Page 24 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe
MY CHIEF PROBLEM next to eating, stockings, and rent is my automobile. In addition to being behind on her rent at the Hollywood Studio Club, Marilyn’s behind on her car payments, and now her car’s been repossessed. She’s feeling desperate.
Two months before, she’d been in a minor car accident on Sunset Boulevard.
Nothing too damaging, a taillight or something, but it left her late for an audition and in need of a ride.
Tom Kelley, who worked as a former MGM and Town & Country photographer before opening his own studio, witnessed the incident and kindly gave Marilyn five bucks for a cab—plus his business card and an open invitation to visit his photography studio in Hollywood anytime.
Marilyn likes Kelley and his wife, Natalie, so she’s happy to get a call from the photographer not long after. He’s got a new job for her, if she’s interested. Another client of his, the John Baumgarth calendar company in Chicago, has seen and loved her beer ad photos.
“This is a little different from other jobs,” he warns her. “These pictures are for a calendar, and they will have to be in the nude.”
“You mean completely nude?” Marilyn’s surprised but not shocked. She knows it’s not the kind of thing “nice girls” do, but nudity doesn’t really bother her. It’s the most commonplace thing in the world, she thinks.
“You’re ideal for the job not only because you have a fine shape but you’re unknown. Nobody’ll recognize you,” Natalie Kelley assures Marilyn.
“It’ll just be a picture of a beautiful nobody,” her husband agrees. “But there’s fifty dollars in it for you, if you want to do it.”
“For fifty dollars, I am ready to jump off a roof!” Marilyn says.
On May 27, 1949, “Mona” Monroe signs a model release, then poses nude on a red velvet drape, first seated in profile—back arched, legs in an S-curve, knees lifted, feet tucked just below her buttocks—then lying down on her side, while Tom Kelley snaps away from a ladder above.
“Your hair’s so long, no one will know it’s you,” he promises.
His wife holds the stepladder, arranging and rearranging the velvet as if around a diamond brooch in a jewelry box.
The next day, Marilyn’s able to get her car out of hock and writes out check number 101 from her account to the Hollywood Studio Club for $51 back rent.
United Artists is touting Love Happy, the Marx Brothers’ new film, as a “New Musical Girlesque.” With the brothers now in their fifties and sixties, this film—reputedly being made to pay off eldest brother Chico Marx’s gambling debts, like 1946’s A Night in Casablanca —may be their last.
Marilyn hurries to set when she hears there’s a bit part open. Groucho Marx tells her, “This role calls for young lady who can walk by me in a such a manner as to arouse my elderly libido and cause smoke to issue from my ears.”
The task is simple enough. Walk up and down in front of Groucho, his brother Harpo, and the producer, Lester Cowan.
Marilyn is starstruck to meet the famous comedians.
It’s like meeting familiar characters out of Mother Goose!
Though Groucho isn’t wearing his big greasepaint mustache and Harpo isn’t silent—but does have his trusty horn—they both have “the same happy, crazy look I had seen on the screen. They both smiled at me as if I were a piece of French pastry.”
“Get behind me and walk like I do,” Groucho instructs, then sashays in an exaggerated manner.
“We’re going to try out three girls for the part,” Cowan tells Groucho. Marilyn is the third girl.
The producer has the first girl walk across the room.
Very nice.
Next, the second girl walks.
Another good possibility.
“Now the third one,” Cowan says. “You walk across.”
Just before the audition, Marilyn had cut a quarter of an inch off the bottom of one of her heels, to give herself a better wiggle, a sharper swing of the hips, a more prominent tilt to her backside.
“Which one did you like the best?” Cowan asks the brothers after the auditions.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? How could you take anyone except the last girl? The whole room revolved when she walked,” Groucho Marx replies.
Marilyn gets the part.
“You’re like Mae West, Theda Bara, and Bo Peep all rolled into one,” Marx proclaims.
The scene is shot the very next day. She’s paid $100 for one day’s work, plus $25 for posing for some promotional stills at a couple of gas stations with product placement in the film.
Though Marilyn ends up appearing in Love Happy (which Groucho admits is a “terrible picture”) for only a few minutes, when the film is released producer Cowan builds the nationwide publicity tour around her.
“All you have to do is be Marilyn Monroe,” Cowan says when Marilyn hesitates, adding, “You will have a chance to see the world, and it will broaden your horizons.”
He introduces her as the “Mmmm Girl.” Some people can’t whistle, the marketing concept goes, so when they see Marilyn, all they can do is say, “Mmmm.”
The tour delivers her first taste of fame. And a new wardrobe. Cowan gives her $75, which Marilyn spends on three wool suits.
By the time the train reaches New York, the weather is unbearably hot.
“I feel like I’m wearing an oven!” Marilyn exclaims of her new suit.
“We must make capital out of what we have,” the press agent says. He arranges ice cream cones in her hands like a sweet bouquet. “Marilyn Monroe, the hottest thing in pictures, cooling off,” the photo caption reads.
One day’s work turns into five months of touring.