Was Marilyn Monroe secretly a lesbian?

par lotusflower Sam 28 Juin 2014 - 8:17

As the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death approaches (August 5th) publishers and news outlets are looking around for interesting stories about the beautiful but troubled Hollywood screen siren.

Marilyn-The-Passion-and-the-Paradox.jpgThe writer Lois Banner has produced a biography, Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox (see left), which claims that Monroe had affairs with women, and spent much of her life concealing her sexuality.

An extract of the book has been published in The Guardian:

"She had affairs with many eminent men - baseball great Joe DiMaggio, playwright Arthur Miller, director Elia Kazan, actor Marlon Brando, singer Frank Sinatra, the Kennedy brothers – and she married DiMaggio and Miller," Banner writes. "Yet she desired women, had affairs with them, and worried that she might be lesbian by nature."

She continues, "How could she be the world's heterosexual sex goddess and desire women? How could she have the world's most perfect body on the outside and have such internal imperfections? Why was she unable to bear a child? The adult Marilyn was haunted by these questions."

Another book, Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret, (see below pic) as told by Jane Lawrence to author Tony Jerris, reveals how Monroe seduced her when she was a 16-year old girl.

Lawrence reveals how she and the movie star became friends when she started a fan club for Monroe at 20th Century Fox, and their friendship became something more.

She describes how the then 29-year-old actress "leaned in and kissed me full on the lips, very softly and very slowly. I was nearly hyperventilating."

Marilyn-Monroe-My-Little-Secret.jpgThe Daily Mail also recently published an article which alleges that Monroe preferred women sexually. The author of the article, Michael Thornton, claims to have met many classic Hollywood stars throughout his life, including Marilyn Monroe when he was a 15 year-old boy.

His sources of information about the star include film directors who worked with her, and actresses she became intimate with. He also claims to have read the transcripts of taped sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, which he believes confirm that Monroe had a string of lesbian encounters.

Thornton says he met Jean Negulesco (who directed Monroe in How to Marry A Millionaire) in 1969, six years after she died, and that Negulesco told him that Monroe had a life-long struggle with her sexuality.

Thornton writes: "Negulesco had been due to take over the direction of Marilyn’s final film, 'Something’s Got To Give'. Only a day before he was due to visit her, Monroe was found dead.

‘I still think I might have saved her if I could have got to her in time,’ he told me.

‘You know what was wrong with her, don’t you?

'Her whole existence was a search for identity, and her sexual identity was a complete lie.

'She told me once she had never had an orgasm with a man in her entire life.’"

Thornton also claims that Celeste Holm, who appeared with Monroe in All About Eve, told him that Monroe had a complex about sex with men because she was afraid of getting pregnant and giving birth to a mentally abnormal child (because schizophrenia ran in her family). Holm said that Monroe also suffered from endometriosis, a gynaecological condition causing intense pelvic pain, severe cramps and painful periods.

Holm is quoted as saying “She was afraid of it [sex with men], and turned to older women as sexual role models.”

Thornton claims that Monroe’s first husband, Jim Dougherty, lied about their sex life. Although he bragged about how much Monroe loved sex with him, his close friend and confidante Martin Evans was allegedly told by a worried Dougherty that Monroe spent most of their early marriage locked in the bathroom.

“She had sex books and manuals that were given to her, and none of them made a difference," Evans said.

“She was scared. From my information, she even asked if it were possible for her to never have sex with Jim.

“To be honest, I don’t think they had a good sex life ever — despite what Jim later claimed.”

Betty_Grable.jpgCeleste Holm allegedly revealed that Monroe had an obsession with Betty Grable (left pic) [the 1940s star known as the Girl With The Million Dollar Legs].

She said: “She followed Betty around everywhere, studied her all the time and copied everything she did.

“Betty, let me stress, was happily married to Harry James, with two daughters, and was not in the least that way inclined, but she understood Marilyn and was patient with her.”

Thornton also claims that in 1969, Grable confided in him that she had found Monroe’s pursuit of her “sometimes scary, but you have to understand that all her problems had to do with her not being able to have a child.

