And The Winner Isn't

I think it’s a fair assumption that the results of Sunday night’s 84^th Academy Awards ceremony were – as in recent years – utterly predictable. The winners in the major categories were already winners at guild awards, which usually leaves no room for upsets, shockers or surprises. The closest race this year was the ‘Best Actress’ category. Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady versus Viola Davis in The Help. But in the end, Streep snagged her third Oscar for her portrayal of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, after a dry spell of 29 years. Her last win was for Sophie’s Choice in 1983, which came four years after her supporting actress win for Kramer vs. Kramer in ’79.

And while 62-year-old Streep has been referred to as the pre-eminent actress of her generation, there’s a list of great actresses who have never won an Oscar. Some of the legends from Hollywood’s golden era include Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Debra Kerr, Marlene Dietrich, Myrna Loy, Mae West, Lillian Gish, Rita Hayworth and lastly, probably the most celebrated of all actresses, Marilyn Monroe.

This poses the question: Are the Academy Awards overrated? Aside from the hoopla leading up to the annual event, do they really help boost an actor or actresses career and turn them into a star? This year, actor Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar at the age of 82, yet he’s been a Hollywood legend for as far back as his role as Captain Georg von Trapp in the 1965 hit musical The Sound of Music. Sure, winning an Oscar helps boost a few thespians careers, but can you recall who took home a gold statuette for his or her best performance, say… 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Even 2 years ago?

Some would argue that Marilyn Monroe really didn’t deserve and Oscar, yet she still proves to be known as one of the greatest film stars without ever being nominated. Personally, I believe Marilyn was overlooked in her final film, The Misfits, which was popular with critics and the public alike. Granted, she won a Golden Globe in 1960 for Some Like It Hot, and was nominated for another Golden Globe in 1957 for ‘Best Actress’ in Bus Stop, but she was beat out by actress Kay Kendall for her role in Les Girls-- Remember Kay? Yeah, me neither, but in all fairness, Kay passed away at the early age of 32, cutting short what might have been an illustrious acting career. Ironically, Marilyn died at the young age of 36, leaving an iconic impact like no other.

In a weird twist of fate, I once had the pleasure of having lunch with Marilyn’s former roommate and 2-time Oscar winner, Shelley Winters. (Shelley won two ‘Best Supporting’ actress awards for her roles in The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue.) At the time, I was in the early stages of researching my book “Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret,” when a friend who knew Shelley well invited me to join them for lunch at The Silver Spoon restaurant in West Hollywood. Although she was on the rebound from a stroke, Ms. Winters was everything I imagined her to be: a witty, tough-talking, gutsy, dame! For over two hours, she entertained me with stories of old-Hollywood, including a few candid stories about her love affairs with leading men back in the day, branding her as the “bad girl” of Hollywood.

Amidst our conversation – the majority of which Ms. Winters monopolized – I conveyed that I was working on a new book about Marilyn Monroe and the woman (Jane) who started her first fan club at 20^th Century Fox. With her face slightly drooping, due to repercussions of her stroke, Shelley smiled and shook her head, as if to say, “That one there.” Then, she proceeded to tell me how the studios tricked Marilyn into believing that she was nothing more than a sex symbol (keeping in mind that during the 1950’s, Shelley too was considered a “sex bomb”). She also recalled that Marilyn was afraid of growing older, something I had already learned when interviewing Jane.

In retrospect, I think Ms. Winters and Jane were both right. I can’t imagine Marilyn as an aging sex bomb, dressed in a muumuu and baseball cap, which is what Shelley wore when I had lunch with her. On the flipside, can you imagine a world where Marilyn Monroe never existed? 50 years after her death, her face still graces the cover of magazines, while new Hollywood actresses try to emulate her. In her short 36 years, Marilyn set the bar high, appearing in 30 films that made her an enduring icon. Still, she never earned her an Oscar. What she did do was earn a lot of money for those who benefited off her in Hollywood, and Marilyn knew that all too well when she was quoted as saying, “An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.”

