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Who really said it

Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul

Attributed to Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962 · American actress; the line appears in her posthumous memoir
Attributed In copyright

The line is genuinely in print under Monroe’s name — My Story (New York: Stein and Day, 1974), chapter 10, page 47, the earliest printing Quote Investigator ↗ documents. But the memoir was published twelve years after her death, from a typescript the publisher did not verify, and it was shaped by ghostwriter Ben Hecht. QI’s own verdict: not a fabrication, but “a ghost writer may have helped to shape the text.”

Last verified 7 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul” attributed to Marilyn Monroe, My Story (New York: Stein and Day, 1974), ch. 10, p. 47. The memoir was published posthumously and ghostwritten by Ben Hecht, so the wording may be his; Quote Investigator calls the passage's provenance uncertain. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Marilyn Monroe estate and the estate of Ben Hecht, through the book’s publishers — Stein and Day (1974), later Cooper Square Press and Taylor Trade Publishing). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Marilyn Monroe — American actress and Hollywood icon. Theme: "Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line is actually printed

Earliest documented source
My Story
Publication
New York: Stein and Day, 1974 — chapter 10, page 47; verified on paper by Quote Investigator
Ghostwriter
Ben Hecht (1894–1964), credited as an author only in the 2000 Cooper Square Press reprint
Status
Posthumous. Set from an unverified typescript supplied by photographer Milton Greene, twelve years after Monroe’s death

Hollywood’s a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents. My Story, ch. 10, p. 47

In the book the passage follows a remark about being judged on how you look rather than what you are. Note the second sentence — the punchline that every shared version drops, and the contraction (“Hollywood’s”) that the popular wording expands.

1974 first edition
My Story (Stein and Day, 1974) at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: "Hollywood Will Pay You a Thousand Dollars for a Kiss, and Fifty Cents for Your Soul"

Paper trail

  • 1954 — London. Quote Investigator ↗ records that Monroe’s memoir material first appeared as a series of articles in the London newspaper Empire News, with screenwriter Ben Hecht as collaborator and ghostwriter. QI does not confirm that this specific sentence appeared in that series.
  • 1974 — the book. The passage is printed in My Story (Stein and Day), chapter 10, page 47 — the earliest printing QI documents ↗, and one it verified on paper. Digby Diehl reported in the Los Angeles Times of 15 April 1974 (p. C1) that the book repeated the 1954 series largely word for word, running extended passages of each side by side.
  • 1975 — the doubt. Larry Adler, in The Spectator of 29 November 1975 (no. 7692, p. 701), challenged Monroe’s authorship on grounds of prose style, per QI’s citation record ↗.
  • 2000 — the credit. Wikipedia’s article on Ben Hecht ↗ notes that the Cooper Square Press reprint of My Story that year credited Hecht as an author, ending a long stretch in which his role was denied.
In copyright

The work containing this line, My Story, was first published in 1974 by Stein and Day in New York — well after 1931 — so it is in copyright in the United States and has been kept in print through reprints by Cooper Square Press, Ebury and Taylor Trade Publishing ↗. Rights are further complicated by the ghostwriting question: the 2000 reprint credits Ben Hecht (d. 1964) as an author alongside Monroe, so the passage is not free of copyright on either side.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What the internet gets wrong about this one

This is an unusual case for a Marilyn Monroe quote: it is not invented. It really is in a book published under her name, and Quote Investigator ↗ verified the page on paper. What travels online is wrong in smaller, more interesting ways.

Every quote-card version paraphrase

The shared form reads “Hollywood is a place…” and stops at “soul.” The printed text uses the contraction — “Hollywood’s a place” — and carries a second sentence that reverses the whole meaning: “I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.” See the passage as Quote Investigator transcribes it ↗.

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) ghostwriter

Hecht was the screenwriter hired to ghostwrite the memoir material, and the reprint of My Story in 2000 by Cooper Square Press ↗ finally credited him as an author, after a long period in which the role was denied — by Hecht included. Quote Investigator’s conclusion is that the passage is not a complete fabrication, but that a ghost writer may have helped shape the text.

Stein and Day, 1974 unverified

My Story reached print from a typewritten manuscript supplied by Monroe’s former photographer Milton Greene, and QI notes the publisher did not verify the text ↗. In The Spectator of 29 November 1975 (no. 7692, p. 701) Larry Adler questioned Monroe’s authorship on grounds of prose style.

Quote aggregators no source

Most sites print the line with no citation at all. Even Wikiquote ↗ sources it only to Marilyn Monroe: In Her Own Words (1983), edited by Roger Taylor — an anthology published well after the memoir, which tells you nothing about where the sentence came from.

