Marilyn Monroe : les derniers tourments

Marilyn Monroe : les derniers tourments

I’m not just happy generally. If I am generally anything, I think I’m generally miserable. I can achieve certain things in my work, that I am closest to being happy, and I can say that about my life too. But it doesn’t just happen in moments. Sometimes, when I work… And I will be able to fill a scene, and I will be happy. Who can answer this question? Everyone and no one at the same time. Complex, tormented, capable of going from euphoria to depths of despair. A lost girl, Norma Jean Baker, who created a legend, Marilyn. A legend that helped her exist in the eyes of the world, to no longer be an anonymous orphan abandoned by everyone, but a legend that will end up suffocating him. An image in which she ultimately lost herself. Those who witness all these faces will often be… photographers who will have the chance to meet her. This luck, Douglas Kirkland had it three times. He will photograph her and she will give him three different faces. That of a simple and friendly woman, of a living and sensual icon. And then that of a dark woman, fragile and desperate. Here is the first chapter of this story, symptomatic of this complexity if you are tempted. In eight months, Marilyn Monroe will disappear. She has an appointment with the photographer today. On the evening of November 14, 1961, Young photographer Douglas Kirkland visits Marilyn Monroe in her Los Angeles apartment. It was quite surprising. It looked like a motel room or a small hotel room. Marilyn Monroe herself amazes the photographer with her simplicity. She wasn’t the huge star I expected to see that night. She was very, very friendly. She could have been my sister. That evening, The actress and Douglas Kirkland are preparing a photo shoot for the 25th anniversary of Look magazine, of which she is the special guest. She said… I know what we should do. We would need a bed, you would look down on me, above the bed, and I would wear nothing but a white silk sheet. Without a film project, Marilyn Monroe devotes herself to the exercise which, deep down, he has always been the most successful, and which perhaps gave him his greatest roles, studio photography. This is where she finds herself and gives herself completely. It was easier for her. She didn’t have to memorize a text, positions. You walk like this and you fall like that. She could be more creative. But the evening of the photo shoot, Marilyn Monroe does not show up at the studio at the scheduled time. Douglas and his team are getting impatient, are worried. But when, two hours later, she finally arrives, the effect will be that of an apparition. She was bright. dazzling, very white. He was suddenly a completely different person. She didn’t even have the same voice I’d heard two or three nights earlier. NOW, she was a superstar, She was the Marilyn the world knew and loved. She was sexual. It emanated from every pore of his body. I don’t really have an explanation, but Marilyn was able to transform into Marilyn. And maybe that was what always made her late, because she herself had to disappear to become Marilyn. For this session, The actress wanted champagne and Frank Sinatra music. And after a few shots, she makes a new request, more astonishing. She said “I want to be alone with this boy. I find it works better this way.” They are all gone, and here I am alone with Marilyn. And I’m right on top of her. And there, she told me, “Why don’t you come down here with me?” The young photographer responds to Marilyn’s invitation, but not quite as she imagined. Instead of touching her, to do anything to him, I looked into my camera. And I continued to photograph her without stopping, as if I hadn’t really understood what she had proposed to me. I put all the desire I had that night into the device. We made love, but there was a camera between us. The day after, something has changed. When the photographer comes back to Marilyn Monroe’s house to show her the pictures, she leaves him waiting at the door for a long time, before finally opening the door to him, unrecognizable. Another Marilyn, a completely different person, wearing dark glasses, a scarf on the hair. She was no longer the glamorous Marilyn Monroe, She was no longer the friendly Marilyn Monroe I had met that first night. I don’t know what happened, but something had gone wrong. A call, an event, a sadness, something that suddenly plunged her into a deep depression. And so it is with reluctance that Marilyn looks at the photos of Douglas Kirkland. She went through them very quickly. They still didn’t look good. She was unfriendly, I wouldn’t say hostile, but not well. She excused herself and left for a few minutes. Then she came back. She took off her dark glasses and began to look more carefully. She crossed out the photos she didn’t like, stars on the few she loved, but she didn’t seem very happy at first. SO, she went through them a third time, putting aside those she hadn’t liked, and she finally started seeing pictures that she liked. She said “Look at this girl, she hugs a man. Any man in the world would want to be in her arms.” At the sight of some images that please him, Marilyn momentarily comes out of her dark mood. But she now knows how ephemeral this narcissistic satisfaction is and how it is no longer enough to give meaning. to its existence. The drama, it is that indeed, she needed to create this image in order to exist, in the eyes of men, in the eyes of cinema spectators, in the eyes of the directors. And then at some point, she realizes that this is not what existing is all about. Exist, it is to exist for oneself. It’s not looking in the mirror of a camera or a photographic device. Constantly in search of herself, The actress keeps notebooks where she records her moods. His reflections, his doubts especially. The body finally prevented him from speaking, that is, to speak in his place. It was as if she was saying, There is my body and then there is me. The one I am inside, you will never know her. For a very strong reason, It’s just that I don’t know her myself. Why do I have this feeling that things don’t really happen, but that I play a role? Why do I feel less of a human being than others? This woman was searching for herself through words and instead lost herself in her own image, as it was constantly sent back to him. Another moment of truth for Marilyn, less well-known, writing. She made a habit of writing in notebooks, poems or simple fragments sometimes, as an element, a cry that sometimes also appears as the only continuity of this woman adrift. Writings that also reveal… another facet of his personality, a deeper woman, more cultured, than the superficial and reductive image that has too often been given of it. Marilyn constantly tried to take her destiny into her own hands, to access her truth and show who she really was. The first illustration of all this perhaps dates back to the end of 1954, at 28 years old. The Hollywood star is already world-famous for his photography and successful films such as Niagara, Men