“Walk Like This, Marilyn Monroe”

Directing Marilyn Monroe (see cover) in a movie is not the unalloyed delight a man might think. She often reports late for work. Sometimes she does not report at all. When she does report she is likely to go off into a corner to commune with her soul. She wants to hear mood music. She does not want to hear cursing. Problems. More problems. But as Billy Wilder, here shown directing her in Some Like It Hot, has triumphantly demonstrated, who cares about problems? Marilyn has filled his movie with fun and set it afire—and last week, its run just starting, it was top moneymaker in the key cities of the nation.

In the new comedy Marilyn plays ukulele-strumming singer who has taken a job with a girl orchestra because when she works for male orchestras she falls in love with saxophone players. What she does not know is that hidden in the orchestra are two males in disguise—hilariously portrayed by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis—and one of them is a sax player.

A Girls Worst Friend Is the Clock

 

For the first time in 10 years Marilyn Monroe took to the field to help promote her film—she gets 10% of the gross receipts. She flew to Chicago and delighted newsmen with her views on underwear (“I have no prejudice against it”), on Brigitte Bardot (“I find her charming”), on intellectualism (“I don’t consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people”), on her position as a sex symbol to men (“How do I know about man’s need’s for a sex symbol? I’m a girl”).

Then back to New York she flew and kept a theaterful of famous faces waiting a half hour before she showed up for the premiere of her picture. Marilyn worries about doing this. When she is late she is likely to telephone again and again to report that it is getting later. Last week, desperately trying to reform, she carried a man’s large gold pocket watch in her hand, just to remind her of passing time.

DIRECTOR IN ACTION, Billy Wilder shows Marilyn how to swish through steam of train coach.

ACTRESS IN ACTION, Marilyn adds a little something of her own as she carries out orders.

WITNESSES TO A MASSACRE, Chicago musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) stand aghast at St. Valentine’s Day gangster shooting.

FLEEING AS FEMALES, jittery Joe and Jerry, disguised as Josephine and Daphne, join all-girl orchestra to escape gangsters who want to rub out witnesses.

DANCING IN THE AISLE, Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), as a boop-a-dooping vocalist, leads orchestra in practice session aboard the train bound out of Chicago.

FUNIN UPPER BERTH comes when girls gather for a midnight snack with Daphne (Jerry in disguise, third from left) in a mad mixture of arms and legs.

SPRINTING SUGAR hurries toward happy ending with sax-playing Josephine whom she is beginning to know as Joe. She gets him after mobs kill each other off.

A CHARMING PITCHMAN, Marilyn tells Chicago reporters, “I’m a big girl now—I’m 32.” As newsmen looked puzzled, she said she meant years old.

 

It is a quote. LIFE MAGAZINE APRIL 1959