Best available truth: the sentence is documented in My Story (Stein and Day, 1974), ch. 10, p. 47, and no earlier printing is documented by Quote Investigator ↗. Whether the words are Monroe’s or her ghostwriter’s is genuinely unresolved — and the version you have seen is missing its second half.

Context

A joke about the price of a soul — with the punchline cut off

The line survives online as a lament. In print it is a gag. The version everyone shares stops at “fifty cents for your soul” and leaves it there, sombre and quotable. The passage in My Story keeps going: “I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.” The speaker is not mourning the exchange rate — she is admitting she took the worse end of it, on purpose, with a straight face.

That comic timing is exactly what makes the authorship question interesting rather than academic. The memoir material dates from 1954, when Monroe was at her commercial peak and had just founded her own production company; the man sitting across from her taking it down was Ben Hecht, one of the sharpest screenwriters in Hollywood. Whether the joke is hers, his, or something built jointly across a table is a question the surviving record does not settle.

The popular version deletes the punchline — and with it, the joke.

Read the full story

The route from that 1954 collaboration to a printed book was long and messy. Quote Investigator notes that the material first surfaced as a series of articles in the London newspaper Empire News in 1954, with Hecht as collaborator and ghostwriter, and that Hecht spent years publicly denying the role.

When Stein and Day published My Story in 1974, Digby Diehl reported in the Los Angeles Times (15 April 1974, p. C1) that the book covered the same ground as the Empire News series — most of it word for word — and ran extended passages of the two side by side. Quote Investigator records that the manuscript came from Monroe’s former photographer Milton Greene, that the publisher did not verify the text, and that Greene shared in the proceeds alongside the estate’s executors.

The following year Larry Adler, writing in The Spectator (29 November 1975, no. 7692, p. 701), attacked the book on grounds of prose style, asking whether Monroe was really the author of lines like “Automobiles roll down Sunset Boulevard like an endless string of beetles.” The doubt has never been resolved. A reprint in 2000 by Cooper Square Press finally credited Hecht as an author of the book.

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Filed under

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: "…Fifty Cents for Your Soul"quoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the passage to My Story (1974), ch. 10, p. 47, links it back to the 1954 Empire News series ghostwritten by Ben Hecht, and concludes the provenance is not certain.
Wikiquote: Marilyn Monroeen.wikiquote.org

Carries the line in its Quotes section, but sources it only to the compilation Marilyn Monroe: In Her Own Words (1983), edited by Roger Taylor — a much later anthology, not evidence of origin.
My Story (Stein and Day, 1974) — first editionarchive.org

The Internet Archive's catalogued copy of the 1974 Stein and Day first edition, 154 pp., ISBN 0812817079. Access-restricted, so the text is not freely searchable.
Ben Hechten.wikipedia.org

The ghostwriter (1894–1964). Records that the 2000 Cooper Square Press reprint credited Hecht as an author, ending decades in which his role was denied — including by Hecht himself.
My Story — all editionsopenlibrary.org

Edition history for the memoir: first published 1974 by Stein and Day, reissued by Cooper Square Press, Ebury and Taylor Trade Publishing through 2007. Useful for the copyright picture.
Marilyn Monroeen.wikipedia.org

Biography confirming birth (1 June 1926, Los Angeles) and death (4 August 1962), and the 1954 founding of her own production company.

The name on the book

Who was Marilyn Monroe?

Marilyn Monroe

1926–1962 · American actress and Hollywood icon

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles on 1 June 1926, Monroe rose from modelling and bit parts to become one of the studio system’s most bankable stars, playing the comic “blonde bombshell” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire while pushing for dramatic work in Bus Stop and The Misfits. In 1954 she founded her own production company to win creative control — the same year she sat with ghostwriter Ben Hecht for the memoir material that would eventually carry this line. She died in Los Angeles on 4 August 1962, aged 36, and has been one of the internet’s most heavily counterfeited quote sources ever since.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

Monroe, Marilyn. My Story. New York: Stein and Day, 1974, chap. 10, p. 47. This is the earliest printing of the passage documented by Quote Investigator ("Quote Origin: Hollywood Will Pay You a Thousand Dollars for a Kiss, and Fifty Cents for Your Soul," 14 June 2012). The memoir was ghostwritten by Ben Hecht and published posthumously, so the wording may be his rather than Monroe's.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/hollywood-is-a-place-where-theyll-pay-you-a-thousand/

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