Page 36 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“She is natural sex personified. It is there in every look and movement. That’s what makes her the most natural choice in the world for our very first Playboy Sweetheart, ” the magazine proclaims.

MARILYN MONROE PLAYING TEACHER IN NEW MUSICAL , Erskine Johnson announces in his column.

She asks to see the script.

More difficult behavior from “Straw Head,” Zanuck grouses, but he agrees to the contract player’s bold request and sends her the script.

The role of Jenny, a prim schoolteacher turned burlesque dancer, is poorly written, banal, and foolish. Marilyn scribbles “TRASH” across the cover in bright red ink before hurling the script across the room. She refuses to play the part.

Joe DiMaggio is relieved. The studio has been exploiting Marilyn, and not just in business matters. Shots calculated to show her legs and her bust, both at the same time, are too risqué for his taste.

The Fox executives are furious. Last month, they successfully launched How to Marry a Millionaire .

She’s a star. She’s their star. They made her, and they demand their pound of crystal-clad flesh.

Marilyn must take the part to fulfill her contract.

She is not bigger than the studio. No one is bigger than the studio.

Work on The Girl in Pink Tights is to begin immediately upon completion of the retakes needed to complete River of No Return.

On December 9, a letter goes out by registered mail to the Famous Artists Corporation, where Charles Feldman now represents Marilyn following the end of her contract with William Morris.

“You are hereby notified and instructed to report immediately to the studio,” it begins, rattling off a list of her contractual obligations.

She’s a no-show.

“Marilyn Monroe is a stupid girl and is being fed some stupid advice” declares the Hollywood Reporter . The piece headlined 20TH STANDS PAT ON MONROE characterizes “industry opinion” as the certainty that she’s “picked herself a fight that she’ll have a tough time winning.”

Fox dangles a relatively unknown actress named Sheree North—a blonde with measurements identical to Marilyn’s—as her replacement.

Marilyn won’t relent. She has Joe DiMaggio’s backing. And that’s enough.

She spends Christmas 1953 in San Francisco with the DiMaggio family. After giving Marilyn a Maximilian “Black Mist” mink coat, Joe proposes to her—without an engagement ring.

The gesture is neither romantic nor passionate, tender nor amorous. She’s having trouble at work. He has a practical solution.

The couple has been “talking about getting married for some months,” Marilyn says.

“We knew it wouldn’t be an easy marriage.

On the other hand, we couldn’t keep on going forever as a pair of cross-country lovers.

It might begin to hurt both our careers.

” Marriage, they decide, is “the only solution to our problem. But we had left time and place in the air.”

Rumors of a Las Vegas wedding now swirl.

At the city’s Hotel El Rancho, the couple schedules a ceremony for January 4, 1954—then cancels it.

The press spiral into a frenzy. Their only lead, from one of DiMaggio’s four sisters, is that the couple is on “a motor trip.”

That same day, Fox officially suspends Marilyn.

On January 5, the Los Angeles Times speculates, “It could be that she was having so much fun up north with Joe DiMaggio, the former Yankee baseball star, that she simply didn’t feel like coming back to work.”