How Marilyn’s L.A. Fans Keep Her Legacy Alive

Ahead of this week’s service hosted by Marilyn Remembered at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles on the 62nd anniversary of Marilyn’s death, the German news weekly, Der Stern, published a feature on this annual tradition in its July 31st issue (#32), available in the UK from August 14.

Monica Shahiri, shown above at a previous event, also attended Monday’s ceremony in a replica of Marilyn’s powder-blue Travilla dress from That’s No Business Like Show Business.

Reporting for Der Stern, Susanne Hehr visited Los Angeles on Marilyn’s 98th birthday earlier this summer.

“‘Mom, do you want to give her a kiss too?’ A young woman in a flowing white dress looks at the mauve lipstick print above the name plate. It reads: ‘Marilyn Monroe. 1926-1962.’ The mother waves it off, her daughter giggles quietly. ‘My grandmother had a life-size cardboard cutout of Marilyn in a white dress,’ says Uriah Massie, 20. ‘She’s been my idol since I was little. She’s my favorite person to look up to.’ One Friday afternoon in June, Massie from Florida visits Monroe’s grave in Los Angeles for the first time. She has been looking forward to this moment for a long time.

The Westwood Village Memorial Park is hidden between a busy boulevard and modern high-rises. If you take the right turn, you can drive right up to the marble-clad columbarium, where there are fresh pink roses and a photo of Monroe. ‘This is definitely the right place to be buried,’ says Massie. It is so peaceful, ‘even in a city as big as this.’ She looks dreamily up into the treetops through which the sun’s rays fall. You can practically feel Monroe’s presence, whispers the 20-year-old so quietly, as if something else would be chased away. It is an aha moment that puts everything in perspective. ‘She was a real person, she went through a lot. She can be worshipped here as long as this place exists.’

Massie has been travelling across the USA with her mother for a week. They have already been to New Orleans, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. There they scattered the ashes of their deceased father. Massie has a tattoo above her left collarbone: ‘I love you’ in her father’s handwriting. ‘I’ve also thought about getting a Marilyn Monroe tattoo,’ she says. ‘I would love to have her on my body for the rest of my life.’

For four years, photographer Amy Gaskin has been meeting people like Massie, and she has already spent several hours on the small marble bench in front of the grave. What was born out of necessity as a project during the corona pandemic has now become Gaskin’s main occupation. ‘When we were practically all afraid to touch our purchases, I saw that there were fresh lipstick marks on the marble,’ she says. ‘I was curious about what brought people here, so I started spending a lot of time here.’ Everyone has their own personal story about what Marilyn means to them. Gaskin began to collect them and write them down. Like that of George, who drives past the grave before work to start his day. Or Donna, who bought her own resting place not far from Monroe’s grave. There are people here who stage a memorial service every year in the small chapel in the cemetery where Monroe’s funeral service once took place. Many of the true fans are rather shy, Gaskin knows. A bit like how you imagine Norma Jeane Baker, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe.

Anyone who delves into the Marilyn world of Los Angeles with Gaskin will sooner or later find themselves in front of a pink-painted house a neighborhood overgrown with plants. The door opens and a big-eyed dachshund padded into the stylish Art Deco living room. There is a black grand piano and dozens of Monroe’s blue eyes look out at the visitors from framed photographs. Greg Schreiner smiles gently: It is quite obvious who the people in his house are.

‘She changed my life’

Schreiner, an older gentleman with blond hair and a pleasantly deep voice, says: ‘She changed my life completely.’ When he speaks, he looks at his hands or the floor. His first memory of Monroe is when he was seven years old: his parents took him to the drive-in cinema to see Some Like it Hot, the celebrated Billy Wilder classic. ‘I just thought she was wonderful,’ says the man, who was still a boy at the time. Schreiner began to collect everything he could get his hands on of the global star. At the time, it wasn’t much, he says, just a poster or a newspaper article. Schreiner grew up in an agricultural community of just under 500 inhabitants in the US state of Illinois. ‘There was no one like me. So I was an outsider in that respect.’ In 1979 he moved to Los Angeles – because of Monroe, of course – and since then he has spent almost every August 4th, the anniversary of Monroe’s death, at her grave. There he met like-minded people. At some point someone asked: ‘Why don’t we have a memorial service for her next year?’ And so the fan club Marilyn Remembered started in 1982. Many doors opened for him, says Schreiner, who himself works in the entertainment sector: ‘Almost like a kind of Marilyn magic from heaven.’

Only a dozen people showed up for the first memorial service for Marilyn, but today her fan club has tens of thousands of members. ‘We all grew up feeling different because we were so fascinated by Marilyn and people didn’t understand that,’ Schreiner says. The fan club brought outsiders together and even enabled him to meet people who had known Monroe. ‘It was a great experience because I never met, but through these people I feel like I know her.’

When Schreiner talks about his love for Marilyn Monroe, it’s always about his own story. ‘It was a passion that drove me.’ Because only if you’re passionate about something can you be successful in life. Schreiner looks around: ‘I live in this house and have many things that once belonged to her.’ Clothes, furniture, even Monroe’s refrigerator. It’s almost a little scary to know so much about her under his roof. But: ‘She took over my life and steered it in the right direction.’

In the cemetery, Uriah Massie poses next to Monroe’s photo, like Schreiner once did. What would legend say about her posthumous fame? Massie thinks for a long time, Gaskin’s camera clicks. ‘A life like Marilyn’s means constantly worrying about being watched,’ Massie finally says. ‘So maybe it’s simple: she’s loved and idolised.’ Yes, Massie is happy with that, she exclaims: ‘Marilyn is everything.'”