Ella and Marilyn

[Larry Kart]

This, from the Songbirds site, was then confirmed by a poster there who knew Ella quite well:

The following was part of Ephraim Hardcastle's column in the London Daily Mail

on Tuesday 19 February.

"Bonnie Greer's new play, 'Marilyn and Ella' at the Theatre Royal, Stratford

East - is about the touching relationship between movie star Marilyn Monroe and

the great black sing Ella Fitzgerald. The actress helped the singer cross race

lines.

Ella once said: 'I owe Marilyn Monroe a great debt. It was because of her that I

played the Mocambo Club, a very popular (New York) [actually Los Angeles-area: LK] nightclub in the '50s. She

personally called the owner and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and,

if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. Marilyn was there,

front table, every night. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club

again.'"

They say you shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers, but I do hope

this is a true story. Anyone heard it before?

[JSngry]

The chronology smells a little fishy to me, but in no way do I know enough thereof to have any but an extremely casual opinion, so I shouldn't even be posting. But I hate to see a 0 Reply thread.

[Elissa]

Someone wrote a play based on a small item in a TV documentary about Monroe - how she'd pulled strings to help Ella perform at the Mocambo, "the biggest – and whites-only – club on the West Coast." Love that

[king ubu]

I read that story before but can't quite remember where... indeed nice!

[king ubu]

I found it - it's an uncredited text in the booklet of David Klein's great disc "My Marilyn" (Enja, 2001 - Klein plays tenor sax and is accompanied by Mulgrew Miller, Ira Coleman, Marcello Pellitteri, and his mother, Miriam Klein, joins them on a few titles). The booklet also sports a few letters and notes that Klein received in reaction to his sending out review copies of the album to friends and contemporaries of Marilyn, including Jane Russell and Eli Walach.

Here's the story as told in the booklet:

It is a very underpublicised fact that Marilyn Monroe was a passionate Jazz fan. In fact she never went anywhere without her record player and a stack of LP's by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, citin Ella's duo record with Ellis Larkins as one of her favourite records ever. Her admiration for her idol went so far that, after hearing Ella could not get a gig at the Mocambo (in the fifties Hollywood nightclubs did not invite African American artists to perform) she called the owner personally. In Ella's own words: "She wanted me booked immediately and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night I was there. She also told him - and it was true, due to Marilyn's superstar status - that the press would wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. After that, I never had to play a small Jazzclub again. She was an unusual woman, ahead of her times and she didn't know it."

(typos are mine, of course!)