{"id":411093,"date":"2026-05-04T09:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T09:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/411093\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T09:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T09:54:11","slug":"listen-to-her-last-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/411093\/","title":{"rendered":"listen to her last interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first home she bought for herself, aged 35, a cute, hacienda-style cottage in Brentwood, Los Angeles, Marilyn Monroe is fixing herself a drink. She\u2019s got tequila but she doesn\u2019t know what to put with it. She\u2019s tried it with champagne before and that was too much. There is the clink of glasses, ice, the hoot of cars on nearby South Carmelina Avenue. She asks her publicist, Pat Newcomb, to answer the phone. \u201cAnd if it\u2019s any Italian, say I\u2019m out, for ever!\u201d A great gale of laughter. It\u2019s a designer: does she want buttons on her new dress? \u201cNo buttons,\u201d she calls out. \u201cTell her I\u2019m just going to wear it clingy. But tell her thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is Monroe as we\u2019ve never heard her before, in a candid interview recorded over two days, June 28 and 29, 1962, for Life magazine. The article came out on August 3, the day before she died of a barbiturate overdose, and several minutes of the recording featured in a 1992 HBO documentary \u2014 but most of it has never been heard until now. Later this month it will be published in book form to mark what would have been her 100th birthday, alongside audio excerpts and hundreds of unseen images from Life photographer Allan Grant\u2019s shoot.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077527630\"allan grant<\/p>\n

And what a conversation it is, which I was lucky enough to hear in its entirety. Life\u2019s associate editor, Richard Meryman, was mainly interested in fame \u2014 what it feels like, how it shapes you \u2014 but Monroe wanted to go much deeper, proving to the 20th Century Fox executives who had just fired her from Something\u2019s Got to Give that she was still a force to be reckoned with: smart, funny, self-aware, adored by her public. She throws shade on her Some Like It Hot co-star Tony Curtis and reflects on sex scenes, her nude calendar, Hollywood \u201ccatfights\u201d, ageing and singing for John F Kennedy. She was in negotiations with Fox lawyers (who reinstated her in July) and the interview was to be part of her comeback. \u201cPlease don\u2019t make me look like a joke,\u201d Monroe tells Meryman. \u201cI don\u2019t mind making jokes\u2026 It\u2019s just the way it could be done.\u201d It was the way it often had been done.<\/p>\n

Listen to Monroe\u2019s last interview. Click to play:<\/p>\n

The interview took place on terms negotiated by Monroe and Newcomb: it would be published in her own words and she would see the edited transcript and be able to make changes. There were very few, Meryman wrote in Life two weeks after her death. \u201cOn the steps of the house, she showed me changes she had pencilled in, all of them small. She asked me to take out a remark about quietly giving money to needy individuals.\u201d Monroe kept in every \u201cGee!\u201d and \u201cWell\u201d, the kinda, sorta looseness of real speech, knowing it would sound like her. She really wanted to get somewhere with this conversation, she told Meryman \u2014 \u201cCome on, let\u2019s get down to it\u201d \u2014 and so they talked about the rot in the studios, feeling betrayed and the roots of her chronic lateness.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077301474\"Allan Grant<\/p>\n

Meryman was two months younger than Monroe, who had turned 36 on June 1, but sounds stiffer and stuffier on the recording. Monroe performs, animated and emphatic, doing other people\u2019s voices (the rubbish collectors on 57th Street in New York, a friendly Clark Gable), laughing often, patient with Meryman\u2019s dogged return to the same question: what\u2019s fame really like? \u201cIt\u2019s like caviar,\u201d Monroe says. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have caviar, but we have it every damn day. You know? It\u2019s too much caviar.\u201d<\/p>\n

She pauses. \u201cSpeaking of caviar, how about a drink?\u201d Meryman declines: \u201cI\u2019m afraid I\u2019m going to keep my wits about me.\u201d \u201cAh, well,\u201d Monroe says, sighing, \u201cmine are kind of dim.\u201d<\/p>\n

A woman at a crossroads<\/p>\n

In June 1962, she was at a major crossroads in her life. She was no longer the Fifties ingenue of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; nor could she command the fees or scripts of a contemporary like Elizabeth Taylor. She was three-times divorced, from Arthur Miller (in 1961), Joe DiMaggio (in 1954) and Jim Dougherty, whom she married when she was just 16 \u2014 though she remained close to DiMaggio. Her health was poor: she had been fired after six weeks of on-off sinusitis, but before that had undergone treatment for depression, endometriosis and gallstones, which had left her addicted to sleeping pills and barbiturates.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077301427\"Allan Grant<\/p>\n

