“She Had Such an Inferiority Complex.”

From Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors, by Peter Bogdonavich:

Howard Hawks, who directed her first big success, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (co-starring established, top-billed sex goddess Jane Russell), had initially directed her a year earlier, in a major supporting role, with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, in Monkey Business (1952), which actually featured the first great Marilyn Monroe performance. In fact, her scenes with Cary are the highlights of the picture and make you wish they could have done an entire romantic screwball comedy together. The same year Marilyn died, Hawks told me, “Marilyn was frightened to come on the stage — she had such an inferiority complex — and I felt sorry for her. I’ve seen other people like that. I did the best I could and I wasn’t bothered by it too much. In Monkey Business, she had only a small part — that didn’t frighten her so much — but when she got into a big part … For instance, when we started her singing [for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes], she tried to run out of the recording studio two or three times. We had to grab her and hold her to keep her there. She sang quite well, actually. I got a great deal of help from Jane Russell. Without her I couldn’t have made the picture. Jane gave Marilyn that “You-can-do-it” pep talk to get her out there. She was just frightened, that’s all — frightened she couldn’t do it” …

Ironically, the picture that made Monroe a sex symbol, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was intended by Hawks as “a complete caricature, a travesty on sex — it didn’t have normal sex.” In a 1967 interview I did with Hawks for the BBC, he said, “Their sex was a sort of a symbol, an obvious thing, which all you can do is really make fun of and enjoy, you know, and watch them perform. You don’t try to make reality. Monroe never was any good playing the reality. She always played in a sort of a fairy tale. And when she did that she was great — something happened. But as far as doing a real story with her, I don’t believe that she’s ever done a good picture that was a real story. They were all more or less of a fairy tale quality. Kind of a musical-comedy sort of a thing.”

Hawks had told me that when he knew her on those early pictures, Marilyn wasn’t “very sexy in real life.” He said, “Monroe couldn’t get anybody to take her out — nobody. A funny little agent about five-feet-two used to cart her around. But they both [Monroe and monogamous housewife Jane Russell] were sex symbols to the motion picture public …” Hawks also said that while Russell peaked in one or two takes, Marilyn continued to improve through repetition: “With Monroe, the more you kept going, the better she got.”