Marilyn Monroe in bed in a publicity still from Niagara, the movie that made Marilyn a star when it was released in January 1953. When asked once what she wore to bed, Marilyn famously replied, “Chanel No. 5.”

I slept with Marilyn Monroe 10 days ago.

Not in the flesh, obviously, because the fabulous Marilyn has been dead and buried (encrypted, actually) for more than 46 years.

No, not in the flesh, but something more than platonic …. something, hmmm, spiritual.

Let me begin at the beginning (fade to black and reopen in the lobby of a classic, old-fashioned hotel) …

My lady love (Karin, not Marilyn) and I arrived at the Crowne Plaza Niagara Falls (Fallsview) hotel — to give the genteel old place its clumsy current name — in the middle of a thunderous rainstorm that made the Falls even more dramatic than a sunny day. Power knocked out by the storm had just been restored to the hotel shortly before we arrived.

I will acknowledge the hotel as the Crowne Plaza, but for me it will always be The Brock —  the Hotel General Brock when it was built in 1929 as the first grand hotel in Niagara Falls, later the Brock Plaza during much of its illustrious history and, for a while, the Skyline Brock.

Above, an early postcard of the Hotel General Brock with Niagara Falls wildly out of position. Below, the Brock Plaza as it was when Marilyn Monroe stayed in Room 801.

The Brock has lost some of its exterior majesty, corseted now by a casino, Hard Rock Cafe, Starbucks and other 21st-century upstarts, but Crowne Plaza has maintained the Brock’s elegant glory inside  and spiffed up the old girl with a major renovation last year.

So Karin and I are checking in at the front desk and the clerk tells us we have Room 801.

I break out in a broad idiot’s grin and start babbling incoherently.

Karin watches the display with bemused tolerance because she knows I had requested Room 801 when I made the reservation online earlier.

I had requested 801, but I never thought we’d get it. So to hear the magic number flow from the desk clerk’s mouth was like winning a lottery jackpot for me.

And just what is so special about Room 801 of the Hotel General Brock/Brock Plaza/Skyline Brock/Crowne Plaza Niagara Falls (Fallsview)?

It’s the bedroom of the suite Marilyn Monroe occupied for much of June 1952 while she was in Niagara Falls filming the movie that made her a certified major-league star.

The movie was, of course, called Niagara — a noir melodrama about a scheming femme fatale (Marilyn) plotting the murder of her neurotic basketcase of a husband (Joseph Cotten) while on vacation in the Honeymoon Capital.
 
The movie’s promotional tagline was “Marilyn Monroe and Niagara — a raging torrent of emotion that even nature can’t control.”

Marilyn was already a hot topic in Hollywood when she made Niagara. She had received good reviews for small parts in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, a strong supporting role in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night,  and was the star of two minor films about to be released the following month — the comedy We’re Not Married and the drama Don’t Bother to Knock.

But it was her offscreen activities that garnered Marilyn the most attention.

In March 1952, Marilyn blithely turned a brewing studio scandal into a publicity bonanza by freely admitting that a nude pinup photo making the rounds  was indeed one of her taken in 1949 when she posed nude (with photographer Tom Kelley’s wife present) for $50 to pay the rent.

That photo made millions — for other people, not Marilyn — when it  adorned calendars and playing cards and appeared in the very first issue of Playboy in December 1952.

During the feeding frenzy over the nude pinup, a reporter asked Marilyn if she had anything at all on during the photo session. “The radio,” Marilyn replied.

 
It also got Marilyn on the cover of Life magazine in April 1952 with the tag “The  Talk of Hollywood.”

And, to add to the excitement, the world had just discovered that Marilyn was dating Joe DiMaggio, the recently retired, still-married baseball star she would eventually wed two years later.

 
So when Marilyn arrived in Niagara Falls on June 5, 1952 — having just turned 26 on June 1 — she was a major celebrity, but not yet a major movie star.

Niagara would change all that. Niagara was Marilyn’s movie from start to finish.

Niagara introduced the full-blown sultry Marilyn Monroe “look” and established her as the era’s biggest screen sex symbol. Niagara also let the world know she was a major actress — even though Marilyn had to fight for recognition of her acting ability her entire life.

