“In a post-war era when actresses had little power, she would fight studio heads to control her image and film roles, winning adoring fans and a legion of men along the way … She was a woman who veered between paranoia and power, innocence and bold sexuality; a woman whose life involved extraordinary triumphs and dark episodes…”
Louise Millar’s article, published in the December 2010 issue of Marie-Claire (UK edition) is based on the new Cindy De La Hoz book, Marilyn Monroe: The Personal Archives.
In ‘Excited and Scared’, Episode 6 in Season 7 of TV’s Desperate Housewives, Renee (Vanessa Williams) hosts a Halloween party dressed as Marilyn Monroe, and is horrified when neighbour Lee (Kevin Rahm) arrives in the same costume.
Auction of these rare photographs, taken by Max Youngstein during filming of The Misfits in 1960, at Christie’s in South Kensington, London, on November 25. Arthur Miller, producer Frank E. Taylor and Eli Wallach can be seen with Marilyn in these pictures.
Another extract from Maurice Zolotow’s book, Marilyn Monroe: The Uncensored Biography, first published in the Los Angeles Daily Mirroron November 21, 1960.
The ‘Dreams’ collection has been launched by the Brazilian jeweller, Amsterdam Sauer, and Milton Greene’s classic photographs of Marilyn (the ballerina sessions and black sitting) are being used to promote it.
Predictably, ‘Coco’ Perez Hilton is baffled: ‘What’s weird, besides the fact that she’s dead,’ the infamous gossip blogger mused, ‘Marilyn isn’t wearing any of their jewelry in the vintage shots. It just doesn’t make sense.’
For those among us who ‘get’ Monroe’s timeless beauty, there are more details over at MM Collection Blog.
Norma Jeane with husband Jim Dougherty at the Coconut Grove, March 1946
This extract from Maurice Zolotow‘s Marilyn Monroe (the first full-scale biography of the star) was published in the Los Angeles Mirroron November 18, 1960, to promote the book’s release.
“Marilyn Monroe is the most famous, ubiquitous, and idolized woman of our modern age. An icon of physical beauty, sexuality, and the quintessentially American dream, Marilyn’s legend continues to grow four decades after her death. MM:Personal is a new and illuminating look behind the veil of that legend, reproducing artifacts and documents – thought to have been lost since 1962 and never before revealed to the public – to clarify, qualify, or reverse many common conceptions about the blond bombshell. Selected from more than 10,000 largely unseen and heretofore unpublished items that were stored in Marilyn’s two personal file cabinets – the ‘Rosetta Stones of Marilyn Monroe scholarship’ – the collection also draws from the important collections of Greg Schreiner and Scott Fortner. These documents, snapshots, letters, memorabilia, and ephemera are joined by the first account of Monroe’s life since Gloria Steinem’s Marilynto be written by a feminist historian, Dr Lois W. Banner, bringing a depth of understanding previously unavailable to her life. New answers come to light, such as what the dimensions were of Marilyn’s personal management of her public persona, Marilyn’s relationship to the photographers with whom she worked, how sensitive she was to her fans, and the tenor of her marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. MM:Personal promises to completely refocus how we view Marilyn’s private life, personal relationships, and legacy.”
This lovely photo by Nickolas Muray, posted on the ‘Things and Other Stuff’ blog today, was found inside a vintage copy of Time, soon to be auctioned on Ebay (the cover star that week was comedienne Lucille Ball.)
Bikini from ‘The Misfits’, 1960 (photo by Eve Arnold)
Marilyn – Hollywood Icon
12 March – 31 October 2011
“Unlike other ‘Marilyn’ exhibitions of recent years, the American Museum’s 50th anniversary extravaganza will be packed full of costumes actually worn by Monroe. The twenty costumes on display are not replicas but the real thing – just like the lady herself. These include:
· The pink ‘wiggle’ dress from Niagara (1952) – Marilyn’s first major role that established her ‘blonde bombshell’ image.
· The red sequined gown she wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
· The green show costume Marilyn wore in Bus Stop (1956)
· The iconic cocktail dress from Some Like It Hot (1959) in which Marilyn crooned ‘I’m Through With Love’.
· The bikini she wore in The Misfits (1961), her last completed film.
Personal items owned by Monroe will also be exhibited here for the first time in the UK. Poignantly, these include the silver ring given to the star by her disturbed mother, Gladys, who spent most of her life in metal institutions – as did Marilyn’s grandparents.
All of the costumes and objects on display at the American Museum are part of the David Gainsborough Roberts Collection, an extraordinary gathering of celebrity memorabilia created during the past twenty years.”
“Ms. Oates wrote a massive semi-fiction about Marilyn some years back, titled Blonde, which is now being made into a film with Naomi Watts. The author (like Norman Mailer before her) didn’t see the harm in mixing truth and illusion, the better to ‘grasp’ the illusive Monroe. Blonde was brilliant, fascinating, messy, confusing, not always truthful. Perhaps like the subject herself.
And in her Playboy piece, Oates just gets it wrong, factually, several times, though she obviously has affection for her subject. I mean, to say that Jane Russell –marvelous though she is – was an ‘A’ list star compared to Marilyn, ‘always on the B-list,’ is simply incorrect. Oates also writes that Marilyn tried to set up a production company but: ‘nothing seemed to come of it.’ Yeah, hiring Laurence Olivier to costar in the Marilyn Monroe Productions film The Prince and the Showgirl was ‘nothing.’ (Marilyn did triumph over the system, much to Hollywood’s rage; the problem was she couldn’t sustain her victory.)
Sigh! Ms. Oates is a fine, sensitive writer. The memory of Marilyn has been treated worse, that’s for sure. Still, pick up Fragments and let this mythical, lost lady speak for herself.”
