Marilyn Monroe: From Orphan to Iconic Movie Starlet

Marilyn Monroe had a traumatic upbringing, yet marketed herself into one of the worlds most famous actresses. Despite her many successes she longed to feel truly loved but never found her love adequately requited.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Marilyn Monroe
born Norma Jean Mortenson was one of the greatest female
screen legends of the Golden Age of Hollywood. An actress, model,

(00:22):
and singer, she changed attitudes towards sexuality in the nineteen
fifties and sixties, eventually emerging into a major icon of
popular culture. My guest today is Charles Cassillo, the author
of two books about Marilyn Monroe, The Maryland Diaries, a
fictional recreation of her lost diary, and Marilyn Monroe The

(00:45):
Private Life of a Public Icon, a biography that speaks
to the many mysteries surrounding the star. Marilyn Monroe doesn't
get more iconic in terms of Hollywood movie starlet sex,

(01:09):
symbol of the last century and still of great interest today.
But she was born Norma Jean Mortenson on June one
in Los Angeles to Gladys Pearl Baker, who was originally
Gladys Monroe, who was actually a poor Midwestern girl whose

(01:33):
family came to California as many families did, and she
was actually not her first child. So let's talk a
little bit about her her family of origin. Gladys being
her mother. But Gladys was originally married at age fifteen
to four year old John Newton Baker, and that was

(01:55):
not a good marriage. No um. He was abusive and
they did have a daughter, and Gladys Baker had emotional
problems too, but with the information that's available, we don't
know if it was her emotional problems or if it
was his abusiveness or a combination of the two that
made the marriage not work. So actually there was a

(02:16):
child who didn't live that long, Robert, I think a
son and Bernice, who actually Maryland didn't even learn about
as a half sibling until she was twelve and met
as an adult, but really had very little to do with.
And it is important to note what emotional problems existed,
because when one's mother has mental illness, basically it greatly

(02:39):
impacts their child. And so we do know that there
were probably already mental health issues afoot, although they didn't
present until later in terms of hospitalization in Gladys. But
maybe even important for the audience to understand that mental
illness as a family history means that one is genetically

(03:01):
more likely to experience. Doesn't mean you definitely will, but
you are more likely to experience mental illness, and not
only did Gladys go on to be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia,
but her mother reportedly had severe depressions, including postpartum depression,
and even a great grandfather on the mother's side who

(03:24):
actually committed suicide died by suicide. So it's important to
know there's there's a real family history of at the
very least effective disorder or depressions and even schizophrenia. That
is important to NOPE. But this man who did abuse
Gladys and for whom she divorced and left was not

(03:46):
actually Maryland's father, So let's talk about actual father, Martin
Edward Mortenson, who was Marilyn Monroe Norman Jeans father. Gladys
left her first two children, Bernice and the son with
the first husband, and then she tried to pull herself together.

(04:08):
She was working as a film cutter in Hollywood, and
Mortenson actually isn't Marilyn Monroe's father, Norman Jean's father. That
was as a result of an affair that she had
the name of her father was Charles Stanley Gifford. It
was a brief affair. Gladys hoped that she would be

(04:29):
able to marry him, but he did not want to
marry her, so after she became pregnant, he entered the
relationship and Marilyn Norma Jean was actually born out of wedlock,
so I always say like she kind of started her
life on the wrong side of the tracks or being
an unaccepted member of society, because in the six when

(04:52):
Norma Jean was born, to be a legitimate was like,
you're starting off on the worst thing that you could be.
You know, you have a black stain on. But Gladys,
who was working as a film cutter, was not mentally
fit to take care of young Norma Jeane, and she
put her into foster care. And actually it's really sad.

(05:13):
I mean she she was really struggling financially to make
ends meet. Right as you said, she was working as
a film cutter, and she tried. Initially it does sound
like she tried to keep Norma Jean and be a
fit mother. She tried to. Basically they got multiple people
lived in a house together, she and her daughter and others,

(05:34):
and she tried in the early years to keep Norma Jeane,
but she she just couldn't really do it. The story
of that is after a few days, her mother realized
that she couldn't take care of her. It was going
to just be too much, so she when Normajine was
only a few days old, she went over to stay
with her first foster parents. And then when she turned five,

(05:55):
Gladys felt that she was in a better kind of
place in her life and that she was. She had
these like ideas, I'm going to get us a house.
I'm gonna buy a piano. I'm gonna be a mom.
I'm going to make Norma Jean give her a life
that she really really deserves. But again the pressure only
after a very very very short time, she couldn't take it.

(06:15):
Like she would go to work, she would draw Norma
Geine off at the movie theaters like the Grahama's Chinese
Theater and just leave her there for the whole day.
And that was her introduction to the movies, and she
would just watch. She'd start in the morning and then
she would watch the films one after another after another,
and then she would come home and act them out.
But she actually witnessed her mother after just several months. Well,

(06:37):
a couple of important things happened during her stay with
her mom. Number one, her mom had a picture of
Norma Jean's real dad, Charles Stanley Gifford, and she would
always show Norma Jean a picture of him, this handsome
guy in wearing off a door hat, and she would say,
this is your real father. And because up until that time,

(06:57):
Norma Jean's life had been so unhappy be and she
felt so isolated, and she felt so much in need
of rescuing, she put all her hopes in her father
that this is a guy like kind of like a
night in shining armor type thing. He'll come someday and
he'll take me away from all of this and he'll
give me the home that I want. So that just

(07:18):
comes in later, when, like most of her relationships were,
she was searching to find her father again. So that
was the first important thing. The second important thing was
that she actually saw her mother be taken out by
the men in the white coats and straight jacketed and
taken away. So she she witnessed that. And even though
obviously it was because her mother was seriously psychiatrically ill

(07:42):
and need to be hospitalized, it's still for a child,
for a young child, which she was like eight, it
still feels like an abandonment, whether your mother means to
or not is really not the point. But to be
so young and to be removed from your mother, who
you're longing for and have just been with, you know,

(08:02):
in more recent times, would be you know, as a
trauma and as an abandonment, especially as you point out,
in light of not having a present father and in
addition the family that she lived with, the sort of
foster parents this is Albert and Ida Bollander, who were
Evangelical Christians and tried to make a nice home. But

(08:23):
another thing that seems to come up about Norma Jean
is sadly the question of of having been sexually abused.
And it's not clear to me from what I can find,
whether there was concerned that that happened in one of
the foster home settings or one of the houses that
she lived in where there were other people present, or

(08:44):
whether that didn't really happen until she stayed with the
friend of Gladys. Basically once Gladys was really institutionalized and
unable to come out, Grace Goddard and her husband Dock
guarded whether that that is what happened there. Well, it
wasn't in her first years with the devoutly religious family.

(09:05):
But that did scare her, as we see in like
some of her scribblings, she never ever really kept a diary,
but she would scribble. The first thing was that she
was taught that loving movies or entertainment or singing anything
other than religious songs was sinful and bad, and that
the human body was bad. And I think one of
the things that happened is that Norma Jean had another

(09:28):
foster brother who that family actually adopted. They never adopted her,
but they were very very close. They looked alike, and
they used to be called the twins. And Ida walked
in on them playing naked or what, experimenting like little babies,
you know, just looking at each other or something, and
she was livid and she was Normalgine was punished and
told that this is sinful and you'll burn in hell forever.

