Marilyn Monroe just played her first big role in the movie niagara (1953), directed by Henry Hathaway. And against all odds, she decides to give an interview to the magazine Motion Picture and Television in which the actress tells behind the scenes. “She is going to denounce the predators she calls the wolves, this toxic universe of Hollywood for women. She is not yet at the top of Hollywood, untouchable like a few years later, but on the rise, wanting to become someone. So she’s taking a pretty big risk to her career and going to describe all the men who’ve tried to harass her.”explains to the magazine “8:30 p.m. on Saturday” (replay) Raphaëlle Baillot, co-director of the documentary Marilyn, woman of today.
“The first real wolf I met should be ashamed of himself, confides Marilyn to the magazine, because he tried to take advantage of a child. That’s all I was. I wasn’t suspicious when he stopped his car and started talking to me. He told me he had an office at the Goldwyn studio. And why not come see it? He would give me camera tests…” Anne Plantagenet, author of the book Marilyn Monroe (ed. Gallimard), says: “She’s a bit surprised when she shows up because there’s no one in the studio. The man hands her a script and tells her to start reading. She barely read a line dialogue that he asks her to lift her skirt.”
“She dares to tell this story”
Raphaëlle Baillot explains the scene: “She says to herself, yes, maybe. He wants to see how I am made at the same time as listening to how I play. So, she pulls up her skirt for the first time…” The man asks her to lift her skirt a little higher and when for the third time he says “higher!”which sounds like a terrible injunction, the actress realizes that he has crossed the room to sit next to her: “Marilyn Monroe doesn’t give up. And where she’s even stronger is that she dares to tell this story.” What she wants is to warn young girls who arrive in Hollywood with their heads full of dreams. Anne Plantagenet recalls that“At that time, young actresses in Hollywood were really just objects at the mercy of the decision-makers. And the decision-makers were men.”
“If you want to be successful, you have to get in the producer’s limo once in a while… And she said later, ‘Yeah, I slept with producers. If I didn’t, there were twenty- five more behind me who were going to do it.’ Can we both sleep with some, since we have to succeed, and then denounce them as predators, asks documentary filmmaker Raphaëlle Baillot? The answer is of course yes. You can be both desirous, ambitious… and denounce predators. It’s all about consent.”
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