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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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died. She was a lovely, miserably unhappy girl all the way through.

Q:

Did you see her on different occasions after that?

Cerf:

Yes. After she married Arthur Miller we saw her a couple of times. We met her at parties and several dinners.

The publicity and fanfare couldn't help but go to her head. She wore ridiculous clothes. The interesting part about this girl--one of the tragedies of show business--is that, when she was about thirteen years old, she was a ward in some house and the man of the house raped her. She was a little girl and it hurt her very badly. As a result thereof, sex to her was rather unpleasant. Here was the great sex symbol of the world, who just didn't like sex because it was painful to her. Nobody would believe this unless they knew her. Of course, being a girl who had no money and posing naked for a calendar and being propositioned by everybody from studio heads to delivery boys, she learned how to satisfy men without having to go through with normal intercourse.

We published a book last year called The Symbol. It was a novel that was more or less based on Marilyn Monroe. We shouldn't have published it. It was a very good book, but the only way that that book could have been sold really was to advertise it the way that Bernie Geis books are advertised--you know, with sensational and suggestive





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