Gentlemen Prefer Blondes trailer, 1953 · public domain (US, published without notice)
1955 · New York
Marilyn Monroe
She could switch it on
Susan Strasberg described walking through Manhattan beside her while nobody recognized her. Then Marilyn grinned and asked, “Do you want to see me be her?” Nothing changed that a camera could have shown. Strasberg wrote that she made some inner adjustment and turned something on, and within minutes a crowd had gathered around her. Eli Wallach and Richard Avedon each described the same switch in their own words. She had studied it. She already had a contract, and she kept going to classes. She played Cordelia to Michael Chekhov’s Lear. On the set of Niagara, when her career was taking off, she was reading a difficult book about physical habits.
Source · Strasberg (1992); Arnold (1987); Monroe, Fragments (2010)
Principle 14 · our reading
You build presence. You are not born with it.
Taught in Topic 10 · The Monroe Method
Why we teach it
It was the same face, the same coat and the same street, so the difference was her behavior, and you can practice a behavior. That is the most useful fact about her, and it is why we teach her and do not only admire her. The witnesses do not describe a quality she was born with. They describe something she did on purpose.
The exercise
Before you enter one room this week, decide on the one thing you will give the people in it. Then give it, and do not check how you are coming across.
The warning
She was sick with fear before scenes for her whole career, and she often could not work without a coach beside the camera. In 1957 Avedon watched her perform “Marilyn Monroe” for an evening. Then he watched it switch off and leave her in a corner with nothing. She built it as a mask to hide behind, and that version destroyed her. She was underpaid for years, given the same kind of role again and again, and never safe to switch off. She died on the night of 4–5 August 1962, aged thirty-six. Practice being unnoticed as carefully as you practice being noticed.
Who Monroe was, and why we chose her
1926 – 1962
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson. She was an American actress who became the most photographed woman of her century, and one of its most underestimated performers. She fought her studio for better parts and better pay, started her own production company at the end of 1954, and studied at the Actors Studio in New York. She read seriously and she wrote. Her notes and poems were published in 2010 as Fragments. She died in 1962, aged thirty-six.
Why we chose them · our reading
We chose her because of one story that teaches more than any theory. Susan Strasberg described walking through Manhattan beside her while nobody recognized her, until she asked: "Do you want to see me be her?" Nothing changed that a camera could have shown, and a crowd gathered. She could switch her presence on. If she could switch it on, she had built it, and if she built it, you can learn it.
Monroe’s principle is practiced in Topic 10, The Monroe Method: a 1:10 video and 10 real-life exercises.
The other masters
- Ovid — The first book anyone wrote about this
- Cleopatra VII — She made him come to her
- Ninon de l’Enclos — She ended things warmly, on purpose
- Giacomo Casanova — What his memoirs really show
- Madame de Pompadour — She brought a world with her
- Lord Byron — Why being unavailable is not a strategy
- Gabriele d’Annunzio — Proof that attention matters more than looks
- Grigori Rasputin — His enemies invented most of his legend
- Joséphine Baker — Being playful worked better than being polished