Marilyn Monroe 1926-1962
Marilyn Wines have released their 2010 Sauvignon Blonde in time for summer. And what better image to toast the season than Monroe’s ‘skirt-blowing scene’ from The Seven Year Itch?
“The 2010 vintage Sauvignon Blonde™ is a 100% varietal from the Yountville district of Napa Valley. Varietal aromas are a distinct combination of ripe grapefruit and pineapple lending to a classic balance of Sauvignon Blanc characters. The flavors are fruity, crisp and lingering.”
Melinda Mason’s account of meeting George Zimbel – one of the photographers who covered the famous ‘subway scene’ shoot from The Seven Year Itch – last week at the ongoing Marilyn exhibit at the McMichael, Ontario, is posted at The MMM Blog.
‘Norma Jeane’ is the latest offering from Marilyn Wines. The photo on the label, of a young Marilyn, was taken by John Engstead in 1950. He said later, ‘Her pretty face was all that impressed me and I still wonder what transformed this sweet young thing into the superstar and sex symbol of a generation.’
This week marks the 12th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s death. He graces the cover of this month’s Sports Illustrated, and is the subject of several new books. ‘Today’s true baseball “heroes” are few and far between,’ writes Liz Smith, ‘and I don’t think they’d cut the mustard with this man who made the game a craze 70 seasons ago.’
Over at Watertown Patch, MA, Dennis Noonan remembers some childhood pets with glamorous names who met an untimely end:
‘Growing up, we always had cats in the family. Most cats were free, mixed breed and outdoor in those days. On Robbins Road in 1954, someone gave us a pair of kittens from the same litter – a female and a male. Mom named them “Marilyn” and “Joe” after the famous celebrity couple of the day – Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. The celebrity marriage lasted less than a year; the cats didn’t last much longer either. Joe got hit by a car, and a year later Marilyn caught some evil disease called cat typhus and had to be put down.’
On her Work in Progress book blog, Dani Torres reports that there is currently a display at her local library with the theme, ‘Are You as Well Read as Marilyn Monroe?’
A trailer for The Smurfs movie reveals a reference to Marilyn’s famous ‘skirt-blowing’ subway scene from The Seven Year Itch. ‘Nothing like a cool breeze through my enchanted forest,’ says Gutsy (Scottish) Smurf who’s letting a vent blow cold air up his kilt.
‘Palaces of Montezuma’, the latest single from Grinderman II (Nick Cave’s side-project), contains a curious reference to Marilyn Monroe and JFK.
Okay. Well, one of the most beautiful songs on the CD is “Palaces of Montezuma”…
Jim Sclavunos: It’s amazing how much this song is coming up.
Nick Cave: Every second journalist talks about that song.…But then there are these lines about JFK and Marilyn Monroe: “The spinal cord of JFK/Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee/I give to you.” That’s a really vivid and disturbing image to deposit two thirds of the way through this lovely track.
JS: It’s a variation on the classic, “I’ll give you the moon and the stars,” kind of thing. Only this one’s full of very odd curiosities and phantasmagorical, fetishistic things, like a spinal cord and a negligee. But it is a classic type of love song.
NC: I quite like the unsuspecting lyric, or line. You’re sitting listening to a song and it’s going along and suddenly there’s that, “F—, did he just say that?” kind of thing. I guess that’s just become one of the things I kind of do. It suddenly changes the trajectory of the lyric.
You can read those lyrics in full here
The Guardian reviews a new Elliott Erwitt exhibition, showing at London’s Atlas Gallery until March 19, including a series following Marilyn during filming of the famous ‘subway scene’ in The Seven Year Itch, NYC, 1954.
“Photographing Marilyn Monroe … Erwitt plays at being the flâneur whose wanderings around the city are prompted by erotic opportunism. Here there is no need for a narrative, a diptych or trilogy that organises images into a short story. Monroe, unlike the characters in the other sequences, sticks to her assigned spot…The result is an array of poems written with light, contrasting the self-conscious stance of the woman…with the uncontrollable antics of the dress, which behaves in successive frames like a flaunting tail, an inverted flower, a soft shell or a billowing parachute. ”
Model Lara Stone imitates Marilyn’s famous pose from The Seven Year Itch to launch this year’s Red Nose Day appeal for Comic Relief.
“I had so much fun being Marilyn Monroe for the day and recreating the iconic shot with a Red Nose twist. It was an honour to be asked to take part.”
This year’s Red Nose Day telethon will be broadcast on BBC1, March 18.
These latest extracts from Zolotow’s 1960 biography, first published in the Los Angeles Daily Mirror, recounts Marilyn’s split from husband Joe DiMaggio, and her decision to leave Hollywood; her business partnership with photographer Milton Greene and her personal relationship with his wife, Amy (Marilyn stayed at their Connecticut home in the winter of 1954-55, before moving to New York.)
A New York movie tour includes a stop by the grating where Marilyn Monroe filmed The Seven Year Itch – see ScreenTours for more details.
And Marilyn’s two classic comedies with director Billy Wilder are showing in Connecticut this weekend – The Seven Year Itch at the Criterion Cinema in New Haven, and Some Like it Hot at Bow Tie Place 17 in Hartford.
British TV presenter Konnie Huq (who recently married the writer and broadcaster, Charlie Brooker) channels Marilyn in the ‘subway scene’ from The Seven Year Itch, wearing a similar halter-neck dress made of newspaper – all for energy provider nPower‘s SOS Climate Change campaign, proving that anyone can be stylish and eco-friendly.
US Singer Katy Perry pays homage to Marilyn’s famous ‘subway scene’ from The Seven Year Itch (1955) in ‘We Love to Entertain You’, a commercial for the German TV channel, ProSieben Star-Force.
In this summer release, written and directed by Offer ‘Vince’ Shlomi (better known to US readers as ‘the ShamWow guy’), Lindsay Lohan recreates the famous ‘subway scene’ from The Seven Year Itch, as a skit, but with a difference – this time, ‘The Girl’ pulls a gun on the paparazzi.
In the sketch, one of the characters tells Lohan, “You look like Marilyn Monroe,” to which she replies, “Marilyn never had to wear a SCRAM bracelet!” (This is a reference to Lindsay’s recent jail stint.)
I think this ‘revenge fantasy’ is most likely a spoof on the paparazzi, not Marilyn herself – but please be warned – as the trailer indicates, Underground Comedy Movie 2010 is peppered with violence, sexual innuendo, and profanity.
