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‘Love, Marilyn’: A Fan Speaks

Photo by Edgar Freire

MM superfan Edgar Freire attended a screening of Love, Marilyn at New York’s Film Forum recently, and shared his impressions with members of Immortal Marilyn:

“Went to see Love, Marilyn over the weekend in NY. It was an enthralling experience, being able to sit in the darkened cinema enjoying a loving, layered portrait of such an increasingly fascinating icon. Seeing some rare photos and private footage was a surprising bonus. Some early reviewers have commented (not positively) about the director’s decision to have contemporary actors reciting Marilyn’s words and thoughts, but I think this was a good tactic…it really brings Monroe’s story alive, and reinforces the serious actor’s struggle for reality and empathy for the human condition. Despite its heartbreaking end, this film breathes life, hope and trust at its core.”

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Chopard Exhibit in New York

Monroe mania has hit New York City … Uma Thurman, star of Love, Marilyn and Smash, attended the opening of ‘Marilyn Forever’, the touring Milton Greene photo exhibit, now at Chopard‘s boutique on Madison Avenue.

Thurman, whose third child was born in July, shared her admiration for MM with Women’s Wear Daily:

“‘I always had the highest respect for her work,’ Thurman said of Monroe. ‘If you’re an actor or an actress…you can see how incredible her performances were, how complete and how full and how seamless and how alive. It’s not easy.'”

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Emerson Graduation Photo Sold

Marilyn’s graduation photo, taken at Emerson Junior High in 1941, has sold for £990 at Omega Auctions in Stockport, near Manchester, reports BBC News.

Can you spot Norma Jeane in there?

“The 8in x 24in (20cm x 60cm) photo from 1941 was sold by a man who had bought it from one of Monroe’s classmates.

It was taken at the Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in Los Angeles.

Karen Fairweather, of Omega Auctions in Stockport, said the only other photo from the event had fetched £15,000 because it boasted Monroe’s signature.

The photograph, which sold to an online UK bidder, had belonged to one of the actress’s classmates called Barbara Chapbaum, who had it signed by several of her friends but not the future Hollywood legend.

A collector from the North East of England bought it off Ms Chapbaum several years ago and has now sold it.

At the time of the photograph, Monroe, then aged 15, was a brunette whose real name was Norma Jeane Baker.”

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Marilyn’s Gift to London’s Children

Marilyn by Willy Rizzo, 1962

London’s Anna Freud Centre for children suffering from mental health problems, a beneficiary of Marilyn’s final will (via Dr Marianne Kris), has been given a £5 million windfall by her estate, reports the Daily Express.

“The Anna Freud Centre in Hampstead, north-west London, has been supported by the Hollywood movie legend’s will since 1980.

Recently, however, the clinic, which helps distressed children with mental health problems, has benefited from a £5 million windfall.

The money was proceeds from Marilyn’s iconic image when the rights were sold by her estate to a commercial branding company for up to £30 million…

…She made her psychiatrist, Dr Marianne Kris, a beneficiary of her will provided she used the money to help children…When Dr Kris died in 1980 she bequeathed her Monroe rights to the clinic. Anna Freud and Dr Kris were family friends and the two worked together throughout their careers in psychoanalysis.”

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‘Love, Marilyn’ in New York

Liz Garbus’s documentary, Love, Marilyn, has opened at New York’s Film Forum to mostly favourable reviews. Here are a few of them…

“Drawing on Marilyn Monroe’s letters and notebooks from the archives of the late Lee Strasberg—one of her prime teachers and crucial confidants—the director Liz Garbus has assembled a distinctive, empathetic, and cogent biographical portrait…Unfortunately, Garbus delivers Monroe’s texts to a batch of current-day actresses, whose interpretive excesses (with only a few exceptions) merely serve to highlight the vast distance that separates them from the waning days of the high-studio era. Nonetheless, Monroe’s intimate voice, rescued from the screenplays and the junkets, is a revelation.” – The New Yorker

“Though it may seem a strange choice to have other people embodying Marilyn’s own words, the effect is resoundingly personal…You’ll understand Marilyn better as a result of this film, which should be all the endorsement you need to get yourself to the theater.” – Cinespect

“Actresses like Glenn Close, Viola Davis, and a fantastic Uma Thurman read the excerpts, and listening to Monroe’s own words, we hear her voice and glimpse her soul as never before. We also watch her in never-before-seen interviews, photographs, and home movies, some of which were shot when she wasn’t wearing makeup. That’s a good metaphor for what the film achieves: It presents Marilyn without the cosmetic cover of her mythologies.” – Entertainment Weekly