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ITALIAN AGENDA

1955 or 1956

In an Italian diary engraved in green, Marilyn Monroe wrote down thoughts in free association in continuation of a kind of self-analysis she had begun to practice in the “record” notebook (she noticed with amusement her own Freudian slip when she wrote the first three letters of the name “Buddy” as “Bad”). It isn’t really known who the woman with big breasts was: perhaps her analyst, Dr. Hohenberg (mentioned on another page)? A salaried member of her circle? In any case, Marilyn remembered two traumatic moments: as a lonely child, when, despite the lies she told, a teacher was one of the only people who seemed to understand her; and an incident of sexual abuse for which Ida Martin, her foster mother, seemed to have taken her to task rather than consoling or helping her. It is likely that these pages correspond to work on repressed memory undertaken as part of her analysis with Dr. Hohenberg, which she started in February 1955. Her relationship with her third husband, Arthur Miller, seemed to be idyllic still, propelled as it was by strong desire and absolute confidence: there is no trace of either doubt or crisis.

She also evoked her relationship to fear, which she seemed to need to draw on for her acting but which terrorized her as well. The Peter whom she mentions twice as a source of fear and threat could well be Peter Lawford, whom she knew in the early 1950s, although it is not known with what degree of intimacy. Lawford later became John Kennedy’s brother-in law upon his marriage to Patricia Kennedy. Some years later Marilyn often saw the Lawford couple and visited their Santa Monica beach house several times.

Note: Ida Bolender and her husband, Albert Wayne, cared for Norma Jeane at their home in Hawthorne from June 1926, shortly after her birth, and she stayed with them until she was seven. The child called Ida Wayne’s husband “Daddy” despite the fact that Ida Bolender would have preferred her to call him “Uncle Wayne.” The Bolenders adopted two children: Nancy, who was five years younger, and Lester, who was the same age as Marilyn.

Notes:

The Peter who is mentioned is possibly the British-born actor Peter Lawford, a friend of Marilyn’s and brother-in-law to the Kennedys through his marriage to Pat, the president’s sister.

If indeed it is the name Jack that is written (the writing is difficult to decipher), it could refer to Jack Cole, a dancer friend of Marilyn’s who coached her on the films Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and There’s No Business Like Show Business.

Notes:

Marilyn was a guest on Edward R. Murrow’s very popular TV show Person to Person on April 8, 1955.

A.I. was probably Aunt Ida, that is, Ida Martin, the other Aunt Ida (the first being Ida Bolender), a great-aunt with whom Marilyn lived from November 1937 to August 1938 in Compton, California.

In the spring of 1938, Marilyn may have suffered a sexual assault by one of her fellow boarders, who could be be the Buddy mentioned here.

“The D.” may be short for either “doctor” or “demon.”

In a bookstore in Los Angeles, February 1953 On the set of The Seven Year Itch, 1954

PARKSIDE HOUSE STATIONERY

1956

Soon after their wedding on June 29, 1956, Marilyn and Arthur Miller went to London, where the film The Prince and the Showgirl, produced by Marilyn Monroe Productions, was to be shot. Laurence Olivier directed the film and played the male lead. The relationship between the two actors was difficult: Olivier was disdainful and haughty toward Marilyn. The couple arrived in London on July 14 and stayed at Parkside House, a luxurious manor house in Egham, Surrey, near London. Everything should have been idyllic. However, one day Marilyn found her husband’s open diary and discovered that the playwright was disappointed in her, that he was sometimes ashamed of her in front of his intellectual peers, and that he had doubts about their marriage. Marilyn was extremely upset and felt betrayed.

Did she write these few