celebrity gossip, academic style

Another entry in the “Problem Stars” Series — and the last star study of this chapter of my dissertation. Please excuse the haphazard citations, but please enjoy the images. Again, comments and suggestions are very welcome.

According to Billy Wilder, Marilyn Monroe had “flesh impact” — a rare quality, shared, in Wilder’s opinion, only with the likes of Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, and Rita Hayworth. “Flesh impact” meant having “flesh which photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it.”^[i] Whether or not it was “flesh impact,” Monroe clearly possessed something indelible. But she also had business acumen, personal volition, and a startling, if subtle, awareness of her own image. She made her studio, 20th Century Fox, a tremendous amount of money when predictable hits were few and far between: as classic stars failed to draw audiences, she seemed to promise that new ones could still be cultivated. But Monroe was no meek studio star. She tested the weakened boundaries that governed star contracts in the early ‘50s, and fled Hollywood, formed her own production company, and chose her own projects. Monroe also “acted out what mattered” to people in the 1950s — which is to say, she acted out sex — and did so in a manner that seemed to heighten and soothe anxieties about sexuality during the era. As a result, she also proved a singular challenge to the gossip industry, which had little experience in processing an image of which sexuality was so forthrightly a part.

Ostensibly, Monroe was a fan magazine’s dream: under contract to 20th Century Fox during her rise to stardom, she participated in myriad interviews, confessionals, and domestic ‘exposes’ between 1952 and 1955. But the current of sexuality that ran through the Monroe image stymied attempts to fit her within the dominant paradigm of female stardom of the time, exemplified by domesticated mothers Janet Leigh and Esther Williams. When Monroe declared her desire to be a normal housewife, such words still emanated from her seemingly perpetually half-open mouth, with her trademark breathy voice, from her body, all of which were laden with the signification of sex.

For stars such as Ingrid Bergman, the sudden visibility of sexuality created scandal. For Monroe, sexuality was the very foundation of her star image, and her studio, her agent, and Monroe herself had no qualms about forwarding that image. Ten years before, that image never would have been possible, let alone palatable. In the 1950s, however, her image reconciled innocence and sexuality — the amalgamation of the virgin and the whore — in a manner that seemed to arouse and appease sexual appetites without guilt or shame. How, then, could the historically conservative fan magazines profile her? How could they alter their attitudes towards explicit sexuality? They certainly could not decry and condemn the most popular star in the nation. Instead, they employed three rhetorical tactics: 1) pseudo-psychologizing Monroe’s behavior, using details of her past to explain her current actions; 2) framing her as an object to be pitied — the lonely flip side of life as a sex object; 3) explicitly dividing Monroe into parts: one sexual, the other innocent.

Monroe spent most of her life traded amongst foster homes and extended family, dropping out of school to marry the son of a next-door-neighbor, getting a start in modeling, divorcing, and posing for cheesecake photos before eventually scrapping her way to the top of the Hollywood heap.^[ii] In 1949-1950, with the help of boyfriend/William Morris agent Johnny Hyde, Monroe landed a string of bit-parts before winning a small but significant turn in All About Eve, in which she played “a breathless if somewhat dim-witted” actress, willing to “make herself available to nice men if it might advance her career.”^[iii] The part established the ground note of Monroe’s image and picture personality. Over the next five years, her roles would prove variations on the selfsame theme.

Hyde was dying, but he set the table for the feast that would be Monroe’s future, arranging private acting lessons and fostering connections between the star and the gossip industry, which would lead to a Photoplay profile in September 1950. In December, Hyde secured Monroe a seven-year contract with Fox. He would die before the end of the month, but Monroe’s future was secure. Her film roles remained, for a time, unremarkable, yet her exposure was growing: Stars and Stripes, the magazine for soldiers in Korea, “featured a Monroe on its front page every day,” she appeared on the covers of Look and Life, she was declared “the Nation’s number one sex thrill” and “the hottest topic of conversation in Hollywood.”^[iv] Various “Monroe-isms” — “I never suntan because I love feeling blonde all over,” etc. — were in wide circulation. A high-profile romance with Joe DiMaggio made her a fixture in the gossip columns. Theater owners billed her over classic stars Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant, and Fox raised her loan-out rate to $100,000 a picture.^[v] Where ever the Monroe name and image appeared — on the screen, in the pages — profits followed.

