xoxoxo e: Joe DiMaggio

Showing posts with label Joe DiMaggio. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

unfinished - now available in paperback!

Unfinished - A Graphic Novel of Marilyn Monroe, is now available in paperback.

From Amazon:

Why does Marilyn Monroe continue to be our iconic American goddess? A question explored in “Unfinished.” In words and pictures author and illustrator Elizabeth Periale brings a new perspective to Marilyn Monroe. "Unfinished” focuses on Marilyn from a female perspective, including touching on her many health issues. This graphic novel also shines a light on Marilyn's gifts as an actress, a talent that tends to be side-stepped in the many previous and sensational accounts of her life and death.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

marilyn, joe, and the seven year itch

Here's another essay from the longer-format piece I'm working on about Marilyn Monroe.

In The Seven Year Itch Marilyn Monroe played The Girl, the object of fantasy for Tom Ewell. A character with no known (to the audience or Ewell) name. It didn't matter. A tad ironic, considering how her name, her many names, played such an important part in who she became.

Norma Jeane Mortenson, or Norma Jean Baker as she was also known, is frequently presented as if she was a completely different person from Marilyn Monroe — as Marilyn's alter ego. But Marilyn never really changed from the girl she was before she became a movie star. She was born with an identity crisis. Who was her father? Her mother Gladys Baker wasn't even sure, or at least she never said so definitively. She was separated from her second husband, Martin Mortensen, but soon changed Norma Jeane's surname to that of her first husband, Baker. Gladys was having an affair with fellow Consolidated Film Industries employee Charles Stanley Gifford, who is thought to be Marilyn's biological father. Gladys chose, probably for legitimacy's sake, to use her current husband's name on Marilyn's birth certificate. Except she spelled the last name wrong — Mortenson instead of Mortensen. How could her daughter not be confused about her murky origins.

Norma Jeane spent her childhood with practically nothing of her own, being shuttled through a series of foster homes from babyhood. A child who had trouble being noticed, one of many in a household of foster children, she grew up wanting to be adored, like the movie stars she idolized: Jean Harlow, Alice Faye, and Katherine Hepburn. She spent hours at the movies, the films acting as a sort of babysitter, while her guardians worked. From early childhood, inspired by her mother's job as a negative film cutter at Consolidated Film Industries and her family friend Grace McKee, who became her legal guardian when Gladys was institutionalized, Norma Jeane was encouraged to become not just an actress, but a star. Grace had some unrealized fantasies of stardom of her own, and endlessly promoted the young girl's dreams of becoming a movie star.

Norma Jeane Dougherty, 1945

Norma Jeane had an unfortunate youth, but she didn't want to escape it by getting married. But when Grace remarried and was preparing to move from California to Virginia, she tried to solve the "problem" of what to do with Norma Jeane, how to keep her from going back to the orphanage, by marrying her off at the age of 16 to a local neighbor, Jim Dougherty. The marriage was doomed from the start, with a reluctant groom who was always away in the Merchant Marine, and a bored Norma Jeane with major abandonment issues. While Jim was away, Norma Jeane worked at the Radioplane Munitions factory in Van Nuys, where she was soon discovered by U.S. Army photographer David Conover, who had been assigned to take some morale-boosting photographs for the Army's magazine, Yank. He urged her to pursue modeling. The young girl wasted no time in following his advice, seeing modeling as a road to acting, and more importantly, as an escape from the humdrum life of a teenage housewife. Norma Jeane was never cut out to be a housewife.

The marriage was dissolved and Norma Jeane began to model full-time, sometimes using the name Jean Norman. When she finally got a contract at Twentieth Century-Fox she was urged to changed her name from Norma Jeane Dougherty. Her grandmother's maiden name was Monroe, and something alliterative was suggested— she became Marilyn. But The Girl wasn't done changing. She had already lightened her hair color, as blondes got more modeling work than brunettes, but she was told to alter her hairline, raising it a bit. And then to make some slight improvements to her chin and nose. She was willing to do whatever it took. She knew that starlets were a dime a dozen and could be dropped at any moment. And Marilyn wanted, needed, to become a star.

