***The Cold War Dream- With My Week With Marilyn In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

She, Marilyn she, all curves, slopes and harmless teeter, enflamed the red scare cold war 1950s night, the night of the long knives, the night of the snitch and the stabber- in- the- back, the night of the man in the gray-flannel suit, the night of go along or else, the night of the freeze- frame cultural stop. She, Marilyn she, enflamed fathers’ flickered hearts, fathers worn out from endless struggles against the haphazard, uneven economic circumstances of the great depression whirlwind dust bowl which drove them to despair and more recently some shallow water Pacific atolls, some damn coral reef , or some desolate Norman beach, slogging east and west to break the back of some evil men. And thinking, thinking that father’s wit thinking while blanked out in some father’s newspaper night chair, or better, in some restless sultry rumpled sheets night bed, the little woman harmlessly next to him sleeping the sleep of the just, mind you just thinking- hey why couldn’t I get next to that, why couldn’t I who sacrificed this and that get next to that blonde goddess. Hell, they say she likes men, likes them by the score (before spitting them out posthaste but how were they to know that if they didn’t get their chance next to that). Maybe she just needed a solid guy, a guy who worked as a welder down at the shipyard (or fill in the blank for the work-a-day world job) to straighten her out.

Oh yes, then snapping back to reality there was the question, always the question, of that little woman harmlessly sleeping next to him, about her fate without him in a mated world (and she a Catholic and so really up against it in the marriage lottery), about those two young boys sleeping another sleep of the just in the next room (already neck-deep in ideas od college pushed by that little woman so they can get ahead of mother and father), about that fresh mortgage hanging over their heads and the dog needing some work at the vet’s. Yes, that mix would stop a better man than him, stop him cold in his red scare cold war tracks. And so he would have to forgo that blonde goddess experience, have to shoulder on in the red scare cold war night and try to do the best he could. But in the far reaches of his mind every time he saw her in some film down at the Strand (and he saw them all), every time some newsreel photo showed up on the screen, every time he picked up a copy of Playboy or some girlie magazine (making sure that with those two growing, exploring always asking questions boys the damn thing was well hidden behind the shelves in the garage), every time he went to take a leak in the men’s room down at work and spied her figure gracing the calendar on the toilet wall he would think how he could have gotten next to that, gotten next to that easy.

That little woman, the mother of his children, those two sleeping boys in the next room, well, she sensed, sensed every time they went to the Strand, just the two of them with his mother doing the baby-sitting chores to give them a night out, bless her, and she, Marilyn she, was in the film (or hogging all the air in some damn newsreel chronicling her doings, or not doings ), or when they passed some newsstand and her picture was plastered all over Look or Life or some movie magazine detailing her latest infatuation or infidelity, or worst when he went out to the garage late at night (she knew all about that damn smut magazine stuff he hid behind the shelves- who did he think he was fooling ) his heart would beat a little more quickly. His hand in hers previously held tight would go a little bit limp. And she could sense a faraway look in his eye, a look that she knew, she was a woman after all, said he was thinking, thinking-“ well hell I could have gotten next to that, gotten next to that easy.” And she laughed, laughed at such a preposterous idea, laughed at the vanity of men and their dream-encrusted ideas.

She furthermore knew, knew when she stopped laughing that it was just a “phase,”that such dreams in any case were harmless, mostly harmless, and that if he had gotten within fifty yards of her, Marilyn, he would have swooned and gotten all tongue-tied just like that first night he had asked her for a date, asked to see her again after that USO dance down at the Starlight Ballroom when he was in the service and was stationed at the same Naval Depot where she worked in the civilian section. She had been good enough for him then, and he said, made a point of saying, she was good enough for him now especially after they had come out of one of her, Marilyn’s, movies. She of the good earth high collar house dress and sensible shoes. She of the making do when he first got out of the service and jobs were scarce and the first boy was coming soon. She of the making a good home for him and the boys. She, well, she of his real day- time dreams. Then she thought, going back to girlish times, the times before she was married, and was looking around for a mate that all the guys were always swarming around her always ready to ask her out at the slightest hope. And she, in her way, has played her little coquettish games, and had done her little ass-shakings if it came to that.

While in that frame of mind, and after taking a quick glance in the mirror, she frankly confessed that maybe she had lost a step, had not kept up her appearances, had grown into some matronly housewife what with raising kids, doing the household chores, including that damn laundry and so she resolved to take a step back and promote herself as a woman, as his woman. And promoting oneself as a woman in 1950s Marilyn America meant only one thing, for starters. Color thy hair. Whether you were a perky red-head, a feisty brunette (like her), a raven-haired devil woman or just slightly legally blonde that was step one. Lighten the damn thing as far as you could without becoming freakish. Reddish blonde, brunette blonde, black blonde, and blonde blonde a la Mae West but blonde.

