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Blonde Rebellion
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I post things but you won't like them. Let's kill them... with kindness.
Press party for Marilyn Monroe Productions, January 7th, 1955.
Press party for “Marilyn Monroe Productions”, January 7th, 1955.
Marilyn Monroe Productions [Part IV, Adam Victor ‘The Marilyn Encyclopedia’]
Before the release of The Prince and the Showgirl in April 1957, Marilyn issued a statement claiming that Greene had been mismanaging the company and conducting secret negotiations without her knowledge. Marilyn proposed to bring a new Board of Directors. Five days later Marilyn replaced the company lawyers with Arthur Miller’s own legal advisor Robert H. Montgomery, his brother-in-law George Kupchik, and friend George Levine.
Milton Greene publically responded in the Los Angeles Times: “It seems that Marilyn doesn’t want to go ahead with the program we planned. I’m getting lawyers to represent me, I don’t want to do anything now to hurt her career.”
Marilyn’s counterstatement was far less conciliatory, accusing Greene of giving himself false credits: “My company was not formed merely to parcel out 49.6 percent of all my earnings to Mr. Greene, but to make better pictures, improve my work, and secure my income.”
Marilyn Monroe Productions made no more movies, though it continued to exist for tax purposes to handle Marilyn’s earnings. This ultimately led to problems with the tax authorities, which had, from the company’s foundation, suspected that Marilyn had created the company purely for purposes of creative accounting.
Marilyn Monroe Productions [Part I, Adam Victor ‘The Marilyn Encyclopedia’]
In 1954 Marilyn finally had enough of mediocre sex-role typecasting and a salary pegged to just $1500 per week, many times lower than the vast majority of her colleagues. In November she divorced Joe DiMaggio, and in December, after months of planning with Milton Greene, she left for New York and put the finishing touches to her brainchild, Marilyn Monroe Productions.
The world learned of the formation of Marilyn Monroe Productions on January 7, 1955, when a public statement was read out to eighty journalists and friends at the East Sixty- fourth Street home of lawyer Frank Delaney- the only notable press absentees were “hostile” columnists Dorothy Kilgallen and Walter Winchell. Marilyn was appointed company president, with Greene named vice president; 51 percent belonged to Marilyn, the remaining 49 percent to Greene.
To celebrate the launch, Marilyn took the Greenes and their pals to see Frank Sinatra’s show at the Copacabana night club. The fact that it had been sold out for weeks was no problem, the management fitted in an extra table by the stage. In some reports, the party continued at Marlene Dietrich’s apartment.
