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My journey ends here...

MARILYN MONROE PRODUCTIONS

Office located at Milton Greene photo studio, 480 Lexington Avenue, New York City.

Story

November 1954 : Marilyn divorced Joe DiMaggio.

December 1954 : she left to New York to found, with Milton Greene, her own production society.

On January 7, 1955 : public statment in front of 80 reporters and friends, in the lawyer Frank Delaney's house; the only absent reporters were Dorothy Kilgallen and Walter Winchell (particularly hostiled to Marilyn ).

Pictures

arrival

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seated
with fur

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without fur

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with reporters

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with Elsa Maxwell

with Frank Delaney

with Marlene Dietrich

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in the stairs

signing autographs

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with reporters

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other

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Marilyn was named presidente with 51% shares and Milton Greene vice président with 49% shares.

Their lawyers were Frank Delaney, Irving Stein; the bookkeeper was Joseph Carr.

She celebrated the event at the Copacabana, a night-club where Frank Sinatra was performing.

By acting this way and for her own, she called the all-powerful studios into question; she was vilified by the press.

She prepared herself to a sabbatical year : she lived at the Greene's property, stayed at the Waldorf Astoria when she was in New York City, started to take some courses with Lee Strasberg and began a psychoanalysis.

Milton dealt with the financial development of the main capital of the society, prepared some movie projects and worked with his lawyers team who re negotiated Marilyn's contract with the Fox.

Pictures with Milton Greene

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After a year, the society announced that they had negotiated a new non-exclusive contract with the Fox.
The huge success of "The Seven Year Itch" reinforced the Marilyn Monroe Productions's position, and Marilyn forced the Fox to submit. Her new contract included a check for the residual salaries, a new salary of 100 000$ for shooting 4 movies in 7 years and guaranteed her the Fox approval for all her personal projects. She also held a right of inspection on the screenplays proposed and also on the directors and directors of photography.
Her victory was one the first breach in the great Hollywood studios system.

Her place as president of her own production society gave her a much more important power than the one of the most actresses of this era.

She started with 2 projects :"Bus Stop" (1956) in collaboration with the Fox, and "The Prince and The Showgirl" (1957) with the Warner, her first and last independent production.

March 1, 1956, agreement with the Warner
with Jack Warner

with Jack Warner and Milton Greene

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others

1956 : the relationships between the 2 partners slowly deteriorated. Arthur Miller wanted to be involved in his wife's professional projects.

1957 : in April, before the release of "The Prince and the Showgirl", she claimed that Greene had badly ran the society and held negotiations on his own and didn't inform her about it.

She suggested a new manager staff. Five days later, she replaced the lawyers of the society by Miller personal legal advisor, Robert H. Montgomery, Miller's brother-in-law, George Kupchnik, and one of his friend, George Levine.

George Carr spent his last years to work as a bookkeeper; Irving Stein, him, became president of the Elgin Watch Company. He died in 1966.

The Marilyn Monroe Productions didn't produce any other movie but survived for fiscal reasons and to run Marilyn's income. The financial authorities closely took an interest in the society, because they suspected Marilyn to have founded it in a tax avoidance purpose.

Checks of the Marilyn Monroe Productions

April 8, 1958 payable to Cecil Beaton

November 30, 1959 payable to Marilyn

December 4, 1959 payable to Hazel Washington

March 8, 1961 payable to Internal Revalue Service

October 6, 1961, payable to Marjorie Stengel

September 29, 1961 payable to Arthur Young & Company

Letter from the Marilyn Monroe Productions to the Fox about Cherie Redmond

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