A few days later she did just that, did a rinse job at home with some hydrogen peroxide, and he didn’t notice it when he came in for supper (nor did the kids but that was no surprise what would they know of love’s desperate trials and tribulations). A couple of days after that she tried some Clairol, still no takers (although one of the boys said something smelled funny after she had completed her task). Finally she resolved to take her pin money and take her case to the local beauty parlor. The results, kind of dark ash blonde which given her brunette roots was about as far as such things could reasonably go, she admitted were fabulous. That night he came home to supper and asked with a quizzical smile if she had done something to her hair. Well, yes (the kids still clueless kept to their cluelessness). He kind of kept looking at her all evening in some kind of stupor. That Saturday night though when they went to the movies, just the two of them, for a break (his mother doing the baby-sitting chores, bless her) and guys were kind of giving he the once –over she noticed that he held her hand very tightly throughout the whole movie. And that night, well, she would leave it to the imagination about what happened that night.

And of those two clueless boys, or at least one of them, Kenny, did not give a rat’s ass (his term, Kenny’s term, his neighborhood hang-out boys, age twelve bracket, exploring their own coded language to avoid scrutiny by those she, Marilyn she, smitten fathers and ashy blonde mothers) about Marilyn Monroe. He had thought her ugly with that little black beauty mark on her face, a funny shape unlike his mother’s and a funny whispery voice, when he had seen her with the parents at the Strand in Some Like It Hot or some name like that. See he had troubles closer to home, well, school trouble, well not exactly school troubles but a girl at school troubles. See Alison Crowell “liked” him (and how he knew that she liked him was through that ancient grapevine that defied all advances in communication technology when Alison had told Timmy Jones’ sister Beth and Beth conveyed that knowledge to Timmy, and Timmy, being one of those coded language rat’s ass hang-out guys, told Kenny. Simple). The problem, the trouble really was that he “liked” Alison too. Could anyone believe that. The previous year in fifth grade she was just kind of a stick, just kind of a giggling girl to be avoided at all costs in that boy hang-out world. But this year, this year she kind of got a certain little shape, a bump here and there, and , moreover, when he talked to her, or she to him, she seemed, well, she seemed kind of interesting (although she still giggled a little too much for his tastes). So no, no way, was he going to give a rat’s ass about some blonde, some movie actress (and how did anybody know if she was really a blonde, it looked fake, just like his mother’s although don’t tell her that, his mother, because he was supposed to be just a clueless kid when it came to girls’ things. He had seen Mom walking out of Lucille’s Beauty Parlor looking, well, looking different), when he, Kenny he, had to figure out how to get Alison Crowell up into the Strand balcony for the Saturday matinee. Jesus.

Many years later, the number does not matter, but many, Kenny was accompanying his wife (his third wife, Anita, so some things, well a lot of things, had got awry in his life’s love department since innocent Alison times) to a Sunday indoor flea market (invoking shades of the master flea marketer and prolific author Larry McMurtry and his doings since he was looking for old books and she, Anita, was looking for old western jewelry) on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. While there he passed (and re-passed) a life-sized (and life-shaped) cardboard poster of a woman, a blonde woman, nude, and wondered who she was because the face certainly looked familiar. Upon inquiry of the dealer selling the item (and if he had had his wits about him instead of drooling, wondering how maybe he could get next to someone like that, something like that under the sheets, he would have noticed that the dealer was exclusively selling movie-related items) he found out that she was a young Marilyn Monroe, a Marilyn at a time when she might have been from hunger, but also before she was all dolled up with every form of surgery and uplift imaginable. At that moment he finally knew why his father had that girlie magazine hidden behind the shelves that he (and his brother) found one night when they, his parents, were out and they had gone exploring. And knew too now why his mother had started to lighten her hair that time when his father would come home after work and have those far away looks sitting in his nighttime newspaper chair (and continued to lighten it until she was very blonde before she conceded to age and let it go back to its natural color and then to grey).

But that is not the end of Kenny’s story, and would not be complete without this last tidbit. That flea market moment got him to thinking, as was his wont when he was in a film mood, about Marilyn’s films, films that he had not seen for a long time, since those days at the Strand. So when he and Anita got home to Los Angeles he scurried to the local library that was choke full of DVDs to rent. He made a number of selections and over a few weeks viewed most of her films. Frankly he still didn’t see what the big deal was, what made his father and other fathers have wandering thoughts although he thought better of that Some Like It Hot than his dragged- to- the-movies as a kid opinion. What did change his view somewhat was when he viewed her in her last film, The Misfits, something her husband (or ex-husband, such things are confusing in the modern world), playwright Arthur Miller, put together for her.

There she just dominated the screen and he found himself thinking that if they had let her loose more and not faked her up maybe she would be remembered as more than some Andy Warhol icon, some American icon. But with that movie he now finally understood why Norman Mailer wrote a big- ass book about her, why that same Andy Warhol silk-screened her to eternity, why Joe DiMaggio would let his batting average slip for her, why Arthur Miller spent many sleepless nights fretting over some words that would do her justice, why some guy over in England spent a week with her being enchanted, and why his father would always make a point of saying to anyone who would listen that he had seen every film that she had ever made. Thanks Marilyn.