Film critic Mick LaSalle names Marilyn’s smouldering performance in Niagara among his ‘Evil Beauties of Cinema’, but with a caveat:

“Not Evil Even When She’s Being Evil: Marilyn Monroe in ‘Niagara.’ As Francois Truffaut said when he reviewed this film, Marilyn had no business playing evil characters. It’s just not who she was on screen.”

Well, I have to disagree with Truffaut on this. Monroe’s Rose is deliciously wicked, and the fact that we love her even when she’s bad is what makes Niagara so chilling!

Michelle Williams won last night’s Film Independent Spirit Award as Best Female Lead for her role in My Week With Marilyn. The ceremony was held at one of Monroe’s childhood haunts, Santa Monica Beach.

“My friend was joking that until now I have been the Susan Lucci {star of TV soap All My Children, Emmy-nominated 18 times before finally winning in 1999} of the Indie Spirit Awards! I have been luckier and luckier to be working with better and better people. I still can’t even believe I did it, playing Marilyn. There wasn’t a direct path to playing her. The only way is was time and letting her dictate it instead of me controlling it.” 

The New York Post reports on 31 Days of Oscar, TCM’s countdown to this year’s Academy Awards by screening a special program of classic movies – including Some Like it Hot (February 1st) and Let’s Make Love, which though not one of Marilyn’s more successful films, earned Oscar nominations for its impressive soundtrack; BAFTA nominations for director George Cukor and Yves Montand; and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical/Comedy.

Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh are both Oscar nominees for their roles in My Week With Marilyn:

Actress In a Leading Role

• Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
• Viola Davis, The Help
• Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
• Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Photographer Terry O’Neill – known for his portraits of Brigitte Bardot and Amy Winehouse, among others – chooses his ten favourite photos, with Bert Stern’s Monroe shoot just behind Mohammed Ali at No. 2.

“Stern had three sessions with Marilyn Monroe for Vogue in June 1962, six weeks before her death, and it became known as The Last Sitting. Everyone was fixated on her bosom but he made a thing of her back. It’s coy and it’s very clever. He recreated the pictures in 2008…with Lindsay Lohan. She’s no Marilyn but what I found odd was a guy paying tribute to himself. So many people want to copy or recreate famous pictures these days.”

Let’s Make Love may not be one of Marilyn’s most widely popular movies, but it comes first on Mick LaSalle’s (chronological) list of the 100 Best Comedies Since 1960, and it was, after all, the last comedic film that she completed.

Michelle Williams has won the Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her role in My Week With Marilyn - deservedly in my opinion, and a fitting tribute, as Monroe herself won the same award in 1960 for Some Like it Hot.

Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, where Marilyn Monroe and other stars dipped their hands in cement, is not what it used to be, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Donald Kushner of Grauman’s Chinese says the theater will need to begin taking out some imprints in the near future. ‘Some of the handprints are going to have to be removed so we can preserve them,’ he said. ‘Some of them, like Groucho Marx, have almost disappeared.’

This year has seen a record number of new entries – some perhaps reasonable enough, like Mickey Rourke, Jennifer Aniston and Robert Pattinson – and other more dubious choices, including Alvin and the Chipmunks and DJ David Guetta.

This had led some critics to protest that the ‘honour’ is being bestowed far too indiscriminately, and also to concerns that older stars’ prints may be removed to promote passing fads.

I suspect that Marilyn’s spot is safe enough for now. But Hollywood is where the American film industry began, and trifling as it may seem, the Walk of Fame is one of the few lasting memorials to the creative artists who made it great.

The original beach babe, MM, ranks 3rd on Men’s Health magazine’s list of ‘The Hottest Women of All Time’, just below Raquel Welch and winner Jennifer Aniston, and above Britney Spears and Madonna.

‘She’s the quintessential blonde—the star who single-handedly seduced a sitting President, charmed a baseball legend, and inspired countless generations of women to stock up on peroxide. Marilyn Monroe—or, if you prefer, Norma Jeane Mortenson—was never apologetic about her sexuality. She once posed nude for a calendar—reportedly to help pay the rent—and helped launch the inaugural issue of Playboy, gracing the cover and the centerfold and spawning legions of imitators from Anna Nicole Smith to Lindsay Lohan, who dyed her signature red locks bleach-blonde for a nude photo shoot in New York. Monroe, no doubt, would have been flattered—though the key to her allure was always in its seeming effortlessness. “Sex is nature,” she once said. “I go along with nature.”’

