After signing her first contract with Fox she posed for a series of publicity pictures to go with the story that she had been a baby-sitter discovered by a Fox talent scout. "They could at least have had me be a daddy sitter."
Her first review, 23rd October 1948: "One Of The Brightest spots is Miss Monroe's singing. She's pretty, and with her pleasing voice and style, shows promise."
"I guess people think that why I'm late is some kind of arrogance, and I think it is the opposite of arrogance . . . I do want to be prepared when I get there to give a good performance or whatever to the best of my ability."
"A lot of people - the ones who haven't met Marilyn - will tell you it'a all publicity. That's malarkey. They've tried to give a hundred other girls the same publicity buildup. It didn't take with them. This girl's really got it." Niagra co-star Joseph Cotten.
Did you have anything on when you posed for that calendar? "Yes. The radio."
"Marilyn is a dreamy girl. She's the kind liable to show up with one red shoe and one black shoe. . . I'd find out when we'd take a break at eleven that she hadn't had any breakfast and forgot she was hungry until I reminded her. She once got her life so balled up that the studio hired a full-time secretary-maid for her. So Marilyn soon got the secretary as balled up as she was, and she ended up waiting on the secretary instead of vice-versa." Co-star and friend, Jane Russell.
You're so pale, why don't you get a tan? "I like to feel blond all over."
"Somehow it's like when I was a little girl and pretended wonderful things were happening to me. Now they are."
"I don't think she's an actress at all, not in any traditional sense. What she has - this presence, this luminosity, this flickering intelligence - could never surface on the stage. It's so fragile and subtle, it can only be caught by the camera . . . but anyone who thinks this girl is simply another Harlow or harlot or whatever is mad" Truman Capote.
"It's funny how success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you."
Marilyn, when we last saw you, you were wearing a low-cut gown. Now you're wearing a high-necked suit. Is this the 'new' marilyn? "Well, I'm the same person - it's just a different suit."
"Why should someone like Marilyn pretend to be dressing like somebody's old Aunt?" husband Arthur Miller defending his wife's dress.
"A struggle with shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine. . . I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle. . . An actor is not a machine, no matter how much they want to say you are. . . The executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in; but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or virus. . . I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection. I'm not an actress who appears at the studio just for the purpose of discipline. This doesn't have anything to do with art. . . this is supposed to be an art form, not just a manufacturing establishment."
"She was like champagne on the screen." Arthur Miller.
"We knew her as a warm human being, impulsive and shy, sensitive and in fear of rejection, yet ever avid for life and reaching out for fulfilment. . . In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could obtain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine. For us, Marilyn was a devoted and loyal friend, a colleague constantly reaching for perfection. . . it is difficult to accept the fact that her zest for life has been ended by this dreadful accident. I am truly sorry that the public who loved her did not have the opportunity to see her as we did, in many of the roles that forshadowed what she would have become. Without doubt, she would have been one of the really great actresses of the stage. Now it is all at an end. I hope that her death will stir sympathy and understanding for a sensitive artist and woman who brought joy and pleasure to the world." Lee Strasberg.
What do you wear to bed, Marilyn? "Chanel No. 5."