Marilyn had received word on her birthday that she had won the much-coveted role of Lorelei Lee, the Blonde of the title in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but it was Niagara that established her as a star who could carry a picture to success on her own (well, maybe with a little help from twitchy co-star Joe Cotten and steady director Henry Hathaway).

Hathaway, a Hollywood veteran of westerns and film noir, was accused of exploiting Marilyn’s cinematic sensuality — a charge he happily acknowledged since sexual power over men was a key to the character Marilyn was playing in Niagara. If that heat didn’t transfer onto the screen, the movie didn’t work.

In one notable shot, the camera holds on Marilyn’s swaying bum for a full 16 seconds as she walks toward the Falls. It has been called “the longest walk in cinema history.” After seeing Niagara, snippy actress Constance Bennett noted: “There’s a broad with a future behind her.”

Even the New York Times film reviewer was swayed by Marilyn:

“Obviously ignoring the idea that there are Seven Wonders of the World, Twentieth Century-Fox has discovered two more and enhanced them with Technicolor in Niagara, which descended on the Roxy yesterday.

“For the producers are making full use of both the grandeur of the Falls and its adjacent areas as well as the grandeur that is Marilyn Monroe. The scenic effects in both cases are superb.”

Here’s the link to the full Jan. 22, 1953 New York Times review of Niagara.

So back to the check-in desk of the Crowne Plaza/Brock hotel.

“Room 801. Marilyn’s room,” the desk clerk said. “I booked it for you myself.”

“Thank you.” Idiot grin.

“Now you have to realize it’s not quite the same as when Marilyn stayed here. She had a suite that is now divided into two separate rooms.” Pause. “But you have the bedroom she slept in.”

“I hope it’s not the same bed,” romantic but practical Karin said.

“Oh, no, all our beds are new and very comfortable.” (True, as it turned out.)

“And,” the clerk continued, “Niagara Falls itself has changed a lot in the past 50 years. Marilyn had a fabulous view of the Falls from her suite when she was here, but it’s not quite the same now.” Pause. “The casino next door and the Sheraton hotel obstruct it a bit.” Another pause. “But it’s still Marilyn’s bedroom.”

“We’ll take it.”

Room 801, Marilyn’s bedroom, is very nice. A little smaller than more modern hotel rooms, but big enough and beautifully appointed, with super-comfy pillowtop beds (as promised) and a terrific bathroom.

Move to the window and you see … the wall and rooftop of the old Casino Niagara, the one that was overtaken a few years ago by the glamorous Fallsview Casino “entertainment complex” closer to the Falls. And the hulking bulk of the adjoining Sheraton highrise hotel.

The view now from Room 801

There’s also a coppery dome you see in the photo that is, I think, part of a rooftop spa/swimming area for the Sheraton.

And beyond that you can see part of the American Falls and the mist rising from Canada’s glorious Horseshoe Falls.

If you stand on one of the room’s two queen beds — the one closest to the window, the one in the same position where Marilyn’s bed was in 1952 — you can actually still see the water rushing over the lip of the Falls.

(That water flow is carefully controlled, by the way. Even though it seems like Nature’s wild, unharnessed majesty, the water flow used to be much stronger. Much of the water is now diverted to the Beck hydroelectric plant. And at night the flow of water is cut back even further, to half its daytime rate. Niagara Falls is still spectacular, no matter how humans tamper with and crowd it with greed and chintz.)

So we were in Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom, maybe not seeing the same view as Marilyn but looking out the same window, and surrounded by the same walls and ceiling Marilyn was as she studied her Niagara script and practised smoking for her upcoming Lorelei Lee role. Later we would dine at the rooftop Rainbow Room where Marilyn frequently held court during her stay in June 1952.

Marilyn reading her Niagara script in bed in Room 801 of the Brock Plaza in June 1952/Jock Carroll, Library and Archives Canada

Now I don’t want the sexual innuendo to get too hokey here. We had no ghostly visitations that night. No rude awakenings. Nothing really happened that wouldn’t happen in any other hotel room. And we’ll stay completely away from the whole threesome thing that’s niggling at the back on your mind.