(09:51):
And it it did have an effect on her forever,
because she eventually she started dreaming about being naked in
church and walking down the island, everyone looking at her
in my hearing her because she was so beautiful. And
I think that's a very very very important and interesting
fact about a child that started having that dream as
a result of being told that it was wrong. Her
subconscious was telling her, no, the human body is good,

(10:13):
the human body is right, and I want people to
accept that in me. So it's interesting that in these
early years she had these experiences that on the one
hand told her or let's say, informed her future feelings that,
you know, showing yourself as a beautiful person, as a

(10:33):
beautiful human, as a beautiful woman physically is okay, and
in fact, she for the times was really disinhibited in
some ways. And yet we then see later in her
career and wonder why behaviors which we'll talk about later,
that insinuate low self esteem, shame, even guilt, and this

(10:57):
perfectionism very hard on herself. And you know, you have
to think about these early experiences where on the one hand,
she was admired for being very beautiful, even as a child,
a beautiful child, her mother was purportedly very beautiful. And
at the same time, as you're pointing out, having these
experiences where she's being told to be admired or to

(11:18):
show yourself is sinful because you would be bad in
the eyes of God. It started an enormous amount of
conflicts in her because she's you don't forget. She was
in Los Angeles, where beauty was one of the most
important commodities a person could have, and you know, people
were telling you she was beautiful, and then on the
other hand, she was getting signals from the person that

(11:39):
was taking care of her saying that it was wrong
to be looked at and almost wrong to be, you know,
considered beautiful. So it started very early planting all these
conflicting ideas of beauty and acceptance and all of those
kinds of things, with these thoughts to parents, and really
from somewhere between the ages of eight twelve she had

(12:01):
this moving around from an orphanage, which albeit was considered
a very good orphanage, but an orphanage is still an orphanage.
You know, you don't have a family home of family life.
It's kind of like being in a school all the time,
or you know, it's an institution. And then the family
of Grace Goddard and her husband, which apparently she liked

(12:21):
better certainly, But did something happen in that home? I
think that's that's been a question, whether some sexual impropriety
happened in that home, because at that time she also
started to develop this stutter that she had a shyness
and a stutter. Actually, the way she told the story,

(12:42):
it was before the first time she was sexually abused.
She was around seven. It was shortly after her mother
was institutionalized. She was shuffled into a foster home. And
it was in that foster home whose name of the
people there we don't know, but it was a woman
who was running a boarding house. And she was staying
with this woman who was running a boarding house, and
one of the tenants lured her into his room and

(13:02):
sexually abused her and then gave her a nickel and
told her not to tell anyone. And when she tried
to tell the foster mom and she usually called him
Aunt so I. I don't know if it was like
Aunt Louise or whatever it was, but she told him
what he did, and she smacked her and said, he's
one of my best tenants. Don't you dare say anything
about Mr So and so so. Again, these deep seated

(13:27):
problems were being planted in her from a very early
age because this woman was also religious. And when when
they were at service, she saw this guy at the
service praying fervently, you know, about righteousness and all of
those other things. And here she was carrying this secret
that he abused her, and no one would believe her anyway.
But then she was shuffled. She recounts so many foster homes.

(13:50):
It was like she went to different schools. She was uprooted.
She would get comfortable in one place, and her mother's friend,
Grace Goodard, always would tell her, oh, you're so beautiful,
you're gonna be an actor. She would try to take her, uh.
Her Grace's life was number one, you know so, and
she was trying to be an actress herself, and she
was very theatrical. She met a guy who was much younger.
His name was Doc, and when they briefly took her in,

(14:13):
and that's it said that this guy Doc abused her too.
But she told people various things throughout her life. But
it was more than just two people. It was because
in those days foster care it wasn't really supervised the
way that it would eventually become. You're placed into a family,
a young, pretty child, with these men who looked at

(14:35):
her like I said, she's a damaged commodity. No one
wants her. She doesn't belong to anyone. I could do
what I could do what I want with her. And
then in the end she learned that if that happened
to her, she was victimized, it was her fault. I mean,
that was right. That was the message from the women
in the home who I mean, she's she's wishing for
a mother, and she gets women who basically say either

(14:58):
I don't want to know or don't want to hear
about it, or it's your fault, and it's your fault
for being seductive or evil in some way, which is
really terribly traumatic. She ultimately in school, she is considered
a pretty average student, maybe like a mediocre student, except

(15:20):
that she is considered a good writer. She writes for
the newspaper. And it's important to you know she, of course,
for most of her career was really portrayed as dumb,
as unintelligent, and you might be an average student, meaning
not a superstar student. But that's certainly she was not
a poor student. She was not a poor student, and

(15:41):
she did have this aptitude for writing. And it's important
to understand that because even though those are the parts
she portrayed in the way that she ended up directing
her career, we have a lot of evidence that she
was a reasonably intelligent person. She loved poetry, she loved learning.
She always said, I'm not an intellectual, but I admire
intellectual people. She was very hungry for knowledge and bettering

(16:03):
her mind, which is why she gravitated towards you know,
people like Arthur Miller and very great intellectuals or renowned people.
She always wanted to better herself. I mean, she loved
Carl Samberg. She had a great friendship with Carl Samberg.
But I think that one of the reasons that maybe
she was, you know, in in school writing. Well, first
of all, I think she wasn't a good student, not

(16:24):
because she was. I think that when you come from
a situation like her, it's more about survival. You're worried
about surviving from day to day, getting through the day,
not being made fun of. She was very ashamed of,
you know, not having a family, not belonging to anyone,
and as you said, she did start stuttering. She was
made fun of. She was very tall for her age.
They used to call the string being normaging. The human

(16:45):
being was one of the things that they called her.
So she was kind of I wouldn't say she was bullied,
she was she was separate, so writing was also something
that she could. You know, you can do that by yourself.
It's not a team thing. So I think that may
be one of the reasons why she excelled it eating
and now, and you bring up a great point. Try
being a great student when you essentially are in a
different home all the time, or in an orphanage and

(17:08):
don't have an ongoing parent, don't actually have a parent today.
You know you that would be you could imagine how
difficult that would be. And she did continue on one
the lessons school until the age of sixteen when Doc
and that's who she was living with it the Godter
got relocated his job to West Virginia. When she was fifteen,

(17:31):
they they found out that they were going to be
relocating and there was an elderly woman who was getting
too old that they've tried, you know, they were going
to keep her with her. It was actually someone that
normal Gine loved very much. She called her aunt Anna.
But she couldn't take her. She couldn't move with the
Godards because the Doc had children of his own, so
they couldn't afford it. They couldn't really afford to take her. Yeah,

(17:54):
so it became either she was going to go back
into an orphanage or she got married. So Grace, being
the resourceful woman that she was, started looking around for
a potential husband for the fifteen year old, and she
literally went to the boy next door asked him to
take her out. They got along, and his mother said
it would be really nice if you married her so
she doesn't have to go back to the orphanage. And

(18:16):
so they waited until she was sixteen, and two weeks
after she was sixteen years oldly married. Wow. So this
was James Doherty right. I think he was a factory
worker basically at that point. He was like one years old,
so older than her. Not old, handsome by all accounts,
a nice guy, perfectly nice person. She called him daddy,

(18:39):
by the way, and that's a recurring thing that always
she always called her husband's daddy. Okay, well that you
don't need a psychoanalyst to explain the edible meaning of
that to you. So, yes, she was in search of
a father and romanticizing a father who would rescue her,
and in this sense, James Doherty was rescuing her from

(19:00):
going back to the orphanage that he was going to
supposedly provide her stability and someone to take care of her,
and that was it was the first time in her
life she belonged to someone. So it was in the
first i would say months, maybe to the first year,
she was content. She was content. His expectation was that
she would be a homemaker, and so she quit high school.

