Marilyn Monroe Her Shoe and Me

By Howard G. Allen

Basically this book is about the week that I spent with Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller at their apartment in New York City on East Fifty Seventh Street back in 1960 when I was a young wide eyed aspiring actor of twenty.

Marilyn showed me the whole city; took me everywhere. It was and still is the most exciting week that I have ever spent with anyone. Then she revealed something to me that she had never revealed to another single soul.

This book is about that week, what she revealed to me and the results of the secret that she revealed to me back fifty years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453557976

Howard G. Allen

Howard Allen is a graduate of the Dramatic Workshop and an alumnus of the Herbert Berghof School of drama both of which are located in New York City. Mr. Allen also took acting classes with Stella Adler, Gene Frankel, and Lee Strasberg back in the nineteen sixties, as well as Ivor Francis and Madeline Sherwood. Mr. Allen Is a member of Screen Actors Guild (SAG) American Federation Of Television And Radio Artist (AFTRA)and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). In Mr. Allen’s earlier years he spent several seasons with the Louisville Theatre Guild in Kentucky and the Clarksville Little Theatre in Clarksville, Indiana. Founder of The Troupe Repertory Company in New York City, Mr. Allen left the Troupe after four years of being the director and was the founder of another repertory company, The New York City League Of Playwrights. Mr. Allen resides in New York City and now spends most of his time writing plays and novels, songs and poems while smoking his cigars and drinking his wine, reminiscing about space and time and dreaming of all that was sublime.

Book preview

Contents

PART ONE: THE BEGINNING ---- I MEET MARILYN

PART TWO: MY FIRST FULL DAY IN NEW YORK

PART THREE: I MEET ARTHUR MILLER

PART FOUR: MY FIRST SUBWAY RIDE.

PART FIVE: THE PARTING

ADDENDUM, OR AFTERTHOUGHT

MARILYN MONROE, HER SHOE AND ME.

This novella is dedicated to my late daughter

Laura Angela Allen that crossed over just

Recently on April 27th 2010.

She proved invaluable to me in helping

Me write this novella and had a lot

Of input into it through

The first half of part four of this book

The story of Laura as an infant was only to be in

This book, but after she crossed

Over I have added a summarized story about her as

An adult and her death.

After her death, with much anguish

I finally summoned up the strength

And courage to finish this novella.

H. Allen

MARILYN MONROE

HER SHOE AND ME

A novella

By

Howard G. Allen

PART ONE: THE BEGINNING ---- I MEET MARILYN

After working in an aluminum factory for one year in Louisville Kentucky I decided that that kind of work was not for me, so I decided to embark upon another career. This was January, 1960.

After conversing with my brother-in-law’s boss who owned his own electrical company, he said that I should pursue a career in the computer field; so I did. I enrolled in a business college to study business and computers. After two months of arduous studies at this business college I decided that this was not for me, because it was too boring and tedious.

I then plundered through my cerebrum as to what my future should be. Like a mad man in a desert searching for water because I felt that I was dying of thirst for a direction, my mind frantically searched my cerebrum for an answer. After all I was all of twenty years old at the time and I had no time to lose. I was swiftly becoming an old man with no direction in sight.

Aha, aha!! I finally got the answer! I would be an airline pilot. That was an exciting career.

So I trotted out to Bowman Field in Louisville and went to a flying school and told the instructor that I wanted to become a pilot.

They only had small planes, Piper Cubs, Aronica’s, etc. I knew that I had to start out with small planes at first if I wanted to advance on to bigger planes. Upon approaching the instructor of this flying school I told him that I wanted to learn how to fly a plane and that I wanted to take flying lessons.

The instructor ask me if I wanted to start that day. I said yes. He ask me if I could ride a motor cycle. I said Yes. He then ask me if I could drive a stick shift car. Again the answer was in the affirmative. He said The lessons are twenty dollars per hour with a two hour minimum. That’s fine with me, let’s get started was my answer.

I was expecting to have a week or two classroom instructions before actually flying a plane, but the instructor took me over to this small Aronica and said This is the plane that you will be taking flying lessons in, so lets get started.

He climbed into the cockpit and turned the ignition on, came out of the cockpit back onto the tarmac and said This is how we start the engine. He then took hold of the propeller and gave it a swift turn and the engine started up. He then said We’re ready to go.

I said to him You mean that you are going to start teaching me how to fly in a plane right now by actually flying the plane? He said Yes. So I said That’s okay with me, let’s go. So we got into the plane, him in back and me in front and we taxied out on the runway and took off.

