Ralph L Roberts.com

It does seem somehow quieter, and more secluded than the Mapes. Except word seeped out that she was there and tonight members of a convention stood outside the building shouting for ten or fifteen minutes, Marilyn! Hey, Marilyn, where are you? What floor, what’s your room number?

"It’s my period, and the schedule calls for me to do the horseback scene, and the swimming scene in the lake. I could legitimately refuse to do them. I sure don’t like the idea of showing all the bloat wearing that bikini, but I’m going to do my darndest to do anything I possibly can to get this over."

"Clark told me today that Kay is going to have a baby. I was so thrilled, almost as excited as I’d been if I were going to have one. He said he wanted me to be the first in the company to know."

Sheldon Roskin organized a baseball game during a break today. I was massaging Marilyn’s neck when "I’m tempted to go out there and show them how to really do it. I bet they’d be surprised. I learned from a master, Joe, himself. We used to go out and he told me I could have been a professional."

One night in the hospital, after everyone had gone and I stayed behind to massage neck and feet, she, for the first time since I’d known her, brought up the subject of sleeping pills. She said Dr. Engelberg and Dr. Greenson both wanted more and more to get her completely off the need of them. "I never took sleeping pills in my life. I never felt the need, until the night during shooting of THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL and I wanted to look over my script for the next day. It was in the library and happened to be next to Arthur’s diary, opened to that day’s entry. I rarely snoop, and I certainly didn’t intend to read it, but you know how sometimes your eyes become riveted to some printed word? Well, he had written the most dreadful things about me. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I made a terrible scene. I was torn in half. I knew that an early call had to be kept, that I had to work with Paula even earlier (I was in such awe of Oliver). All of a sudden I was back with that preacher foster home, and was accused of singing before breakfast. Punished. But as bad as that had been, this was worse. I called a friend for a sleeping pill and I took it, it didn’t work. But I’ve been trying ever since." She became almost hysterical, as though she were reliving the experience. "I have two pills now they have allowed me - I asked for one Seconal and one Tuianal. I always take a Seconal toward the end of the massage because I’ve found that the combination of you and the Secanol works faster. The Tuianal at the very end of the massage, because it’s effect lasts longer.

"My God, you’re a perfectionist. Even at the art of taking sleeping pills! I was aware of something you did at a certain point in the massage, but I thought it was all the work of magic fingers." "Believe me, I wish I had the guts to try to see the night through with the massage only. Neither Seconal nor Tuianal really work without it. But I keep seeing that page."

*not sure about spelling on "Tuianal"