Oakland Tribune, California, June 10, 1951
Ten to one, you know Hollywood’s Marilyn Monroe as Miss Atomic Bomb, or as Miss Cheesecake. Or as “The Shape,” or even Miss Flame Thrower, because she’s been that too.
You’d recognize her anywhere because she has one of the most-photographed figured in the curve-conscious film word. She has personality appeal, too - the kid that kept men movie-goers glued to their seats to see “The Asphalt Jungle” a second time. And Marilyn had only a bit part in it!
But: there’s another Marilyn! Behind the cheesecake, the girl with the smile and the figure is a scholar and a student. Here’s proof:
- She’s enrolled for a literature course at the University of California at Los Angeles.
- She has only two charge accounts - both at book stores. “You’ll usually find her in the poetry department,” said a clerk recently.
- She writes verse herself. “My poems are kind of sad,” she says, “but then so is life.”
- She likes to talk about such cultural big-wigs as writers Thomas Wolfe and Walt Whitman, musicians Mozart, Beethoven. But she’s also strong for jazzmen Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.
She’s Still Atomic
That’s Marilyn the scholar, who’s really a bright girl searching (as so many people are) for some meaning to life. Has it made her highbrow? Stuffy?
“Not a bit,” says Marilyn. “If the boys like me and want my pin-ups, I’m ever so happy. The cheesecake and sexy pictures are parts I enjoy - as long as I can do them honestly.”
And the future? “Acting - real acting,” she says. “Not just posing. There are things inside of me that I don’t know how to say except through acting.”