Meryman later recalled in Life that Monroe\u2019s doctor had visited during their second interview. She had asked to postpone that afternoon, saying she was tired, but after his visit was good to go. \u201cMarilyn bounded out to the kitchen, returned with a little ampule and, holding it up to me, said, \u2018No kidding, they\u2019re making me take liver shots. Here, I\u2019ll prove it to you.\u2019 By then she was willing to talk on, and it was nearly midnight when Marilyn jumped up and announced she was going to throw a steak on the grill. She came back to say there was no steak and no food at all.\u201d According to Monroe biographer Donald Spoto, that portion of Meryman\u2019s tape was \u201cunusable\u201d because \u201cher speech was rapid and disjointed\u201d \u2014 but his daughter Meredith Landis (Meryman died in 2015) confirms that, aside from a couple of getting-to-know-you meetings, the four-hour tape is the complete interview.<\/p>\n

After Monroe\u2019s death, Meryman retitled their conversation \u201cA Last Long Talk with a Lonely Girl\u201d, and it is true that she sometimes sounds tired and hurt. Late at night, drinking champagne, her speech becomes slower and more looping, running over past injustices. But whose doesn\u2019t? The 64-year-old recording is imperfect, though digitally improved, with stops and starts and knocks to the machine.<\/p>\n

\u2018When I\u2019m older, I\u2019ll play all kinds of parts\u2019<\/p>\n

Perhaps the loneliest parts came when the tape was off, because the stronger impression is of someone full of life and plans, besotted with her new house and buying Mexican bits for it, saving her first swim in the pool \u201cfor a friendly occasion\u201d, liberated by being single. For the next phase of her career, she was inspired by actors like Chaplin and Garbo as examples of how to be true to yourself. \u201cI think Sophia Loren proved that beautifully in the film she won the Academy award for [Vittorio De Sica\u2019s Two Women],\u201d she tells Meryman. \u201cThey tried to make her the same. And then when she went back to her own country\u2026 I don\u2019t mean that she shouldn\u2019t come out of her own country and make films here, but they should accept her as she is. She was marvellous.\u201d Monroe looked forward to not being the love interest: \u201cWhen I\u2019m older, I\u2019ll play all kinds of parts. How come they haven\u2019t put more care into casting other parts? Not just, you know, \u2018the spring lovers\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077527406\"allan grant<\/p>\n

It had annoyed Fox when she flew to Madison Square Garden on May 19 to sing Happy Birthday to the president after weeks of sick leave. But she seemed to know it would be one of the performances of her life. She lights up talking about it \u2014 the fear (\u201cI told Pat backstage, \u2018I don\u2019t know if I can do this\u2019\u200a\u201d), the way she pitched her voice at the cheap seats (Meryman: \u201cYou identify with the peanut gallery?\u201d Monroe: \u201cYes, with the people\u201d). In her memoir My Story (written in 1954 but only published 20 years later), Monroe said that as a foster child she had longed to stand up in church and take off all her clothes \u2014 to be admired rather than loved \u2014 and here was the fulfilment of that: singing in a naked dress to the nation. \u201cA hush like that from the people warms me,\u201d she tells Meryman.<\/p>\n

Afterwards she introduced her date, Arthur Miller\u2019s father, Isidore, to John F Kennedy. If there was anything between her and the president (there is no evidence of an affair, beyond gossip), there is no hint of it on the tape, where she worries about having failed to say, \u201cHow do you do?\u201d and instead focusing on her beloved former father-in-law. Her nerves had got her through it, and she marvels to Meryman that other stars couldn\u2019t appreciate that. \u201cMaria Callas was in my dressing room, to have our picture taken. I said, \u2018Tell her that I\u2019d be honoured afterwards, but not before.\u2019 She, of all people, should be aware of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018She was cheerful and utterly disorganised\u2019<\/p>\n

It was a running joke on the night that Monroe was never on time \u2014 she was introduced as \u201cthe late Marilyn Monroe\u201d \u2014 and Meryman asks her why. How does it happen? \u201cSometimes I\u2019m catching up with business matters, legal matters. Sometimes it\u2019s sitting for a dress,\u201d she says airily. \u201cI don\u2019t know where they get these screwy stories where I\u2019m standing in front of a mirror, admiring myself.\u201d Being late is \u201cthe opposite of arrogance\u201d, she explains, because she only wants to be prepared \u2014 before contradicting herself on the mirror front. \u201cThey\u2019ve slandered me in the press, saying that I\u2019m depressed and in some kind of a slump and hidden away. So then I take a little extra time with my hair, with a little extra flip, a little extra eyeshadow. A little more glitter. I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s just my way of saying, \u2018Ha!\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077527634\"allan grant<\/p>\n

