Marilyn in the Blogosphere

‘Norma Jeane’ is the latest offering from Marilyn Wines. The photo on the label, of a young Marilyn, was taken by John Engstead in 1947. He said later, ‘Her pretty face was all that impressed me and I still wonder what transformed this sweet young thing into the superstar and sex symbol of a generation.’

This week marks the 12th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s death. He graces the cover of this month’s Sports Illustrated, and is the subject of several new books. ‘Today’s true baseball “heroes” are few and far between,’ writes Liz Smith, ‘and I don’t think they’d cut the mustard with this man who made the game a craze 70 seasons ago.’

Over at Watertown Patch, MA, Dennis Noonan remembers some childhood pets with glamorous names who met an untimely end:

‘Growing up, we always had cats in the family. Most cats were free, mixed breed and outdoor in those days. On Robbins Road in 1954,  someone gave us a pair of kittens from the same litter – a female and a male. Mom named them ”Marilyn” and “Joe” after the famous celebrity couple of the day – Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. The celebrity marriage lasted less than a year;  the cats didn’t last much longer either. Joe got hit by a car, and a year later Marilyn caught some evil disease called cat typhus and had to be put down.’

On her Work in Progress book blog, Dani Torres reports that there is currently a display at her local library with the theme, ‘Are You as Well Read as Marilyn Monroe?’

A trailer for The Smurfs movie reveals a reference to Marilyn’s famous ‘skirt-blowing’ subway scene from The Seven Year Itch. ‘Nothing like a cool breeze through my enchanted forest,’ says Gutsy (Scottish) Smurf who’s letting a vent blow cold air up his kilt.

‘Palaces of Montezuma’, the latest single from Grinderman II (Nick Cave’s side-project), contains a curious reference to Marilyn Monroe and JFK.

Okay. Well, one of the most beautiful songs on the CD is “Palaces of Montezuma”…
Jim Sclavunos: It’s amazing how much this song is coming up.
Nick Cave: Every second journalist talks about that song.

…But then there are these lines about JFK and Marilyn Monroe: “The spinal cord of JFK/Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee/I give to you.” That’s a really vivid and disturbing image to deposit two thirds of the way through this lovely track.
JS: It’s a variation on the classic, “I’ll give you the moon and the stars,” kind of thing. Only this one’s full of very odd curiosities and phantasmagorical, fetishistic things, like a spinal cord and a negligee. But it is a classic type of love song.
NC: I quite like the unsuspecting lyric, or line. You’re sitting listening to a song and it’s going along and suddenly there’s that, “F—, did he just say that?” kind of thing. I guess that’s just become one of the things I kind of do. It suddenly changes the trajectory of the lyric.

Entertainment Weekly

You can read those lyrics in full here


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