Four days before what would have been her 100th birthday, Hollywood legends look back on their friendships with a woman who, underneath the studio sheen, was warm, supportive and empathetic<\/p>\n
You can judge a woman by the people she surrounds herself with. For the last few months I\u2019ve been talking to the people Marilyn Monroe surrounded herself with, during her eventful 36 years on earth. Ostensibly and primarily, I was doing this to make a radio documentary, which begins on what would have been her 100th birthday. But I also had a secret secondary motive: I wanted to find out if \u2013 maybe in another life \u2013 Marilyn and I might have been friends.<\/p>\n
The first thing to say about Monroe\u2019s friends is that she had a lot of them. The fact that more than six decades have passed since her death, and it\u2019s still possible to find enough living people to interview, tells you something. This is all the more surprising because MM (as she\u2019s sometimes referred to in fan circles) seems far too much the archetypal, immortal screen goddess to do anything as ordinary as have mates. And while it\u2019s possible to imagine her trailed by a harem of pathetically adoring men \u2013 like Tom Ewell\u2019s character in The Seven Year Itch \u2013 her sex-symbol image means people find it harder to envisage her having real friendships with women.<\/p>\n
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