Maureen Stapleton on Monroe
"She was a sweet girl. She would clip her toenails and ask me what the deal was with Chekhov. I would say I didn’t know, but let’s talk about it. And we did.”
“Why are you showing me that? I hate that picture.”
I have shown Maureen Stapleton the forlorn and famous photograph of Marilyn Monroe, from 1957, by Richard Avedon.
You hate it? I asked.
“Yeah, I hate it,” Maureen continued, “because it’s sad Marilyn; tragic Marilyn. Piling on the myth. People tearing their shirts and moaning about their lost opportunities to save her. I get asked a lot to talk about her, and I usually ignore people, because they see what they want to see. And they didn’t know her or meet her or spend time with her, but she’s our lost angel, the Little Match Girl, out in the snow, dying, seeking shelter. Bullshit.”
You don’t think there was sadness?
“Of course there was sadness!” Here I get a piercing look from Maureen that everyone who knew would recognize. It’s a look that might augur a fight. It’s a look that says, Jesus, you’re a moron. “Who isn’t sad? Who doesn’t have tragedy? I have an idea of what was done to Marilyn, but we lose the girl—I know I’m an antique for calling her a girl—but she was a girl. A sweet, serious girl who just wanted to get better—at everything. She absolutely read more than I did. She really cared about her acting. She cared about people. I’m tired of our putting her in the designer-crafted hair shirts.”
Maureen stops, then says, “What did Kim say about Marlon?”
Which Kim, I ask.
“Hunter. What did she say about how he smelled.”
She said, in fact, that he was a muscular baby. He smelled of Ivory Soap and, sometimes, Johnson’s baby powder, smells that did not match his hyper-masculine physique, but which made for a sensation that still excited Hunter in 1989, when she told me about it.
“That’s it,” Maureen said. “Ivory Soap! Marilyn had Ivory Soap in her bathroom. I mean, she also had the fancy shit that she used to become public Marilyn, but she was Ivory Soap. She was simple and sweet and clean-smelling, and that’s not what people think. They think sex and money and Chanel No. 5 and rampant fucking. She was a sweet girl. She would clip her toenails and ask me what the deal was with Chekhov. I would say I didn’t know, but let’s talk about it. And we did.”