(19:25):
She dropped out of high school, which wasn't was not
that unusual for the times, but still for someone who
wanted to learn and better herself, not not exactly the
path you would think she would take, but she was
sixteen and she really had no options. So she said
she was happy. And then about a year in he

(19:46):
joined the Merchant Marines their stations at Santa Catalina Island.
Things are fine, let's stay fine, stable, But then in
the next year he is shipped out to the Pacific
for two years. He's gone, and she's alone, and it's
the war and she needs to work and make money,

(20:08):
and so she moves in with his parents and works
at the radio plane company, the munitions factory, as many
young women did. She worked in the parachute like assembly line,
packing the parachutes, which was actually what a lot of
young women did during the war time. For the wartime
efforts and to support themselves. And this is where she

(20:29):
is first sort of spotted, let's say, by a photographer
who comes to pictures really for the for the wartime efforts,
to you know, hear the window supporting the boost morale
and show what women were doing for the war effort.
And she was a pretty teenager really, and so he
asked her to pose and when he got the photos,
he said, you could be a professional model. You really

(20:52):
have something. And that started the wheels turning in her
because it goes back to that beautiful thing, Like you know.
The an interesting thing is like when she went from
eleven to twelve, a very interesting thing happened to her life.
People started paying attention to her when she was twelve
because her body developed. She became a pretty girl. She
would walk to school and guys would beat the horn.

(21:15):
So for her that was like it's really kind of
the first time she was accepted. So I think it
became important to her if beauty is the thing that's
going to get me attention and make people like me,
then I'm going to be as beautiful as I can be.
Mm So, so it's like an antidote to abandon it. Right, Yeah,
your father never wanted you at all and never showed up.

(21:38):
Your mother marginally seemed to and is incapacitated and and
in a shameful way. I mean in those days, to
be in a mental institution was a total mark of shame.
And so she from being completely unwanted and abandoned, you
would definitely desperately be looking for any way to be

(22:00):
accepted and maybe even more importantly admired, to be admired.
So here she was naturally very beautiful and was admired. Yeah,
and so this was her ticket into a life of
being more accepted and more just part of the world. Um.
One interesting thing about her father that I should say
is like when she first married and she was feeling
secure with her first husband, jim'derty, she called her father.

(22:24):
Her mother had by then told her what his name was,
and she called him and she said, you know, I'm I'm,
I'm glad he's Baker's little girl, and and he froze
and said, call my lawyer and hung up. So that
was another rejection for her, absolutely, especially if you've been
fantasizing that one day, right, he'll come and be be thrilled.

(22:44):
To have you. But the interesting thing is that David Conover,
the photographer who took these pictures, they didn't get picked
up and used for the purpose that they were they shot.
She was not one of the ones selected to be
used for the wartime purposes. He just on the side
said to her, but you really have something, and I
personally would be very happy to take pictures of you

(23:05):
for modeling purposes and for my friends who are also
in this business to do that. And I just say
that is there were a lot of risks at that
time and at all times, I suppose for young women
to feel like they have to put themselves in risky
positions to make it, you know. And she, who had
no one protecting her, was lucky in the sense that

(23:28):
nothing terrible happened, but that she ever talked about. I'm
pretty sure terrible things happened to her by the wolves,
as she came to call them. I mean, they'd already
happened to her as a child, and so her ability
to you know, her dealing with it so to speak,
or not being shocked by it is probably true. But

(23:49):
it sounds like this early experience at least was really
a man saying, hey, you really, you really could be
a model, and I'm going to treat you like a model. Yes,
And he introduced to her to owner of a modeling agency,
the blue Book Modeling Agency. This woman called Emmiline's snivey,
great name, and she went to see her with photos
that Conniver had taken of her, and she looked at

(24:11):
them and said, well, she saw dollar signed. She said,
we can you know you're you're the girl next door
and we can make a lot of money on you.
And she one important thing that she said is but
you know, blond's make a lot more money. So Norma
Jean became a blonde and she worked a lot. Let's
take a quick break here, we'll be back in a moment.

(24:33):
We're talking now, she becomes Gene Norman. She stops calling
herself Norma Gene, so she's Gene Norman and she makes
her hair straighter and blonde. And also that particular head
of the modeling agency said that she had never seen

(24:56):
a young woman worked as hard as as norm magine,
she really worked hard at this and actually ultimately over
this time period was on like thirty three covers. I mean,
she was successful at least for let's say the genre,
which admittedly were probably a lot of men's magazines, etcetera
and moda, pin ups that that kind of stuff, bathing

(25:19):
suits and shorts, and you know, it was like they
had magazines like they were called like Peak Peek a
Boot and things like that. And she did a lot
of negligent stuff and bathing suits stuff. So she she
was avidly working something that apparently her husband, James was
not too happy about, not what he envisioned as his homemaker,

(25:40):
and he wanted her to stop. So that became a
problem a because at this point she basically felt the
later part of their marriage was I think she put
it incredibly boring, that they were just they were just
a mismatch, and she was bored by him. And then
in addition, he was, you know, increasingly pressuring her to stop,
and in fact, really at a time when not only

(26:03):
did she not want to stop what she was doing,
but she was really having aspirations for turning this into
something more like being an actress. While he was gone,
she changed her name. She became Marilyn Monroe. And he
came back and she said, my new name is Marilyn Monroe,
and it was it just, you know, he didn't. It
wasn't what he boggained for. He didn't marry into that.
He didn't marry into a career woman or an aspiring actress.

(26:24):
It was you know, Norma Jeane was this lonely little
girl basically that he was going to take care of
and they were gonna have children and raise a family,
and so um they separated. You know, it's interesting because
at this juncture, just her saying I'm out and I'm
going to be more and I'm going to be an
actress is really interesting in the face of all of
the trauma that she suffered, that she really at this

(26:48):
juncture at least shows her willingness to stand up to
a man and say no and aspire to even in
the face of a lot of uncertain t and unknowns,
that she had the resilience. I guess that's what I'm saying.
It's it's amazing that, you know, with a severely mentally

(27:08):
ill and institutionalized mother, and I think that she later
does talk about her fears that she might have what
her mother had and end up the same way, and
despite those fears and despite the recurrent trauma, that she
really has a lot of resilience and strength, an extraordinary ambition.

(27:32):
And I think what helped her is that now she
was starting to be surrounded by people that believed in her.
As much as she was rejected, Like any up and
coming actor or actress, a model, you know, there was
lots of rejections, there was always someone from this point
on who really saw something different and special in her.
At this point, she had started to be photographed by

(27:52):
this photographer name Andre d de Ennis, and he took
some of the most remarkable photos of her while she
was trying positioning from Norman Gine into Marilyn Monree and
he was successful, and people friends would go to his
apartment and they'd be the walls would be covered with
photos of Norman Gine and they look at her and say,
she's very pretty, but she's not that special. I don't

(28:14):
know what he saw something in her, because he dealt
with beautiful women all the time, that's the kind of
photography he did. But he saw something in her. And
I think that those kinds of people, she had a
knack for finding them and surrounding herself with the men
and women who believed in her, and that gave her
a little extra encouragement and just she had really no

(28:36):
confidence at all, so she had to rely on other
people's confidence to kind of get her through. And people
like that gave her a little bit more of a
backbone to stand up for herself and to go on.
So it's it's interesting she sort of found like mothers
and fathers all over the place to nurture her and
be proud of her and put her forward. And as

(28:57):
she said, she but she did have some sort of
rhythma and ability to connect. Even though she's described as shy.
She is described by others as a shy child. It's
not that she's outgoing or bubbly. But yet she had
some ability to be charismatic enough to draw in certain people.