prefer blondes, or How to Marry… a millionaire. However, she decides to leave everything behind. On the evening of December 16, 1954, Marilyn Monroe, then aware of his fame in Hollywood, leaves Los Angeles in the greatest secrecy. She leaves Hollywood, she takes a plane under an assumed name, Zelda Zank. She wore a brown wig to avoid being recognized. It’s almost an escape plan that has been devised for her. She goes to New York with the very specific goal of training. Norma Jean Baker wants to free herself from the Hollywood Marilyn, this creature that she herself forged, but which it now wants to free from the all-powerful big film studios. Marilyn couldn’t stand playing the dumb blonde in movies anymore. She really wants to show that she can play lyrics. She wants to play texts. And first he needs to train. So the actress will address one of the founders of the Actor Studio in New York, the teacher Lee Strasberg. She decided to work with Lee Strasberg because he was then considered the best acting teacher in the world. She arrived, heart on hand, saying “please”. Help me. I believe that you are the people who will allow me to become the person I would like to be. By training in this renowned school, Marilyn Monroe puts her career on hold for a change at the end of the picture. She will humbly join the actor studio, where there, he is asked to play in front of everyone, in front of other students who, at the start, are still rather illas, rather suspicious and not very favorable. Cara New York. The intellectual capital of the United States, the Hollywood star doesn’t really inspire respect, and she knows it. Really, what the New York actors thought then, it was “You’re joking, Marilyn Monroe? “What are you talking about, there ? ” “Stupid comedies, Of course. ” ” Tremendous, tremendous. But that’s not what we want to do here.” That was it, consensus among serious actors. Melis Strasberg, him, will take Marilyn Monroe’s desire very seriously. She wanted to be recognized and respected as an actress. And my father thought she could. Marilyn arriving at Strasberg’s, This is really giving Strasberg a huge cake. Marilyn Monroe became a diligent student and very quickly, The relationship with his teacher continues beyond the doors of the actor’s studio. Lee Strasberg perceives the actress’s fragility and takes her under his wing. Marilyn was a very hurt person and my father loved hurt people. And he also encourages the actress to engage in psychoanalysis to be closer to the characters. Marilyn Monroe had gone so far in creating a public persona that it had become her personality. I believe that the psychological analysis that Strasberg asked her to undertake plunged her into an abyss. Because she had so many masks that she identified with that she really didn’t know where reality lay anymore. And Marilyn Monroe will find a model family in the Strasbergs. A father, a mother, two children, this family that she herself does not have. Never had. She was still looking for a family. Always. She had grown up more or less like an orphan, even if his mother was alive and even if his father was somewhere in the world. And there, she could be at the family table, to feel like part of the family. She needed to belong somewhere. And it is in this family that Marilyn Monroe finds refuge in her moments of despondency. She even sleeps in John’s room, the young teenager. And she wakes him up in his sleepless nights. She arrived on all fours. Because, obviously, she was taking drugs. She said, Johnny, can i stay with you? We stayed on the sofa, I don’t know how long. She spoke, She was drugged. Lee Strasberg will therefore take care of Marilyn Monroe as one would take care of a little girl. She couldn’t sleep. And Lee Strasberg took her in his arms, spoke to him, rocked her, until she finally fell asleep. My father was sitting next to her, on the bed, singing “Go to sleep, my dusky baby » . Lee Strasberg is like a father to her, and his wife Paula, will in turn become a mother figure for Marilyn. All this will end up upsetting the balance of the family, because the actress gradually became a sort of favorite daughter of the couple. She is a woman who constantly demands attention, affection, interest, support, protection, insurance, comfort, love, Of course. Ella Prida-Place, He’s a terrible child. Marilyn is able to literally take power over the family, to the point that they no longer really take care of their own children, because all their energy, all their time is devoted to Marilyn. By moving to New York, Marilyn found a real family. She opened the doors to the intellectual elite of the East Coast for him. And it will allow her to find a man, crossed paths a few years earlier on a set. His name? Arthur Miller, He is a playwright. They complemented each other very deeply. Each represented the unfinished part of himself to the other. Him, It is the intellectual fantasy. She, it’s the fantasy, I think, really of the woman. They fell in love, as happens to those who are convinced they have met their soul mate, the one who will give meaning to their life. And a year later, June 29, 1956, Marilyn Monroe marries for the third time. Her union with Arthur Miller fascinates the media. It’s the most unlikely marriage there is. Marilyn Monroe is convinced that with Arthur Miller, she is finally getting closer to the life she aspires to. Both thought they were going to make this perfect union of actress and great writer. Arthur Miller, he is a man who has precisely what she does not have, that is to say an interior, in the sense of an apartment, with books, with a library, with continuity, everything Marilyn lacks. And he’s probably also a father figure. She always looks to her husbands for substitute fathers. She’s going to call them all dad anyway. That’s all, eh, Dad, daddy, pa. She, the little orphan, living with Arthur Miller. She had a sense of accomplishment and respectability. The couple moved into an apartment in the 57th Street in Manhattan. Marilyn Monroe poses for the first time in her life. She makes plans. But very quickly, a discovery will upset this new balance. Marilyn found a diary, very soon after their marriage. Arthur Miller expresses his doubts and even regrets about their marriage by saying that… They didn’t come from the same world, that they don’t understand me, that they do not have the same values. He thought he had married a princess, but he realized she wasn’t a princess. It broke Marilyn’s heart. They then doubly entered, as a woman, like in love, and socially. And in his notebooks, a few weeks later… As if in response to Arthur Miller’s journal, Marilyn expresses her “disenchantment”. “I think I’ve always been deeply afraid of being someone’s wife, because I learned from life that one cannot love another, Never, Really. ” Marilyn quickly lost the loving innocence of her early days. But the couple overcame this initial disappointment and remained an iconic couple over the years. constantly pursued by cameras. At 34 years old, once again weakened, Marilyn is still waiting for the