Marilyn’s Eternal Flame

Marilyn by Eve Arnold, 1955

Liza Power of the Sydney Morning Herald examines the Marilyn phenomenon, interviewing David Wills, Australian-born author of MM: Metamorphosis; Dr Lois Banner (MM: Personal) and Laurent Morlet, director of With Her, a new documentary about Marilyn’s fans:

”’There is something unexplainable about their love for her,” Morlet says. ”She is a confidante, a friend, a guide, a support for them, usually since a very young age. I don’t think they ‘see’ specific things in her as much as just feeling a need for her, often without knowing why.”’

Introducing ‘MM: Personal’

This upcoming book by Dr Lois Banner is an illustrated look at ‘the Inez Melson files’, collected by Melson, Marilyn Monroe’s business manager, from filing cabinets at Monroe’s home immediately after her death in 1962.

The collection, photographed by Mark Anderson, was the subject of a Vanity Fair cover story, ‘The Things She Left Behind’, in 2008.

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Abrams (March 1, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0810995875
  • ISBN-13: 978-0810995871

The Meaning of Marilyn

Philippe Halsman, 1952

Dr Lois Banner, professor of History and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California, considers three recent MM biographies in this month’s Women’s Review of Books, and discusses the difficulty of ‘deconstructing Marilyn’.

Banner is currently writing a scholarly study of Monroe for Bloomsbury Press, An Uncommon Woman: Marilyn Monroe as an American Icon of Passion and Power.

Dr Banner at USC

Lois Banner on Amazon

My own reviews of recent Monroe literature can be found here