Meryman witnessed the Monroe \u201cHa!\u201d himself a couple of days later, when he stopped by for a scheduled 10am breakfast and failed to catch her before she left, many hours later, for Bert Stern\u2019s famous Vogue shoot. \u201cWhile [her hairdresser] worked on her and she sat under the dryer, I could hear uproarious laughter,\u201d he wrote in Life. \u201cThen, in her curlers, she made little barefooted errands about the house and in and out of her room, phone calls, visits to me to ask if I was comfortable, all busy bustling, getting nothing done. There was none of the fearful moping and preening in front of mirrors I had heard so much about. She was entirely cheerful and utterly disorganised.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Grant photographed Monroe on July 7 she had already cancelled three times and he had booked a fishing trip with friends as an insurance. But on the day she was only an hour late and in a collaborative mood, asking what she should wear. Whatever she felt comfortable in, he said, and she chose blue Capri trousers and a V-neck. He asked her to sit in a chair by the window \u201cbut instead she grabbed the arms and started sensuously moving her body, slowly gyrating around\u201d. It wasn\u2019t right for Life, and the intimate portraits he got an hour later were the ones they published \u2014 Monroe laughing, thinking, frowning.<\/p>\n

Grant bought the rights from Life for $1 in 1967 and for decades the rolls of film were a well-kept secret. It was only last year that his widow, former People magazine picture editor Karin Grant, decided it was \u201ctime to let Marilyn be free\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077301407\"Allan Grant<\/p>\n

A reluctant sex symbol<\/p>\n

Monroe didn\u2019t entirely mind being a sex symbol, she tells Meryman, though she was \u201cinsulted\u201d to be on a list of them. \u201cIt\u2019s better than, \u2018She leaves me cold.\u2019\u200a\u201d Doesn\u2019t sexuality have something to do with your fame, he asks. She hedges: \u201cIf you check over my movies, I\u2019ve never yet had an erotic scene. I\u2019ve always wanted to see if I could do it.\u201d There\u2019s a big knowing laugh, but she\u2019s serious. \u201cAsk the people at Life \u2014 when, which scene, tell me how was it sexual?\u201d In the Life interview Monroe refers to \u201csome actor\u201d who said kissing her was like kissing Hitler, and that she had mentally replaced him with someone else. On the tape she goes further, her anger with Tony Curtis still audible four years after shooting Some Like It Hot: \u201cFrom the moment that particular actor walked onto the set he was never there, because I was so disappointed. I said \u2018Oh\u2019 to myself. But I don\u2019t remember his name.\u201d<\/p>\n

In interviews and her memoir, Monroe often spoke of other women\u2019s envy and meanness towards her. In Life she tells the story of knocking on a door while househunting and the man who opens it being \u201cvery cheerful\u201d, followed by his wife asking her to get off the premises. (What she leaves out, but says on the tape, is that the house was probably not for sale.)<\/p>\n

But Meryman\u2019s questions mostly reveal a more sisterly side of Monroe, who speaks warmly of her co-star Jane Russell and refused to pose outside Bette Davis\u2019s dressing room on the set of All About Eve in 1950. \u201cAs if they were kicking her out and I was moving in. I said, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t do this to anybody.\u2019\u200a\u201d She doesn\u2019t get into arguments, Meryman observes. \u201cCatfights? That\u2019s a waste of time and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A young actress recently came to her for advice, Monroe says, after nude photographs of her started circulating. \u201cI can\u2019t describe the poses because it\u2019s impossible, and I don\u2019t want to offend your readers. I said to her, \u2018You know, I don\u2019t feel prim on this subject, but why did you do it?\u2019 She said, \u2018The same reason you did: to become famous.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a misunderstanding, Monroe says. She did her \u201cred velvet\u201d nude shoot for $50 to cover her rent, and was successful by the time the pictures resurfaced years later. Did she regret it, Meryman asks. \u201cWell, I was a little embarrassed,\u201d she says, not sounding embarrassed at all. \u201cMy God, there I am with my bare tuchis out!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AmericanMonroe in 1953Getty Images<\/p>\n

