Read Online My Story by Marilyn Monroe, Ben Hecht - Free Book Online Page A

seldom spoke three words during dinner but would sit at Mr. Schenck’s elbow and listen like a sponge. The fact that people began to talk about me being Joe Schenck’s girl didn’t annoy me at first. But later it did annoy me. Mr. Schenck never so much as laid a finger on my wrist, or tried to. He was interested in me because I was a good table ornament and because I was what he called an “offbeat” personality.
    I liked sitting around the fireplace with Mr. Schenck and hearing him talk about love and sex. He was full of wisdom on these subjects, like some great explorer. I also liked to look at his face. It was as much the face of a town as of a man. The whole history of Hollywood was in it.
    Perhaps the chief reason I was happy to have won Mr. Schenck’s friendship was the great feeling of security it gave me. As a friend and protégée of one of the heads of my own studio, what could go wrong for me?
    I got the answer to that question one Monday morning. I was called into the casting department and informed that I was being dropped by the studio and that my presence would no longer be required. I couldn’t talk. I sat listening and unable to move.
    The casting official explained that I had been given several chances and that while I had acquitted myself fairly well it was the opinion of the studio that I was not photogenic. That was the reason, he said, that Mr. Zanuck had had me cut out of the pictures in which I had played bit parts.
    â€œMr. Zanuck feels that you may turn into an actress sometime,” said the official, “but that your type of looks is definitely against you.”
    I went to my room and lay down in bed and cried. I cried for a week. I didn’t eat or talk or comb my hair. I kept crying as if I were at a funeral burying Marilyn Monroe.
    It wasn’t only that I’d been fired. If they had dropped me because I couldn’t act it would have been bad enough. But it wouldn’t have been fatal. I could learn, improve, and become an actress. But how could I ever change my looks? And I’d thought that was the part of me that couldn’t miss!
    And imagine how wrong my looks must be if even Mr. Schenck had to agree to fire me. I lay crying day after day. I hated myself for having been such a fool and had illusions about how attractive I was. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. Something horrible had happened. I wasn’t attractive. I saw a coarse, crude-looking blonde. I was looking at myself with Mr. Zanuck’s eyes. And I saw what he had seen—a girl whose looks were too big a handicap for a career in the movies.
    The phone rang. Mr. Schenck’s secretary invited me to dinner. I went. I sat through the evening feeling too ashamed to look into anyone’s eyes. That’s the way you feel when you’re beaten inside. You don’t feel angry at those who’ve beaten you. You just feel ashamed. I had tasted this shame early—when a family would kick me out and send me back to the orphanage.

    When we were sitting in the living room Mr. Schenck said to me, “How are things going at the studio?”
    I smiled at him because I was glad he hadn’t had a hand in my being fired.
    â€œI lost my job there last week,” I said.
    Mr. Schenck looked at me and I saw a thousand stories in his face—stories of all the girls he had known who had lost jobs, of all the actresses he had heard boasting and giggling with success and then moaning and sobbing with defeat. He didn’t try to console me. He didn’t take my hand or make any promises. The history of Hollywood looked out of his tired eyes at me and he said, “Keep going.”
    â€œI will,” I said.
    â€œTry X Studio,” Mr. Schenck said. “There might be something there.”
    When I was leaving Mr. Schenck’s house I said to him, “I’d like to ask you a personal question. Do I look any different to you than I used