Gene Walz, a professor in English and Film Studies at the University of Manitoba, has reviewed Charles Casillo’s new biography, Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon, for the Winnipeg Free Press. (I’m currently reading this book, and my own review will follow in due course.)
“Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon, meanwhile, is Charles Casillo’s second Monroe book — his first being The Marilyn Diaries (1999, expanded 2014). That book was a novel purported to be the star’s personal diary. This second one is a sympathetic biography with a substantial bibliography (500 book entries and multiple footnotes). While it contains no Earth-shaking new insights, it’s a serious, commendable study.
This is not a Cinderella story. Not just because Monroe was insecure, terribly needy and never truly happy, but because very few men in her life were princes — and that’s what she so desperately wanted and needed. Certainly not Fox’s executives, who had little respect for her talent … In addition to the un-prince-like men, there were some ‘wicked stepsisters’ as well.
Monroe was not a dumb blonde, as she is elsewhere presented. She was a woman with a quick wit and genuine humour, a gifted and sensitive writer as well as a thoughtful, hard-working actor who wanted to be taken seriously. Her notorious lateness and absences on movie sets were not because she was a prima donna, but because she was a manic depressive wracked by suicidal self-doubt and despair. Her talents and needs were rarely honoured by the people around her. Casillo’s book attempts to rectify this wrong. Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon is like a massive quilt of a book, assembled artfully from other resources and his own interviews. It’s the latest ‘last word’ on the undeniable, unforgettable, but misunderstood star. It’s a readable refresher course for those caught up in Monroe idolatry, providing some new dimensions to her mythic life.”