Quotes About Marilyn Share | Options

[Tara]

I took her as a serious actress before I ever met her. I think she's a great comedienne, but I also think that she might turn into the greatest tragic actress that can be imagined.
Arthur Miller

I had always thought that all those amusing remarks she was supposed to have made for the press had probably been manufactured and mimeographed by her press agent, but they weren't. She was a very bright person, an instinctive type.
Photographer Elliott Erwitt

Miss Monroe is one of the greatest comedy actresses of our time. She is simply superb. Miss Mansfield I've never seen.
Vladimir Nabokov, when asked his opinion of America's sex symbols

In one sense, then, her life is completed, because her spirit is formed and has achieved itself. No matter what unpredictable events may be in her future, they cannot change who she is and what she has become.
Maurice Zolotow, 1960

She was a difficult woman, you know. We liked her and we said the nicest things about her and she deserved them; but, she was trouble and she brought that whole baggage of emotional difficulties of her childhood with her.
Norman Rosten

This post has been edited by Tara: Apr 12 2006, 09:45 PM

[Robby]

Let's share quotes about Marilyn! Not things she said, but things people said about her. I hope there isn't already a topic for this.

I miss Jayne and Marilyn. Jayne was a wide-open, fun-loving type whose candle too soon burned out, though she is not the subject of a song like Marilyn. - Mamie van Doren

When you look at Marilyn Monroe on the screen, you don't want anything bad to happen to her. You really care that she should be allright. - Natalie Wood

A lady from way back ... Quiet, gentle, gracious, and the sort of girl you'd like to bring home and say, 'Mama, this is Marilyn.' - Henry McLemore

One of the most unappreciated people in the world. - Joshua Logan

When she's there, she's there. All of her is there! She's there to work. - Clark Gable

Look at that face! She could be five years old - Laurence Olivier

She was a difficult woman, you know. We liked her and we said the nicest things about her and she deserved them; but, she was trouble and she brought that whole baggage of emotional difficulties of her childhood with her - Norman Rosten

[Tara]

Let's share quotes about Marilyn! Not things she said, but things people said about her. I hope there isn't already a topic for this.

Actually there is Robby - and you started it! Anyway perhaps the mods can merge these threads:

http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/ind...?showtopic=9667

Here are some more:

"Marilyn wasn't awkward when she was on the set. She had a sense of humor and she didn't take herself seriously around the crew. I mean, she wasn't any prima donna, and she was full of fun, but she was also looking for that escape. To me, that whole picture was a series of her thinking, "I'm gonna do it, I'm not gonna do it.' "

Gene Allen
Art Director
Something's Got To Give

"I think about Marilyn a lot now and I wonder if there's a heaven if we'll be together. She had all the beauty that God could bestow but then He took it away. He let us live and He took Marilyn away... I loved Marilyn."

Shelley Winters in her last conversation with John Gilmore
'Inside Marilyn Monroe'

"Marilyn really cared about learning. The day before the dinner party, Marilyn told me, 'I want to be in touch, Pat -- I want to really know what's going on in the country.' She was especially concerned about civil rights -- she really cared about that. She had a list of questions prepared. When the press reported that Bobby was talking to her more than anyone else, that's what they meant. I saw the questions and I knew what they were talking about. She identified with all the people who were denied civil rights."

Pat Newcomb
Monroe publicist


"Marilyn was a terrifically nice person, really -- fun to talk with, warm and interested in serious issues."

Ed Guthman
Special Assistant for Public Information, Senior Officer Justice Department


"She was a marvellous actress with a lively personality. Her life cannot have been very happy, but she always succeeded in appearing happy and serene."

Sophia Loren


"When I said goodbye, she returned to the task she was engaged in when I arrived. There was an array of photos of her, contact sheets and prints all over the floor, and she was making decisions about them. This was not, I thought, a shallow person, and I was sorry I never really knew her. She was a woman who made distinctions, who thought about her life, who knew the difference between sham and reality. She had depth. Of course, she was enormously complex and I had a sense of some real underlying suffering there. But at her best there was no one like her. The wounds with Fox were healed, and when I last saw her, she was like a young and beautiful starlet, eager to do a picture that now had real possibilities."

Peter Levathes
Executive Producer, Something's Got to Give
recalling the last time he saw Marilyn


"I had great respect for her as an artist and as a person. She was a lovely girl. She had a great mind. The girl's got character. The first sixteen years of her life was enough to floor most of us. She never fully realized herself. The best years for her were ahead of her, the best years were the years to come."

Carl Sandburg
from an article for Cavalier magazine by Julian Scheer


"She and Marilyn were quite different, but they had this in common: they were both extremely attractive, and they both had the knack of concealing what they knew. The comedy seemed quite natural, yet they knew exactly what they were doing."

George Cukor on Monroe and Harlow


"If it weren't for Grace, there'd be no Marilyn Monroe. Grace raved about Norma Jeane like she was her own. Grave said Norma Jeane was going to be a movie star. She had this feeling. A conviction. 'Don't worry, Norma Jeane. You're going to be a beautiful girl when you get big -- an important woman; a movie star.' "


Leila Fields, one of Grace's co-workers

"Grace was very perceptive. From this very early time she had the idea that Norma Jeane was going to be a movie star. And she did everything in her power to bring it about. Grace could have no children of her own, and so she lavished her affection on Norma Jeane, whom she considered to be as much or more hers than Gladys's."