“She would have been a wonderful mother and it would have saved her life if only she could have had children.”

He also alleges that Monroe pursued and propositioned Judy Garland. Garland is quoted as saying: “One night at a party, Marilyn followed me from room to room. ‘I don’t want to get too far away from you,’ she said.”

Before Monroe signed with Columbia Pictures in 1948, she met Natasha Lytess, a drama coach at the studio.

She reportedly told Monroe: "I shall mould you into the great actress I suspect you can be. But to do so, you must submit to me. Do you understand?"

Monroe moved into Lytess’s apartment while she was being wooed by the Hollywood agent Johnny Hyde. When Hyde died from a heart attack in December 1950, Natasha is said to have rescued Monroe from a suicide attempt with a drug overdose.

According to Thornton, Monroe told her close friend, actor Ted Jordan, that she and Lytess were sleeping together.

She said to him: “Why not? Sex is something you do with people you like. What could be wrong with a natural act?”

Monroe described Lytess as: “a great teacher, but she got really jealous about the men I saw. She thought she was my husband!”

Lytess disliked the baseball player Joe DiMaggio, who Monroe started to date in 1952 and later married. He always referred to Lytess unflatteringly as ‘Morticia’.

“If it were up to me”’ he is quoted as saying, “Morticia would take a long walk off a short pier.

“Maybe I could get through to Marilyn if I didn’t have this broad to deal with. This broad is gonna ruin her, I’m telling you.”

Joan-Crawford.jpgThornton also claims that in the transcripts of Monroe’s taped sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, she describes lesbian sex with Joan Crawford (left).

She said in the tapes: “Oh yes, Crawford. We went to Joan’s bedroom. Crawford had a gigantic orgasm and shrieked like a maniac. Credit Natasha with that. She could teach more than acting.

“Next time I saw Crawford, she wanted another round… after I turned her down, she became spiteful.”

After her encounter with Crawford, Monroe then had liaisons with two other veteran Hollywood stars, Barbara Stanwyck and Marlene Dietrich.

After Monroe’s divorce from Joe DiMaggio in 1954, he confided to the New York newspaper columnist Walter Winchell that the real cause of their breakdown of the marriage was her preference for her own sex.

Shortly afterwards, Monroe moved to New York and began studying at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and his wife, Paula, with whom Monroe allegedly established a relationship.

At this point she "dumped” Lytess. Before Lytess's death from cancer in 1964, she said of Monroe: “The truth is, my life and feelings were very much in her hands.

“I was the older one, the teacher, but she knew the depth of my attachment to her, and she exploited those feelings as only a beautiful younger person can.

“She said she was the needy one. Alas, it was the reverse.”

Following Monroe’s marriage to playwright Arthur Miller in 1956, Paula Strasberg accompanied them to London as Monroe’s acting coach. Strasberg is said to have had a strong hold over Monroe.

British movie star Jean Kent, who appeared with Monroe in The Prince And The Showgirl, said: "Marilyn would not make a single move or take a single step without Paula’s approval. Someone heard Paula telling her that she was the most popular person on earth, more popular even than Jesus!"

Taylor_and_Burton_-_Cleopatra.jpgFive years later, at Frank Sinatra’s cabaret opening at the Sands, Las Vegas in June 1961, Monroe allegedly had a one-off sexual encounter with Elizabeth Taylor (see left, pictured with Richard Burton), who was six years her junior.

Taylor wrote in her diary: "Her touch was electric. I wanted to see how far the bitch would go. But she had to do all the work."

Thornton writes that Monroe's marriage to Arthur Miller was just as unsatisfying sexually as those to Jim Dougherty and Joe DiMaggio. They divorced in 1961, and she became more reclusive.

Around this time, there was a lot of speculation that Monroe was intimately involved with the Kennedys, but Dr Ralph Greenson allegedly affirmed that Monroe "was not sexually involved with either Kennedy brother or with any other man at the end of her life."
- See more at: http://www.whensallymetsally.co.uk/news/celebrity/marilyn-monroe-secret-lesbian#sthash.sOTG83cG.dpuf