This year would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday. She was born on June 1, and the milestone has people looking back at what made her so unforgettable.
One man who knew her personally has some answers. James Haspiel, now 88, first encountered Monroe when he was just a teenager. He started out as a fan, photographing her with a five-dollar camera. Over time, that connection grew into a real friendship.
He recently sat down with People magazine to share what he remembered. And what he said offers a different perspective on one of the most photographed women of the 20th century.
“Marilyn Monroe was a costume she put on,” Haspiel told the magazine. “It was her invention, it gave her success, but in real life, she was Norma Jeane.”
Norma Jeane was her real name. She changed it to Marilyn Monroe to make herself more marketable. The Monroe came from her mother’s maiden name. The name Marilyn was inspired by Broadway actress Marilyn Miller.
She Did Something Other Actresses Wouldn’t
Those of us who grew up in the 1950s remember how much pressure there was on women to look a certain way. Girdles were part of nearly every actress’s wardrobe. They smoothed everything out and gave that perfectly flat stomach you saw on screen.
Monroe didn’t wear one. Haspiel says that was a big part of why audiences connected with her so deeply.
“She was loved because she didn’t wear a girdle. She was real. She did things other actresses didn’t often do.”
He pointed to Lana Turner as a contrast. “In the 1950s and before and sometimes after, actresses wore girdles so that they had a flat stomach,” he said. “Lana Turner is a perfect example. She never had anything but a perfect figure, if you will.”
Monroe’s natural figure showed up on screen in her earliest films. Haspiel noted that the belly visible in the 1961 film The Misfits, which sparked speculation she was pregnant, was the same one audiences had seen all along, going back to Niagara and The Prince and the Showgirl. It was simply because she never wore a girdle.
A Friend Who Never Forgot Her
Haspiel published a book in 1991 called Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend. It included never-before-seen photographs he had taken of her himself.
He called Monroe an “angel” and said he “cried for two years” after she died. She passed away in 1962 at the age of 36.
A century after her birth, the friend who knew her best still remembers her not as the glamorous icon, but as Norma Jeane, the real woman underneath the costume.