“You know, she would stop whatever she was doing to wave to truck drivers and cabbies who yelled ‘Marilyn!’ to her. She had a lot of their standards … That’s the element, the quality, which every young girl in America could recognise.
I think the major reason for her myth becoming larger and larger every day, for the legend growing on such a gigantic scale, is not the tragedy of her life. It’s the joy of the girl; she presented the joyous moment of a vibrant woman.
More important, she represents the freedom which kids have today. Only, she was fifteen or twenty years ahead of the times, so she paid the price for her freedom.
Anyway, I want to show the nice moments in her life. I think in my own way I don’t gloss over what we look upon as vicious in life. What the hell! You’ve got to be tough to survive in the movie world. And in individual relationships with people. In the emotional life.”
Charles Casillo, author of Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon, is interviewed in the July issue of digital journal PHACEMAG. (You can read my review here.)
“Today, celebrities tell everything on Twitter. They write tell-all memoirs. They post their lives on Instagram. And in a way that makes them like everyone else. On the other hand, Marilyn will always remain slightly out of reach. There will never be anyone like her. So I think, no matter what we find out or what remains unclear, she will always be remembered–for her beauty, her talent, her sensuality, and her humanity–with some mystery thrown in as another powerful ingredient.”
As we reach the 57th anniversary of Marilyn’s death, Megan Monroe reminds us of her true legacy in a timely blog post.
“So many people and society tend to view Marilyn as a victim, passed around from man to man and used throughout her lifetime. This both angers and frustrates not just me, but many fans, who have spent years taking the time to research legitimate sources and find out who Marilyn herself was. Often her death is viewed as a conspiracy-fueled, gossip-loving debate, so much so that she ends up no longer seeming like a young woman anymore, but an object of fascination.
It seems to me that it’s easier for people to believe in the distasteful lies and conspiracies that surround not just Marilyn, but many other celebrities and icons before and after her. People cannot comprehend someone as beautiful, talented and loved as her to have any demons or hardships … In the end Marilyn ends up being turned into a former shadow of her true self, which is just not acceptable to me and so many others – therefore, I will continue to try and dispel the lies and bring back her true character.
Furthermore, Marilyn’s death does not define her – intended or accidental it is still and will always be a tragedy, but, it does not take away from her 36 years of life and the achievements she made during and after her lifetime … Ultimately, this was the real Marilyn, the person that so often gets lost in the publicity of hearsay and money making headlines. “
57 years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains the greatest movie icon the world has ever known – a legacy celebrated in Amanda Konkle’s new book, Some Kind Of Mirror: Creating Marilyn Monroe. You can read my review here.
Screenshot from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) by Classic Film at Flickr
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes will be screened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on August 22 at 7 pm, with an introduction by the writer Bim Adewumni, who explains how the 1953 classic inspired her love of film.
Marilyn makes the front page of today’s Inverness Press & Journal, with news of her ancestral links to the Munro clan of Moray. This story is also reported in today’s Scotsman.
“New DNA evidence proves beyond doubt that Marilyn Monroe had Scottish roots. She was descended from the famous Munro clan, from Moray, despite the alternative spelling of her surname. The blonde bombshell was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in 1926, but took her screen name from her mother, Gladys Monroe.
Hundreds of members of Clan Munro will hear details of her Scottish kin during a clan gathering in the Highlands next weekend. They will meet at Foulis Castle, near Dingwall, for an update on the latest discoveries in the clan’s DNA project.
Monroe’s mother Gladys could trace her father’s line back to John Munro, a prisoner of war exiled to America after the Battle of Worcester during the English Civil War in 1651. No Munro men who shared the same signature pattern of the male Y chromosome had been found in Scotland, so the link to the Highland clan was uncertain.
Now, the Clan Munro DNA project has finally proved that Marilyn’s forefathers were related to a Munro family from the Moray village of Edinkillie, near Forres. Descendants of this Munro family, some of whom emigrated to the Bahamas in the 18th Century, carry the unique Y chromosome marker previously found only in descendants of exiled John Munro.
Another member of the Moray family, William Munro, emigrated from Scotland to Batavia, now Jakarta in Indonesia, in the early 19th Century. He married into a Dutch family, and William’s descendant Roelof Zeijdel said: ‘I was most proud to discover my clan Munro heritage, but very amazed that DNA could show also I was related to this big star that everybody knows.’
Clan chief Hector Munro said: ‘At Foulis Castle, Munros whose ancestors travelled throughout the world, as well as those who stayed in Scotland, will be coming together to celebrate our shared history, heritage and traditions, whatever their genes may tell us.’
Previously the Munro DNA project found that US President James Monroe was of a different male line, most closely related to the Munros of Teaninich Castle in Alness.”