Marilyn presents an Oscar, 1951

In New York’s Village Voice, film critic Michael Musto noted the irony of Oscar talk about Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn, when the woman she plays was never nominated:

“I guess you can get a nomination for recreating the production of a film, but not for having actually been in it…The insanity at the time was that Marilyn was just a giddy sexpot, not an actress – a point of view she herself took to heart…She had a natural magnetic appeal, deft comic timing, and heartbreaking pathos, and she knew exactly what to do whenever a camera loomed.”

Marilyn is already something of a fixture on many people’s fantasy dinner guest lists. Talking to The Scotsman, singer Sharon Corr adds a new twist:

“I’d invite Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, just to see how they really got on; Yeshua Ben Josef, to ask him if he was actually Cat Stevens; Oscar Wilde, to capture the moment for all of us; and Debbie Harry, for a little punk flair. We’d eat a lot.”

And on Facebook today, The True Marilyn Monroe asks: who would Marilyn invite to her own fantasy dinner party?

Over at PopMatters, Matt Mazur casts an eye at 1961′s Oscar nominees, and argues that Marilyn should have been on the list: ‘Marilyn Monroe’s final, haunting dramatic turn in John Huston’s The Misfits is a subtle marvel.’

1961′s winner was Sophia Loren, for Two Women. Mazur has previously contended that Marilyn merited a nomination for Some Like it Hot (1959), and also Kim Stanley for her MM-inspired role in 1958′s The Goddess.

Whenever Mazur gets around to 1956, I hope he’ll mention Marilyn’s extraordinary performance in Bus Stop. Not only should she have been nominated that year, I think she deserved to win outright.

How do you fit adultery, strangulation and drowning on a postcard? The Guardian awards Niagara 4th place on their list of The 10 Worst Fictional Holidays:

“Doomed holidays dominated the silver screen in 1953. While M. Hulot did his worst in France, director Henry Hathaway chose the Niagara Falls as the backdrop for his film in which Ray and Polly Cutler (Max Showalter and Jean Peters) take a delayed honeymoon. They show up at the falls to find their cabin already occupied by George and Rose Loomis (Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe), and Monroe (above) is about to reveal herself as a force of nature to rival Niagara. Her murderous love life comes close to sending everyone, unlucky lovebirds included, over the edge.”

May 19 marked the 49th anniversary of Marilyn’s ‘Happy Birthday’ performance for President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, as Garrison Keillor noted in his Writers’ Almanac. (Unfortunately, while he reports on the event well, he has added three spurious quotes attributed to MM via the internet. )

Given all the confusion out there, it was refreshing to find a sound, intelligent analysis of some verified Monroe quotes from Jason Cuthbert over at MadeMan.

And talking of the eternal rumour mill, Lady Gaga – who really should know better – tweeted yesterday that ‘Government Hooker’, a track from her new album, Born This Way,  ”was inspired by Marilyn Monroe + political mistresses. I wonder what they were privy to + what they affected.”

An Actress Prepares, a recreation of Marilyn’s last interview by Irina Diva, is coming to the New End Theatre in Hampstead, London, playing from June 14-July 10.

The Seven Year Itch is one of Marilyn’s most enduringly popular films, yet for some reason it is rarely included in cinema revivals (Some Like it Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Misfits are all frequently shown.) So I was glad to hear of a recent outdoor screening via the San Diego Reader.

Over at Pop Matters, Oscar-watcher Matt Mazur challenges the Academy in Best Actress Rewind: 1959. Contending that Elizabeth Taylor deserved to win for Suddenly Last Summer, he also states that Marilyn should have been nominated for Some Like it Hot. (Actually, Marilyn won a Golden Globe. Simone Signoret won the Oscar that year for Room at the Top, while Marilyn was filming Let’s Make Love with her husband, Yves Montand.)

Marilyn With Isadore Miller, 1962

Miss Naval Air Station 1952

Snapshots from 'The Misfits', to be auctioned at Burchard Galleries

Thanks to Marijane at Marilyn Monroe Collectors