Noel Coward's spot on comment on Marilyn Monroe and her death

Noel was supremely talented but could be a complete cunt, as he was here.

Leaving aside the fact that we don't know if it was suicide, an accident (my guess) or something more sinister, I think Marilyn was badly fucked-up way before she met Arthur Miller.

Monroe wasn't involved with Miller and The Method when she made "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," was she?

Interesting quote. I've never understood some of her die hard fans insistence that she was some fountain of depth and genius. Yes she read books but so did many Americans of that era. I've noticed a strange tendency that continues today for certain people to insist that every female sex symbol is also brilliant intellectually. Oddly enough you don't see it as much towards male sex symbols .

[quote] Judy Garland and Vivien in their different ways are in the same plight.

Wow, he was spot on in his prediction. Did he write this in real time in 1962? Or did he write this years later after those two died.

R3 Marilyn also had to dye her hair and get a ton of plastic surgery to become a sex symbol. Dorothy Dandridge was naturally beautiful.

R4, with respect, Judy and Vivien were NOT in "the same plight".

Vivien was bipolar and Judy suffered from depression and drug addiction.

Noel was blowing smoke out his ass.

R5, congratulations! You win the Datalounge Non-Sequitur Award for at least the next three minutes.

Dorothy even died in a similar way as Marilyn, but she is not romanticized like Marilyn is.

R5 Marilyn had decent work done. Very subtle unlike a lot of the jarring and uncanny surgeries of today's era. But yes, Dandridge was born with a far more beautiful face than Monroe.

R7 It’s a valid point. People focus too much on Marilyn and act like she’s the only Old Hollywood actress who had a tragic life.

Dandridge had her nose bobbed.

R4 In 1962, The day after Marilyn died.

After...

***chuckling knowingly after reading Noel Coward's comment at OP***

Oh, he was such a BITCH!

R11 Still prettier than Marilyn imo.

Yes, but not as strong an actress.

[quote]Yes she read books but so did many Americans of that era.

Most Americans didn't read the same caliber of books. Here's a list of 430 books from her personal library.

I think Hazel Scott was prettier than Dandridge.

100% agree with Noel Coward's opinion.

[quote]Most Americans didn't read the same caliber of books. Here's a list of 430 books from her personal library.

Oh, she was ridiculous. She was so an intellectual poseuse. She was famously photographed reading "Ulysses," which would be absurdly beyond her capabilities since she did not go to college.

[quote]She was, to begin with, a fairly normal little sexpot with exploitable curves and a certain natural talent.

What an odious and dismissive thing to say about a woman who's barely cold. The fuck would he have known about her?

[quote]Dorothy even died in a similar way as Marilyn, but she is not romanticized like Marilyn is.

Dandridge and Monroe were friends. They both took singing lessons from the same teacher. Dandridge's last apartment where they discovered her body was in the the El Palaccio Apartments on Fountain Avenue, where Monroe temporarily lived in 1947.

I think we guessed that from you calling it, "spot on", OP.

Lol. R23.

R3 People do the same thing with Jayne Mansfield, aka the poor man’s Marilyn.

R20, I am glad to hear that not going to college means you are incapable of cracking open "Ulysses."

I first attempted to read it at age 8, so thanks for the heads-up!

R21 It was his private diaries. He was free to express his reals thoughts in it.

That whole Arthur Miller egghead crowd did seem dreary. Not that jock DiMaggio was right for her either. She needed someone in the middle, like a Mike Todd.

No, she needed to go to radio and get fat, like Ann Sothern.

She needed to retire to a farm.

Norma Jeane coincidentally looked like Judy Garland.

You can just tell Noel was one of those tedious people who insists there's no such thing as mental illness or addiction. "Just pull up your socks and get on with it," he'd advise anyone struggling with either.

I like Marilyn but it’s hard watching her in some of her movies. She was always so objectified.

[quote] —I had no idea what the hell it meant

I can guarantee you neither did she.

Dorothy was just as fucked up in the head as Marilyn was…both were molested by adults as teens. Dorothy courtesy of her mother’s girlfriend, a manly bull dyke who shoved her fingers in Dorothy’s vagina under the guise of checking if she had been sexually active. Cannot remember who Marilyn’s perp was, but I think that he was a family member. And they were both emotionally fragile. Combine that with men slobbering over them, plus the soul-crushing racism Dorothy went through, it’s a recipe for dysfunctional behavior.

