I don't mean rhinestones

How life should be.

The legend

The one and only Norma Jeane Mortenson, aka Marilyn Monroe, would have been 95 years old today...

The only article I can find that mentions this milestone anniversary is this one in Deutsche Welle (DW), which despite its trendy use of the word "woke" [how much do I loathe that word?!], is worth a read.

Madness is genius

Marilyn would have been 90 years old.

“When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I'm already better than them.”

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

“I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot!”

“If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.”

“I'm not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful.”

“If you're gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty.”

Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson, 1st June 1926 – 5th August 1962)

Unlikely conversations, #397 in a series

Groucho Marx and Diana Ross


Eleanor Roosevelt and Lucille Ball


Eartha Kitt and Marilyn Monroe


Gloria Vanderbilt, Pearl Bailey and Truman Capote


Kathleen Turner, Madonna, Martha Graham and Calvin Klein

Oh, to be a fly on the wall...

Unlikely conversations, # 361 in a series

Sylvia Sidney and Hermione Gingold


Andy Warhol and Tennessee Williams


Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett


Marilyn Monroe and Karen Blixen

Oh, to be a fly on the wall...

Happy New Year...

...from all here at Dolores Delargo Towers - and Marilyn, Jane and Charles too!

She conquered

Marilyn by Phil Stern

"I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it."

"Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world."

Marilyn Monroe (1st June 1926 – 5th August 1962)

Life is a party

"Only an expert fabricator could survive the public tightrope walk required of someone trying to portray herself as both the taste-making doyenne of European society and a self-effacing American nobody." - biographer Sam Staggs

If you weren't invited to an Elsa Maxwell party in the mid-20th century celebrity whorl, you were nobody. She knew something about everyone.

Elsa Maxwell injected a sense of fun into post-war society parties, and the great and the good came flocking to her door to lap it up, from royalty to Hollywood. The superstars of the entertainment world all carefully kept the grande dame on side, for fear she would launch a tirade against them in one of her syndicated newspaper gossip columns or numerous TV appearances.

She not only entertained in person and in print, she also wrote books on "etiquette", wrote and produced music for theatre and film (and appeared in a few) - and in 1959 she even recorded an album of her own, Elsa Maxwell - Her Voice and Music [oh, if only I had a copy of that!].

A bizarre mix of contradictions, Miss Maxwell was renowned for being coarse and vulgar yet aspired to mix with the highest echelons, and she was probably a lesbian (and quite possibly a stalker at that) yet publicly decried homosexuality. Certainly, by all accounts she was a much-feared harridan.

Her endless name-dropping and not-so-subtle snobbery belied the fact that she was (in her own words) "a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background, who decided to become a legend and did just that."

Yet when she died, aged 82 in 1963, barely a dozen people turned up for her funeral. The party probably wasn't big enough, or fun enough. Or maybe the joke had simply run its course.

"Life is a party. You join after its started and you leave before its finished."

"I don't hate anyone. I dislike. But my dislike is the equivalent of anyone else's hate."

"Nothing spoils a good party like a genius."

"Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can."

Elsa Maxwell (24th May 1883 – 1st November 1963)

Unlikely conversations, # 276 in a series

Anita Loos and Cecil Beaton


Dame Edith Sitwell and Marilyn Monroe


Carol Channing, Poly Styrene, Jackie Collins

Wouldn't you just love to have been a fly on the wall?

The instrument

"If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument."



Eve Arnold (21st April 1912 - 4th January 2012)