"I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful"

Nothing ever came easily to Marilyn. Her road to stardom started, then stalled, and at times seemed in reverse. She was hired by Twentieth Century-Fox, only appearing in bit parts, and then dropped. She then was hired by Columbia, who dropped her when her six-moth contract was up. After a walk-on role in the Marx Brothers' Love Happy she caught the attention of Hollywood agent Johnny Hyde, who helped get her into two great movies, The Asphalt Jungle, where she impressively played the very young girlfriend of Louis Calhern; and as starlet-on-the-rise Miss Casswell, a "student of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art," in All About Eve. Hyde was able to persuade Fox to not only rehire her but sign her to a seven-year contract.

Marilyn finally began to get steady work, appearing in mostly comedies until her breakthrough role in the noir-ish Niagara, costarring Joseph Cotten. It was around this time, in 1952, that she was also introduced to one of the most famous men in America, retired Yankee Joe DiMaggio, who had asked to meet her after seeing a publicity photo of her trying to hit a baseball.

"I was surprised to be so crazy about Joe. I expected a flashy New York sports type, and instead I met this reserved guy who didn't make a pass at me right away! He treated me like something special. Joe is a very decent man, and he makes other people feel decent, too."

They were soon an item. Marilyn and Joe's romance was documented by photographers in ways that would make modern paparazzi blush. They were the original "It" couple. There are many who still romanticize their "perfect" union. The truth, and their relationship, was of course much more complicated. They may have been great as lovers, even friends, together, but marriage was something neither of them were well-suited for. But their attraction for one another was instantaneous.

Joe and Marilyn with Cary Grant, Marilyn's costar in Monkey Business, 1952

In Canada during the filming of River of No Return

Marilyn was not a sports fan and may have not known who Yankee Joe DiMaggio was before they met, but clearly Joe really didn't know who she was, either. How else to explain how he might have ever entertained the fantasy that she would settle down to become the perfect housewife. Their pairing may still fascinate many today because it is so puzzling. Joe met her in 1952 and dated her for two years before they married. Marilyn was at the height of her career, with films Niagara, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry A Millionaire propelling her to the forefront of Hollywood. She agreed to marry him in 1954.

Newly married Norma Jeane DiMaggio's passport

The Girl, the number one female star in the world, may have been on top of the world, but she was still in the throes of an identity crisis. Once she was married to Joe (and gained yet another name, Norma Jeane DiMaggio), she had to contend with his fantasy of the sort of wife he wanted her to be. How could the Yankee slugger who had resisted retirement convinced himself that Marilyn would give up her Hollywood life to become a hausfrau in his preferred city of San Francisco at the pinnacle of her fame? After years of struggling to get small parts, Marilyn was finally a favorite of the bigwigs at the studio, and most importantly, the public. Joe wanted her to walk away from that? Not on her life. The real Marilyn was neither The Girl the world fantasized about, nor the wife Joe DiMaggio thought she should be. She was a complicated woman who wanted more from her career and her life.

The "It" couple of the mid-1950s

Joe and Marilyn on the town

Joe became increasingly uncomfortable with Hollywood and Marilyn's part in it. He was disgusted by the revealing outfits she wore to premieres, the endless publicity cheesecake shots she was always willing to do. The couple struggled from the start of their marriage, but the crowning blow came during the infamous night shoot of The Seven Year Itch, where The Girl stands over a subway grate on a hot New York City night with costar Tom Ewell and the breeze from the underground train lifts her skirt skyward. Director Billy Wilder's publicity stunt of filming the scene on the street at 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue (the scene that was ultimately used in the movie was filmed on a soundstage) sent Joe round the bend. The public display may have enraged DiMaggio, but probably what was hardest for the Yankee Clipper to take was that Marilyn didn't belong only to him. She belonged to her public, and she loved that. That night in 1954 Joe had a rude awakening.

There are some (unsubstantiated) reports that he dealt with his frustrations by batting her around. Marilyn may have endured that, but what she couldn't and didn't tolerate was his insistence that she give up her career. Joe didn't realize what Marilyn had gone through to become Marilyn.

