(7 of 11)
1962: As it must to all movie stars, the nude scene came to Marilyn Monroe. It was really in the script of Something's Got to Give, and perfectionist Director George Cukor said no to the flesh-colored "nude suit" Marilyn wanted to wear. Cukor cleared the set of "all males not actually involved in the production," admonished electricians to "turn around," and Marilyn slipped into the pool like Botticelli's Venus, while cameras whirred. As she paddled around, the chief electrician shouted, "Bobby, make your No. 10 a little higher." It was later reported that at this point Marilyn said very distinctly: "I hope Bobby is a girl."
1963: Sick Comedian Lenny Bruce, 37, wasn't laughing. Like he missed the trial. While a Chicago jury was convicting him for an "obscene" nightclub performance, Bruce was being arrested in Los Angeles, charged with possession of narcotics, and released on bail.
1964: At long last, Elizabeth Rosamond Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher took on the Burton. After 24 months as the world's most famous lovers, the seemingly (or unseemlily) inseparable couple made it legal in Montreal at a Unitarian ceremony attended only by eleven of their dearest employees. That night, said Liz, "we sat and talked and giggled and cried until 7 in the morning."
1965: Gstaad is where Charlotte and Anne Ford go to gsport themselves with the young film crowd: George Hamilton, Natalie Wood and David Niven Jr. But since Dad was honeymooning at nearby St. Moritz, the girls dropped over to visit with him and their new stepmother, Christina Ford, 38. "Hi there!" one hearty Midwestern voice boomed at a startled Henry in the lobby of the Palace Hotel. "I'm your dealer in Dayton!"
1966: None of the reviews rankled so much as the one that his "old friend" Edmund ("Bunny") Wilson, 70, wrote for the New York Review of Books last July, picking apart the translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin by Novelist Vladimir Nabokov, 66. At last, in the February Encounter, Lolita's scholarly old man replied to Bunny. "A number of earnest simpletons consider Mr. Wilson to be an authority in my field," Nabokov began, and went on to recall their old association: "I invariably did my best to explain to him his monstrous mistakes of pronunciation, grammar and interpretation" of Russian. And, just to finish the job: "Mr. Wilson's use of English is also singularly imprecise."
1967: Terrible was that combat, Horrible, ugly, vast, gigantic, furious, awesome. Arms is a calling that causes many tears.
That kind of literary style is also enough to make a grown man cry, but in this case, the author can be forgiven. After all, Charles de Gaulle, 76, was only 15 years old. The lad wrote the one-act play, entitled An Unfortunate Encounter, to win a boys' magazine prize for the best playlet in verse. After le petit Charles won the prize, Encounter was printed in 50