The Dangling Telephone

The Dangling Telephone

They found her cold body tangled in sheets. A telephone receiver dangled from a cord by the bed. Detectives concluded that she had tried to make one last call. Folks in her hometown always said that the Mortenson girl would end up dead before her time.

Actually, she really wasn’t the Mortenson girl. No one knew the identity of her real daddy. She was only six when her mother, Gladys, was carted off to the insane asylum, leaving her to be shuffled through too many foster homes, where she was abused and mistreated. In one of these homes, a renter molested her and then purred, “Here, honey, take this nickel and don’t tell anyone what I did to you.” She later complained, “I found out early on that I was only worth five cents.” Even after she grew up to be a Hollywood goddess, she saw herself as little more than a sex object.

She often said, “I want to be loved for myself.” Yet Norma Jeane Mortenson constantly reinvented herself. As a child she adopted her mother’s maiden name and became Norma Jean Baker. When she married at age sixteen, she was Norma Jean Dougherty. Later she wed a baseball legend and turned into Norma Jean DiMaggio. During her short marriage to a renowned playwright she was Norma Jean Miller. But it was as a twenty-year-old model that a Hollywood publicist gave Norma Jean her most famous name, Marilyn Monroe.

Though she parlayed her sexy blonde persona into megastardom, she always felt used and dirty, like a molested little girl. Maybe that’s why she plowed through three failed marriages and unhappy romances with the most powerful men in the world. She lamented, “I’m just a small-town girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.” Toward the end of her short life, she observed, “A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.”

At age thirty-six, her life was out of control. In desperation, she called an actor friend. After listening to her talk incessantly about how unloved she felt, he impatiently hung up. Popping lethal barbiturates, she frantically tried to call someone who would listen. The next morning, the phone was found dangling by her deathbed.

The editor of Vogue, Clare Boothe Luce, later wrote a poignant piece on Norma Jean’s death. She asked, “What really killed this love goddess who never found love?” Ms. Luce believed the answer was in that dangling phone. “Marilyn Monroe died because she never got through to someone who would love her.”

In his haunting tribute to Norma Jean, “Candle in the Wind,” Elton John sang, “Loneliness was tough, the toughest role you ever played.” It’s the hardest role that any of us ever play. Clare Boothe Luce concluded, “Millions of people are trying to get through to someone who will love them.” There is someone who loved us enough to step out of heaven and die on a cross to open the lines of communication. This ought to give you the confidence to pick up the receiver.

He’s been there all the time, waiting patiently on the line.

Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.

Jeremiah 33:3, ESV