Free My Story by Marilyn Monroe, Ben Hecht Page B

Just relax, miss, and go to sleep. We’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
    There was a loud knocking on the door. I jumped two feet. It was around 1 a.m.
    â€œDo you usually get company at this time of night?” the detective asked me.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I never have any company. Nobody has ever come to call on me.”
    â€œGo open the door,” the detective ordered.
    I went to the door and opened it. It was the screen cutter. He made a grab for me, and I screamed.
    The two detectives seized him.
    â€œThat’s the man,” I yelled. “He’s the burglar!”
    â€œWhat’s all this?” the man scowled at the detectives holding him. “Marilyn’s an old friend. Good old Marilyn.” And he winked at me and said, “Tell ’em, honey”
    â€œI don’t know the man,” I said. “He looks a little familiar, but I don’t know him.”
    â€œLet me go,” the man cried. “You can’t arrest somebody for calling on an old friend.”
    â€œHow about it?” one of the detectives said to me. “Let’s have the truth, Miss Monroe. Is this an old sweetie of yours?”
    I could feel that they were believing the man, and I was terrified they would go away and leave him alone with me.
    â€œHe’s no burglar,” the detective scowled at me. “He knows your name and address. He comes back after you chase him away. Obviously he’s—”
    The other detective was searching the man and pulled a revolver out of his pocket.
    â€œHey,” he interrupted, “this is a police gun! Where’d you get this?”
    At the words “police gun” I knew who the man was. It was the policeman with the eyes close together who had helped me cash my forty dollar check. He’d memorized the name and address as I wrote them on the back of the check.
    I hadn’t recognized him at first because he was out of uniform.
    I told the detectives who he was. He denied it but they found a Los Angeles police card in his pocket.
    They took him away.
    The next day the detectives visited me. They told me the man was a new cop, that he was married and had a fourteen-month-old baby. They said they would rather I didn’t file any charges against the man because it would give the police force a black eye.
    â€œI don’t want to punish him,” I said, “but I would like to be sure he didn’t try to do that to me again. Or to any other girl.”
    The detectives assured me he wouldn’t. So I didn’t file any charges. Instead I moved out.
    I went back to a Hollywood bedroom, and I stayed in it for several days and nights without moving. I cried and stared out the window.

15
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the bottom of the ocean
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    When you’re a failure in Hollywood—that’s like starving to death outside a banquet hall with the smells of filet mignon driving you crazy. I lay in bed again day after day, not eating, not combing my hair. I kept remembering how I had sat in Mr. A’s casting office controlling my excitement about the great luck that had finally come to me, and I felt like an idiot. There was going to be no luck in my life. The dark star I was born under was going to get darker and darker.
    I cried and mumbled to myself. I’d go out and get a job as a waitress or clerk. Millions of girls were happy to work at jobs like that. Or I could work in a factory again. I wasn’t afraid of any kind of work. I’d scrubbed floors and washed dishes ever since I could remember.
    But there was something wouldn’t let me go back to the world of Norma Jean. It wasn’t ambition or a wish to be rich and famous. I didn’t feel any pent up talent in me. I didn’t even feel that I had looks or any sort of attractiveness. But there was a thing in me like a craziness that wouldn’t let up. It kept speaking to me, not in words but in colors—scarlet and gold and shining