Marilyn

This layout represents one of those burning questions I always wished I could have asked so many years ago.

I met Marilyn when I was almost 10 years old. Being an only child, I went every where with my parents when we traveled - after all, what could they do with me, leave me in some motel room alone? So this particular day, my Mom's Uncle Frank, who we were visiting in CA, had arranged for my parents to see a real movie being filmed. Kids weren't allow on sound stages while filming was going on so I had waited in the car. A red light was flashing next to the huge rolling door my parents had disappear through.

After what seemed like half a day, the light went out and Mom came to get me. We were escorted around the set to meet the actor & actress who were filming a movie that was named "Don't Bother to Knock" when it came out in the theaters. The actor was Richard Widmark (sp?) and the actress was Marilyn Monroe. Mr. Widmark was friendly to the adults, mentioning that he was born and raised in SD when he found out we were from Iowa. I was totally ignored.

Then we continued on to Marilyn's area of the sound stage. It was an entirely different story. Marilyn greeted my folks and shook hands with them but she drew me to her lap and had me lean against her while we talked. The adults all but became invisible as she asked me about home and school and my dog, Blackie. It seemed we were in our own little world. I remember she smelled so good and was very pretty but had on a very plain dress, not at all like I expected a movie star to wear. We continued to talk until a warning bell went off, announcing they were ready to film the next scene. We were all hustled out of the sound stage but as I got a last hug from Marilyn, she said, "Please write to me - you can send it here to the studio. Tell me how Blackie is and how school goes." My Mom could hardly wait to ask me what Marilyn and I talked about. "She spoke so softly, I couldn't hear anything she said once she had you," Mom said.

A few weeks after we got back home to Iowa, I wrote a letter to Marilyn. When I took the letter, all sealed in its envelope, to Mom so she could address it for me, she just shook her head. "Honey, she didn't really mean for you to write to her. That's just something polite she said - she didn't expect you to write to her. She's too busy for letters from a child." I took my letter back to my room, feeling sad.

Many, many years later, long after Marilyn had died her lonely death, I read a biography on Marilyn that explained how much she had wanted children and had several miscarriages. It made me wonder if just that once my mother had been wrong. I've always wished I had written - that's how this layout came about...Did you mean it when you asked me to write to you?