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Nickolas Muray Exhibit in Genoa

Photographer Nickolas Muray is the subject of a new retrospective, opening at the Doge’s Palace in Genoa, Italy, and on display until February 8, 2015. Born in Hungary, Muray was also known for his passionate affair with the great Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo. His Hollywood portraits feature Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard and a young Elizabeth Taylor. Famed for his work in Kodachrome, Muray photographed Marilyn in 1952, in a unique, Renaissance style.

Thanks to Eric and Tony at MM Fan Club Belgium

A catalogue for this exhibition can be ordered here

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Mike Bell’s ‘Marilyn’ in Atlantic City

‘The Art of Mike Bell’, a new exhibition featuring this monochrome painting of Marilyn as Grand Marshal at the 1952 Miss America Parade in Atlantic City, opens today and will be on display at the Noyes Art Garage, A.C. until August 28. Admission is free.

Defiantly lowbrow, Bell’s main themes are pop culture and the ‘carnival’ atmosphere of his hometown, At the Shore reports. Another portrait of Marilyn, pencilled onto a matchbook, has been displayed by Ripley’s.

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Marilyn at the Crowne Plaza

Writing for SautStar, Tony Ricciuto looks back at Marilyn’s stay in the General Brock Hotel (now the Crowne Plaza), while filming Niagara in the summer of 1952.

“It’s Room 801 inside the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Niagara Falls and if you play your cards right, you can sleep there, too.

It’s on the eighth floor, right at the end of the hall, on the left side.

‘It’s more than just the room, it’s the entire hotel because this is where she stayed when they were filming the movie Niagara,’ said Joseph Legace, general manager of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

In June 1952, the hotel was called the General Brock, in honour of Sir Isaac Brock, the British major general who defended Canada from the Americans in the War of 1812.

‘We have taken actual photos of her when she was filming the movie and we have placed them on the eighth floor for all our guests to see,’ said Legace.

When the 20th Century Fox film Niagara was shot in Niagara Falls, Monroe, Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters all stayed at the Brock.

‘We are actually going to be doing historical tours of the hotel,’ said Legace.

The hotel was built in 1929. It’s directly across the street from the Rainbow Bridge and it’s the first building American visitors may see after crossing into Canada. The hotel has changed names over the years, and while there have been a number of renovations, the eighth floor and Room 801 will always be a part of Marilyn Monroe history.

‘We get guests all the time asking where did Marilyn sleep or what was her room number. We advise them to take a look on the eighth floor, there are five special pictures that were shot of her when she was here,’ said Legace. ‘They are quite unique and they have a little caption under them. A new picture was just sent to me recently and it shows Marilyn on our balcony.’

According to local folklore, Marilyn was known to walk around naked or sleep in the nude.

Opening the door to Room 801, it’s smaller than expected. On the left there’s a bathroom. There are two double beds in the room and there’s a large framed black and white photograph of Marilyn that was taken at the Maid of the Mist. It was signed and dated by the photographer.

This is the bedroom of the suite where Marilyn stayed. It would have been much larger in 1952 and the view from the window showing the American Falls would have been more spectacular. Now, part of that view is blocked by new construction that has gone up around the hotel.”

Photos from the ‘Marilyn Suite’ were posted by a member of Everlasting Star forum in 2011. You can view them here.

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Eleanor Parker 1922-2013

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Actress Eleanor Parker – perhaps best-known for her role as the scheming baroness in the 1965 musical, The Sound of Music – has died aged 91.

Born in Ohio, Eleanor Jean Parker made her screen debut at 18, in They Died With Their Boots On (1941.) However, her scenes were cut. Signed to Warner Brothers, she played Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1946); and starred in the 1948 adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ mystery novel, The Woman in White.

In 1950, Parker was nominated for an Oscar for her role as a teenage convict in Caged. She was nominated again in 1951, for another Noir role, in Detective Story. Her third nomination was for Interrupted Melody (1955), a biopic in which she played Marjorie Lawrence, an Australian opera singer stricken with polio. She also starred alongside Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm (1956), a harrowing look at heroin addiction; and in another Maugham story, The Seventh Sin (a 1957 remake of Garbo’s The Painted Veil.)

Parker had three children, and found lasting happiness with her fourth husband, Raymond N. Hirsch, whom she married in 1966. Her last screen role was in 1991. An unusually versatile actress, Parker was known as the ‘woman of a thousand faces’.

What movie fans may not know is that Eleanor Parker was also a friend of Marilyn Monroe. They met during the late 1940s, when they were both living at the Hollywood Studio Club, a hostel for aspiring actresses – as Marilyn later revealed in ‘I Want Women to Like Me!’, a signed-by (or approved) article, published in Photoplay magazine’s November 1952 issue.

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You can read the article in full at Everlasting Star

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Marilyn (and Dorothy) at the Plaza

One of Marilyn’s favourite New York hangouts was the Plaza Hotel, where in February 1956, she held a press conference with Sir Laurence Olivier – and, much to his amazement, chaos erupted when the strap on his co-star’s dress broke!

