Marilyn & Me by Lawrence Schiller Page B

Milton Greene’s; Richard Avedon’s was nothing like mine.
    In 1972 it occurred to me that there was the potential for a great book from these stunning photographs, and I considered the writer Gloria Steinem before finding Norman Mailer to write the text. Marilyn had captured his imagination as surely as she had captured the imaginations of the photographers whose work was included in the book.
    The resulting book, published a year later, became a huge best seller; and in 1975, after several disagreements, I returned to Billy Woodfield the few poolside photographs of Marilyn he had given me back in 1962.
    For Mailer, Marilyn was “every man’s love affair with America … queen of the working class … a mirror of the pleasures of those who stare at her.… She was our angel, the sweet angel of sex … a sly leviathan of survival … [who] had an artist’s intelligence … [and was] not so much a movie star as a major figure in American life.”
    For me, she was an assignment that changed the course of my life. I had been a photographer when I met Marilyn and I was a photographer when she died, but during the days that I was around her, something changed inside me. She used to tease me about my entrepreneurial spirit, but in fact she ignited it. After the success of the Marilyn book, Mailer and I would collaborate on four more books, one of which,
The Executioner’s Song
, would win Mailer his secondPulitzer Prize. In the years that followed, I became a writer myself. I went on to produce and direct a number of television movies, including one about Marilyn, and for that picture I surrounded myself with people who had worked with her, including Whitey, to make sure I did her justice. John Huston took time to walk me through his experiences directing Marilyn. And now I have put my memories to rest with this memoir.
    Marilyn Monroe came into my life in 1960, and she is still a living, breathing, extraordinary presence for me fifty-two years later. I think about her often.

Acknowledgments

    Since 1994, I have written a number of books about the times in which we live, always looking at them through the window of some event that has captured the public’s interest. Last June, I remembered that this year would be the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, so I went to my archive. The memories came flooding in.
    As I noted in the preface of this book, Lawrence Grobel has been interviewing me for years, so it only made sense that I would ask him to work with me on the first draft. My first wife, Judi, was helpful in triggering my memory. Over the years I have worked with a fine editor, Veronica Windholz, who has put her hand to four of my books and now again with this memoir. Two of my close friends, Mike Lennon and David Margolick, read the manuscript and made important suggestions and contributions. Author Kaylie Jones dashed off suggestions to me after reading my second draft. My brother, Martin, came up with the book’s title.
    Benedikt Taschen had seen my photographs in yearspast. He jumped aboard and is publishing my work as a signed limited art edition. I soon realized it was my dream to have my words also published as a stand-alone memoir. My son Howard helped me to develop a presentation I could take to the right publisher; and my daughter, Suzanne, has preserved Hefner’s original letter to me and Billy for all of these years.
    Without telling my friend Gay Talese, I asked his wife, Nan, to read this book. She loved it and asked if she could publish it as a small memoir. Well, was it possible for two publishers to publish the same book at the same time in two editions? Sonny Mehta, Knopf’s publisher, and Tony Chirico, the president of Doubleday/Knopf, supported the idea and I thank them for their confidence in my work. Nan brought her years of experience to the table, and the skills of her publishing house. Andy Hughes, head of production, Peter Andersen, head of design, Pei Loi Koay, and