It was almost never a problem for Marilyn to sign autographs, pose for pictures. Fans followed her everywhere she went. She received hundreds of fans outside her hotel room within hours of her arrival. They waited for her to appear, hoping to get a glimpse, a photo, or an autograph. She was known to be chased into restrooms, with fans passing autograph books under the cubicle. Marilyn even had a group in New York known as the “Marilyn Six,” who kept a vigil for her whenever she was in town.
Marilyn Monroe’s husband Arthur Miller describes in his autobiography Timebends, that Marilyn could handle a crown
As easily and joyfully as a minister moving among his congregation. Sometimes it was as though the crowd had given her birth; I never saw her unhappy in a crown, even some that ripped pieces of her clothes off as souvenirs.
Her fans’ adulation was an antidote to her lifelong feeling of low self-esteem because Marilyn was genuinely aware of the affection she received.
She relied on the most ordinary layer of the audience, the working people, the guys in the bars, the housewives in the trailer bedevilled by unpaid bills, the high school kids mystified by explanations they could not understand, the ignorant and – as she saw them – tricked and manipulated masses. She wanted them to feel they’d gotten their money’s worth when they saw a picture of hers.