(29:19):
And people were very attractive. See, it was like she
was I always say she was like a cocktail. There
was a combination of this vulnerability and sensitivity along with
her physical allure, along with her ambition, along with her
she was very witty when she chose to be in
a hunger to know more, she's very interested. It all
combined together form this charisma that really hasn't been duplicated since.

(29:42):
But and and the other thing that's very important is
that she was very shy, but something happened when she
was in front of a camera. The shyness just dropped.
She had a love affair with the camera and it
loved her back. So it's interesting how many actors and
actresses and models and people who do public work basically

(30:03):
are actually introverted people who need their private time, their
quiet time. That's how they recharged themselves. Its energy expansion
to have to Unlike for extroverts who get their energy
from being with people, introverts right get their energy from
there alone time. And being an introvert doesn't mean that

(30:24):
you don't find pleasure from doing something that would be
public in front of other people. That actually is still
doing your own thing. It's not, you know, acting isn't
the kind of relating that a social interaction is. It's different.
But what it does speak to is the pleasure that
she did get via her exhibitionistic impulses, which which we

(30:47):
all have. We all have some amount of enjoying showing
ourselves and looking the other side voyeurism, look exhibitions and
voyeris um so people often have some enjoyment of both
those things. But she had a good dollar right they
being seen and being appreciated, being looked at. That was
something that was clearly enjoyable for her, and as you said,

(31:11):
she lit up doing it in a certain kind of
way that others found very appealing. It was during this
time that she moves into acting. She signs with twenty
century Fox, but they give her six month contract because
really Zane does not think much of her, but he
doesn't want someone else to sign her, so he signs
her but for this short term. But this is where

(31:32):
she becomes Marilyn Monroe, Monroe being basically her mother's maiden
name and choosing that. And she gets divorced, so she's
now a free agent and she's off. But she really
has her first number of years, she doesn't make much
of an impression as an actress. They dropped her after
the six month option. She only did a bit part

(31:53):
where it was no no way to judge her. I mean,
she's seen in the distance. She has one line which
is hello, So they didn't they didn't have any belief
in our respect her for her, and she was dropped
after the six month option. So then she was sort
of like like many other struggling actor going on auditions
and being rejected and looking for that break, and that's

(32:15):
what she was like. It was it was a tough
that this was a tough period for her because you know,
she was a successful model, but sometimes there was dry
spells and she couldn't pay the rent or you know,
there were oftentimes when she felt very alone. She was
looking for, um, those substitutes that are the family substitutes,
the mom substitute, the dad's substitute, the lover substitute. You know,
so she was floundering. It was a do you know,

(32:36):
she went through a lot of dark periods, and there
was a dark period in between her modeling and before
she started, you really acting, working as an actress. Even
though these were hard periods, we don't have reports really
that I'm aware of, of periods of depression that incapacitate her.
At the stage of her life. It was hard, but
she kept working, she kept functioning. You don't hear about

(32:58):
drug abuse in this period of her life or you know,
seeking out substanance to you know, dull the pain. She
seems to be functioning, and you don't none that doesn't
really seem to present until later in her life, which
is interesting because of course this on the one hand,
seems like a very insecure time. But on the other hand,

(33:19):
I suppose she's not being judged in the harsh way
that later she will be judged. That the she's not
yet presented with the possibility of feeling the imposter syndrome
that she later, you know, a sort of I'm supposed
to be larger than life, but I don't feel like
that on the inside that she later experiences. But she

(33:39):
signed by William Morris Agency. In forty nine, she meets
Johnny Hyde, whom she ends up having a sexual relationship
with an apparently proposes marriage, but she does not accept.
But he he champions her. He really champions her. If
there wasn't a Johnny Hyde, there wouldn't be a Marily Monroe.
He was a very powerful man in the industry. He

(34:00):
worked with all the big stars. And they met at
a New Year's Eve party and he saw her from
across the room and he's one of those people that
I was talking about that recognized something in her that
was extraordinary. And he went up to her and he said,
I worked with all the big stars, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth,
Betty Grable, and none of them have what you have.

(34:22):
And he became very, very very more than smitten, maybe
less than obsessed, or maybe I think he did. She
did become this obsession. He started calling the movie studios
and saying, I've got this girl and you've got to
see her, and it's Marilyn Monroe. And they would say, oh,
we we saw her, you know, we we we saw
and he would say, look at her again. You know,
there's really something, there's something there. And he started getting

(34:44):
her big parts, but important parts, parts that showcased her
and you know, the abilities that she had at the time.
And he did leave his family to be with her,
but she wouldn't marry him because she felt it was
dishonest because she wasn't and she loved him, but she
wasn't in love with him in that way. So although
she would have been a very rich woman if she
married him, because he would tell her, Marilyn, I'm not

(35:06):
going to live long because he had heart, very severe
heart problems, and you will be a very very very
wealthy woman and marry me, and she she said, no,
I just can't. She lived with him, they were a
couple and all those things which she would not marry him. Wow,
And she would have been a very rich woman. Because
after basically like weeks after she signed the seven year

(35:28):
contract that he helped her get with twentieth Century Fox,
he died of heart attack. I mean he died shortly thereafter,
did he In fact? Is there actual evidence that he,
you know, sort of saw her through getting some plastic surgery.
There is evidence because through the years, you know, many
decades later her the plastic surgeon was interviewed and he

(35:53):
gave away some of the things and this is and
this is the story that the plastic surgeon told. When
she was starting to get pa arts, she was very
you know, it's it's she's always a diechonomy because part
of her was she was alive in the camera, but
the other part of her was that she was insecure,
and Johnny Hide thought that getting something done to her

(36:16):
face would give her more confidence. He didn't think that
she needed it. So what the doctors ended up doing
is um trimming a little bit off the front of
her nose. People, there's this rumor going around that Maril
Monree had her face redone um No, there's enough photos
of her as normal gine when she was already a
very successful model and she had made a very low

(36:36):
budget film called Ladies of the Chorus before she met
Johnny Hyde. And that's as close as you could see
normal gine in action with no plastic surgery just now.
And she's very lovely. She's a very lovely person, doesn't
There's nothing of Maril Monroe in that particularly in that film. Um,
she's an ingenue, which she never played. She said, I
wasn't born to play an augina. Later on she said that.

(36:58):
So she did have this minor plastic surgery on her nose,
and then later on she had some cartilage injected in
her chin to make her chin more pronounced. But in
those days it was it was cartilage and it dissolved,
so it was that wasn't even a permanent thing. So
it's sort of like today is filler or whatever. Basically
that okay, so interesting. So he it's not that he

(37:22):
thought she needed. It's it's that he did that. He
encouraged her to do this, to feel even more confident,
to an extra, an extra, yeah, more beautiful, more confident.
She then does go on and he dies, and she
is working for twentieth Century Fox. This is when she
really starts doing films. She's really doing films, and she's

(37:43):
really doing romances, she really is. She gets involved with
Kazan and Peter Lawford and You'll Brenner and ultimately Joe
Di maggio. But she's really in Hollywood at that point,
working but not getting admired really for her acting roles.

(38:04):
She's sort of there. Twenty century Fox had no respect
in her acting talent at all. They didn't believe in her,
and they wouldn't have given her a contract if it
wasn't for Johnny Hyde's belief and you know, kind of
pressuring them to do it. His power got her and
so they were throwing her away in these little bit parts.
What started to get her the attention, interestingly, was the

(38:25):
cheesecake photos that she kept posing for and they were
going to the newspapers, but even you know, the studio
didn't recognize her. But like she had done while Johnny
Hyde was still alive, he got her a role in
this film called The Asphalt Jungle, and it was a
gangster film and lots of important actors, and then she
had a bit part, a couple of scenes and it
was an exciting film and people loved it, but they
walked out of the theater saying who's the blonde, who's

(38:48):
that blonde? So, as Marilyn said, it's always like, if
anybody ever made me a start, it was the public.
No man, no film studio, no photographer. It's the public
that made me a start because they're the ones that
recognize her. And then some studios are money making machines,
so they're like, well, if we can make money on her,
let's use her more. So that's really basically how I grew.