Conflicted reactions to Monroe’s explicit sexuality quickly began to circulate. A Photoplay reader complained that Monroe “seems to think that the only way she can get noticed is to shed her clothes,” yet conceded “I don’t mean that she should hide those gorgeous curves…but she doesn’t have to disrobe to appeal to us men. I enjoy looking at her, who wouldn’t?”^[vi] This reader, like many other fans, was drawn to Monroe, yet conflicted about her overt violation of social mores. His internal struggle mirrors that of the gossip industry, which found themselves attracted to the readership and profits that Monroe copy would offer, even as the star’s image conflicted with every standard theretofore set for magazine and its subjects.

Photoplay addressed the conflict head-on with an November 1952 article, ostensibly penned by Monroe herself. While Photoplay had published treatments of the star in the past, this article would form the true foundation of its future treatment, attempting to establish the star as vulnerable, lonely, afflicted by a troubled past, and forced to rely on sexuality due to the lack of female guidance in her life. “I Want Women to Like Me,” addressed apparently animosity towards Monroe on the part of female fans — presumably because they disliked the way that the star affected the men in their lives.^[vii] Monroe confesses, “I have never, in my whole life, had but two women who were outright kind to me. I had no family life in my childhood…I was separated from my mother not long afterward.”^[viii] Monroe proceeds to play to female readers’ concerns about her actions, admitting,

Up until now, I’ve felt that as long as I harmed no other person and lived within the bounds of good taste, I could do pretty much as I pleased. But I find that isn’t really true. There’s a thing called society that you have to enter into, and society is run by women. Until now, I’ve never known one thing about typical ‘feminine activities.’ … All I know about cooking is how to broil a fine steak and make a good salad. That, you see, is all any man wants for dinner…I don’t sew. I don’t garden. But now… I’m beginning to realize that I’m missing something.”

That missing something: female friendship.^[ix] Through its use of biographical tragedy and lack, “I Want Women To Like Me” invites reader to think of Monroe as a human, not simply the object of their husbands’ affections. Photoplay and Fox understood that Monroe’s appeal was lopsided; for her to become an authentic star (and not just a sex object), Monroe’s intrinsic sexuality needed to be complimented with an authentic sense of humanity, supported by a plea for protection and affection. The strategy that would go on to structure Monroe’s sustained success.

In 1953-1954 marked the height of Monroe fever — a symptom of America’s fascination with sexuality, but also a catalyst for that fascination. Monroe appeared in a a quick succession of films — Niagara, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire — that refined her unique brand of innocent sex appeal. She was Photoplay’s Star of the Year, and, in January 1954, married Joe DiMaggio.^[x] 1953 was also “a year of extraordinarily compelling significance in the history of sexuality”: Kinsey released his report on women, inciting “the most massive press reception ever accorded a scientific treatise,” and Playboy published its first issue, with Monroe on the cover.^[xi]

The cover featured a picture of Monroe as Grand Marshall of the 1952 Miss America Parade. Monroe’s dress featured a plunging neckline that sparked intense debate at the time — and evoked a brazen, guilt-less sexuality that Playboy wished to associate with its fledgling brand. But the money shot was the magazine’s very first centerfold: a reprint of Monroe, posing nude, from the “Golden Dreams” calendar. Monroe had posed for art photographer Tom Kelley in 1948; the photos were subsequently reprinted in numerous calendars, of which “Golden Dreams” was the most famous.

When Monroe’s star rose in the early ‘50s, she was identified as the model in the photos. Her response to the revelation became as fundamental to her image as the photos themselves. Instead of attempting to avoid or deny the rumors, Monroe answered them head-on: she had been “hungry,” was “three weeks behind with [her] rent,” and had insisted that Kelley’s wife be present. “I’m not ashamed of it,” she averred. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” Hedda Hopper would deem this forthright defense “The Monroe Doctrine.”^[xii] Once the potential for scandal had dissipated, she promised “I’m saving a copy of that calendar for my grand-children,” admitting “I’ve only autographed a few copies of it, mostly for sick people. On one I wrote ‘This may not be my best angle’”^[xiii] As Dyer explains, the crux of Monroe’s image in the wake of the photos — the notion that sex was “guiltless, natural, not prurient” — was the exact philosophy proselytized by Playboy.^[xiv] By confronting the rumors, Monroe had transformed a potentially scandalous story into one that further bolstered her image. What’s more, the salience and generalized acceptance of Monroe’s defense forced the gossip industry to cultivate and further this very narrative of innocence, muting objections to such behavior on the part of its subjects.

Several months later, Photoplay was at the center of another brewing scandal, when Monroe made an ostentatious entrance at the magazine’s Gold Medal Awards Dinner, with all the major stars in attendance. Monroe “wriggled in, wearing the tightest of tight gold dresses. While everyone watched, the blonde swayed sinuously down the long room to her place on the dais. She had stopped the show cold.”^[xv] Joan Crawford denounced Monroe’s “burlesque show,” claiming ‘Kids don’t like Marilyn…because they don’t like to see sex exploited.”^[xvi] The gossip industry exploited the battle between two very different types of stars: Louella Parsons called Monroe, promising to tell “her side of the story,” cultivating sympathy for the star by relating the details of her difficult childhood and emphasizing her hurt feelings.^[xvii]

Photoplay exploited its role as “host” of the feud, sensationalizing the story under the title “Hollywood vs. Marilyn Monroe.” In what had become standard ‘50s Photoplay style, the article offers a tantalizing hook of scandal, but then proceeds to contextualize the offense in terms of Hollywood history, woven with distinct threads of nostalgia and moralism. The author allegorizes the confrontation as an “offensive” against Monroe, with Joan Crawford as its “general.” In a cunning twist, Monroe’s behavior is compared to Crawford’s during her “hey-hey girl” days in the late 1920s. The conclusion: Monroe’s “offenses” are not all that offensive, and Crawford was hypocritical and out of line.^[xviii] The resultant portrait was of an old fashioned and embittered star criticizing another who had stolen the limelight, with the gossip industry firmly on the side of the new star, brazen sexuality and all. Photoplay thus managed to both exploit the controversy and ingratiate itself to Monroe; the following issue, the cover heralded its “SCOOP!” of intimate details of the DiMaggio/Monroe romance. It would prove a harbinger of things — and strategies on the industry’s part — to come.

In 1954, Monroe and Photoplay repeatedly attempted to domesticate her image, framing her romance and eventual marriage to the conservative Joe DiMaggio as catalyst for a profound personality change.^[xix] At home, where their lives were “as ordinary as a couple’s in Oklahoma City, Monroe “slips into an apron and begins opening cans and getting things ready for the big fellow’s dinner, which she cooks with her own hands.” Another article proclaims Monroe’s marriage philosophy, which called for “candlelight on bridge tables, budgets and dreaming of babies” — simple, plain, domesticity.^[xx] “Joe doesn’t have to move a muscle,” Monroe boasted, “Treat a husband this way and he’ll enjoy you twice as much.” This “New Monroe Doctrine” was in stark contrast to “Monroe Doctrine” of old.

But the rhetorical masonry of the fan magazines buckled under the weight of Monroe’s preexisting image. Even as Monroe proclaimed subservience to DiMaggio during their Honeymoon to Japan, she detoured to Korea to appear in ten shows for 100,000 eager servicemen. As she and DiMaggio played house for Photoplay, Monroe privately complained that “Joe’s idea of a good time is to stay home night after night looking at the television.”^[xxi]

A few months later, Billy Wilder invited the press to observe the filming of the now-famous “air vent” scene for The Seven Year Itch. Hundreds of spectators surrounded the shoot as Monroe’s dress flew high, infuriating DiMaggio and incited a yelling match between him and Monroe, witnessed and reported by Walter Winchell.^[xxii] The two would divorce soon thereafter, confirming the unspoken speculation that sexuality and domesticity could not coexist. Such incompatibility recalled Monroe’s 1951Modern Screen confessional, “Who’d Marry Me?”, in which the star admitted that any man “would have to hold me awfully tight to keep me home. Because I’m a girl who wants to go places.” Monroe concluded that “right now, I have a one-track mind — screen work.”^[xxiii] That “one-track mind” had stymied the most sincere attempting, including those of the gossip industry, to domesticate her image.

Monroe extended this new-found independence to her career, leaving Hollywood and Fox in early 1955. It wasn’t the first time that Monroe had rebelled against her studio — in late 1953, she had balked when Fox cast her in yet another derivative song-and-dance film, The Girl with the Pink Tights. Eager appear in more serious roles, a furious Monroe refused to report to the set. Fox put her on suspension, but soon negotiated a deal: Monroe would appear in the mediocre There’s No Business Like Show Business in exchange for the coveted lead in The Seven Year Itch. After Itch wrapped production, Fox persisted in type-casting her; acting on the advise of photographer and confidant Milton Greene, Monroe retreated to New York. “The New Marilyn” was born.

The New Marilyn -- Reading Ulysses

“The New Marilyn” attempted to shed her one-note image and cultivate her acting skill, sitting in on classes as the Actor’s Studio. With Greene’s assistance, she self-incorporated, forming Marilyn Monroe Productions. When The Seven Year Itch was released to massive box office success, Monroe had the upper hand against her former studio. She renegotiated her contract, leveraging profit participation for her production company and the authority to reject any script or director, accentuating the shift in the power from studio to star. Many doubted the sincerity of Monroe’s ambitions, but her performance in Bus Stop, the first film under her new contract, received the best notices of her career. During this period, Monroe began her relationship with playwright Arthur Miller — 11 years her senior. Never before had a major star attempted to renovate her image so radically on her own accord.

The gossip industry struggled to reconcile this “New Marilyn” with the Monroe of old. The incongruities were immediately apparent. To announce her production company and new direction, she called a press conference in New York wearing a full-length white ermine coat -the very signifier of her previous bedazzled image.^[xxiv] When asked for names of potential projects she’d like to pursue, Monroe replied “The Brothers Karamozov.” She meant, of course, that she would like to play the lead female role of Grushenka, for which Monroe would be a perfect fit. Her response, however, was (perhaps maliciously) misinterpreted, and word spread that she wished to play one of the brothers. A Monroe-ism also began to circulate concerning her production company: “I feel so good,” Monroe purportedly told a wardrobe assistant, “I’m incorporated, you know.” The press persisted in reading Monroe’s old image into her new one, effectively suggesting the “New Marilyn” as little more than publicity stunt.^[xxv]

The other tactic was to explain Monroe in terms of dueling images. The Saturday Evening Post divided Monroe into three: “the sex pot Monroe” of the early 1950s, “the frightened Marilyn Monroe,” from the tales of her childhood, and “the New Marilyn Monroe,” a “composed and studied performer.”^[xxvi] Photoplay distinguished between Monroe The Legend and Monroe The Woman. The Legend was draped in furs and jewels, responsible for “Monroe-isms,” and “robbed The Woman of friends, love, and peace of mind,” while The Woman was “shy, hesitant, removed, and terribly lonely.”^[xxvii] Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller offered The Woman a third chance at happiness, but only if she can put the “frankenstein-like Legend” to rest, and “The Woman also becomes a mother.” Both magazines were performing a form of star analysis, underlining her “polysemy” — the fact that her image was available for widely varied interpretations and exploitations. Photoplay’s description of the warring sides of Monroe’s personality proved prophetic, as Monroe continued to struggle against the images created for her, growing increasingly difficult to work with, and separating from Miller before succumbing to a drug overdose in 1962.

The bifurcation of Monroe’s image served a distinct ideological purpose. Neither magazine — or the gossip industry at large — could render sexuality and intelligence, or sexuality and happiness, in conjunction. If both needed to separate Monroe’s explicit sexuality in order to approach her as a human, it follows that overt sexuality is not human — or at least not part of the human woman. Despite Monroe’s popularity, the gossip industry was unable to mediate Monroe’s image, let alone endorse it, without siphoning off and condemning the sexual component of her image. The resultant image was an aspiring domestic, lonely, and desperate to shed her sexuality, and completely at odds with the behavior and demeanor that characterized the star in action.

Monroe challenged the status quo for appropriate female behavior, and made sex visible after a long history of sublimation on the screen. But she also confronted, even flaunted, the rules that had theretofore governed acceptable behavior for a star contracted by a studio. At the same time, she proved an immensely lucrative asset to a struggling studio, and leveraged the resultant power against the studio to her artistic and financial advantage,. Coupled with a handful of similar deals negotiated during this period, Monroe’s negotiations helped further tip the balance of power from the studios to the stars.

The gossip industry’s fumbling attempts to mediate Monroe’s image illuminated its inability to convincingly represent or confront sexuality. Another magazine, much more savvy and willing to exploit, rather than sunder, the expression of sexuality would capitalize on this inability throughout Monroe’s career. This magazine, cleverly named Confidential, took Hollywood and the nation by storm, rising to prominence the month it placed Monroe, and the promise of revelation of true scandal, on its cover. Until Confidential, no mainstream magazine dared publicize, let along speculate, on the truly scandalous actions of public figures. Here was a magazine that didn’t even consider itself a fan magazine — and refused to play by the Hollywood rules. By exploiting that which Photoplay and the rest of the fan publications were too shy, or too cowed, to cover, they heralded a new mode of reportage in the gossip industry - scandal mongering — that would soon characterize even the most historically conservative of gossip publications. The business — and the way Americans thought of and valued stars — would never be the same.