John F. Doscher, a bartender (or ‘mixologist’) at the Plaza during the fifties, remembers Marilyn and other stars in his new book, The Back of the House, reports Hernando Today.

“Take for instance his va-va-va voom encounter with Marilyn Monroe. The starlet stayed at the hotel numerous times.

Doscher said he was awestruck by the entourage of photographers, hair stylists and makeup artists accompanying Miss Monroe each time she came in.

‘They were from Life, Look and Photoplay magazines, all there for photo opps, he said, early paparazzis, you know?’

One day Monroe was having a late breakfast in what was the Edwardian Room and sitting by the window overlooking Central Park South. A few tables away with her back to Monroe sat Plaza-regular New York newspaper columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen.

Working the bar that day in the Edwardian, Doscher mentioned to Kilgallen that Monroe was sitting by the window. Kilgallen, he said, ‘Let out a “harrumph” and said, ‘Yes. I saw her. She looks like an unmade bed.’

‘Apparently, there was some animosity there,’ Doscher observed. ‘I mean, Marilyn Monroe has been described many ways in her lifetime, but never the description Kilgallen offered.'”

Dorothy Kilgallen was a syndicated newspaper columnist. In 1952, she reported that journalist Robert Slatzer was a rival to Joe DiMaggio for Marilyn’s affections. (Slatzer has since become a notorious figure in Monroe history, and biographer Donald Spoto considers him a fraud.)

After Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released in 1953, a sceptical Kilgallen wrote to Darryl F. Zanuck, asking him to confirm that Marilyn’s singing was her own voice, which he did.

Needless to say, none of this endeared her to Marilyn, and in his essay, A Beautiful Child, Truman Capote wrote that MM had described Kilgallen as a drunk who hated her.

Kilgallen lived near the summer house where Marilyn and Arthur Miller stayed in 1957. In 1960, she was photographed with Marilyn at a press conference for Let’s Make Love.

Just days before Marilyn died, Kilgallen alluded to the star’s affair with a prominent man in her column. In the following weeks, she tried to investigate the circumstances behind Monroe’s death – particularly her alleged links to the Kennedy brothers.

In 1965, 53 year-old Kilgallen was found dead in her New York apartment, having overdosed on alcohol and barbiturates, and also having possibly suffered a heart attack.

However, some conspiracy theorists think Kilgallen was murdered, because of her critical comments about the US government.

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Dale Robertson 1923-2013

Actor Dale Robertson died on February 27th in San Diego, aged 89. He was suffering from lung cancer.

Best known as a television actor, Robertson starred in Tales of Wells Fargo, The Iron Horse, and as a host on Death Valley Days. In later years, he appeared in Dallas and Dynasty.

In his 2012 book, They Knew Marilyn Monroe, author Les Harding wrote that Dale had been preparing for a photo shoot with a young Marilyn when her agent, Johnny Hyde, nixed the idea. Hyde was in love with Marilyn, and did not want people to think she and the handsome actor were involved.

Dale also appeared in the episodic film, O. Henry’s Full House (1952), but in a different segment to Marilyn’s. However, they did become friends, and were photographed together on September 15th at a charity event, the Hollywood Entertainers’ Baseball Game.

Biographer Michelle Morgan interviewed Robertson for her 2007 book, Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed. ‘We would go to ball games together and she was very pleasant company,’ he recalled, ‘but we were never boyfriend and girlfriend because we just weren’t attracted to each other.’

Fifty years later, Robertson remembered sensing a sadness in Marilyn. ‘She had a rough time for a while,’ he said, ‘and her biggest enemy was herself.’

After hearing of Robertson’s death, Morgan wrote in her blog, ‘I won’t pretend that I was close to Dale Robertson, in fact I never spoke to him again after I had interviewed him back in 2006, but he was such a lovely person that I truly felt very blessed to have been in touch with him, no matter how short our association had been.’

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Gloria Pall 1927-2012

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.

 

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‘Full House’ on DVD

Good news for UK fans: O. Henry’s Full House (1952) is being released on DVD (Region 2) on November 12. It is a compendium film, based on the classic short stories of O. Henry. Marilyn stars alongside Charles Laughton in the episode entitled, ‘The Cop and the Anthem.’ The DVD can be pre-ordered now via Amazon UK.

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Marilyn in Art: Seen and Unseen

Artist and photographer Mary Ann Lynch, whose ‘Forever Marilyn‘ project featured sightings of Monroe’s image across the globe, has now created a self-portrait – with eyes closed, holding a newspaper article featuring make-up man Allan ‘Whitey’ Snyder’s personal snapshots of Marilyn during filming of Niagara in 1952 – for her ‘Seen/Unseen’ series.

“Well. I have this series ‘Seen/Unseen: Artists & Their Work’ for which I ask people to close their eyes. . .I find them in a gallery or public place, never have an appointment. . .and a few have said, ‘So where’s your photograph of YOU?’ So I made this self-portrait, with Marilyn Monroe, who is the subject of another longtime project, Forever Marilyn–more of that on my website. . .”