The 1950s never took Marilyn Monroe very seriously. Only after she died in 1962 from an overdose of sleeping pills did the world learn just how seriously she wanted to be taken. Aside from her ambitions as an actress, she tried poetry, which interested Carl Sandburg enough for him to request copies of three short works. Published in the August McCall's, they mirror Marilyn's somber side. Samples:

Don't cry my doll Don't cry

I hold you and rock you to sleep

Hush hush I'm pretending now I'm not your mother who died.

Help Help

Help I feel life coming closer

When all I want is to die.

When inmates of Massachusetts' Walpole State Prison formed a JayCee group, their first gesture to the local townspeople was to stage a barbecue and dance for senior citizens. Trying out a waltz, one white-haired woman found herself in the arms of Albert DeSalvo, the self-confessed but never prosecut Boston Strangler. DeSalvo, who is serving a term for breaking and entering and assault, proved a model escort.

"You can really groove on God this way," said one youth at Manhattan's Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. To make up for the fact that the late Mahalia Jackson had died last January before she could sing a promised benefit concert at the cathedral, 4,000 admirers came to hear Duke Ellington read the Bible and Clara Walker and Delores Hall sing gospel tunes. Then they prayed and clapped happily in time with the music. Said Rutgers University Professor Samuel Proctor, who delivered the sermon: "It was joyful music, a joyful occasion, as joyful as Mahalia's own life and music were." -

"I'm just tired of waiting," explained the Rev. James Groppi, the militant priest of Milwaukee's St. Michael's Catholic Church. "It'll be the fourth time a parish has opened up in the black community, and each time I've been bypassed." So, since his archdiocese ignored his request for transfer to a church in the black district, Groppi resigned. His next planned project: studying at the Antioch School of Law. "Apparently," said Groppi, "the church is telling me something. I'll be better able to serve people in the community if I know something about the law." -

Even Leonard Bernstein has to rest sometimes. So the man whom Igor Stravinsky once likened to a musical department store announced that he will take a year off from conducting in order to write new theater pieces. Among his main projects: a musical version of the dybbuk, the Jewish legend of a wandering evil spirit that seeks to possess its victims. Bernstein's vacation won't begin until September 1973, by which time he will need it even more. His imminent schedule includes stints at the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and, as a change of pace, a year as professor of poetry at Harvard.

Favored with dark good looks, an elegant wardrobe and an arsenal of jewelry, Princess Ashraf, 52-year-old twin sister of the Shah of Iran, has long traveled the world as a figure of enigmatic glamour. Sometimes there were troubles--as when French officials discovered her trying to take $2,260 in undeclared francs out of the country--but that only made her all the more a figure of mystery. Then, last spring, the respected Paris newspaper Le Monde alleged that a suitcase containing several kilos of heroin had been found among the princess's luggage at Geneva airport. The princess denied it all, and so did the Swiss authorities. Le Monde printed a retraction, but the princess pressed a suit for $100,000, declaring that she wanted not money but vindication. A Paris court therefore ordered Le Monde to pay $200 in damages. The princess was pleased, saying, "I have no resentment against the press."

From her home in Paris, and virtually everywhere she goes, Actress Melina Mercouri has repeatedly denounced the military-backed regime in her native Greece--so noisily that the authorities took away her citizenship. When her father's body was to be brought from London to Athens last March, Mercouri was refused permission to attend the burial ceremony. But when her mother died last week, the authorities relented: Mercouri could return home for 13 hours, and only if she promised to make no public statements. "Let me smell the Athens sea air I love," said the actress. Then she went to the funeral, put a tape cassette of her songs into the coffin and resumed her exile.

After sampling the sights of Moscow and Peking, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger turned up in Hollywood, accompanied by his children and two other tourists, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin and Mrs. Dobrynin. They trooped through the Universal Studio, and the children got autographs from Rock Hudson, Dean Martin and Dennis Weaver. Then Dobrynin tried a little acting of his own. He hoisted a huge foam-rubber rock high over his head and pretended to threaten Kissinger. "Throw it at me," Kissinger taunted. "You've always wanted to." Dobrynin smiled and put the prop down.

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