Noel is such a bitch.

Noel was kind of ugly too.

There’s a formula for straight men wanting to bed women: Tell a smart woman she’s beautiful and tell a beautiful woman she’s smart.

R3, Her fans insist that she HAD to be intelligent because only an intelligent person could play a dumb blonde and make people believe it.... Her fans aren't the brightest.

What if the woman is both?

I'd like to echo Barbra's question.

Dorothy Dandridge had a shitty life. Apart from being molested by her mom's girlfriend. She also had a daughter with her abusive and unfaithful ex-husband, the performer Harold Nicholas. The child was born with an intellectual disability because her husband abandoned her during labor (to play golf!) and she had a delayed birth with the use of forceps. Dorothy blamed herself for it, of course.

She was playing an animated version of herself, that's not too difficult to do. Intelligent people don't have to pose with books to prove that they are intelligent. And the 400+ books in her library I doubt she bothered to read any of them, they were a showpiece.

R39 I think she had some emotional intelligence and natural talent. Definitely charisma. Dumb people aren't good at making their characters interesting or likable.

Well, R43, I suspect you put frozen breakfast pork-product links up your asshole and pretend an Eskimo is fucking you.

That's the thing about ad hoc opinions about people we don't actually know. They don't mean shit.

[quote]Cannot remember who Marilyn’s perp was, but I think that he was a family member.

Norma Jeane was digitally molested by George Atkinson who rented part of the Arbol Street house than Marilyn's mother had purchased in 1933.

Noel Coward was a BITCHY QUEEN.

Marilyn Monroe was RUBBED OUT by the Kennedys because she was GOING TO TELL about her affairs with the Kennedy brothers.

It's creepy when someone writes in their 'diaries' as if yhey know it's going to be read. He's trying to be witty and entertaining.

"Committed suicide yesterday"? They didn't even know the cause of her death yet. Was he there?

He's confusing the persona she created with the real person, something they always do. Her acting improved vastly after New York, and picking talented directors.

"The Misfits" (her final completed film) was her best work yet. She integrated the 'Marilyn' character the audiences loved with a more complex character. Unfortunately, the film itself was so downbeat that audiences stayed away.

Shelley Winters is one of the few people that was willing to give her honest thoughts on Marilyn. Her fans usually have meltdowns if anyone dare show any criticisms towards their patron saint Marilyn.

Case in point, R45 is having a mental relapse. Poor thing.

I was molested in analogue and I didn't even get a hit record out of it!

Marilyn Monroe and James Dean are analogous. Came from a poor background and dysfunctional family. Possibly molested and mentally unstable. Had ambition to be more than what they were and created a new identity. Mimicked movie stars that they adored but tried to do something new. Were willing to trade sex to get far in the industry. Died young and became icons before they became old and decrepit nobodies. Represent the now-dead American Dream in many ways.

[quote]And the 400+ books in her library I doubt she bothered to read any of them, they were a showpiece.

According to the Christie's catalog from the 1999 auction of her estate, many of them had underlined portions and margin notations in her handwriting. I guess she did that just for show, knowing that one day, they would be sold.

Here's a photo of Marilyn posing circa 1951-2 in her apartment at the Beverly Carlton (now Avalon Hotel in West LA) with just a small part of her library.

OP - no one would claim that Monroe was an intellectual.

I think it is safe to say two things.

She tried to better herself through reading.

She did not kill herself because of Arthur Miller and "The Method".

The End

R51 Dean also liked to read books like Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe's fans are deranged like Jacko's fans who insist he was not a drug addict nor a pedophile.

R51 According to Shelley Winters, Jimmy and Marilyn didn’t care for each other the one time they met. Shelley had written about how Jimmy circled them on the road with his motorcycle as a practical joke and then hung out with the both of them in Nicholas Ray’s bungalow at the Chateau Marmont. However after his death, Marilyn put up a photo of Jimmy on the set of Bus Stop as a tribute to him. He apparently wanted to audition for that movie.

R5 is the usual lurking racist who shits on white people.

