Reality can be stranger than fiction
The last untold story in the life of Marilyn Monroe. Selected excerpts from André de Dienes's memoirs
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A bizarre event happened there in that room during the first day of our stay. Norma Jeane was manicuring and putting nail polish on her toenails and she lifted her hands in the air to show me her palms, observing how curious it was that in each palm there was a large M. Somewhat childishly, we compared out palms, looking at the lines in them. And there, I told Norma Jeane the story of an old bell-ringer in Transylvania who, in my childhood, had predicted that the two letters "MM" would mean a great deal to me when I grew up. And I told Norma Jeane the story of about my meeting the old man while reading a strange old book, and how the old man was preoccupied with one of the pages where the writing began with the two words "memento mori." Norma Jeane was fascinated by my story, and we discussed again and again the two Ms in our palms. I told her jovially that the Ms had nothing to do with death-to the contrary, they meant "marry me!" And we pressed our palms together. We hugged and kissed and decided we shall get married as soon as she would get a divorce from her husband. We decided she would go to Las Vegas to get the divorce and we would get married there, right after. From those moments onward, we felt we were engaged. I told Norma Jeane about my wanderings through Transylvania on foot, and having carved many times in the bark of trees the two initials "M.M." I promised her that when we got married, I would buy her a thick, heavy gold wedding ring, and I shall have the two initials engraved inside the ring and a memento to remember the prediction of the old bell-ringer. I even took a picture of her palm.
While it was snowing, we stayed in the room all day long, except for a brief hour when I took her out to photograph her in the snow, reading. She was pampering herself, combing her curly hair out again and again at the mirror, and draping herself in the bed sheet, while examining the results in the mirror. A sexy little "vampire" she was, glamorizing herself with the bed sheet, as if it were an expensive evening gown! If only I had the foresight to photograph her in that room as she was glamorizing herself on the bed naked, quite uninhibited. The future Marilyn Monroe was there, in that room! A sex symbol was incubating that afternoon!
MM
During the summer of 1946, just at the onset of Labor Day, again, Norma Jeane called me to say she had important news to tell me, and she asked me to come to her apartment. When I got there, she came right to the subject: "Guess what, I have a new name!" With a pencil, slowly, carefully, she wrote her new name on a sheet of paper: MARILYN MONROE. And she emphasized the two M initials in an almost calligraphic way!
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
A bizarre event happened there in that room during the first day of our stay. Norma Jeane was manicuring and putting nail polish on her toenails and she lifted her hands in the air to show me her palms, observing how curious it was that in each palm there was a large M. Somewhat childishly, we compared out palms, looking at the lines in them. And there, I told Norma Jeane the story of an old bell-ringer in Transylvania who, in my childhood, had predicted that the two letters "MM" would mean a great deal to me when I grew up. And I told Norma Jeane the story of about my meeting the old man while reading a strange old book, and how the old man was preoccupied with one of the pages where the writing began with the two words "memento mori." Norma Jeane was fascinated by my story, and we discussed again and again the two Ms in our palms. I told her jovially that the Ms had nothing to do with death-to the contrary, they meant "marry me!" And we pressed our palms together. We hugged and kissed and decided we shall get married as soon as she would get a divorce from her husband. We decided she would go to Las Vegas to get the divorce and we would get married there, right after. From those moments onward, we felt we were engaged. I told Norma Jeane about my wanderings through Transylvania on foot, and having carved many times in the bark of trees the two initials "M.M." I promised her that when we got married, I would buy her a thick, heavy gold wedding ring, and I shall have the two initials engraved inside the ring and a memento to remember the prediction of the old bell-ringer. I even took a picture of her palm.
While it was snowing, we stayed in the room all day long, except for a brief hour when I took her out to photograph her in the snow, reading. She was pampering herself, combing her curly hair out again and again at the mirror, and draping herself in the bed sheet, while examining the results in the mirror. A sexy little "vampire" she was, glamorizing herself with the bed sheet, as if it were an expensive evening gown! If only I had the foresight to photograph her in that room as she was glamorizing herself on the bed naked, quite uninhibited. The future Marilyn Monroe was there, in that room! A sex symbol was incubating that afternoon!
MM
During the summer of 1946, just at the onset of Labor Day, again, Norma Jeane called me to say she had important news to tell me, and she asked me to come to her apartment. When I got there, she came right to the subject: "Guess what, I have a new name!" With a pencil, slowly, carefully, she wrote her new name on a sheet of paper: MARILYN MONROE. And she emphasized the two M initials in an almost calligraphic way!
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Photo: André de Dienes