Awkwardly, Meryman asks how she stays in shape. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have a bad gall bladder and go on a low cholesterol diet,\u201d Monroe says, laughing. \u201cI didn\u2019t do one exercise. I rented a bicycle and I\u2019ve been on it once. I get it from my grandmother \u2014 I can\u2019t take much credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monroe was fighting for her job but unafraid to give Fox a poke. \u201cIf I\u2019m sounding picked on or something, well, I am,\u201d she tells Meryman. Her complaints were many: that the studio planted false stories about her, that the unions protected only the bosses, that stars were blamed for everything. When she is indignant, she is funny \u2014 \u201cI was an aspiring actress. I should say perspiring\u201d \u2014 wondering aloud if the swimming actress Esther Williams got her fair share. \u201cDo we know how much talent Esther Williams really had? How long could she keep swimming, really? I think they sold swimming pools, but I don\u2019t know what she got out of it. And I was never an Esther Williams fan. You know, I dog-paddle; I don\u2019t swim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I wouldn\u2019t want my child to go through what I have\u2019<\/p>\n

There was a rumour that someone at Fox wrote her jokes for her, Monroe tells Meryman, but the tapes prove her both a natural wit and an instinctive socialist. After her marriage to Miller, she was investigated by the FBI for suspected communism and found to be \u201cconcisely leftist\u201d. That doesn\u2019t seem to have interested Meryman much: a statement she reads him, about the importance of kinship across race and class, and twice says should be the article\u2019s conclusion, isn\u2019t included.<\/p>\n

One upside of fame was meeting Miller and DiMaggio, Monroe says, \u201ctwo of the nicest men\u201d, and one upside of divorce was worrying less about their children. She tells Meryman about Bobby Miller hiding a gossip magazine from her, and how Joe DiMaggio Jr was teased about her at school. \u201cSo I just said, \u2018Bobby, anything you want to know, come and ask me. But don\u2019t get it second-hand.\u2019 And he always felt he could \u2014 they all did. Now I feel a little freer.\u201d Children brought out her fierceness: \u201cIf I had had a child, I wouldn\u2019t want a child of mine to go through what I\u2019ve been through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001077301433\"Allan Grant<\/p>\n

Though it is Meryman who asks the questions, it is Monroe who is in charge \u2014 the star who could pull the plug at any moment. At one point, he asks her about \u201cthe business of cranking yourself up to appear before the camera\u201d, and she loses her temper, her voice rising. \u201cI don\u2019t crank anything! You know, I\u2019m not a Model T. I think it\u2019s kind of disrespectful to refer to it that way.\u201d It was slang, he says. \u201cOK, well, don\u2019t slang in the article.\u201d A minute later she softens: \u201cSay, would you like a drink?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Fame is fickle. I\u2019ll find a way to exist\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of many moments that didn\u2019t make it into print, and raises the question of what Monroe might make of all this surfacing now. Wouldn\u2019t she have thought it kind of disrespectful, I ask Chris Flannery and Jason Greene, the business partners who negotiated the rights to Grant\u2019s pictures and Meryman\u2019s text a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the reverse,\u201d Flannery says. \u201cI think her identity got lost because of the focus on some of the negatives and her vulnerabilities. This may be the best retort, which is, here\u2019s what she had to say, no guesswork.\u201d After all the myths and conspiracy theories, they argue, this is her last great reveal \u2014 Monroe by Monroe \u2014 and she\u2019s sharper, subtler and more compelling than anyone else\u2019s version.<\/p>\n

When Meryman heard that she had died, a \u201cprobable suicide\u201d, he was \u201cdumbfounded\u201d, he said in 1992. \u201cI never saw any sign that this was a woman giving her last interview, a woman on the verge of suicide\u2026 I\u2019ve listened to those tapes a dozen times to see if I somehow missed some clues. I still don\u2019t know the answer.\u201d Which leaves the last word to Monroe. \u201cFame is fickle,\u201d she tells him. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing I\u2019m counting on. I\u2019ll find a way to exist; I have since I was five years old. And I would say, gee, it was a painful time, when I was famous. And I\u2019ll remember some pleasurable times. You know?\u201d <\/p>\n

Marilyn: the Lost Photographs, the Last Interview by Marilyn Monroe, Allan Grant and Richard Meryman (Weldon Owen, \u00a340) is published on May 28. Order from timesbookshop.co.uk<\/a> or call 020 3176 2935. Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait, featuring Grant\u2019s photographs and Meryman\u2019s interview, is at the National Portrait Gallery in London from June 4 to September 6 (marilynslostphotos.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first home she bought for herself, aged 35, a cute, hacienda-style cottage in Brentwood, Los Angeles,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-411093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}