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Marilyn Monroe, a face frozen in time and beloved around the world. Well, today she would have been 100. And fans flocked to the Chinese Theatre to celebrate her birthday. CBS LA's Decca Comstock shows us how they honored the blonde bombshell who's still capturing hearts. We spoke with one of Marilyn Monroe's photographers tonight. One of few people alive who knew her so closely. He said she intimidated him a bit at first, but immediately started joking around and making him feel comfortable. Her handprints are the most visited of all time in the famous forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre. And tonight on Marilyn Monroe's 100th birthday, her fans are riding a wave of nostalgia for the Hollywood icon.
You guys love Marilyn Monroe, right? Who doesn't? She has an ethereal quality about her that is just very hard to put into words. Many here would have loved to know her, but only one man here actually did. Award-winning photographer Lawrence Schiller, who worked with Monroe when he was in his early 20s. She said, "All right, come on, puppy dog. Come on up here and sit in the corner. I'll show you a good picture." And I got up there, ran, I sat in the corner, lifted my camera, and it was a million-dollar picture.
Schiller, who published many of those pictures in the book Marilyn and Me, says the real Marilyn Monroe was more of a businesswoman than a movie star. He says she knew what she wanted as an artist and wasn't afraid to say what she didn't want. For once, we drove up in her T-Bird up to Sunset Boulevard. She ran inside, got a bottle of Don Perignon, came back and said, "Oh, let me see the pictures now." Then reached in her purse and took out pinking shears and held my pictures up to her street lights, cut the ones that she didn't like. And I held them together, kind of looking, I said, "I would have killed that one anyway."
He shared some of those stories tonight at the Chinese Theatre before a screening of Monroe's beloved 1953 film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Happy birthday. Earlier in the day, fans gathered here to sing Monroe happy birthday and watch a rededication of the Marilyn Monroe fountain, which was built to benefit the Hollywood orphanage where she once lived. Her story of starting from nothing and becoming the biggest star in the world of her time, even to this day, I think it's just so admirable and uh that makes her like a more of a real person. And Monroe's connection to the Chinese
Theater runs deep. She would often come here as a young girl and watch movies on the weekend. Reporting in Hollywood, Nicole Comstock, CBS LA.
