| Marilyn's politics were to the left,
in keeping with the politics of many of her foster parents and her
identification with the working class. In My Story Marilyn states that
she read Lincoln Steffens's autobiography on the set of All About Eve
and liked his discussion of oppression and resistance. When Joe
Mankiewicz heard she was reading Steffens, he told her she could get
into trouble if studio executives found out. Harry Brand cautioned her:
"We don't want anyone investigating our Marilyn." She hid the book under
the bed in her apartment and read it at night by the light of a
flashlight. She was observed reading other radical literature on the
sets of her films.'" In 1949 writer Norma Barzman and her husband, screenwriter Ben Barzman, both members of the Communist Party, had scheduled a meeting of Communist sympathizers at their house in the Hollywood Hills to discuss how to respond to the House Un-American Activities Committee's attack on freedom of speech. As they waited for their guests, a young blonde woman in a convertible drove up their driveway and waved them over to speak to her. The woman, they realized, was Marilyn Monroe. She told them that two policemen at the end of the street were watching their house. They were stopping everyone driving onto the street and questioning them. She had been driving up the road to a friend's house, and she had been stopped. She spoke to Norma and Ben in her blend of metaphor and reality. "I'm glad I stopped in on you guys. I'm real glad there's people like you trying to figure out ways of not getting pushed around. I don't care what you are. I'm glad that somebody's minding the store."42 As usual she identified with the exploited. Within a few years, she would become a dedicated leftist, supporting even the Communist struggle against capitalist imperialism. In the spring of 196o she wrote to Lester Markel, a friend of hers who was a New York Times editor, supporting Castro in Cuba. By the year she died, she had subscriptions to The Nation and I.E Stone's Weekly, both radical publications. In February 1962, she visited the members of the "Hollywood Twenty" who were living in Mexico City. She talked about her support for the Civil Rights struggle, while praising the Communist leaders of China for bringing equality to a hierarchical society. From: Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner (2012), pp. 256-257 http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Passion-Paradox-Lois-Banner/dp/1608195317 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/05/opinion/la-oe-0805-banner-marilyn-monroe-icon-biography-20120805 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/books/review/marilyn-by-lois-banner.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/dowd-the-love-goddess-who-keeps-right-on-seducing.html |