’d memorized the name and address as I wrote them on the back of the check.

  I hadn’t recognized him at first because he was out of uniform.

  I told the detectives who he was. He denied it but they found a Los Angeles police card in his pocket.

  They took him away.

  The next day the detectives visited me. They told me the man was a new cop, that he was married and had a fourteen-month-old baby. They said they would rather I didn’t file any charges against the man because it would give the police force a black eye.

  “I don’t want to punish him,” I said, “but I would like to be sure he didn’t try to do that to me again. Or to any other girl.”

  The detectives assured me he wouldn’t. So I didn’t file any charges. Instead I moved out.

  I went back to a Hollywood bedroom, and I stayed in it for several days and nights without moving. I cried and stared out the window.

  15

  the bottom of the ocean

  When you’re a failure in Hollywood—that’s like starving to death outside a banquet hall with the smells of filet mignon driving you crazy. I lay in bed again day after day, not eating, not combing my hair. I kept remembering how I had sat in Mr. A’s casting office controlling my excitement about the great luck that had finally come to me, and I felt like an idiot. There was going to be no luck in my life. The dark star I was born under was going to get darker and darker.

  I cried and mumbled to myself. I’d go out and get a job as a waitress or clerk. Millions of girls were happy to work at jobs like that. Or I could work in a factory again. I wasn’t afraid of any kind of work. I’d scrubbed floors and washed dishes ever since I could remember.

  But there was something wouldn’t let me go back to the world of Norma Jean. It wasn’t ambition or a wish to be rich and famous. I didn’t feel any pent up talent in me. I didn’t even feel that I had looks or any sort of attractiveness. But there was a thing in me like a craziness that wouldn’t let up. It kept speaking to me, not in words but in colors—scarlet and gold and shining white, greens and blues. They were the colors I used to dream about in my childhood when I had tried to hide from the dull, unloving world in which the orphanage slave, Norma Jean, existed.

  I was still flying from that world, and it was still around me.

  It was while I lay on this ocean bottom, figuring never to see daylight again, that I fell in love for the first time. I’d not only never been in love, but I hadn’t ever dreamed of it. It was something that existed for other people—people who had families and homes.

  But when I lay on this ocean bottom it hit me, hoisted me into the air, and stood me on my feet looking at the world as if I’d just been born.

  16

  my first love

  He’s married now to a movie star, and it might embarrass him if I used his real name, and her, too. I read in the paper that their marriage, only a year old, is heading for the Hollywood reefs where most of the movieland marriages come apart. A few years ago I might have felt like giving it a push, just for old times sake. But now I’m happy and I wish him well and I wish anybody he loves well.

  I was coming out of the casting department at M.G.M. with the usual results—no job and no prospects—when a girl I knew introduced me to an ordinary looking man. All I could tell about him was that he wasn’t an actor. Actors are often wonderful and charming people, but for a woman to love an actor is something like incest. It’s like loving a brother with the same face and manners as your own.

  We went to a café and sat down and talked. Or rather, he talked. I stared and listened. I was sick inside with failur
e, and there was no hope in me. His voice was like a medicine. He told me he was a musician and how much he liked to play the piano and why some music was better than other music. I didn’t think of him as a man or a musician. All I thought was “He’s alive and strong.”

  He called me up, and I always hurried to join him. The first thing I saw when I entered any place to meet him, no matter how crowded it was, was his face. It would jump out at me.

  After a few weeks he knew I loved him. I hadn’t said so, but I didn’t have to. I stumbled when I went to sit down, my mouth hung open, my heart ached so much I wanted to cry all the time. If his hand touched mine by accident my knees buckled.

  He smiled at me through all this as if I were half a joke. When he laughed at things I hadn’t meant to be funny, I felt flattered. He talked a lot about women and the emptiness of their love. He had just been divorced and was very cynical. He had a six-year-old son whose custody had been granted him by the court.

  One evening after he had put his son to bed he sat and played the piano for me. He played a long time. Then he did something that made my heart beat crazily. In order to see the music better he put on a pair of glasses. I had never seen him with glasses on.

  I don’t know why, but I had always been attracted to men who wore glasses. Now, when he put them on, I felt suddenly overwhelmed.

  He stopped playing, removed his glasses and came over to me. He embraced and kissed me. My eyes closed, and a new life began for me.

  I moved from the Studio Club where I was living to a place nearer his house so he could stop in on the way to work or home from work. I sat all day waiting for him. When I looked back on all the years I could remember, I shuddered. I knew now how cold and empty they had been. I had always thought of myself as someone unloved. Now I knew there had been something worse than that in my life. It had been my own unloving heart. I had loved myself a little, and Aunt Grace and Anna. How little it seemed now!