She thinks she's stealthy about it.

R49 I always felt Shelley was respectful of Marilyn whenever she spoke and wrote about her.

I do think Dorothy was more naturally prettier and had more talent as a singer, dancer and actress. Marilyn was cute with a nice boy but she had a huge makeover and became the icon we know and love. Marilyn was definitely more charismatic. Dorothy was sexually magnetic but in a more refined diva way. She didn't come across as vulnerable as Marilyn in film maybe because she was a seasoned former child performer. They both worked well but differently. I would say Dorothy got the shorter end of the stick because of the racist climate. Maybe if Dorothy had moved to France and gave up on Hollywood earlier, she would have had more success.

*body

R59 I think it’s difficult to assess Dorothy’s abilities because outside of Carmen Jones, she wasn’t given good roles period.

I knew an actor who was friends with her when she was studying the Method. And he was the only person I've ever heard say that her normal speaking voice was not that airy whisper dingbat shit. That was part of the character that she created for the film "All About Eve", and the studio liked what she did. From that point forward she was trapped in that character and she regretted it.

He said that she was bright, had a great sense of humor and loved having deep conversation.

[quote]Marilyn Monroe's fans are deranged like Jacko's fans who insist he was not a drug addict nor a pedophile.

Not all of us put Monroe on a pedestal. Monroe had mental issues and an addiction to pills after about 1955. She trusted the wrong people and died tragically from an accidental overdose. However, she also had an onscreen magic that very few did or do.

I often wonder how people like Dean and Monroe would feel about their iconic status.

Marilyn Monroe was a persona for Norma Jean Baker. It proved to be marketable and it unfortunately bled into her personal life as she began internalize it. That's why method acting can be dangerous because it's hard to shut off the persona.

R17 Well she had photos taken of her appearing to be reading a book. That much I’ll buy.

[quote]And he was the only person I've ever heard say that her normal speaking voice was not that airy whisper dingbat shit.

Monroe's voice in a 1960 interview.

Marilyn Monroe was a totally well-balanced sexpot before she met Arthur Miller. Soon, after attempting to read James Joyce, her brain melted and she killed herself. I blame Arthur Miller, who is smarter than I am by a good long chalk. Obviously being molested as a minor, having a drug addiction and having an affair with the President of the United States could have done nothing to contribute to the situation. In other news, Dorothy Dandridge is from Norway, The Empire State Building is five stories tall and raw oysters make an excellent ice cream topping.

I'm not smart.

"I'm the same person, but it's a different suit."

Monroe being quite charming and witty with the press upon her return to Los Angeles to film Bus Stop.

Here she is in 1955 being interviewed and she's playing the dingbat "Marilyn character" but she's toned it down.

r67 It's funny how she's adopted a "Mid-Atlantic" affectation by that1960 interview. (probably to sound more intelligent and posh)

[quote] Her fans insist that she HAD to be intelligent because only an intelligent person could play a dumb blonde and make people believe it.... Her fans aren't the brightest.

I always think of Christina Applegate. Her character on Married with Children, Kelly Bundy, was a slutty, shallow dumb blonde stereotype. A walking slut joke born of misogynistic writers. However, Christina made Kelly likable, endearing and gave her hidden depths. She had a lot of say in her character development in later seasons and reimagined Kelly as an "idiot savant".

She started off as a pass around party girl, that got her through the door. She made her fame and money being a sex symbol and that's what she was still doing in her final years, taking her clothes off for mags and all that...basically how she started. So her bitching to Elli Wallach that "that's all people see her as" was of her own doing. She wanted it both ways but she couldn't have it.

Noel was always such a bitch.

Ugh, have you ever gone to a British literary party? Every queen in attendance sounds like Coward does here. Bitchy, mean-spirited, cruel. They throw around words like "silly, vulgar, and he's a bore" incessantly There is no environment on the planet more toxic

Marilyn said something like 'people expected blonde hair women to be ditzy', but I don't recall anyone saying that about Jean Harlow, Mae West or any of the other blondes prior to the 50s. The moniker of being a "ditzy/dumb blonde never followed them but it only followed Marilyn....

What was “The Method”? Every interview I’ve read, people who knew Marilyn are always complaining about it. I think it was Arthur Miller who said he heard her coach telling her “you are the Coca Cola bottle”.