My Years With Jane & Marilyn

As Hollywood gets ready for the 84^th Academy Awards, it appears that Oscar has taken a step back in time with the films and those nominated in their roles. The Artist salutes Hollywood’s silent era. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo pays tribute to turn-of-the century motion picture pioneer, George Melies, while The Help takes us back to Mississippi during the 1960’s, whereupon a southern society girl turns her friends’ lives upside down when she interviews the black maids who spent their lives taking care of their prominent families. (I predict that both Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis will walk home with gold statues.) Then, there’s My Week With Marilyn, starring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh for their portrayals of Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier during the 1957 problem-plagued movie The Prince and the Showgirl.

My Week With Marilyn is an adaptation of late writer, Colin Clark’s books “My Week With Marilyn” and “The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me,” which chronicles Clarke’s supposed encounter with Marilyn during the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl. Michelle Williams has received favorable reviews as Marilyn, and is said to have captured her appearance, attitude and mannerisms. I’m not sure any actress can capture the essence of Marilyn – just saying – but that’s not what this post is about. I wanted to address the issue of Clark’s books being a ‘supposed encounter’ with the renowned sex symbol. Williams herself admitted to having hesitations that the movie was being advertised as being “based on a true story.” And she wasn’t alone.

Amy Greene, widow of Milton Greene, who was a photographer and vice president of Marilyn’s production company was quoted as saying, “I was there every day, and I knew what was happening. Clark was on the set, and he was a gopher. ‘Hey, I need a cup of coffee,’ or whatever. No one regarded him as anything but a gopher.” While Greene’s son, Joshua, was quoted as saying, “It’s a complete lie. It’s a fantasy. He was a fourth-rate waterboy.”

Lighten up, guys. Gophers and waterboys have feelings too, you know?

The fact is, people who knew Marilyn are doubtful that there was ever a hint of a romantic relationship between Marilyn and Clark, yet it’s been said that the filmmakers never verified the authenticity of Clark’s memoirs. Clark died in 2002 and isn’t here to defend himself. The same could be said for the woman (Jane), who is at the center of my upcoming book, “Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret.” But the important thing I’d like to convey is that Jane was very much alive when I initially started the project and optioned her life rights to tell her story about Marilyn.

Without giving away too much about my book, Jane was in ill health when we met and always wanted to tell her story about Marilyn before she left this planet, only she wasn’t a writer. Sadly, Jane passed away in 2007, however, while she was alive I played the role of a journalist, recording her fondest memories of Marilyn. I also have photos of her and Marilyn together, along with other personal artifacts (i.e. Marilyn’s signature on pictures and notes to Jane) that Christie’s auction house authenticated. And I also contacted people in the industry who knew of Jane’s connection to Marilyn. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it took me years to verify Jane’s story, let alone wrap my mind around it. Once I had, a few top literary agents in the publishing world and industry professionals were eager to take the book on until they found out that Jane had passed away. Keep in mind, a couple of them met Jane when she was still alive and couldn’t wait until the book was completed.

With that said, it’s out of any of our control when any of us are to leave this crazy planet. And I pray… (pausing to make the sign-of-the-cross), that I’m still kicking when the book finally is released. True, I put a lot of time and energy into it, but beyond that, this story was important to Jane, and I’m her mouthpiece. Once I really got to know her I understood, unequivocally, that the possibility that she made things up or stretched the truth was zero. She had a solid grasp on what happened, even forty years later. How many of us can say the same? But to reiterate, should anyone question Jane's story with Marilyn, I can state that having gotten as close as I did to her, it was not within her make-up, at that point in her journey through life, to fabricate anything.

