FACT CHECK: Did Marilyn Monroe Say, ‘Give A Girl The Right Shoes And She Can Conquer The World’?
A post shared on Facebook credits actress Marilyn Monroe with saying, “Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.”
“Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world”-Marilyn Monroe.#kobevn
Posted by KOBE STORE on Monday, July 29, 2019
Verdict: False
There is no indication that Monroe said or wrote this expression.
Fact Check:
Monroe was an award-winning Hollywood actress who starred in several films in the ’50s and ’60s, including “The Seven Year Itch” and “Some Like It Hot.”
Throughout her life, she kept notebooks and wrote many poems and letters. Some of these writings were eventually compiled in books like “Fragments” and “MM – Personal.”
However, there is no evidence that Monroe ever said or wrote this expression. A search of compilations of her writings turned up no results. It doesn’t appear in her autobiography either.
The Daily Caller News Foundation also reached out to multiple experts, none of whom thought the quote was authentic.
“I can tell you straight away that it is a fake quote,” said Michelle Morgan, author of “The Girl: Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch, and the Birth of an Unlikely Feminist,” in an email to the DCNF. “Marilyn certainly did not say this or most of the quotes on the Internet.”
A spokesman from Marilyn Remembered, a long-time Monroe fan club, told the DCNF via email, “It’s definitely a misquote. The Divine Miss M (Bette Midler) actually said it.”
The quote, according to the website Quote Investigator, appears to be somewhat similar to a quote from actress and singer Bette Midler.
Quote Investigator reports that this early version of the saying appears in a 1980 newspaper supplement that published fan questions for celebrities together with their answers, including one asking Midler about shoe preferences.
“The spike-heeled kind. They’re not always easy to find,” the newspaper quotes Midler as responding. “I firmly believe that with the right footwear one can rule the world.”
News outlets, including BuzzFeed and Elle magazine, have included the quote on lists of famous misattributions.
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