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Scarlett, Elle Under Marilyn’s Spell

Elle Fanning for Interview – photo by Craig McDean

Actress Scarlett Johansson – who is sometimes compared to Marilyn – talks to another famous MM fan, 16 year-old Elle Fanning (now starring as Princess Aurora in Maleficent), about her idol in the May issue of Interview magazine.

“JOHANSSON: Growing up, my idol was Judy Garland. I loved her fragility, but also her strength. I know that you love Marilyn Monroe. Do you relate to Monroe as a performer? What is your Marilyn story?

FANNING: I was seven when I first saw a picture of her. I didn’t know that she was such a big icon. But I would just look at her and I was mesmerized. She was beautiful and so … truthful. She’s not faking it. If she’s having a terrible day when the picture was taken, she’ll show that she’s really depressed and having a terrible day. You can see it in her eyes. There are all the layers behind it. She not like, “Oh, let me just put on a smile.” That year my dad got the DVD of The Seven Year Itch [1955]. I was probably way too young to watch it. I didn’t even know what the story was about, but I was just looking at her the whole time and the way she talked was so light. That year I was Monroe in the white dress for Halloween. It was interesting to me that she did mostly comedies but her life was so tragic.

JOHANSSON: Sounds like you were attracted to her, if not attracted to her tragedy—you could see there’s such a soul to her.

FANNING: I felt like there was something deeper. It wasn’t glossy—there were bumps. There was more to her than just her blond hair.

JOHANSSON: Have you seen The Misfits [1961]?

FANNING: No. I’ve seen most of them but I haven’t seen that one. I bought this Marilyn Monroe app on my phone, and I was reading all her quotes.

JOHANSSON: Wow. I think there’s something really interesting about a really young girl—seven at the time—noticing the depth to Marilyn, because so many people only respond to the surface glamour or movie star glitz of her.”

(And for anyone looking to read genuine quotes by Marilyn, I recommend Immortal Marilyn Quote Unquote.)

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Scarlett as Marilyn (Again)

Scarlett Johansson may have tried to distance herself from being compared to Marilyn (see here), but it seems that Interview magazine has other ideas. This Andy Warhol-esque cover graces the Russian edition for February, which is fitting as the Godfather of Pop Art himself was also the magazine’s founder.

Scarlett recently played another iconic star, Janet Leigh, in Hitchcock, and is currently starring as Maggie in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

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Scarlett Johansson on Monroe Comparisons

Actress Scarlett Johansson has never made any secret of bing a Monroe fan, and has often drawn on her image – but she has no desire to play her onscreen, she tells The Independent:

‘”I never wanted to play Marilyn Monroe [Johansson was reportedly in the running to play the actress in last year’s ‘My Week with Marilyn’.] I don’t know. It’s just a job – I didn’t have the passion for that. I love Marilyn Monroe. She’s a very underrated actor but it just seemed exhausting in a way that I couldn’t wrap my head around.”‘

Interestingly, her thoughts on fame, and worries about being typecast as a sex symbol echo Marilyn’s…

‘I never wanted to be a sex symbol I wanted to be a character actor. Those are the actors I mostly admire. I think women that are curvy can be pigeonholed in that bombshell thing. It’s not like I actively look for sexy roles. It’s not a requirement that my character be pretty and delicate. I never think about my character being sexy, unless that’s written in.

It’s weird to be a recognisable face I’m not traumatised [by it] but I find it can bring out the worst in humanity sometimes. I’m constantly surprised by how rude people are. You’ll be having an intimate dinner with a friend and there’s somebody on the table behind with a cameraphone pointing at your face. I think, “I would never take a photo of someone without asking.”‘

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Scarlett Johansson on Monroe Comparisons

As Catherine in Arthur Miller’s ‘View From the Bridge’

Actress Scarlett Johansson is often compared to Marilyn as a sex symbol and comedienne, and she has channelled the Monroe look in many photo shoots. However, as she told USA Today recently, she has no plans to play MM onscreen:

‘Two years ago, Johansson made her Tony-winning Broadway debut a neighborhood away in A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller, the former husband, of course, of the icon she’s constantly held up against, Monroe.

‘There’s a lot there to explore, and I like to watch other people do it, but I have no interest’ in joining the Monroe biopic brigade.

‘It’s lovely to be compared to somebody as sort of effervescent and charming and fragile and I think kind of an underrated actor, really,’ Johansson says. And ‘you know, beautiful and everything. But it’s never been one for me.'”

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Cover Girls’ Blonde Ambition

Singer Gwen Stefani, who has drawn inspiration from Monroe, Harlow and Madonna, is on the cover of the UK’s InStyle magazine this November.  ‘I do my roots as often as Marilyn Monroe did hers,’ she says. ‘I’m serious. I found out.’

Actress Scarlett Johansson – who has often been compared to Monroe – exudes 1940s-style glamour on the cover of the Spanish magazine, S Moda, and in her latest ad campaign for Dolce & Gabbana – resembling either Lana Turner, Betty Grable or a young Marilyn.

Over at Rookie magazine, starlet Elle Fanning (Somewhere, Super 8) talks about her Marilyn collection:

“Every year I get a new Barbie calendar and there are all these old Barbie dolls on the calendar, and I’m very obsessed with schedules and everything, so I love writing in different things that I have each day on it. So that’s one of my favorite things in my room. I also am obsessed with Marilyn Monroe, and I went to an auction and got her face cream and powder. Her actual one!

Oh my god!

I know! Crazy! So I have that in my room. It’s literally the best thing ever. The lotion on it is sort of glued shut but the powder, some of it’s still in there.

That’s insane! You need a Marilyn Monroe Barbie, though—do you have one?

I do, I do. I have the ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ one, and I have the Seven Year Itch one, with the white dress.”

 

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Boris Prefers Blondes

Marilyn won praise from an unlikely source in Metro this week – from the gaffe-prone Mayor of London, Boris Johnson (something of a blond bombshell himself):

“Who do you admire the most?

Aristotle, Marilyn Monroe and Scarlett Johansson – in fact, I think she might have overtaken Marilyn Monroe – and my wife, of course. My wife is way ahead of Aristotle. She’s beaten him in the final furlong.”

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‘Maf the Dog’ Movie Plans

Eric Skipsey, 1961

Plans are afoot to bring Andrew O’Hagan’s comic novel, The Life and Thoughts of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, to the big screen, it is confirmed in today’s Daily Telegraph, ahead of a live reading from his book at the Southbank Centre this Sunday.

The movie plans were first reported in the Scottish Herald in May:

“At the time of writing, O’Hagan reports that director Stephen Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven) is in the frame. They are even negotiating sequel rights for reasons we shall come to later. Meanwhile, rumour has it that George Clooney wants to play Frank Sinatra – Ol’ Blue Eyes gave Marilyn Maf, short for Mafia Honey, in November 1960 – opposite Scarlett Johansson as the angel of sex herself, although O’Hagan confides that his own heart is set on the ‘delicious’ Christina Hendricks (Joan in Mad Men). We agree, however, that Maf, who was Marilyn’s constant companion for the last two years of her life, who ‘breathed the secrets of her pillow’, should be voiced by only one actor, O’Hagan’s friend Ewan McGregor.”

This sounds promising, though I do wonder if the book’s subtle whimsy will translate on film. Judging by some of the reader reviews on Amazon, not everyone was as charmed by Maf the Dog as me.

But I suspect this all depends on your preconceptions about Marilyn (O’Hagan is positively rapturous about her), and your willingness to suspend disbelief and accept a canine narrator.

Two other MM-related movies are currently in the works: an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde, starring Naomi Watts; and My Week With Marilyn, based on Colin Clark’s memoir, with Michelle Williams.

Who knows how these projects will turn out, but I’ve read all the books that they’re based on, and Maf’s story is easily my favourite of the three!

UPDATES:

Jolie Casts Doubt on Marilyn Role

Maf the Dog: Call Off the Search