Marilyn, "I didn't want to give up my career, and that's what Joe wanted me to do most of all."

Joe, "It’s no fun being married to an electric light."

When the New York location shooting of The Seven Year Itch was over, so, for the most part, was the nine month-long marriage. Joe didn't like failure, so their break-up must have been especially hard for him to take. Joe and Marilyn may have failed as a married couple, but their bond was strong, and they stayed close through the years. Joe was always someone Marilyn could rely on. He wasn't a hanger-on. He was one of the few people in her life that didn't want to suck off of her star persona. He went into therapy (possibly influenced by Marilyn) and seemed to mellow in many of his views. One of the most well-known stories of their post-divorce relationship was when Joe rescued Marilyn from the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic. Marilyn, distraught after the filming of The Misfits and the dissolution of her third marriage to playwright Arthur Miller, thought she was going into the hospital for a rest cure. But her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris had her committed to the psychiatric ward. Marilyn reached out to Lee Strasberg to no avail. It was Joe who responded to her call for help.

Marilyn joined Joe in Florida for some much-needed R&R

Would Marilyn and Joe have gotten back together, even married? There are many who claim that they were planning to do just that, but Joe never said so and we will never know. It probably would have been foolish for them to remarry, but they did seem to need to be in each other's lives. After Marilyn died, Joe arranged for a dozen red roses to be sent regularly to her grave. Joe DiMaggio never remarried. The Girl was gone.

Joe sent Marilyn a birthday telegram on June1, 1962

An unfinished letter from Marilyn to Joe, found in her house after her death

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

beauty queen on the cover of a magazine

Marilyn Monroe started her career as a model, and she was quickly in much demand, finding herself on numerous magazine covers. Marilyn Monroe: Cover to Cover is a collection of many of those covers, in brilliant and at times, lurid color. Marilyn memoribilia collector and author Clark Kidder has a genuine affection for his subject, and assembles the images in mostly chronological order, so that fans can get a sense of Marilyn's print evolution.

It's an interesting volume to flip through, and includes a nice foreword by fellow pin-up Mamie Van Doren, who can certainly understand what it was like to start a career in cheesecake. Kidder quotes liberally from Marilyn's posthumous autobiography, My Story and other sources to create captions for many of the images. Although his intentions are good, there are a few quibbles. He gets more than a few facts wrong, citing John Huston as the director of All About Eve (it was Joseph L. Mankiewicz), states that Marilyn began dating Joe DiMaggio during the filming of River of No Return (they had already been a couple for quite a while), and spells Actors Studio Coach Lee Strasberg's name Strassberg.

What is nice about Marilyn Monroe: Cover to Cover is the large amount of foreign magazine covers that are included, many which may have never been seen by American audiences before, from countries like Italy, France, England, Sweden, and Japan. Marilyn made global impact early on. Unfortunately the author either doesn't know or hasn't been able to determine how early shots of model Norma Jeane made their way to foreign publications. A little history of her modeling career and how magazine covers and modeling agencies worked in the late '40s and early '50s would have been appreciated. Some of Marilyn's most famous covers seem to be missing, too, and there must have been many more gossip magazines devoted to her and Joe DiMaggio than are on display here.

What is quite interesting in the multiple covers from a single year is how often a specific costume from one of her films or personal wardrobe would show up again and again across a number of magazine covers.

So not a complete look at Marilyn's impact in photos, but at least a glimpse into her other career, the one that helped to create her worldwide exposure and both bolster and support her movie career.

Related:

Marilyn Monre's classic magazine covers, Entertainment Weekly
Marilyn Monroe magazine covers

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

marilyn, in her own words

In 1954 Marilyn Monroe, at the height of her fame and popularity, was persuaded by friend and publicist Sidney Skolsky to publish her autobiography. They enlisted screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Front Page, Monkey Business, A Farewell to Arms) to ghostwrite, and sat down for a series of interviews which they intended to have published in a magazine, not in book form, in The Ladies Home Journal. The interviews focused mainly on her rough and tumble childhood. Hecht's agent, without his or Marilyn's knowledge or approval, sold it as serialized articles to the London Empire News, who ran it between between May 9 and Aug 1, 1954. In 1974, twelve years after her death, photographer and former business partner Milton Greene produced a copy of the manuscript and had it published in book form.

