Marilyn Plays a Part in Their Lives

No matter what Marilyn Monroe believed at the end of her life, she could not have foreseen the vast extent of her legacy, could not have imagined that 40 years after her death in 1962 at age 36, there would be hundreds of flourishing Marilyn Monroe fan clubs worldwide, that stores would still be full of Marilyn T-shirts, mugs, key chains, calendars, masks and books (some by serious authors).

She could certainly not have predicted that she would earn after death what she never was granted in life: a kind of benevolent family, a worldwide community of fans who want nothing from her, who say they care deeply for her memory, respect her struggles, and apologize for the mistreatment she received from all those men who literally and figuratively handled her.

Over the weekend, to honor the anniversary of Monroe’s Aug. 5 death, some of those fans gathered in Los Angeles. They crossed continents and oceans to be closer to the memory of the woman whose blond buoyancy and baby doll demeanor belied the turmoil of her life--the woman Truman Capote called “an untidy divinity, in the sense that a banana split or cherry jubilee is untidy but divine.”

About 30 of those fans, many of whom were born long after Marilyn’s death, signed up for a five-hour tour Saturday of Marilyn’s homes and haunts around Los Angeles, an event organized by Leslie Kasperowicz, 24, of the Immortal Marilyn club, and Jill Adams, 35, of the Forever Marilyn club. The tour was part of a three-day commemoration by various Marilyn fan clubs.

Adams, who owns more than 200 books on Monroe, says her fandom began when she read Norman Mailer’s book on the actress and “realized that she was this huge icon who was so fragile and vulnerable and human.”

The tourists wore Marilyn T-shirts, tattoos, and hairdos; picnicked on Marilyn paper cups and plates, photographed themselves outside what was once the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home, now called Hollygrove, where the actress lived as a child, and the various Beverly Hills homes where she later lived and died. They were an intriguing assortment.

Gia Woods, 20, of Las Vegas, who identifies herself as “an actress and Christina Aguilera look-alike,” took the tour “because nobody today has Monroe’s beauty or her talent. Plus, she started from nowhere and attained her dream. I see her as an inspiration for me. She’s one of a kind.”

Caroline Krijnen, 35, a market researcher who came from Antwerp, Belgium, for the Monroe event, says she first saw the actress at age 6. “She was so ahead of her time. She was one of the first to work out, before people started talking about it. And one of the first famous women to admit being sexually abused. She broke the barrier there. She single-handedly changed the way things were done in Hollywood, by starting her own company, MM Productions, in which she owned 51% of the shares, and by producing pictures she wanted to make. She didn’t want to be the dumb blond anymore.”

Also on the tour were newlyweds Kim Kaine-Smith, 36, and husband Sean Smith, 24, of Las Vegas. Kim, a professional Marilyn impersonator at corporate wingdings, was wearing her Marilyn wig. “I’ve loved her since I was 12, when my dad told me I looked like a young Marilyn. When I turned 19 I dressed up like Marilyn and my mom and I went to the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park. The owner there saw me and told me I could make money as her look-alike.” Ross McNaughton, 59, a travel agent from Wellington, Australia, has been a Marilyn fan for 50 years, since he first saw a photo of her attending a premiere. He cut it out of the magazine, and he’s scooped up “virtually every book or magazine that’s come out on Marilyn “ ever since. “She had a mystique to which no one has come close ever since. If she walked down the street now she would not look out of place.”

An Irish Marilyn Monroe fan club is run by Julie McIlmail, 25, a public relations consultant in Belfast. “She was beautiful, talented, and she’s never gotten the credit she deserved,” she says.

Fifth-grade teacher Lisa Bates of Raven, Ky., says she became a fan when she heard a Def Leppard song about Marilyn. “Then I read Anthony Summers’ biography, called ‘Goddess,’ and I was hooked. She had a dream, she worked harder than most people who had fewer obstacles, and she fulfilled her dream. It’s so inspiring. She played the best game with the worst hand of cards ... and she was surrounded by people who were like leeches.”

Trino and Leja Chavez, both in their 20s, flew in from Chicago for the tour. It was a big sacrifice to make to honor their heroine, they said, because they have two babies at home and Trino was laid off from his shipping clerk job at a Marshall Fields store after Sept. 11. “The bills are piling up no matter what we do--so we decided to give ourselves this one treat,” Leja Chavez said.

Benice Cooper, 44, was also there. She loads cargo on airplanes at Heathrow airport in England, and says her heroine has been Marilyn for at least 25 years. “She was so talented, so underrated--but she came out on top. She was a survivor--for as long as she could hold on.”

The tour ended at a house in Brentwood that was the first home Marilyn ever owned, and was where she died of a drug overdose. There is Internet chatter among fans about one day purchasing the house through combined donations and turning it into a shrine. There is also talk about a possible Marilyn museum, for which her fans would raise the money and maintain.

Eileen Porter, 55, a financial director from Bedfordshire, England, called herself “the oldest person on this tour.” It pleased her and her husband, Kevin, who runs a charity for homeless people, to think that “so many young people are so fond of Marilyn Monroe.” The Porters began collecting Marilyn objects in their youth, dropped out while they raised their family, and have now gotten back into their hobby. The collection includes period magazines, plates, calendars and figurines. “It’s probably worth a lot of money,” she says, “but the money doesn’t matter. I feel that if I had met her, I’d have liked her. She was a good human being.”

Rick Watson, 47, a quality management director for an Austin, Texas, aerospace firm, sports a Norma Jean tattoo on his arm. He says he has all 10 Life magazines that featured Monroe on the cover. “I also have 3,000 pictures of Marilyn on my computer,” he adds. He is one of the few who’ve seen the inside of Marilyn’s Brentwood house. He jumped the fence a few years back while it was unoccupied and being renovated. “She’s a big part of my life,” he says.