If I had observed all the rules, I'd never have gotten anywhere. Everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like a sort of chunk out of you. I don' think they realize it, but it's like 'grrr do this, grr do that...' But you do want to stay intac - intact and on two feet. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you know, of any kind of nature - and it won't hurt your feelings... Only the public can make a star. It's the studios who try to make a system out of it. It's all make believe, isn't it? Sometimes I've been to a party where noone spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties...the ladies would gang up in a corner and discuss my dangerous character. Arthur Miller wouldn't have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde. That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some other things we've got symbols of. Gee, I never thought I had an effect on people until I was in Korea. There was my name up in lights. I said, 'God, somebody's made a mistake.' But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, 'Remember, you're not a star.' Yet there it was up in lights. |