R76 Untrue. The ditzy blonde goes way back.

I think the blonde stereotype originally was more innocent and childlike than straight-up stupid. But most early screen actresses were blonde or black-haired because it contrasted better in black-and-white. The blonde would be the ingenue and the black-haired one would be the siren or femme fatale.

It takes a very bright actress to pull off a "dumb blonde" character (with the necessary comedic timing).

Examples are "Betty White, Judy Holiday, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn, Jean Hagan (Singing In The Rain), Suzanne Sommers, just to name a few.

She may have fucked my brother-in-law, but unlike my sister, Marilyn was never on Assistance.

I don't know, r58. Shelley would pull out that story about asking Marilyn to wash the lettuce and later finding her scrubbing each leaf with a Brillo pad.

Shelley embellished a bit.

She's such a remarkable success story, and that's part of the attraction for her fans. No one could have imagined how that little abandoned waif could evolve into one of the biggest movies star ever. But she played the game and cleverly won big.

Yeah, R83

Just a tad.

This is just plain mean and unfounded.

Please read the link below for an antidote to his venom.

r86 is asking us to read an Ayn Rand essay for the pearls of wisdom contained within.

One great beauty writing about another.

Harlow and Lombard and other blondes were seen as "ditzy" in the 1930s, it was already an archetype then.

Mansfield wasn't much of a performer.

Harlow read books, r88.

I can read upside down.

Why, I'm no such thing!

What an absurdly stupid statement R20. Before college even existed people read Ulysses. My mother read it out loud to us when I was a young teen and she did not go to college you dumb cunt.

People from his generation didn’t know much about mental illness. They lived through two world wars and this probably toughened them up to a degree that they really weren’t pleasant people anymore.

Em... DL has plenty of unfeeling old gay men. (Well, unfeeling for others...). It's not particular to Coward's generation.

R20 "She was famously photographed reading "Ulysses," which would be absurdly beyond her capabilities since she did not go to college."

You can't be this stupid, can you?

I think that if Noel Coward DID write that in real time a lot of his info came from Laurence Olivier’s experience with Marilyn and Vivien. As talented as Marilyn Monroe, Vivien Leigh and Judy Garland were - by most accounts all three were emotionally exhausting to spend time with at the end of their lives.

R97 Laurence Olivier was an asshole tho.

R27, who said he wasn't free to do so? This kind of comment reminds me of kids on the playground saying, "It's a free country!" His thoughts are still odious.

R100

You're terrible, Muriel r100.

Jayne was known for her intellect.

About *that* photo...

[quote] He said that she was bright, had a great sense of humor and loved having deep conversation.

You won't believe this, but eccentric British poet Edith Sitwell wrote about Marilyn Monroe in her autobiography.

Here it is--

"In private life she was not in the least what her calumniators would have wished her to be. She was very quiet, had great natural dignity (I cannot imagine anyone who knew her trying to take a liberty with her), and was extremely intelligent. She was also exceedingly sensitive.

'What will-power she must have needed in order to remain the human being she was, after the cruelty with which, in the past, she was treated! That is over now, and she is accepted as the fine artist that she was. But that cruelty is completely odious. It arose partly, I think, from the envy of people who are devoid of beauty, and partly from the heartless stupidity of those who have never known a great and terrifying poverty.

"That afternoon she wore a green dress and, with her yellow hair, looked like a daffodil. We talked mainly, as far as I can remember, about Rudolph Steiner, whose works she had just been reading. "

Steiner was heiß.

Edie would know, r104.

Edie was a lady.

Audio play

Edith liked to manspread.

Up until the 80s it was normal for non-college educated people to read current and classic literature. In prisons, high-school dropouts are reading Proust.

Eadie was a lady, r107, not Edie.

[quote]What an absurdly stupid statement [R20]. Before college even existed people read Ulysses.

The first part of [italic]Ulysses[/italic] to be published was in 1914, in [italic]The Little Review.[/italic] The entire full volume came out in 1922 in Paris.

The first college established in the United States was Harvard College in 1636. The first college in France, where [italic]Ulysses[/italic] was published, was the College of the Sorbonne in Paris, which came into operation in 1253.

