Our theme for fifth grade Home Ec class this quarter is'Our Bodies, Our Selves.' I know you gave the assignment weeksago, but I just couldn't come up with anything. I tried to thinkof selves as separate from the bodies. Then I triedto imagine our bodies going backwards instead of forwards, so thatwe never have to go through the 'changes,' what my mother calls thechanges. I hate the changes. I think you know what I'm talkingabout. If there are so many changes, then there can't be anyselves to speak of. Why don't boys have to bleed? I think I mightbecome a nun, so I can hide. That would fool the changes. And nochildren. That would serve my mother right. I know you wantsomething else here, like how grateful I am to be a girl, but Icouldn't fake it. Maybe later on, I will learn how to fake it. Norma Jean
I came across this piece by Norma Jean the other day. Isuppose I ought to sell it. It would surely be worth some moneynowadays, you know, seeing how things turned out. She's even morefamous now dead than when she was alive. I don't know why I savedit. I thought it was pathetic at the time, and she was the onlygirl in the class who didn't do the assignment. I thought she wastrying to get away with something, and I told her so. I told herI was going to show it to her mother, but I never did. I don'tthink I ever intended to show it to her mother. Not really. Ijust wanted to scare Norma Jean a little, get her to stopdaydreaming, to wake up and smell the coffee. I feel like I failedher in some way. I guess we all did.
--Ruth Handley (Sister Jeanne Marie)
"The Last Nude" has become both popular and sacred. Wethink of Marilyn as a sex symbol, but the photograph is remarkablefor its modesty. Totally naked, Marilyn (at her insistence)reveals the entire torso, but the body is twisted in such a waythat none of the erogenous zones are visible. Her face and hernavel are the only markers, as though she is daring the viewer,mocking him in his strained and futile voyeurism. All there andyet not there at all. That is the contradiction, what stays withme in this photograph. I fancy myself a detached observer, but Itoo strain and am haunted.
--Reginald Coke, Artforum
She was unique. That's why I multiplied her. The one and themany. I saw Marilyn as a logo, no different from the Campbell soupcans. You could eat her for breakfast, put her on a sweatshirt,display her on billboards, until she became a cliche and you feltthat certain je ne sais quoi, a pleasurable nausea. I thoughtabout making a flag of her, her naked body laced with diagonal whipwelts, which I would call "Stars and Stripes." I would havewarehoused her if I could have gotten a patent on her existence. To me, Viva was the smarter, parodic Marilyn, a caved-in anorexicdeesse of a Marilyn. I did get a patent on Viva.
--Andy Warhol
I wrote the song in a bit of a hurry, an inspired state, ifyou will. It doesn't say much, but it feels a lot. Mind you, itdoesn't say much, because I never knew her, but, you see, I say soin the song now, don't I? Bernie was a tad bothered by the song,but oh well. I was really thinking about the Kennedys, a few riffsabout the Kennedy boys, a sort of "Abraham, Martin and John" thing,but then, you know, I didn't know them either, not personally ofcourse, and then sideways-like I got to thinking about Marilyn,and, well, there you have it. The candles thing? Well yes, Ithink of them as the perfect symbol, as in the saying: the candlethat burns twice as bright burns half as long. Something likethat. I think they used it in the film Blade Runner, didn'tthey? Well, anyway, I think of them as votive candles.
--Elton John
Sure, like, I stole from her. We all did. In the mirrorI'd make like her and stuff. Say. Why do they always have candybars named after guys? Huh? I think a Marilyn bar woulda sold,don't you? Sure, and what about a Roseanne bar? Ha ha. I alwayswanted to use that in my act. Who can ever sing "Happy Birthday"to a man with a straight face after her? I sing to Tom like that,you know, heavy breathing and kinda off-key, but he thinks I'm justdoing the national anthem again. He laughs and doesn't get it, butyou guys get it, right?
--Roseanne
I don't think she liked her body all that much, but she used it,fucken A, she used it. I was her for awhile when I first startedout. So famous you knew her by one name only. Just like that. Icopied that. She threatened the hell out of people: play dumb butbe smart, act sexy but be funny, she was the original truth ordare, just the way she faked it. I thought Jackie got to actinglike her after awhile: the same smiles, the same falsie voice. Ironic, huh? And Marilyn was a trip, man, the way she played withthe heads of stars. My favorite was the way she called SidneyPoitier "Mistah Pwotty-yay" and sat him on her knee to play TrottyHorse Trotty Horse. I do that too in my act, but in a more hip-hopway. Did she need a man to take care of her? What? You think shedidn't take care of her own number one self? What a dumbassquestion. She was feminism before they had the word. She wasGloria Swanson and Gloria Steinem all rolled into one. She wasglory be.
--Madonna
She was funny. I thought I was funny, but she was funnier. She'd say, "Mistah You'll...Not." She was the first to do that"not" thing after sentences. I thought of her as the originalBarbie Doll. And Gardner McKay, remember him? Or David Jansen orGeorge Maharis or that fella George Somebody the Third, they couldall be Ken, take your pick. But, see, lots of Kens, but only oneBarbie. There been lotta wannabe ladies since then. Loni Andersoncomes to mind. Jayne Mansfield. Dianna Dors, remember her? EvenSuzanne Somers, but sorry, not even close. Can you imagine, ifMarilyn were in her star prime today, shoot, she'd probably have todo sitcoms on TV. Can you picture her in Three's Company?
