West Hollywood Council Disrespects Marilyn Monroe for 40 Years

When I moved to 9000 Cynthia Street in 1982, West Hollywood wasn’t yet a city.

By the time it was officially incorporated in 1984, I noticed something curious: the new City Council seemed to love honoring itself.

Take our first mayor, Valerie Susan Terrigno. After she was convicted of embezzling federal grant funds and forced to resign, city officials still gave her four plaques celebrating her contributions to organizing West Hollywood. I’m guessing most of you reading this have never heard of her, and why would you?

Fast forward to 1997–1998 and our gruff 78-year-old mayor, Sal Guarriello. Before politics, Sal worked as a guard for the U.S. Marshal Service, transporting prisoners to federal penitentiaries. Like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, Sal also served with distinction in World War II. I never had anything against Sal (though he did refuse to speak at a major ACT UP event I invited him to in 1991). Still, the City Council decided to build a nearly one-million-dollar eyesore at one of West Hollywood’s busiest intersections in his name. I’m not sure how many people today even know who Sal was.

Councilman Steve Martin called it “our award-winning memorial” and declared it “without a doubt the most impressive monument to veterans built west of the Mississippi in the last 50 years.”

Makes you wonder how many veteran memorials he’s actually seen.

Back in 1984, one of the first historical markers I saw in WeHo was erected across the street from my apartment. It was a large plaque honoring the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills—as the church calls itself—though it’s not located in Beverly Hills. It’s in West Hollywood, at 9025 Cynthia Street, zip code 90069, a number I imagine the church quietly resents.

Side note: Urban legend has it that Marilyn Monroe asked JFK to assign her the 90069 zip code when postal zones were being finalized before their rollout in 1963. And after one phone call from Kennedy to Postmaster General J. Edward Day—voilà, 90069 became ours. I have no reason to doubt that rumor. The other one—that she and JFK named “Dicks” and “Norma” streets—I’m not so sure about.

But back to the church plaque. What pissed me off wasn’t that it honored a Baptist church. What pissed me off was that it stood a stone’s throw from where Marilyn Monroe once lived—and she wasn’t honored at all.

So, twenty-something Joel marched into a City Council meeting and made my case: let’s put up a plaque honoring the landmark West Hollywood apartment building that Marilyn Monroe once called home.

Of course, the city refused, citing a lack of “evidence” that she ever lived on Doheny.

However, even in my twenties, I had established contacts with museums and had already begun building one of the largest private collections of 18th- and 19th-century human rights artifacts in the country. I knew how to do research, and I wasn’t about to let this go.

I tracked down copies of some of Marilyn’s most famous letters—written on her private stationery, engraved with the return address:

882 North Doheny Drive, Unit #3, Los Angeles.

I also collected dozens of newspaper and magazine articles citing her residence there from 1952 to January 1954, just before she married Joe DiMaggio. She returned to the Doheny apartment after divorcing Arthur Miller in 1962 and lived there again until she moved to Brentwood.

And still, the council refused.

Ten years later, in the 1990s, I brought it up again at another city meeting. I pointed out that tour buses stop at less significant locations all over West Hollywood—so why not honor Marilyn? Again, the city saw no point in acknowledging that Marilyn Monroe once lived in West Hollywood during some of the most pivotal years of her life. I think that’s something worth commemorating—with at least a modest plaque.

Forty years later, the city still won’t give Marilyn Monroe a plaque—because apparently, being the most iconic woman of the 20th century just doesn’t measure up to being on the City Council.

Let’s be honest, readers—long after every West Hollywood council member has faded into total obscurity, Marilyn will still be turning heads, lighting up screens, and living rent-free in the world’s imagination.

For contact with me use Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joel.rothschild.2025/