Remembering Marilyn With Gabe Pressman

First posted here on June 23, 2017

Gabriel ‘Gabe’ Pressman, a reporter for New York’s WNBC-TV for over 50 years, has died aged 93. Born and raised in the Bronx, he covered events ranging from the assassination of Malcolm X to 9/11. Among his many interviewees were Harry S. Truman, Elvis Presley, Fidel Castro and, of course, Marilyn.

Gabe is at her left in the photo shown below, as she confirmed her engagement to on June 21, 1956, during an impromptu press conference in her apartment building at 2 Sutton Place in Manhattan.

In a recent Facebook post, he paid tribute to Marilyn.

“She was effervescent. She was beautiful and she transfixed the reporters who interviewed her one day in New York. I was one of them.

I remember the main topic of the conversation. It was her new boyfriend who later became her husband, playwright Arthur Miller.

Marilyn was in a good mood. She laughed and she made us laugh. I asked her: ‘What do you see in this guy?’ And she trilled in a dreamy, soft voice: ‘Have you seen him?’ She rolled out the seen word in a mischievous way.

And she made us all laugh. She was charming and made us all part of the fun.”

Gabe can also be seen at Marilyn’s left in another photo, taken at the reopening ceremony for the Sidewalk Superintendents Club on July 2, 1957, as construction began on the Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue.