This tour book will get you as close as you will ever come to Marilyn Monroe and her life in Los Angeles. By the end of the tour you will have "relived" much of both Norma Jeane’s and Marilyn’s life. The tour is based on the upscale "Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles" tour offered by my former company Insider Tours.

Marilyn Monroe is the perfect person around whom to create a tour of Los Angeles. Norma Jeane grew up in Los Angeles and, from her earliest years through childhood, was in frequent contact with the film world–going on walking tours of film star homes with her mother, visiting her mother’s film lab at Columbia, listening to her mother and friends discuss the latest movies, or simply curling up in the darkness of a movie theater. And it was in Los Angeles that Norma Jeane Baker created Marilyn Monroe, the most famous and recognizable personality in the history of film. Marilyn Monroe is the only Hollywood star who remains forever linked with a previous incarnation–Norma Jeane.

Yet the tour is not just for fans of Marilyn Monroe!

This tour cuts the vast city of Los Angeles down to size. It takes you through the heart of such well-known areas as Bel Air, Westwood, and Hollywood, and shows you many of the city’s most famous landmarks. No commercially available tour covers such a large portion of Los Angeles. And no other tour contains so many significant architectural sites or so much cultural history.

Norma Jeane’s Los Angeles was the Los Angeles of the 1930s and early 1940s. Marilyn’s Los Angeles was the Los Angeles of the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the early 1960s. Many landmarks from those decades still stand while others have disappeared or are now altered. We point out the most important of these along the tour route to more accurately recreate the look and feel of Marilyn’s Los Angeles.

What is the best time to take the tour? Anytime. But keep in mind that something like eight hours is needed to drive the complete tour. Perhaps more, perhaps less, depending on whether you take some or all of the side trips we have included. Why not break it up into two days? After all, as you visit the Marilyn sites you are also seeing Los Angeles.

Where to begin the tour? You obviously do not need to begin with stop number one in Santa Monica. We suggest you pick up the tour at the site nearest your hotel.

Common sense tells you that there will be more traffic in the summer than in the winter. Weekdays there is less traffic near the beach than on weekends. But on weekends there is less traffic citywide than on weekdays. Remember that it gets dark early in the winter. You won’t see much after dark. Also remember that you are in a large urban environment. Always lock your car and leave nothing in view on the seats or floor.

Refreshment and lunch stops are suggested throughout the tour.

We also point out the new hot spots of the burgeoning Hollywood club and restaurant scene.

You will need to use a city map of Los Angeles along with the driving instructions included in the book. Also it is a good idea to read over the book first and chart the tour on the city map. This is especially important in regard to the Sunset Boulevard leg of the tour because the sites often come up in rapid succession. And don’t worry about freeways. You will be driving on surface streets only.

The tour routes were created by the author. He is not responsible for any accident that may occur when following these routes nor does he guarantee the routes in the event of changes to the route streets or construction on or near them.

Please remember that many of the sites on this tour are private residences and, as such, private property. Please do not approach the residences or disturb their occupants.

Note: "Los Angeles", as it is used in this book, means not only the City of Los Angeles proper and its areas of Westwood, Hollywood, Brentwood, the Holmby Hills, and Bel-Air, but also the separate municipalities of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and West Hollywood.