--Tom Ewell
I took America's pulse, damn you, and it came up her: thisfrowsy blond with the titsandass swagger and the vulnerability ofa vestal virgin. A peroxide personality, quick to twitter, thetinny falsetto laugh, one of a kind. She reduced Joltin' Joe toMr. Coffee commercials. Sunk that Yankee Clipper. He might aswell have been Phil Rizzuto doing shill for the Money Store. AndArthur Miller? He was shocked out of his intellectual sitz bath tosee how smart she was. She could have outmarried Liz Taylor ifshe'd wanted to. She put the promise back in promiscuity. She wasthe Susan Sontag of smash-face suck-up sensuality. If he'd knownMarilyn, Onan wouldn't have been able to resist coming inside. Poor shit, he'd still be alive today.
--Norman Mailer
If design govern in a thing so small,
she'd have been born Lauren Bacall.
--Robert Frost
She had her fun with us. I introduced her to Frank. Iintroduced her to Jack. She could say with a straight face, "Let'sbe frank, Jack." That sort of thing. I have to say I didn'tparticularly care for the way she was always saying Lee Radziwon't.
--Peter Lawford
Our best song was about her. It was supposed to go likethis:
"Wake up, Norma Jean,and so on. At the last minute, we changed it to Sleepy Jean.
oh what can it mean,
to a daydream believer"
She knew too damn much. She had pillow talk on presidentsand mobpins, actors and benefactors, cabbages and kings. And shewas out of control. Worried about her weight, her fading beauty,diminished status. How do you grow old to yourself when you'vebeen Marilyn? She was starting to go pharmacy: diet pills,sleeping pills, weight pills, stay-up-late pills. The threat wasthere, that she would sing more than Happy Birthday. Oswald andRuby and the whole sordid cast of characters, they didn't just fallout of heaven and start with an immaculate conception. You couldgo back to Marilyn and see there was foul play.
--Jim Garrison
She was a real d-tease. We didn't exactly click, you know. But that was because of Jean. If there was one person Marilynmodeled herself after, it was Jean Harlow. She once teased me: "Ifwe'd met twenty years ago, I could have given you a house of sevenGables." Can you beat that?
--Clark Gable
Yes, she was threatening. I mean, I always thought I couldstack up with her booby-wise, but I couldn't compete with thelegend of her, a legend she was constantly promoting, as though itwere someone else in there. Corky liked her. So did Rusty. Allthe guys did.
--Annette Funicello
She couldn't act. So what are we talking about?
--Bette Davis
She was the first great simulacrum of the screen. Therewere other legends before her -- Dietrich, Garbo, Gish -- but theyhad to be emoting continually to keep their legends alive. Andeven so, they were larger-than-life on the screen, private andinvisible away from it. Marilyn's accomplishments on-screen wereslim to none, but she was always larger-than-life away from it. They were the etoiles of late and high Modernism. She wasthe first Postmodernist star.
--Jean Baudrillard
It all went so fast, accelerating with every image andevery second. One millisecond, I was looking into the blessedvisage of my beautiful wife, the next I was seeing Marilyn. Thensomething snapped.
--Peyton Farquhar
We're used to sexual scandals associated with politicalcandidates now. More than used to them. In fact, we think someonehasn't done his/her homework if we haven't found a scandal yet. Other politicians have had mistresses, but they were anonymous andbehind-the-scenes. When they were discovered, they became afootnote, then faded into obscurity again. That all changed withMarilyn.
--Woodward and Bernstein, Washington Post
Nobody really knew her. She was just like CitizenKane: the more we learned about her, the less we realized weknew her. This many years later, we're still looking for herrosebud.
--Siskel and Ebert
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--Marcel Marceau
When she botched words, she watched birds.
--Karl Spooner
By her example are we reminded that on the casting couch oflife many are called but few are chosen.
--Jerry Falwell
After her Happy Birthday number, I was out of work.
--George Jessel
She was a good kid, don't you know?
--Jimmy Stewart
She was in the great tradition, the international style ofthe alliterative star/siren/sex symbol. Yes. Think about it. Anouk Aimee, Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Greta Garbo,Marilyn Monroe. Huh? Don't give me Farrah Fawcett!
--Hedda Hopper
You see her in some of the more candid photos, frisky andfull of herself, full of her fresh good looks, wearing a man'sshirt, walking a dog on the beach, and you say to yourself: thiswas my mother years ago, before age took its toll, still innocentand oh so alive. And of course you fall in love with her.
--Umberto Eco
She could light up a battalion faster than a nightfirefight.
--Bob Hope
The gigantic lips? They were hers.
--Man Ray
I asked her, "If you were a toy, what toy would you be?" And she said, "A boy." I said I didn't think that was veryamusing. Or especially vulnerable.
--Barbara Walters
I don't remember. I was pretty wild in those days.
--Ronald Reagan
I'm glad she wasn't a Republican.
--Nancy Reagan
Etc.
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