role that will make her a dramatic actress. And it is precisely this man in whom she had placed so much hope who will provide her with the scenario for this metamorphosis. Arthur Miller wrote a powerful story, intense, a story that perhaps sounds a little too much like Marilyn. On Wednesday, July 20, 1960, in the early afternoon, Arthur Miller picks up Marilyn at the Reno airport, in Nevada. Reno was a city where people came mainly to gamble at the casino and get divorced. But if Marilyn is there, it’s for the shooting of a film, The Misfits, which Arthur Miller has been writing for her for over two years. This is finally his first real dramatic role. She had fought for so long to be considered seriously as an actress. It was a way to show the world what she was capable of. Perhaps Arthur Miller’s greatest gift to his wife was convincing Clark Gable to play the lead role. Marilyn Monroe therefore shares the poster with this man whom she has long idealized. She never met her father. She didn’t know who he was. Until this day, No one has ever been able to find out who his father might have been. And his dream came true with Arthur Miller’s film. The role she was waiting for, with a partner she dreamed of. Everything should have been great for Marilyn. And yet, on the set, Everyone realizes that the actress has a complicated relationship with Arthur Miller. It was a couple that was already struggling at that point, and for quite a while. Marilyn is coming out of an affair with Yves Montand. She believed that Yves Montand would leave his wife Simone Signoret for her. The opposite happened. Yves Montand has returned to France. So she is extremely hurt. The couple’s hopes were also dashed by Marilyn’s successive miscarriages. She had always wanted to have a child. But at the last moment, the body rejected the baby. There is this form of failure with Arthur Miller. Filming begins, but very quickly, Marilyn doesn’t feel comfortable with her character. She feels that Arthur Miller plundered her story to write this role of Roselyne. Arthur Muller will make extensive use of elements of the couple’s intimacy and that of Marilyn Monroe to construct the character of Roselyne. So she, she will feel completely dispossessed, revealed in this intimacy. Marilyn Monroe will gradually realize, by playing this role, of the image her husband has of her, who is a disturbed woman, immature. hard, and this role is going to be terrible for her. This character of Roselyne, who is a broken woman, sad, who has never had any luck with men, who tries to seduce everyone, who drinks, who loves animals, etc., who has not had children, It’s her. Obviously, It’s her. A character all the more difficult for Marilyn to interpret, that it sends her back very directly to her childhood wounds. I never had many people. I am here. You had your mother. It’s reality cinema. She only tells her own story. She actually only lived with her mother for two months. The rest of the time, She was placed in foster families. Its mother tried hard to raise him, but it was too difficult for her. And she had a nervous breakdown. She married many nights. moved a lot. She herself suffered from psychiatric disorders. During filming, in his moments of solitude, the actress relives the dark hours of her past, with this founding drama, that of little Norma Jean, placed at 9 years old, in an orphanage. Marilyn’s childhood was terrible. It was devastating for her. She was never able to find a position in life from which to situate herself. Miller thought that that first night in the orphanage must have been the moment she lost her zest for life forever. There is something deeply cruel about him, even if it is unintentional. He uses everything he knows about her, that is to say his destroyed childhood, unhappy, a crazy mother, and memories that stopped haunting her. So the filming of Emmy Svitz will exacerbate all the tensions between Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, to the point that the couple ended up taking separate hotel rooms. This film will really leave its mark, definitely, the end of their marriage. She didn’t want to see him. She would lock herself in her hotel room to cry and scream. It was the beginning of the loneliest period of Marilyn Monroe’s life. Secluded in her hotel room, Marilyn no longer finds refuge in medication. She was eaten away by a hospital, a barbiturate and many other things. She drank all the time. She was in a truly terrible state. She couldn’t get up in the morning, it took him a lot of time, take medicine to wake up. She was known for never being on time. But it was on this set that his lateness became legendary. The pace of filming is then entirely subject to the moods of the main actress. People were bored. They first hoped that she would arrive, but sometimes when she finally arrived, She was angry. Very poor condition. Before you can enter the plateau, she had to enter into this camouflage, that of the Marilyn Monroe that the world knew. But inside her, she didn’t want to see these people, these lights, and all those people looking at her. So she was wrong, everyone was angry with him, everyone hated her. But she tried again and started again anyway. That’s how Marilyn worked at that time. At the time, his only support is the one who has become his coach, Lee Strasberg’s wife, Paula. She was still there, in the heat of the desert. She was dressed in raven black, as a religious figure. Obviously, She was important to Marilyn. Paula Strasberg protected Marilyn from the outside world. She was like the wicked witch and no one on set liked her. Because when we finished shooting a scene, Marilyn didn’t look at the director and ask, “Does this suit you?” No, It was Paula Strasberg she was looking at. And 9 times out of 10, Paula said, “No, let’s do a new take.” Marilyn tries to concentrate, to work, but she seems to be only a shadow of herself. Her skin is very damaged and her hair has been bleached so much over the years. Saved time, They had wigs for her that he just had to slip onto his head. Like that, there was no need to do hair in addition to makeup. Most of the time, so it wasn’t her hair, but a wig. At the end of August 1960, Director John Huston forces a break in filming. Marilyn returns to Los Angeles for treatment. He went to see Arthur Miller and told him “You have to do something for your wife. I’m afraid she’ll die in the middle of filming.” Emileur replied “I can’t do anything.” The question is whether this film can be completed. Because we’ve reached the point where it might just be cancelled. Houston sent him to rehab. She was hospitalized for a week. She’s really very bad at that moment. Marilyn eventually returned to the set after her hospitalization. She searches deep within herself for the strength to shoot a scene. A scene that will make her flirt with her own madness. His character will scream his anger when he sees Clark Gable and his friends capture this horse destined to be slaughtered. This is not a movie scene, it’s something else. There’s something incredibly amazing about