Eleanor (Bebe) Goddard


"When I photographed Marilyn playing the roles of various women who were sex symbols of the past, she studied their work, saw their movies, analyzed their makeup and the way they moved and posed. She became very involved with each sitting. I remember our looking at the series of photographs in which she had posed as Jean Harlow. LIFE chose one, while she and I preferred another. Across the photograph that LIFE had chosen, she wrote, 'She (meaning Jean Harlow) wouldn't have liked this one.' Very sensitive to each of the women she was interpreting, she felt she knew exactly what Harlow would have liked as a pose or as a picture."

Richard Avedon

[Robby]

Oh my God, I can't believe it (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/laughing.gif) , And I did search, though.

[Tara]

It happens! I remembered the old thread because I liked it a lot.

[Robby]

I like it too, that's why I probably started another one (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/laughing.gif) !

[Paju]

Merged (IMG:http://www.everlasting-star.net/boards/style_emoticons/default/wink3.gif)

[Tara]

Thanks Paju!

[Tara]

On the Forever Marilyn group they post a quote each day, and I like to collect them...

"It was after she said that she wanted to be in The Brothers Karamazov that she started going to the Actors Studio School in New York. She didn't do it for publicity. She is sincerely trying to improve herself, and I think that she should be admired for that. She could have sat her in Hollywood on her pretty little can and collected all the money any ordinary actress would ever want, but she keeps trying."

Billy Wilder

[Brigitte]

I sat near her. She gulped wine by the glassful. When her name was called, she had to be helped out of her chair onto the stage. She accepted the award almost in a caricature of herself.
James Bacon on Marilyn Monroe at the 1962 Golden Globe Awards

She seemed to have a kind of unconscious glow about her physical self that was innocent, like a child. When she posed nude, it was 'Gee, I arn kind of, you know, sort of dishy,' like she enjoyed it without being egotistical.
Elizabeth Taylor

[Tara]

"I am genuinely sorry not to be able to work with Miss Monroe. I am mercenary enough to know that with her in a picture, the chances of success are improved."

~ Gregory Peck, who was initially slated to costar opposite Marilyn in 'Let's Make Love'

[QueenNefertiti]

"I took her as a serious actress before I ever met her. I think she's an a great comedienne, but I also think that she might turn into the greatest tragic actress that can be imagined." -Arthur Miller

"She'd come out of our apartment in a shleppy old coat, looking like my maid, and all the people would push her aside to get my autograph. She loved it." - Shelley Winters

"Look at that face-she could be five years old." - Laurence Olivier

"She will go on eternally." - Jackie Kennedy Onassis

"She seemed to have a kind of unconscious glow about her physical self that was innocent, like a child. When she posed nude, it was 'Gee, I arn kind of, you know, sort of dishy,' like she enjoyed it without being egotistical." - Elizabeth Taylor

[Robby]

Here are some quotes from the Hometown Girl book!

There'll never be anyone like her - Emmeline Snively
She was just magnificent, breathtaking to look at - Sylvia Barnhart
She was the sexiest, better than anyone else - Earl Moran
It's a damn fine test, sign her up - Darryl Zanuck
She had enough books to start a library - Clarice Evans
I see a hundred actresses a week, they haven't got what she has - Johnny Hyde
Marilyn Monroe has more sexual vibrations than any woman I ever met - Tom Kelley
Her sexuality is something corked up in a bottle - Jerry Wald
She was one of the best pupils in the group - Lotte Goslar
She had great potential, and never realized it - Hal Schaefer
She was an unusual woman - ahead of her time. And she didn't know it - Ella Fitzgerald
I still have a scarf she gave me - Simone Signoret
She was quite adorable and fey - Dorothy Parker
Are you really Marilyn Monroe? - The Liemerts maid
There was an almost childlike quality about her - George Barris
Everyone knows how I feel - Joe DiMaggio (Upon her sudden death)

[~TheGirl~]

Ive always loved the quote from Ella!

[princesshapnick]

"Marilyn was definately something special. I enjoyed working with her. I liked her very much. We got along great. And I knew that she had problems and that she was not very happy. We were quite close but not close enough for her to discuss any problems she could have had at the time we made Some Like It Hot. She was a very troubled woman but with a big heart. Nobody could have played Sugar Kane better than Marilyn Monroe. She had a magic on film."
- Jack Lemmon

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/clapping.gif)

[meztisa]

The most heartfelt quote about Marilyn has to be made by Joe Dimaggio, who on his deathbed, his final words were, "I'll finally get to see Marilyn." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/throb.gif)

[the.mmmm.girl]

http://lifestyle.aolsvc.de/Starke-Abgaenge...66930471-0.html (please click..WEITER..to see Joe)

Look what I found today on the German AOL homepage...famous last words!
And there is Joe DiMaggio who said that he now will meet Marilyn again....I am happy to see that their love will not be forgotten................... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/throb.gif)

This post has been edited by the.mmmm.girl: Aug 31 2008, 02:50 PM

[meztisa]

Haha (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I just said that.

[Mezzo]

"There are people so vivid in life that they seem not to disappear when they die, and for many weeks I found myself having to come about and force myself to encounter the fact that Marilyn had ended. I realized that I still, even then, expected to meet her once more, somewhere, sometimes, and maybe talk sensibly about all the foolishness we had been through - in which case I would probably have fallen love with her again."

"...she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes."

Both quotes are from Arthur Miller, Timebends.

This post has been edited by Mezzo: Oct 5 2008, 12:24 AM

[Demos Kratos]

"There are people so vivid in life that they seem not to disappear when they die, and for many weeks I found myself having to come about and force myself to encounter the fact that Marilyn had ended. I realized that I still, even then, expected to meet her once more, somewhere, sometimes, and maybe talk sensibly about all the foolishness we had been through - in which case I would probably have fallen love with her again."

"...she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling her clothes."

Both quotes are from Arthur Miller, Timebends.

Just...

Wow......