Sliding down the banister, bouncing off the wall and springing into the guest bedroom, little Joshua Greene would leap over the footboard and, as he fondly recalls as an adult, “get tickled to death.”
But the tickler was no ordinary friend staying for the holidays. The playful, aunt-like figure — who shrieked as loudly as Joshua as he grabbed a cushion to protect himself — was none other than Marilyn Monroe.
“I have wonderful childhood memories of being tickled, having pillow fights,” reveals Greene, now 58, the son of the late photographer Milton Greene, Monroe’s one-time confidant and business partner. “Marilyn Monroe was my babysitter, and she gave me bubble baths!”
Greene throws up his hands in mock horror at the thought of being bathed and diapered by the most famous sex bomb in showbiz. “I was lucky, what could I say?” Greene tells The Post.
The domesticity played out during a little-known period in the life of Monroe, who died 50 years ago on Aug. 6, when she lodged with the Greene family in Weston, Conn. It was a rural retreat where she intermittently dodged the limelight for more than two years.
Devastated by her divorce from Joe DiMaggio and disillusioned by Hollywood, Monroe fled Los Angeles for the relative tranquility of the East Coast. It was the winter of 1954-’55, and for weeks, nobody knew about her hideout.
There were wild rumors that she was having affairs with Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable. The press was in a frenzy of speculation.
But, much to the chagrin of Monroe’s studio, 20th Century Fox, she had simply transferred her business affairs to New York City. Her goal was to reassess her career and seek fulfillment as a serious actress by studying at the Actors Studio in Manhattan, run by Lee Strasberg.
It took eight months, but Milton Greene helped forge an agreement with Fox that allowed Monroe more freedom to take opportunities and control her image. The duo founded their own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, which paired with Fox to make “Bus Stop” in 1956 and Warner for “The Prince and the Showgirl” later that year.
But the machinations of the film industry went way over young Joshua’s head.
“I was too young to have any realization of who Marilyn was,” Greene says of the star, who treated him like a favorite nephew. “She was just a friend of the family — safe, nurturing and playful. Those years were the happiest of her life because she had the safe, family environment.
“It wasn’t about drugs or the negative things which made her insecure,” he adds. “My father worked doubly hard to make her feel more secure.”
Interviewed for “Marilyn in Manhattan,” a rereleased documentary now available on several video-on-demand channels, Joshua’s mother and Milton’s widow, Amy Greene, now 82, reflects on her own memories of their houseguest.
“It was [the] home that she never had,” says Amy, a former beauty editor. “She got up when she wanted to, she contributed, she made her own bed, she washed her own dishes and she would take long walks in the woods.
“She had never seen a tree without leaves — and she loved the snow,” Amy adds. “She loved the sound of the snow when her feet would be crunching. And she took care of Joshua.”
In the summertime, Monroe accompanied the Greenes on picnics, fishing expeditions on Milton’s boat and swimming trips to beaches on Long Island Sound.
“She could move about freely,” recalls Joshua. “If she didn’t have her hair done up with the flip and the red lipstick on, she just looked like a blond woman with her hair pulled back or a scarf over her head.
“Marilyn Monroe was a character she created, someone she would just go and turn into — a bit like any superhero or whatever,” Greene says. “She was not the Marilyn Monroe of stage and screen when she was in our house hanging out with her friends.”
But it was not all downtime. Monroe would frequently travel into Manhattan to study at the Actors Studio, where future greats like Ellen Burstyn, now 79, also trained.
In “Marilyn in Manhattan,” Burstyn says Monroe tried to blend in with the other students, and showed no ego. She was also extremely talented.
“Marilyn Monroe worked on Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Anna Christie’ at the Studio with Maureen Stapleton,” recalls Burstyn, an Oscar winner. “Everybody who saw that says it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did, it was some of the best work ever seen at the Studio.”
The experience prepared Monroe for more challenging movie roles, such as her 1961 performance in “The Misfits”, written by her next husband, playwright Arthur Miller, in which she held her own with respected stars such as Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter.
At the same time, Milton, a good friend of Dizzy Gillespie, introduced Monroe to jazz clubs, and she developed a more sophisticated taste in music. Her hip quotient soared when she befriended Ella Fitzgerald.
“The Actors Studio, [my father’s] crowd and the jazz scene were doors which took Marilyn into another world which had nothing to do with Hollywood glamour,” says Greene, who now runs a photo archive in Oregon. “She educated herself by surrounding herself with jazz musicians and intellectual minds. It was all about being a professional.”
Meanwhile, Greene still has the stuffed cat with calico fur that Monroe gave him for his second or third birthday. He’s forgotten its name, but will always treasure those playful memories of his beloved stand-in aunt.
“Water would collect [in the yard] outside our house and I would splash in the puddles,” he says. “I’d be naked as a jaybird, of course, and Marilyn would come and splash with me. We’d have these little water fights, stuff like that. It was pure, simple, innocent fun.”
jridley@nypost.com