Extra Credit Questions

[Rob Wick]

Roger,

The University of Illinois has a deep collection of Sandburg images culled from his collection, and it includes a number of photos of Sandburg and Monroe. Sandburg wrote a tribute to Monroe for Look Magazine after her 1962 death. Hollywood Progressive ran an article about the meeting. Here is an excerpt:

After Monroe arrived, late as usual, she ran to Sandburg, hugged and kissed him, and began talking to him. He remembered that “she sometimes threw her arm around me, like people do who like each other very much.” After they sat down, she sometimes squeezed his hand. What she found in him was a sympathetic and personable old sage who liked her for herself and not just her fame and looks. Sandburg recalled that “she had some faith in me.” She told him of her insomnia problems and “that she thought herself too intelligent to commit suicide.”

He found her to be down-to-earth and genuine. He said that “she came up the hard way,” and since his path to fame had also been difficult, he probably admired her “rags-to-riches” saga. He thought she “was a good talker.” Although “'there were realms of science, politics and economics in which she wasn't at home, . . . she spoke well on the national scene, the Hollywood scene, and on people who are good to know and people who ain't.” He added that they “agreed, on a number of things—that Charlie Chaplin is beyond imitation, for instance”—and she “never talked about her husbands.” He also found in her “a vitality, a readiness for humor,” which was a characteristic Sandburg always appreciated in others, including Abraham Lincoln. In his Look tribute, he expressed great regret over her death, “I wish I could have been with her that day. . . . I believe I could have persuaded her not to take her life.”

Best
Rob