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Sam Kashner’s article “The Things She Left Behind” [October] did not address another of the mysteries surrounding Marilyn Monroe: how the troubled actress struggled with stuttering at various points in her life.
Monroe stuttered as a child, and this speech impediment later returned for two years when she was a high-school student. A speech therapist taught her to speak in a breathy tone of voice, something that became her trademark as an actress. Kashner chronicled the troubled final weeks and days of her life, but he should have mentioned that during the shooting of her last movie, the uncompleted Something’s Got to Give, from which she was fired, she was under so much stress from her personal life that her stuttering returned and caused her many problems in delivering her lines. Tape recordings of these outtakes have circulated underground for years.
Marilyn Monroe will forever be a star. However, a compelling and unknown part of her legacy is that over the years she has served to inspire young people struggling with stuttering. —EDWARD S. HERRINGTON, Longmeadow, Massachusetts
THERE IS NOTHING “curious” about Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper washing the sheets at midnight following Monroe’s suicide. Anyone who has tended to a dying person knows that the body evacuates fluids when death occurs. Even a beautiful woman, often referred to as a “goddess,” is not immune from leaving an unpleasant mess, which the housekeeper thoughtfully cleaned up. —R. UPTON, Monterey, California
THE REVELATIONS IN “The Things She Left Behind” seemed loose, unconnected, and unexciting—not to mention untitillating. I would say that the whole exposition induced a mighty yawn of “so what” from this reader. And I am sure there are many others who share my take on it.
I must confess that I don’t see Marilyn Monroe as some kind of icon of American beauty, talent, and allure. Good body, yes. Some acting ability, yes. But I can’t look up to her as a mysterious goddess of love and joy. Of course, I find it difficult to put Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana on the pedestals of martyrdom, too. —WILLIAM A. HARPER, San Diego, California
AS USUAL, Vanity Fair, you have outdone yourself. This month, I got lost in “The Things She Left Behind.” What a great article. But it was nothing short of a total shock to dreamily peruse the Marilyn items and then turn the final page and be greeted with the cold, dark close-up of Vladimir Putin looking like some 17th-century monster about to suck the soul out of my very body [“Dead Soul,” by Masha Gessen]. What an interesting choice of article placement. —HEATHER VAUGHAN, Phoenix, Arizona
Screen Wars
JAMES WOLCOTT IS RIGHT [“Little Big Screen,” October]. The best time to go to the cinema is in the afternoon because no one other than those who love film takes time away from work or education just to watch one. That’s what the weekend is for, so come Friday or Saturday night, film-loving cinema-goers avoid theaters. And, as Wolcott discusses, there are problems posed by the modern audience. But don’t abandon the theater; don’t surrender it to the obnoxious audiences. The familiarity of the TV series may be comforting, the immediacy of it and the low costs appealing. However, there is a magic in the cinema unattainable anywhere else. —MATHEW BAYLISS, Manchester, England
Splitting Hairs
SENATOR JOHN McCAIN cannot lift his arms above his shoulders [“From the Jazz Age to Our Age,” October]. He hasn’t been able to do so since he was tortured in Vietnam. So the side on which he parts his hair seems a little less relevant, psychoanalytically. Even though I didn’t vote for the guy, Graydon Carter’s comment was a little counterproductive. —DAVID CARLET, Montclair, New Jersey
THE REAL REASON a man parts his hair to either the right or the left is pretty basic: cowlicks. —JOYCE CLARK, Burlingame, California
The Eloise of Shamrock Hotel
I READ with great interest and delight Bryan Burrough’s story “The Man Who Was Texas” [October], because when it became clear that Glenn McCarthy was better at drilling oil and partying than running a hotel, my father, Frank Briggs, was brought in by Equitable Life Assurance Society to manage the failing Shamrock Hotel. A Cornell hotelman whose expertise was in turning around problem properties, my father arrived in Houston in 1951, with his wife and three young children. We moved into a large, beautiful suite on the 16th floor of the Shamrock and lived there happily for three years. As a little girl, I was in heaven. What other child has Annie Oakley, plus the Cisco Kid and Pancho, who were in Houston for the annual rodeo, drop by her birthday party? Or has the world’s largest pool in her backyard? We left the Shamrock in 1954, when Conrad Hilton acquired it, and my father moved on to manage other Equitable properties. The day the Shamrock was demolished, in 1987, was a sad one for our family. —KINGSLEY BRIGGS EATON, Montgomery, Alabama