There has been much debate about the authenticity of the book. Some of the stories may have been embellished or streamlined by Hecht, but the overall feeling rings true to Marilyn. Marilyn was well-known for telling and retelling the stories of her life, frequently heightening the drama. She was a born actress. According to Monroe biographer Sarah Churchwell (The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe), "Hecht reported to his editor during the interviews that he was sometimes sure Marilyn was fabricating. He explained, 'When I say lying, I mean she isn’t telling the truth. I don’t think so much that she is trying to deceive me as that she is a fantasizer.'"

Norma Jean in 1946, photographed by Andre de Dienes

Marilyn may have pumped up some of the pathos in her early life and Hecht may have cleaned up the text, but of all the books on Marilyn Monroe that I have read recently (and I have been reading a lot) this is the best. Is it the most well-written? Absolutely not. But does it come closest to capturing the woman who fifty years after her death is still an icon, a movie goddess? It actually does. So many of the other books, by authors good and not-so-good, have quoted liberally from My Story, but somehow have missed Marilyn's voice and personality in their desire to catalog her inevitable road to death. When read in full, My Story gives a far better impression of Marilyn, how she talked, how she thought, than any picked-and-chosen snippets could.

The articles were clearly originally intended as a Cinderella story, cataloging Marilyn's "orphan" childhood to her fame and marriage to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. With all of the emphasis on the waifdom, a palpable sadness does comes through. After reading My Story the reader learns that Marilyn could never forget her youth, her deprived existence as Norma Jean. "My own costume never varied. It consisted of a faded blue skirt and white waist. I had two of each, but since they were exactly alike everyone thought I wore the same outfit all the time. It was one of the things that annoyed people — my wearing the same clothes."

It may have been intended as a publicity piece, but Marilyn and Hecht don't hesitate to touch on the seamy underbelly of trying to get ahead in Hollywood, "I've never heard anything about the Hollywood I knew in those first years. No hint of it is ever in the movie fan magazines. ... The Hollywood I knew was the Hollywood of failure. ... We ate at drugstore counters. We sat in waiting rooms. We were the prettiest tribe of panhandlers that ever overran a town." A story about trying to cash her last paycheck, a mere $40, after her [first] firing from Twentieth-Century Fox, points to the easy availability of drugs, "After doing my shopping, I stopped in a doctor's office. I had a cold, and I had not slept for several nights. The doctor gave me a sleeping pill. 'I don't usually recommend sleeping pills,' he said, "but you been having hysterics too long. A good sleep will not only be good for your cold but cheer you up." She shares an amusing story of her first Hollywood feud, with Zsa Zsa Gabor, apparently as a result of husband George Sanders's love of "pneumatic" blondes. Reading My Story gives the impression that Marilyn had a lot of Hollywood stories to tell and would have been very amusing company.

Marilyn in 1954

On her changing her name to Marilyn Monroe, "When I just wrote 'This is the end of Norma Jean,' I blushed as if I had been caught in a lie. Because this sad, bitter child who grew up too fast is hardly ever out of my heart. With success all around me, I can still feel her frightened eyes looking out of mine. She keeps saying, 'I never lived, I was never loved,' and often I get confused and think it's I who am saying it."

Marilyn may have been one of the first well-known women to talk publicly about childhood sexual abuse. She claims her first sexual encounter happened when she was nine and was molested by a man named Mr. Kimmel, who rented a room from the foster family she was living with. The incident had ramifications on her dealing with the casting couch later in Hollywood, "Maybe it was the nickel Mr. Kimmel once gave me ... But men who tried to buy me with money made me sick. There were plenty of them. The mere fact that I turned down offers ran my price up."

The only bum note in My Story is the introduction by Andrea Dworkin, "She kept trying to hold on for dear life with a man, some man, who had his feet solidly planted in achievement. Instead, they had their feet solidly planted on her neck or other exposed flesh." Although she tries to cast Marilyn in a good light, Dworkin regurgitates lots of unsubstantiated gossip about Marilyn in her introduction, including the rumored affairs with both Kennedy's and 20 abortions. Disappointing.