her. There’s something about that broken voice that comes from the depths of Marilyn Monroe. Two weeks after the end of filming, in November 1960, Clark Gable dies of a heart attack, a new injury for Marilyn. He had worked very hard in the desert, with terrible heat, in conditions made even more difficult by the problems it posed for production. The press will go wild and say that Marilyn Monroe’s whims, The delays in filming affected the health of Clark Gable. She has, I believe, felt terribly guilty. She almost feels like she’s being accused of killing her father through Clark Gable. I mean, I am finding happiness. Clark Gable leaves and in another way, Arthur Miller too. At the beginning of the year 61, Marilyn divorces for the third time. To this, we must add the failure of the misfits, commercial failure, the murderous criticisms that made the actress sink into a deep depression. As she stands on the edge of the precipice, one of her doctors will make a decision for her, a radical decision. On February 5, 1961, Marilyn Monroe is admitted to New York Hospital on the advice of her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Criss. Marilyn constantly threatened to commit suicide, broke things in his apartment, She drank far too much and took far too many medications. Dr. Criss prescribes him a rest cure, which is perfectly appropriate. Marie-Lyne thought she was going there simply to rest and detox. But things don’t turn out at all as she had planned. The psychiatrist decides to isolate her completely and has her admitted to a psychiatric ward, a closed unit. It’s not a nursing home at all and when she realizes this, It’s too late. Marie-Lyne finds herself locked in a cell. She is actually hospitalized in the psychiatric section of the hospital. The Payne-Whitney Clinic. I was interrogated after being put in a cell. Everything was barricaded and sealed off. There were bars everywhere, around the lamps, on the cupboards, to the toilet, at the windows. And the doors were equipped with small windows so that the sick were visible at all times. This is a processing error, finally we applied to… A woman who suffered from severe psychological trauma, of severe depression, a madman treatment. When you are declared crazy, It’s a total atrocity because you can never prove that you’re not crazy. And she feels something closing in on her, a trap. Isolated in the room of this hospital, Marilyn suddenly finds herself confronted with her deepest terror, that of succumbing to family dementia. Madness has haunted her from the beginning. She saw her grandmother go crazy when she was very young, to be taken away by nurses one morning. She saw her mother going crazy. She knows that madness haunts her family. She is convinced that it is hereditary and that she too, She’s bound to end up in an asylum at some point. more contact with the outside world, she cannot decide on her exit. She still manages to scribble a note which she sends to her friends, Lee and Paula Strasberg. Dear Lee and Paula, Dr. Chris admitted me to New York Hospital. I’m locked up with all these poor fools. I’m sure I’ll go crazy if I stay in this nightmare. Please, Lee, help me. This is the last place I should be. They couldn’t get her out, even if they tried, because they were not members of his family. After five days of confinement, Marilyn is allowed to make only one phone call. And this is her second husband, Jody Maggio, a baseball star, that she calls. He could claim to have been married to her. He threatened to demolish the building, brick by brick. And I believe that at that moment, they gave in. He was a great man, with huge hands. That’s how he finally got him out of there. He will transfer it to where it was actually supposed to be, that is to say in the Zona Bicane, for a rest cure. Marilyn spent three weeks in this new hospital, that of Columbia University, much better suited to his condition. And upon its release on March 5, 1961, swarms of journalists. The actress offers this smiling face, but something in her has definitely changed. She was devastated by this episode at the Payne-Mittney Clinic. She never let go of it. A few months later, in the summer of 1961, She writes this fragment in her notebooks. Help, for help, for help, I feel life coming closer, while all I want, it’s dying. Marilyn Monroe leaves New York, the city in which she had placed so much hope to change its image. She returns to the west coast, She knows she is fragile and can no longer live without the help of a therapist. In Los Angeles, She will now entrust her soul and her hopes of remission to the psychiatrist. Ralph Grinson. Ralph Grinson was considered the world’s leading expert on psychoanalytic practices. Truly the best expert in the world. And as Lee Strasberg had done in New York, The psychoanalyst decides to take his patient’s case very seriously. He tried, more than anyone, to save Marilyn Monroe. of the catastrophe towards which it was heading. He thought no method worked on her, absolutely none. So he wanted to try a new technique, something that would quickly solve his problems, that would make her feel better, as soon as possible. Ralph Grinson is therefore trying a new form of therapeutic approach, a very intensive form of psychoanalysis. He saw her almost every day of the week and three or four hours a day for tea in a hurry. He took his time. He had dismissed his other patients and was now devoting his work as a therapist only to this single patient. And then more and more often, The evening, We see Marilyn Monroe arriving at the Grinson’s private home. He started inviting her home, then she stayed for dinner. in the same way that she dined at the Strasbergs’. He wanted to make Marilyn a member of the family, because he thought she needed a balanced family model. It was to assure him, he said, an environment conducive to its development. She will literally live in this family, which nevertheless contravenes all the elementary precautions of a relationship between a psychoanalyst and his patient. The relationship between Ralph Grinson and his patient, will actually go far beyond the strict framework of psychoanalysis. He had become her artistic agent, its financial agent. He advised on his love relationships. It had become Marilyn’s main drug. She called him at all hours of the day and night. As soon as she is not well, and it’s quite common, he arrives at her house. What happened between them was what in psychiatry is called a folie à deux, that is to say that at the start, neither of them are crazy. And then the meeting of the two produces between them a totally passionate relationship of mutual dependence, of dramatic fusion, in which both came out destroyed. And to better control it, Grinson will also impose a new character on Marilyn, Eunice Murray, a private housekeeper. Eunice Murray, he was someone Grinson had recruited, who reported to him all the movements, the comings and goings, the men Marilyn met, so she was a bit of a spy too. Actually, Grinson’s idea was to keep Marilyn under his wing and make her his