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February 17: Andre de Dienes publishes a color photograph of Norma Jeane on the cover of Parade. He shoots her from her left side. She is wearing a green sweater and yellow-gold slacks in a strongly diagonal shot that shows her posed against a mountainside, her right and left hands touching a rock face, her right knee bent as though she is climbing. She is smiling and looking directly at the camera. Her sleeves are rolled up, and on her lef..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 17: Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times reports: "On two occasions troops rioted wildly and behaved like bobby-soxers in Times Square, not like soldiers proud of their uniform."
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Carl Rollyson |
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Neither John Wayne nor Walter Brennan grew up in the cowboy West, and though Brennan became a rancher, he did not pretend to be his characters the way Wayne sometimes did. Walter's son Andy remembered a story about a downpour that hit the Red River location shoot just as the cast and crew were sitting down to lunch: "Duke was seated next to Walter and, as everyone scurried for shelter, Wayne calmly went on eating, saying to Walter, 'This wi..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 17: With Maureen Stapleton, Marilyn performs a scene from Anna Christie at the Actors Studio to a round of applause, but she doubts she has given a good performance. Afterwards she suffers from laryngitis.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 17: Simone Signoret spends the night telling Marilyn about film work in France, and Marilyn behaves like "a kid who's delaying the moment for lights out," Signoret recalls in a memoir."
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 18: Marilyn takes Isidore Miller to dinner at the Club Gigi in the Fontainebleau Hotel. They also see a cabaret show at the Minaret.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 18: Marilyn draws up her first will. She bequeaths $100,000 to Arthur Miller, $25,000 to Lee and Paula Strasberg, $20,000 to Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, $10,000 to Xenia Chekhov (Michael Chekhov's widow), $10,000 to the Actors Studio, and $10,000 to Patricia Rosten, daughter of Norman and Hedda Rosten. Marilyn also allots $25,000 for the care of her mother.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 18: A federal grand jury indicts Arthur Miller on two counts of contempt of Congress. Each count could mean up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. At Doctor's Hospital, Marilyn begins treatment to help her carry a child to term.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 18: Marilyn stays home without notifying the studio. When she doesn't answer his knock at her residence, Montand slips a note under her door: "Don't leave me to work for hours on end on a scene you've already decided not to do the next day. I'm not your enemy, I'm your pal. And capricious little girls have never amused me." Monroe calls Miller in Ireland, and he in turn calls the Montands, asking them to return to her door. Ashamed..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 19: Marilyn visits Joe DiMaggio in Fort Lauderdale.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 19: Fox approaches Elia Kazan about doing a film with Marilyn.
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Carl Rollyson |
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March 3: Associated Press columnist Bob Thomas reports Joan Crawford's comments on Monroe's appearance at a Photoplay awards dinner: "It was like a burlesque show. Someone should make her see the light; she should be told that the public likes provocative personalities but it also likes to know that underneath it all the actresses are ladies." Marilyn replies via Louella Parsons's column in the Herald Examiner: "What hurts me more is what M..
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Carl Rollyson |
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I noticed that he wasn't looking at me while we talked. After we finished the take, I asked him where he'd been looking. "Your ear," he replied. "Why?" I asked in surprise. "Because that way more of my face is on camera. Don't look at the other actors. Look in three-quarters, so your face is more prominent. Stick with me. I'll teach you some tricks." And Walter did teach me. He shared his bag of tricks for how to make the most of a scene. W..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Like Drums Across the River, Bad Day at Black Rock (January 7, 1955), is a revisionist work--this time examining the seamy side, the racism and thuggery--of postwar America. Brennan, looking much slimmer than in his previous pictures, plays a western town's veterinarian and mortician. This taut drama, featuring menacing performances by a trio of villains (Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin), ultimately centers on Brennan's charact..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 28, 11:38 p.m.: Marilyn writes a love letter to DiMaggio, who has departed for work in New York City: "I want someday for you to be proud of me as a person and as your wife and as the mother of the rest of your children. (Two at least! I've decided.)"
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 28: Marilyn is nominated for a Golden Globe award for her work on Bus Stop but does not attend the ceremony, at which Deborah Kerr wins for her performance in The King and I.
