xoxoxoe’s #CBR4 Review #46: My Story, by Marilyn Monroe

a favorite actress of mom’s (along with Elizabeth Taylor). This young woman had to *work* to make it (and she had talent)…enjoy! MIndigo

Cannonball Read IV

In 1954 Marilyn, at the height of her fame and popularity, was persuaded by friend and publicist Sidney Skolsky to publish her autobiography. They enlisted screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Front Page, Monkey Business, A Farewell to Arms) to ghostwrite, and sat down for a series of interviews which they intended to have published in a magazine, not in book form, in The Ladies Home Journal. The interviews focused mainly on her rough and tumble childhood. Hecht’s agent, without his or Marilyn’s knowledge or approval, sold it as serialized articles to the London Empire News, who ran it between between May 9 and Aug 1, 1954. In 1974, twelve years after her death, photographer and former business partner Milton Greene produced a copy of the manuscript and had it published in book form.

There has been much debate about the authenticity of the book. Some of the stories may…

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Nevada & Lake Tahoe

Summer at Tahoe, 1906 (source, Wikipedia)

Here’s a new excerpt from the memoirs;

Mom and her mother are driving across country from New York to their summer home on Lake Tahoe. This is the last day of their drive:

 Home Stretch

We got up at the crack of dawn for the final leg of the journey. Mama was nervous that last day. She had to coax the old Packard over the Mount Rose summit; it was always the hardest day of the trip.

First of all, we had to drive across Nevada, from Elko, in its northeast corner, to Lake Tahoe, at the angle in the middle of its western boundary. The terrain was flat and beige, flat and beige, as we sped down the state routes paved in tar. Including stops for breakfast and lunch, we made the foot of Mt. Rose by early afternoon.

 The mountain rose without warning from the desert floor. The gravel road up to its summit was quite steep and included several hair-pin turns. Halfway up, the car boiled over, and we refilled the radiator from the can we had brought along. Then we found ourselves facing another car coming down the road; creeping down in reverse, we found a place to move over into (we were on the inside lane). We were lucky; the spot was only a few dozen yards down the road; sometimes people had to go back a mile before they found find a space big enough to accommodate their car.

It was all very exciting. The gravel road twisted and turned at the edge of the mountain, revealing spectacular views of Reno, mountains, and the lake along the way; I could look over Mama’s shoulder and see down the mountain. “How far down do you think it is?” I asked.”You stop that, Nancy! Just keep your eyes on the road for any big rocks.”

After a long while we reached the top of Mt. Rose and looked down at the lake. No matter how difficult the trip had been, we knew it was worth the effort when got to the top. The gorgeous blue of the lake’s waters would shimmer in the sun and Mama would say, “It gets prettier every year!”

 From our vantage point, we could see the lake spread out beneath us, surrounded by forests of mixed fir and pine (among them, lodgepoles, Jeffrey pine, and Douglas firs), and beyond it, distant peaks. The lake is large, covering more than 170 square miles, and deep, about 1,650 ft deep, and is famous for the clarity of its water—nothing grows on the bottom. From the pass (8,911 feet high), no sign of people could be made out, but by the 1930s, houses had been built wherever the shoreline permitted; together with several townlets, the human presence was significant without being overwhelming.

Our house was built on the north shore near the town of Brockway. This was the most densely populated part of the shoreline, in part because of the long view of the lake it afforded, in part because it was close to the town of Truckee, which lay along the original transcontinental railroad (and the Lincoln Highway). Gambling was legal on the Nevada (eastern) side of the lake, and during the summers, the area was home to a pleasant, friendly community of vacationers and year-round natives.

 In fact, as the years went along, we found that Tahoe never disappointed.

How we got started

Last winter, I found a copy of a memoir 

that my mother had been compiling over decades–since at least the late 1970s. The typescript (which she had composed on old wordprocessors) was 113 pages long and contained anecdotes of her childhood, from her earlier memories to her entry into college and marriage to my father. I decided that I would put the entire manuscript on the computer and see if it was publishable.

So far the story is not that unusual, but there was one further consideration behind my decision: my mother is still alive, and I thought that now was the moment, if I was to get the full story and she was to see her writing in print.

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So at this point, the manuscript is on the computer & being edited, and we’re thinking about getting it published in paper and on the web. Any suggestions for the next steps? We’d appreciate constructive advice. Thanks!