Marilyn rehearses at Madison Square Garden

Legendary music producer Phil Ramone, who arranged Marilyn’s iconic performance of ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’, died in New York on March 31st, aged 79.

Here is an excerpt from an interview he gave to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2010:

“Q. You were the mastermind behind Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday Mr. President” moment for President Kennedy. What was that like?

A. An armory had been transformed into a massive theater for the president’s birthday celebration and I was handed the terrifying job of doing something with Marilyn Monroe’s appearance, which turned out to be the most fun I’d ever had. She was so sweet. She looked sensational. And I looked like a deer in headlights. She comes out and sings that song like it’s never been sung before or since, and all we have is some crummy 16mm film footage of it.

Q. So did you get to kiss Marilyn Monroe that night?

A. She gave me a big kiss on the cheek as she said thank you.”

Singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked is to publish a new song ‘I Will Be Loved’, a tribute to Marilyn – part of her current work-in-progress, Indelible Women – on her website tomorrow, to celebrate St Valentine’s Day.

The sheet-music will be available to buy for $5.00. Michelle was inspired to write about Marilyn after seeing an ‘ethereal’ painting by David Willardson. (Indelible Women is described as a mixed-media collaboration between these two artists.)

Bombshell, the fictional Marilyn musical that is the subject of hit TV show Smash, is now available on CD and for download. And for fans of the show, Smash returns to US screens for a second season next week.

This photo, featuring Marilyn relaxing at the 5-4 Ballroom, Los Angeles, in 1952, with costume designer Billy Travilla and an unnamed friend, was uncovered by the Travilla estate a few years ago. Previously, it had only been published in cropped form – with the man other removed, probably because he was black – in an era where segregation was still enforced in parts of America.

Over at his Travilla Style blog, author Eric Woodard investigates the background to this photo being censored – revealing how Marilyn took a stand against racism, and suggesting that the mystery man might have been Hank Jones, the renowned jazz pianist who, ten years later, would accompany Marilyn in her iconic performance of ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ at Madison Square Garden.

Actress Gloria Pall, aka TV’s ‘Voluptua’, died on December 30, aged 85, reports the Los Angeles Times. Gloria attended the party to celebrate bandleader Ray Anthony’s 1952 hit, ‘My Marilyn’, where Marilyn herself was the guest of honour.

In recent years, Gloria was a regular guest at the annual service for Marilyn at Westwood Memorial Park. She also penned a book about MM, The Marilyn Monroe Party, in 2002.

Hal Schaefer was an accomplished jazz pianist and vocal coach to Marilyn. They became close while she was unhappily married to Joe DiMaggio, and Hal was with her on the night of the infamous ‘Wrong Door Raid’. He died on December 8th, 2012.

You can read my tribute to Hal Schaefer here or at Immortal Marilyn.

The Mexican edition of Playboy‘s latest issue features a different cover shot of Marilyn. Meanwhile, ‘Sunset Gun’ blogger Kim Morgan, whose wonderful tribute is a highlight of the magazine special, spoke to the Winnipeg Free Press about writing for Playboy, and what MM means to her.

“I wouldn’t say that I was being simply protective, though I do feel loyal towards her. I think there’s more complexity to how one approaches Marilyn, whether they know it or not, which is why she remains powerful to this day. And I mentioned Candle in the Wind briefly, a well-meaning song, in opposition to the song that runs through my piece, Bob Dylan’s She Belongs to Me, even though Dylan didn’t write it for MM. But to me, that song feels like Marilyn in all her beauty, complications, mystery and art. ‘She’s an artist.’ Marilyn was an artist.”

Christina Aguilera has revealed the artwork for her new single, ‘Your Body’, and – not for the first time in her career – it may be inspired by Marilyn, specifically her iconic photo session with Bert Stern in 1962.

Incidentally, the pose was also imitated by Madonna back in 1990, in her ‘Homage to Norma Jean’ shoot with photographer Steven Meisel for Vanity Fair. At the time, Stern described the effect as ‘body-snatching Monroe’, but he has since replicated the shots with Lindsay Lohan.

Grace and Gladys with Norma Jeane

Michelle Morgan, author of Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed, has posted some interesting findings on her blog about Marilyn’s mother, Gladys Baker, and her friend Grace McKee’s life in Los Angeles during the 1920s.

“One of the things I loved, was when I discovered a news article about the Rayfield Apartments, where Gladys moved to with best friend Grace McKee, shortly after Marilyn’s birth.  The apartment block was situated at 237 Bimini Place and was fairly colourful - something that probably attracted the fun-loving Grace and Gladys.

I discovered a story that took place around about the very time the women lived at  the Rayfield, about a couple called Mr and Mrs Simpson, who also lived in the building.

Apparently the couple had had a big fight, and afterwards Mr Simpson took the unprecedented decision to phone the police, claiming that he had just murdered his wife.

Officers swarmed the block and began interviewing the ‘murderer’ Mr Simpson, but were shocked when Mrs Simpson – the murdered woman – walked into the apartment.  They interviewed her too and she of course denied all knowledge of ever being murdered by her husband!

