Krystall Fasel
English 101
04/27/15
Rough Draft #2
Marilyn Monroe
A Personal Narrative
“Then off to Saks for a bulky sweater, terry-cloth three-quarter hooded
beach jacket, a blanket, a large towel for those peek-a-boo shots, and a sexy
bikini. I did not buy Marilyn any undergarments—she never wore them.”
-George Barris ‘Her Life in Her Own Words, Marilyn’
The first time I watched ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’, I
believe I was fifteen years old. Falling instantly in love with this
classic movie, feeling that she and I had so much in common. I myself was a
bubbly, and silly blonde young woman. I soon added to my cinema interest by watching,
‘The Seven Year Itch’, and ‘Some Like It Hot’. I watched them on old VHS tapes,
and I marveled at how glamorous the beginning of Hollywood was. These actors
and actresses, in their time, had to be multi-talented. They had to sing and
dance along with remembering lines. ‘I
could never do that’, I thought to myself. ‘I could never be that talented or that beautiful’. There she was,
Marilyn Monroe, dressed in pink. That was my new favorite color, I decided that
right there at that moment. I started talking about her and asking questions.
Caring about her, looking up facts, and reading books. Always wanting to
find an autobiography, a journal, or an interview, something that could place
me next to her.
My mother bought me a book for my birthday. I read it. She
bought me another book for Christmas and I read that one. I was reading not
because I had to, but because I wanted to. My searching brought me to an
antique shop in Port Orchard where the store clerk found me on the floor
rummaging through some old magazines. Having in mind exactly what I was looking
for I pulled one from the pile, then the next making more piles. Dust floating
around me as I carefully checked from one magazine to the next. Paying careful
attention to dates. I’m sure I looked a mess sitting on the floor, my hair in a
bun, just on the verge of sneezing.
“Can I help you find something honey?” She asked me.
Probably puzzled by my appearance, conceivably she had seen this before. I
would love to someday interview the people that work in old antique shops, and
the individuals that must come in looking for peculiar things. Today was my
turn.
“I was hoping to find the old ‘Life’ magazine from 1952 with
Marilyn on the cover, or even old pictures from ‘Family Circle’ or ‘Blue Book’
an old ‘Photoplay’?” Hopeful I looked up at her.
She smiled at me. “We don’t have anything like that here
honey. Try some of the shops in Seattle, we do however have a few books.”
She led me over to a book shelf where she pulled out
‘Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words’. I bought the book without hesitation, I
was thrilled. In it were photos, journal entries. The best book I’d found so far.
Excited I raced home and began to read, I felt like I was sitting in her
bedroom with her, interviewing her myself. She had me hooked, me and everyone
else.
The antique stores in Seattle did have an array of items. I
found posters, magazines, wine bottles, anything you wanted in life you could
find with a picture of Marilyn. There was a store in Santa Cruz, California
that had an abundance, though I found most completely out of my price range.
Being close to these artifacts did make me happy though. Reading more about her
and collecting magazine articles over the years completely filling my apartment.
There’s something about her strength that makes me want to be strong. I had a
yearning to know more so I read and I researched.
“Those things the press has been saying about me, are fine, if they
want to give the wrong impression. It’s as simple as all that. I’m not
interested in being a millionaire. The one thing a person wants most in life is
usually something basic that money can’t buy. I’m not the girl next door—I’m
not a goody-goody—but I think I’m human.”
-Marilyn Monroe
Quote recorded by George Barris ‘Her Life in Her Own Words,
Marilyn’ page 137
Marilyn had survived so much in her childhood. She had
been passed around from family members, abandoned by her mother and placed into
foster care. Never once harboring hatred for those that abandoned her,
always forgiving and understanding. Always left just wanting to be loved.
In her stay under foster care she suffered many forms of
abuse. She, in my opinion, took these times in her life and formed an
ideal of what she would hope for in the future. Once her life was in her own
hands she would not allow these hardships to discourage her from the fame she
believed would one day be hers. From family to orphanage, to foster care, to
family again. She never had a stable life and she lived a life of broken
promises. In order for her to free herself from this pain she married at
sixteen years old, got a job and pursued the life of a military homemaker.
Excepting of this life, it was only as she got older and started being allowed
to find herself that she realized what she wanted. Being discovered by a
modeling scout while at work, her hopes and dreams came into sight.