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Carl Rollyson |
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A pilot for Mr. Tutt, a series produced by Desilu and based on a Saturday Evening Post story about a curmudgeonly lawyer, was not made into a series, but it was broadcast on Colgate Theatre (September 10, 1958). The Variety reviewer considered Brennan excellent in the part, even though the script for the pilot was subpar. Brennan's subsequent career on television might have been quite different if this role had made the same indelible impre..
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Carl Rollyson |
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In Come Next Spring (March 9, 1956) and Goodbye, My Lady (May 12, 1956) Brennan was able to rise above the pedestrian roles that followed Bad Day at Black Rock by perfecting the persona of the small town or rural character that emerges in films such as Driftwood and The Green Promise.
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Carl Rollyson |
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March 5: Marilyn flies from San Francisco to Los Angeles for the Photoplay Awards dinner. Joe flies to New York on business.
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Carl Rollyson |
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To Rio Bravo, Brennan brought his own brand of realism. He explained his reaction to the script to reporter Steven H. Scheuer: They tell me I'm playing a crippled old man who's got a rifle built into his crutch. Any time they get rough with him, he shoots them down with his crutch. I think about this for a little while, and then I asked them a simple question. I said, "When this crippled old man picks up his crutch and shoots why doesn't he..
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Carl Rollyson |
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March 7: With May Reis, Marilyn in mourning clothes attends the funeral of Arthur Miller's mother, Augusta, who died of a heart attack. Marilyn offers Arthur Miller her condolences and consoles his father Isidore.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 17: Arthur Miller marries Inge Morath.
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Carl Rollyson |
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After completing work in December 1950 on Along the Great Divide, Walter Brennan made the first of several appearances on Family Theater, a radio series conceived by Father Patrick Peyton, who convinced the Mutual Broadcasting Corporation to air 540 half hour dramas from 1947 to 1957. No commercial interruptions followed what was a short sermon to the effect that the family who prays together stays together. On January 24, 1951, in "A Star ..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 27: Muncher Illustrierte (Germany) displays Marilyn and Jane Russell in showgirl costumes, holding black top hats above their heads.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Of an entirely different order is Brennan's magnificent performance as Pop Gruber, an aging grifter in Nobody Lives Forever (November 1, 1946), starring John Garfield as a con man, Nick Blake, who eventually goes straight after falling in love with Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald, in the prime of her beauty). The script by W. R. Burnett, one of masters of film noir, provides not just Brennan, but also George Coulouris (Doc Ganson) wi..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Before dinner we had our usual round of Scotch, chips, and olives. [MF] "I think it's better with the olives, don't you?" [CR] "Good contrast with the chips--crisps, Americans call them chips; the British call them crisps. You can't call them chips. What you call chips Americans call French fries. [MF] Yes. So if you ask for either of those in your bloody country, you'll get the wrong thing. [CR] Yes. So be careful next time you come. [MF] ..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 29: Marilyn's management contract with John Carroll and Lucille Ryman expires.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 29: Marilyn, accompanied by her lawyer, Irving Stein, finally appears in court, and Judge Griffin fines her fifty-six dollars for three traffic violations: driving without a license, driving too slowly, and driving after her license had expired. He tells her, "Laws are made for all of us, rich or poor, without race or creed or whether your name happens to be Miss Monroe or not, and this kind of acting won't win you an Oscar."
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 20: Bob Alden writes from Korea on New York Times stationery to Stan (not otherwise identified): "The girl was just wonderful out here. She put every ounce of herself into everything that she did and won the hearts of a hundred thousand smitten G.I.'s. I doubt if any of them from General on down to Private will ever be the same again. Maybe we could send Marilyn up into North Korea to win over the Communists."
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 20: Time publishes "Co-Stars," about the Monroe-Olivier matchup."
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Carl Rollyson |
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Tony?" Michael spoke into phone in an unusually quiet manner. "Michael Foot here. How are you? Can I wish you a happy new year?. I'm ringing about someone who's writing a biography of Jill and I wondered if he could come and see you. He's a fully qualified biographer, well prepared. He's written some wonderful stuff before and he knew Jill and he would very much like to see you. What? Carl Rollyson. I think he did write to you in the last w..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Brennan made everything he did look easy, but occasionally he revealed how much labor went into his roles. In Red River, for example, he walks with a slight stoop after the film flashes forward fifteen years. On the set, a United Press reporter watched the actor ease his apparently weary body into a chair, ordering a meal in a "semi-senile voice," and commenting, "If you knew what a job it is to assume an aged character like this, you would..