Joyce himself attended college at University College Dublin (established in 1854) years before [italic]Ulysses[/italic] was written or published.

[quote]Marilyn Monroe was RUBBED OUT by the Kennedys because she was GOING TO TELL about her affairs with the Kennedy brothers.

Marilyn had one night with JFK in Palm Springs. No long drawn out affair. She also told her (gay) masseuse Ralph Roberts that she didn't find Robert Kennedy attractive. Please stop believing what Jeanne Carmen and Robert Slatzer published decades after Marilyn's death. They weren't close to her in any way, shape or form.

Monroe wouldn't risk ruining her career by confessing she'd banged the President. She was not a vindictive woman. She never spoke badly about any of her ex-husbands or boyfriends, so she wouldn't have done so about the Kennedys. The press conference she'd arranged was supposed to be about her return to Fox with a new contract and the resuming of filming Something's Got to Give once Dean Martin finished the project he was currently working on.

R113 Marilyn’s connections to the Kennedy’s are so overblown. I guess she didn’t help matters with that happy birthday performance, but still.

Oh, I'm going to tell about the Kennedys. I am. I am GOING to TELL.

Masseur.

R71 She doesn't have a mid-Atlantic accent.

I would love to find a single lesbian with a Mid-Atlantic accent.

R112, now I wonder if that poster got confused and thought we were talking about the Odyssey.

As others have written, she didn't intentionally kill herself. You could argue she wanted to and her drug use was a step in that direction. Noel may have a point though about The Method and its affect on her. Billy Wilder thought she was relatively stable when filming "The Seven Year Itch" but four years later she had gone mad when filming "Some Like It Hot." Like completely different and thoroughly unstable mad. The Strasbergs were no good for her, they filled her head with nonsense like "you are an electric fence with water pouring over it."

[quote]I would love to find a single lesbian with a Mid-Atlantic accent.

Mrs. Bundy in The Birds?

[quote] Up until the 80s it was normal for non-college educated people to read current and classic literature. In prisons, high-school dropouts are reading Proust.

I think that just shows how society really dumbed once television and later smartphones became so widely available. People in Monroe's time had less options for entertainment. Reading books were common. Even if you aren't educated on formal level, you can still learn on your own. Marilyn tried her best and was intellectually curious. The fact she was aware she was uneducated was a sign of being smart. Dumb people think they have al the answers and don't want to learn.

R2

MM had just recently married Arthur Miller about two months before couple arrived in UK for her to begin filming "The Prince and The Showgirl".

While in UK MM and Arthur Miller attended a performance of Noel Coward's South Sea Bubble at the Lyric Theatre.

Vivien Leigh was starring in the production, and with all of London speaking of nothing else (MM's appearance at play upstaged Ms. Leigh..), Noel Coward likely was somewhere about.

If had to place Noel Coward among the girls in "Ladies Who Lunch", would have to put him firmly under "Here's to the girls who just watch...." "Another chance to disapprove, another brilliant zinger...".

Many may have considered Noel Coward a catty and nasty old queen, but his observations and witty remarks were often spot on.

R113 has the most cogent description of MM I’ve ever read. It’s true, Marilyn may have been a mess but she was never ever mean. Explains why she was a mess too.

r3 Truman Capote thought MM was smart. More street smart than book smart, but nevertheless no dummie. I believe him, he would have said if she was stupid and pretentious.

I tend to believe what Olivier said about her.

Her pussy stank. That’s what people should know about Marilyn. It stank up the joint worse than a Bette Davis movie.

Full on "Mid-Atlantic" (faux semi-British) accent in 1960 interview!

Paula Strasberg should have been barred from all movie sets.

[quote] I would love to find a single lesbian with a Mid-Atlantic accent.

Really?

R129 Is speaking clearly, and enunciating, now considered a mid-Atlantic accent? I don't hear any accent. The mid-Atlantic accent doesn't have a hard r. Which she uses throughout the interview. Apparently people just speak very badly now. Speaking in a normal, modulated voice in a regular American accent is all she's doing there.

[quote]Reading books were common.

How common were it?

Most people read The Bible at least. Today that's considered challenging literature.

