Missing out on Marilyn
QUESTION What were all the film roles that Marilyn Monroe either turned down or was considering when she died in 1962?
When Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962, she was in the middle of filming Something’s Got To Give, directed by George Cukor for 20th Century Fox, a remake of My Favourite Wife (1940), an oddball comedy starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
Monroe played ellen Arden, a photographer who is on a transPacific yacht race when she is swept overboard. After an exhaustive search, her husband nick (Dean Martin) has her declared dead.
On the day her husband marries Bianca (Cyd Charisse), she returns home after having been rescued from a desert island where she has been marooned for five years. She then tries to win nick back.
Though never completed, the remaining film is famous for a pool scene in which Marilyn’s character ellen attempts to entice nick away from his new wife by swimming naked.
In total, around 30 minutes of footage of this film is still available, and Monroe shows no hint on screen of her offscreen troubles while this film was being made.
Twentieth Century Fox overhauled the entire production the following year and produced another remake of the film, now retitled Move Over, Darling and starring Doris Day, James Garner and Polly Bergen.
Monroe was in the frame for at least three other films. Despite a series of feuds, director Billy Wilder, who had directed her in The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It hot, recognised Monroe’s comedic talents and is believed to have offered her the title role in his reworking of the French musical Irma La Douce, in which she was to play a prostitute. The film was made after her death in 1963 with Shirley MacLaine as Irma.
Monroe was also first choice for The Stripper (1963), a drama film about a struggling, ageing actressturnedstripper, based on the play A Loss Of Roses by William Inge. The role eventually went to Joanne Woodward. She was also considered to play Louisa May Foster in the musical What A Way To Go! (1964). Foster, a fourtime widow, discusses her marriages, in which all of her husbands became incredibly rich and died prematurely because of their drive to be rich. This role also went to Shirley MacLaine, while her husbands were played by Paul newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin and Gene Kelly.
Louise Gates, Newport, Shropshire.
QUESTION How can we get more than one crop of seedless grapes?
SEEDLESS fruit have been around for thousands of years, and some strains of seedless grape have been known since ancient Roman times.
Such fruit can naturally occur due to mutations, problems with egg/sperm fertilisation or through specific hybrid breeding — mixing plants with more or fewer chromosomes to get a sterile offspring.
Fruit farmers utilise these traits to produce entire seedless crops. Rather than using fertilised seeds, they use cuttings or graftings instead. In fact most fruit crops are cultivated this way.
In cuttings, a piece of a vine or branch is cut off, dipped in rooting hormone and then placed in moist soil so that roots and leaves form. Because they come from cuttings, new grapevines are essentially clones of the vine they were cut from.
When plants are grafted, the green top of one plant is combined with the living roots of another plant. This process can establish plants that might not be able to reproduce on their own. nuts, apples, and stone fruits are often grafted. Most seedless fruits have what is termed parthenocarpy, where fruit form without fertilisation. Most seedless grapes are not technically seedless, although they are seedless for practical purposes.
Seedless grapes differ from most seedless fruits because the seeds initially develop but abort when they are minute embryos. This is termed stenospermocarpy. Thus, in seedless grapes, normal fertilisation does occur. You can often see the remains of the aborted seed in the mature fruit.
Seedless grape breeders can remove the tiny embryos before they abort and grow them in tissue culture to propagate a mature plant. This is termed embryo rescue.
The fruit of seedless grapes is smaller because it is the seed that produces the plant growth hormone gibberellin. Most commercial seedless grapes are sprayed with gibberellin to increase the fruit size and also to make the fruit clusters less tightly packed.
One major problem with the cutting and grafting methods of cultivation is susceptibility to disease. If all the plants are clones of one original plant, they will not have the genetic diversity to fight any disease. John Barton, Milton Keynes
QUESTION In World War II, did the German, Japanese and Italian governments close their embassies in the Republic of Ireland?
IRELAND was a province of the United Kingdom until 1921 so did not conduct diplomatic relations of its own with other nations until after then.
After that, as with most small countries, it did not maintain embassies or other diplomatic missions with every nation. In some countries it uses other nations’ embassies to look after its interests and those of its citizens.
Formal diplomatic relations between Ireland and Germany and Italy began in 1922. Both countries maintained embassies in Dublin throughout the war, and Ireland maintained its embassies in Berlin and Rome for the period.
In April 1945, on the death of Adolf hitler, the German embassy in Dublin opened a book of condolence which was signed by both the President of Ireland, eamon de Valera, and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Joseph Walshe.
Irish envoys elsewhere in europe visited German embassies to sign books of condolence. The only other heads of state of neutral countries to sign these books were General Francisco Franco of Spain and Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, both fascist dictators in their own countries. De Valera’s act was widely condemned, particularly in the USA.
Despite contacts dating back 130 years, Japan did not establish an embassy in Dublin until 1964 and the Irish embassy in Tokyo opened only in 1973.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.