Thirty-seven takes of “I Wanna Be Loved by You”

During the production of Some Like It Hot, Marilyn Monroe insisted on thirty-seven takes of “I Wanna Be Loved by You” before she was satisfied. The repetition was not simply a demand for a better performance: it exposed the distance between the small differences she perceived and the near-identical, already excellent takes perceived by the director and crew. Exhaustion, public adoration, comic self-consciousness, and a deepening distrust of those around her converged in the scene.

Return to the Set

Monroe’s first full day back on the set followed a period in which she had been ill and shut away at home, while rumors circulated around her absence. Her husband was present, pale, tall, bespectacled, and visibly grim. Against that tense background, she sang the number to win the crew’s affection. Their response was an unprompted round of applause, though W, as director, was the first to begin it, and the others followed, eager to please the blonde star.

The applause brought recognition, but not immediate reassurance. Monroe kept her eyes lowered and bit her lips almost to the point of bleeding. Her heart was racing despite what the narration describes as a sedated state; she was trying to work out whether the people applauding were sincere or merely acting as if they were. The uncertainty matters to the scene: the response she longed for arrived, yet she could not confidently receive it as genuine. She asked to do the number again, and then repeated the request in the successive takes, refusing to treat applause as proof that the performance was finished.

Thirty-Seven Takes

The song’s small ukulele and its flirtatious, suggestive bodily movements made Sugar Kane seem like a deliberately exaggerated comic creation. The scene’s performance required Monroe to play a woman whose sexualized naïveté was itself the joke. Sugar Kane is presented as a sexy cartoon, fashioned for male amusement, and the role’s description as “jelly of a girl” wounds Monroe even as she recognizes that Sugar Kane has been written for her. The comedy therefore depends on a difficult balance: the character must be ingenuous enough to sustain the farce, while Monroe must shape that apparent simplicity as a deliberate performance.

That balance helps explain why repetition mattered to her. W and the others thought the takes were mostly alike, each already of excellent quality; Monroe registered fine distinctions among them and considered those distinctions fundamental. She believed she could not improve on the thirty-seventh take, but arriving at that judgment required everyone to remain inside the scene far longer than they expected. The crew was exhausted, and Monroe was exhausted too. Her exacting insistence could provoke anger and panic when others dismissed the differences she could feel, because their willingness to overlook them seemed to threaten the integrity of the performance itself.

The Camera, the Character, and the Audience

The musical number also belongs to the novel’s larger concern with what happens when Monroe’s body and image become objects of other people’s looking. In an earlier photographic session, Otto Öse’s camera had functioned like a mirror for her: the lens offered an unusually powerful reflection, while also placing her body under a photographer’s controlling gaze. The nude image that he made was later identified by a reporter as a photograph of the young Marilyn Monroe and became a public scandal. In both the still photograph and the musical performance, the camera does not merely record her; it helps turn her image into something that others can desire, interpret, and sell.

On the set, however, repetition gives Monroe a form of authority within that arrangement. She cannot remove Sugar Kane from the sexualized joke or control what the audience will make of her, but she can insist that the scene be performed again until it meets her own standard. The ukulele, toy-like beside the glossy sexual display, becomes an emblem of the performance’s artificiality. Yet the number is not meaningless to her: the gradual improvement of Sugar Kane’s interpretation is something she senses from within, even when other people treat the character as a shallow cartoon. Her insistence makes craft visible inside a role designed to make its performer look foolishly unaware.

Applause, Touch, and Distrust

After the thirty-seventh take, Monroe was satisfied enough that someone saw her smile. W complimented her cautiously and took her hands to thank her. Instead of accepting the familiar gesture, she stiffened and recoiled like a cat, short of breath and unwilling to be touched by him. The response sharply contrasts with her earlier dependence on his approval. When she had been married to the Ex-Athlete, she had run to W for praise and once wept in his arms while trying to hide her bruises; he had held her with a tenderness she had not forgotten. Now she no longer trusted him, despite their earlier closeness and the success of their previous comic film, The Seven Year Itch.

The thirty-seven takes thus end in a double result. Monroe completes a performance she considers as good as she can make it, and the crew’s applause confirms that the number has pleased them. But the cautious praise and offered hands do not restore the old intimacy between actress and director. The episode turns a comic song into a measure of both her artistic control and her isolation: she can demand another take, refine Sugar Kane, and command a room’s attention, while remaining unable to tell whether that attention is affectionate, performed, or safe.