Marilyn Monroe at home at the Beverly Carlton in 1951. Photo by David Cicero.
It’s a very large image, let’s take a closer look.
She’s reading The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine (1948), near her feet is the screenplay of her upcoming film Don’t Call Me Mother, which during production would be retitled, Don’t Bother to Knock. There’s a glass of wine or champagne next to the bouquet of flowers; under it, a 1950 edition of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, a dictionary, and a photo of a man who suspiciously looks like Arthur Miller, whom she’d marry in 1956 (she had met him in 1951 and had told her acting coach, “That’s someone I could love forever.”).
(The very first book in the row behind her, Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, is the adaptation by Arthur Miller.)
Also among her books: The Loyalty of Free Men (1951) by Alan Barth, Anna Karenina lying on top of Charlie Chaplin, many books on acting (Building a Character, Focus), and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Her love of Russian literature had been ignited by her former sugar daddy, Russian-born Johnny Hyde, who had died a year before; and also by her acting coach, Natasha Lytess.
On the table in front of her are books about Michelangelo and Albrecht Dürer, and there’s one of those year-in-review books, from 1949.
Her mirror has been decorated with several pictures: Bruegel’s Portrait of an Old Woman (bottom left), A Woman by Modigliani, and Cézanne’s Card Players.
Finally, on top of the bookcase, in the corner, is a portrait of famed Italian actress, Eleonora Duse, who once remarked, “Away from the stage, I do not exist.”
I’m off …
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