exclusive property. And it was the therapist who did that. little still that pushes Marilyn to buy a house in January 1962 a stone’s throw from his home in the Brentwood neighborhood. In Hollywood, it never had a place, because she has always lived in hotels. It is very difficult to keep track of all the places, the sofas, all beds and extra beds, all the extra blankets that welcomed Marilyn, because she could never be alone. This house was supposed to allow him to anchor himself somewhere, to finally belong to a particular place. It’s the little orphan who suddenly finds herself at a house. Yet, Marilyn is unable to invest in this place. He emphasizes it a little more His loneliness. It will remain a somewhat empty house, despite everything. She had no furniture, just a small sofa and two chairs. Who lives with her? Who does he share his life with? These are pre-passages, game info. The psychoanalyst would know, but she is a single woman. She had no family, she had no affection from anyone. SO, sometimes it was okay, but sometimes she fell into depression. SO, to escape this silence, Marilyn spends hours and hours on the phone. She couldn’t sleep, so she called people. Imagine this poor Marilyn, who makes phone calls at 4 a.m., to say how much she can’t sleep, how weak she is, tortured, alone, desperately alone. She needs to talk, she needs to be listened to. Then let her feel, thanks to his phone calls, that it still exists. Marilyn is alone and she is not filming. But she remains a star in the eyes of the world. And this Marilyn must sometimes appear in public, in representation. It is March 4, 1962. The actress is invited to the Golden Globe Awards ceremony, which is held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. in Los Angeles. Marilyn suspected that she would receive the Golden Globe awarded by the European press. She arrives that evening on the arm of her current lover, a young stranger met a few days earlier during a trip to Mexico. He was her escort that night. It’s perhaps the most incredible thing that has ever happened to him in his entire life. He was there, with her, he was drinking, had a good time with others. But when it came time to receive his prize, Marilyn creates amazement in the room. When she goes on stage to get him, obviously, she is not in her normal state. It is not known exactly what she took. It was probably a mixture of bubbles and alcohol. She was in an indescribable state. I don’t even know why it got to this point. Everyone was unrolled. They said, my God, How can she resolve herself in this state? Staggering onto the stage, The actress is not even able to express the necessary thanks. Eventually, The ceremony, which was supposed to be broadcast on television, was cancelled at the last minute because they didn’t want to show Marilyn in that state. That evening, The entire Hollywood film industry thinks Marilyn’s career is over. She was so drunk they had to get her out before she collapsed. I think she was no longer able to cope with everything that was going on, with being a huge lady. Everyone now seems to agree that Marilyn Monroe is no longer fit to work. Yet, His contract with Fox requires him to make one more film. Its title, “Something’s Got to Give”, “Something has to crack.” Nobody really wants it, but the Hollywood studio… actually spent so much money, millions of dollars for Lee Stelor in Cleopatra, that he hopes to make the most of the filming with Marilyn. One thing remains to be known, Is she still able to take on all this? Marilyn initially goes through the costume fittings for the film. Yet, from the first day of filming, things are going badly. The actors, Sid Charisse and Dean Martin are here at 9:00. And they wait for the arrival of the leading role. But Marilyn won’t come. On the attendance sheet, a single word next to his name. He. Sick. From the first days, Marilyn doesn’t even show up on set, saying she is sick. Then she comes a day or two, and then nothing. And again, She is sick. Marilyn is supposed to save the studio. And she’s sick. The actress still comes to shoot for a few days, always assisted by her inseparable coach Paula Strasberg. But this film takes her even further away from the cinema she dreams of making. It was a film Marilyn would never have made. She hated the script, She found him absolutely stupid. Marilyn’s desire to appear as an intelligent woman on screen, It’s not Fox’s problem at all. On the contrary, They want to confine her to this image. Very, very salesy, of the blonde, sexy, a little plump, to white, which is his. The studio was going under before their eyes because of the money invested in Cleopatra. Someone had to pay. Result, Marilyn Monroe seems trapped once again. Marilyn was not respected by the studio. She brought them a lot of money. While it didn’t cost them much to hire him. She earned $1,500 a week. While at the same time, Elizabeth Taylor was paid $1 million for Cleopatra. The actress spends most of her time locked up at home, imposing his repeated absences on the team, and this during the entire first month of filming. It drives people crazy to sit around waiting for someone to come along. We already shot all the sequences without her. Everything is blocked, We lose a lot of money every day. It costs them millions of euros. And on May 17, 1962, Marilyn Monroe will once again leave the set in the middle of filming. But that day, She is not sick. She is expected in New York. She’s going to leave one movie for another movie, but which is much more important to her, because it’s a film about life. It’s the president’s birthday, we tell the president. Marilyn Monroe is invited to sing at John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s birthday gala. And she decided to go there, at the risk of breaching the contract with its producer, the Fox. Marilyn is not allowed to go there, Really. It’s really a challenge for Fox. It’s worth all the studios in the world. It’s worth all the filming in the world. And it was a radiant Marilyn Monroe who returned to New York on May 17 to prepare for her performance. For her, the stakes are high. A few weeks earlier, the star had a one-night stand, or more according to some, with the President of the United States. There are those who claim that the relationship with John Kennedy has been going on since the 1950s, when he was a young senator and she was still a Hollywood starlet. She had an affair with Kennedy. It is known that they spent at least one night together in March 1962 at the home of singer Bing Crosby, where they have called friends since their lives. At any rate, This connection seems to give the actress new hope. It’s an absolute myth, she sleeps with this myth, She is happy. Herself, she is a myth, but obviously, she likes it, she loves this man. Not necessarily for what he likes, but for all that it represents. I think she really fantasized, I heard. She is a little girl who dreams, and how some of his dreams came true. She dreamed of being the wife of the greatest baseball champion in American history. She was. She dreamed