BOOK REVIEW BY DAVID MARSHALL

The title of the book pretty well sums up its contents. This is not a book by a “best friend” that suddenly appeared after Marilyn’s death. It is not a book by a former maid who had a rough time communicating with Marilyn as she barely spoke English. Nor is it a book of compiled “memories” of “best friends” and “former husbands” taken as truth and passed off as such by a writer who had never met his subject. In fact, not many of the various authors who have published books on Marilyn can lay claim to the title of “Friend”, something both Norman Rosten and Sam Shaw can do without any of their readers ever once wondering if this is just more hyperbole for a book’s promotion.

 Shaw met Marilyn on the set of “Viva Zapata” where he had come to take photos of the man who would become another friend of Marilyn’s, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn’s current romantic interest, director Elia Kazan. Within three years Shaw would take some of the most famous pictures ever taken of her, photos that would eventually achieve iconic status and symbolize the magic of Hollywood internationally, the simple photos of a giggling Marilyn holding down the skirt of her pleated white halter-dress. The film would be released on Marilyn’s 29^th birthday, the same year Shaw would introduce Marilyn to another friend of his, poet Norman Rosten. Both men would become a solid part of Marilyn’s world and like all friends, would keep hold of that friendship through good times and bad, seeing her through divorce, bad press, worldwide acclaim and the quiet, late night phone calls when she would reach out to both for a moment of reassurance.

 I have to admit up front that “Marilyn Among Friends” has become one of my favorites. Foolishly, I put off buying it for far too long. It was only this last summer when I chanced upon it in a used bookstore that I finally read it. I would hope that none of you makes the same mistake as this, like Rosten’s “Untold Story”, brings forward the Marilyn you felt was there, struggling to filter through the lyrical nonsense of Mailer, the reverence of Guiles and the salacious exposes of both Summers and Wolfe. Susan Strasberg’s book comes close to explaining or at least allowing us to see the Marilyn we felt in our hearts was behind the ramblings of the various biographers but Rosten and Shaw are able to present this woman so clearly because they did not have the extra baggage of seeing her through the eyes of a shunted aside “other” daughter. In Shaw and Rosten’s book, Marilyn stands free of both the over-done gushing of some and the downright nastiness of others who have tried to bring her to life through print.

 Rosten writes at the very end of the book that in “those years, people, friends, were closer. There was more meaning to friendship.” It may very well be true. I can remember parties my parents hosted in those years, summer backyard barbeques where my sister and I would watch with envy as my parents sat out on the lawn chairs laughing until they’d choke, highballs and cigarettes in hand while the coals would cool and the summer twilight came on. I thought I would grow up to have friends like that, the ones my parents would refer to as “company”, as in “be on your best behavior as company’s coming”. That’s not to say that I don’t have friends, special individuals and couples who mean the world to me but I think Rosten is right. Shaw’s photo of Marilyn and Hedda, strolling hand in hand with Patricia Rosten and Edie Shaw brings that era startling  back to mind. It was a special time of closeness, where women met for mid-morning coffee klatches and the kids played in the yard, an era of confidences exchanged over coffee and cigarettes. An era and a brief period where even Marilyn Monroe could kick back and laugh with the girls and feel, for an even briefer period, that her life had reached an even keel balanced between new newfound creative freedom and the normality of friends, a loving husband and the exquisite banality of planning barbeques and weekend boating trips.

 The icing on the cake of course, are the many wonderful Shaw photographs presenting Marilyn during what was likely the happiest times of her life. That we have seen the majority of them lessens their worth not a bit. It’s all here: the candids from the set of Seven Year Itch, the SYI party hosted by Billy Wilder at Romanoff’s, Marilyn shopping for Arthur, rowing a small boat in Central Park, and then that wonderful session with Mr. and Mrs. Miller on the grounds of their Connecticut farm which cumulated in the gentle picture of Marilyn as wood nymph hugging a tree presaging Roslyn’s nature dance in The Misfits. As much as I love collecting photos of Marilyn via the Internet, there is a completely different satisfaction in being able to hold those photos in your hands, to pour over them by turning a page rather than clicking with a mouse.

 The book takes us from Marilyn’s escape from Hollywood in what would be a seminal year for her, 1955, to Rosten’s dimming memories of her death. The majority of that time span would be considered “The Miller Years” yet Joe DiMaggio makes more than one appearance. But the focus is on Marilyn, a woman unique not only in her talents and generous spirit but in her ability to linger on in the memories of friends for so many years. “Marilyn Among Friends” allows us into that tight circle of friends and provides the reader with a closer approximation of what she was “really” like. Shaw and Rosten should know and by the end of this simple volume the reader feels as if they too had had the joy of spending an idyllic afternoon in her company.