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Gene London Brings Marilyn to Allentown, PA

This green lace blouse and black pencil skirt ensemble, created by Travilla for Marilyn’s role as down-at-heel showgirl Cherie in Bus Stop (and topped with a black fedora she wore in the Arizona sun), is among many iconic movie costumes on display in Designing Hollywood, an exhibit showcasing the extensive collection of Gene London, opening on September 29 until December 22 at the Allentown Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, as WFMZ reports. Previous exhibits from London’s archive have also included costumes from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and The Prince and the Showgirl.

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Conversations With Marilyn’s Leading Men

Marilyn with Joseph Cotten during filming of Niagara

Among the many luminaries featured in James Bawden and Ron Miller’s book, Conversations With Classic Film Stars, are Joseph Cotten, who played Marilyn’s murderous spouse in Niagara; and Rory Calhoun, her roguish husband in River Of No Return; and Cary Grant, the unwitting object of her desire in Monkey Business.

Thanks to Gia at Immortal Marilyn

“I never met a girl as introverted as Marilyn. The whole fame explosion had just set in and whenever we filmed on location at Niagara Falls, great crowds gathered to see her. She couldn’t cope, retreated into her shell.

Director Henry Hathaway was a tough taskmaster at the best of times. He got so exasperated with Marilyn and her Russian acting coach [Natasha Lytess], he finally banned the woman from the set. I tried to keep her distracted. At night there’d always a party in my hotel suite, but she’d look in, say hi, and then go off with her instructress. We’d wait hours for her to show up. Hathaway started shooting rehearsals as backup and found she was less mannered there and actually used some of the footage.

I asked her about the nude photograph and she said, dead serious, ‘But I had the radio on.’ I’m glad I knew her before the troubles enveloped and destroyed her. I want to remember that superb girlish laughter when I told her an off-colour joke. One day Hathaway shouts at her and she yelled back, ‘After paying for my own wardrobe, my coach, my assistant, and God knows who else I barely have enough left over to pay my shrink!’ And the crowd watching applauded her!”

Joseph Cotten

“She was a phenomenon that I doubt like hell this town will see the likes of ever again. There have been a lot of people trying to copy her one way or another – and to me, they’re third-stringers.”

Rory Calhoun

“Howard Hawks says it’s wonderful we knew and worked with Marilyn before she got difficult. Because she was so winning and adorable in Monkey Business. When I drink that youth serum and am acting like a teenager, Marilyn really got into it. I’m diving off the high board and she’s giggling and waving me on. Years later she asked me to co-star in something called The Billionaire. It was a comedy and she said her husband Arthur Miller was reworking it. Arthur Miller a comedy writer? I ran away and so did Greg Peck, and the completed film, Let’s Make Love, showed she’d become all blurry and distant. It was sad.”

Cary Grant

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Marilyn, Joan Crawford and a Catty ‘Letter From Hollywood’

Letters From Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Film-Making – compiled and edited by Rocky Lang and Barbara Hall, with an introduction by Peter Bogdanovich – is the latest coffee table book from Abrams, the publisher who brought us MM – Personal and more recently, Hollywood Book Club. Marilyn’s own correspondence isn’t included (although she was featured in another anthology, Dear Los Angeles.)

However, Letters From Hollywood does include a reference to the night in 1956 when Marilyn met Queen Elizabeth II in a letter from Joan Crawford, also present at the London gala. Clearly Joan hadn’t changed her opinion of Marilyn’s revealing attire since publicly slating her in 1953 (see here.) And once again, her censorious tone does seem rather hypocritical – maybe she was triggered by Marilyn’s gold lamé…

“The book includes her handwritten 1956 note to Hollywood biographer and novelist Jane Kesner Ardmore about a royal premiere in London. After gushing about meeting Queen Elizabeth, Crawford included a few jabs at sex symbols Marilyn Monroe and Anita Ekberg.

‘I was presented to the Queen last night — nearly died of excitement and fear,’ Crawford wrote. ‘Of course, I was not too happy about being presented with that group of people representing the Motion Picture Industry, such as Marilyn you-know-who, and Anita Ekberg. Incidentally, Marilyn and Anita were howled at because of their tight dresses — they could not walk off the stage. It was most embarrassing.'”