of being a movie star. She became one. She may have dreamed, right now, that after all, She was the next president’s wife. It is May 19, 1962. It’s 8:30 p.m. Madison Square Garden fills up as it awaits the arrival of the President of the United States. There were about 17,000 democrats who had paid to attend the ceremony. All of New York’s elite and a good portion of Hollywood’s were there. But when JFK arrives, we immediately notice someone missing from his side. Jackie Kennedy is not coming. She leaves when she learns that Marilyn is going to sing. and she goes to her hara, in Virgillia. She doesn’t want to risk humiliation, She doesn’t want to risk ridicule. She is a woman who has a very precise sense of her position, but there’s no way she’s going to confront the blonde for a moment. SO, she is not there. And she’s right. This evening, on stage, The biggest stars of the moment will sing in honor of the president. It was a wonderful gala where the biggest stars of show business performed. including three world-renowned singers, Maria Callas, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald. But when it’s Marilyn’s turn, as always, the star is making us wait. Mr. President, on this occasion of your birthday, This beautiful woman is not just a punk, but a punk. Mr. President, Marilyn Monroe. She is announced at least four times and then she doesn’t come on stage. Poor Peter Loforn, who was a bit of a host of the evening, he was trying to make jokes. Yes, It’s him. In the history of peace affairs, there is not a single woman who has done as much, who did more. Mr. President, the oldest Marilyn Monroe. That evening, on Kennedy’s birthday, she said to herself “I am turning a new page in my life.” She’s playing a huge role. She knows it when she goes on stage. She knows what she’s going to do. Marilyn Monroe was there, in a dress that looked like it was painted on her body. Mr. President, Happy Birthday to you! She told him “I love you.” She told him, but she tells him more than “I love you.” She told him, “We’re sleeping together.” “You’re my guy.” As she does this, she is in the total blossoming of her person and her ego. And there, she takes revenge for everything, of all past men, of all disasters, of all failures, of all the humiliations of his childhood, of everything. She asks us to sing the silliest thing and she totally perverts that little chorus. making it a hot moment, really hot. She did everything she could to make this moment unforgettable. And for the president, Marilyn’s public statement also comes as a surprise. He chooses to react to it immediately, with humor. Marie-Lyne puts him in a position which, on the social level, on the moral level, on the political level, is almost untenable. Wit and sense of humor immediately took over. That’s why he made that joke. But he was really dismayed. It’s still extraordinarily embarrassing. It’s in public, There are thousands of people. It’s a political moment, too, because it’s a fundraiser for the campaign. And there is this irruption of something completely different. This is where this woman is both crazy and brilliant. That is to say, she allows herself to disrupt the machine. The actress meets JFK at the party following the ceremony. No one knows what they exchanged that evening. The only certainty, The president does not attach as much importance to this relationship as Marilyn does. Marilyn Monroe, She was one of his conquests. It wasn’t the only one. There were many others, famous and less famous ones. Like all Kennedys, they see a beautiful girl, They want to jump on her. A full stop. He is not in love with her for a moment. It doesn’t hold water. He is absolutely not in love with Marilyn Monroe. It is a sex object. We sleep with her once, twice, three times, I don’t know. How many more were there? How many more will there be? And then after, Get rid of her for me. Marilyn returns to Hollywood. She will now have to face the consequences of her New York escapade. She becomes aware of this on the set of the film, June 1, 1962, on his 36th birthday. The fact is, she came to work that day. And of course, The studio wanted to make her work like a beast. Retaliatory measure or not, The studio refuses to waste time celebrating the star’s birthday. Fox has banned a small birthday party. They didn’t give him anything for his birthday. While for Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday in Rome, They gave a sophisticated banquet and all kinds of gifts. Nothing for Marilyn. No party, no gift, nothing at all. At that moment, Everyone hated Marilyn Monroe. A few technicians close to Marilyn still manage to organize a small party at the end of the day. His lining, Evelyn Moriarty, finally arrives with a cake she found at the local pastry shop. The studio didn’t give a cent for the birthday cake. And who paid for the champagne? The technicians. And the team members are there, They put a few candles in and that was it. Marilyn blows out her candles in this tense atmosphere. But in this photo, a scent of magic is released, the one perhaps dreamed of by the actress, at that time. Soon after, The star makes a public appearance at a charity baseball game. And at 10 p.m., she comes home to finish this evening alone, in his new home. You imagine, the most beautiful girl in the world, the most photographed in the world, spends her Saturday night alone in this small house in Brentwood. She has no family. It’s the family who thinks about birthdays, or it’s the lovers. Marilyn just turned 36. And what she doesn’t know yet, It’s just that she has just experienced her last day of filming at the cinema. This is the last time she is in front of a camera. She never returned to the set again. Because the following Monday, Marilyn is sick again. For their part, The studio executives have already decided to put an end to this unmanageable actress. On June 8, 1962, Fox notifies him of his dismissal. While going to sing at President Kennedy’s birthday, She had given Fox the option to invoke a clause in her contract to fire her. She’s fired. of the film. It’s making headlines, etc. They started suing her. Marilyn Monroe has just been purely and simply fired by Fox, like a bad student. The studio is also seeking $500,000 in damages and is looking for a replacement actress to resume filming as soon as possible. An unbearable humiliation for the one who, just a few days earlier, sung in front of cameras around the world in honor of the President of the United States. While everyone is once again predicting his fall, Marilyn will, however, surprise. She decided to set up a great seduction operation. As soon as she learned of her dismissal from Fox, Marilyn decided to launch a legal counter-offensive, but also media. The minute they sent her back, where they told him, “You’re finished, you’ll never work in Hollywood again” She showed those morons what she was capable of. She knows how popular the photographs have made her. SO, She makes appointments with several photographers. The goal was to show it in a positive way. And how to show it