"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul."

Many people have expressed an opinion that Marilyn Monroe was unstable and some have gone so far as to suggest they think she may have had Borderline-Personality-Disorder.

It goes without saying that none of these people actually met Marilyn, but then I'm not one to talk as she had been dead for years before I was even born, so I can't really claim to have known her...

My point is that it is very easy to conjecture about somebody who is dead and cannot answer back and of course I remind you that I myself am only stating a personal opinion on Marilyn's character I have no proof that any of what I'm saying is iron-clad.

I believe that Marilyn was an extremely intuitive person. Arthur Miller once said that and it appears she was a very astute judge of character, often surprising those around her who thought her naive.

It seems beyond doubt that Marilyn was vain, but I've never found anything to say that she was conceited. To be vain simply means that you care very much about how to look as opposed to being conceited when you think you look great all the time. Many have said that she was always late because she couldn't tear herself away from the mirror. In fact she was constantly looking for imperfections and would apply and re-apply her make-up many times over until she was satisfied and even then would be paralysed with nervousness and overwhelming shyness that she didn't look her best. While trying to research her character for this page I kept coming up against several recurring themes.

One was that people around her seemed to (more often than I believe is usual)declare that if they wanted her to do something they could easily convince her to. Remarks such as 'give me 5 minutes, I'll soon convince her to do it' and 'Don't worry I'll talk to her and I'll make sure that she does it', 'No problem, she'll do anything I tell her too'.

Now I don't think for an instant that any of these people were correct but I wonder if Marilyn let them think that? My reasoning is that these were days when men seemed to control everything and there weren't many women in boardrooms. Marilyn certainly came across as a 'non-threatening woman' but sometimes I wonder how little the people around her really knew anything if it wasn't something she wanted them to know or think.

Many times we hear of her fragility and frailty but in fact I hold an opinion that Marilyn was a great deal stronger and more resilient than is commonly thought. A quote which comes to mind is the one that she ad-libbed at the end of 'How to Marry a Millionaire'. Not many people know that Marilyn actually made this line up herself, it wasn't in the script.

"I can be smart when it's important but most men dont' like it'.

When the people who were trying to control her life were acting out their dastardly deeds, I wonder how often they were actually in conrol and how often Marilyn just let them think so...

One reason I think this is that I'm a very non-confrontational person and as a result I often find people (normally men) thinking that they can use the power of their forceful personalities to brow-beat me into doing what they want me to do (business, past relationships etc). This made me realise that from a personal perspective if someone under-estimates your strength then you have a huge advantage over them in that it soon becomes clear who is attempting to be intimidating and bullying instead of who is really a friend. I won't start on a feminist rant her (honest!) but I wonder if that's not a situation that is a great deal more common that we realise. Obviously in the time that Marilyn was alive, since men wielded a great deal more (with notable exceptions) power than women, in order to get to where she wanted to be it was more often men that women whom she had to deal with. To add to that it is clear that Marilyn had a great deal of resolve and determination to achieve her goals.

A quote from Emeline Snively (of the Blue Book Model Agency that Norma Jeane started out it) that I found intriguing was when she was asked what she thought that Marilyn's 'secret' was. Her answer surprised me the first time I heard it. "Work, work, work... that girl had the most devotion to study and work and was single-minded at studying the things she thought necessary to achieve her goals."

It has been reported many times that Marilyn studied books on human anatomy, muscle structure and posture and worked out vigourously to strengthen the muscles that would better her body and posture. There have been many examples of Marilyn's total and utter lack of envy or jealousy with regard to other actresses and it would be hard to find a quote where she had maliciously attacked another person. Her compassion seemed to extend to even plant life, for when she was living with her husband Arthur Miller she read the instructions on a pack of seeds that she had planted and realised that she had to 'thin out the growth of the seedlings' and wasn't to replant them as they were too small to have roots. Marilyn happily boasted that she couldn't bear to 'just let these little living things die' and so had re-planted them elsewhere anyway, just in case. To her joy, all of the seedlings survived and she was thrilled. "They were so tiny they didn't even have roots yet!

She toyed with the idea of becoming vegetarian as "being vegetarian is supposed to make you more gentle isn't it? and yet Hitler was a vegetarian..."

In fact this was a forgivable mistake.

Adolph Hitler (as a vegetarian I get tired of saying this!) he was NOT a vegetarian. He used to go on binges of unhealthy food and red-meat and drink and then attempt to de-tox (I suppose the modern word is) by for a limited time only living only on vegetables and water.

Okay, not specific to Marilyn but this is my page and I'll rant if I want to...

"I'm a vegetarian except for fish...?" Yeah! and I'm a non-smoker apart from cigarettes! People who eat fish are NOT vegeatarians!!!

Okay I'm done.

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