“I don’t know who invented high heels,” a supposed quote by Marilyn Monroe goes, “but all women owe him a lot.” Marilyn is also sometimes quoted to go on to say: “Excuse the pun, but it was the high heel that gave a big lift to my career.”
A slightly different version attributes to Marilyn Monroe the phase with women changed out with men, hence: “I don’t know who invented high heels but all men owe him a lot.” And a further variation is “I don’t know what man invented them but all women should be grateful.”
While it has become almost cliched to begin articles about heels with a version of this quote, what you will not find accompanying the words is a definitive origin of the quote.
And while it is almost impossible to prove that someone never uttered particular words in their lifetime, here are some reasons why we can be reasonably skeptical about whether Marilyn Monroe said these ones.
Origins of Marilyn Monroe’s supposed quote about the inventor of high heels
An early reference to both the “owe him a lot” part of Marilyn’s supposed quote and the “big lift to my career” part can be found in chapter 3 of Mary Trasko’s book Heavenly soles: extraordinary twentieth-century shoes (affiliate link) which was first published in 1989. Unlike many more recent books, Trasko included a footnote referencing both quotations.
At page 125 of her book, Trasko referenced both quotations to page 123 of William Rossi’s 1976 book The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe (New York: Saturday Review Press).
Unfortunately, Rossi’s book is where the trail ends because, while Rossi includes the quote, the book does not include any references or footnotes. Here’s what Rossi says in its entirety about Marilyn at page 123 in his chapter titled “the Sensuous Stilts”:
The telling point about Rossi’s reference to the source of the quotation is that it is vague. He refers to “an interview on the subject of her wanton walk”, but doesn’t give any more details of the interview at all. We are not told whether it was a published interview in the print media or television or radio. We are not given a date or the name of the interviewer.
In many other places in his book, Rossi is much more precise with his sources. So it is unusual to say the least that he would be so vague with this one.
Secondly, despite searching we have never found this quotation in any published interview with Marilyn Monroe or in any available video. This does raise the question: if Rossi had access to an interview in 1976 when he wrote his book, why can it not be found now?
In the absence of a more precise source than “an interview”, we should not accept that Marilyn actually uttered these words.
Why is this quote so often believed to be by Marilyn Monroe?
Despite the lack of source, it is undeniable that Marilyn could have said these words. She had a great turn of phrase, and it is possible certainly to imagine her uttering them.
One reason that the quote is often believed to be by Marilyn though is that she did have something of a public persona of a stereotypical silly blonde. This was not something that Marilyn herself necessarily cultivated; she lived in an era of lazy media portrayals that made such assumptions about her and others.
Perhaps this assumption of naivety about Marilyn Monroe is what gives the attribution of the words to her a ring of truth.
Hence the idea that Marilyn would assume there was an “inventor” of high heels (when in fact heels have been around nearly forever), or that the inventor must have been a man to whom women should be forever grateful. Or that fact that, if there was in inventor, she wouldn’t know who it was.
All of these feed into an assumption about Marilyn Monroe that she was not clever or worldly. But the truth is Marilyn was not silly or naive.
Indeed she was considered, clever and well spoken but her words, well-spoken or not, did not likely include that women owed a lot to the inventor of high heels.