Why Mr Simpson took it upon himself to phone the police and admit to killing a woman who was still alive and well is a mystery, but I always wonder – were Grace and Gladys at home when all this was taking place? Something tells me if they were, they most likely very much enjoyed the scandal going on just yards from their apartment!”

Another irony about this tale is that one of the songs from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - later cut from the movie – was called ‘When the Wild, Wild Women Go Swimmin’ in the Bimini Bay.’

The Chicago Tribune takes a look at the various ways Marilyn’s legacy has endured – through movies, TV, music, art, literature, advertising, photography and more.

“There’s a moment at the end of the promo reel for Love, Marilyn, an upcoming Marilyn Monroe documentary that will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, when Uma Thurman, speaking in words that were written by Monroe, almost whispers these lines:

‘Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone.’

Obviously, Monroe didn’t get her wish…

…But the most substantial musical treatments could be Dan Bern’s Marilyn in which the singer-songwriter posits that her life would have been better if the author she married had been Henry Miller rather than Arthur Miller, and T Bone Burnett’s After All These Years which Burnett has said was inspired by a story he read about exhuming Monroe years after her death:

‘Was she still as alluring, still as seductive?
Could she still drive you crazy by the look on her face?
Did she still have a whisper you could hear cross an ocean?
Was she still a scandal, still a disgrace?’…

…It’s also not hard to find fake Marilyn Twitter accounts including @TheMsMonroe, which puts its approach this way: ‘It’s 1962 and Marilyn Monroe Tweets regularly.’”

‘Please don’t tweet about me when I’m gone?’“

Marilyn Monroe: Collector, the latest compilation of Marilyn’s modest but stellar musical repertoire, is now available on CD or for download. Ludovic Hunter-Tilney reviews it in today’s Financial Times.

“Collector marks the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death with a straightforward compilation of her songs, from the sultry big band jazz of ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ to her sweetly wistful torch-gospel routine on 1954’s ‘River of No Return.’

The best aspect of her vocals, as with her acting, was comic timing: ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ is a swinging, playful take on the relationship between the sexes – which in real life of course she found tragically oppressive.”

Howard Reich reviews jazz singer Rebecca Kilgore’s tribute to Marilyn, ‘Some Like it Hot!’, for the Chicago Tribune. (Rebecca’s show will return to New York in October. For more details, visit her official website.)

“Yet Kilgore obviously admires Monroe considerably, and you could hear it in the affection she brought to the repertoire Monroe sang in feature films and elsewhere. Kilgore’s bathed-in-sunshine view of this music may not have matched Monroe’s slyly ironic stance, but there was no question that Kilgore produced a lot more sound than Monroe ever did. So Kilgore’s show – which she calls ‘Some Like It Hot!’ – could be considered more a response to Monroe’s work than an evocation of it.”

 Lana Del Rey recreates Marilyn’s ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ in the opening sequence of her new video, ‘National Anthem’. The president is played by rapper A$AP Rocky. Lana goes on to embody the Camelot myth, giving her own take on the role of First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

“Sure, there are some who will object to the clip’s re-telling of history: Del Rey actually plays both Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe — a loaded proposition when you consider the long-standing rumors of an affair between the actress and the commander in chief — and the clip opens with her doing Monroe’s sultry ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ from 1962. She then switches to the more demure Jackie, the doting wife to Rocky’s JFK, and their love story unfurls over seven hazy, dreamlike minutes. In a way, the dual roles seem to be director Anthony Mandler’s way of exploring the complexities of one of our nation’s most celebrated (and discussed) first couples: the notion that, from the outside, all appeared to be perfect, while, internally, their marriage was wrought with indiscretions and very stormy indeed.

There is also the fact that the clip is loaded with social commentary. The scenes of Del Rey and Rocky cavorting in the Kennedys’ Hyannis Port compound very boldly show the so-called ‘American Camelot’ (the term used to describe the unbridled hope associated with the Kennedy presidency) through a decidedly 2012 prism. Here is the first family reimagined as a beautiful white wife and a confident, powerful black husband, very much in love, caring for their biracial children, holding court with their associates. It was a scene that was practically unimaginable during the 1960s, and one that, sadly, is still sure to rankle some today.” – MTV

More screencaps at LanaDelReyFan.com

Marilyn has inspired another songstress – Lana Del Rey, whose new track, ‘Body Electric’ (performed at the El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, on June 3) begins with the line, “Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn is my mother – Jesus is my bestest friend…”

‘I Sing the Body Electric’ is also the title of a poem by Walt Whitman, whose collection, Leaves of Grass, was a favourite of Marilyn’s. You can watch the video here.

Ethereal singer-songwriter Natasha Khan – aka Bat For Lashes – played three new tracks, including ‘Marilyn’, live in Cambridge yesterday. She also announced plans for her third album, The Haunted Man. Watch the video here.

“On another new song, ‘Marilyn’, she trilled ‘Honey, you’re touching a star,’ playing the final word as if running a xylophone stick upwards over a constellation. It’s a Japan (the band) song turned show tune, still soft and luscious in spite of its grinding spine.” – Pitchfork