Evening star. [volume], November 28, 1954, Page 12, Image 133

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
: . ÜBB &
pi MARILYN MONROE’S EX-ROOMMATE EXPLAINS
What turned her into the kind of woman who puts personal suceess » > ,
ahead of everything else, even love? A girl who knew her intimately
seeks the answer in her lonely, heartbreaking childhood ...
As told to Leslie Lieber
SECOND OF TWO PARTS
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PAKIS-MATCH
I AST week l wrote about the lighter aspects
iof my life as Marilyn Monroe’s room
mate. I also hinted at certain character traits
which might partly explain the quick disinte
gration of her marriage with Joe DiMaggio.
Frankly, the Marilyn I knew at the Holly
wood Studio Club prepared me more for the
breakup than for the marriage itself.
Actually I didn’t believe the columns when
they began taking Joe and Marilyn seriously.
In our girlish bull sessions at the Studio Club,
Marilyn, whose eyes were already aglow with
the dream of footlights, told me she didn’t
want to get married for at least 10 years.
She had set aside a decade to give her all
consuming career a chance to ripen. At the
end of that time, she would willingly give up
glory for the right man. Marilyn also was
very specific about wanting four children
two of her own and two orphans to whom she
wanted to give the advantages she had never
enjoyed.
12
MMILYN, tired from day’s shooting, relaxes in projection room. A few days later she and DiMaggio (right) decided to part
I wasn’t prepared for the news of Marilyn’s
marriage because I felt that, with her back
ground. career must always win out over love.
You won’t know what I’m talking about
unless you understand her childhood —a des
olating ricochet from orphanage to foster
home. It was during that loveless stretch in
her life that this little blond waif realized her
only security lay in herself and what she could
accomplish.
That is why the grown-up Marilyn Monroe
today is systematically organized for a career
rather than for marriage. *■"“
Nobody's titft BH
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t fancy my
self an armchair strategist on marital battles.
I’m as ignorant as you of what happened
inside the four walls of the DiMaggio-Monroe
residence.
But as her ex-roommate, I do know that
Marilyn’s matrimonial troubles began
through no fault of her own before her hair
was in pigtails.
The tragedy is that America’s sweetheart
was never anybody's little girl. Her mother,
who was too ill to care for her, hardly ever
saw her. Her father was killed in an auto
accident.
The only real parent Marilyn ever knew
was Los Angeles County.
Like an unwanted bundle, Norma Jean
Baker —that was her real name—was shipped
from family to family on approval. Even
though most of the army of legal guardians
were good and kind, their little boarder
learned early in life to be self-sufficient.
In the painful conversations we had about
her childhood, Marilyn could scarcely remem
ber all the places she had lived. The first
dimly recalled roof over her head was in
Hawthorne, Calif. Her “parents” there moved
East when Marilyn was five. She was then
farmed out to a family of British actors who
were playing bit parts in Hollywood. From
them, the scrawny blond tyke picked up a
slight British accent, as well as a precocious
flair for knife-throwing and juggling Indian
clubs.
Two years later she was delivered to the
door of a Hollywood studio worker and his
wife. They lived in a big house on a hill. But
there were no children around and for com
panionship Marilyn relied on a collection of
rare birds.
Short o■ AffartMM
This too proved to be a temporary sanctuary.
At nine Marilyn ended up in the Los Angeles
orphan’s home. The superintendent, a Mrs.
Dewey, was “wonderful and sweet.” But her
affection had to be meted out in thin slices to
scores of love-starved boys and girls.
Even the tiniest crumb of attention made
an indelible impression on Marilyn, though.
It was during this stay at the orphanage, she
Thia Week kfugmaute NopmiW 11, 1954