In a weird way, Anna Nicole Smith got her wish. She once
declared in Playboy magazine she wanted to be
”
the next Marilyn Monroe.
”
Her sudden death at age 39 fulfilled that sad ambition.
In a weird way, Anna Nicole Smith got her wish. She once declared in Playboy magazine she wanted to be “the next Marilyn Monroe.” Her sudden death at age 39 fulfilled that sad ambition.
Like Monroe, who died on Aug. 5, 1962 at age 36, Smith’s demise last month generated a massive media mania as reporters provided ’round the clock coverage of the “drama.” And like Monroe, mystery fuels the fires of news stories as journalists and TV pundits give us every trivial fact about what might have caused celebrity Smith’s sudden death and who might have fathered her infant daughter.
I hope the public will soon grow tired of the Smith saga and instead focus on more newsworthy situations. But it’ll probably be years before this story is finally laid to rest – just as Smith was earlier this month.
Marilyn Monroe’s passing from this life into the next still excites public attention. Every few years someone comes up with a conspiracy theory about how the legendary actress met her end. One theory even claims Robert F. Kennedy “murdered” Monroe to hide a politically scandalous affair he and his brother John F. Kennedy had with the blonde bombshell. Robert’s alibi, surprisingly, has a South Valley connection. When Monroe died, he and his family were at the Happy Heifer Ranch just off Watsonville Road between Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
Smith will never become the iconic figure that Marilyn Monroe became. There’s something freakish about the reality-TV star’s overbearing buffoonish style that makes her a Jayne Mansfield-like sideshow attraction. Unlike Smith, Monroe had true talent.
The sad part of this Greek tragedy is that Monroe and Smith’s humanity got lost in the sensationalism surrounding their deaths. Few people ever got to know the real Smith or Monroe, the human beings beneath the flesh fantasy.
A friend of mine did get a glimpse of the real Monroe one time. George Forrester, who I first met when I took his theater course at San Jose City College, once told the class a charming story of his close encounter with the legendary actress.
Forrester was a 22-year-old college student in Los Angeles when he worked a temp job in 1953 at the Hollywood Bowl where comedian Danny Thomas hosted a huge fundraising event for his St. Jude Children’s Hospital charity. Forrester was hired to man the stage entrance for the show. He saw a parade of famous film celebrities pass through, and the biggest star of all was Marilyn Monroe, the main attraction of the evening. Everyone waited anxiously for midnight when the movie goddess would end the show by performing songs from her hit film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
Fate somehow maneuvered George Forrester to literally bumped into Monroe. He had gone backstage to get a Coke to drink. When he turned around, he accidentally collided into the actress and spilt his soda on the star’s tangerine-colored skin-tight dress.
“She was able to brush it all off,” Forrester told me in a phone chat the other day as we discussed the differences between Monroe and Smith. “Her bodyguard grabbed me by the neck and lifted me into the air. It was Marilyn who said, ‘Sam, put him down. Put him down.'”
After Sam had set Forrester back on the ground, Marilyn tried to comfort the young man. “She made me feel comfortable because she saw that I was shook up,” he recalls. “She apologized for (Sam’s behavior) and we sat down.”
Although this was a big night where Marilyn was the focus of everyone’s interest, the actress focused her own attention on Forrester. She asked him about his life plans and he told her he was a senior in college majoring in drama and minoring in pre-dental. He told her about his ambitions to be a big-shot actor. Perhaps all too wary of the ways of the motion picture business, she advised him to stick to pre-dental.
Perhaps this very down-to-earth conversation with Forrester helped shield Monroe’s mind from the overwhelming media hype she had to face that night. “I have a feeling she kept me with her because everyone was trying to get a photo-shoot with her or talk to her,” Forrester said. “She looked at me, her eyes looked in my face constantly when we were talking, which always makes you feel good.”
That night, Forrester found a genuine human being behind the Hollywood icon. He got a chance to pull back the public image of fantasy and discovered a woman who was tender and vulnerable and who felt compassion for others.
It seems the world won’t ever get enough details about the private lives of sex symbols. Maybe the entertainment value helps distract us from our own problems.
And too many women – like Anna Nicole Smith – hold the secret fantasy of being a Marilyn Monroe clone. Maybe they don’t realize that even Monroe really wasn’t Monroe. “Marilyn Monroe” was the acting role she played for the public. Beneath the glitz and glamour, she was simply Norma Jean Baker, a girl who grew up in a humble home and faced hardships on her rough road to stardust fame.
Perhaps Monroe’s journey began in our own coastal region of California five years before George Forrester spent an evening with her at the Hollywood Bowl. Few people know the curious anecdote that before she became “Marilyn,” as Norma Jean she entered a beauty pageant at Castroville’s first artichoke festival. Forerunning her rise as the most royal of all Hollywood film stars, she won that 1948 contest and was crowned Castroville’s first “Artichoke Queen.”
Maybe there’s a message there for all women who, like Anna Nicole Smith, hunger to be “the next Marilyn Monroe.” The most legendary film star in the world started off by reigning over a simple, thistle-filled vegetable.
If you wish to become a big-shot star, remember to keep your feet firmly planted on solid ground. Goddesses plunge to earth in fatal falls when they forget their human heritage.
