Messages 2012
Billy Wilder on Marilyn Monroe
March 12th, 2012
Berkeley, California
Received by FAB
I am here, Billy Wilder.
I see you are reading my biography [“Billy Wilder in Hollywood” by Maurice Zolotow]. You have just read that I had said, “I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe.”
Well, that’s exactly how I felt, and that was my experience of her as her director for those two films [“The Seven Year Itch” and “Some Like It Hot”]. I have spoken with her, and she told me that she suffered horribly for certain things she had said and done. She also told me of her kinder side.
I coudn’t understand her as a mortal, but I confess that I did not see her good side. All I saw was a professional who acted most unprofessionally and who showed no regard for her colleagues. When I shared this with her, though in a nice way, she just said quietly, “I know.”
By the time I connected to her in spirit, she had already progressed out of her darkness, so I couldn’t avoid seeing goodness in her. It was a surprise, but I had had many other surprises about human nature.
Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood’s golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment). (Source Wikipedia)