(39:10):
They didn't um like they did with so many stories
in those days, like sort of sponsor them and groom
them for stardom. No, Marilyn was grooming herself during those
first couple of years under contract, and really initially what
she groomed herself to be was the biggest sex symbol
that she just she emerged as the as a gossip
columnists referred to her nineteen fifty the girl, but the

(39:34):
it girl in the form of a sex symbol up
a blonde bombshell, and that's that's how she groomed herself.
It goes to what I was saying earlier about when
she started getting attention for being beautiful, it was like,
if this is what's going to do it if this
is what it's going to make people notice me and
love me, because it was all about love. You know,
she didn't have love. Now she's being loved, she's being more.

(39:56):
Then I am going to be the sexiest, the most beautiful,
the most desirable. And she basically threw her attributes and
her ambition and canniness. She did it. She did it.
At the same time that she did do it was
doing it on set. She started to develop this reputation

(40:22):
of being quote difficult to work with. And you know,
there are two sides to this coin. You could say
what was up that she she would come late or
not show up or not fully know her lines. And
when you try to understand behavior, you know, why was
somebody who's trying to make it that much and has
been working that hard to get there do do those things?

(40:46):
And you have to also then acknowledge that the fear
of screwing up, of not being viewed well enough, of
the perfectionism involved the low self esteem that she struggling with,
the high expectations that she was facing, and that one
would develop a lot of anxiety about being on set.

(41:09):
It was all about fear. It wasn't and co workers
have said this about her many of her co workers,
that it wasn't about being a diva or a power
trip or anything like that. She was fearful of the
camera because at this point she was saying, Okay, now
I want to be loved and I want to be admired,
and I want people to want me. This is the
moment that I'm going to be judged on these few

(41:30):
This scene here that we're filming today is going to
be my make or break things. So it was enormously
intimidating for her to um face the camera because she
and then when she started to getting notoriety, it became
each time it became more difficult because she hadn't actually
had to live up to something exactly. And in addition,
there are a lot of reports or she reported really

(41:52):
being often sort of bullied even or you know, treated
not so well by directors, by by co stars who
didn't want to be upstaged or didn't even want to
be respectful to her in her sex symbol role that
was an intellectual or that wasn't you know what real

(42:14):
actors and actresses are, and so she was often treated poorly,
something that you know, for as we talked earlier about
a young girl who is used to being treated poorly,
could really undo, you could make it. It could be
very difficult to stand up to the bully when you've
been bullied earlier. I think she developed a lot of

(42:35):
hatred for the studio people, the men in the studio system,
the directors and the executives high up, because she sensed
and it was true, they did have a low opinion
of her because of her background and when she came
from and she had been she was on the certain
there was a thing in those days. It was called
a party girl, and there was these the executives of

(42:56):
the studios would have these like poker parties on Friday nights,
away from their families and everything, and they would have
the starlet's come in empty ashtrays and get their drinks,
and they were treated very disrespectfully. And one time, m
somebody just reached over and grabbed Marilyn's gown and ripped
the top off, and they were all laughing at her,
and she laughed with them because that's what was expecting

(43:18):
of her. But you can only imagine the rage that
was building up. I mean, she didn't really have a voice,
She had no protection so she had to put up
with that kind of treatment to get to her to
you know, to her goal to basically be abused. Yeah,
they weren't. They weren't respectful of her. This is the
days of the casting couch and the expectation that you

(43:39):
are an object and you do whatever the powerful man says,
or you won't have a job. There was no other
way in those days. You know. I think it was
Claudete Colbert who said, you know, every almost every star,
every female star that came through, we had to go
through the casting couch. It was the days. Let's not
forget I don't I don't like to make you know,

(44:00):
but political talk or whatever. But it was the days
before feminism and women in Hollywood were treated like commodities.
It was horrible when you think about it, and Maryland
was you know, it was one of them. There weren't
women in leadership roles who would be protecting you that.
That's the other thing, that all of all leadership roles
were men who protected each other. It was then in

(44:23):
ninety two, at about this time when she started developing insomnia,
difficulties with mood, and somebody well was giving her barbituates
and emphetamines to manage her sleep difficulties. You know, barbituates
to go to sleep, emphetamines to wake up, which is

(44:45):
a vicious cycle. And and she started drinking alcohol. So
sometimes you know, I mean the old terms are referring
to to sort of self medicating for mood issues. And
it wasn't in those days difficult to get pills at all.
You could just go to a studio doctor and they
would prescribe you, you know, something to sleep, something to
pep you up. I mean, so many of them in
those days, Judy, I mean a lot of them got

(45:07):
addicted to pills because it's like you know, it was
also like the film studios in those days, it was
a grindhouse of like you have to get up in
the morning, you have to work a full day, you
have to sleep at night, look good for the cameras
and and be peppy and do the whole thing all
over again. It was there was costume fittings, and there
was tests, and there was there was a photo sessions,
and it was it was it was a really full

(45:28):
day and somebody like Maryland, who you know now, the
pressure is on her to deliver. So she did self
medicate of course, what you know, what's sad about once
someone starts using barbituates or amphetamines is you, over time
you need more of the same thing to have the
same effect. That's you know, did you develop tolerance? And

(45:48):
that's when you develop a substance abuse problem? And that,
you know, ultimately is what grew for Maryland over the
ensuing you know, decade really until the end of her life.
It's interesting also at this time though, is when she
starts to really be in films and and try to
be in films where she does some of the best

(46:10):
films of her life, you know, Diamonds or Girl's Best Friend,
Gentlemen prefer blonds. And yes, they were roles that she
had issue with in terms of wanting to play more
serious roles and and these being still very kind of
glamy roles, but they are the roles that got her
noted as an important actress. I think that at first

(46:32):
she was okay with the like I don't think she.
I think she was glad to do gentlemen for her blondes.
And it does show a lot of comedic skill, you know.
Then it was like how to marry a millionaire and
there's no business like show. But it was after she
had done several of them she started thinking like, I
could I do something else? I would like to do more.
I want to She was always interested in acting. She
had studied acting, and she wanted to do but it

(46:53):
was like if she was going to make money this way,
the studio only wanted to make money. They weren't, you know.
They were like, why can't you be happy? Any One
of the things they said to her is like, people
want to be Marrily Monroe. You are Marilyn Monroe. Why
can't you just be satisfied with that? Of course they
were at the same time they were saying that to her.
They were making a lot of money, but because she
signed a seven year contract, she wasn't making anymore. She

(47:15):
wasn't making him more money. She didn't even have a
dressing room. She had a fight for a ddressing room
during Gentlemen for Blondes. I mean Jane Russell, her co star,
had addressing room to herself as a star should. Marilyn
was in with the you know, the supporting players, and
in a big so she finally she went to them
and she said, gentleman, I am the blonde. Whatever else
you think of me, I'm the blonde and I'm in

(47:36):
gentleman prefer blonde. And they finally gave her addressing room.
She said, it came to that I had to do that.
They never offered it to me. She really had to
fight for equal anything, and she did. She did ultimately
do that. She was helped by she married Joe DiMaggio,
which really, let's say it increased her brand, you know,
made her even more popular. He was so popular. And

(47:59):
she shot seven Year Itch, which uh with the with
the famous skirt scene that is iconic, and you know,
but she was really noted for her acting in that film,
which did change the game for her, although unfortunately it
also impacted her marriage. Joe DiMaggio was rethinking his love

(48:19):
of being married to a sex symbol. He really did
love her. I think he's one of the few people
that genuinely loved her. But he wanted her to be again.
He wanted her to be a housewife like the first husband.
Like he wanted her to give up the career cook
Italian Dennis for her, have him have children and sit
in front of the TV set. And that wasn't for her.

