Marilyn Covers Australian Women’s Weekly

Marilyn’s 1953 photo shoot with Alfred Eisenstadt is perennially popular – this image alone has made two magazine covers recently. Firstly, Hungary’s Meglepetes Retro, and now Australian Women’s Weekly. It’s a special edition, the second issue in an ‘Icons’ series, and if you’re not living down under, copies are available on EBay.

Richard Henry Knight has kindly shared a preview of the magazine on the Marilyn Remembered Facebook group. The tribute to Marilyn seems visually beautiful (of course), and well-written.

She also features in articles about her How to Marry a Millionaire co-star, Lauren Bacall; and the Australian-born Orry Kelly, who designed her costumes for Some Like It Hot.

Marilyn has a long history with this magazine…

Marilyn Mural in Loch Sport, Australia

Former chef turned artist Simon White painted this mural (using a 1957 photo of Marilyn by Sam Shaw, plus The Beatles and explorer Steve Irwin as inspiration) on a water tank in his new hometown of Loch Sport, Victoria (on the East Gippsland coast, 260 km east of Melbourne, Australia), as Carolyn Webb reports for the Brisbane Times.

Georgie Currie’s Ode to ‘Norma Jean’

Norma Jean‘ is one of six tracks on Flowers For Your Worst Days, the debut EP from Australian folk singer Georgie Currie, released today, as Augustus Welby reports for the Beat website.

“The lyrics in ‘Norma Jean’ are cleverly layered. Initially it seems like a love letter to the woman Norma Jean, who you could interpret as Marilyn Monroe or a metaphor for a media-approved beautiful woman. But the second line of the chorus is a watershed moment, as Currie sings: ‘Norma Jean, she’s so much easier to love than me.’

‘I think I used the story of Marilyn Monroe as a bit more of a channel of how I was feeling at the time, which was not feeling like you ever really measure up compared to what you perceive to be all these beautiful people around you.'” 

Marilyn Double Bill in Lithgow

The Lithgow Valley Film Society in New South Wales, Australia are presenting a wonderful double bill from 2 pm this Sunday, April 28 at their Main Street cinema. Introduced by an ‘MM expert’, the acclaimed 2012 documentary Love, Marilyn will be followed by the 1953 ‘Technicolor Noir’, Niagara, in a restored print, the Lithgow Mercury reports.

‘Marilyn Tower’ Planned for L.A.

You may have heard of the ‘Marilyn Monroe Towers’ apartment complex at Mississauga in Ontario, Canada. But as Steven Sharp reports for Urbanize Los Angeles, another architectural tribute is being planned right in Marilyn’s hometown.

“A proposed high-rise development in Downtown’s booming South Park neighborhood takes inspiration from California’s famed Redwood trees.

The project, the first in Los Angeles by the Australian developer Crown Group, would replace a mid-century warehouse at the southwest corner of 11th and Hill Streets … A revised plan, calls for a larger 70-story edifice designed by Sydney-based Koichi Takada Architects.

The tower would greet the corner of 11th and Hill with an undulating canopy, a reference to the blowing skirt of actress Marilyn Monroe in the film The Seven Year Itch. The project from Crown Group is one of four potentially skyline-altering developments planned for the 11th Street corridor …”

Marilyn Jetty Swim Returns to Adelaide

Blonde wigs were sold out across the state as the annual Marilyn Jetty Swim was held at Brighton Beach in Adelaide, Australia this weekend, as Lauren Ferri reports for the Daily Mail, with men participating for the first time among  270 swimmers breaking the Guinness World Record for most MM impersonators gathered in one place, raising $65,000 so far for cancer research (it’s expected to reach $100,000.)