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Gonfaloniere (governing body)

(pres)

Grande—nobles

Macchiavelli (1469–1527) Botticelli

damn near broke my back

and dislocated my neck trying not to

sleep all over the filipino boy

Moved my seat when a

[illegible] left the bus—the

only empty seat so

I left mine for so the

girl could sit her kid

down and I took the

other seat. It was next to

a filipino boy and

he smelled good like

flowers.

Marilyn with a book about Goya, around 1953 Marilyn and Degas sculpture, Los Angeles, 1956

OTHER “RECORD” NOTEBOOK

AROUND 1955

This black notebook has a smoother cover than the preceding one. Only the first few pages have been filled; pages 3 and 4 have disappeared, because Marilyn either ripped out the sheet to write on, or did so on rereading it. It is likely that this group of notes, which is coherent and forms a certain continuity, dates from the time Marilyn started working with Lee Strasberg, around 1955. A sincere effort at introspection can be observed as the star returned to her childhood and the lifelong fears it engendered. Aunt Ida is probably Ida Martin (rather than Ida Bolender, with whom Marilyn also stayed as a child). Ida Martin was the mother of Marilyn’s aunt by marriage, an evangelical Christian and strict disciplinarian who emphasized obedience and was repressive about sexual issues in general; she may also have made the twelve-year-old Norma Jeane feel guilty for an episode in which she said she had been molested. To no longer feel ashamed of what you were, of what you desired: this was what Marilyn, who had made her childhood dream come true by becoming an actress, was now aiming for. We may also assume that she had just started psychoanalysis, as she pointed out the bent of the unconscious to forget and repress, an impulse she urged herself to struggle against by trying to reclaim memory in order to be able to accept herself fully. She experienced work as a way of freeing herself from the constraints and shackles of the past, and these pages can be read as an outline of self-analysis, both gripping and moving.

to know reality (or

things as they are than

to have not to know

and to have few

illusions as possible—

train my will now

working (doing my tasks that I

have set for myself)

On the stage—I will

not be punished for it

or be whipped

or be threatened

or not be loved

or sent to hell to burn with bad people

or feeling that I am also bad.

or be afraid of my genitals being

or ashamed

exposed known and seen—

so what

or ashamed of my sensitive feelings—

they are reality

or colors or screaming or doing

nothing

and I do have feeling

very strongly sexed feeling

since a small child—(think of all the

things I felt then

I do know ways people

act unconventionally—mainly

myself—do not be afraid of

my sensitivity or to

use it—for I

can & will channel it + crazy thoughts too

I want to do my scene or exercises

([illegible] idiotic as they seem)

as sincerely as possible I

can knowing and showing

how I know it is also—no

matter—what they might

think—or judge from it

I can and will help

myself and work on

things analytically no

matter how painful—if I

forget things (the unconscious

wants to

forget—I will only try to remember)

Discipline—Concentration

my body is my body every part of it.

feel what I feel

within myself—that is trying to

become aware of it

also what I feel in others

not being ashamed of my

feeling, thoughts—or ideas

realize the thing that

they are—

having a sense of myself

Marilyn reading To the Actor by Michael Chekhov, New York, 1955 Marilyn writing at home, May 1953

WALDORF-ASTORIA STATIONERY

1955

Marilyn Monroe’s immense popular appeal had at last been recognized by the Hollywood elite, who had gathered together at a party given in her honor by Charles Feldman, the producer of The Seven Year Itch, on November 6, 1954, at the Beverly Hills Romanoff. Still dissatisfied with what Hollywood had to offer, Marilyn decided to leave the West Coast for New York and set up Marilyn