Did Mamie Van Doren and Marilyn Monroe Really Feud?
What To Know
- Mamie Van Doren, often rumored to have feuded with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, insists she and Monroe were actually good friends and that Monroe was a mentor to her.
- Van Doren credits Monroe, Mae West, and Jean Harlow for paving the way for her career, and recalls Monroe as a compassionate and vulnerable person, not the rival portrayed in the media.
- After the deaths of Monroe and Mansfield, Van Doren left Hollywood, reflecting that the industry’s attitude toward blondes changed and contributed to her departure.
Mamie Van Doren, who turns 95 on February 6, is the last surviving member of the trio of 1950s-era blond bombshells that became known as the “Three Ms”: herself, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield. And in the ensuing decades, reports of animosity between the three women have persisted.
El País, for example, reported recently that Van Doren suffered a “resounding defeat” in her “long-distance feud with Mansfield and, above all, with the stellar Monroe.” But Van Doren, who became known for roles in films like 1958’s Teacher’s Pet and 1968’s Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, said Monroe was actually a friend and mentor.
According to Van Doren, she and Monroe were good friends
Baron/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
“Marilyn and I were very good friends, and we liked each other,” Van Doren told IndieWire last July, adding that they both studied with drama coach Natasha Lytess.
“I was 12 years old when I first met her, she was at the Blue Book Modeling Agency at the Ambassador Hotel, and I lived out back at the Ambassador Hotel,” Van Doren added. “And when I was a kid, and I would go into the swimming pool all the time, and I used to see her modeling all the time. So I met her when she was 17 then and I was 12.”
In a 2000 interview with Film Talk, Van Doren shared the story of their first encounter at that same hotel. “Once I got in the way when they were taking a shot of her, and the photographer got mad. So he said, ‘Get out of the way, kid,’ but she thought I stayed at the hotel with my mom and dad. She said, ‘Well, you have no right to say that to her.’ That was our first meeting.”
In fact, Van Doren credited Monroe (and Mae West, and Jean Harlow) for opening the door for her
Everett Collection
When Film Talk asked Van Doren whom she’d call her mentor, she replied, “Mae West was, in many ways. She was the one who went to jail for having the word ‘sex’ in a show she did in New York, she was the one who fought an entire system, and when she came to Hollywood, she opened the door for a lot of people. Then there was Jean Harlow — she was more a glamorous type — and then Marilyn came along in the 1950s. She really opened the door for me.”
In fact, Van Doren said when she got her contract at Universal, she was “their answer to Marilyn Monroe.” Universal made Van Doren dye her hair platinum blond and put her in “sexy” and “dumb” roles. “They didn’t know what to do with a well-endowed blonde, except giving her dumb roles,” she added.
She saw “what a sweet person” Monroe was in real life
20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett Collection
Van Doren remained connected to the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star, telling Film Talk she turned down the 1955 play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? because it was a satire of Monroe and she was tiring of the comparison. The role went instead to Mansfield.
Over the years, Van Doren often ran into Monroe at parties, but the last time the two saw each other was at New York City’s Russian Tea Room a few months before Monroe’s death. “She wasn’t doing well then,” Van Doren said. “She had not been living well, she had been drinking heavily that day, and she really looked disturbed. Marilyn was being used, she knew that and she was trying to cope with it. And the drugs made things much, much worse. It exaggerated everything. She was so vulnerable to the world, but what a sweet person she really was, lovable, compassionate. … You know, talking about Marilyn Monroe is strange. To me, she’s a person; to most people, she’s an idea.”
Van Doren left Hollywood after Monroe & Mansfield died
Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 at age 36, and Jayne Mansfield passed away nearly five years later at age 34.“That was just a very, very bad thing,” Van Doren told Film Talk, reflecting on the deaths of the other two of the Three Ms. “Hollywood didn’t want to be reminded of blondes at that time, which was also one of the reasons why they didn’t want me anymore. It was a very difficult time in my life; I really had to hang on.”
So Van Doren and her son Perry — whom she welcomed with bandleader Ray Anthony, her second husband — moved to Orange County, and that’s where she stayed, explaining that she “had to get away” from Hollywood.
But she didn’t seem to regret her decision. “I’m just glad to be waltzing around and enjoy my life more than I ever have,” she told the publication.