Remember Norma Jeane…

Circa 1946

Posted in Art and Photography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

David L. Wolper 1928-2010

David L. Wolper, producer of The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, died in Beverly Hills last week aged 82. Read my tribute to Wolper and his seminal documentary here

Posted in Documentaries, Television | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jolie, Clooney Tipped for ‘Maf the Dog’

Photo by Douglas Kirkland

Andrew O’Hagan’s comic novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, is set for Hollywood, according to today’s Guardian.

A few years ago, Douglas Kirkland recreated his 1961 Monroe photo shoot with Angelina Jolie, to stunning effect. While I do wonder if Jolie can recapture Marilyn’s fragile charm, she is a gifted actress and Hollywood’s biggest star right now. (Her performance in Life Or Something Like It, back in 2002, drew comparisons to Monroe in some quarters.)

Screen adaptations of two other Marilyn-related books, My Week With Marilyn and Blonde, are also rumoured to be in the pipeline.

Posted in Books, Celebrities, Movies | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Dog is a Girl’s Best Friend

“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.” – Marilyn Monroe

Photo by Milton Greene, 1955 – thanks to Savannah

Legends Licensing

Posted in Animals and Nature, Art and Photography | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Howard Hawks and ‘Blondes’

“Playing up the usual style gap between Monroe’s acting and everyone else’s, and playing down her often-cited vulnerability, Hawks oversees a remarkable comic performance, with terrific line readings like beat poetry (‘Sometimes Mr. Esmond finds it very difficult to say no to me’) and bits of business that hint at a bizarre inner life (confronted for the first time with a diamond tiara, Lorelei can barely restrain her hands from pouncing inappropriately; after the tiara’s departure, she happily improvises a scenario of future possession, using a napkin ring encircled by a necklace as a stand-in).”

Dan Sallitt


Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Simply Irresistible

Another Marilyn tee at Walmart, junior sizes from small to xxlarge. Thanks to Colby George…

Posted in Fashion and Beauty | Tagged , | Leave a comment

American Beauty

Richard Avedon, 1957

From American Beauty by Lois W. Banner (1983)

“The most important film representative of the 1950s voluptuous woman was Marilyn Monroe, who differed from the others by combining with sensuality strains of childishness reminiscent of the adolescent stars. She thereby created a powerful combination that encompassed the era. Technically unschooled and often intellectually vacuous in her film characterisations, she nevertheless possessed both the shrewdness of the classic chorus girl (a character she often portrayed in film roles) and the intuitive genius of a child, able to see more clearly to the heart of a matter than others more sophisticated around her. As a down-and-out member of a seedy female band in ‘Some Like it Hot’, she taught fleeing mobsters Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon the meaning of friendship and love; as a chorus girl in ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’, she taught the same lesson to Laurence Olivier, the head of a fictional kingdom. Most of the other voluptuous film stars had dark hair, but Monroe’s was peroxided a light blonde – a colour that invoked traditional images of angels and virtuous women, reflected the light locks of the era’s adolescent film stars, and both legitimised and heightened her sensuality.

Previous exemplars of female sensuality had also had blonde hair: one thinks of the British Blondes in the 1860s and Jean Harlow in the 1930s. But Monroe differed strikingly from the Lydia Thompson troupe and from Harlow. They were tough, wisecracking, even masculine in type. With a slight, lisping voice, a soft curvaceous body, and a seriousness about life, Monroe projected an intense femininity and an inner vulnerability. Her sensual posturings were reminiscent of Mae West, although with no hint of the parody that West intended. Monroe regarded her body with dead seriousness. Long before she was acclaimed as movie actress and sex queen, she had posed for the first nude centrefold in ‘Playboy’ magazine, destined to become a trendsetter in liberalised sexuality and a showcase for the bodies of beautiful women. [Actually, Monroe had posed for a trade calendar - the shots were acquired by Hugh Hefner four years later, after her rise to fame.]

Monroe’s popularity ensured the triumph of the vogue of dyed blonde hair, which cosmetics companies had been promoting. Sales of hair colouring soared; platinum blondes seemed everywhere. The widespread dying of hair to be light blonde indicated women’s acceptance of a model of looks and behaviour that had them be feminine, sensual, and unintellectual. Women were to seem like children, expressing their adulthood primarily through their sexuality. The ‘dumb blonde’ who ‘had more fun’ now became the dominant image of beauty for American women.”

Dr Banner is currently working on two new books about Marilyn.

Read my comparison of Monroe and Harlow, ‘American Bombshells’.


Posted in Books, Fashion and Beauty | Leave a comment

Hollywood Museum Exhibit Extended

Until September 16

Marilyn Remembered

Photo by ‘misskelleen’ at 1962

Posted in Exhibitions | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Illustration by Graham Carter

'Hot Pants' (silkscreen)

Graham Carter website

Print at Art Republic

Posted in Art and Photography | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaga for Marilyn

This month’s Vanity Fair interview with singer Lady Gaga took place close to one of Marilyn Monroe’s old haunts….

“Bungalow 9, the Beverly Hills Hotel…the pink stucco bungalow stands between No. 10 – where Marilyn Monroe had a torrid affair in 1960 with her ‘Let’s Make Love’ co-star Yves Montand – and No. 8, home at one time to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.”

Photo by Bruce Davidson, Beverly Hills Hotel, 1960

During the interview, Gaga referenced MM while discussing her controversial ‘Paparazzi’ video of 2009.

“And while my fascination with celebrity has almost left the building, I had this incredible fascination with how people love watching celebrities fall apart, or when celebrities die; I wanted to know, what did they look like when they died? Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, JonBenet Ramsey…I think about all those dead girls, all those dead blonde icons. What did they look like when they died? So then I thought, well maybe if I show what I look like when I die, people won’t wonder. Maybe that’s what I want people to think I’ll look like when I die.”


Posted in Addresses and Locations, Celebrities, Death, Magazines, Music | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment