Marilyn Monroe

format_quote "In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty." edit

stars  “I wanted to be a sex goddess. And you can laugh all you want to. The joke is on me, whether you laugh or not. I wanted to be one -- one of them. They used to laugh at Marilyn when she said she didn't want to be a sex-goddess, she wanted to be a human being. And now they laugh at me when I say, "I don't want to be a human being; I want to be a sex-goddess." That shows you right there that something has changed, doesn't it? Rita, Ava, Lana, Marlene, Marilyn -- I wanted to be one of them. I remember the morning my friend came in and told us that Marilyn had died. And all the boys were stunned, rigid, literally, as they realized what had left us. I mean, if the world couldn't support Marilyn Monroe, then wasn't something desperately wrong? And we spent the rest of the goddamned sixties finding out what it was. We were all living together, me and these three gay boys that adopted me when I ran away, in this loft on East Fifth Street, before it became dropout heaven -- before anyone ever said "dropout" -- way back when "commune" was still a verb? We were all -- old-movie buffs, sex-mad -- you know, the early sixties. And then my friend, this sweet little queen, he came in and he passed out tranquilizers to everyone, and told us all to sit down, and we thought he was just going to tell us there was a Mae West double feature on somewhere -- and he said -- he said -- "Marilyn Monroe died last" -- and all the boys were stunned -- but I -- I felt something sudden and cold in my solar plexus, and I knew then what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be the next one. I wanted to be the next one to stand radiant and perfected before the race of man, to shed the luminosity of my beloved countenance over the struggles and aspirations of my pitiful subjects. I wanted to give meaning to my own time, to be the unattainable luring love that drives men on, the angle of light, the golden flower, the best of the universe made womankind, the living sacrifice, the end! Shit!” ― Robert Patrick, Kennedy's Children edit

stars  “If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.” ― Clifford Odets edit

stars  1951 Henrietta Awards: The Best Young Box Office Personality Soldiers posted to the Aleutians: The Girl Most Likely to Thaw Alaska The 7th Division Medical Corps: The Girl Most Wanted to Examine Stars and Strips: Miss Cheesecake of the Year The All Weather Fighter Squadron 3, San Diego: The Girl They Would Most Like to Intercept The Present All GIs Would Like To Find in Their Christmas Stocking 1952 Detroit Free Press: New Faces Award Look Magazine: Look Award Stars and Strips: Cheesecake Queen of 1952 Look Magazine Achievement Awards: Most Promising Female Newcomer 1953 Photoplay Magazine Awards: Fastest Rising Star of 1952 Independent Theatre Owners of Arkansas: The State’s Most Popular Movie Actress (Selected by a poll of 109,248 Arkansas theatre patrons) Redbook Magazine: Best Young Box Office Personality The Jewelry Academy: The Best Friend a Diamond Ever Had Golden Globe Award: Female World Film Favorite Advertising Association of the West: The Most Advertised Girl in the World 1954 Photoplay Magazine Awards: Best Actress – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire VFW Post 398, Inglewood, CA: Recognition in Commemoration of Her Unselfish Service Rendered to the Armed Forces in Korea, Presented June, 19, 1954 1956 British Academy Awards: Nomination: Best Foreign Actress – The Seven Year Itch 1958 David di Donatello Prize (Italian equivalent of the Oscar): Best Foreign Actress of 1958 – The Prince and the Showgirl British Academy Awards: Nomination: Best Foreign Actress – The Prince and the Showgirl Harvard Lampoon: The Thank-God Award: To Marilyn Monroe, who in a sweeping public service has made no movies this year 1959 Crystal Star Award (French equivalent of the Oscar): Best Foreign Actress – The Prince and the Showgirl 1960 Golden Globe Award: Best Actress in a Comedy – Some Like It Hot 1962 Golden Globe Award: Female World Film Favorite Other: Some Like It Hot and All About Eve scored positions fourteen and sixteen respectively in the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of America’s Greatest 100 Movies. In June 1999 Marilyn came sixth in the American Film Institute’s list of the top twenty-five female stars of all time. edit

stars  "There's no need now to argue her quality as an actress, or the degree to which she was a victim of a cruel system or her own worst enemy. What was clear, immediately, on hearing of her death, was the way in which this lovely girl had meant something, anything, to everyone- whether she liked it or not; whether she had the faintest idea of how to control the wild circus... People blamed Twentieth Century-Fox for Monroe's death, the studio that had at last run out of patience with her. And over the years, nearly every other segment of our society, from the federal government to the Mafia, has been listed among the suspects. But maybe that says more about the breadth of her appeal than actual lethal intent." Film Critic David Thomson edit

stars  I had always thought that all those amusing remarks she was supposed to have made for the press had probably been manufactured and mimeographed by her press agent, but they weren't. She was a very bright person, an instinct type. - Photographer Eliott Erwitt edit