Los Angeles Times

The Queen meets Joan Crawford (top) and Marilyn (above)
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Marilyn: A Lady of Fashion

Ahead of the exhibit at London’s May Fair Hotel, opening next week (details here), the four iconic garments worn by Marilyn up for sale at Julien’s Auctions in November – including three movie costumes designed by Travilla, and the black cocktail dress she wore to the press conference for Some Like It Hot, shown above – are the subject of a four-page article, followed a double-page spread featuring Marilyn-inspired fashions, in the current issue of The Lady (dated September 20.)

Thanks to Fraser Penney, and Lorenzo at Marilyn Remembered

UPDATE: You can read all my posts on the sale here.

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Douglas Kirkland’s Marilyn at Christie’s

Archival prints from Douglas Kirkland’s 1961 session with Marilyn – plus the camera he used – will go under the hammer at Christie’s in New York on October 29.

“The fresh-faced photographer, who had made his name photographing Hollywood stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich, had been commissioned to capture a ‘sizzling’ picture of the screen siren for Look magazine’s 25th anniversary issue.

On 29 October at Christie’s in New York, the 1959 Hasselblad (No. 36980) that Kirkland used to take those pictures of Marilyn Monroe (as well as many others) — together with two magazine backs, two Carl Zeiss lenses and two limited-edition archival pigment prints — will be offered in The Exceptional Sale. 

A few days before the shoot in November 1961, Douglas Kirkland and two of his magazine colleagues met with Marilyn Monroe and her agent in the star’s Beverly Hills apartment. ‘My greatest difficulty as a very young photographer,’ recalls Kirkland, who is now 85, ‘was telling Marilyn exactly how I wanted to photograph her.’

He needn’t have worried. Monroe took charge … ‘She understood my ideas and articulated them better than I had been able to do,’ says Kirkland.

‘I learned an important lesson from her: if you are to elicit her most outstanding performance, treat a star like the princess you want her to be in front of your lens.’

The first set-up saw Marilyn in a dress, but she clearly was not at ease. Returning to the dressing room, she took off her clothes before slipping unannounced into the unmade bed, wrapping herself seductively in the white silk sheet. ‘It was extremely intimate,’ he remembers. ‘It was just myself, the camera and Marilyn.’

‘I didn’t even use a strobe light; just a flood light, a constant light, so that there was no interruption of flash,’ he explains. ‘Marilyn showed me how she felt, slithering erotically between the sheets. I kept shooting.’

This unforgettable, one-on-one encounter had a lasting impact on Kirkland. ‘The Marilyn Monroe I had been with on that night of the shoot unquestionably took a firm hold on me,’ he admits. ‘She arrived in a misty vision and when she left it was as if she had evaporated. I admitted to myself with some embarrassment that I missed her.’

But there was never just one Marilyn. ‘There was the sunny girl next door of our first meeting,’ Kirkland recalls. ‘Then there was the “true” Marilyn of the night of our shoot: the breathy, sexy beauty that every red-blooded man was in love with. And lastly there was the darker, sadder woman I sat with reviewing my pictures a week later. I was never with the same individual twice.’”

UPDATE: Bids in the auction did not meet the estimated price and the camera has gone unsold.

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All About Marilyn (and Eve) in Italy

Marilyn is featured in Eve Arnold: Tutto Sulle Donne (All About Women), the photographer’s first Italian retrospective, on display at the Casa-Museo Villa Bassi in Abano Terme, Padua until December 8, as Caterina Bellinetti reports for Art & Object magazine.

“During the 1950s and 1960s, Arnold photographed many celebrities—Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and Andy Warhol—and brought attention to social and political events and personalities, such as the Civil Rights Movement and Malcolm X, and the rise of political figures like Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yet, the focus of Arnold’s work was on women; their struggles, their strengths, and the expectations that society was placing upon them. Over the years, Arnold not only portrayed the conditions of women in America and Britain but also around the world …

Eve Arnold was a woman in a profession dominated by men. She strongly opposed the label of ‘woman photographer’ because she simply wanted to be recognized as a photographer who happened to be a woman. And she was a great photographer. Without her unique way of looking at the world, there would be no record of Marilyn Monroe’s timeless and familiar beauty, of a baby’s first touch with their mothers, the fearless Mongolian girls training horses for the militia, or the exuberant fashion shows in Harlem.”

