Marilyn Monroe | autograph note signed, undated

Marilyn Monroe

Autograph note signed

slip of paper headed with a typed quotation "It's a responsibility -- being a symbol of sex" with an autograph note signed underneath in red ink ("I didn't say that I said its a responsibility being an actress. Marilyn Monroe"), the words "responsibility being an actress" written in another hand, 1 page, 64 x 140mm, n.d. 

MARILYN MONROE QUALIFIES HER STATUS AS A SEX SYMBOL. She was indeed being misquoted, but not quite in the way that she claims here. "Have you become a symbol of sex?" This was a question posed to Monroe in the course of a 1956 interview by Peter Martin. He wrote that she gave the question careful thought and admitted that "there are people to whom other people react", giving Marlon Brando as an example, and then continued:

"'If that part about my being a symbol of sex is true, it ought to help at the box office, but I don’t want to be too commercial about it.' Quite seriously she said, 'After all, it’s a responsibility, too — being a symbol, I mean.'"