Naturally, he was in control and was in charge of taking off. There were dual controls on the plane and he talked me through everything he was doing and told me to pay close attention at what the controls were doing in my part of the plane.

We took off from the airfield and climbed to about one mile and leveled off. He then told me that he was turning the controls over to me, and he did. He told me to do different things which I did and it was quite simple. He was right, if you can ride a motorcycle and drive a stick shift then you can fly a plane.

Over the next two months I became a pro. Take offs and landings, nose dives and stalls and all the rest that one has to learn to fly a plane.

After two months of flying lessons I became a pro. I was ready to solo, but I got very bored with flying as I did with business school and computers, so I decided that being a pilot was not for me and stopped taking flying lessons.

I was getting into a panic mode about my future, because I was becoming an old man. I was now almost twenty years old.

I rummaged through my cerebrum again to give me answers. My thoughts went back to my childhood to when I was five, six, seven years old.

Back then my interest was theatre. I loved the theatre at a very young age and did school plays in first grade and appeared in plays at the local church.

THAT’S IT I THOUGHT! I will become an actor. As an actor I can be a business man, an air plane pilot, a lawyer, a doctor, a rocket scientist, or even a cold blooded killer if I want, and when the curtain falls I can be myself again, so I joined a theatre group across the river in Clarksville Indiana and then later became a member of the Louisville Theatre Guild.

I spent three seasons with those two groups and then decided that if I wanted to be serious about being a professional actor that I would have to go to either New York or Los Angeles. I decided on New York.

I did not know the first thing about New York City and the thought of going to New York made me quake in my shoes like every small town person that thinks about going to New York City.

While in my first year with the theatre group in Indiana I decided that I wanted to go to New York to study acting. This was Nineteen Sixty. I was still only nineteen years old.

How do I go to New York I thought. Where will I go to if I go there? So I decided to call a theatre critic at the Louisville Courier Journal. He was known as the GRAND DADDY of the theatre critics. He had once been a major critic if not the major theatre critic in New York City. I was apprehensive about calling him, but I did. I called him and ask him if he knew any theatre schools in New York City that I could study at. He was quite congenial and told me that he did not have the time to talk to me at the present moment, but would I like to meet him at the BROWN HOTEL in Louisville the next day at lunch to talk to him. Of course I said YES.

I ask to take off from work the next day so that I could go and have lunch with this very important theatre critic.

He was a portly gentleman in his sixties the best that I could surmise and quite amiable to all of the questions that I had for him.

We had an agreeable lunch and I ask him a million questions and he gave me several names of schools that I should contact in New York and he told me to call him back tomorrow and that he may have additional information that he could give to me.

We pretty much hit it off. He seem to like me and I definitely liked him. So we had lunch and he went back to work and I went back to my apartment.

Every Sunday morning I would listen to the concert on my radio coming from Carnegie Hall and would dream about what Carnegie Hall was like.

I had been dreaming about New York City for several months before I ever met this theatre critic and had bought a map of New York City to study so that I would know how to get around when I finally went there.

I called several of the schools in New York within the next week to find out about their curriculum and how much the tuition was and etc.

When I called the DRAMATIC WORKSHOP and the director told me that they were located in Carnegie Hall. That was all that I needed to know. I ask to be sent a brochure and when I got the brochure I definitely knew that I wanted to study at the DRAMATIC WORKSHOP because in the brochure it gave the names of famous alumnus of that school.

My two favorite people in the theatre were alumnus of the DRAMATIC WORKSHOP; Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando, so I made up my mind that that was where I wanted to study.

I am getting a little ahead of myself here, because I did all of this after meeting with the theatre critic a second time the next day at the Brown Hotel again.

When I walked into the Brown Hotel the next day to meet with this critic he had a little grin on his face. He could tell how eager I was about going to New York and studying acting and I think that he was a little amused at my naivete, perhaps bringing back memories of himself when he was a young man pursuing a career in the theatre.

He was having Red Snapper for lunch that day and he ask what I would like to eat. I told him that I would have the same thing that he was having, so he ordered lunch for me. After lunch, being the gentleman that he was he refused to let me pay for my own lunch.

So he says, You want to truly pursue a career as an actor? I said Yes. He said I appreciate the enthusiasm that you have for the theatre, but I warn you it is a hard road to travel. I said That’s okay with me, it beats working in a factory.

He said, "I have some good news for you.