Her life then began spiraling into a world she knew nothing
about. Always being told what to wear, how to stand and who to be. She fought
hard every single day to prove her worth. It was in that new modeling career
that she realized her true potential. She chose to abandon her job and her
husband to peruse something for herself, something that she wanted. People
usually misunderstand her background. To understand Marilyn Monroe you would literally
have to place yourself in her shoes and live a life in the era where she grew
up and became famous. It’s easy for most to misconstrue the situation by thinking,
‘She’s just a blonde girl, living on
beauty with the world handed to her’. When in fact she was a hard
working women that shaped Hollywood and the worlds view on women in the cinema.
Marilyn changed my ideas on life, she gave me strength. Surviving my own
tortuous and confusing childhood, I found myself being free of judgment and
really sympathizing with her. I see persistence in her, in the hardest moments,
she never gave up.
“I’ve tried to imagine spring all winter—it’s here and I still feel
hopeless. I think I hate it here because there is no love here anymore…”
-Marilyn Monroe 1957
‘Vanity Fair, November 2010’
‘Marilyn’s Secret Diaries’
Obsession grew, secretly wanting to know everything. I was
given, as a gift, some very private photos of Marilyn. At nineteen, I framed
the delicate photos with extra care and hung them on the walls of my apartment.
I felt like every story I read, every quote and every photo put me just a
little closer to her. I began to try and follow in her footsteps, almost to
every hip move in the way I walked. Not just because every man wanted her and
every women wanted to be her, but because she had endured so much. She took
every negative thing that ever happened to her and turned it around. No matter
how bad things got she still wanted to do her best. After researching and
reading everything I could get my hands on, I began to make my own opinions.
Her pain came from within her own body. She wanted more than anything in life
to have her own children. Her body
however could not reproduce. She was unable to carry a child after conception.
It is rumored by many that she had repeated abortions although that is only
rumor and the truth is long lost.
“Marilyn’s final hospital stay was just two weeks before she died, when
Dr. Krohn operated on her once again endometriosis. Speculation that this
hospitalization episode was for an abortion…seems unlikely, in view of her
enormous desire to have children.”
-Adam Victor, ‘The Marilyn Encyclopedia’
Never having my thirst of knowledge quenched, I have searched
for every last book. I took meticulous notes on one author to the next.
Comparing stories to see how accurate they were. Pretending sometimes that I
could have lived in the same era, memorizing the lines from her movies, the
words to her soundtracks and smiling though the darkest days. It is in my
opinion, after the many books that I have read, she overdosed on her own
medications which is what finally killed her. Like so many famous people that
we all know, Michael Jackson, Anna Nichole Smith, Brittany Murphy and so many
others, prescription drugs not controlled can be deadly. In her time, doctors did
not have symptoms in place with each other and often times diagnosed her and
prescribed her with different prescriptions simultaneously, not knowing there
were other doctors involved with her analysis.
She was chronically sick with colds, pain, and gynecological problems,
always on more than one medication at a time. She also very much enjoyed
drinking alcohol. The combination proved to be more then she could control.
“The thing I want more than anything else? I want a baby! I want to
have children! I used to feel that for every child I had, I would adopt
another…”
-Marilyn Monroe
Quote recorded by George Barris ‘Her Life in Her Own Words,
Marilyn’ page 131
Having a ‘Marilyn’ day of my own. Wanting to feel wonderful
and enjoy the good weather, I went shopping on a sunny day. I came across a few
antique shops finding nothing to favor. Staying positive I tried ‘Goodwill’.
They have a very fun section of ‘Vintage Clothing’ that I always find something
to favor. Sometimes finding things my grandmother would have worn, sometimes
something my mother would have worn. On this particular day I came across a
very special sweater. It was very familiar to me, as if I’d seen it before.
Mostly cream, with brown, stripes. Knit with a tie around the waist. I put it on
over my own clothes. Normally not something I would do but I was falling in
love with this sweater. I bought it and brought it home. There were no tags on
the inside but I knew the sweater was special. Only coming to me later did I
realize that it was almost identical to the sweater that Marilyn wore in the
photo shoot with George Barris. I know
it’s obviously not the same one, but when I ware it on cold days I feel warmer.
It’s also my favorite sweater to wear to the beach. Pretending to be like
Marilyn, playing in the waves. I still search high and low for more books, more
stories, and more photos. I know that she is enormously famous, people around
the world know who she is. She has been written into songs, poems, and been
inspirational to artists all over the world. She has started trends, been a
generational sex symbol that all others look up to. She is featured in
literature, movies, on cups or shot glasses, in fashion magazines today. To me,
she is a little girl just wanting to be loved. Wishing for all the love in the
world to fill her heart. Only in death did she finally achieve that, death beat
her but could not take from her, her one true wish. To be eternally, forever
loved.