in a positive way? By taking a picture of her. George Barris began photographing her. We’ve all done it. And with the photographer, she is organizing a session on Malibu beach at the beginning of July, in Los Angeles. She was very funny, very happy. She said, “George, I want to do that! What do you think? Do you want me to do it like this? And she jumped, she felt good. She was truly fulfilled. She is campaigning to regain her status with the public, to prove that the studio is completely wrong and has understood nothing. And as a provocation, Marilyn created a cover with Life magazine with photos taken during the filming of the movie. The magazine announcing a “a nude bath you’ll never see” on the screen. Marilyn knew what she was doing, She was intelligent. She wanted to make sure that the week the pool photos came out, Elizabeth Taylor would disappear completely from the magazine opening. She didn’t want to see Elizabeth Taylor anywhere, to show the studio that she was the one with the power. She was suddenly the hottest topic in the country. Marilyn won the media battle, and on August 1st, She also won the legal battle. Fox sees that she is an uncontrollable actress, but at the same time a star who has such an aura that they cannot do without him. And Fox had no choice but to beg her to come back to the studio. On August 1st, She signed a very advantageous contract for her with Fox. She’s in a fight and she’s winning. It’s rare to win against a big production house, especially like Fox. She wins. She wins and the filming of Something’s Got To Give… must resume in September, and this under the conditions chosen by the actress, with a new director and a salary in line with his status. Three days after this victory, Saturday, August 4, 1962, marks the beginning of an ordinary day in Marilyn’s life. It’s a rather quiet day, she gets up… relatively early. She is not alone at home since her housekeeper and her friend, press officer Pat Newcomb, are present. In fact, she tends to domestic activities, manage the house, receive packages, flowers, plants she had ordered. In the morning, She also receives the photographer Laurence Schiller with whom she has new projects. I saw her in her garden. There was talk of a new photoshoot for Playboy this time. We were wondering whether she should be on the front page of the magazine or the back cover. Like every day, Marilyn Monroe sees her psychoanalyst in the afternoon. And that day, the session takes place at her home. We know that her psychiatrist came to see her, that he stayed with her for a while. The last person to see her may have been Ralph Grinson. And it would be around seven o’clock less than seven o’clock. The psychiatrist leaves the house early in the evening. He finds Marilyn anxious and doesn’t want her to be left alone. That evening, The housekeeper actually stayed over. The psychiatrist asked her to stay at home and sleep. And around 7 p.m., Marilyn retires alone, in his room. She pulled the phone up to her room, she locked herself in. That’s why she took a call from Joe DiMaggio’s brother. This call is very important, because she was very happy when she took it. Does this mean she was going to remarry Joe DiMaggio, father ? Does this mean she had solved her problem? That she had reached the end of her quest? Does this mean she was mad about drugs, amphetamines? The actress apparently receives another phone call early in the evening. There would also be Peter Loford, who was an actor friend of Marilyn, who had invited her to dinner at his house and to which she replied that she would not attend. And in the early morning of Sunday, August 5, 1962, The Los Angeles police department receives a call from the residential neighborhood of Brentwood. The call said that Marilyn was dead and police officers were sent to her house to check if the call was serious or not. A few minutes later… Police enter Marilyn Monroe’s property. The first image, it’s the body of this woman on her bed, half naked, with around her, there is no other word than mess, that is to say, an unheard-of disorder. Pills, retinaquents, small manuscripts. Marilyn Monroe has just been found dead at the age of 36 in the bedroom of her villa. In his room, there is almost nothing. There is a mattress lying on the floor. There is no box spring and the walls are white. It’s very bare, very stripped down. At 5:30 in the morning, The actress’s body was taken to the morgue for an autopsy. On August 5, 1962, America wakes up to the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death. How Is Marilyn Monroe dead? A police investigation was immediately launched to understand what happened on the night of August 4 to 5. We don’t know what happened, everything is surrounded by mysteries. When, in addition, this woman was the mistress of the sitting President of the United States, the first thing that services do in any country, democratic or not, is to erase all traces, written documents, the wiretapping records because she was being tapped. The first person the police question, And Tony Smeray, the housekeeper, present in the house that evening. She says she discovered Marilyn’s body during the night and immediately alerted Dr. Grinson. Once there, It was the psychoanalyst himself who called the police around 3:30 in the morning. It is still very likely that we knew that she had died around 10 p.m. and that during this period, people were contacted. When a movie star With a colossal contract and suddenly found dead on the ground, Many people need to be consulted and many things need to be sorted out before the matter leaks. Several hours would have passed between the death of Marilyn Monroe and the arrival of the police at her home. This lapse of time and the uncertainties surrounding the exact course of the evening have left doubts about the cause of his death. There are not many credible accounts of this day, in the sense that Eunice Morel, the housekeeper, has changed version several times. First uncertainty about the housekeeper’s testimony, She claims to have been intrigued by the light left on in Marilyn’s room. How could the housekeeper see light under the door, since there was an investigation? very very thick which prevented the light from filtering through. Second inconsistency. An Ismere reportedly found Marilyn’s bedroom door locked. And Dr. Grinson would then have had to break a window to gain access from the outside. The problem, It’s that Marilyn never locked her door. Like many people who are drug addicts, she couldn’t stand daylight. But she surely didn’t close her door. 12 days after the star’s death, August 17, 1962, The medical examiner gives a press conference in front of the world’s media to announce the findings of the autopsy. Ms. Monroe has suffered from psychiatric disturbances for a long time. On more than one occasion in the past, when she was disappointed and depressed, She attempted suicide using sedative drugs. The latest toxicological report reveals that the dose of barbiturate, previously reported as a lethal dose, was positively identified as