"I didn't think of my body as having anything to do with sex. It was more like a friend who had mysteriously appeared in my life, a sort of magic friend."

Marilyn's own observations about her sexuality are far more interesting and revealing. Her discovery of her own beauty and voluptuousness seems to have been as much a revelation to her as to everyone around her. "Why I was a siren, I hadn't the faintest idea. ... The truth was that with all my lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as unsensual as a fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise." She developed early physically, but was unprepared emotionally, "My admirers all said the same thing in different ways. It was my fault, their wanting to kiss and hug me. ... I always felt they were talking about someone else, not me. ... I not only had no passion in me, I didn't even know what it meant." An early marriage at the age of 16, to neighbor Jim Dougherty, "Was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges. I found out later that marriages are often no more than that. And that husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives."

Marilyn photographed by Philippe Halsmann

Much of My Story is written in hindsight, with Marilyn telling what she currently thinks and feels about her past, and trying to remake her future, "[When married to Dougherty] the thought of having a baby stood my hair on end. I could only see it as myself, another Norma Jean in an orphanage. ... I feel different about having a child now. It's one of the things I dream of. She won't be any Norma Jean now. And I know how I'll bring her up — without lies. Nobody will tell her lies about anything. And I'll answer all her questions. If I don't know the answer I'll go to an encyclopedia and look them up. I'll tell her everything she wants to know — about love, about sex, about everything!"

As much as her youth as Norma Jean haunted Marilyn, My Story is a very hopeful read. Marilyn's dreams and her never-ending desire to improve herself come through loud and clear. Everyone knows how her story ended, which is the focus of most books about the star. My Story is how her story started, with hints of how it might have gone differently.

Friday, August 17, 2012

little bits of marilyn

In 1982, after his death, Actor's Studio Director Lee Strasberg's widow, his third wife Anna, found two boxes of poems and other writings by Marilyn Monroe. Monroe had named Strasberg the primary beneficiary in her will. Strasberg, however, had not followed Marilyn's final wishes:

With the exception of two letters, which he returned to their authors, during his lifetime Lee Strasberg never sold or gave away any of Marilyn’s personal effects — this totally contravened the instructions in Marilyn’s Will. It is clear that she did not intend for Lee Strasberg to keep her possessions, which included clothing, letters, documents, furniture, all her personal effects that she absolutely clearly stated, that she wanted distributed amongst her friends. — from Loving Marilyn

Although this action, or more accurately, inaction on Strasberg's part would have disappointed Marilyn, it is because of his neglect that so many of her personal items remained intact, and are able to be viewed as a whole. Anna Strasberg, who had never even met Marilyn, asked family friend Stanley Buchthal to help her determine what to do with the boxes' contents, and he soon enlisted the help of editor and essayist Bernard Comment. Together the pair sorted through the materials and created Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters a glimpse into Marilyn's life and mind in book form.

Buchtal and Comment have tried to present Marilyn's writings in as straightforward a manner as possible, keeping things chronological. A photograph of the original item, in Marilyn's handwriting,is presented on a left-hand page, while their transcription, sometimes joined by notes of explanation, appears opposite, on the right.

Black and white photographs of Marilyn, frequently reading, also accompany the text. Marilyn wrote poems, letters, and kept journals. While perusing Fragments it is unavoidable not to feel as if one is prying, sneaking a peek at her diary. We are. But it is undeniably fascinating. Her notebooks contain notes from classes she took on Italian art, as well as from acting class. Some of her note-taking seems to meld with her poetry and become stream-of-consciousness prose poetry, as does this fragment, c. 1955:

On the stage — I will
not be punished for it
or be whipped
or be threatened
or not be loved
or sent to hell to burn with bad people
or feeling that I am also bad
or be afraid of my genitals being
or ashamed
exposed known and seen —
so what
or ashamed of my sensitive feelings — they are reality
or colors or screaming or doing
nothing
and I do have feeling
very strongly sexed feeling
since a small child — think of all the
things I felt then

Some of her notes are like puzzles or maps. Talk about fragments. She writes a paragraph in her notebook on the left hand page, and then continues, sometimes at an odd angle, on the opposite page, and then back again, drawing arrows, linking one thought to the next. She may not have been writing continuously, and went back to add ideas at a later time, or she may have purposely wanted to keep her writing difficult to understand and more private.