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Carl Rollyson |
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March 4: Elia Kazan sends a telegram to Fox promising to arrive on April 1 to work with screenwriter Calder Willingham on a film starring Marilyn. Fox officially notifies Marilyn that she is assigned to Time and Tide, a film Kazan will direct. She is to appear for work on April 14.
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Carl Rollyson |
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March 6: Emmeline Snively, head of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, sends Norma Jeane to Joseph Jasgur for test shots. In The Birth of Marilyn, Jeannie Sakol reports Jasgur's first impressions: "What he saw was not too encouraging. Her hips were too broad and would photograph even broader if he didn't take special pains. Her loose pink wool sweater and check pedal pushers only exaggerated the imperfections of her figure and emphasized her nee..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Brennan often cited Goodbye, My Lady as one of his favorite films. Certainly it was a labor of love in the close collaboration with the director, William Wellman, better known for his action films and for The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Skeeter (Brandon DeWilde) lives with his none too ambitious uncle Jesse (Brennan) in a swamp, where they find a strange dog with a hyena-like laugh. (It is, in fact a basenji, bred in Africa). Jesse realizes the..
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Carl Rollyson |
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On the set, Walter provoked Spencer Tracy's ire. Katie (Katharine Hepburn) didn't have "good judgment" or common sense, Brennan told Tracy. Walter was referring to her attacks on Senator Joseph McCarthy. Tracy turned icy, and the next day director John Sturges discovered Tracy and Brennan were no longer speaking to one another. The estranged actors addressed one another through intermediaries. Sturges remembered this exchange: [Tracy to Stu..
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Carl Rollyson |
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March 1: Marilyn makes an appointment at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, complaining of appendicitis, but director Howard Hawks insists that she return to the set of Monkey Business, and her operation is delayed until the end of production.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Brennan was also impressed with Lee Marvin during a scene in which Doc Velle offers his hearse to Macreedy as a getaway vehicle. Suddenly, Marvin appears and then nonchalantly walks over to the vehicle and rips out some of the engine's wiring. The casual violence is shocking. It was the first time Brennan had met Marvin, who had a powerful effect on Brennan: "When he came out and tore the ignition out of that thing, I could have killed him...
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Carl Rollyson |
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Watching the nuances in Brennan's performances--especially in roles that would seem to allow for little variation--is to appreciate once again his incomparable place in Hollywood history as the consummate character actor. No star ever had Brennan's opportunities to play both for and against type, to be a hero and a villain, a fool and a wise man. Whether at the center of the action, or on the periphery, Walter Brennan made his presence coun..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Talk of Blair stimulated Michael to say, "Some of our people are in my opinion too critical of him. Some of them say, 'Oh Gordon Brown is much better, you know.' I doubt that there is all that much distinction between the two."
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 21: Revue (Germany) puts John Florea's photograph on its cover, showing a deeply tanned Marilyn wearing jeweled earrings and a bracelet, a jewel on the waistband of her elegantly-patterned light blue, silvery dress. With her closed mouth and hooded eyes, she seems mysteriously enticing.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 21: Marilyn arrives on the set at 10:30 a.m. Academy Award nominations have just been announced, but her performance in Some Like It Hot has not been acknowledged. Nevertheless, Marilyn happily congratulates Simone Signoret on her nomination for Room at the Top
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 21: Cinemonde (France) shows a heavier Marilyn (during the Some Like It Hot period) wearing a strapless back dress, with a v-shaped front that shows off her cleavage and long white gloves.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 21: Joe DiMaggio escorts Marilyn to the airport for her flight from Miami to Mexico. She flies to Mexico with Pat Newcomb and her staff on a shopping expedition to furnish her new hacienda-style home on Helena Drive in Los Angeles. Bob East photographs Marilyn climbing the steps to her Pan Am flight, carrying a makeup case. She is dressed in white slacks and wearing sunglasses. She turns to look at the camera and acknowledges
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Carl Rollyson |