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Chris Lemmon Joins Cast of ‘Blonde’

Chris Lemmon, son of Hollywood legend Jack Lemmon, is among the latest batch of actors cast in Netflix’s Blonde – although his role is not yet confirmed, as Deadline reports. Chris, who is 65, may be too old to play Jack (who was 33 when he co-starred with Marilyn in Some Like It Hot.) However, Chris recently toured theatres with his one-man show, A Twist of Lemmon, about his relationship with his famous father.

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Richard C. Miller and the Story of Marilyn’s Audition

Richard C. Miller first photographed Norma Jeane Dougherty as a young model in 1946. By 1950, she was an aspiring actress and he photographed her again at an audition for Street Scene, an upcoming production at the Players Ring Theatre in Los Angeles. She didn’t get the part, and the photos remained obscure until just a few years ago.

The series was recently posted on the Considerable blog, a timely reminder that Marilyn Monroe worked long and hard for fame, with disappointments along the way. When she and Miller next met in 1958, she was at the peak of her success, filming Some Like It Hot.

This photo of Marilyn talking with an unnamed man (most likely involved with the production) has led to speculation among fans that he may have been making unwanted advances on her, from the way he was tugging at her collar and the solemnity of her expression in contrast to his.

But while sexual harassment was certainly a widespread problem in Hollywood – and is still making headlines today – it’s all too easy to pass judgement on images without knowing their full context. They were not alone at the time, and the relaxed demeanour of others in the frame doesn’t indicate any cause for concern. (This poster from the 1931 movie adaptation of Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer-winning play, in fact, suggests Marilyn may simply have been rehearsing with another hopeful actor.)

Thanks to Fraser Penney
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Marilyn, Bobby Kennedy and a ‘Scandalous’ Conspiracy

The Fox News documentary series, Scandalous: The Death of Marilyn Monroe, has now concluded. While some viewers voiced concerns about sensationalism in the early episodes, most fans watching in the US seem satisfied by the verdict.

“I’m one of the experts interviewed for this three-part special on Marilyn Monroe,” historian Elisa Jordan says. “I’m pleased to be a part of something that gets closer to the truth about her death and debunks a lot of the ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding her. If you happen to catch it, it’s worth watching. (And I would say that even if I weren’t in it.)”

Fellow contributor Donald McGovern, author of Murder Orthodoxies (reviewed here), has spoken about the dubious origins of conspiracy theories linking the Kennedy brothers to Marilyn’s untimely demise.

“‘The conspiracy theories about Marilyn’s death as they exist now. Did not exist in the 60’s. They grew exponentially from the 60’s to where we are now,’ said Donald McGovern, in the final episode of the Fox Nation series, Scandalous: The Death of Marilyn Monroe.

The documentary details how a right-wing writer [Frank Capell] the head of an anti-Communist group [Maurice Reis], and the first police officer to arrive on the scene of Monroe’s death [Jack Clemmons], conspired to point the finger at [Robert] Kennedy.

The three conspirators met in the months after Monroe’s death, and according to McGovern, ‘that’s when they first got the story from Reis about the Kennedy-Marilyn involvement.’ The show delves into the plan to push the narrative that Monroe did not die of a drug overdose, as the coroner had concluded, but that she was killed on orders from Kennedy.

Central to this scheme was the involvement of one very powerful New York gossip columnist. ‘Walter Winchell serialized what essentially was a theory. That Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn had had an affair and that Bobby Kennedy had Marilyn murdered. I don’t know that Winchell ever comes out and says that. But it’s insinuated,’ recounted McGovern.

The theories surrounding Monroe did not end there.  They re-surfaced in the 1970’s, around the 10th anniversary of her death, when novelist Norman Mailer wrote an instant best-selling book, Marilyn: A Biography. In the final chapter of that book, Mailer turns the Capell-Reis-Clemmons conspiracy on its head and suggests that Monroe was killed by the conspirators.

Fox News

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Marilyn Goes From Hollywood to Poland

Marilyn graces the latest cover of Poland’s legal journal, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (dated September 13-15), accompanying an interview with filmmaker Andrzej Krakowski about sexual behaviour in Hollywood, in which he refers to her rumoured – and much exaggerated – affair with John F. Kennedy. The main headline apparently translates as ‘Women in Bed, Not in Politics.’ (Sex was probably the last thing on Marilyn’s mind in this 1952 photo, however, as it was taken at her bedside after being admitted to hospital for an appendectomy.)

Thanks to Marco at Marilyn Remembered