Especially revealing are two poems she wrote, on Parkside House stationery, during her stay in England when she was filming The Prince and the Showgirl. Marilyn, newlywed to playwright Arthur Miller, was already feeling insecure about the marriage:

I guess I have always been
deeply terrified to really be someone's wife
since I know from life
One cannot love another,
ever, really.

where his eyes rest with pleasure — I want to still be — but time has changed
the hold of that glance.
Alas how will I cope when I am
even less youthful —

Back in the U.S., at their home in Roxbury, CT in 1958, her life with Miller hadn't improved much:

starting tomorrow I will take care of myself for that's all I really have ever had. Roxbury — … I think I hate it here because there is no love here anymore. I regret the effort I desperately made here. ... what I could endure helped both of us and in a material way which means so much more to him than me. ... When one wants to stay alone as my love (Arthur) indicates the other must stay apart.

It becomes clear that many of these fragments are first drafts for notes or letters. One page in her notebook, scribbled in pencil, which she signs with multiple pet names, was confirmed by close friend Norman Rosten as a letter he received from her. Some of her notes seem to be character studies. There are also thoughtful observations about not just the character she would be playing, but other characters in a film with her, like this one about The Misfits:

I feel the camera has got
to look through Gay's [the character played by Clark Gable]
eyes whenever he is in a
scene and even when he
is not there still has to be a sense of
him
He is the center and the
rest move around him
but I guess Houston [sic - director John Huston] will
see to that
He is both subtle and overt in his meeting them
and in his cruelty and his tenderness
(when he reaches out of himself for her – R. [R stands for Roslyn, Marilyn's character in the film])

There is a really interesting letter to Lee Strasberg, dated December 18, 1961, where Marilyn tells him she is forming an independent production company, possibly jointly with Marlon Brando, and that she would like him to be a part of it. Marilyn definitely had some big plans for her future, and was constantly trying to get more control over her career.

Strasberg wouldn't accept Marilyn as a student unless she agreed to undergo psychoanalysis. This led to a whole additional host of problems for the already insecure star, and doctors who may have done her more harm than good. After her break-up with Miller, her New York psychiatrist Marianne Kris had her committed to Payne Whitney's psychiatric ward — Marilyn thought she was only going to a hospital for a rest cure. This was one of the most traumatic events of Marilyn's life. She reached out to Kris and the Strasbergs, but only ex-husband Joe DiMaggio was able to secure her release. Once she moved to Los Angeles, her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson crossed all the boundaries of doctor/patient relations by having Marilyn socialize with his family. He may also have been instrumental in her taking more barbiturates than were necessary on the day of her death.

Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters stresses Marilyn's love of books and her lifelong respect for writers. Writers also seem to have admired her greatly, as Buchtal and Comment take pains to point out.

In 1959 Karen Blixen asked to meet her, "... she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub ... I shall never forget the most overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed."

Truman Capote, who met her in 1950, dedicated his short story "A Beautiful Child" to her.

Through husband Arthur Miller Marilyn befriended Carson McCullers, who wrote about her in "Illumination and Night Game."

Norman Mailer tried to cultivate her friendship, but she demurred. He wrote the controversial "Marilyn," which started the unsubstantiated-by-fact Kennedy/Marilyn rumor mill going on 1973.

Somerset Maugham approved of her proposed role as Sadie Thompson in a television production of "Rain," which was never produced.

She admired British poet Edith Sitwell and met with her both in Hollywood and London, while filming "The Prince and the Showgirl."

Marilyn met Carl Sandburg in 1959, and their appreciation of each other was very mutual. She loved his biography of Abraham Lincoln and he wrote, "She was not the usual movie idol. There was something democratic about her. She was the type who would join in and wash up the supper dishes even if you didn't ask her."

