Dana Andrews on Marilyn Monroe

You can get the greatest picture from Europe and just play it in the art houses to the intelligent people, and it'll flop and it doesn't make a star of anybody. But it is so much more gratifying to work in a good picture. It's very difficult to get such a picture made. They don't want to make a picture which doesn't appeal to the whole segment of the public. It's nearly impossible. Because actually motion pictures are strictly for money. It's a business. The men who make pictures, in my opinion, are only gamblers. They don't know very much about their business except the results of it and what it can do for them personally. They have no artistic sensibilities at all, because they're money men. They talk in terms of money, and if a little trollop off the streets comes and makes money for them, they are on her side and she's a great lady. I've seen it happen many times. Until she is that, she is just ... nobody.

On our 10th wedding anniversary, Mr. Wyler and a number of his friends were over, and his wife called and said, "We're having dinner with Johnny Hyde"--who was an agent with the William Morris agency--"and wonder if we can bring him along." I said, "Well, it's just a buffet thing, of course, bring him along." She said, "He has a girlfriend with him; could she come?" "Fine."

So this girl came. I must say she didn't look very attractive, and she didn't have anything to say, and nobody paid any attention to her. All of the other people were well known--directors, people like Preminger, people I worked with. It was not a large Hollywood-type party, a party where I didn't know anyone personally. They were all close friends. And everyone said about this girl, "Who the heck is she?" with a sort of derogatory expression on their faces. I said, "Oh, it's some friend of Johnny Hyde's." I went over and tried to engage her in conversation and didn't have much luck. She seemed shy. I thought, this is very peculiar, for her to be with Johnny Hyde, who's quite a man of the world.

f you'd been at that same party two years later, everybody would have been trying to talk to her. Her name was Marilyn Monroe.

This is the way Hollywood is. The girl was there; she was just the same as she is now, more or less, yet they weren't able to see it. Johnny Hyde saw it. He's the one who got her into pictures. "