It's interesting how acting, dancing and singing were likened to prostitution in older times. Entertainers doubled as courtesans. It was historically considered a "common" profession. The idea actors should be intellectual, morally superior and classy seems like a Hollywood invention. The casting couch always existed. Monroe was attractive and had sexual charisma. She took advantage of the world's oldest profession to get to where she got. I don't see why that's a moral failure. She was not special in that regard.

[quote] The idea actors should be intellectual, morally superior and classy seems like a Hollywood invention.

It was an invention of this lady--

[quote]The casting couch always existed. Monroe was attractive and had sexual charisma. She took advantage of the world's oldest profession to get to where she got. I don't see why that's a moral failure. She was not special in that regard.

Marilyn slept with many, many guys. I don't even know if she slept with anyone to get ahead, she probably would have slept with them anyway.

One of her big champions at Fox was former actor Ben Lyon, who was a casting director. I never heard it said he slept with her. Also, Zanuck didn't like her so I don't think she slept with him. Some girls he did sleep with and tried to promote (Bella Darvi) bombed. Not saying Marilyn didn't use sex professionally but the reason she made it was because audiences loved her. People are still talking about her, there's a reason - she's fascinating and people can never get enough of her.

Marilyn didn't have family (not in an asylum), no husband, no money, and no formal education (not even a high school education). She had one asset - her appearance and she used it to get ahead. So what?

R138 Exactly. People will do what they have to do to survive. She wanted to be a star and was willing to do what it took. People did it back then and they still do that today. How is it any less degrading than working in a factory, a store or doing domestic work which didn't pay that well especially for a woman back in the 1940s? She would have used her looks to land a husband but what if she ended up being miserable in a loveless marriage? It wasn't easy being financially independent in a time where women had very little freedom. Her situation was difficult no matter what route she took.

Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?

Billy Wilder talks about her at the 30:35 mark.

[quote]but nevertheless no dummie.

Oh, my.

I think Marilyn was more well read than most people today.

Nothing wrong in improving one’s circumstances. It’s true she seemed a sensitive and compassionate person. She was needy but humble. Being abandoned and vulnerable at young age can set one up for that. She was never crass or unkind, I respect that.

R127, 6:55 that bit made me laugh. I didn't expect that from Olivier at all. Also, the part where he said Marilyn was bad tempered and scary was interesting. Usually it's said that she was "sweet, innocence and childlike", people seem to forget that Marilyn was an adult, and one very capable of displaying aggressive emotions.

Didn't Billy Wilder say something similar about Marilyn behaving like a brat on set?

When you back a cat into a corner...

But, she wasn't backed into a corner. People tried to be gentle and patient with her and like Olivier explained in the clip, it still wasn't enough for her to get the job done. So what can you do? I mean her persona wouldn't work unless a man knew how to lead it.

When she's too scared to come out of her trailer and you're pushing to get her out... that's a cat backed into a corner.

[quote]How is it any less degrading than working in a factory, a store or doing domestic work which didn't pay that well especially for a woman back in the 1940s?

R139 Maybe we should start with why you think it's degrading to work in a factory, a store, or as a domestic. My dad worked in a factory his entire adult life until he retired. So did my uncle, aunt, and cousin. Many people work in stores, too, I mean come on.

R149 I didn't say it was necessarily degrading but it can be difficult dealing with greedy or perverted bosses, difficult customers and questionable wages. Especially back then as a young woman. There was less protections for workers in that time unless they were unionized. My main point is if Marilyn did sex work for money or career opportunities to get what she wanted. There isn't anything degrading or shameful about it either.

[quote] People tried to be gentle and patient with her and like Olivier explained in the clip, it still wasn't enough for her to get the job done.

Michelle Morgans' biography, Marilyn, Private and Undisclosed is one of the best biographies on the actress.

"More than 50 interviewees are featured, many never put on the record before, including a large number from her orphaned childhood and early years - details of which until now have remained mysterious and patchy. Documentary sources range from the private testimony of her gynecologist, to the previously undisclosed Laurence Olivier papers relating to Marilyn's time in England."

Here's Dame Sybil Thorndike's take on Marilyn during TPATS. Unfortunately, the entire interview cannot be found online.

One of m favorite scenes as she says "hell" about 2 minutes in.

Oopsie.