Buchtal and Comment also include some selected book covers from her personal library, which included:

Mme. Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Fall by Albert Camus
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Once There Was A War by John Steinbeck

Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters is an interesting, even unexpected look into Marilyn's life, with the accent not on glamor, but on her thoughts and aspirations. Marilyn was always trying to learn new things and improve herself, and many of these fragments show her progress.

Sunday, August 05, 2012

marilyn, gone 50 years ago today

Here's another essay from the longer-format piece I'm working on about Marilyn Monroe.

There are so many books, movies, and documentaries about Marilyn Monroe, and I've been reading a lot of them recently. Something they all share in common: her sex life, her troubles. No one seems to want to talk about the woman as an actress, an artist. It's easy to get caught up in the sordid and tragic details of her life and death, but I would rather focus on her incandescent screen presence. She may never have been a classical actress along the lines of Eleanora Duse, one of her idols, but her movies are still highly enjoyable and watchable, and she was serious, always, about her craft. In fact, her notorious lateness and difficulty on film sets could be attributed to her stage fright, for which she experienced actual physical symptoms of nervous rashes and flushing, which caused delays in re-applying of make-up. But even more so, she always, even before encountering the Method, insisted on multiple takes, as she was obsessed with getting a scene “right.” This also extended to rigorous rehearsals of musical numbers. Marilyn, even when she was a bit player, employed acting, singing, and dancing coaches in an effort to improve herself and give the best possible performance.

As Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

When her marriage to Joe DiMaggio went bust in 1954, she decided to leave California and concentrate on honing her craft in New York City, where the acting was “serious.” Against all the advice of friends and advisers, she left Los Angeles and moved across the country. Once there, she began to study with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, of Method acting fame. Strasberg, like so many others who met her, was impressed with her beauty and her star power, He wasn’t just her acting guru, but like many of the men in her life he became an ersatz father figure, and he welcomed her into his family. She respected Strasberg so much she even made him the primary beneficiary in her will. Strasberg made Marilyn believe what she dreamt of — that more serious roles were in her future. This dream did come true, with dramatic roles in Bus Stop, The Prince and the Showgirl, and The Misfits. Her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 also steered her away from the frothy musicals she had done previously.

For someone who reportedly was so full of sadness and vulnerability, Marilyn was said to be a joyful presence in many lives. But she was also always aware of death. She may have contemplated and attempted suicide many times — reports of failed attempts are non-existent or frequent, depending on which biography you are reading. Unfortunately, she finally did overdose in 1962, fifty years ago today. We'll never know how serious her intent was. She was so use to taking a lot of pills over the course of a day that she may have miscalculated. Or maybe she thought there would be someone — there was always someone, like an assistant or a doctor — waiting and able to rescue her. Unfortunately, on August 5, 1962, that wasn't how the story ended.

Marilyn in New York

Marilyn’s dependence and misuse of drugs definitely played a part in her death. The amount of barbiturates in her system was staggering. Her use of barbiturates and painkillers began at an early age, and a lot of her drug dependencies can be traced to her difficulties with menstruation. She was plagued by endometriosis, and suffered excruciatingly painful periods from her youth. Throughout her life doctors prescribed painkillers and Marilyn took them. Drug abuse was not a "thing", a social crisis, a cause, in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Maybe things would've been different for her if she had a hysterectomy as was advised by a gynecologist. But Marilyn refused. She always wanted the possibility of having a child. If Marilyn had undergone a hysterectomy in her 20s she would no longer have had to suffer the miscarriages (or purported, by some, abortions) that caused her both physical and mental anguish, hence more drugs to numb the pain. This painful irony didn’t escape the screen goddess — that a walking, talking symbol of sex was cursed with such troubles with procreation, with her own womanhood.

And Marilyn is still a goddess of sex and of womanhood. She is an extreme version of so many issues that women deal with every day. Trouble conceiving or bringing a baby to term. The difficulties in finding a man, maintaining a relationship The difficulties of being taken seriously in a man's world. How hard it is to balance a career and family. Marilyn dealt with all of these issues firsthand, before feminism, with few to guide her. She had a shaky foundation; her mother in and out of institutions, and a succession of families (where she encountered alleged child abuse at worst, or indifference) who were willing to take her on and care for her — until they couldn’t — and then she would be sent on to the next family.

