Marilyn Monroe 1926-1962
Cumbrian fans are in for a treat this summer – Some Like it Hot gets an outdoor screening in the historic surroundings of Greystoke Castle, near Penrith, on August 24. A jazz band will play before the movie, cross-dressers and Marilyn wannabes welcome. Gates open at 6pm, film starts after dusk. Book tickets here.
Mitzi Gaynor, who starred alongside Marilyn in There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), will appear at a tribute evening for choreographer Jack Cole at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theatre on August 4 (the anniversary of Marilyn’s death) at 7.30 pm, reports Film Noir Blonde.
‘Choreography by Jack Cole’, a 4-film homage featuring Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at 11.45 pm, will air on TCM (US-only) on September 10.
Dangerous Years (1947), a B-movie about teen gangs featuring a brief appearance from Marilyn as a waitress in a diner – only her second movie role, and rarely seen – has now been released by Fox DVD-R (region-free, manufactured on demand) and is available to order on Amazon.com.
Some Like it Hot will be screened at the Paramount Theatre in Kankankee, Illinois, on Thursday, July 26th at 7pm, reports TribLocal.
“‘We’re going all-out for a fun Hollywood-style red carpet event and Marilyn Monroe is scheduled to appear prior to the film,’ said Jackie Haas, president and chief executive officer for the center. ‘Bringing a classic film like this one to life on the big screen in the beautiful art-deco style Paramount Theatre is a unique event that everyone can enjoy.’
Prior to the movie, a VIP reception will be held at 5:30 p.m. at ‘164 North,’ 164 N. Schuyler Ave. in Kakakee. The reception features light refreshments and cash bar. A Marilyn Monroe look-a-like is scheduled to attend. VIP tickets are $25 and includes the reception and a movie pass.
All proceeds benefit the Helen Wheeler Center, which provides outpatient counseling and mental health services to children, adolescents and adults in our community.”
Lana Del Rey recreates Marilyn’s ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ in the opening sequence of her new video, ‘National Anthem’. The president is played by rapper A$AP Rocky. Lana goes on to embody the Camelot myth, giving her own take on the role of First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
“Sure, there are some who will object to the clip’s re-telling of history: Del Rey actually plays both Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe — a loaded proposition when you consider the long-standing rumors of an affair between the actress and the commander in chief — and the clip opens with her doing Monroe’s sultry ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ from 1962. She then switches to the more demure Jackie, the doting wife to Rocky’s JFK, and their love story unfurls over seven hazy, dreamlike minutes. In a way, the dual roles seem to be director Anthony Mandler’s way of exploring the complexities of one of our nation’s most celebrated (and discussed) first couples: the notion that, from the outside, all appeared to be perfect, while, internally, their marriage was wrought with indiscretions and very stormy indeed.
There is also the fact that the clip is loaded with social commentary. The scenes of Del Rey and Rocky cavorting in the Kennedys’ Hyannis Port compound very boldly show the so-called ‘American Camelot’ (the term used to describe the unbridled hope associated with the Kennedy presidency) through a decidedly 2012 prism. Here is the first family reimagined as a beautiful white wife and a confident, powerful black husband, very much in love, caring for their biracial children, holding court with their associates. It was a scene that was practically unimaginable during the 1960s, and one that, sadly, is still sure to rankle some today.” – MTV
More screencaps at LanaDelReyFan.com
Elisa Jordan, whose regular column on Marilyn is published at the Examiner, has launched an entertainment tour company, L.A. Woman. Her ‘Marilyn’s Hollywood’ tour will go ahead next month:
AVELA, a company specialising in nostalgia merchandise, has filed a lawsuit in New York, alleging that the Marilyn Monroe estate is interfering with its licensing activity, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“Despite judgments that ruled that Monroe couldn’t devise by will a property right she did not own at the time of her death in 1962, the estate has continued to send out cease-and-desist letters…
…AVELA says that it has also received a cease-and-desist and is now suing to punish the estate for its legal aggressiveness.”
‘Coroner to the Stars’ Dr Thomas Noguchi has spoken to the Daily Telegraph about his role in the much-disputed autopsy of Marilyn Monroe.
“When Noguchi looked at the police report, he saw that the dead woman was 5ft 4in tall and weighed just over 10 stone. Various bottles of pills, including an empty bottle of the sleeping pill Nembutal, had been found close to her body. Her name meant nothing to him. It was only after he had read the report that someone told him that she was better known as Marilyn Monroe. ‘Even then,’ says Noguchi, ‘I didn’t think for a moment he meant the movie star. I just assumed it was someone else who had the same name.’
But when he walked into the autopsy room and lifted up the sheet that had been placed over the naked body, any doubts were swept away. When he’s asked how Marilyn Monroe looked in death, Noguchi, who has a fondness for poetry, quotes the Latin poet, Petrarch: ‘It’s folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying. For death looked lovely in her lovely face.’ At the time, though, it’s safe to assume that Petrarch was not uppermost on his mind. ‘Of course, I felt pressure, but I remember thinking very clearly that I must make sure I was not distracted by who she was…’”
This image of Marilyn, taken by Cecil Beaton in 1956, was spotted in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo by Shizuo Kambayashi.
Several new books about Marilyn have been published in Italy recently, including Cursum Perficico: The Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe, and I…Marilyn: Life, Cinema, Glamour.
Meanwhile, The Nation reports on the Marilyn exhibit at the Ferragamo Museum in Florence:
“‘Of course I thought about a concept,’ says Stefania Ricci, the museum’s director and the exhibition’s co-curator with Sergio Risaliti. ‘I wanted to underline that she had a brain, she was a businesswoman, she was intelligent, she was a wonderful person and actress in cinema and wardrobe. But [exploring] the photos, we found that many of the photographers, when they made their photographs, had in mind a piece of art.’
The more they explored the history of those countless, compelling images of Monroe, by some of photography’s greats, the more the theme began to make sense.
‘I found that Cecil Beaton wrote that when he made photos of Marilyn he thought about Greece, about rococo, about pieces of art,’ says Ricci. ‘And Andre de Dienes wrote, during 1946 to 49, that Marilyn [is] like the Venus of Botticelli, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Leda and the Swan.'”
For more updates and to connect with Italian fans, why not join this Facebook group, Marilyn Monroe – Italia.