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^[i] Martin, P. New Marilyn Monroe. The Saturday Evening Post v. 228 (May 5 1956) p. 25-7+

^[ii] (Rose 148).

^[iii] (Rose 148).

^[iv] ((Hedda Hopper, “Marilyn Soared to Stardom on Torrid Monroe Doctrine” LAT May 4 1952, D1) (John Crosby, “Anyway, the Men Like Her Fine,” Wash Post Nov 4 1952, 31).

^[v] (Florabel Muir, “What Hollywood’s Whispering About,” PP Dec 1952, p. 14).

^[vi] (“Readers Inc.” PP June 1952, p. 8).

^[vii] According to Monroe, women regularly charged her with “putting the country in a worse state than it’s in,” accusing her “of startling all the rapes.” (John Crosby, “Anyway, the Men Like Her Fine,” Wash Post Nov 4 1952, 31).

^[viii] (Marilyn Monroe, “I Want Women to Like Me,” PP Nov 1952, p. 58)

^[ix] Photoplay aimed to make it clear that Monroe’s plea had the desired effect, publishing a letter from one reader who proclaimed “I hope…this opens the eyes of some of those jealous women gossipers who do nothing but criticize her…Marilyn, this is one gal who loves you.” (“Readers Inc.” PP Jan 1953, p. 18).

^[x] See Dyer 27

^[xi] (Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, 27)

^[xii] (Hedda Hopper, “Marilyn Soared to Stardom on Torrid Monroe Doctrine” LAT May 4 1952, D1; Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, 31). Photoplay emphasized the fact that Monroe did not have to come forward and address the rumors; “libel laws being what they are…so long as Marilyn didn’t admit she had posed for the photo, reporters would have thought twice before identifying her.” But Monroe, unashamed, “just had to tell the truth.” Sheilah Graham, “Why Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” PP June 1953, p. 52)

^[xiii] (Martin, P. New Marilyn Monroe: Here She Talks About Herself. The Saturday Evening Post v. 229 (May 12 1956) p. 26-8+)

^[xiv] (Dyer 31)

^[xv] (Sheilah Graham, “Why Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” PP June 1953, p. 52).

^[xvi] (Barbas 316).

^[xvii] Monroe would show her gratitude to Parsons for the rest of her career, favoring the gossipist over Hopper and granting her the exclusive on the Monroe/DiMaggio marriage the following year.(Barbas 316).

^[xviii] The author does caution Monroe that “it’s foolish to try founding either a marriage or a movie career on sex attraction alone.”

^[xix] DiMaggio was notoriously private, making Photoplay’s exclusive access to their home all the more sensational. “The Private Life of Joe and Marilyn” (Are Joe and Marilyn Married?) George Armstrong, PP Dec 1953, p. 40).

^[xx] (Sidney Skolsky, “260,000 Minutes of Marriage,” PP August ’54, p. 52).

^[xxi] (Lesley Anne Dick, “I Just Want to Be Wonderful: The Cultural Legacy of Marilyn Monroe,” Unpublished Dissertation, p. 104).

^[xxii] CITE

^[xxiii] (“Who’d Marry Me?” Marilyn Monroe, September 1951, in The Best of Modern Screen, p. 208)

^[xxiv] (No author, “Studio Claims Marilyn Is Still Under Contract,” LAT Jan 9 1955, pg. A).

^[xxv] Other sources chose to authenticate the “New Marilyn,” most forthrightly through description of her new self. This new Monroe was “liberated, happy, cooperative, friendly, and relaxed”; her “shy, tense, little-girl voice” was gone, replaced with a woman who radiated “confidence and aplomb.”²⁵ A copy of Ulysses on Monroe’s coffee table, marked with dialogue notes for future rehearsals, provided further proof of the shift.²⁶ The “Monroe Doctrine” was repurposed to describe Monroe’s new attitude towards movie-making: “I don’t want to be the highest paid movie star in the world,” she proclaimed. “I want memories of having been a real actress.”²⁷

^[xxvi] (Martin, P. New Marilyn Monroe. The Saturday Evening Post v. 228 (May 5 1956) p. 25-7+).

^[xxvii] (“The Woman and the Legend,” Dorothy Manning, PP October 1956, p. 58).