Nembutal, the toxicologist. However, very high quantities of barbiturate were found in his body. She died of an overdose of nimbutal mixed with chloral hydrate. It’s a bit like throwing kerosene on a fire. Add to that the fact that she had also been drinking a lot. The conclusion of the autopsy report, It’s probable suicide. Probable suicide. Because the autopsy report does not really provide an answer to a fundamental question. How did Marilyn Monroe ingest this fatal amount of barbiturate? Was it an enema? Was it a sting? Did she ingest it herself? Could she have ingested it herself? There was no… no glass next to his bed. Questions, gray areas which have given rise to the hypothesis of an assassination. Among the first suspects, Marilyn Monroe’s lovers and first and foremost, a man, the President of the United States. The conspiracy theorists think she’s Kennedy because she was disturbing, because she dreamed of being a first lady, because she could reveal secrets, because it could compromise the… Kennedy’s re-election would have made it disappear. Marilyn Monroe’s relationship with Frank Sinatra has also been linked to a mafia-sponsored murder. Marilyn, she’s in Frank Sinatra’s gang, she is in Peter Lofort’s gang, who is the Kennedys’ brother-in-law, and all these people are still quite close to mafia circles. She may have betrayed them in some way, or they may have betrayed him, but it becomes speculation as soon as we talk about the mafia. Speculation, because none of these theses have ever been proven. This evening of August 4, 1962, Marilyn could have simply died accidentally. Every time she took pills and drank, she was putting her life in danger. She played with death, like a roller. She knew that if she took 7 pills like this, it would kill her. So she stopped at 6. I think Marilyn lost track of how many pills she had taken. She was on the phone, she was drinking, took two pills. Probably, She fell asleep in a semi-coma. And emerging from this sleep, She took the pills again. And that was it. Let someone prove to me one day, I want to, that she committed suicide, with injections in the buttocks, FBI agents, a reel arriving by helicopter, all that, It’s a novel. In my opinion, it’s a novel, This is a joke. It is the end of an unhappy woman, sick, abandoned, self-destructed, paranoid, and who that evening took three or four pills too many. She died as she had written in her notebooks. She had said, I’m the kind of girl who will one day die in dirty sheets, alone and abandoned. On August 8, 1962, in the early afternoon, The actress’s funeral took place in the very discreet Westwood Village Cemetery, right in the center of Los Angeles. It’s behind some office buildings. No one can imagine that there is a cemetery there. At the time, it was a small cemetery, In fact. It was not at all the graveyard of the stars. It was very, very calm. The walk from the chapel, no music, nothing extraordinary. What is surprising at first that day, They are the great absentees from this ceremony. He is still a world idol, Marie-Hélène Mandraud. It is all the more surprising that there is no… It’s not at least the Hollywood community first, with the producers, studio actors, the actors or actresses who worked with her, who played alongside him. Frank Sinatra is not coming. Dean Martin is not coming. The most important people, those who made money from Marilyn Monroe, none of them come. Everything that is near, even far away, of what we can call the Kennedy galaxy, they don’t come. We are not going to see a single representative. of this family with which she nevertheless had a special relationship. That day, no family, no Hollywood star, not really any friends either. We only find a few people, those who accompanied her in the last years of her life. Her hairdresser comes, her makeup artists come, her hairdresser too. The people who were close to her as she struggled with life, came. Some key figures in the star’s life too. Ralph Grinson and his family. And then Lee and Paula Strasberg, to whom the actress would ford all her possessions. These are people who represented an anchor and a family. Finally, of her three ex-husbands, alone Jody Maggio is present. Him, he is there. It’s true. But the other men who played a role in her life and in whose life she, she played a role, they are not there. Arthur Miller, They were divorced. I think he didn’t want to be present at the interment and it wasn’t desirable for him to be. Dimaggio was the best of her husbands. He is the one who truly loved her, who really took care of her. Marilyn’s funeral was deliberately kept small. They were barricaded. DiMaggio had placed guards and police officers and special credentials were required to attend. It seems that Joe DiMaggio did not want to allow people into the ceremony who he thought had something to do with Marilyn’s death. Marilyn’s life, from birth to burial, It’s a moment of frightening loneliness. It’s a time when there is no one around. Marilyn’s acting work, where what transpired from her on the screen, had little to do with his personality. There was always this terrible separation between what she was and what she was supposed to be. It was the bane of his existence, this separation between the two. She was never able to bring these two parts of herself together. It was impossible. What a story, what a riddle! Half a century after his disappearance, Marilyn remains an absolute icon today. Not a year goes by without all over the world, a book, testimonies, documents fuel the myth. And fan groups, researchers, even continue to investigate these last hours, each of them perhaps hoping to find the very answers to their existence there. Finally, Who still has the answer to these dizzying questions today? Why her? Why did she never find peace with herself? And why has no one been able to replace her in the imagination? Therein lies the whole mystery of Marilyn. Thank you and see you soon for a new issue of Un jour, a destiny.

Près de cinquante après sa disparation, Marilyn Monroe reste aujourd’hui encore une icône absolue, l’image d’une blonde superficielle et sensuelle fixée à jamais dans l’imaginaire collectif. Mais derrière la légende se cache en fait une réalité plus complexe, celle de Norma Jeane Baker, une jeune femme abandonnée de tous qui passera sans cesse de l’euphorie à des abîmes de désespoir. Tout au long de son existence, Marilyn tentera de s’affranchir de son image et d’accéder à sa vérité. Vous découvrirez les épisodes méconnus des dernières années de la vie de la star.
Pourquoi a-t-elle abandonné Hollywood et rejoint New York sous un nom d’emprunt en 1954 ? Comment s’est-elle retrouvée enfermée dans une clinique psychiatrique après le tournage des “Misfits” ? Que contenaient ses carnets intimes ?
Quelle relation entretenait-elle avec son psychanalyste ? Enfin, dans quelles circonstances cette femme de 36 ans a-t-elle trouvé la mort ? Grâce à de nombreux témoignages et à des archives, les équipes dressent le portrait d’une personnalité mystérieuse et tourmentée.

Réalisé par Dominique Fargues