So, while many of you raise your glass this Oscar night to toast your favorite star, I’ll be raising mine to Jane and Marilyn for what one day could be a “true life” best picture nominee…

The 11 Year Itch

With my new book “Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret” nearing publication, I had the itch to start blogging about the book’s status and my long journey of how it came to transpire. Some of you who are fans of my Facebook page, Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret, are already privy to the information how, for a little over a decade now, I’ve been working on a true story about the woman who started Marilyn Monroe’s first fan club at 20^th Century Fox. For those of you just learning about the book, I invite you to become a fan on Facebook and follow my blog.

Now, there’s only so much an author can reveal about his/her book before it hits the shelf – or in many cases today, Kindle – but it’s the stories behind “the story” itself that can be just as intriguing. For instance, I never in my wildest dreams would’ve imagined that one day I would meet (let alone write about) a person who shared a direct correlation to unarguably one of the most famous movie stars of all time. Granted, as a kid growing up in Upstate New York, I was fascinated with all things Hollywood. Where or how the fascination came about is beyond me. All I knew was that one day I would be involved in the movie world, be it writing, directing, and for a fleeting moment, even starring in one. At the age of 17, I had accomplished all three… by filming my own home movies. On weekends, I would summon together my cousins and neighborhood friends and tell them we were going to shoot a movie. No script. No budget. Hell, we didn’t even have sound, being that I used my parent’s old 16mm movie camera. What we did have, however, was fun. Since it was the late ‘70’s, we didn’t have access to laptops, iPads, iPhones or a Wii-- We were our own entertainment. And I was the Cecil B. DeMille at the helm.

One of my epic productions was a recreation of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic, The Birds. My biggest dilemma was how to tackle the climatic final scene when Tippi Hedren’s character is attacked by an endless array of birds. Using my artistic genius – at least I thought it to be genius back then – I created an endless array of birds out of tube socks with cardboard beaks. I filled the beaks with ketchup so when my cousin (who portrayed Tippi) was repeatedly pecked, it would leave an illusion of blood streaked across her skin. Damn! If only youtube was around back then, I’m positive that movie would’ve gone viral!

Fast forward to the mid-eighties. After receiving a B.A. degree in English and Journalism at a SUNY college in Upstate New York, I moved to Manhattan. Hell’s Kitchen, to be exact, where high crime, crack heads, muggers and prostitutes were everywhere. And while it made for good writing material, I knew deep in my heart that Hollywood was calling me. I had hit the 11-year mark, which seems to be a running theme in my life, when I had the itch to leave the left coast for L.A. Ah yes, the bluffers paradise. Or as Woody Allen once said, “A place where they shoot too many movies and not enough actors who star in them.”

Speaking of actors, there’s an old expression in Hollywood how, ‘you’re only as good as your last picture,’ meaning that an actor’s popularity depends on how successful his or her last movie did at the box office. Well, the same holds true for a writer. You see, when I moved to L.A. the only movies I had under my belt were the ones I shot as a teenager. What I did have was what most people in New York would consider a solid writing resume, which consisted of several plays I had written that were actually produced, including my off-Broadway comedy, Tell Veronica! But this was L.A. The movie capitol of the world, and unless my last name was Neederlander, my plays and their favorable reviews meant basically squat to ‘the suits’ in the business. On the flipside, I did interview with a couple popular TV shows at the time who found my resume to be impressive, yet I was too over-qualified to be hired as a writer’s assistant on the shows.

But I never felt overwhelmed or defeated. Aside from the fact that this is where I wanted to be for as far back as I can remember, I was a firm believer that the universe hands you a gift when you are least likely to be looking for it. And that’s when I met the woman who started Marilyn Monroe’s fan club. Her name was Jane, who led me down what I refer to as ‘The Marilyn Rabbit Hole.’ At one time Jane had over 4,000 pictures of Marilyn; some candid, others publicity photos from back in the day when she was a 12-year-old girl running Marilyn’s fan club. Then, little by little, I began to unwrap the gift the universe gave me, and it finally dawned on me that this wasn’t the place I wanted to be, it was where I was destined to be in order to tell the story of “Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret.”