Marilyn burned with ambition and a desire to excel and succeed. And she had a powerful tool in her arsenal: her beauty. She continued this cycle of patronage and ersatz protection with older men in Hollywood, and even the men she married, but no one seemed able to give her the acceptance, the support that she craved.

On the set of The Misfits

Marilyn's only escape as a child from the drudgery of foster homes (and even for a few years an orphanage) was the movies. She went a lot, and her favorite screen idol was Jean Harlow. She was actively being considered for a biography of Harlow before she died. She may never have been as sassy as Harlow — she just didn't have it in her — but her performance in Some Like it Hot hints at how great that movie might have been. (Two movies, both named Harlow, were eventually filmed, both released in 1965, one starring Carrol Baker, the other Carol Lynley, and both were resounding flops.)

Marilyn is to be applauded and respected for trying to shake off the stereotype of the dumb blonde and to always challenge herself. But it is also a shame that she turned her back on some of her most engaging work. She was a born comedienne, and what makes her such a star, so unique, is that talent, paired with her beauty and sexiness. She apparently didn’t care for Some Like it Hot, one of her best films. Husband Miller had little respect for her musical numbers, and he urged her to drop her idea of having songs in The Prince and the Showgirl. Maybe after that marriage fell apart in 1960 she began to revise her opinions about appearing in musicals, as she was in talks to do a remake of The Blue Angel, Irma La Douce, Can Can, I Love Louisa (which became What A Way to Go!), and a musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She was also in talks to star in Some Came Running, which leads one to ponder that Shirley MacLaine may owe a lot of her film roles to Marilyn’s being out of the picture.

To watch Marilyn on the screen is frequently pure joy. She bubbles over. Some find her exuberance, her sensuality, her uber-femininity, embarrassing. But the camera loved Marilyn and she loved it back. On this, the fiftieth anniversary of her death, she is best commemorated by her film legacy, not the ups and downs of a life that ended too soon.

Some viewing suggestions:

Musicals/comedies

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1952) A Technicolor explosion of fun, with Marilyn, Jane Russell, fabulous costumes and lots of fun musical numbers, capped off by Marilyn's wonderful rendition of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.”

Seven Year Itch (1955) Not her best film, but possibly her most iconic, featuring the infamous subway grating scene and Travilla’s amazing white pleated dress.

Some Like It Hot (1959) Marilyn is amazingly beautiful and vulnerable in one of the funniest films ever. She matches Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in the comic moments too. A classic.

In Some Like It Hot

Drama

All About Eve (1950) In just a small part, as Miss Casswell, a “graduate of the Copacabana school of dramatic art,” Marilyn still impresses.

Niagara (1953) Marilyn is beyond sexy as a femme fatale in this color-saturated film noir. Husband Joseph Cotton is driven mad by his young wife’s wayward ways, against the backdrop of the Falls location shoot.

Bus Stop (1956) The first film where Marilyn was taken seriously, and she is frequently heartbreaking as saloon singer Cherie.

The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) Marilyn effortlessly steals the show from director and costar Laurence Olivier. The much-reported off-screen trials and tribulations aren’t visible to the audience, but Oliver’s stiff performance highlights his classical method versus Marilyn’s fresh, modern approach to acting.

The Misfits (1961) Marilyn is raw, vulnerable, even painful to watch. With a screenplay by then-husband Arthur Miller, The Misfits is not the greatest film, but it is still fascinating. Marilyn's interactions with costars Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift are wonderful.

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Looking for more interesting articles on the ultimate movie star?

Check out high50, a British-based site for "the fifty-plus generation that aims to put the AARP in the old folks' home."

high50 is featuring and article by Julie Burchill, Mrs. Morgenstern’s Morning. "One of the UK's best-known and most controversial writers, Burchill imagines how Marilyn might have turned out, had she survived the last 50 years. It's in short-story format — with a real sting in the tail."

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R.I.P. Marilyn ♥