Page 28 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“Then why can’t I get a job?” Marilyn asks. “Just to make enough money to eat on.”

“It’s hard for a star to get an eating job,” says Hyde. “A star is only good as a star. You don’t fit into anything less.”

Johnny Hyde is a man in love. He’s also a whirlwind. Marilyn matches his energy as they lunch at Romanoff’s, dance at Ciro’s, party at the Mocambo and the Troc. She sits next to him, not uttering a word beyond “Yes, Johnny” or “No, Johnny.” Occasionally, she calls him “Daddy.” Most especially when she wants something.

He leaves his wife and his four sons and rents a house on 718 North Palm Drive, Beverly Hills, and puts Marilyn up at the Beverly Carlton Hotel to distract the press and studio gossipmongers.

Smart and well-read, he buys Marilyn enough volumes to start a personal library, from the Russian greats—Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy—to Marcel Proust and Thomas Wolfe toKonstantin Stanislavski’sAn Actor Prepares. She studies, underlining each page, knowing that he will test her afterward.

“Johnny Hyde wants to be my agent!” Marilyn announces to Natasha Lytess. “He’s buying me out of my contract with Harry Lipton. He told me so last weekend in Palm Springs.” He knows that she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, but it doesn’t dissuade him. “I don’t think it’s wrong to let him love me the way he does. I do feel sorry for him, but I swear I am never going to lie to him.”

Johnny knows that I don’t tell lies. He knows I’m not planning to fool him. “The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone,” Marilyn says. It’s hardly her fault if “men sometimes fool themselves.”

On March 2, 1949, Marilyn signs a contract appointing the William Morris Agency as her sole and exclusive representative in film, television, and radio.

CHAPTER 20

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 andTown & Countryphotographer 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.

Now, Marilyn digs out Kelley’s card and takes him up on the offer. He books her for a Pabst beer ad. Soon she is posing in a two-piece bathing suit, tossing a beach ball overhead and smiling at the camera. She earns herself a quick $20.

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 newjob 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 toutingLove 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’sA 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.

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