Marilyn of my Young Dreams

When I was a preteen in the 1950s, my cousin Marlynne and I were fervent Marilyn Monroe fans. We subscribed to movie magazines—Photoplay and Modern Screen—with a feature on our favorite movie star in every issue. We  made up scrapbooks and pasted in every possible picture and article we could find. When I visited my cousin in Philly, I always brought my updated scrapbook.We reviewed our new insertions immediately, and most seriously.

i also loved Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the beautiful celebrity power couple of the time. In the spirit of today’s media name couplings, maybe they would have been known as “CurtLeigh.”

But Marilyn was my idol, bar none, and I followed her life story and career faithfully. I can’t tell you how many times I saw her on the silver screen, most notably with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire, and with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in the perpetually hysterical Some Like it Hot.

Glamorous Hollywood musicals in technicolor, and black and white romantic comedies, played at the Plaza Theater in my New Jersey hometown at fifty cents for a Saturday matinée. My allowance covered that and a box of Raisinets, the movie food in those days along with Good & Plenty and Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy.

I lived in the movie world of the 1950s. The scariest movies, Tarantula and Creature from the Black Lagoon—the stuff of nightmares—are still seared in my memory.

I decided to write to Marilyn Monroe herself at the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio to let her know I was a loyal fan and to request an autographed picture.

By return mail I received a matte finish 8×10 black and white photo of Marilyn wearing a sparkling diamond necklace and leaning against a beautifully draped satin background, with an inscription in bright red ink especially for me, To Barrie . . . .

My mom gave me permission to place a long-distance telephone call to my cousin to share the amazing news.

Fast forward to my adult life and Antiques Roadshow on PBS. In one episode, a woman brought in the same exact photo of MM with the handwriting in red ink. The ephemera appraiser flipped out and said that Marilyn herself had used red ink.

‼‼‼ He estimated the value at $5,000 ‼‼‼ 

I screeched, then danced around the living room. I had saved the photo for more than forty years, protected in a beautiful brushed gold wood frame worthy of Miss Monroe.

Fast forward another few years, and it turns out that the appraiser was wrong—it was later determined through archival research and handwriting analysis that the studio secretaries customarily signed for Marilyn, regardless of the ink color (it does have some value as a fan photo, but only a small fraction of the original).

My hopes to sell it to help pay my daughter’s freshman college tuition were dashed. But now I get to keep the photo of the sweet, sad, and beautiful movie star who I adored then, and still do.