(48:41):
That wasn't for her. Well, that wasn't who he married
in the first place. Also interesting is how she turned
to Lee Strasburg and the Actors Studio and she really
studied acting. She really wanted to be serious and learned
method acting. And the one thing that was difficult about

(49:01):
this is so all of them were recommended to be
in psychoanalysis, which I find so interesting is the psychoanalyst
in order to actually dig up and process and understand
their past traumas and then be able to harness them
and use them in the service of acting that they
weren't when they were acting. They weren't supposed to be acting.
They were supposed to be reliving the difficult emotions that

(49:24):
they had experienced from their past. That was method bringing,
bringing up the feelings that relate to a scene that
she was doing, digging and bring it up and use it,
use those emotions for reality to enhance the performance. Marilyn
left after the seven year edge. She left Hollywood and
moved to New York to study with a Lie Strasbourg

(49:44):
and also to start her own film company because she
at this propite this point, she had realized the studio
wasn't going to give her the kinds of roles she
wanted to play, and if she was going to broad
in her career, she was gonna have to do it herself.
So she found a photographer who was very intelligent and
resourceful and believed in her. One of these people that
saw what she was and what she could possibly do,

(50:05):
you know, what's her potential. His name was Milton Green,
and she formed a company with him, and their intention
was to make great films. Let's take a quick break here,
we'll be back in a moment. Amazing that she in
some ways was a savvy businesswoman at a time when
you know, certainly no one taught her that, and no
one to her where she came right, No one taught

(50:26):
her anything. She really was self taught. She was really
self taught. But the method acting, you know, it caused
psychological turmoil for for many people. She was damaged before,
but she was pretty wrecked after the psychoanalysts that year
in New York. Digging down to all that and living

(50:47):
with it all the time, her dreams were horrible. She
was always in insomniac. Now she never slept at all,
and her pill taking and and and drinking increased enormously.
It was difficult to now in the public eye, and
every move you made is examined under the microscope. And

(51:07):
then have all these childhood traumas and these insecurities and
this damage and this you know, we're living on a
constant reel in your head. It was almost an impossible situation. So,
you know, psychoanalysis is a treatment. It's not supposed to
be used as an acting tool. And so it's one
thing to take out all of this difficult material and

(51:30):
examine it in the service of removing your guilt and
removing your shame, and getting rid of the conflicts and
and accepting who you are and and building some some
coping tools. It's an entirely other thing to say, I'm
gonna examine this so I can take it out every
day and relive it. So clearly that proved to be

(51:53):
not good open a can of worms. But it didn't
give her anywhere to go with the can of worms
other than just living it all the time. So that
was really tragic and obviously made things worse for her.
She and Joe DiMaggio get divorced. She's quickly involved with
Arthur Miller, and it's interesting to me that she marries

(52:14):
him converts to judaism for him. Even as she's being
so successful. This is when she she wins a Golden
Globe for Best Actress. I mean she is really soaring,
but still the men in her life, you know, have
the ability to say, you know, be this for me.
Be you know, I'm telling you do this, and you

(52:36):
do this. So that's fascinating. It does seem at that
time that she wants to have a child, and she
had nick Topic pregnancy, she had a miscarriage, she had
this terrible endometriosis, which may have been why she has
to have surgery for that. But I think people don't
realize or know that, you know, wanting to have a
child at a certain stage and having were current difficulties

(53:00):
like in a Topic pregnancy and a miscaras those are
tragic losses. Those are really traumatic events in a woman's life.
She's unable to conceive and has losses like that, and
I don't think people think about that. Marilyn Monroe and
that that's a big part. I mean, that was enormous
failure for her and a source of pain. Another thing

(53:20):
with Arthur Miller, I dislike, like, you know, bad mouthing people,
but for the purposes of this conversation. Arthur Miller was
not a good match for her at all. He was
ashamed of her. He married her because well, one of
the reasons he married her was because he was under
investigation from the House of American Activities for you know,

(53:41):
communism in those days could destroy a career. And he
announced his engagement to Marilyn Monroe from the steps of
a hearing she he hadn't even asked her yet. But
he didn't really have respect for her as a woman.
I think he saw her as a muse, like someone
his career was kind of like in in turmoil he
is looking for, you know, it's kind of like a

(54:02):
midlife crisis. And here was this exciting, beautiful, interested, interesting
woman and he married her. But he was ashamed of
her past, her past with men, her past with the
casting couch. And how do we know this? I mean,
I'm not pulling this out of thin air. First of all,
he kept a diary and she she read it. He
left it out for her to read how disappointed he

(54:22):
was in her. And then after she passed away, everything
that he wrote with her as a character is very
derogatory towards her. And he almost wrote almost every play
had a Maril Monroe character in it, particularly After the Fall.
I mean, if if ever you really want to know
what off the Miller thought of Marilyn Monroe, it's in
the play that he wrote directly after she died, called
After the Fall, and the character is not flattering it

(54:44):
at all. So, I mean, she looked to these men
as savers, as daddy, as my father. He's gonna save me,
He's gonna take me away from all of this, Arthur Miller.
He's so smart. I'm gonna be respected now, I'm gonna
be protected now, and even even like I'm going to
get some of this intell, actual prowess for myself. You
know that desires she was always She loved poetry, she
liked reading. She wanted to acquire knowledge, and acquiring a

(55:08):
knowledgeable man is another way of doing that. Then to
have that knowledgeable man actually basically say you know, you
can't have it because you're you're too unintelligent and embarrassing,
and to make it known to her is in that
cruel way. Um is an abuse of sorts. Oh sure

(55:30):
it was. It wasn't a happy marriage for her. I
think that they both Yeah, she wasn't an easy person either.
Let's put it. It can't put her all the blame
on Arthur Miller. I mean, but she she was difficult
to with her mood swings and her demanding conditional love
every moment you have to show me you love me,
you have to. It was probably for him a very,

(55:50):
very difficult thing. So it just wasn't a good match.
And Marilyn's career was never the same after that. She
shouldn't work as much, that's for sure. You know, after
their marriage, she everything became more difficult, every partially because
of him, partially because of her fame now was completely
out of her control. It was an impossible thing to
live up to. It wasn't even a person. It was

(56:11):
this omnipresent commodity, you know, thing to live up to,
completely out of her control. And so it was the
marriage wasn't good for them. After the divorce, I mean,
her her health takes a turn for the worse. I
think it's important for people to understand that depression and

(56:32):
physical health. Mental health and physical health are intimately connected, right,
the mind body connection. And she had gallstones, she had surgery,
as I said, for this endometriosis. She was not feeling well.
She was taking a lot of substances and using them
to try to probably manage her moods, certainly manage her sleep.