But it was still THE private quarters, the personal sanctuary of Marilyn Monroe for weeks in June 1952 when she was just bursting forth to become the most famous movie actress of the decade.

So it’s a little bit like “George Washington slept here” — but better.

Because Marilyn didn’t just sleep here. She lived here. Painted her toenails here. Poured her heart out to her closest confidante, makeup artist Allan “Whitey” Snyder, laughed and cried through phone conversations with Joe DiMaggio, and paced her suite buck naked most nights (according to local historian George Bailey, who said a favourite hobby of Niagara Falls’ adolescent male population soon became Marilyn spotting with binoculars outside the Brock).

Marilyn with her trusted makeup artist and friend Allan “Whitey” Snyder in Room 801 /Jock Carroll, Library and Archives Canada

Let’s step back into that room when Marilyn Monroe was in residence in June 1952.

Our guide is Jock Carroll, the legendary Canadian photojournalist, who spent a week with almost unfettered access to Marilyn in Niagara Falls while on assignment for Weekend magazine. Jock took about 400 intimate photos of Marilyn during that week and later wrote about the experience in his 1996 book, Falling For Marilyn: The Lost Niagara Collection, published the year after Jock’s death.

Jock Carroll shooting Marilyn Monroe in Niagara Falls in June 1952

The following extracts and photos appeared in Falling for Marilyn. The photos are part of the Jock Carroll collection of more than 20,000 photos now held by Library and Archives Canada.

On one particular day we had a tentative date for ten o’clock in the morning. At ten I phoned her room. Marilyn answered. “Oh, I’m sorry, but I’m not ready yet. You know, I don’t feel well. I don’t know what could have caused it. Maybe something I ate yesterday.”

I was disappointed, but said, “Well, I don’t want to push you into taking pictures if…” “Oh, no,” she replied. “We’ll take the pictures. But say about twelve o’clock?” “Shall I phone again or wait downstairs?” “You can come up.”

At twelve I knocked on her door. I heard her voice, saying, “I’m not ready yet. But you can come in in a few minutes.” More time passed before she opened the door. She was alone and wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe and, so far as I could see, nothing else. As she walked into the room I saw “Sherry Netherlands Hotel” printed across the back of the robe.

I looked around her room. There were a few clothes, a small folding clock beside her bed, and a photo of Joe DiMaggio. Lots of books. “Maybe you’re reading too much,” I suggested. “You’ll confuse yourself.” “I don’t about that,” said Marilyn. “I know lots of people who don’t think much about anything. And they’re just as unhappy as I am.”

She busied herself with her make-up — she chatted just as easily about that as about unhappiness. She was using a base stick to darken the flesh tones of her face and chest. “The secret of a base,” she said, “is to take most of it off That’s where most women go wrong.” She applied witch hazel, then patted herself with tissue. “See? I’m taking most of it off.”

I picked up one of her books. It was The Thinking Body. “What’s this about?” “About relaxing, partly. When you’re sitting, standing – even jogging.” She stood up and began jogging up and down the room. “Like this,” she said. She let her wrists go limp and her arms fly about. Inside her white robe other parts of that marvellous body jiggled and jounced around.

I was so totally stunned by all this activity I didn’t even think to raise my camera.

… And later …

Marilyn propped herself up on her bed. “I know what,” she said, “I have to learn to smoke a cigarette for my next picture. Give me a cigarette and you can take pictures of me practising.

“Now, this is my French inhale,” she demonstrated “Here’s how I roll the cigarette from one side of my mouth to the other with my tongue.”

She ran through pose after pose and I shot off a whole roll of film. For the final picture she leaned forward directly, into the camera — and winked one eye.

Room 801 is now non-smoking, of course/Jock Carroll, Library and Archives Canada

Jock and Marilyn did several photo shoots at the Falls and elsewhere around Niagara that week. The amazing thing is that Marilyn went everywhere unescorted. She was charming and courteous when dealing with fans who descended upon her and even took a spontaneous ride on the Maid of the Mist. Can you imagine Angelina Jolie doing that today?

It was a different world and a different Niagara Falls than the one Karin and I were in. But for a brief period we were on common ground with the fabulous Marilyn Monroe. We’ll always have Niagara, Marilyn — and Room 801.