Revised MARILYN

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.