(56:53):
But even though she was in treatment with Ralph Greenson,
she certainly had a a psychiatrist and therapist. And I
think it's important that people also understand sometimes, you know,
when psychiatric illness becomes severe, certainly if substance abuse is involved,
having a treating doctor may not solve the problem. You know,

(57:15):
someone has to be willing to to stop substances and
to be able to really treat a mood disorder. There's
no evidence that I'm aware of that she really at
any point presented like her mother, that she really looked
like she had schizophrenia or paranoid delusions. Directly after her
divorce from Arthur Miller, they had made a film. He

(57:36):
wrote it for her, and it was a very taxing film.
It was made in the desert. It took a long time.
At this point, she was occasionally suicidal. She had her
during the making of that film. She was put in
a hospital because she was too addicted to film. You know,
her eyes would not focus and she overdosed and had
her stomach pumped. She made She made a few a

(57:56):
few suicide attempts with overture did Arthur Miller and pulled
her in from the ledge of their apartment high up
above Manhattan. She was standing on the ledge and he
pulled her in. She was suicidal at times, and she
had a fascination, almost a love affair with death. But
she was institutionalized. When she came back from that making
that film and started proceedings for Dwarf from Martha Miller,

(58:19):
she was seeing her doctor Daly. This wasn't Greens and
he was in l A. She was in New York
and it was Dr Maryann Chris, famous psychoanalyst. Thought that
she might kill herself. She was so down and she
was so depressed, and she was She was hospitalized at
Payne Whitney near Presbyterian Hospital, which is actually by hospital
where I trained and where I'm on the faculty. But sadly,
she certainly wrote about her experience there being a horrible

(58:42):
She was strait jacketed, which must have been so traumatic,
having watched that happened to her mother, who never came
out of the hospital. Really, it was so traumatic for her.
She was put on the floor for the dangerously and
saying she was before they straight jacketed her, she said, well,
if they're gonna think I'm an, I'm gonna act like
a nut. And she her door of her room had

(59:02):
a little window, and she started she had there was
a chair in the room, and she started throwing it
against the window and throwing it against the window and
it wouldn't break, but it like shards started to come off,
and she held when and she waited for someone one's
come in, and she threatened that she was gonna damage herself,
and that's when they pulmitted her, and you know, they
they wrestled with her and got her in a straight
jacket and brought her to the next floor, which was

(59:23):
really like for the off the wall people. And she
said when she was talking about it later, the orderlies
and the nurses and all they would come in and
look at her. And she told one of her friends
that they touched her. So for her, it was a
really really horrible situation. She wrote. She tried to get

(59:44):
to her teacher, the Strasbourg's Lee Strasburg and his wife Paul,
and she wrote a note which exists, and we haven't
about how horrible it was there. I think it starts
off they have me locked up with all these nutty people,
and if you don't get me out of her, I'll
end up a nut She she must have had a
terrible fear at that point that she was her mother,
that she was you know, that that this had happened

(01:00:04):
to her. That was her biggest feary. Now she's in
an institution, she's straight jacketed, she's they're not listening to her.
They weren't they She was trying to explain express that
she was seeing and she was cocaring, and they just wouldn't.
She felt they weren't listening to her. They were obviously
terrified that they had a giant starlett who was going
to kill herself on their watch. That she's holding a

(01:00:25):
piece of glass and saying she's going to cut herself.
And it's certainly nothing about this hospitalization experience left her
feeling that there was someone in her corner and she
was being helped. Unfortunately, quite the opposite, quite the opposite,
And so you know, then she comes out having and
you know, obviously people who make repeated suicide attempts are

(01:00:47):
a really high risk for suicide, and her mood issue continues,
the hospitalization really hasn't helped her, and in fact, if anything,
it's left her with the idea that, you know, this
safety net is not a safety net at all. And
now she's divorced. She's the movie The Misfits. I mean,
it sounds like it's going terribly. She's often not showing up,

(01:01:10):
she's coming late, she can't remember lines, and it just
sounds like a real downward spiral from there. She never
made a film again after The Pain Whitney. She never
finished the film. She started one, but she never completed it.
It's interesting too that the only way she got out
of The Pain Whitney was she was some A nurse
took pity on her and let her make a phone call,
and she called Joe Dimaggia and he flew in, and

(01:01:33):
he went to the front desk and said, if you
don't let my wife out of here, I'll take this
hospital apart, brick by brick, and you know you have
a destroyed Joe DiMaggio standing at the front. They released
her the next day, but he wasn't and they weren't married,
but so he rescued her from that. But the year
and a half that remained to her, it was the
darkest period of her life. So she was depressed a

(01:01:53):
good deal of that time. She most of it, if
not all of that. She was seeing a psychiatrist every
single day. And what was playing in with all, you know,
the marriage that didn't work, not being able to have children.
All of her foundation of her career was built on
being beautiful. Now she was thirty five years old. You know,

(01:02:13):
you do you say that's a baby? I say that's
a baby. But in nineteen sixty one two for a
sex symbol, and they started printing this in the columns
and in the papers. She's over the help. What's going
to happen to her? You know? She's done so that
fear playing in with all the other problems that she has.
Now she's worrying about I have all this love. Finally,

(01:02:35):
everyone loves me. Everyone wants to know me. Everyone wants
to meet me. Presidents, kings, you know, the poets, the
greatest people want to know me. I'm going to lose
that now. I have to give that up now. Well,
not only that, but in all the wanting to know her,
they want to know her, but they don't want to
love and stay with her. Right So she none of
these marriages have worked out, she's not been able to

(01:02:56):
have a baby. From a biological clock perspective of right,
that window is closing. And that must have been just
completely frightening. I mean, because her biggest fear, which had
happened to her in her whole growing up abandonment, right
becomes her reality that she is alone and her her

(01:03:18):
body and her age mean that, you know, her ability
to not be alone right is dwindling, and it must
have been completely terrifying. And you mix that with the
unfortunate reality that by this point she is often taking
pills and you know, using substances, and that she has

(01:03:42):
made repeated attempts before. She is a person who knows
how to make a serious and lethal attempt, not a gesture.
And ultimately it appears that that that is exactly what happened.
There was a lot of things going on in her
life that summer that she died, a lot of it
had to do with rejection. She was looking to men,

(01:04:03):
but she always looked for herself forth through the eyes
of men. And she was involved that year, that last
year with Frank Sinatra, who was like the epitome of
entertainment world and she had a flirtation. There's a big
debate about what her relationship was with the Kennedy's President Kennedy.
She made it into more than what it was. It
was something, but it wasn't this big romantic love affair

(01:04:28):
with John F. Kennedy. It was a flirtation. It was
a flame. It was a flame, but it was a well,
there's a different was it a flirtation as in they
talked in rooms and were flirtatious to each other, But
then they we know at least one I mostly there's
one accepted undisputed time when they spent a couple of

(01:04:49):
days together in Palm Springs at being Crosby's Ranch, so
that that was at least once. I think that there
was maybe up to three more times. But then when
he was warned by several people that he could no
longer be involved with this. It was too dangerous, she
was too famous, he had to distance himself, and I

(01:05:09):
think that Bobby stepped into be like a buffer for
that the rejection. But he, in my opinion, really did
twelve under her spell as men had before, and there's
became a little bit more intense. But again, he had
no intention of leaving his family and being with her
or anything. But they were involved, and in her eyes

(01:05:33):
and this vulnerable, fragile, dark time, here's my savior. This wonderful, brilliant,
powerful man haunts me. The studio may not want me.
She kept getting involved in seeing these potential rescues or
even let's say, and accruing of power for herself by
getting the powerful man. But at the end they each

(01:05:56):
used her for a while. That was sort of what right.
Nobody left any wives or wanted to be with her
in a permanent way. On that last night, she was
expecting to see Bobby at the petal Orford Beach House
and he canceled. He was with his family in San Francisco,
and there were other things. There was a lot of
contributing factors, but she was fired from her film. She

(01:06:19):
was thirty six years old. On the news stands at
the time of her death, they were saying Marilyn Monroe
desperate poses nude because she had done a little nude
interlude in her swimming and her film that she got
fired from for not showing up because she couldn't face
the cameras anymore. So she was in this really dark place.
What happened that night. Now we know her doctor, her

(01:06:41):
her medical doctor. She was seeing her medical doctor and
her psychiatrist every day. Her medical doctor has said she
was bipolar, and the two doctors had this deal that
they weren't going to prescribe her any pills without conferring
with each other. But she lied to the medical doctor

(01:07:02):
and said that my psychiatrist says, it's okay, you can
prescribe me twenty five nembutols. He did prescribe it, and
he forgot to tell the psychiatrist that she had them.
So that day, that last day, that Saturday, she was
so distraught. The psychiatrist went to see her and he

(01:07:23):
talked to her and he said she was very depressed,
and he had a dinner party. So he left and
he didn't see any nembutol on her night table. And
that's the that's the dose that killed her. So it
was it was the dose that the medical doctor had
prescribed her ostensibly for sleep. For sleep, I think that

(01:07:44):
would happen that night. I think she did intend to
kill herself, and then when she started to go under,
she changed her mind and she started calling people to
help her, to come and rescue her and there's a
famous phone call that she called Peter Offord and said,
say goodbye to the President, and say goodbye to Bobby Kennedy,

(01:08:07):
and say goodbye to yourself, because you're a nice guy.
And that set his alarm off, and he started calling her.
Now the phone was off the hook because she started
going under. He never went into He should have at
least called an ambulance or something to go. But I
think that she went under before she could get the
help that she was trying to get. But that being said,

(01:08:29):
I in my opinion, if she was rescued that night,
as she had been in the past, the next month,
or two months later or the following year, she would
have eventually succeeded. Well. There had been a number of
attempts and and certainly things did not seem to be
improving for her psychologically or psychiatrically speaking. The question of
bipolar disorders is difficult to know, in the sense that

(01:08:51):
there's no evidence that she was treated for bipolar disorder.
You wouldn't just give them utal to somebody with bipolar disorder.
Even in those I don't know how much they knew
about it. In nineteen sixty two, Engelberg was her doctor,
and Dr Engelberg he was u a famous you know, Hollywood,
Beverly Hills doctor, and he didn't talk until like thirty

(01:09:13):
forty years after her death. He's passed now, but like
he was an elderly man when he was talking about
and he said, we she was manic suppressive. We don't
call that anymore. But I I like that term because
it really describes what she was. I think what they
were treating was her insomnia, because that a lot of
her problems stemmed from that. If you have bipolar disorder,

(01:09:33):
not getting enough sleep can definitely precipitate an episode of
either depression or hypomania romania, so that on the one hand,
that's understandable. On the other hand, even at that time,
lithium or an attempt to stabilize the mood overall would
be the primary goal. And in fact, there is an
overrepresentation of people with bipolar disorder in the arts of

(01:09:57):
all the arts because in fact, sad Lee, it confers
this possibility of symptoms of depression alternating with uh these
periods of expansive mood and flight of ideas and so on,
on the negative side. On the plus side, people with
bipolar disorder are often unusually creative, unusual original thinkers, have

(01:10:19):
this charisma and this incredible verbal ability that has been
shown in studies. That is, you know, beyond the typical
person that does not have bipolar disorders. So there are
particular strengths that often come along, particularly with bipolar disorder,
that you see over representation in the arts. So that

(01:10:39):
wouldn't be surprising. On the one hand, it's just surprising
that there wasn't sort of a treatment plan that would
be more consistent with bipolar disorder. I tend to agree
that she was bipolar from her behavior, Like she would
go through like a period of being very upbeat and
optimistic and productive, like she would fly to Mexico. She

(01:11:01):
bought a house, and she would fly to Mexico and
by all the furnishings there and be very social, and
then she would like collapse for two weeks. And it
was the same thing even when she was filming that
last film that she never completed, Like she'd go in
for two days, work really well, be very into it
and everything, and then not show up for another nine days.
You know, it's interesting because of course paranoid schizophrenia looks
completely different we understand today from bipolar disorder, but sometimes

(01:11:27):
people with schizo effective disorder, meaning they have some mood
component ups and downs that look like bipolar, but they
have more psychotic symptoms can look like people with bipolar
disorder who in their mania also becomes psychotic, have a
break with reality, and so you just sort of wonder.
Genetically speaking, you know, given her mother did have this diagnosis,

(01:11:49):
which could have been correct or incorrect in those early days,
you know that she was institutionalized for you kind of
wonder about that. Her psychiatrist did say that she had
some paranoiac episodes and things like she had an assistant
who put a blonde streak in her hair, and Marilyn
felt that she was trying to take over her soul,

(01:12:09):
you know, that kind of a thing like she was.
It became like a lesbian thing, that this woman was
obsessed with me and she's trying to be me, and
so things like she did have behavior like that too
that was becoming questionable in those last months. Unfortunately, even
in manic episodes or in major depressive episodes, one can
have psychotic moments, psychotic thinking if it's severe enough, and

(01:12:31):
so you know, without someone who really has gone checklist
by checklist, through her history and through her symptoms, we
you know today, it would be hard for us to
say what was going on. And actually, if we did
sit there and do that with her, then we wouldn't
be able to say because of confidentiality, it wouldn't be
appropriate to say what was really going on with her.

(01:12:51):
So it's left open, but it's It is certainly clear
from both the symptoms that she suffered in her later
years and her death that she certainly struggled with some
mental health issues. And there's certainly discussion of character logic
issues that were at that time referred to a sort
of histrionic personality disorder, the you know, over sexualization, the

(01:13:17):
overexpansive look at me, look at me. I my life
is full of high drama all the time. I gravitate
towards high drama. That used to be called we don't
even do this anymore. It used to be called histrionic
personality disorder, and there have been wonderings about that as well.
But to have someone who had so much trauma and

(01:13:38):
difficulty in their early life, it would be surprising to
not have a lot of the issues especially as you
ascended to such a public position as Marilyn Monroe did
so in that respect not really surprising and not really shocking,
but certainly tragic. And of course, even though she felt
that she was getting older, she died so young at

(01:13:58):
thirty six. We have no idea what she would have
gone on to do, right, but you know, the one
thing that I would like to look to was, like,
how commendable was that she did manage with all of
her things, that she achieved what she did achieve in
a short time incredible, I mean, really a testament to
an incredible talent. And as you pointed out, ambition and
drive and ability to connect, to connect with an audience,

(01:14:22):
to connect with others that propelled her into this incredible position,
this gift of like you know, as dark as she
was on the inside, she gave a flight. That's why
people don't want to accept that she was so troubled,
because she makes them feel so good. Yes, that's actually
that that's because often people shy away from people with
depression because they feel sucked into it. They fell pulled

(01:14:43):
into their depression and they don't want to be with her,
which may have been part of the difficulty in her
more intimate life. You know that if you really were
in her inner circle, her lover, her, you know, her
close friend, that you would have felt pulled into her
depressive episode. But for the public at large, right in
her performance, she could transmit the beauty and the light

(01:15:08):
as you said, and people felt pulled in. That wraps
things up for this episode. Thank you to my guests
Charles Casillo, And if you want to know more information
about Marilyn Monroe, you should check out his books The

(01:15:31):
Maryland Diaries and Marilyn Monroe The Private Life of a
Public Icon. If you'd like to know more about the
concepts in personology, my book is The Power of Different
The Link between Disorder and Genius. For psychological and mental
health advice, you might want to listen to my other podcast,
How Can I Help? Follow me on Twitter at Dr

(01:15:55):
Gail Salts and until next time. Personlogy is a production
of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are doctor Gayle
Saltz and Tyler Clang. The associate producer is Lowell Brulante.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.